One of the flaws in our make-up as human beings is that we don’t always cherish the performances of sporting legends when they’re in our midst. Often times, it’s only when an icon retires that we truly look back and appreciate their excellence.
If we were just able to rid ourselves of that mindset for a moment, we could drink in the astonishing athleticism of Simone Biles, who bagged herself another four medals – three gold, one silver – at the Paris Olympics of 2024.
It might have been more, but for an uncharacteristic struggle in the balance beam discipline, but otherwise the American showed once again she is in a class all of her own with gold in the vault, all-around and team events and silver in the floor exercises.
It takes Biles’ all-time Olympic medal haul to eleven, and if she was able to compete in the 2028 Games in Los Angeles – which she herself has commented ‘never say never’ about – she could propel herself into the annals of the greatest Olympians in the event’s 120+ year history. But where do Biles’ heroics stack up against the best Olympic athletes ever?
Going for Gold
It goes without saying that winning a gold medal at the Olympics is the pinnacle – proof positive that you are the best in your chosen sport, and have been able to deliver your finest performance on the biggest stage.
To that end, there’s a reason why Michael Phelps is considered the greatest Olympian of all time. Nobody can lay a glove on his ridiculous record of 23 gold medals won at the Summer Games – for context, the next best gold medal haul is nine, shared by a stack of different athletes:
Number of Gold Medals Won at a Summer Olympics
As you can see, nobody can hold a candle to Mark Phelps, the American multi-disciplinarian swimmer who competed at four different editions of the Summer Games. He won 23 gold medals in all, across individual events like the butterfly and medley as well as the team disciplines, such as the 4x100m freestyle relay.
Phelps’ Physical Advantages
What’s interesting about Phelps is that he was genetically predisposed for success in the pool. A tall guy at 6ft 4in, Phelps’ wingspan is actually wider than his standing height – crazy, right? – while his huge hands and feet helped to propel him through the water.
Bizarrely, given his height, the American has short legs – but that actually aids his swimming stroke, according to the experts, as there’s less resistance to overcome. The icing on the cake is Phelps’ mammoth lung capacity: at 12 litres, he has almost double the oxygen supply of standard swimmers, enabling him to battle the rigours of lactic acid, and perform at an elite standard, for longer.
The leading publication Scientific American has also reported that Phelps is double-jointed at the ankles; something that enabled him to create an almost flipper-like movement with his feet in the water.
Biles’ Physical Advantages
Biles also possesses physical advantages that are thought to help her in gymnastics, although those are pretty much the opposite of Phelps’ gifts. Biles stands just 4ft 8in tall, but that lower centre of gravity can be helpful in gymnastics, as can her remarkable strength-to-weight ratio.
Paavo Nurmi: A Talent in His Own Right
At 5ft 9in and 149lb, there was no advantage to be had by Paavo Nurmi in his long-distance running career. Instead, his success came down to pure talent alone – he entered 12 events at the Olympic Games between 1920 and 1928, won gold in nine of them and silver in the other three.
Although he’s not a household name to many, Nurmi boasts the remarkable achievement of ending his career unbeaten over 10,000 metres and in cross country events, and at one point he went on a winning streak of more than 100 races at distances as varied as 800m and 10,000m.
Larisa Latynina: 18 Olympic Medals
The Finn was a truly extraordinary Olympian, and athlete in general. A record that Biles may be targeting in 2028 belongs to Larisa Latynina, the Ukrainian gymnast that represented the Soviet Union at the Games in 1956, 1960 and 1964.
She won nine gold medals – for context, Biles has seven following the Paris Games – including a hat-trick of floor exercise and team golds in Melbourne, Rome and Tokyo. All told, Latynina won 18 Olympic medals – an all-time record, until Phelps came along and blasted everybody else out of the water.
