{"title": "Aaron Peirsol", "requested": "Aaron Peirsol", "extract": "Aaron Wells Peirsol (born July 23, 1983) is an American former competition swimmer and backstroke specialist who swam for the University of Texas and is a former world champion and world record-holder.  He is a three-time Olympian and seven-time Olympic medalist with five gold, and two silver medals. Individually, he has held the world record in the 100-meter backstroke event and is the current record holder in the 200-meter backstroke (long course).  In his long career, Peirsol captured a total of thirty-six medals in major international competition: twenty-nine gold, six silver, and one bronze spanning the Olympics, the World, Pan American, and the Pan Pacific Championships.\n\n\n== Early life and swimming ==\nPeirsol was born July 23, 1983 in Newport Beach, a suburb of Irvine, California, the son of Scott and Wella Peirsol.  His younger sister, Hayley, was also a competitive swimmer. In 2003, Peirsol and his sister became the first sibling duo to medal at the same FINA World Championships. He attended Irvine's Venado Middle School, and was a 2002 graduate of Newport Harbor High School in Newport Beach, California. He began swim training at the age of five, eventually competing at the nearby Newport-Costa Mesa YMCA where he came under the direction of Coach Stacy Zapolski.  Zapolski was a four-year competitor for Pepperdine University's women's swim team where she specialized in backstroke, and from 1991-1992 coached Peirsol, likely improving his backstroke technique.  By eight, he participated in a competitive summer swim league that included water polo with Coach Ted Bandaruk in Corona del Mar.  Bandaruk, who was a Professor at Orange Coast College, where Dave Salo would coach, was aquatics director and coached a large age-group swim team currently known as the Harbor View Swim Team Dolphins at the Harbor View Community Association, from 1978-2014.\n\n\n=== Irvine Novaquatics ===\nBy 12, Peirsol's most intensive training was with the Irvine Novaquatics under Hall of Fame Coach Dave Salo, with more frequent training from youth and age group Coach Brian Pajer.  Through July, 1996, Peirsol held an age group record for ten and under boys in the 100-meter backstroke of 1:12.13. Swimming at 12 for the Novaquatics at Golden West College on July 14, 1996, Peirsol set the national age group record for Boys 11-12 in the 100-meter backstroke with a time 1:03.6. At 14, on August 6, 1997, Peirsol broke the national age-group record for the 200-meter backstroke with a time of 2:05.42 at the Juniors West Championship at Clovis West High School.    Not having yet reached his full potential at 14, Peirsol placed sixth in the 100 backstroke with a time of 59.32 at the U.S. Junior West National Championships on August 8, 1997 at Clovis West High.\n\n\n=== University of Texas ===\nPeirsol swam for the University of Texas at Austin in the Big 12 Conference under Hall of Fame Coach Eddie Reese and Associate Coach Kris Kubik.  Swimming for Texas, he was the NCAA 2003 and 2004 backstroke champion, and was the 2003 NCAA Swimmer of the Year.  He graduated Texas in 2006, majoring in Political Science.\n\n\n== Life outside swimming ==\nAfter finishing his second year of collegiate eligibility, Peirsol signed with Nike, Inc., thus turning professional.\nPeirsol is involved in a number of charities, and has served as an ambassador for the Global Water Foundation and the Surfrider Foundation.  He has also served as a spokesman for Oceana, an organization that addresses international ocean conservation. He is also a spokesman for Oceana, which is the largest international ocean conservation and advocacy organization.\n\n\n== Swimming career ==\n\n\n== 2000 Sydney Olympics ==\nPeirsol qualified for his first Olympics at the age of seventeen after finishing second to Lenny Krayzelburg in the 200-meter backstroke at the 2000 U.S. Olympic Team Trials.  At the finals of the Sydney Olympics, Peirsol won a silver medal in the 200 meter backstroke finals with a time of 1:57.35, taking a close second to Lenny Krazelburg's 1:56.76 who took the gold medal. Peirsol also competed in the 100-meter backstroke, but did not qualify for the event finals.\nAt the finals of the Sydney Olympics, Peirsol finished second in the 200-meter backstroke with a time of 1:57.35 finishing second to rival Lenny Krayzelburg who took the gold with a 1:56.76.\n\n\n=== 2001-2002 ===\nAt the 2001 National Championships, with Krayzelburg not competing, Peirsol qualified for the 2001 World Aquatics Championships in Fukuoka, Japan, in the 100-meter backstroke, the 200-meter backstroke, and the 4×100-meter medley relay. Peirsol's time in the 200-meter backstroke was the second-fastest ever, with only Krayzelburg's world record faster. At the 2001 World Aquatics Championships, Peirsol won gold in the 200-meter backstroke with a time of 1:57.13, a championship record.\nPeirsol started off 2002 with the first world record of his career in the 200-meter backstroke, bettering Krayzelburg's mark set in 1999. In his first major competition of 2002, Peirsol won five medals (three gold, one silver, one bronze) at the 2002 FINA World Swimming Championships (25 m) in Moscow.  In Moscow, he was a part of the American team that broke the world record in the 4×100-meter medley relay and he broke the 200-meter backstroke world record. At the 2002 Pan Pacific Swimming Championships in Yokohama, Japan, Peirsol won gold in the 100 and 200-meter backstroke and the 4×100-meter medley relay.  Combined with Brendan Hansen, Michael Phelps, and Jason Lezak, Peirsol set the world record in the 4×100-meter medley relay to break the previous record set in 2000.\n\n\n=== 2003 World Championships ===\nAt the 2003 World Aquatics Championships in Barcelona, Spain, Peirsol won gold in the 100 and 200-meter backstroke and the 4×100-meter medley relay.  He also won a silver medal in the 4×200-meter freestyle relay.  In his first event, the 100-meter backstroke, Peirsol won gold in a time of 53.61, a championship record.  His time was just 0.01 s off Lenny Krayzelburg's world record. Peirsol participated in the 4×200-meter freestyle relay with Michael Phelps, Nate Dusing, and Klete Keller to win silver behind Australia. Peirsol then competed in the 200-meter backstroke and won gold in a time of 1:55.92, almost two seconds ahead of second-place finisher Gordan Kožulj of Croatia.\nPeirsol competed in the 50-meter backstroke and the 4×100-meter medley relay.  In the 50-meter backstroke, Peirsol finished out of medal contention with an 8th-place finish. In his last event, Peirsol competed in the 4×100-meter medley relay with Brendan Hansen, Ian Crocker, and Jason Lezak.  The final time of 3:31.54 was a new world record, bettering the old mark from 2002.\n\n\n== 2004 Athens Olympics ==\n\n\n=== 2004 Olympic trials ===\nAt the 2004 U.S. Olympic Team Trials, Peirsol won individual titles in the 100 and 200-meter backstroke.  Four years after finishing in 4th place at the 2000 U.S. Olympic Team Trials, Peirsol won the 100-meter backstroke title, beating Lenny Krayzelburg. Peirsol was the only individual in the field to break 54 seconds and was just off Krayzelburg's world record.\nIn the 200-meter backstroke, Peirsol won in a world record time of 1:54.74, bettering his previous record of 1:55.15 set in 2002. He beat his closest competitor, Michael Phelps, by more than a second.\n\n\n=== 2004 Olympic finals ===\nAt the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece, Peirsol won gold in the 100 and 200-meter backstroke, sweeping the backstroke events, and also took gold in the Men's 4×100-meter medley relay.\nIn his first event, the 100-meter backstroke, Peirsol won gold in a time of 54.06, 0.29 s ahead of second-place finisher Markus Rogan of Austria. In his second event, the 200-meter backstroke, Peirsol won gold in an Olympic record time of 1:54.95 and completed a clean sweep of the backstroke events. Rogan again finished second to Peirsol, 2.40 s back.  An initial disqualification alleged that Peirsol had made an illegal turn during the 200-meter backstroke race. Having been improperly entered, the disqualification was eventually overturned. In his last event, the 4×100-meter medley relay, Peirsol combined with Brendan Hansen, Ian Crocker, and Jason Lezak to win gold in a world record time of 3:30.68, 2.94 s ahead of second-place finisher Germany. While leading off the relay, Peirsol broke the world record in the 100-meter backstroke with a time of 53.45, bettering Krayzelburg's time of 53.60 set in 1999.\nPeirsol caused minor controversy when he accused Kosuke Kitajima of Japan of using an illegal dolphin kick in the 100-meter breaststroke final when compatriot Brendan Hansen lost by 0.17 s.\n\n\n=== 2004 FINA Short Course World Championships ===\nShortly after the 2004 Summer Olympics, Peirsol competed at the 2004 FINA World Swimming Championships (25 m) in Indianapolis where he won three gold medals.  His first gold medal came in the 100-meter backstroke in a time of 50.72, a new championship record. Three days later, Peirsol competed in the 200-meter backstroke and the 4×100-meter medley relay.  In the 200-meter backstroke, Peirsol won gold in a world record time of 1:50.52, bettering his old mark of 1:50.64 (set earlier in 2004) and finished 2.02 s ahead of Matt Welsh of Australia. Peirsol then competed in the 4×100-meter medley relay with Brendan Hansen, Ian Crocker, and Jason Lezak to win gold in a world record time of 3:25.09, 4.63 s ahead of Australia. Peirsol also competed in the 50-meter backstroke but finished out of medal contention.\n\n\n=== 2005 World Championships ===\nAt the 2005 World Championship Trials, the selection meet for the 2005 World Aquatics Championships, Peirsol won individual titles in the 100 and 200-meter backstroke.  