Olympic athletes are a special breed. They live, eat, and breathe the sports they're
passionate about and spend countless hours training. Competing in the Olympics is one
thing. Earning a medal is another, and winning several gold medals is a feat few people have achieved.
Here are some of the best Olympic gold medal winners of all time.
Swimmer Michael Phelps vastly outperforms other Olympians with a whopping 23 gold medals.
He won a total of 28 medals during his Olympic career. Phelps first started competing in the
international competition arena at the age of 15 as a member of the U.S. men's swim team.
He has been part of five Olympic teams, and he earned a gold medal for an individual
event in swimming at age 28, making him the oldest person to ever do so.
Phelps, a Baltimore, Maryland, native, was inspired as a teenager by the 1996 Summer
Games in Atlanta, Georgia, and three years later, he made the U.S. National B Team.
The following year, Phelps, just 15 years old, became the youngest male swimmer to
compete at the Olympics in nearly 70 years. He started breaking records in 2001 and
continued to do so for several years. When he competed in the 2004 Olympics in Athens,
he took home eight medals, including six golds, another history-making moment.
Larisa Latynina put the Soviet Union on the map in the sport of gymnastics. She is the first
female athlete to take home nine gold medals in the Olympics and won 18 medals in total, a
record she held for nearly 50 years, until Michael Phelps came along and passed her total in 2012.
Latynina competed at the 1956 summer Olympics, winning gold medals for the
floor and vault events. She also won silver and bronze medals for the uneven bars.
She competed at the 1960 Rome Olympics, in which she earned two additional gold medals, as well as
the 1964 games, in which she won a gold medal for the floor event for the third consecutive time.
What makes Latynina's career so impressive is that she won medals in each event that
she participated in except for one in her 1956 Olympic debut. She's also a standout athlete for
being the only female to win an all-around medal for gymnastics in two different Olympic games.
Finnish athlete Paavo Nurmi is considered one of history's greatest long-distance runners.
He took home a total of nine gold medals and three silver medals in the 1920, 1924,
and 1928 Olympiads. Nicknamed "The Flying Finn"
and "The King of Runners," Nurmi set 25 world records during his career.
Nurmi's unique style of running made him a superstar, his strides long and his partially
clenched fists held to his chest. He didn't alter his pace and was easily able to surpass less
gifted runners. Nurmi won six of his gold medals at the 1924 Olympics in Paris, and Finland erected
a bronze statue of a naked Nurmi outside of its Helsinki Olympic Stadium, an enormous honor.
Swimmer Mark Spitz won two gold medals at the 1968 Mexico City Games and seven gold medals at
the 1972 Munich Games, in which he competed in seven events, dominating each one and
setting world records. The California native started swimming competitively at age six,
and he started breaking national records before reaching the age of 10. Dubbed "Mark the Shark"
by fellow swimmers, Spitz stunned spectators after taking home so many gold medals in Munich.
You may also know Spitz for the mustache he sported while competing in the games.
He bucked the clean-shaven trend because he felt that the facial hair gave him luck,
which was the exact opposite thinking of other swimmers,
who believed hair created too much drag on the body while swimming.
"It deflects the water away from my mouth."
Spitz is considered one of the greatest Olympians of all time,
and he also won five Pan-American golds and set 33 world records.
Also topping the list of world's greatest athletes is track and field star Carl Lewis,
who won nine Olympic gold medals during his career.
He made history and set records by appearing in five separate Olympics. Over a decade,
Lewis won 65 events in a row in the long jump, an incredible streak in sports history. In 1984,
he set a record for indoor long jump that still hasn't been broken. His inspiration
was Jesse Owens, and Lewis matched Owens' four-gold medal haul during the 1984 Olympics.
Lewis was 35 years old when he won his fourth consecutive gold in long jump in 1996.
This accomplishment resulted in nine total gold medals, which tied him with Paavo Nurmi, Larysa
Latynina, and Mark Spitz. Sports Illustrated writer Rick Reilly said of Lewis at the time:
"Lewis beat age, gravity, history, logic and the world at a rocking
Olympic Stadium in Atlanta to win the Olympic gold medal in the long jump.
It was quite possibly his most impossible moment in an impossibly brilliant career."
Norwegian cross-country skier Marit Bjørgen has won more medals at the winter Olympics
than any other athlete. The skier has taken home 15 medals, including eight gold ones,
and she won five medals in South Korea in 2018 alone, more than anyone else.
She started competing internationally in 1999 at the age of 19, and she took home
her first Olympic medal, a silver, in 2002 in the women's 4x5 km team relay at Salt Lake City.
Bjørgen officially retired following the 2018 Olympics, but the thrill of
competition prompted her to return to the sport. In 2020, the 40-year-old decided to
compete in a roughly 55-mile long-distance race in Sweden. In addition to her Olympic medal haul,
Bjørgen is an 18-time world champion, and she won the World Cup four times.
Birgit Fischer is the only female Olympic athlete to win eight gold medals in kayaking,
and she achieved this tremendous feat over a span of two decades. The German athlete started
kayaking with her older brother when she was just six years old with the assistance of her father.
She competed in the 1980 Olympics in Moscow and, at 18 years old, became
the youngest kayaker to win a gold medal, which she did in the K1 500-meter event.
She then went on to win three World Championships in a row in 1981, 1982, and 1983.
