Most Successful Olympic Male Athletes

Last Updated 2014-05-12

This is a list of the most successful Olympic male athletes, sorted by the number of gold medals. Note that different sports have a different number of events where medals are available. Therefore athletes in some sports, e.g. swimming, have the opportunity to win more medals than athletes in other sports. Also note that the number of events has increased in recent years, which favours athletes that have competed during the last decades. But this will not change the fact that Michael Phelps is the pre-eminent number one, with twice as many gold medals as any other athlete.

Ranking	Athlete	Nation	Sport	Years Competing	Games	Gold Medals	Silver Medals	Bronze Medals	Total
1.	Michael Phelps	United States	Swimming	2004–2012	Summer	18	2	2	22
2.	Paavo Nurmi	Finland	Athletics	1920–1928	Summer	9	3	0	12
3.	Mark Spitz	United States	Swimming	1968–1972	Summer	9	1	1	11
4.	Carl Lewis	United States	Athletics	1984–1996	Summer	9	1	0	10
5.	Ole Einar Bjørndalen	Norway	Biathlon	1998–2014	Winter	8	4	1	13
6.	Bjørn Dæhlie	Norway	Cross-country skiing	1992–1998	Winter	8	4	0	12
7.	Sawao Kato	Japan	Gymnastics	1968–1976	Summer	8	3	1	12
8.	Matt Biondi	United States	Swimming	1984–1992	Summer	8	2	1	11
9.	Ray Ewry	United States	Athletics	1900–1908	Summer	8	0	0	8
10.	Nikolai Andrianov	Soviet Union	Gymnastics	1972–1980	Summer	7	5	3	15

Sources: wikipedia.org, cc search