In the 100-meter backstroke, Peirsol won and broke his own world record with a time of 53.17, bettering his time of 53.45 set in Athens. In the 200-meter backstroke, Peirsol easily won with a time of 1:55.13.\nAt the 2005 World Aquatics Championships in Montreal, Quebec, Peirsol won gold in the 100 and 200-meter backstroke and the 4×100-meter medley relay.  In his first event, the 100-meter backstroke, Peirsol won gold in a time of 53.62, just 0.01 s off his championship record set two years earlier in Barcelona. For his second event, the 200-meter backstroke, Peirsol won in dominating fashion.  His time of 1:54.66 was a new world record and 1.97 s ahead of second-place finisher Markus Rogan. Peirsol then competed in the 4×100-meter medley relay with Brendan Hansen, Ian Crocker, and Jason Lezak to win gold in a time of 3:31.85, 3.23 s ahead of second-place finisher Russia. Peirsol also competed in the 50-meter backstroke but finished out of medal contention.\n\n\n=== 2006 Pan Pacific Championships ===\nAt the 2006 National Championships, the selection meet for the 2006 Pan Pacific Swimming Championships and the 2007 World Aquatics Championships, Peirsol won individual titles in the 100 and 200-meter backstroke. At the 2006 Pan Pacific Swimming Championships in Victoria, British Columbia, Peirsol won gold in the 100 and 200-meter backstroke and the 4×100-meter medley relay.  In his first event, the 100-meter backstroke, Peirsol won gold in a championship record time of 53.32. Peirsol was the only individual in the field to break 54 seconds and beat his closest competitor, Ryan Lochte, by 0.70 s. Peirsol earned his second gold in the 200-meter backstroke with a world record time of 1:54.44, bettering his previous mark of 1:54.66 set last year in Montreal. At the time, Peirsol held nine of the fastest times posted in the event and defeated second-place finisher Michael Phelps by 2.37 s. Peirsol then competed in the 4×100-meter medley relay with Brendan Hansen, Ian Crocker, and Jason Lezak to win gold in a time of 3:31.79, a new championship record.\n\n\n=== 2007 World Championships ===\nAt the 2007 World Aquatics Championships in Melbourne, Australia, Peirsol won one gold and one silver medal.  In his first event, the 100-meter backstroke, Peirsol won gold in a world record time of 52.98, bettering his time of 53.17 set in 2005. Peirsol became the first man in the event to go under 53 seconds and beat Ryan Lochte by 0.52 s.  At the time, Peirsol held five of the fastest times posted in the event.  At one point during the first 50-meters, Peirsol was a full meter behind Ryan Lochte, and at the turn, Peirsol was in third place behind Liam Tancock and Lochte.  But Peirsol had a superior finish to over-take both swimmers. After the race, Peirsol thanked Lochte for the fast start, which he attributed to the world record. In the 200-meter backstroke, Peirsol placed second to Lochte and lost his world record he set in 2006. Throughout the race, Peirsol was in first and at the 150-meter mark, Peirsol was ahead of Lochte 1:24.56 to 1:25.05.  But Lochte had a strong finish to over-take Peirsol for the win. For Peirsol, it was his first international loss in the event since the 2000 Summer Olympics. Peirsol did not have a chance to swim in the 4×100-meter medley relay final because the United States was disqualified in the heats.\n\n\n== 2008 Beijing Olympics ==\n\n\n=== 2008 Olympic trials ===\nAt the 2008 U.S. Olympic Team Trials, Peirsol won individual titles in the 100 and 200-meter backstroke, repeating his results from the 2004 U.S. Olympic Team Trials.  In his first event, the 100-meter backstroke, Peirsol won ahead of Matt Grevers with a world record time of 52.89, lowering his previous mark of 52.98 set last year. In his second event, the 200-meter backstroke, Peirsol won in a time of 1:54.32, equalling Ryan Lochte's world record set last year. Lochte finished a close second, just 0.02 s behind Peirsol.\n\n\n=== 2008 Olympic finals ===\nAt the finals of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China, Peirsol won gold in the 100-meter backstroke and the 4×100-meter medley relay.  He also won silver in the 200-meter backstroke.  In his first event, the 100-meter backstroke, Peirsol was the heavy favorite for gold, with him being the world-record holder and the defending Olympic champion.  For the final of the 100-meter backstroke, Peirsol was swimming in lane two, having qualified fifth in the semi-finals.  At the first 50-meters in the 100-meter backstroke final, Peirsol was in second place behind Liam Tancock, who took it out in 25.11.  Peirsol was 0.54 s behind Tancock at the turn.  However, after the turn, Peirsol overtook Tancock, who eventually placed sixth, and won the gold.  Peirsol's final time of 52.54 was a new world record, bettering his previous mark of 52.89 set last month.  After the race, Peirsol said, \"I'm a little bit excited, a little bit relieved, absolutely elated.\" In his second event, the 200-meter backstroke, Peirsol placed second to Ryan Lochte 1:54.33 to 1:53.94.  In winning the gold, Lochte broke the world record tie he and Peirsol shared in the 200-meter backstroke. In his last event, the 4×100-meter medley relay, Peirsol combined with Brendan Hansen, Michael Phelps, and Jason Lezak to win gold in a world record time of 3:29.34, lowering the old mark of 3:30.68 set four years ago in Athens.\n\n\n=== 2009 World Championships ===\n\nAt the 2009 National Championships, the selection meet for the 2009 World Aquatics Championships, Peirsol won individual titles in the 100- and 200-meter backstroke.  In his first event, the 100-meter backstroke, Peirsol won in a time of 51.94, reclaiming the world record from Aschwin Wildeboer. In winning the 100-meter backstroke, Peirsol became the first person to swim the event in under 52 seconds and it was the sixth time he set the world record in the event. In the 200-meter backstroke, Peirsol defeated Ryan Lochte and reclaimed the 200-meter backstroke world record he lost in Beijing. Peirsol also competed in the 100-meter butterfly but did not qualify for the event in Rome, finishing in third place.\nAt the 2009 World Aquatics Championships in Rome, Peirsol won two gold medals.  In his first event, the 100-meter backstroke, Peirsol surprised many after he failed to make the final, which he attributed to a miscalculation of his own position in the semi-finals.  Peirsol said, \"I thought I was going faster.  I am very disappointed. I completely misjudged my race. I have to go on, pick myself up and focus on my next events.\" But Peirsol's world record in the 100-meter backstroke would stay in place after the final. In his second event, the 200-meter backstroke, Peirsol won the gold in a time of 1:51.92, breaking his own world record of 1:53.08 by more than a second. Peirsol then competed in the 50-meter backstroke but did not advance past the heats. In his last event, the 4×100-meter medley relay, Peirsol combined with Eric Shanteau, Michael Phelps, and David Walters to win gold in a world record time of 3:27.28, lowering the old mark of 3:29.34 set a year ago in Beijing. While leading off the relay, Peirsol broke the championship record in the 100-meter backstroke with a time of 52.19, bettering the previous mark of 52.26 set by Junya Koga.\n\n\n=== 2010 ===\nAt the 2010 National Championships, Peirsol placed second in both the 100- and 200-meter backstroke. In the 100-meter backstroke, Peirsol placed second to David Plummer, who touched just 0.03 s ahead.  For Peirsol, it was his first loss in the 100-meter backstroke at a national championships since he placed 4th at the 2000 U.S. Olympic Team Trials. In the 200-meter backstroke, Peirsol placed second to Ryan Lochte, who finished 0.70 s ahead.\nAt the 2010 Pan Pacific Swimming Championships in Irvine, California, Peirsol won gold in the 100-meter backstroke and the 4×100-meter medley relay.  Peirsol's first gold came in the 100-meter backstroke.  Initially, Peirsol did not qualify to swim in the medal-awarding final because only a maximum of two swimmers from one country could enter in the finals and David Plummer and Ryan Lochte owned the top two American spots. However, Lochte withdrew from the 100-meter backstroke and as a result, Peirsol advanced to the finals.  Peirsol won the gold in a time of 53.31, breaking his own championship record set in 2006. Peirsol then competed in the 200-meter backstroke but did not qualify to swim in the medal-awarding final, with Lochte and Tyler Clary taking the top two American spots. In his final event, the 4×100-meter medley relay, Peirsol won gold along with compatriots Mark Gangloff, Michael Phelps, and Nathan Adrian.  This would be the last race of his international career.  When the competition was over, Peirsol said he put his swimming equipment in a locker and walked away.\n\n\n== Retirement ==\n\nOn February 2, 2011, at the age of twenty-seven, Peirsol announced that he was officially retiring from professional swimming. This ended months of speculation after he withdrew from his spots in both the 2010 FINA World Swimming Championships (25 m) in Dubai and the 2011 World Aquatics Championships in Shanghai. Peirsol said he contemplated retirement after the 2008 Summer Olympics. In 2010, he said he had no further goals and found it difficult to swim because he \"ended up doing everything (he) set out to do.\"  He added, \"Things outside of the sport started to interest me.\" Peirsol said it was \"poetic\" that 2010 Pan Pacific Swimming Championships, his final competition, was held at the pool where he trained in childhood. Peirsol planned to go to graduate school at the University of Texas at Austin to study political science.\nPeirsol returned to Newport Beach where he has served as a seasonal ocean lifeguard and swim coach at his alma mater, Newport Harbor High School.\n\n\n== Awards and honors ==\n2005: Golden Goggle Awards – Male Athlete of the Year\n2005: Swimming World – American Swimmer of the Year\n2016: International Swimming Hall of Fame inductee\n2017: Texas Swimming & Diving Hall of Fame inductee\n\n\n== See also ==\n\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists at a single Games\nList of Olympic medalists in swimming (men)\nList of Olympic records in swimming\nList of University of Texas at Austin alumni\nList of World Aquatics Championships medalists in swimming (men)\nList of individual gold medalists in swimming at the Olympics and World Aquatics Championships (men)\nList of world records in swimming\nWorld record progression 100 metres backstroke\nWorld record progression 200 metres backstroke\nWorld record progression 4 × 100 metres medley relay\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nAaron Peirsol  at World Aquatics \nAaron Peirsol at USA Swimming (archived June 2, 2021)\nAaron Peirsol at Team USA (archive January 27, 2023)\nAaron Peirsol at Olympics.com Aaron Peirsol at Olympic.org (archived) \nAaron Peirsol at Olympedia \nAaron Peirsol at InterSportStats \nOfficial website \nAaron Peirsol's Race for the Oceans at the Wayback Machine (archived March 19, 2012)"}
