Our journey into the indissoluble bond between music and sport can only end on a podium. What’s more, it’s Olympic.

It is there that the winners’ anthems resound, certifying the feat accomplished. When Mameli and Novaro wrote Fratelli d’Italia in 1847 (they originally titled it L’inno degli italiani), they would never have imagined that it would become a vibrant soundtrack for sporting successes. They wanted to stir the conscience of a people, not to extol footballers or javelin throwers.

The anthem was a call to battle (for freedom, independence, a national identity), just as La Marseillaise (1795) had been for the French for over half a century or, for almost two centuries, God Save the King for the British.

Yet fortunately this is its destiny in peacetime. A war song becomes enthralling music, sweet to the ears of sporting heroes called on to vie with rivals from around the world, in a playful or athletic simulation of battle (Orwell was right).

So, if we limit our question to the Winter and Summer Olympics, how often have athletes had the good fortune to win gold, and so been able to hear their anthem from the top step of the podium? The most successful and therefore the best, without a doubt, from Athens 1896 to Tokyo 2021, have been the Americans. The Star-Spangled Banner has been performed 1174 times (the total number of gold medals won by the USA). In second place comes the Soviet Union, which before disappearing, totalled 473 performances for as many medals, followed by Germany with 305, the United Kingdom with 297, China with 284 and France with 263. Italy has taken home 258 golds, finishing seventh overall.