California is a dominant athletic and cultural force at the Games.

You have probably heard it before: If California were its own country, it would rank fifth in an Olympic medal count.

When reached by phone in Tokyo, Dr. Bill Mallon of the International Society of Olympic Historians couldn’t say for sure whether that was true. But he did say the state would rank “almost certainly in the top 10.”

In terms of producing Olympians, he added, California’s universities are at the top of the list. As of about 2012, Stanford had sent 289 American athletes to the Games, the most of any school, Mallon said. It is followed by 277 from U.C.L.A., 251 from the University of Southern California and 212 from U.C. Berkeley.

In other words, even before skateboarding and surfing were added to the Games, the Golden State was a robust presence at the Olympics — a testament, Mallon said, to the state’s ideal weather for year-round training, its large population and the existence of a kind of snowball effect for athletes at top universities. (Athletic success begets more success.)