Michael Phelps Has Olympic Gold Double-Digit Company as Johannes Klæbo Earns 10th Gold
The list of double-digit Olympic gold medalists has doubled. Johannes Klæbo joined Michael Phelps as the only athletes in history to reach 10-plus gold medals.
Klæbo, a cross-country skier from Norway, has won five gold medals at the ongoing Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics: the 20-kilometer skiathlon, the individual sprint, the 10km freestyle and the 4 x 7.5km relay and the team sprint.
Klæbo already owned more gold medals than any other Winter Olympian in history, surpassing three other Norwegians who were tied at eight golds. Klæbo has accomplished double-digit golds in just his third Olympics, just like Phelps.
The existing record of nine gold medals had stood for 80 years since Finnish runner Paavo Nurmi completed his career at the 1928 Games. Soviet gymnast Larisa Latynina, American swimmer Mark Spitz and U.S. track star Carl Lewis went on to tie that record over their careers, but Phelps blew past it with his gold medal in the 200 butterfly in Beijing. That race is best remembered as the one where Phelps’ goggles filled with water on the start, yet he still broke the world record.
Phelps would reach 14 gold medals by the end of the Beijing Olympics before adding another four golds in London and five in Rio. The final career total was 23 gold medals, three silver and two bronze. And he remains in a club of his own: there is still no other Olympic athlete to win more than 10 Olympic gold medals in their career.
But several have nine in addition to those listed above.
Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt finished his Olympic career with nine gold medals, but that was retroactively lowered to eight as Bolt’s 4 x 100 relay from 2008 received a retroactive disqualification nine years later when one of his teammates, Nesta Carter, tested positive for a banned substance. The next pair to reach nine were both U.S. swimmers: Katie Ledecky and Caeleb Dressel, who reached that number in Paris.
