The word sweep is commonly used in North American sports such as baseball, basketball, cricket and ice hockey which have playoff or regular season series, to describe a situation where one team wins all the games in a series, for example, with a 4–0 victory in a best-of-seven series.
The term is also used in a broader sense when a country, team or athlete wins all possible prizes in a competition.
[1] At the highest level, that would be when one nation wins all the medals in the Olympics.
To encourage competition, some event organizers or federations implement rules to prevent podium sweeps.
At the 2008 Olympic Games, China won all six medals at the singles events in Table Tennis, across both genders.