Mark Spitz: 9 Olympic Gold Medals
Two other retired athletes won nine Olympic golds too. Mark Spitz was the American swimmer who produced one of the single greatest performances at an Olympic Games in 1972: not only did he win seven of his nine gold medals in Munich, each of them was won in a new world record time. Talk about delivering your best on the big stage.
Spitz’s Olympic heritage is even more incredible when you consider that he retired immediately after those Munich Games – at the age of just 22. He therefore only competed at two editions of the Olympics in his prime; years later, he attempted to make a comeback at the 1992 Games at the age of 41, after a filmmaker offered him $1 million dollars if he succeeded.
Carl Lewis: 9 Olympic Gold Medals
Unfortunately for Spitz, he was just two seconds outside of the time required to qualify for Barcelona. The other nine-time gold medal winner that has now retired is Carl Lewis, whose achievements in track and field are incomparable.
At the 1984 Games in Los Angeles, Lewis won gold in the 100m, 200m and 4x100m relay – impressive enough in itself. But he also contested the long jump, winning the gold medal with a leap of 8.54m.
Jesse Owens: 4 Olympic Gold Medals
Multi-disciplinarians on the track aren’t that unusual, but to combine sprints with the long jump – and win gold in each of them – truly was extraordinary; Lewis matching the feat of the iconic Jesse Owens at the 1936 Games in Munich. The remaining two athletes on the ‘nine golds’ list have an asterisk against their names – and for good reason.
Katie Ledecky & Caeleb Dressel: 9 Olympic Gold Medals
Both Katie Ledecky and Caeleb Dressel have won nine Olympic golds, and both were aged just 27 at the culmination of the games in Paris. Therefore, it’s not impossible that either or both will compete on home soil in Los Angeles in 2028 – Ledecky, who went to university in California, would surely love to strike gold again in her adopted home state.
Going for Gold, Silver, and Bronze
Is there anything in sport more divergent than winning silver or bronze at the Olympic Games? Some athletes would be absolutely delighted to win a medal of any colour; that would be the physical manifestation of all their hard work in training, not to mention their ability to handle the pressure of the Olympic stage.
And yet, for others, anything other than a gold medal is a complete disappointment – you can almost see the look of despair in their eyes as they take to the lower platforms on the podium during the medal ceremony.
But if we take the point that winning an Olympic medal of any colour is great, we can compile a list of the greatest Olympians based upon their total medal collection:
Total Olympic Medals Won
This image tells you all you need to know about the extraordinary career of Phelps: he’s won more Olympic gold medals than any other athlete has won a combined tally of all-coloured medals. Latynina, in addition to the nine golds we’ve already learned about, won nine other medals – five silver, four bronze – to bring her overall tally to 18.
Nikolai Andrianov: 15 Olympic Medals
One athlete has won 15 Olympic medals in total at the Summer Games. Nikolai Andrianov contested three editions for the Soviet Union between 1972 and 1980, and is widely regarded as perhaps the best male gymnast of all time.
The Russian won seven gold medals, including two each in the floor exercise and vault disciplines. He also racked up five silver medals, with the Soviet Union finishing second in the team competition in both 1972 and 1976, and a trio of bronze medals.
The 14 Medal Club
Then we have three athletes with an asterisk against their name with 14 medals apiece. Ledecky, widely regarded as the greatest female swimmer of all time, will surely look to add to her collection in Los Angeles – she has already alluded as such.
It’s less probable that Emma McKeon will head to L.A. – in fact, she formally announced her retirement from swimming after the Paris Games, where she took her medal collection to 14. “I will miss the training and the racing but I am definitely ready for the next part of my life, which I am excited for,” she said.
Mind you, plenty of other Olympians have retired before returning to their chosen vocation – the buzz of the big events and the discipline of training dragging them back. McKeon, the most successful Olympic athlete in Australia’s history, will be 34 in 2028, so in theory there’s a chance she may be tempted back into the pool.
