The greatest Olympian

Michael Phelps' position in sports history is assured

As the spectators filed past the Temple of Zeus into the stadium at Olympia in 152 BC, a few must have murmured to themselves that Leonidas of Rhodes might as well have stayed home. The runner, at 36, was trying to replicate the feats of his youth; how many in the stands, that long-ago summer morning, must have shaken their heads sadly in expectation he would lose. But he did not. For the fourth time in a row, Leonidas of Rhodes won the 200-metre race, the 400-metre race, and the terrifying "race in armour", in which athletes ran the distance of the track carrying the heavy equipment, including the shield of a Greek infantryman. Leonidas was promptly declared a god by his fellow-inhabitants of Rhodes; no mortal man could possibly have won three medals at four successive Olympic Games.

Leonidas' record of 12 individual gold medals has stood for over 2,100 years -- but it was broken last week. Michael F Phelps, who had planned to retire after the London Games of 2012, lit up the pool for the fourth Olympiad in a row. When he won the 200-metre individual medley, he had won 13 individual gold medals, finally beating Leonidas' record. And, perhaps, his longevity as an athlete is even greater; because it is worth remembering he won the 200-metre butterfly in Rio after he came fifth, as a 15-year old, at the Sydney Games in 2000. The very next year he won that event at the swimming world championships and set a new world record while doing so.

Phelps' position in history is assured. When, at the 1972 Munich Games, the US swimmer Mark Spitz - boasting the sort of enormous moustache that was then quite fashionable - won seven golds, it was believed nobody would repeat it. And few other Olympians in the modern age have had his longevity. Perhaps the only one is Carl Lewis, who won gold in the 1984, 1988, 1992, and 1996 Games. Like Phelps, Lewis won in a series of different events; but he dominated the long jump like Phelps dominates the butterfly.

Others perhaps could have had similar longevity, but fate intervened. The "Flying Finn", Paavo Nurmi, who easily won every long distance race in the 1920s, was forbidden from the 1932 Olympics because he once allowed an event organiser to pay for his travel. For others, the world wars intervened - such as for Hawaiian surfer-turned-swimmer Duke Kahanamoku, who won medals in 1912, 1920, and 1924, but could not in 1916, due to the First World War. Kahanamoku's fame never died out, since he was essentially popularised surfing in America and Australia - and, a year after his last medal, saved nine people from drowning during a storm, an event that caused the Los Angeles County Lifeguards - the "Baywatch" - to start using their famous and familiar surfboards.

Certainly, just by the numbers, and by the length of career, Phelps is the greatest Olympian ever. But it is worth noting that his record - and that of runners like Lewis and Nurmi and gymnasts like Larisa Latynina, his only real competition numerically -- is boosted by the number of events that these three types of sportsmen can win. Sprinters have the 100m, the 200m, and the relays; long-distance runners have the 800m, the 1500m and the 3000m; the gymnasts have a bewildering array of disciplines from the floor exercises to the vault. But then what of those who are brilliant at one particular event - like the discus thrower Al Oerter of the US, the first to win gold in the same discipline in four successive Olympics since Leonidas of Rhodes. And surely sprinters, whose bodies break down faster, deserve more accolades for longevity than swimmers? There's never any real answer to these debates. What's worth remembering is that, as with Leonidas of Rhodes, some achievements seem more than mortal.