Most Individual Medals at Summer Olympics — Sport-by-Sport Records

About This Dataset

The highest number of medals won by a single athlete in each major Olympic sport discipline. Gymnastics and swimming produce the most prolific individual medal winners, with athletes like Larisa Latynina, Michael Phelps, and Nikolai Andrianov collecting extraordinary totals across multiple Olympic cycles.

Analysis

The dominance of swimming and gymnastics in individual Olympic medal counts is striking, with Michael Phelps leading the pack at 28 medals, a record that seems insurmountable. Larisa Latynina's 18 medals in gymnastics reflect the sport's potential for high individual achievement, while athletes like Birgit Fischer and Simone Biles, with 12 and 11 medals respectively, further emphasize gymnastics' prominence. The gap between Phelps and the next closest athlete, Latynina, is a remarkable 10 medals, suggesting that the training and specialization in swimming may yield greater opportunities for medal accumulation. The trend indicates that while some sports allow for multiple medal wins, others may be more competitive and limit individual success.

Source: Wikipedia

Key Findings

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Michael Phelps (Swimming) leads in Sport Olympic Medals with 28.

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Average Sport Olympic Medals: 14 · median: 12.

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Gap: Michael Phelps (Swimming) is 3.1× larger than Usain Bolt (Athletics).

Most Individual Medals at Summer Olympics — Sport-by-Sport Records

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Data Insights Below

Data Insights

Numbers, trends & sources behind this chart

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Data Points

8 categories · 1 year

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Top Value

Michael Phelps (Swimming)

Sport Olympic Medals · All Time

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Metrics

Sport Olympic Medals

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Period

All Time

Single year snapshot

Methodology & source

Data source: Wikipedia
Coverage: 8 entities · 8 observations
Measure: Sport Olympic Medals
Last updated: 5 April 2026
Compiled by: The ANYSTAT team, from the source above

How the figures are calculated

Values are shown as reported by the source. Nothing is rescaled, rebased or converted — the only changes are thousand separators and decimals shown to two places.
Entities are ranked highest-first on their value.

Rankings & Full Data

8 records · Sport Olympic Medals · ranked by All Time

✓ 8 sourced

#	Category	All Time
🥇	Michael Phelps (Swimming)	28
🥈	Larisa Latynina (Gymnastics)	18
🥉	Edoardo Mangiarotti (Fencing)	13
4	Birgit Fischer (Canoe)	12
5	Jenny Thompson (Swimming)	12
6	Simone Biles (Gymnastics)	11
7	Carl Lewis (Athletics)	10
8	Usain Bolt (Athletics)	9