US win medal count, and British celebrate as well

United States won 46 gold, 29 silver and 29 bronze to top London Olympics medals table.

By any measure, the 2012 London Games will be considered a booming success for the United States.

When the U.S. men s basketball team won the Olympic title Sunday, it clinched the 46th gold medal for Americans in London, marking the highest total the nation has ever taken home from a "road" Olympics. The U.S. winners of 104 medals overall in London, easily the most of any nation won 45 golds at Paris in 1924 and Mexico City in 1968.

"It means everything," U.S. basketball player LeBron James said.

The final numbers for the Americans in London won t go down as record-setting, not coming close to the 83 gold medals at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, and the 239 total from St. Louis in 1904, when U.S. athletes won roughly seven out of every eight medals awarded.

Different eras, different dynamics.

Many thought this would be the Olympics where the Chinese went home with more medals than the Americans, and that didn t come close to happening. China won 38 golds, its most ever on foreign soil, but finished 17 medals behind the U.S. overall and took a major step back from when it served as the host team four years ago.

"We are immensely proud of the success that our athletes had in London," U.S. Olympic Committee CEO Scott Blackmun said Sunday.

Host country Britain also had plenty of celebrate at these games: 29 gold medals, 65 medals overall, riding the wave of home-field energy for its best Olympic showing in more than a century to deliver on a promise of greatness in 2012 and possibly set the stage for continued emergence down the road.