Winter Olympic Games only country to have earned a gold medal at every Winter Olympics is the United States. Norway leads the all-time medal table for the Winter Olympics both on number of gold and overall medals, followed by the United States, Germany, and the former Soviet Union. A predecessor, the Nordic Games, were organised by General Viktor Gustaf Balck in Stockholm, Sweden in 1901 and were held again in 1903 and 1905 and then every fourth year thereafter until 1926. Balck was a charter member of the IOC and a close friend of Olympic Games founder Pierre de Coubertin. He attempted to
Colonialism and the Olympic Games protest China's treatment of protesters in Tibet. During the Olympic torch lighting ceremony in Greece on 24 March 2008, three Reporters Without Borders journalists breached a cordon of 1,000 police at the ancient Olympia stadium and interrupted the speech of Liu Qi, head of the Beijing Games committee. One protestor tried to snatch the microphone as another unrolled a black flag showing the Olympic rings as handcuffs. Nearly 50 Tibetan exiles in India began a global torch relay 25 March 2008 with a symbolic "Olympic" flame that ended in Tibet on 8 August 2008, the day of the Summer Games'