Swimming in Olympics : A different perspective
Is swimming the sport which can produce multiple medalists?
We have analyzed over 500 multiple medalists over the course of the Olympic history, (Note: Multiple Medalists are those who score more than one medal in all the Olympic games they have participated in over different events they have participated)
The sheer number of events present in swimming enhances the chances of an athlete to bring multiple medals.
The categories of events present in Swimming are 50,100,200,400, 1500m, 10 km and different types like Freestyle,Medley,Breast Stroke,Back Stroke,Butterfly Stroke.
There are 80+ multiple medalists in Swimming which includes the legendary Michael Phelps, Mark Spitz and Ian Thorpe.
Why do swimmers have more multiple medalists in Olympics than any other sports.
Argument: There are more events and the swimmers can(and do) participate in multiple events.
Proof:
Let us consider the case of Swimming in Rio Olympics, 2016
899 players participated in the Rio Olympics for Swimming in both Men and women’s category.
414 Women and 485 Men participated in 34 events including Relays and Marathon.
The reason for more multiple medalists in swimming is that athletes participate in more events resulting in probabilistic advantage of winning a medal.
Out of 485 male athletes, more than 100 of them participate in more than one event (calculating only for the individual events)
Most of the countries chose their best for the relay events hence athletes for those events will also be the same as those of individual events.
For example: Michael Phelps, Katie Ledecky participated in individual events as well as in relay representing USA.
Freestyle events (50m, 100m, 200m, 400m and 1500m)
A total of 291 athletes qualified in these events.
69 of them participated in more than one event.
50 m Freestyle Bronze medalist — Nathan Adrian (USA) also participated in 100m Freestyle and won a bronze medal in that event as well.
Sun Yang (Chinese swimmer) participated in 200 m, 400m and 1500m freestyle and won Gold and Silver respectively in the first two events.
Back Stroke events (100m, 200m)
A total of 65 athletes qualified in these events.
14 of them participated in both 100m and 200m.
Ryan Murphy (USA) secured gold medals in both the events with an Olympic record in 100m Backstroke.
Breast stroke events (100m, 200m)
A total of 85 athletes qualified in these events.
11 of them participated in both 100m and 200m.
Kevin Cordes (USA) participated in both and finished 4th and 8th respectively in both events.
Butterfly stroke events (100m, 200m)
A total of 71 athletes qualified in these events.
9 of them participated in both 100m and 200m (Prominent names include Michael Phelps of USA and Chad Le Clos of South Africa)
Michael Phelps won Silver and Gold respectively for USA.
Individual Medley (200m, 400m)
A total of 57 athletes qualified in these events.
6 of them participated in both 200m and 400m.
Japanese Athlete Kosuke Hagino won Silver and Gold respectively in 200m and 400m.
There has been at least one athlete who participated and achieved a podium finish in multiple events of same category.
One might argue that the stroke being similar and only distance getting changed is not sufficient challenge for the athletes.
Then there are athletes who do different events and sometimes they do achieve podium finishes as well.
11 players who were competing for the Gold in 100m freestyle also participated in 100m Breast stroke which shows that swimmers can effectively qualify in multiple events as we know that Olympic qualification time is not easy to achieve still many qualifying for multiple events shows that these many events are not really necessary in Olympics.
At least 10% of the participants in an event has qualified in the other when you consider Breast stroke, Back Stroke and Butterfly stroke.
A similar situation arises when we consider women athletes as well with katie Ledecky and Katinka Hosszu bagging multiple medals after participating in individual as well as team events.
One can always argue that a feat achieved by Michael Phelps could never have happened in Olympics in any other sports or events. The sheer number of events contributed to his success(not undermining his talent and hard work of course)
