Talk:List of multiple Olympic medalists

Revise timeline box
We need to revise the timeline box so that it is in accord with the gold medal box. The table would look something like this: Remember (talk) 12:55, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Rank
I don't think it's worth adding in the overall ranks until the list is more complete as they will not be accurate. Basement12 (talk) 13:50, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Agreed. I am just too lazy to remove them all. Remember (talk) 13:50, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Length of article
Perhaps we should limit the chart to those olympians that have 5 or more medals. Otherwise, I am afraid that table will get too big. What do others think? Remember (talk) 14:02, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Possibly its hard to teel as i have no idea how many people will need including. Another option, which would make editing easier if nothing else, would be to have seperate sections for different numbers of medals, i.e. a table of 3x medal winners, one for 4x winners etc. Basement12 (talk) 14:07, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I would rather not split up the table since the entire thing won't be sortable then. Remember (talk) 14:26, 14 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I strongly agree. For one thing. if the limit is 3, it makes the gold-medals page a subset of this, and since tables are sortable, that one would be redundant.  Much more importantly, the current table is so incomplete as to be worthless or misleading. I suggest starting with a more easily reached limit — say, 7 medals — and getting it complete. Afterwards we can extend it to 6, 5, 4 medals.  jnestorius(talk) 22:55, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I completely agree with this suggestion. Feel free to revise the current table.  I would move the cut portion to this talk space. Remember (talk) 00:20, 15 August 2008 (UTC)


 * If we were to follow precisely what the title implies, a complete list would have to include Olympians with at least two medals (the same thing should've been applied to List of multiple Olympic gold medalists). The problem is that then the latter list would be completely duplicated in this one. Parutakupiu (talk) 23:13, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree that both articles should be renamed. Any suggestions are welcome. Remember (talk) 00:12, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I propose to split the article into 3 articles: 1) total career medals (plus corresponding timeline), 2) single Games medals (plus corresponding timeline) and 3) medals in different disciplines (currently the 3rd section). Gap9551 (talk) 21:22, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Cut table to add once completed
Below is the medal listings we have for athletes with 6-3 medals. Once this is complete we can incorporate the results into the main table. Remember (talk) 00:56, 15 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Clara Hughes and Christa Luding each won five medals in two sports. On top of that they won in both the Summer Olympics and the Winter Olympics. Should they be listed and how would you do that?--T. Anthony (talk) 02:32, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

People to add to list

 * 9	Mikhail Voronin, USSR	Gymnastics	2-6-1
 * 9	Heikki Savolainen, FIN	Gymnastics	2-1-6
 * 9	Yuri Titov, USSR	Gymnastics	1-5-3
 * 8	Shirley Babashoff, USA	Swimming 1972-76	2-6-0
 * 8	Susie O'Neill, AUS	Swimming 1992-2000	2-4-2
 * 8	Sofia Muratova, USSR	Gymnastics 1956-60	2-2-4
 * 8	Margit Korondi, HUN, 	Gymnastics 1952-56	2-2-4
 * 7	Maria Gorokhovskaya, USSR	Gymnastics 1952	2-5-0
 * 7	Ildiko Uslaky-Rejtoe, HUN	Fencing 1960-76	2-3-2
 * 7 	Karin Janz, E. Ger 	Gym 1968-72 2-3-2
 * 7	Shannon Miller, USA	Gymnastics 1992-96	2-2-3
 * 8	Merlene Ottey, JAM	Track/Field 1980-2000	0-3-5
 * Maria Gorokhovskaya, USSR 	Gym
 * Larisa Latynina, USSR 	Gym
 * 5 Ines Diers, E. Ger Swim 	1980 2-2-1
 * Shirley Babashoff, Swim
 * 4 Mary Lou Retton, USA Gym
 * Dara Torres, USA Swim
 * Natalie Coughlin, USA Swim
 * Mikhail Voronin, USSR 	Gym
 * 5 	Burton Downing, USA 	Cycle
 * 8 Liesel Jones, AUS, Swimming —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ordinary Person (talk • contribs) 10:07, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

7- Libby Trickett (nee Lenton) AUS Swimming - 4-1-2  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 101.116.165.193 (talk) 03:34, 23 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Fixed. Thanks for the tip. HandsomeFella (talk) 11:46, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Relays provide a huge advantage for athletes from countries that dominate certain sports
If Michael Phelps were from Portugal or another small country he would have many fewer medals, because so many of his medals are from relays where he needed his comrades, and it is much easier to win relays if your country is big and has many other top athletes in the same sport. The same is true for Larissa Latynina and most of the others in this list. I think this obvious advantage for people from the big countries at least must be mentioned. Olympicdreams (talk) 21:41, 2 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Australia probably would not be considered a big country but has attained a very high degree of success in the Olympic Games, both in individual events and relays. Kablammo (talk) 00:10, 3 September 2008 (UTC)


 * That's right, also true for the small country of Norway which dominated some of the winter sports. I should have written: If Michael Phelps were from Portugal or another country that does not play a dominant role in swimming, he would have many fewer medals, because so many of his medals are from relays where he needed his comrades, and it is much easier to win relays if your country has many other top athletes in the same sport. The same is true for Larissa Latynina and most of the others in this list. I think this obvious advantage for people from dominant countries must be mentioned, because it biases the multiple medalist rankings. Probably there should not be any rankings at all due to incomparability of the athletes. Olympicdreams (talk) 20:40, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Rankings questionable as athletes from dominant countries are favored
I suggest to remove the rankings and order the athletes in an unbiased way, say, alphabetically. For the moment I just added: The ranking is biased towards nations with many top athletes in certain sports, since the athletes with the highest medal counts profit from relays and other team competitions typically won by dominant nations. Olympicdreams (talk) 21:32, 3 September 2008 (UTC)


