Now Phelps breaks record that’s stood for over 2,000 years
WHEN he retired after London 2012, Michael Phelps had 22 medals to his name and was already considered one of the best athletes of all time.
But as he returned to the sport to compete in Rio, he still had one man to beat – Greek Olympian Leonidas who about 2,160 years ago won 12 individual events over four Olympics.
In the early hours of yesterday morning Phelps finally pushed the Greek into second place, after winning his 13th individual gold by more than a body length.
Leonidas, who competed naked for some events, ran in four consecutive Olympiads and won three foot races in each. An athlete who won three events at one Games was called a ‘triastes’. Leonidas was the only person who achieved this more than once.
In Rhodes, a statue of him bears the words: ‘He had the speed of God.’
Professor Paul Cartledge, a specialist in Greek culture and history at Cambridge University described how Leonidas competed between 164BC and 152BC. ‘In two of his races – 200m and 400m he was completely naked, but the third type of event, called the race in heavy armour, he wears a breast plate, he wears a helmet he carries quite a heavy shield and he probably wore greaves [arm protectors],’ the professor told the BBC.
Thousands of years after Leonidas last competed, Phelps – nicknamed the ‘Baltimore bullet’ – outshone him, becoming the first Olympian ever to win 13 individual medals.
After collecting gold in the 200m individual medley, Phelps admitted: ‘As a kid I wanted to do something that nobody had ever done before – I’m enjoying it.’
He held up four fingers to a roaring crowd, illustrating that it was his fourth consecutive win in the event.
Since his first Olympics in Sydney in 2000, 6ft 4in Phelps has amassed 26 medals, 22 of which are gold.
He was 15 when he was selected for Sydney, making him the youngest US male swimmer to appear at an Olympics in 68 years. And Tuesday’s 200m butterfly gold made him the oldest swimmer to win an individual Olympic title, at 31 years and 40 days.
If Phelps were a country he would be above Jamaica, Argentina, Mexico and Austria in the all-time gold medal winners’ table.