A gold medal. Only about 6,000 have ever been awarded.
To give you some perspective on that figure,
every gold medal could have its own room on this cruise liner.
So it's a rare achievement.
Rarer still are those Olympians
who have won multiple gold medals.
There are an unbelievable 367 competitors
who have taken home three or more gold medals.
Each of them could find a seat on this plane.
There is, however,
one group of Olympians so special they could fit
into one car:
athletes who've won gold at five separate Olympic Games.
They are Hungarian fencer Aladar Gerevich,
German equestrian Reiner Klimke,
plus two rowers, Romanian Elisabeta Lipa
and Britain's Steven Redgrave,
and driving that car would be Germany's Birgit Fischer,
whose story truly epitomises the Olympic ideal.
Hey, are we taking part by watching?
Yes, we are.
That makes us special, then!
Fischer is a German kayaker.
I say "is" rather than "was" because with her story,
you can't guarantee she won't come back for more!
Born in Brandenberg, East Germany, in 1962,
young Birgit took to
the water when she was only six and she quickly flourished.
By the time she entered her first Olympic Games,
at just 18 years old, she had already won two world titles.
At the Moscow Olympic Games in 1980,
her first-ever Olympic event was the K1 500 metres.
K means Kayak, 1 means one person
and 500 metres means it's a sprint!
Despite being the youngest in the field,
Fischer won with relative ease and took her first gold medal.
Fischer was unable to defend her title in 1984
but she was back for Seoul in 1988,
taking two golds in the K2 and K4 500-metre races.
Believe it or not, that could have been that.
Fischer thought that three gold medals and a silver
from two Olympics were a decent return for her career.
She had two young children at home
and decided to retire from the sport.
She wasn't going to be gone for long.
She was back in time for the next games, Barcelona in 1992.
Her medal tally improved further here,
taking gold in the K1 and silver in the K4.
All thoughts of retirement were dismissed.
Atlanta 1996 brought another gold-silver combo,
first in the K4 and second in the K2.
And she followed that up at Sydney in 2000
with two more gold medals in the K2 and K4.
She had joined that very small elite group.
Over five Olympics she had won an incredible seven gold medals
and three silvers.
Now 38, it was finally time to call it a day.
Fischer had cemented her place
as one of the very greatest athletes
in Olympic history, and could hang up her oar and relax
with her family,
content that there was no more she could have done.
A hero in Germany,
and christened "Supermum" by the press,
she went about living as normal a life as you can
when you've had such a famous and extraordinary career.
Fischer would still regularly feature in magazines
and on TV shows,
and in 2003 a company wanted to make a documentary
about her life.
An honour indeed.
The film crew asked Fischer to sit in her kayak for a shot.
It was the first time she had done so
since the Sydney Olympics,
and it hit her like a thunderbolt.
A wave of competitiveness flowed through her
and her mind immediately switched
to the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens,
just nine months away.
After three years away, just qualifying was an achievement
but that would never do for Fischer.
She was targeting gold.
She shed seven kilos and quickly got back
to her former sharpness.
It turns out that kayaking is a lot like riding a bike,
on water, with your hands.
Basically, you never forget!
She of course qualified and took to the water for the K4,
her team tackling the world champion Hungarians.
Having started her first race in 1980
as the youngest in the field,
here she was at 42, the oldest competitor.
The German team stormed to the title,
giving Fischer yet another gold medal.
Her medal collection would swell further
when she took silver in the K2.
Now it really was time to retire.
Over 24 years and across six Olympic Games,
Fischer had amassed eight gold medals.
That makes Fischer
the second most-decorated female Olympian ever
and the most successful kayaker of all time,
which isn't a bad result for someone
who first wanted to call it a day
all the way back in 1988.
That's the problem with being a winner. It's addictive.