What us olympian has the most gold medals

The 2022 Winter Olympic Games, which will last 16 days, are underway in Beijing and venues near the neighboring towns of Yanqing and Chongli.

A total of 91 National Olympic Committees have qualified athletes - two less than four years earlier - and among them, there's Team USA, the nation with the second-most medals ever in Winter Olympics history (304), only beaten by Norway (368).

The most decorated US Winter Olympian

The record-holder for having won the most Winter Olympic medals for the US is Apolo Anton Ohno. Seattle native Ohno, who retired in 2010 at the Games held in Vancouver, was a short-track speed skating competitor who won eight medals (two gold, two silver, four bronze) through competition in three Winter Olympics.

He met success early, at the age of 14, when he became the youngest US national champion, back in 1997. He maintained his national dominance from 2001 to 2009, winning the title a total of 12 times.

In 1999, he became the youngest skater to win a World Cup event title and became the first American to win a World Cup overall title in 2001, which he lifted again in 2003 and 2005.

Ohno, who was inducted into the US Olympic Hall of Fame in 2019, also won 21 World Championship medals, with eight of them being gold.

See also:

Football and boxing his early passions

Although Ohno has made history as a short-track speed skater, at an early age he wanted to go into football and boxing, but his father, Yuki Ohno, had him focus on other sports.

“He didn’t want me to play either of those two sports, so I had so much energy as a kid that he was just looking for any type of after-school activity. But while watching short-track speedskating with my dad during the 1994 Olympic Winter Games, I fell in love with the sport," he revealed.

Ohno ended up playing a major role in growing the popularity of the short track. The sport debuted as an Olympic medal sport in 1992 but was not widely known in the US back then.

A decade later, at the 2002 Olympic Winter Games in Salt Lake City, it became much more popular, in large part due to Ohno.

At the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games, many decorated athletes will be returning for their second or third Olympics looking to add to their medal haul. Phenoms like swimmer Katie Ledecky and gymnast Simone Biles return after collecting five medals each at the 2016 Rio Games but still have an uphill climb to reach the echelon of athletes with the most Olympic medals.

The most decorated Olympic athletes of all time tend to compete in disciplines with multiple events, including individual and team opportunities to win medals -- like swimming, gymnastics and track and field. 

Let’s take a look at which athletes have brought home the most medals in Olympic history.

The Olympian with the most medals of all time is Michael Phelps. The swimming superstar won 28 medals between 2004 and 2016, ten more than the previous record of 18.

Olympic Medals Adjusted Per Athlete

Since the 1896 games in Athens, the number of countries and athletes participating in the Olympics has ballooned in size lowering the number of medals per athlete for each country.

Phelps started slow at his first Olympics in 2000 at the age of 15, finishing fifth in his only event, the 200m butterfly. Four years later in Athens, he entered eight events and came away with medals in every single one, then one-upped himself at the 2008 Beijing Olympics by finishing first in all eight events.

Watch all the action from the Tokyo Olympics live on NBC

Phelps broke Larisa Latynina's record of 18 medals during the 2012 London Olympics. He added six more during the 2016 Rio Olympics to ensure that his record would be virtually unbreakable.

Latynina’s record had stood since the 1964 Tokyo Games. A gymnast from the Soviet Union, she collected her 18 medals over three Olympic Games, beginning in Melbourne in 1956. While leading the Soviet Union to three straight golds in the team competition, she also won the individual all-around twice and earned at least two individual medals in each of the four apparatuses.

Many other gymnasts also appear on the list of most decorated Olympians: Nikolai Andrianov (Soviet Union, 15 medals); Boris Shakhlin (Soviet Union, 13 medals); Ono Takashi (Japan, 13); Kato Sawao (Japan, 12); and Aleksei Nemov (Russia, 12). An Italian fencer Edoardo Mangiarotti also has 13 Olympic medals from five separate Olympics between 1936 and 1960. 

The other owners of 12 medals apiece include Finnish runner Paavo Nurmi; Birgitt Fischer, who competed in canoe sprint for East Germany and later Germany; and four American swimmers, Jenny Thompson, Ryan Lochte, Dara Torres and Natalie Coughlin.

The U.S. Swim Team has had decades of dominance at the Olympics, and some of the most decorated swimmers in history tell us exactly how it’s done.

Unsurprisingly, Phelps also demolished the previous record for Olympic gold medals won by a single person. Of his 28 medals, a whopping 23 were gold. No one else has ever won more than nine. Phelps broke the record when he won his second event, the 100m butterfly, at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Phelps also owns the record for most gold medals won in a single Olympics: eight in Beijing.

Several athletes are tied for second with nine gold medals, including Latynina and Nurmi.

Two Americans also have nine gold medals to their names. Mark Spitz -- the best American swimmer in history before Phelps came along -- racked up nine golds in only two Olympic Games, 1968 and 1972. Carl Lewis, the back-to-back champion of the 100m in 1984 and 1988, also competed in the 4x100 relay, the 200m and the long jump, which helped him reach nine golds.

Tied for third all time with eight gold medals are Fischer, Thompson, Sawao, American swimmer Matt Biondi, American track and field athlete Ray Ewry and Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt. 

Watch 2020 Olympic sprinter Gabby Thomas talk about how she managed to pursue her athletic career while studying inequities in the health care system at Harvard University in this full video interview from episode 2 of the My New Favorite Olympian podcast.

Unlike the overall medal record, Phelps has to share this one with gymnast Aleksandr Dityatin. Phelps’ eight medals each in 2004 and 2008 matched Dityatin’s record from the 1980 Moscow Games.

Dityatin won three golds in the team, individual all-around and rings, while also placing second in four other apparatuses and taking the bronze in floor exercise.

Ten athletes are tied for second with seven medals at one Olympic Games. Two of them did so in the pool: Spitz in 1972 and Biondi in 1988. Two Americans, Willis Lee and Lloyd Spooner, each brought home seven medals in shooting in 1920. Rounding out the list are five gymnasts: Shakhlin (Soviet Union, 1960); Andrianov (Soviet Union, 1976); Hermann Weingaertner (Germany, 1896); Maria Gorokhovskaya (Soviet Union, 1952); and Mikhail Voronin (Soviet Union, 1968).

Twenty-five athletes have collected six medals in a single Olympics.

Meet the stars of Team USA’s track and field team for Tokyo 2020.