{"title": "Akinori Nakayama", "requested": "Akinori Nakayama", "extract": "Akinori Nakayama (中山 彰規, Nakayama Akinori; March 1, 1943 – March 9, 2025) was a Japanese gymnast and Olympic gold medalist. Nakayama was born in Nagoya, Aichi Prefecture, and is a graduate of Chukyo University in Nagoya. Nakayama is one of only three gymnasts to become an Olympic Champion in rings twice.\n\n\n== Biography ==\nNakayama won six medals at the World Championships in 1966, including three gold medals in the team all-around, the floor exercise and the horizontal bar. Two years later, with four gold, one silver and one bronze medals he became the most successful male athlete at the 1968 Summer Olympics. In 1970, he won another four world titles: in team competition, on rings, floor and parallel bars. He won four more medals at the 1972 Summer Olympics.\nAfter retirement he was the vice-president of the Japanese Gymnastics Federation. He also served as a gymnastics coach at his alma mater, Chukyo University. In 2005, he was inducted into the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame.\nNakayama died from stomach cancer on March 9, 2025, at the age of 82.\n\n\n== Competitive history ==\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists at a single Games\nList of multiple Olympic medalists\nList of Olympic medal leaders in men's gymnastics\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nAkinori Nakayama at World Gymnastics\nAkinori Nakayama at the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame\nAkinori Nakayama at Olympics.com\nAkinori Nakayama at Olympedia"}
{"title": "Al Oerter", "requested": "Al Oerter", "extract": "Alfred Adolph Oerter Jr. (; September 19, 1936 – October 1, 2007) was an American athlete and a four-time Olympic champion in the discus throw. He was the first athlete to win a gold medal in the same individual event in four consecutive Olympic Games. Oerter is an inductee of the IAAF Hall of Fame.\n\n\n== Olympic athlete ==\nOerter was born in 1936 in Astoria, Queens, New York City and grew up in New Hyde Park; he attended Sewanhaka High School in Floral Park. He began his track and field career at the age of 15 when a discus landed at his feet and he threw it back past the crowd of throwers. Oerter continued throwing and eventually earned a scholarship to the University of Kansas in 1954 where he became a member of Delta Tau Delta fraternity. A large man of almost 6 ft 4 in (193 cm) and 280 pounds (130 kg), Oerter was a natural thrower. Competing for Kansas, he became the NCAA discus champion in 1957; he successfully defended his title the following year.\nOerter began his Olympic career at the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne. He was not considered the favorite but he felt a rush during the competition and he unleashed a throw of 184 feet 10 inches (56.34 m)—which, at the time, was a career best. The throw was good enough to win the competition by more than 5 inches (130 mm).Oerter began his Olympic career at the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne. He was not considered one of the favorites, but in the final he produced a lifetime-best throw of 56.36 m (184 ft 11 in), which set a new Olympic record and won him the gold medal.\nIn 1957, it seemed that Oerter's career would be over at the age of 20 when he was nearly killed in an automobile accident. He recovered in time to compete at the 1960 Summer Olympics at Rome, where he was the slight favorite over teammate Rink Babka, who was the world record holder.\nBabka was in the lead for the first four of the six rounds. He gave Oerter advice before his fifth throw; Oerter threw his discus 194 feet 2 inches (59.18 m), setting an Olympic record. Babka settled for the silver medal when he was not able to beat Oerter's throw.\nDuring the early 1960s, Oerter continued to have success and set his first world record in 1962. In the process, he was the first to break 200 feet in the discus. He was considered a heavy favorite to win a third gold medal at Tokyo in 1964.\nOerter was hampered by injuries before the Games began. He was bothered by a neck injury that required him to wear a neck brace, and a week before the start of the competition he tore cartilage in his ribs. Oerter was competing in great pain, but he set a new Olympic standard and won a third Olympic gold medal despite not being able to take his last throw due to the pain from his ribs. He had told the doctors, \"These are the Olympics. You die for them.\"\n\nOerter returned to the Olympics in 1968 at Mexico City; however, teammate Jay Silvester was cast as the favorite. Many felt Oerter, who was then 32, could not win the event because he had never thrown as far as Silvester did on his average throws. At the Olympics, however, Oerter hurled another Olympic record throw of 64.78 metres (212.5 ft) on his third throw. His record held and he became the first track and field athlete to win gold medals in four consecutive Olympic Games. This accomplishment would be equaled many years later by fellow Americans Carl Lewis in 1996, swimmer Michael Phelps in 2016, and swimmer Katie Ledecky in 2024.\nOerter retired from athletics after the 1968 Olympics. He later eyed a comeback and took anabolic steroids in 1976 under medical supervision in order to put on muscle mass. However, he stopped the course as this affected his blood pressure and failed to give much improvement on the field. After this he advised athletes to avoid such drugs and focus on training and technique instead. He was critical of the increase of drug use and the subsequent testing in track and field, stating that it had destroyed the culture of athlete camaraderie and that the banning of athletes such as Ben Plucknett was merely scapegoating by international officials.\nOerter did make an attempt to qualify for the American team in 1980 but finished fourth. He nonetheless set his overall personal record of 69.46 metres (227.9 ft) that year at the age of 43. Dr. Gideon Ariel, a former Olympic shot putter himself for Israel, had developed a business of biomechanical services, and Oerter after working with Ariel—at age 43—threw a discus 27 feet farther than his best gold medal performance.\nWhen filming for a TV segment, he unofficially threw about 245 feet (75 m), which would have set a world record only surpassed in 2025. In later years, Oerter carried the Olympic flag for the 1984 Summer Olympics, then carried Olympic flame into the stadium for the 1996 Olympic Games.\n\n\n== Later life, death and Art of the Olympians ==\nOerter had struggled with high blood pressure his entire life, and in the 2000s, he became terminally ill with cardiovascular disease. On March 13, 2003, Oerter experienced a period of being clinically dead; a change of blood pressure medications caused pericardial effusion, a fluid build-up, around his heart.\nOerter was inducted into the Suffolk Sports Hall of Fame on Long Island in the Track & Field Category with the Class of 1990. In 2005, Oerter was inducted into the Nassau County Sports Hall of Fame.\nAs a child, Oerter had frequently traveled to his grandparents' home in Manhattan and admired their art collection. As a retired athlete, Oerter became an abstract painter. Oerter enjoyed the freedom of abstract art, and thus decided against formal schooling for his art, as he thought it might stifle his creativity. Part of Oerter's work was his \"Impact\" series of paintings. For these works, Oerter would lay a puddle of a paint on a tarp, and fling a discus into it to create splashing lines on a canvas positioned in front of the tarp. If the discus landed painted-face up, Oerter would sign it and give it to whoever purchased the painting.\nIn 2006 he founded the Art of the Olympians organization and held an Olympian Art exhibition in his home town of Fort Myers.  This first show included artworks and sculptures from 14 Olympians, including Florence Griffith Joyner, Roald Bradstock, Shane Gould, Cameron Myler, Rink Babka and Larry Young. Later that year the exhibit traveled to New York City for shows at the United Nations, the New York Athletic Club and then at the National Arts Club. Art of the Olympians also had their work on display on the giant Panasonic Astro-Vision screen in Times Square for the entire month November 2006. Oerter and other Olympian artists were also featured on the CBS Morning Show to discuss their New York Tour.\nIn mid-2007, Art of the Olympians was given the rights to use the word Olympian by the United States Olympic Committee (USOC)—an act protected by Congress. On August 1, 2007, Art of the Olympians was awarded a 501(c)(3) status.\nAs Oerter's heart condition progressed, he was advised by cardiologists that he would require a heart transplant. Oerter dismissed the suggestion. \"I've had an interesting life,\" he said, \"and I'm going out with what I have.\" Oerter died on October 1, 2007, of heart failure in Fort Myers, Florida at the age of 71. He was survived by his wife and two daughters.\nUpon learning of Oerter's death, track and field historian and blogger Mike Young wrote that Oerter was arguably the greatest Olympian of all time.\nOn March 7, 2009, the Al Oerter Recreation Center, operated by New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, opened in Flushing Meadows–Corona Park in Flushing, Queens.\nIn 2025, a collection consisting of a signed photograph, a personal practice disc, and his four gold medals was featured on Antiques Roadshow, appraised at $400,000.\n\n\n== See also ==\n\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists in one event\nList of multiple Summer Olympic medalists\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nOfficial website \nObituary, The Times, 3 October 2007\nObituary, The Independent, 4 October 2007\nMasters T&F Discus Throw All-Time Rankings Archived January 3, 2010, at the Wayback Machine\nAl Oerter at World Athletics\nAl Oerter at Tilastopaja (registration required)\nAl Oerter at the USATF Hall of Fame (archived)\nAl Oerter at Athletics Podium\nAl Oerter at Olympics.com\nAl Oerter at the Team USA Hall of Fame\nAl Oerter at Olympedia\nAl Oerter at the Kansas Sports Hall of Fame (archived)\nAl Oerter at InterSportStats\nAl Oerter at the Team USA Hall of Fame (archive February 24, 2023)"}
