Our Olympic Wednesday entry today tackles the 1984 Summer Olympiad in Southern California, the second visit to Los Angeles for the Olympics. Despite the Soviet-led boycott in retaliation for Moscow in 1980, close to 7,000 athletes from 140 nations still arrived in the City of Angels to compete in 221 events across 28 disciplines. These Games actually turned a profit, too, thanks to “Western imperial capitalism.”

With the Eastern bloc nations abstaining from competition, the host nation dominated the medal count, winning 174 medals. The next-best nations were West Germany (59) and Romania (53), which ignored the call to boycott. Also, with East Germany and the Soviet Union absent, there were more medals to go around: a whopping 16 countries managed to claim double-digit medal totals, which was exciting for those nations.

Most Outstanding Male Athlete: Li Ning, China

With a total of six medals overall, Chinese gymnast Li Ning gets our honors here: three individual golds in the floor exercise, the pommel horse, and the rings—in addition to silvers in the individual horse vault and the team all-around event, plus a bronze in the individual all around. He had a real weakness in the horizontal bar which kept him from winning the individual all-around event, but six medals is brilliant.

Most Outstanding Female Athlete: Ecaterina Szabo, Romania

The only woman to win five medals in these Games, Romanian gymnast Ecaterina Szabo tops everyone else here with individual golds in the floor exercise, the horse vault, and the balance beam. She also picked up a gold in the team all around, while claiming silver in the individual all-around event, missing out on another gold due to the outstanding efforts of American Mary Lou Retton. But it wasn’t enough, clearly.

Most Outstanding Male Team: American Boxing

Without the presence of the many national teams, the United States boxers were able to clean up, winning 11 medals out of a possible 12 weight classes, including 9 gold medals. The Americans added one silver and one bronze—famously, by light heavyweight Evander Holyfield—and only missed scoring a podium finish in the bantamweight class. Holyfield probably would have won the gold, but fate intervened there.

Most Outstanding Female Team: American Swimming

The East German women were not here to steal medals this time around, so U.S. women dominated the swimming events in their backyard: Americans won gold in 11 of the 14 events, including a fun tie for first place in the 100m freestyle event. The only event the U.S. women were shut out of was the 100m breaststroke, as overall, they won 7 silver medals, too. With 19 medals out of a possible 24, it was nuts!