 * There's a rule: 6 goldmedals in swimming/gymnastics = 2 goldmedals in athletics = 1 goldmedal in tennis. So I'm not so sure if Phelps is the greatest olympic athlete ever, despite his many medals. It's not always the quantity of medals that counts, but the overall performance. So in a real performance ranking list rather Mangiarotti, Nurmi or Dæhlie would win. 178.197.225.104 (talk) 16:28, 6 September 2013 (UTC)


 * But Mangiarotti had the advantage of being able to compete in both foil and épée, which gave him an advantage over women fencers of his age who were only allowed foil. On the other hand, Mangiarotti was harmed by the 1940 and 1944 Olympics not being held (he might have won up to 4 more medals in that case). So, as you can see, there are so many things which bias this list if you try to use it as a measure of merit. It isn't and it can't be. Olympic results are influenced by so many other factors that you can't infer any other meaning from this list other than "this athlete won X medals". It is still an important list. Do you want another example of oddities biasing these results? Valentina Vezzali is still a strong fencer. She is currently the 11th strongest woman in the world in foil (according to today's FIE ranking). If rankings stay as they are, she won't be allowed to take part in the 2016 Olympics because there will be a maximum of 2 athletes per country in women's foil, which would exclude her and Larisa Korobeynikova (ranked #9). This happens because there won't be a women team foil event in 2016, otherwise there could have been 4 fencers per country, as happened in 2012 and 2008. In 2004, similarly, there was no women team foil game. Right or wrong, this means that chance helps to determine how many attempts at a medal you have :-)
 * --Lou Crazy (talk) 12:16, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

Extra table for athletes with most individual medals, to eliminate the bias towards big nations?
Shouldn't we have an extra table for the athletes with the most individual medals, to eliminate the bias towards big nations? Well, I guess in the individual medal count Larissa Latynina  would still be far ahead of all the others, despite being from a big nation.... Olympicdreams (talk) 23:18, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

problem w/ most medals in one olympics section
Michael Phelps is listed as 1st and 2nd place. That is impossible --67.86.119.65 (talk) 01:18, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Athletes often participate in multiple Olympic Games. Each single-games effort that makes the cut of the table is included in the table, not only their best Games. For instance, Larissa Latynina is included even three times. Phelps's results are such that he occupies the top 2 places. Gap9551 (talk) 11:24, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Ottey's ninth medal
Merlene Ottey is listed as having eight medals, but the IOC awarded her a ninth medal in Dec 2009 in the wake of Marion Jones' disqualification for the 2000 100m. This has yet to be reflected in this list. I'd make the edit myself, but that first column is waaaay too complicated to be dealt with.--Crabbylucy (talk) 19:53, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

This article has been split into 3 articles on June 13, 2011
Because the original article size had reached 78 kB, and in order to be consistent with the splitting of the sister-article List of multiple Olympic gold medalists, this article has been split. The present article remains, covering career total medals, plus a timeline and an individual medal section, and some information on medalists in different disciplines. The newly created List of multiple Olympic medalists at a single Games is similar but covers single Olympic Games only. The remainder, which didn't fit in either of these two articles, has been moved to List of multiple Olympic medalists in one event. Gap9551 (talk) 15:56, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Early Games
A quick look at early competitors got two more pre-WWI competitors with medals in two sports, Edwin Flack 🇦🇺 (athletics and tennis) and Otto Herschmann 🇦🇹 (swimming and fencing) and there may well be more Hugo999 (talk) 21:50, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

Larisa Latynina
According to BBC Larisa Latynina has 9 Gold, 5 Silver, 4 Bronze. This should be corrected on the list. Puntori (talk) 00:29, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

Suggestion of different sorting
The list would be much better if it's sorted by goldmedals, then silver, then bronze. E.g. the 9 goldmedals of Nurmi should be rated stronger than the 7 goldmedals of Andrianov. Please think about it. --178.197.225.104 (talk) 16:43, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

Career years
I think the "career years" column is only meant to include the years of the Olympics, not the whole sporting career of the individual athlete. This should be clarified somewhere in the page.

Also, for almost all athletes which are still active, the career is listed as ending in 2012 (last summer Olympics) or 2014 (winter). This is consistent with the above definition, because an athlete might still be active but there is no guarantee he'll win another medal in 2016 (or 2018 for winter). However, someone added "-present" to Michael Phelps. While I can see the point, I think the same standard should be applied to all entries. If there will be a consensus on pointing out still active athletes, such a sign will have to be added to all of them.

--Lou Crazy (talk) 10:59, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

Wrong Gold count
Says 22 instead of 21 for Michael Phelps. Not there yet but hopefully. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.44.69.250 (talk) 03:26, 10 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Well, you know having so many, tough to track them all!! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:304:CFD3:2EE0:A990:17B4:2197:9E56 (talk) 13:59, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

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Simone Biles
Simone Biles is on this list under 8 medals. She only has 6 as of 7/30/21 and as such should not be on here yet. This may change in the next week.

List of multiple olympic medals
I think Jesse Owen's should be added to the list. 2601:644:8A80:4090:FD8A:50A0:849:9F20 (talk) 02:28, 8 February 2022 (UTC)