{"title": "Aladár Gerevich", "requested": "Aladár Gerevich", "extract": "Aladár Gerevich (16 March 1910 – 14 May 1991) was a Hungarian fencer, regarded as \"the greatest Olympic swordsman ever\". He won seven gold medals in sabre at six different Olympic Games.\n\n\n== Biography ==\nGerevich was the first athlete to win the same Olympic event six times (despite two Games cancelled because of the Second World War) with a record 28-year gap between first and last medals. (Both records were broken by Isabell Werth, who won seven team dressage golds between 1992 and 2024.)\nGerevich's wife, Erna Bogen (also known as Erna Bogathy), his son, Pál Gerevich, and his father-in-law, Albert Bogen (a silver medalist in team sabre for Austria at the 1912 Summer Olympics), all won Olympic medals in fencing.\nIn the Hungarian Olympic trials for the 1960 Rome Olympics, the fencing committee told Gerevich that he was too old to compete. He silenced them by challenging the entire sabre team to individual matches and winning every match. He missed the finals of the 1960 Olympic individual sabre event, and a possible individual gold medal, by a single touch. After retiring, he coached fencing at the Vasas Sports Club in Budapest, where he died aged 81. Asteroid 228893 Gerevich, discovered by  Krisztián Sárneczky and Brigitta Sipőcz at Piszkéstető Station in 2003, was named in his memory. The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on 16 January 2014 (M.P.C. 86716).\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of athletes with the most appearances at Olympic Games\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists in one event\nList of multiple Summer Olympic medalists\n\n\n== References ==\n \n\n\n== External links ==\n\nwww.olimpic.org: Aladár Gerevich with photos"}
{"title": "Alberto Tomba", "requested": "Alberto Tomba", "extract": "Alberto Tomba  (born 19 December 1966) is a former World Cup alpine ski racer from Italy. He was the dominant technical skier (slalom and giant slalom) in the late 1980s and 1990s. At 182 cm and 90 kg, his powerful build was a contrast to the lighter, more traditional technical skiers who prioritised agility over muscle. Tomba was able to take advantage of the introduction of spring-loaded ski gates which replaced the older, solid gates in the early 1980s by using his power to maintain a faster, more direct line through courses. Tomba won three Olympic gold medals, two World Championships, and nine World Cup season titles: four in slalom, four in giant slalom, and one overall title.  He was popularly called Tomba la Bomba (\"Tomba the Bomb\").\n\n\n== Early years ==\nAlberto Tomba was born in Bologna and raised in Castel de Britti, a village in the municipality of San Lazzaro di Savena – an area without strong alpine traditions, but not far from the appenninic piste of Monte Cimone and Corno alle Scale. His father Franco, a businessman in the textile industry, had been a keen skier since attending college in Switzerland and passed his love of the sport to his sons, driving Alberto and his older brother Marco from their home to Sestola so they could ski. Alberto learned to ski at the age of three and started racing at the age of seven. As a child, he participated in sports like tennis, football, and dirt biking, but preferred skiing. Later in life, in 1988, his father Franco promised him a Ferrari if he won a gold medal that year and, as he celebrated his first gold at the bottom of the slope, Alberto told his father and the television viewers that he wanted the car to be red.\nIn 1984 he took part in the Junior World Championships, where a fourth-place finish won him a position on the national B team. That year, in an exhibition parallel slalom competition in San Siro, Milan, he surprised everyone by beating every member of the A team. After three wins on the Europa Cup circuit, Tomba made his World Cup debut in December 1985 at Madonna di Campiglio, Italy, three days before his nineteenth birthday. Two months later, in Åre, Sweden, he surprised the skiing world by finishing sixth from a bib number of 62. His first podium came the following season in Alta Badia, Italy in December 1986, and later that winter he won bronze in the giant slalom at the 1987 World Championships in Crans-Montana, Switzerland - the only medal won by the Italian team at that World Championships.\n\n\n== Rise to fame ==\nOn 27 November 1987, Tomba scored his first World Cup victory, in a slalom at Sestriere, Italy (with starting bib number 25). Two days later he won the giant slalom, beating Ingemar Stenmark.\nHe went on to win nine races that 1988 season, including a slalom win at Madonna di Campiglio where he beat the second-placed finisher by 1.34 seconds, shouting \"I am the new messiah of skiing!\" as he crossed the finish line. He won that year's World Cup titles in both slalom and giant slalom, but was runner-up in the overall standings to Pirmin Zurbriggen of Switzerland. During this early part of his career, Tomba also competed in super-G, an event he would continue to contest until 1989, despite never finishing better than fourth.\nAt the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, Tomba won gold medals in slalom and giant slalom. In the first run of the GS, he finished 1.14 seconds ahead of his nearest competitor.\nTomba was not as successful in the following two seasons, winning a total of four World Cup races. At the 1989 World Championships in Vail, Colorado, he could do no better than sixth place in the super G and seventh in the giant slalom. From 1989 to the end of his career, Tomba was surrounded by his own technical staff managed by former Olympic champion Gustav Thöni and strength and conditioning coach Giorgio d'Urbano, who worked with him for ten seasons.\nTomba was temporarily put out of action in 1990 when he crashed in a World Cup race in Val-d'Isère, breaking his collarbone. However, in the 1991 season, Tomba returned to his winning ways, winning the giant slalom World Cup title for a second time while finishing fourth in the slalom standings. He ended 4th in slalom at the 1991 World Championships at Saalbach-Hinterglemm (Austria) and crashed in the second giant slalom run after having clocked the fastest time in the first leg, handing the victory to Austria's Rudolf Nierlich, the two-time winner at Vail, Colorado, two years earlier. In September 1991, he also met former Miss Italy, Martina Colombari, whom he dated for several years.\nTomba's career reached its second peak during the 1992 season with nine victories and fifteen podiums, and he once again captured the season-long discipline titles in both his technical specialties. His duel with Paul Accola for the overall World Cup crown extended until the very end of the season and the Finals at Crans-Montana, but the Swiss skier scoring points in all disciplines including downhill and combined ultimately prevailed. At the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville, France, Tomba won what was to be his last gold medal at Val d'Isère, in the giant slalom, and picked up a silver in the slalom. In Val d'Isère, he became the first alpine champion to successfully defend an Olympic title when he won the giant slalom ahead of Marc Girardelli.\nThe 1993 World Championships, held in Morioka, Japan, again proved to be his nemesis. Tomba was suffering from a fever during the giant slalom and made a critical mistake in the slalom, failing to reach the podium in either race. To make matters worse, he only managed to win a single World Cup race in the entire 1993 season.\n\n\n== Overall World Cup champion ==\nTomba competed in the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway. After his slalom run, he was seemingly out of medal contention, (placed 12th) 1.84 seconds behind leader Thomas Stangassinger (and 1.00 behind place 3, Peter Roth), but in the second run he recovered to second place and won the silver medal.\nIn the 1995 Alpine Skiing World Cup he amassed 11 victories in the technical events including seven in a row in slalom to capture the overall World Cup title.\nAt the 1996 World Championships, Tomba finally added the final missing pieces to his trophy case, winning two gold medals at Sierra Nevada, Spain. His GS victory came thanks to a second-run rally from 0.81 seconds behind.\nTomba competed in the FIS Alpine World Ski Championships 1997 on his home snow in Sestriere. He was disqualified in the giant slalom and had a disappointing first run in the slalom, but a second run was good enough for his last major medal, a bronze. He decided to continue competing for one more year.