New Zealand celebrates record national medal haul at Rio Olympics

The New Zealand government on Monday congratulated the country's Olympic squad on its best ever results at an Olympic Games with a total of 18 medals won at Rio.

"Our Olympians have secured New Zealand's best ever medal haul, and their achievements are a great reward for the hard work and training they've put into their sport," Sport and Recreation Minister Jonathan Coleman said in a statement.

It was New Zealand's largest ever Olympic team, with 199 athletes competing in 21 sports.

"These results show we have a high-performance system which is delivering strong results, and New Zealand's sports people continue to achieve at the highest level," said Coleman.

In 2016-2017, the government is investing more than 66 million NZ dollars (47.82 million U.S. dollars) in its High Performance Sport New Zealand agency to assist high-performance athletes and to prepare for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.

On a medals per capita table, New Zealand ranked third behind Grenada and the Bahamas, the government's Statistics New Zealand agency said Monday.

At the end of the Games, New Zealand had finished with four gold medals, nine silver, and five bronze.

New Zealand won the equivalent of about four medals for every million people, said a statement from the agency.

Based on gold medals per capita, New Zealand's four golds ranked fifth.

The 18 medals exceeded the previous New Zealand record of 13 won in Seoul in 1988 and in London in 2012. Endit