The Greatest Olympian Ever

Coming into Rio, few people expected 31-year-old Michael Phelps, swimming in his fifth Olympics, to become the most decorated swimmer in this year’s games. With the swimming competition now completed, however, that’s exactly what transpired. Phelps finished with five gold medals (the most of any swimmer) and six medals overall (the most of any swimmer). (His other medal was a silver.)

That’s on top of Phelps’s having been the most-decorated swimmer in London in 2012 (four golds and six medals overall), in Beijing in 2008 (eight golds and eight medals overall), and in Athens in 2004 (six golds and eight medals overall). That degree of sustained dominance is literally unprecedented.


No other athlete in Olympic history has both dominated his sport so completely at his apex and maintained dominance over such an extended period of time. Phelps’s heroics in 2008 (eight golds) were arguably matched—or at least nearly so—by the likes of Jesse Owens in 1936 (four golds in track and field), Mark Spitz in 1972 (seven golds in swimming), Carl Lewis in 1984 (four golds in the same events as Owens), Eric Heiden in 1980 (five golds in speed skating, sweeping the sport’s five events), and Vitaly Scherbo in 1992 (six golds in gymnastics). But none of those extraordinary athletes had the success that Phelps had in a second Olympic Games, let alone a third and a fourth.

It is surely easier to amass large numbers of medals in swimming than in, say, track and field. Swimmers can swim multiple strokes at multiple distances, and swimming offers three opportunities to medal in relays. Yet even if one were to discount swimming’s gold medals by half—presumably an overcorrection—and then round down (giving Phelps credit for 11 golds, instead of the 23 he actually won), Phelps would still have more gold medals than any other athlete in Olympic history. He is pretty clearly the greatest Olympic athlete of all time.

Here is one last glimpse of Phelps in the pool, as he dominates the 200-meter individual medley, perhaps the preeminent event for establishing the best all-around swimmer in the world. Those of us who have lived in the Phelps era have been given a historic treat, as he has been a joy to watch and root for. Hat’s off to Michael Fred Phelps, the Baltimore Bullet, winner of 23 gold medals and 28 medals overall for the U.S.A.

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