\nTomba's performance at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano was a sign that his career was winding to a close: for the first time in his Olympic career, he failed to medal after crashing in giant slalom. He suffered a painful injury and was not able to start in the second slalom run after losing much time in the first leg.\nAlberto Tomba retired at the end of the 1998 season, but not before winning a last World Cup race at the Finals at Crans-Montana where he grabbed the slalom, becoming the only alpine male skier to have won at least one World Cup race per year for 11 consecutive seasons.\n\n\n== Post-racing life ==\nAfter retiring from competitions, Tomba made numerous appearances on Italian television broadcasts, and in 2000 he made his acting debut in the crime film Alex l'ariete, directed by Damiano Damiani; the movie, however, was met with little success and was unanimously panned by movie critics.\nAt the 2006 Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony in Turin, Tomba brought the Olympic Flame into the stadium where he handed it off to the men's 4 × 10 km gold medalists from the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer (De Zolt, Albarello, Vanzetta, Fauner). During the 2010 edition of \"Sport Movies & TV - Milano International FICTS Fest\" he was awarded with \"Excellence Guirlande D'Honneur\" and entered in the FICTS \"Hall of Fame\". At the 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympics opening ceremony, he was one of the three last torch bearers, lighting the Milan Olympic cauldron alongside Deborah Compagnoni.\n\n\n== Medals ==\n\n\n=== Winter Olympic Games ===\n1988: gold in giant slalom, gold in slalom at Calgary, Alberta, Canada (Nakiska).\n1992: gold in giant slalom, silver in slalom at Albertville, France (Val d'Isère).\n1994: silver in slalom at Lillehammer, Norway (Hafjell).\n\n\n=== Alpine World Ski championships ===\n1987: bronze in giant slalom at Crans Montana, Switzerland.\n1996: gold in giant slalom, gold in slalom at Sierra Nevada, Spain.\n1997: bronze in slalom at Sestriere, Italy\n\n\n=== Alpine skiing World Cup ===\n50 victories (35 in slalom, 15 in giant slalom), including seven consecutive slalom wins in the 1995 season.\n28-second-place finishes\n11 third-place finishes\n\n\n== World Cup results ==\n\n\n=== Season standings ===\n\n\n=== Season titles ===\n9 titles (1 overall, 4 giant slalom, 4 slalom)\n\n\n=== Race victories ===\n50 wins (15 GS, 35 SL)\n88 podiums (31 GS, 57 SL)\n\n\n== Olympics results ==\n\n\n== World Championships results ==\n\n\n== See also ==\nSki World Cup Most podiums & Top 10 results\nItaly at the Olympics – Men gold medalist\nItalian skiers most successful race winner\n\n\n== Honours ==\n\n\n=== Orders ===\n CONI: Golden Collar of Sports Merit Collare d'Oro al Merito Sportivo - 1995\n ARMY: Army Gold Cross of Merit: Croce d'Oro al Merito dell'Esercito - 1991\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nAlberto Tomba at FIS (alpine)\nAlberto Tomba at Olympics.com\nAlberto Tomba at Olympedia\nAlberto Tomba at InterSportStats\nAlberto Tomba at Ski-DB Alpine Ski Database \nAlberto Tomba at the Comitato Olimpico Nazionale Italiano (in Italian)\nOfficial website (in Italian)\nAlberto Tomba's career (victory by victory)"}
{"title": "Aleksandr Karelin", "requested": "Aleksandr Karelin", "extract": "Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Karelin (Russian: Александр Александрович Карелин, IPA: [ɐlʲɪkˈsandr‿əlʲɪkˈsandrəvʲɪtɕ kɐˈrʲelʲɪn]; born 19 September 1967) is a Russian politician and retired athlete.\nKarelin competed in Greco-Roman wrestling, representing the Soviet Union and Russia between 1986 and 2000. Nicknamed the \"Russian Bear\", \"Russian King Kong\", \"Alexander the Great\", \"The Experiment\", and \"The Crane from Novosibirsk\", he is widely considered to be the greatest and most dominant Greco-Roman wrestler of all time. Karelin won gold medals at the 1988, 1992, and 1996 Olympic Games under a different flag each time (Soviet Union, Unified Team, and Russia respectively), and a silver medal at the 2000 Olympic Games. His wrestling record at the senior level was 887 wins and two losses, both considered controversial and both by a single point. Prior to his defeat to American Rulon Gardner at the 2000 Olympics finals, a point had not been scored against him in competition the previous six years. He went undefeated in the World Championships, having never lost a match, winning nine gold medals, and he won twelve gold medals at the European Championships. His twelve gold medals at the world level are the most in men’s wrestling history across both freestyle and Greco-Roman disciplines. Karelin's thirteen total world-level medals are tied for the all-time record in men’s wrestling history, along with American wrestler Bruce Baumgartner. He was the national flag bearer at three consecutive Olympics: in 1988 for the Soviet Union, in 1992 for the Unified Team, and in 1996 for Russia. \nDue to his dominance and accomplishments, he was named the greatest Greco-Roman wrestler of the 20th century by the International Federation of Associated Wrestling Styles (FILA), and is part of the class of ten inaugural inductees into the FILA International Wrestling Hall of Fame in 2003. In 2007, Karelin, alongside Buvaisar Saitiev, were voted the best wrestlers in the history of the sport by FILA. Four times he was awarded the \"Golden Belt\" as the best wrestler of the planet by FILA – in 1989, 1990, 1992, and 1994.\nIn addition to his success in wrestling, Karelin was a sambo champion during his service in the Internal Troops and participated in a strongman contest. In 1999, he competed in a mixed martial arts bout, defeating Akira Maeda by unanimous decision, though the bout is seen as a work. He was named a Hero of the Russian Federation in 1996. He entered politics in 1999, being elected a deputy of the State Duma that year. He sat in the Duma through various convocations until 2020, when he entered the Federation Council as a senator.\n\n\n== Wrestling career ==\nKarelin was born as a 5.5 kilograms (12 lb) baby. He was an avid fan of literature and mathematics during his school years. His father introduced him to strength training, giving him a kettlebell and sledgehammer and placing a truck tire in the yard for exercise. As a schoolboy, Karelin also loaded coal, gathered firewood, and cared for the family's livestock while his parents worked, which he credited his father with helping him develop his character. He began training in 1981, under Viktor Kuznetsov, who remained his coach through his entire career. He initially started boxing, following in the footsteps of his father, until he decided against it. He also tried weightlifting, skiing, basketball, volleyball and swimming, excelling in all the sports he tried. Being naturally very big, he came to a wrestling gym, aged 13, standing 179 centimetres (5 ft 10 in) tall and weighing 79 kilograms (174 lb), Karelin grew physically very fast and from 16 years of age throughout his entire career he competed in the super heavyweight division. Karelin was named Master of Sport of the USSR in 1984 and Master of Sport of the USSR, International Class by the age of 18 in 1985. Karelin won gold at Friendship-84 in Greco-Roman wrestling as a junior. In 1986, he competed in 14 tournaments, winning all of them. In 1985 and 1987, Karelin won the World Junior Championship, and in 1986, won the European Junior Championship.\nKarelin had his first loss (score 0–1) at the senior level at the USSR championships in 1987, to the reigning Russian and European champion Igor Rostorotsky, which was considered controversial; he then defeated Rostorotsky at the next USSR Championships, while recovering from a flu and a recent concussion, by fall, and again in a match that would decide which of the two would go to the Summer Olympics, winning 2–0, effectively retiring Rostorotsky.\nKarelin was a 13-time national champion of the USSR, CIS, and Russia from 1988 to 2000, with these national championships being regarded as hard to win as the European Championships, and arguably higher in level than the World Championships. He is listed as runner-up to David Koplovitz at the 1992 Wrestling World Cup, for while he won all of his matches at the event, his partner Andrey Grishin competed in the rest of the rounds, and so they did not accumulate enough ranking points to beat the American team.\n\nIn the 1988 Olympic final Karelin beat Rangel Gerovski, by executing his signature Karelin Lift and won. With his win, Karelin became the youngest Greco-Roman wrestler to become an Olympic champion at super heavyweight (130 kg) at the age of 21 years and two days. After his first Olympic victory, Karelin was named Honored Master of Sport of the USSR in 1988. At the 1992 Summer Olympic Games in Barcelona, Karelin won one of the fastest Olympic wrestling matches, pinning Ioan Grigoraş in only 14 seconds. At the 1996 Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta, Karelin faced American Matt Ghaffari for the gold medal. Karelin had come off a shoulder surgery and looked vulnerable against a strong Ghaffari, who was able to repel Karelin's efforts to lift and slam him, forcing Karelin to use all of his skill and experience to defend a 1–0 lead.\nIn 1995, the IV International Alexander Karelin Prize Tournament, also known as the Karelin Cup, was held in Novosibirsk. Karelin won, beating Matt Ghaffari in the final. Karelin is also a five-time winner of the International Tournament in Memory of Ivan Poddubny. Karelin won the World Championships nine times and the European Championships twelve times.