By winning seven medals – four gold, three bronze – at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, Australian Emma McKeon set the record for the female athlete with the most medals at a single Games, tying with Soviet gymnast Maria Gorokhovskaya in 1952. McKeon is also Australia’s most successful Olympian, with a total career haul of 11 medals.
In Tokyo, she was the swimmer who won the most medals, ahead of American Caeleb Dressel, who won five medals. Not only that: McKeon was also the athlete with the most medals, among all sports. Instagram’s Swimming States page has published the list of the athletes with the most medals in each Olympics over the last 50 years.
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In those 13 Olympic Games, seven of them had a swimmer as the top medalist, including the last five. In fact, Michael Phelps was the sole athlete from 2004 to 2016 to be the top medalist.
Actually, never before 1972 a swimmer had topped the medals list at any Olympics, so Mark Spitz was the first one.
In 1964, Soviet Larisa Latynina was the athlete with the most medals with six. Until this year, she was the last female athlete to do so. So, McKeon’s feat is something that hasn’t been achieved by a female athlete in more than 50 years.
Winning seven or more medals at a single Games is something that was achieved before by only three swimmers in history: Mark Spitz in 1972, Matt Biondi in 1988, and Michael Phelps in 2004 and 2008. So McKeon’s feat is unprecedented among female swimmers.
The picture literally says “most medals”. If it was done by golds first then Thorpe would be the winner for 2000, not Nemov.
Jeez, which part of ‘medal COUNT’ do you not understand? I understand the argument that Dressel is the most decorated swimmer of these games, but if you’re talking about medal C.O.U.N.T. as stated in the title it’s just simple math bro
After two Olympics, Emma is tied 6th for most Olympic swimming medals of all time with 11.
The people ahead of her are Phelps (28 over 5 Olympics), Lochte (12 over 4 Olympics), Thompson (12 over 4 Olympics), Torres (12 over 5 Olympics) and Coughlin (12 over 3 Olympics).
Emma and Mark Spitz are the only swimmers to have 11 medals after only two Olympics, and Emma is the only female.
It is likely that after Paris we will have a new second placer behind Phelps! Emma needs 2 medals in Paris to outright take second place behind Phelps with 13, but realistically could get 5-7. The only swimmers realistically able to match or beat this in Paris would… Read more »
Is it known if Emma McKeon will continue on to Paris?
It’s only 3 years away so one would hope she would – she’s in the form of her life and can hopefully only get better and faster from here.
And re: Coughlin – one of the most impressive swimmers male or female. Her breadth in events was very impressive.
I don’t think she’s made any announcements, but given her form here and the fact that it’s a shorter cycle I would expect her to keep going.
Coaches stole at least one maybe two from dressel but to be fair coaches stole a gold from Mckeon but she also swam poorly there
I thought the Australian order was ridiculous in that 4 x 200 relay. Maybe that’s what you are referring to. I don’t know what the consensus was here, since I was trying to avoid results. Titmus is not a relentless frontrunner. She needs a target to run down. I was shocked when I saw her leading off. It seemed like a waste and it played out that way. I thought McKeon should have led off. The adrenaline would have allowed her to sustain the natural speed. Then use Titmus on anchor where she almost certainly would have chased down anybody including Ledecky.
I am convinced they were just trying to give Arnie another shot at the WR, and you can only do that as the lead off. In their minds they had already won, so they didn’t think it mattered.
She said in an interview that she wasfatigued so putting her in a different position might not have made a difference. She also lead off in Gwangju bettering her individual time. Regardless one of the 2 big guns should’ve been on anchor and O’Callaghan should’ve been on the final team.
This is why it made no sense to swim 4 swimmers in heat & then 4 swimmers in final, it was complacency.
As mentioned Titmus was quoted as saying she was fatigued, but racing against Ledecky may have pulled something out if she had last leg, McKeon dropped the 200 free & hence more training for 50/100, should have gone first may have just used her speed & try to hang on.
Blind Freddy could see that Wilson was not in the form of trials in her 4 X 100 Fee heats & her individual 200, but O’Callaghan had improved from trails to Olympics in 4 x 100 & later in 4 x 200.
Leah Neal actually… Read more »
I think with a bit different pacing O’Callaghan would’ve gone a 1:54. Exciting prospect.
Giann Rooney on the off the blocks podcast, agree entirely with what we all said as soon as the heat sheets were released. Basically oh heck – this is not a good idea. Plus the order of the relay was really unfair on Neale. At least Tom Neill had had 2 swims before he anchored the 4×200 relay.
If Dressel had swam the 4×200 (I don’t think it’s known whether it wasn’t offered to him or he turned it down), then it’s very possible he swims 0.07 slower the next day and loses one of his golds.
You can’t say he had a medal stolen but then ignore the fact that resting that race likely helped him in another. You can’t have it both ways.
Even with dressel no one was catching GB and that’s even with Tom Dean having a poor swim on his lead off if it weren’t for that they would have taken down that WR
i mean in terms of total medals he would have more, but a gold in the 100 free was definitely more meaningful to him than like silver in 100 free + silver/bronze in 4×200. 100 free definitely could’ve gone the other way if Dressel had/Chalmers hadn’t swim the 4×200
Yeah absolutely. If Dressel wants to trade his gold for Kyle’s silver plus Kyle’s relay bronze I would be 100% fine with that
Well.. pretty much impossible to have 7 medals unless you are a swimmer.
Some sports did not even have doubles or team just recently. Only other athlete which could come close to 7 was Scherbo and he missed his performance on one event.
