Hundreds of athletes train day after day with the aim of one day participating in the Olympic Games held every four years. There are several different idols and legends to admire, so we decided to compile the ten best swimmers of all time.
Mark Spitz, born in 1950
Mark Andrew Spitz (nicknamed Mark The Shark) won seven gold medals at the 1972 Munich Olympics, a feat surpassed only by Michael Phelps who won eight gold medals at the 2008 Olympics.
Between 1968 and 1972, Spitz won nine Olympic gold medals plus one silver and one bronze, five Pan American gold medals, 31 US Amateur Athletic Union titles and eight US National Collegiate Athletic Association titles . During these years, he set 33 world records. He was named world swimmer of the year in 1969, 1971 and 1972.
Michael Phelps, born in 1985
Michael Fred Phelps (nicknamed The Baltimore Bullet) is an American butterfly swimmer. He won 16 Olympic medals: six gold and two bronze in Athens in 2004, and eight gold in Beijing in 2008. In doing so, he twice equaled the record of eight medals of any type. to a unique Olympics won by Soviet gymnast Alexander Dityatin at the 1980 Moscow Summer Games. His five gold medals in individual events equaled the Games record set by Eric Heiden at the 1980 Winter Olympics and equaled by Vitaly Scherbo at the 1992 Summer Games.
Phelps holds the record for most gold medals won in a single Olympics, his eight at the 2008 Beijing Games surpassed American swimmer Mark Spitz’s seven gold medals at Munich in 1972. The medal tally Phelps Olympics is second only to the Soviet 18 Gymnast Larissa Latynina has won more than three Olympics, including nine gold medals.
Phelps’ international titles and record performances have earned him the World Swimmer of the Year award six times and the USA Swimmer of the Year award eight times. He won a total of fifty-nine medals in major international competitions, fifty gold, seven silver and two bronze at the Olympics, World Championships and Pan-Pacific Championships.
Ian Thorpe, born in 1982
Ian James Thorpe (nicknamed the Thorpedo and Thorpey) is a retired Australian freestyle swimmer. He won five Olympic gold medals, the most won by an Australian, and at the 2001 World Aquatic Championships he became the first person to win six gold medals in a single world championship. In total, Thorpe has won eleven World Championship gold medals, the second most of any swimmer.
Thorpe was the first person to be named World Swimming Swimmer of the Year four times and was Australia’s Swimmer of the Year from 1999 to 2003. His athletic achievements made him one of the most popular in Australia, and he was recognized as Young Australian of the Year in 2000.
Alexander Popov, born in 1971
Aleksandr Vladimirovich Popov is a former Russian Olympic swimmer, widely regarded as one of the greatest freestyle sprint swimmers of all time. He holds four gold and five silver medals at the Olympic Games, six gold, four silver and one bronze at the World Championships, and an impressive 21 gold, three silver and two bronze at the European Championships.
Pieter van den Hoogenband, born in 1978
Pieter Cornelis Ruud Martijn van den Hoogenband (nicknamed The Flying Dutchman and Hoogie) is a former Dutch swimmer and three-time Olympic champion. He started competing in the Olympics at the age of 18 and throughout his career won three gold, 10 silver and four bronze medals.
Johnny Weissmuller, born in 1904 – died in 1984
Johann Peter WeiBmuller was an Austrian-Hungarian American swimmer and actor. Weissmuller was one of the best swimmers in the world in the 1920s, winning five Olympic gold medals and a bronze medal. He won fifty-two US national championships and set sixty-seven world records.
After his swimming career, he became the sixth actor to portray Tarzan in films, a role he played in twelve films. Dozens of other actors have also played Tarzan, but Weissmuller is by far the best known. His character’s signature Tarzan scream is still often used in movies.
Grant Hackett, born in 1980
Grant Hackett is an Australian former swimmer famous for winning the men’s 1500m freestyle at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney and the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens. This feat led him to be considered one of the greatest long distance swimmers in history. He also collected a gold medal in Sydney for swimming in the heats of the 4 × 200 m freestyle relay.
He is well regarded for his versatility, being the world record holder in the 1500m and formerly in the 800m freestyle, and 2nd and 4th in the 400m and 200m freestyle respectively. He dominated the 1500m event for the past decade, going undefeated in the event in the 1996 final until the 2007 World Aquatic Championships. His four World Championship gold medals in this event make him the only swimmer to have won a world title four times in one event.
Krisztina Egerszegi, born in 1974
Krisztina Egerszegi is a former world record holder Hungarian swimmer and one of the greatest Hungarian Olympic champions of the modern era. She is a three-time Olympian (1988, 1992 and 1996) and five-time Olympic champion; and one of two people to have won the same swimming event in 3 consecutive Summer Olympics.
Debbie Meyer, born in 1952
Deborah Elizabeth Meyer is a former American swimmer who won the 200, 400 and 800m swimming events at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City. As a 16-year-old student at Rio Americano High School in Sacramento, California, she became the first female swimmer to win three individual gold medals at a single Olympics.
Meyer is still the only female Olympian to have won three individual gold medals in freestyle swimming at a single Olympic Games, namely the 200, 400 and 800 meter freestyle events. No swimmer has ever done this in any other combination of distances.
Kristin Otto, born in 1966
Kristin Otto is a German Olympic swimming champion. She is best known for being the first woman to win six gold medals at the Seoul Olympics in 1988. Otto was also the first woman to swim the short course 100m backstroke in less than a minute, during a an international meeting in short course. at Indiana University in 1983.