\nAfter going 13 years undefeated in international competition and six years without giving up a point, he eventually lost 0–1 to Rulon Gardner of the United States in the final of the Sydney Olympics. Karelin had previously beaten Gardner in 1997 with a score of 5–0 and throwing him three times. His loss to Gardner is considered one of the biggest upsets in sports history. His loss in the final of the Sydney Olympics was his first and only international loss, having previously been unbeaten throughout his international career. Karelin retired from competitions in 2000.\nThus his only two losses at the senior level were in finals, those ultimately being the 1987 USSR Championships to Rostorotsky, and 2000 Summer Olympics to Gardner. However, both of his losses are considered controversial, with him also only losing to both opponents by a single point. Some argue, such as Finnish former wrestler Tuomo Karila, that Gardner should not have been awarded the point, and that Karelin should have won. Karelin lost a few matches at the junior level, but his senior level record was an astounding 887–2.\nKarelin was dominant against his rivals, having a record of 11–0 against Swedish wrestler Tomas Johansson with a combined score of 74–1. He had a record of 23–0 against American wrestler Matt Ghaffari.\nKarelin holds the record for most world-level gold medals at 12, the most for either freestyle or Greco-Roman wrestling in men's competitions, and also holds the joint-record for most medals at the world-level, with 13, which is tied with the American wrestler Bruce Baumgartner.\nKarelin twice was the winner of the Spartakiad of the Peoples of the USSR, in 1986 and 1991.\n\n\n=== Training style ===\nKarelin was revered for his extraordinary strength and unprecedented success in international competition. He competed in the heaviest weight class of his day, 130 kg (286 lb). His coach was at first skeptical about a big but undeveloped boy, yet he accepted Karelin and motivated him for hard training, both in wrestling technique and physical strength. As a result, over the years Karelin progressed from 0 to 42 pull-ups. His conditioning and quickness combined with his dominance of the sport, led to him being known as \"The Experiment\". When asked why he thought he was called that (referring to a biased opinion on his alleged PED use), Karelin noted that: \"No one can completely believe that I am natural. The most important drug is to train like a madman – really like a madman. The people who accuse me are those who have never trained once in their life like I train every day of my life.\"\nKarelin's daily training drills included hours of rowing and long runs through Taiga forest often with a large log on his back. He favored the overhead press and also used standard 2-pood kettlebells (32 kilograms (71 lb)) for arm exercises at a daily weight routine. He would clean and press over 190 kilograms (420 lb). He would reportedly do 10 reps of 200 kilograms (440 lb) of Zercher deadlifts. Karelin would routinely bench press 204 kilograms (450 lb) or more as part of his workout. Tuomo Karila, a Finnish Greco-Roman wrestler, noted that even for a heavyweight Karelin was remarkably strong and that he was unusually agile for his size, and recalled that Karelin was able to do around 50 chin-ups. Despite his large physique, he was flexible and agile enough to do backflips and splits. Freestyle wrestler and Olympic gold medalist Anatoly Beloglazov recalled that despite his large frame, Karelin moved \"like a small guy\" while playing football, handling the ball well and being unusually fast for a heavyweight. He also noted that Karelin trained with very heavy weights and rapidly developed physical strength, and that Karelin could climb a rope as quickly as much lighter wrestlers and had no equal in the exercise despite Karelin weighing far more. When asked about his toughest opponent, he instantly replied: \"My refrigerator,\" referring to the time for which he bear hugged his refrigerator, weighing over 500 lbs, and carried it up through eight flights of stairs of his hometown 9-storied apartment building. Karelin also took part in a strongman competition, that being the 1991 European Hercules, and without prior preparation, he managed to place 8th.\n\n\n=== Wrestling style ===\nKarelin was famous for his reverse body lift, the Karelin Lift, where facing the opponent who was lying flat on the mat to keep from being thrown, Karelin hoisted his opponents into the air and slammed him violently to the mat. This devastatingly effective maneuver, when properly executed, awarded Karelin 5 points per throw, the maximum awarded in Greco-Roman wrestling. The throw had long been in use by lighter wrestlers but not by heavyweights – because of the immense strength required to raise, spin and hit the mat with a 560+ lbs combined weight of both athletes (280+ of which resist desperately to the performed maneuver). Karelin's ability to perform this throw against elite opponents weighing as much as 130 kg amazed other participants and observers of the sport. His exceptionally long reach, with measurements between 213 centimetres (84 in) and 220 centimetres (87 in), helped him to grip his opponents' bodies. Furthermore, his incredible grip strength was described as being similar to that of \"an anaconda\", which allowed him to hold down his opponents and prevent them from escaping from his grasp. He was known for his large stature such as a very thick neck and muscular legs. In his early matches before adopting the reverse body lift, Karelin used arm bars, half nelsons, and gut wrenches. His strength, size, explosiveness, flexibility and agility led Joe Rogan to describe Karelin as a \"human panther\".\n\n\n=== Injuries ===\nLike most top wrestlers, Karelin had a number of severe injuries through his career. He credits his fast recoveries to Valery Okhapkin, physician of the national wrestling team, and claims that Okhapkin extended his competition lifetime by several years.\nAt the age of 15, Karelin broke his leg while training; having learned about this accident, his mother burned his wrestling uniform and forbade him to wrestle. At the 1988 USSR Championships, Karelin won and also defeated Igor Rostorotsky in a rematch, despite suffering from a concussion and high temperature. He won the 1993 World Championships despite breaking two ribs in the opening bout against Matt Ghaffari. Another injury occurred at the 1996 European Championships in Budapest, as he had torn the right pectoralis major muscle so badly that doctors predicted he would not be able to use his right hand for several months. Karelin won the Championships, but he had to be urgently operated on in Budapest. Despite not being fully recovered, he won the 1996 Olympics three months later. He has avoided multiple ear cartilage injuries of both ears, unlike many wrestlers.\n\n\n== International competition record ==\n\n\n== Mixed martial arts ==\nOn 21 February 1999, Karelin defeated Akira Maeda in a shoot wrestling contest put on by RINGS that drew a gate of over $1 million. The match gained widespread media coverage, including mentions in The New York Times and Sports Illustrated. The match took place in the Maeda-owned professional wrestling organization RINGS. Though widely considered to have been a work style wrestling contest, the match is counted as an official mixed martial arts (MMA) match in Sherdog's record database. Karelin weighed in at 134 kilograms (295 lb).\n\n\n== Political career ==\n\nBetween 1995 and 1999, Karelin served with the Russian tax police and retired in the rank of colonel. Upon invitation from Vladimir Putin, in 1999, he began his political career. He joined the United Russia party and was elected to the State Duma as a representative of Novosibirsk Oblast in 1999 and 2003. In 2007, he was elected to the Duma as a representative of Stavropol Krai. He was a member of Duma's committee on international affairs. In 2017, he entered the PutinTeam, a social movement aimed at promoting Vladimir Putin's policies.\nIn 2020, Karelin was appointed as senator from the Legislative Assembly of Novosibirsk Oblast in the Federation Council. He took up the post on 25 September 2020, and is a member of the council's committee on International Affairs. He was sanctioned by the United Kingdom in 2022 in relation to the Russo-Ukrainian War.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nKarelin graduated from the Novosibirsk Institute of Transportation in 1985, followed by the Siberian Academy of Physical Culture, a military school of the Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD USSR) and the Saint Petersburg University of MVD USSR. In 1998 he defended a PhD and in 2002 a habilitation in sport-related pedagogy; he also holds a degree in law. His PhD is titled: \"Methods of execution of suplex throw counters\" (Russian: Методика проведения контрприемов от бросков прогибом), and \"Integral training system for top-level wrestlers\" (Russian: Система интегральной подготовки высококвалифицированных борцов).\nKarelin's father was a truck driver and an amateur boxer. Karelin is married to Olga, they have two sons, Denis and Ivan, and one daughter, Vasilisa. Denis (born c. 1986) tried wrestling, but gave it up in favor of car racing. Ivan (born 1994) is coached by Kuznetsov and competes in the Greco-Roman superheavyweight division, in which he is a Master of Sport. Vasilisa (born c. 1999) is a rhythmic gymnast. Karelin had an older brother, Sergei Aleksandrovich Karelin, who died in 2017 at the age of 56.\nKarelin described himself as a fifth-generation Siberian and stated that his ancestors had originally come to Siberia as exiles.\nKarelin is an Orthodox Christian. Since he was young, Karelin has sought to be a \"classical man\", and is well-versed in music and literature, with an interpreter of his stating \"His knowledge and his feeling for poetry, literature and music are incredible.