The longevity of Isabell Werth as an Olympic athlete is mind-boggling – she made her debut at the Barcelona Games way back in 1992, and was still picking up medals some 32 years later! Naturally, she’s the first competitor to win medals at seven different editions of the Olympics – gold in the team dressage and silver in the individual dressage taking her tally up to 14.
It’s rather ungentlemanly to speak of a woman’s age, but Werth is 55 now and may be ready to bring down the curtain on her career – she has hinted at retirement, but is yet to make a formal announcement as such at the time of writing.
The Golden Age
The Olympic legacy of Simone Biles is assured – whether she competes in 2028 or not, she will rightly be regarded as one of the most incredible gymnasts of all time, pulling off acrobatic feats the like of which have never been seen before. By competing at Los Angeles, she would have an opportunity to climb the all-time medal standings, while perhaps enjoying a fitting send-off in front of her adoring home crowd.
“Never say never,” Biles said when quizzed on her future plans in Paris. “Next Olympics are at home. So you just never know. I am getting really old.”
If she felt old at 27, that’s a world away from the creaking bones and aching joints Biles will feel at 31; the age she will be in 2028. Can a gymnast – in a sport governed by agility and dynamic power – really compete with the best in the world at the age of 31?
Well, let’s consider the evidence. Here’s the ages of all the gold medal winners (male and female) in the various artistic gymnastic disciplines at the Paris Olympics in 2024:
Ages of Gold Medal Winners at the 2024 Paris Olympics
The graphic shows just how tough it will be for Biles to add to her medal collection in Los Angeles, should she choose to compete there. No gymnast aged 30 or over won a gold medal in Paris, and only one managed to triumph in their discipline at the age of 29.
A Young Person’s Game
As the data confirms, gymnastics is very much a young man’s and woman’s game. The fact that as many teenagers won gold medals as those in their late 20s (28 or 29) confirms as much. The sweet spot, it seems, is in the mid-20s range – of the 22 gold medals that were up for grabs in artistic gymnastic events at the 2024 Games, 13 (59%) were won by those aged between 23 and 27.
It’s amazing to think that Biles, who was in that perfect age bracket at the Paris Games, also failed to take advantage of being 24 at the rescheduled Olympics in Tokyo in 2021 – her well-documented battles with her mental health and performance anxiety meant that she left Japan with just two medals to her name.
If Biles is to become one of the most decorated Olympic medallists of all time in 2028, she’s going to have to achieve levels that few other gymnasts have reached after turning 30. But the ‘G.O.A.T’, as she’s known to many, is as likely as anybody to pull a rabbit or two out of the hat in front of the American faithful in Los Angeles.
Swim When You’re Winning
If Biles has her work cut out in adding more Olympic medals to her collection, how will turning 30 affect the chances of Ledecky and Dressel in their pursuit to become all-time legends of the Games?
Both, remember, would only need one more gold medal to become the second-most decorated Olympian, as far as golds are concerned, in history behind Phelps. For Ledecky, there’s also the possibility of leaping up to third in the all-time standings for total medals won at the Games. There’s multiple swimming disciplines contested at the Olympic Games, and 2024 in Paris was no exception: 37 different events in all were held.
Here’s a look at the ages of the gold medal winners in each of them: Once again, we can only conclude that youth is a huge advantage in competitive swimming – 51% of all the available gold medals at the Paris Games in 2024 were won by swimmers aged 20-23.
Ages of Gold Medal Winners Over the Years
But that’s not to say that there weren’t successes for those of a slightly older vintage. Sarah Sjostrom (30) won the 50m and 100m freestyle events, while Cameron McEvoy (30) won the men’s 50m freestyle.
Emma McKeon (30) was part of Australia’s winning 4 x 100m freestyle relay team – as was Bronte Campbell, who was also aged 30 at the time of their triumph. So, as long as Ledecky and Dressel remain focused and injury-free, they are perhaps better placed than Biles is to win more medals in Los Angeles – adding more cement to their already remarkable Olympic legacies.