1. If Michael Phelps was a country, he’d be ranked 32nd on the all-time medal count. That’s all-time, as in everything a country has won in 120 years and 28 Summer Olympics.

2. Since 2004, when Phelps won his first Olympic race, only 12 countries have won more golds. Thus, Phelps is No. 13 on the gold-medal list since Athens. Among the many that don’t have Phelps beat: Spain, Brazil, Norway, Canada, Sweden, Cuba, Greece, Romania and the Netherlands.

3. Only 46 countries on the planet have won more total medals than Phelps. Note: We’re comparing him to active countries. Sorry, USSR and East Germany.

4. That means Phelps has more Summer Olympic medals than 160 countries. (Of those, 87 have won at least one medal but are below Phelps’ total of 28. The additional 73 have never made a podium in history.)

5. Given that 205 countries are competing in Rio, Phelps has more medals than 75 per cent of the rest of the world.

6. Phelps would currently be 12th in the 2016 medal count, going by the official gold standard. That puts him ahead of 193 countries. If you go by total medals, he’d be 16th. But he’d need a name if he were his own country. Phelpsphanistan has a solid ring to it.

7. Nobody else has even hit double-digit gold medals in their Olympics career. (The record before Phelps had been nine). Heck, nobody else is within 14 (!) gold medals of Phelps. If you doubled the individual gold-medal count for the second-ranked athlete(s) on the medal rankings, they’d still be five behind Phelps.

8. Stop with this talk about “well Phelps is a swimmer and they have so many more opportunities for gold so it’s not that great!” Just stop it. Do you want to sound like a slowpoke? Then take that stance. Why? Because the most gold medals won by any other swimmer is nine. Only four swimmers in history have more than five gold medals. If you take the six most decorated swimmers in history behind Phelps, and add up their gold medals from individual races (not relays), they combine for 13, the same total Phelps has won by himself. If it were so easy, everybody’d be doing it. Truth is, nobody’s close.

10. Phelps has five more gold medals than any athlete has medals of any colour. Soviet gymnast Larisa Latynina had 18 total. The third most medals belong to Nikolai Andrianov, another Soviet gymnast who had 15 to his name. Three athletes are tied for fourth with 13 overall medals. Two were gymnasts, one was a fencer. But the amount of medals up for grabs in swimming is unfair, right?

10. Starting in Athens, Phelps has medalled in 44 per cent of every men’s swimming event at the Olympics. There have been 64 races, Phelps has competed in 29 and medalled in 28.


lasticlala, seun

http://www.foxsports.com.au/olympics/events/swimming-diving/twentyeight-ridiculous-facts-about-olympic-record-holder-michael-phelps/news-story/bfcefa122a8d59536d9b381cb2d56920

wow!

Bolt, Phelps, CR7, Messi, Muhammed Ali, Jordan, MJ, Curry, LeBron, Bryant, just to mention but a few, were/are aliens