\"\nBeginning in 1985, Karelin served in the West Siberian Directorate of the Internal Troops of the USSR and later Russia. During his service, he competed in sambo and won the USSR Internal Troops Sambo Championship.\nDuring his service in the Internal Troops, Karelin held several roles between 1986 and 1995: he was sports instructor of the 2nd category (1986–1991), instructor of the highest qualification (1991–1992), and finally, coach of the sports team (1992–1995).\n\n\n== Legacy and awards ==\nKarelin was named as the greatest Greco-Roman wrestler of the 20th century by the International Federation of Associated Wrestling Styles (FILA), and is one of the class of ten inaugural inductees into the FILA International Wrestling Hall of Fame in 2003. In 2007, Karelin, alongside Buvaisar Saitiev, were voted the best wrestlers in the history of the sport by FILA. Four times he was awarded the \"Golden Belt\" as the best wrestler of the planet by FILA – in 1989, 1990, 1992, and 1994. He was also included in the 25 best world athletes of the 20th century. Since 1992, an annual wrestling competition is held in Novosibirsk in his honor.\nHe is cited as being one of the most dominant athletes of all time, and as being one of the greatest of all time. He is also remembered as being one of the most feared and intimidating athletes ever. He is also seen as one of the most gifted athletes of all time due to his combination of explosiveness, strength, intellect, flexibility, and agility. The UFC commentator Joe Rogan described him as \"the scariest wrestler of all time\" and a \"human panther\".\nHe has been praised as one of the greatest wrestlers ever by, or usually as the single greatest ever, by other combat athletes like Abdulrashid Sadulaev, Alexander Romanov, Mark Madsen, Juha Ahokas, and even by Rulon Gardner himself.\n\nRulon Gardner stated about Karelin that:Karelin - God. He was and will remain the best fighter. True, some now think that I am the best. But I'm just an Olympic champion. And I will go down in history not as Rulon Gardner, but as the winner of Karelin.Karelin was named a Hero of the Russian Federation in 1996 and awarded the Order of Friendship of Peoples (1989), Order of Honour (2001) and Order \"For Merit to the Fatherland\" IV class (2008). He was awarded the Serbian Order of Saint Sava. In 2017, he was awarded the Order \"For Merit to the Republic of Dagestan\". He was also named a Merited Master of Sports of the USSR (1988).\nHe is a hidden playable character in the Japan-only, AKI Corporation-created, Nintendo 64 video game: Virtual Pro Wrestling 2.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of Heroes of the Russian Federation\n\n\n== Notes ==\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nOfficial website\nAleksandr Karelin at Olympics.com\nAleksandr Karelin at Olympedia"}
{"title": "Aleksandr Medved", "requested": "Aleksandr Medved", "extract": "Aleksandr Vasilyevich Medved (Russian: Александр Васильевич Медведь; Belarusian: Аляксандр Васілевіч Мядзведзь; 16 September 1937 – 2 September 2024) was a Ukrainian-born Soviet Belarusian freestyle wrestler who competed for the Soviet Union and was named \"one of the greatest wrestlers in history\" by FILA, the sport's governing body. Between 1962 and 1972 he won three Olympic gold medals, seven world and three European titles. He served as the Olympic flag bearer for the Soviet Union in 1972, for Belarus in 2004 and recited the Judge's Oath at the Opening Ceremony of the 1980 Olympics.\n\n\n== Biography ==\nAccording to Medved, his grandparents came from Russia; his grandmother was ca. 195 cm, and his grandfather was even taller. Medved was smaller, at 190 cm and 100+ kg, yet big enough to fit into his last name, which means bear in Russian (and with minor variations in Slavic languages).\nBetween 1967 and 1972 Medved had a rivalry with Turkish-Bulgarian wrestler Osman Duraliev. They met eight times in the finals of major international championships and Medved won on all occasions. He was close to losing at the 1971 World Championships in Sofia, where Duraliev led the match 4:3 with 43 seconds left. Yet Medved equalized the score and won the title because of his lower body weight.\nAfter retiring from competitions in 1972 Medved moved to Belarus, where prior he served with the Soviet Army in the late 1950s. There he worked as a national coach and lectured at the Belarusian State University of Informatics and Radioelectronics. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union he was appointed as vice-president of the Belarus Olympic Committee and of the Belarus Wrestling Federation. Previously he was awarded the Order of Lenin (1964), Order of the Red Banner of Labour (1970),  and Order of the Badge of Honour (1964, 1969, 1985). In 2001 he was chosen as the best Belarusian athlete of the 20th century and in 2003 became one of the first 10 inductees to the FILA International Wrestling Hall of Fame. He is an honored citizen of Minsk, where since 1970s an annual wrestling tournament is held in his honor.\nMedved was married to Tatyana, they had a daughter Yelena and son Aleksei. Yelena was a Belarusian tennis champion, while Aleksei won a junior world title in wrestling in 1987.\nMedved died in Minsk on 2 September 2024, at the age of 86.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nAleksandr Medved at the International Wrestling Database\nAleksandr Medved at Olympics.com\nAleksandr Medved at Olympedia\nAleksandr Medved at the National Olympic Committee of the Republic of Belarus\nBiography at Belarusian Olympic Committee (archived)"}
{"title": "Aleksandr Popov (swimmer)", "requested": "Aleksandr Popov (swimmer)", "extract": "Aleksandr Vladimirovich Popov (Russian: Алекса́ндр Влади́мирович Попо́в, born 16 November 1971), better known as Alexander Popov, is a Russian former swimmer. Widely considered the greatest sprint swimmer in history, Popov won gold in the 50-metre and 100 m freestyle at the 1992 Olympics and repeated the feat at the 1996 Olympics, and is the only male in Olympic games history to defend both titles. He held the world record in the 50 m for eight years, and the 100 m for six. In 2003, aged 31, he won 50 m and 100 m gold at the 2003 World Championships.\n\n\n== Swimming ==\nPopov began swimming at age 8 at the Children and Youth Sports School of Fakel Sports Complex in Lesnoy, at that time afraid of water. However, his father insisted on him taking swimming lessons in that sports school, and in his own words, he has \"been stuck there ever since\". Popov started out as a backstroker but switched to freestyle when he joined Gennadi Touretski's squad in 1990 on the initiative by the head coach of the USSR National Team Gleb Petrov. He later moved from Russia to Australia to be with his coach.\nPopov won the men's 50 m and 100 m freestyle in the Barcelona Olympics in 1992, and repeated his victories in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, becoming the first man to do so since Johnny Weissmuller. He presented Touretski with his 1996 Olympic gold medal from the 100 m freestyle. \"I have a title and I'm on the paper, but, you know, Gennadi hasn't gotten anything from Atlanta or from Barcelona,\" Popov said. \"But I know how much this particular medal means for him, is worth for him.\"\nOne month after the Atlanta Olympics, he was stabbed in the abdomen with a knife during a dispute with three Moscow street vendors. The knife sliced his artery, grazed one of his kidneys and damaged the pleura, the membrane that encases the lungs. He had emergency surgery and spent three months in rehabilitation. At the 1997 European Championships in Seville, Spain, he successfully defended his 50 m and 100 m freestyle titles.\nIn 2000, he beat the world record in the 50-metre freestyle in a time of 21.64 at Russia's Olympic Trials in Moscow. Popov, considered one of the most technically sound swimmers of all time, took just 31 strokes to set the world mark, which would last nearly eight years.\nPopov finished second in the 100 meter freestyle at the 2000 Olympics.\nAt the 2003 Barcelona World Championships, Popov once again made a clean sweep of the men's 50 m and 100 m freestyle events, citing that Barcelona would always be special to him, for it was there that for him, everything first began.\nHe announced his participation in the 2004 Athens Olympics. Moreover, he was the Flagbearer of Russia in the opening ceremony. Popov was the oldest competitor at the pool, and finished 9th in the men's 50 m and 18th in the 100 m freestyle.\nHe announced his retirement from the sport in January 2005.\n\n\n== Post swimming ==\n\nPopov was elected a full member of the International Olympic Committee in December 1999. He also represents the athletes on the IOC Sport for All Commission and was elected directly as one of seven athletes to the IOC Athletes' Commission by the athletes participating in the 1996 Olympics. He was re-elected to the Athletes Commission at the 2000 Games and is now Honorary Secretary. He was awarded the 1996 Russian Medal of Honour for contributions to sport. He was also named Russian Athlete of the Year and European Sports Press Union Athlete of the Year in 1996.\nIn June 2003, he confirmed that he was permanently leaving Australia in early 2004 to live in Solothurn, Switzerland. He said the move followed the offer of a business proposition in Switzerland, once he had retired from swimming. He retained Touretski as a long-distance coach.\n\nPopov earned both a bachelor's and a master's degree in sports coaching from the Russian Academy.\nHe is a spokesman for Omega SA alongside other swimmers such as Ian Thorpe.\nHe appeared at the closing ceremony of the Beijing Olympics after being elected a member of the IOC, presenting flowers to volunteers. He was named to the Evaluation Commission for the 2016 Summer Olympics.\nIn 2009, he served as the chairman of the RC Lokomotiv Moscow rugby league club.\nSince May 2009 he has been a member of the supervisory board of Adidas.