Michael Phelps is without a doubt the greatest Olympian to have ever walked the earth and that’s not just admiration, it’s fact.
The American yesterday won his 22nd Gold medal breaking a 2,000 year old record in the Olympics set by Leonidas of Rhodes in 152 B.C.
Phelps won the 200-meter individual Swimming event with a time of 1 minute and 54.66 seconds, followed by Kosuke Hagino of Japan in second with a time of 1:57.05 and Wang Shun of China in third with 1:57.21. Ryan Lochte, the world record-holder in the event, finished in fifth place.
This means Phelps now has 13 individual Gold Medals (Those without any team participation) one more than Leonidas’ 12 individual victories. The ancient Greek runner won three different events in four consecutive Olympics, stretching from 164 B.C. to 152 B.C.
He admits though that it isn’t easy as at 31 years old, he takes significantly longer to recover between races than he used to.
Phelps told NBC that he’d had “probably about five hours” of sleep the night before the qualifying round, admitting that he was “a little tired, but as long as I’m not sore, it’s good.”
It’s likely that the legendary swimmer is not done with the medals yet and could very well go some way in setting another record.