It we take even if Bolt were as good as he was on 100/200 on the 400 he would not be able to have more than 5 medals..
The “Body Fit” for track and field is pretty much decisive to avoid you doing amazing on more than one/two events
Imagine if gymnastics adds one or two mixed events. I’m kind of shocked it hasn’t happened already, since it’s already being done in swimming, track, biathlon and figure skating, etc.
Any male gymnast in a team doing the all-round has a chance at 8 medals….
Agree – but far more than swimming (say) free/medley very well, gymnastics does require different body types to excel on each apparatus
Then Bolt should have figured out the hurdles. Phelps could do each an every stroke at an elite level. I hate this argument. Phelps beat so many people who were specializing in one event.
so glad shes getting the recognition she deserves!
Some commenters on SwSw said only recently she had never won anything much . She’s gone & done an Inge De Bruin.
Salty and bitter Americans
Americans don’t care enough about Australia to hate on them.
Emma McKeon has yet to win an individual gold medal at the FINA World Aquatics Championships. Emma McKeon has yet to win an individual gold medal at the Pan Pacific Swimming Championships.
Emma McKeon, Ariane Titmus & Kaylee McKeown, it must just hurt so much for you.
Emma McKeon:
5 x gold at Olympics
4 x gold at world champs
4 x gold at Pan Pacs
8 x gold at Commonwealth Games
5 x World Record breaker
That’s all the stats I need
Emma McKeon
FINA World Aquatics Championships
Individual gold medals – 0
Emma McKeon
Pan Pacific Swimming Championships
Individual gold medals – 0
Emna McKeon
World Records (LCM)
Individual world records – 0
In addition, no one gives a crap about the Commonwealth Games.
The 50+ countries that compete in the Commonwealth Games care very much. The same as the European championships and the Pan American Games do you say “who cares a crap” about them.
If you’re talking about the general public, no one gives a crap about the Pan Pacs or World Champs either. I promise you more people in the world would know what the Commonwealth Games are than World Champs and Pan Pacs combined.
What you actually mean is no one in the US gives a crap about the Commonwealth games, well you should. In Toyko, Commonwealth countries of Australia, Canada, South Africa, and the UK, with a population, a bit of half of the US, won 15 gold, 10 Silver, and 11 bronze. Unless it is about the US, you’re not interested. Perhaps you should take more notice.
I’m not taking sides here…but the combination of Australia, Canada, South Africa, and the UK had 4 times the qualifying opportunities of the US.
Population doesn’t always work as a direct representation of efficiency, given that each country can only send the same number of people. If the US could send 8 swimmers per event, you probably would have seen more medals. Not because of “the US is going to go 1-8,” but because it would’ve given more opportunities for the 3rd or 4th swimmer at Trials to hit their taper better at the Games and win a medal where the 1st or 2nd was unable to.
Just a bit of a crude thought experiment but if there was a theoretical nation called “the Commonwealth” that selected its team based on FINA rankings before the Olympics taking the top 2 in each individual event the number of individual medals would only be 1 silver and 1 bronze less. That’s ignoring relays because that’s a bit too complicated.
Thanks, Braden, I agree in part, but a pool of 332 million people in a first-world country is going to provide you a much great opportunity to find exceptional talent and win regardless of the number of spots available, either 2 per event or 8. I checked the start list for all 35 event finals and on only 8 occasions was the commonwealth represented by more than 2 swimmers per final. 5 times with 4 entries and 3 times with 3 entries, so it was never going to place from 1 to 8. There was only 1 clean sweep out of the 8 events where there were 3 or more entrants from the commonwealth countries, and I expect without doing… Read more »
If by “don’t care” you mean “obsessed with and talking about constantly” then yes, I agree
What more impressive is five gold medals in five consecutive Summer Olympics. That’s legendary.
Hilarious. You musn’t know Americans well then. Certainly you must be new to the Swimswam comment sections.
Obviously they care enough to trash comment on SwimSwam
Inge de Bruijn broke world records (LCM):
50 meter freestyle – 3
100 meter freestyle – 2
100 meter butterfly – 3
Emma gold medal in 50/100 free in the Olympics, that must hurt.
You know what hurts:
Tokyo 2021 Olympics
Olympic Aquatics Centre
Medal Table
USA – 11G, 10S, 9B
AUS – 9G, 3S, 8B
The short end of the stick, yet again. Better luck next time. LOL!
Shall we compare the women’s teams that you love so much?
Australian women: 8 golds, 11/18 team members Olympic Champions
US women: 3 golds, 2/26 team members Olympic champions
I know which women’s team I would name my account after lol
WOW, you really struggling, I’m not hating on the US team & happy of the golds they got.
But you really hating on McKeon, who just won the 50/100 free, the most competitive of all the events in Olympic record time, in the 100, the fastest anyone has swam, apart for 1 person who swim was in a low key relay leg with no pressure as Sweden doesn’t win medals in the relays.
You really must be hurting.
Aussies are stoked about our medal count so that’s not much of an insult.
26 million population v 333 million population. Think about that stat sunshine.
332 million Vrs 25 Million, Can you to Maths, and yes it’s Maths, I had a fight with the bloody spell checker to stop changing it to US spelling.
You should change your username to McKeown-Hodges-McKeon-Campbell, because according to your favorite wikipedia and fina.org, they are the medley relay champions at the 2021 Summer Olympics. 😀
She swims the same events too. Emma, Inge and Dressel all swim the same individual events. Interesting coincidence.
And the most by anyone not named Michael Phelps since 1988!