Unfortunately, Fischer couldn't compete in the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles because
Eastern Bloc countries were banned from the competition. If she had, it's likely her gold
medal count would be higher than it is today. She won two golds in Seoul 1988, two more golds
in Barcelona 1992 and Atlanta 1996, and two additional golds in Sydney 2000. Afterward,
Fischer decided to retire, yet she returned for Athens 2004 after a three-year break,
where she clinched her eighth gold medal. Incredibly, Fischer won her first Olympic
gold in 1980 and finished with her final Olympic gold in 2004 - 24 years later.
Bjørn Dæhlie of Norway is another incredible Olympian who has taken
home more medals in cross-country skiing than any other athlete during the winter games.
Considered one of the greatest winter Olympians of all time,
Dæhlie competed in the 1992 Albertville Winter Games, where he took home a silver medal in
the 30-kilometer event and three gold medals in the combined pursuit, the relay, and the 50-km.
Two years later at the Olympics in Lillehammer,
Dæhlie won an additional four golds on his home turf. Unfortunately, during the men's relay,
he experienced a rare loss. He made up for that in Nagano four years later,
taking home a gold medal. He has won a total of 12 Olympic medals and has also won five individual
events at the World Championships. Dæhlie retired in 1999 after hurting his back while
roller skating. He had hoped to make a comeback but was unable to do so following the injury.
Japan was a powerhouse when it came to gymnastics during the 1960s and 1970s. During this time
period, Sawao Kato won an impressive eight gold medals, which is the most any male gymnast has
ever won. He was a force to be reckoned with during three Olympiads. During the 1968 games,
Kato, the team captain, took home the all-around title, Japan's third consecutive win in the event.
Even more impressive, three Japanese gymnasts won four of the five individual events.
During the Munich games in 1972, Kato retained the all-around title,
making him just the third gymnast to achieve this task. He took the gold, while his teammates took
the silver and bronze medals in the event, resulting in a Japanese-dominated podium.
This type of clean sweep of the top three medals hadn't occurred since 1900.
Kato also competed in the Montreal Olympics in 1976, where he was defeated by a Soviet
competitor for the all-around title. However, he once again dominated on the parallel bars.
Kato earned a total of 12 medals during his Olympic career.
If you're a swim fan, you no doubt know Jenny Thompson, who has won 12 Olympic medals,
including eight gold, three silver, and one bronze. She's won more medals than any
other woman in the Olympics. At the age of 14, she competed in the 1987 Pan American Games,
winning a gold medal in the 50-meter freestyle event. While she didn't qualify for the 1988
Olympics in Seoul, she appeared in the following four consecutive Olympiads.
In 1992 in Barcelona, Thompson took home two gold medals in the
relay and a silver medal in the 100-meter freestyle. In 1996 at the Atlanta games,
she won three gold medals despite having some problems during the Olympic trials
and not participating in the final heat of the 4x100-meter medley relay.
That struggle just pushed her harder, and in 2000 in Sydney, she won three additional relay
gold medals as well as an individual bronze medal. Thompson competed in Athens in 2004
and won two silver medals but not any gold ones, and then she retired from professional swimming.
Matt Biondi is a highly decorated Olympian with 11 medals under his belt.
He started swimming at age five, and by the time he enrolled in college,
he was swimming as well as playing water polo. He competed in his first Olympics in 1984,
winning a gold medal as part of the 4x100-meter freestyle relay team.
He went on to compete in Seoul in 1988, winning seven medals,
including a gold in the 50-meter freestyle in which he set a world record,
a gold in the 100-meter freestyle, a gold in the 800-meter freestyle relay,
a gold in the 400-meter freestyle relay, and a gold in the 400-meter medley relay.
Biondi is one of only two people to win seven Olympic medals at one Olympiad,
and he won more medals than any other competitor at the Seoul Games.
Swimming World magazine once dubbed him U.S. Olympic Committee Sportsman of the Year,
as well as Male Swimmer of the World on two separate occasions.
Ray Ewry might not be as well-known as other Olympians, but he's definitely not
less accomplished when compared to the other highly decorated Olympic athletes in this list.
After all, he won eight gold Olympic medals. Ewry contracted polio at the age of seven and
strengthened his legs with the use of jumping exercises. When he attended Purdue University,
he played football and participated in track events, breaking records in the high jump,
standing long jump, and standing triple jump.
Ewry competed in four Olympiads; the first was the 1900 Paris Olympic Games, where he
won medals in each of the three events in which he competed. During the 1904 games in St. Louis,
he took home an additional three gold medals in the same events, repeating his success.
At the 1908 London games, he won only two medals because the standing triple jump
was no longer part of the competition. Ewry's record of eight gold medals stood for years.
According to his official website, Usain Bolt is,
quote, "the most naturally gifted athlete the world has ever seen." Judging by this
list of incredible Olympians, he has just a little bit of competition for this accolade,
though. Bolt was making a name for himself in his native Jamaica when he was as young as 14.
He enjoyed jumping and playing cricket before participating in track events.
His claim to fame is winning three gold medals at three consecutive Olympic games. In 2008 in
Beijing, he won the 100-meter, 200-meter, and 4x100-meter, setting records along the way.
He repeated the feat in the 2012 London games and became known as the world's fastest man.
"Man, he's fast."
In 2016, at the age of 29, he once again took home three gold medals for the same three events,
achieving what is known as the "Triple Triple." In addition to his nine gold
medals, Bolt has taken home 11 World Track and Field Championship titles.
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