Abstract: By methods of literature, mathematical statistics and contrastive analysis, the present paper analyzes China's situation of medal winning at the Rio Olympic Games and the world's sports development situation, and sums up the structural characteristics of China's medals won at the Rio Olympic Games and the competitive edge of China's sports events. The results show that the structure of China's medals presents a mixed tendency of "rise and drop"; the number of medals in traditional advantaged events dropped slightly, but these events remain leading forces for medal wining; potential advantaged events such as cycling and taekwondo made a breakthrough; fundamental events such as field and track, women's football, women's volleyball made some progress, while basketball saw the most dramatic drop, and the overall strength of fundamental events is still weak. The author suggests that China adjust its sports development strategy, including reforming it's competitive sports mechanism, optimizing the sports events structure, and enhancing the reserve talents training system; improving it international competitive edge by innovating training methods, maintaining traditional advantaged events, upgrading fundamental events and developing potential advantaged events.

Key words: Rio Olympics, China, Competitive Sports, Structural Characteristics of Medals