A Brief History
On July 31, 2012, Ukrainian gymnast, Larisa Latynina, was passed as the most prolific Olympic Medal winner, when American swimmer Michael Phelps won his 19th Olympic medal.
Digging Deeper
Larisa dominated Olympic gymnastics from 1956 to 1964, winning 9 Olympic Gold medals and a total of 18 Olympic medals. No gymnast, male or female, has surpassed her total of Gold medals, and her total medal record lasted for nearly 5 decades before broken by Phelps.
A remarkable athlete, Phelps won a total of 28 Olympic medals from the 2000 Summer Olympics, in which the 15 year old Phelps did not medal, through the 2016 Summer Olympics. Among those medals are an incredible 23 Gold medals!
In completing his storybook career, Phelps won the Olympic Gold medal in his final event, the 4 × 100-meter medley relay, in which Phelps swam the Butterfly leg of the relay, setting an Olympic record in the process.
Question for students (and subscribers): Do you think Phelps is the Greatest Olympian? If not, then who is? Please let us know in the comments section below this article.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Hansen, Grace. Michael Phelps (Olympic Biographies). Abdo Kids, 2016.
Phelps, Michael. Beneath the Surface: My Story. Sports Publishing, 2016.
The featured image in this article, a photograph by Rory of medalists of the men’s 200 metre individual medley event at the 2012 Summer Olympics, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
You can also watch video versions of this article on YouTube.
