Top 10 Greatest Olympians of All Time

Carl Lewis won 9 Olympic gold medals across 4 consecutive Olympic Games (Los Angeles 1984, Seoul 1988, Barcelona 1992, Atlanta 1996), making him the most decorated track and field athlete in Olympic history. At the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, he won 4 gold medals, equaling Jesse Owens's 1936 Berlin feat, and successfully defended his long jump gold medal at 4 consecutive Games from 1984 to 1996, a span of 12 years. He achieved his golds across multiple disciplines (100m, 200m, 4x100m relay, and long jump). He was named World Athlete of the Century by the International Association of Athletics Federations, an honor built in part on a 65-competition long jump winning streak that lasted a decade.

Simone Biles is the most decorated gymnast in World Championships history with 30 medals (23 gold), and she has won 11 Olympic medals (7 gold) across the 2016 Rio and 2024 Paris Games. At age 27, she returned from withdrawing at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics to win 4 gold medals in Paris.

Paavo Nurmi, the 'Flying Finn,' won 9 Olympic gold medals and 12 total across the 1920, 1924, and 1928 Olympics. At the 1924 Paris Games, he won 5 golds in 8 days—including the 1500m and 5000m within 90 minutes—a feat never repeated, running with a stopwatch to pace himself with exact precision. He set 22 official world records between 1920 and 1931.

Mark Spitz won 7 gold medals at the 1972 Munich Olympics, all in world record time—the greatest single-Games performance in history until Michael Phelps surpassed it in 2008. Sports Illustrated named him among the 40 Greatest Athletes of the 20th Century.

Nadia Comaneci made history at the 1976 Montreal Olympics as the first gymnast awarded a perfect score of 10.0, an achievement so unprecedented the scoreboard displayed '1.00' due to no provision for a perfect 10. She earned 7 perfect 10s at Montreal, winning 3 gold medals. Retiring at 19 with 5 Olympic golds and 9 world championship medals, she added 2 more golds at the 1980 Moscow Olympics.

Jesse Owens's four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympics—winning the 100m, 200m, long jump, and 4x100m relay—remain one of sport's most defiant political statements, delivered in front of Adolf Hitler. He also held the long jump world record at 8.13 metres, set in 1935, which stood for 25 years until it was broken in 1960.

Bjorn Daehlie won 12 total Winter Olympic medals—8 gold and 4 silver—dominating cross-country skiing across the 1992, 1994, and 1998 Games; his total held the Winter Olympic medal record until Ole Einar Bjørndalen surpassed it in 2014. At the 1998 Nagano Olympics, he won the 50km race by a 46-second margin. Daehlie was named Norway's greatest winter sport athlete in 1996.