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Phelps: most decorated, but greatest Olympian?
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American swimmer Michael Phelps has 19 Olympic medals to date. That makes him the most decorated Olympian, but does it mean he’s the greatest? Opinions differ.
Sebastian Coe, two-time gold medalist and head of London Games, not so sure
Associated Press
London
The greatest?
When it comes to Michael Phelps, the answer seems obvious with just a cursory glance of the medals table. The guy has won 15 golds — “insane,” says Serena Williams, who certainly knows a thing or two about winning — and now he’s got more total Olympic medals than anyone, with a few more races to extend the record into almost unfathomable territory before he’s done in London.
Even President Barack Obama jumped on the bandwagon, phoning Phelps on Wednesday to congratulate him on his remarkable accomplishment.
“He’s definitely the greatest Olympian of all time,” said South African swimmer Chad le Clos, who’s actually one of the few guys to have beaten Phelps at the Olympics. “He’s my idol.”
But the greatest?
That’s where things get a bit dicier.
While the sporting world — everyone from Masters champion Bubba Watson to Spanish soccer star Gerard Pique — peppered Phelps with praise in the Twitter-verse after he earned the 19th medal of his career, no less an authority than Sebastian Coe was reticent to bestow the ultimate crown.
“My personal view is I’m not sure he’s the greatest,” Lord Coe said on Wednesday, speaking as a two-time gold medalist in athletics and the face of these games as head of the London organizing committee. “But he’s certainly the most successful.”
Others think the sheer magnitude of Phelps’ accomplishments leave little doubt about his place in history.
“He’s won more medals that any Olympian in history,” said U.S. swimmer Tyler Clary. “That should speak for itself.”
Indeed, the numbers are mind-boggling:
• Start with the golds. Phelps has six more than anyone else. If he wins his last three events in London, he’ll have twice as many as anyone else.
• Soviet-era gymnast Larisa Latynina previously held the record for total medals, winning 18 over a span of three Olympics from 1956-64. From there, the dropoff is significant. Next on the list is another Soviet gymnast, Nikolai Andrianov, with 15 medals. Three others captured 13. Just 23 more — in both Summer and Winter Games — have as many as 10. If Phelps was a nation, he would be tied for 57th on the Summer Games medal list and closing in on India, the second-most populous nation on the globe.
• Phelps won the most gold medals at a single games, his eight-race sweep in Beijing four years ago. In retrospect, the Great Haul of China looks even more impressive. While it’s said that every record is made to be broken, it’s hard to see anyone topping that mark. Coe begs to disagree. Sort of.
“This is the great global pub game. Who is the greatest athlete of all time?” he said during his daily briefing. “Whether he’s the greatest, I don’t know. I could go around this whole room and we’d come up with different interpretations. You’d have to say he’s up there. Is he the greatest? In my opinion, probably not. But my opinion means no more than anyone else’s.”
Coe was pressed for his choice. If not Phelps, who?
“I could throw out a whole series of names,” Coe said. “I could throw out Steve Redgrave, Daley Thompson,” a couple of home-country faves. “If I wanted to go back a few generations and recall what Jesse Owens did in 1936, it was unbelievable. Nadia Comaneci. I don’t know. It’s the great local pub game.”
International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge also was hesitant to put Phelps above everyone else.
“Definitely one of the greatest,” Rogge told The Associated Press. “You cannot reduce everything to the medals.”