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nIn 1997, Popov married Darya Shmeleva, a Russian Olympic swimmer he had dated since 1995. They have two sons, Vladimir (born 1997) and Anton (born 2000), and a daughter, Mia (born 2010).\nPopov is a friend of wrestler Aleksandr Karelin.\n\n\n== Controversy ==\nOn 4 July 2019, the International Olympic Committee accused Alexander Popov, and eight other members of the IOC, of accepting bribes in order to secure their votes for Rio de Janeiro as host of the 2016 Summer Olympics. The former governor of Rio de Janeiro, Sérgio Cabral Filho, contended in court that he paid $2 million to Lamine Diack, the former president of the International Association of Athletics Federation, which it was known as at the time, in order to secure votes. On 5 July 2019, Popov denied these allegations, citing that he did not take any money in return for his vote.\n\n\n== Honors and awards ==\nOrder of Merit for the Fatherland, 3rd class\nOrder of Friendship\nHonoured Master of Sports\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of members of the International Swimming Hall of Fame\nWorld record progression 50 metres freestyle\nWorld record progression 100 metres freestyle\nList of multiple Olympic medalists at a single Games\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Summer Olympic medalists\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nAleksandr Popov at World Aquatics\nAleksandr Popov at SwimRankings.net\nAleksandr Popov at the International Swimming Hall of Fame\nAleksandr Popov at Olympics.com\nAleksandr Popov at Olympedia\nAleksandr Popov at InterSportStats"}
{"title": "Alexander Tikhonov", "requested": "Alexander Tikhonov", "extract": "Alexander Ivanovich Tikhonov (Russian: Александр Иванович Тихонов; born 2 January 1947) is a former Soviet-Russian biathlete. He is a four-time Olympic champion, winning his gold medals in relays.\nOn 23 July 2007, he was found guilty of conspiracy to commit murder and sentenced to three years of imprisonment, but he was amnestied immediately and did not spend any time in prison.\n\n\n== Life and career ==\nTikhonov trained at Dynamo in Novosibirsk. He won nine world championship biathlon gold medals and four Olympic gold medals. He lacks an individual Olympic gold medal in his cupboard, but took part in the gold medal relay winning teams in 1968, 1972, 1976, and 1980.  W.D. Frank, author of Everyone to Skis! Skiing in Russia and the Rise of Soviet Biathlon, wrote in his book that Tikhonov was a member of the KGB.\nIn 1999 he ran for election to become governor of the Moscow region, but Tikhonov lost in the first round.\nAfter Tikhonov was charged with conspiracy to commit murder, he fled and lived in Austria for several years in the early 2000s.\nDuring the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, when biathlete Valeria Vasnetsova complained about the quality of food she was receiving at her hotel, Tikhonov said: \"I would cut off Vasnetsova's tongue for such complaints. At the 1980 Olympics, we lived in America like in a prison and nobody complained.\"\nIn September 2023, he publicly supported Russia's attack on Ukraine. Tikhonov volunteered to serve in the \"special military operation\" in Ukraine in 2023.\n\n\n=== International Biathlon Union; bribery ===\nTikhonov led the Russian Biathlon Union from 1995 to 2008, soon after he was convicted of trying to have a politician killed.\nIn May 2002, after Tikhonov fled to Austria to avoid trial for conspiracy to commit murder, he was chosen as vice president of the International Biathlon Union (IBU), the sport's governing body. He held that position until 2010.\nA two-year investigation by the IBU found that Tikhonov offered a bribe of a jewelry box with valuable jewelry to IBU Secretary General Nicole Resch, \"to induce her not to pursue suspected doping by Russian biathletes in 2008/2009\".  The doping cases were three  erythropoietin (EPO) cases the IBU had brought against three Russian national team biathletes, Ekaterina Iourieva, Albina Akhatova and Dmitry Yaroshenko.\nIn 2010, he was the second in command at the IBU, and vice president of the Russian Biathlon Union. His presence at the 2010 Winter Olympics troubled many of biathlon's leaders, who said Tikhonov's conviction for trying to arrange a murder damaged the image of the sport.  Dr. James Carrabre, a Canadian member of the IBU executive board, said: \"It's not good for us, it's not good for our sponsors, to have this perception that maybe we have someone who is a criminal on our board.\" IBU President Anders Besseberg said Tikhonov's conviction and amnesty created a \"difficult and tricky\" situation.\nThe independent External Review Commission of the IBU concluded that Tikhonov attempted to buy votes at the 2014 IBU Congress elections. It also concluded that generally he was not a reliable witness.\nIn 2018, he was a Georgian delegate for the IBU Congress. He said he would make a congressional proposal that neither Baiba Broka nor Olle Dahlin deserved to be the IBU President. Broka said Tikhonov \"always finds only bad things in other people, especially if they candidate for the post of President of the IBU. The fact that he will represent Georgia, raises question why he is not representing his own country\".\n\n\n== Conspiracy to commit murder ==\nIn 2000, he was accused by prosecutors of participating in planning the assassination of western Siberian Kemerovo Oblast governor Aman Tuleyev. According to the prosecution, a businessman named Mikhail Zhivilo and his company MIKOM had a business conflict with Tuleyev, and Zhivilo decided to organize Tuleyev's murder as revenge. Zhivilo knew Tikhonov and allegedly asked him to arrange the murder of Tuleyev. Tikhonov put Zhivilo in touch with his younger brother, Viktor Tikhonov, to help arrange the murder. His younger brother hired two potential killers from an organized crime group to commit the murder-–Vladimir Kharchenko and Sergey Nikanorov, who Russian media reported were promised $700,000. Kharchenko and Nikanorov instead went to the FSB, and told them about the murder plans.\nViktor Tikhonov was convicted in 2002, and sentenced to four years of imprisonment. He served his term in a maximum security prison.\nAlexander Tikhonov, was charged and arrested in August 2020, but was released from custody a month later when he claimed he was unwell—with an order to remain in Russia. However, he disobeyed the order and fled the country for Austria and Germany, where he lived for several years. He was indicted separately from the other accused. On 23 July 2007, he was tried and found guilty of conspiracy to commit murder, and sentenced to three years of imprisonment. However, he was amnestied immediately due to his decorated Olympic career, and did not spend any time in prison. Leonid Tyagachev, president of the Russian Olympic Committee from 2001 to 2010, approved of his amnesty, opining: \"The person who has devoted all his life to Russia can't be guilty of anything.\"\n\n\n== Honours and awards ==\nOrder of the Red Star (1969)\nOrder of the Red Banner of Labour (1976)\nOrder of Lenin (1980)\nOrder of Friendship (1999)\nMedal \"For Labour Valour\"\nMedal \"For Distinguished Labour\"\n\n\n== Biathlon results ==\nAll results are sourced from the International Biathlon Union.\n\n\n=== Olympic Games ===\n5 medals (4 gold, 1 silver)\n\n*Sprint was added as an event in 1980.\n\n\n=== World Championships ===\n17 medals (11 gold, 4 silver, 2 bronze)\n\n*During Olympic seasons competitions are only held for those events not included in the Olympic program.\n**Sprint was added as an event in 1974.\n\n\n=== Individual victories ===\n2 victories (1 In, 1 Sp)\n\n*Results are from UIPMB and IBU races which include the Biathlon World Cup, Biathlon World Championships and the Winter Olympic Games.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists in one event\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nAlexander Tikhonov at IBU BiathlonWorld.comAlexander Tikhonov at IBU BiathlonResults.com\nBiography (in Russian)"}
{"title": "Alexei Nemov", "requested": "Alexei Nemov", "extract": "Alexei Yuryevich Nemov (Russian: Алексей Юрьевич Немов; born 28 May 1976) is a Russian retired artistic gymnast. During his career, he won five world championships, three European championships and twelve Olympic medals.\n\n\n== Early life ==\nBorn in Barashevo, Mordovia, Alexei Nemov grew up in Tolyatti on the Volga River.His father divorced his wife and he lived with his mother in the city of Tolyatti. At the age of six, he began training in artistic gymnastics at the Volga Automobile Plant's specialized children's and youth Olympic reserve school in Tolyatti. He attended School No. 34. Since 1983, he has been training with Yevgeny Grigoryevich Nikolko, a Master of Sports in gymnastics and Honored Coach of Russia. In 1999, he graduated from Tolyatti State University (until 2001, the Tolyatti branch of Samara State Pedagogical University).\n\n\n== Gymnastics career ==\nNemov made his debut at the 1993 World Championships at the age of sixteen, placing fifth in the floor event. The following year, he stamped himself as a true all-around contender, winning his qualifying session at the Worlds. He later faltered and dropped to twelfth overall. He won his first major all-around title at the Goodwill Games in Saint-Petersburg, beating his second-place teammate and World Silver Medalist Aleksei Voropaev by over one point. Nemov's style of gymnastics was considered very well-rounded; he had complex acrobatics, a unique style, and elegance when he performed.\nDespite his initial promising success internationally, by 1995 Nemov had gained a reputation for having inconsistent performances. In the all-around at the 1995 European Cup, Nemov, then 19, was the leader after five events and had put up the high score on three events. When he came to high bar, he only needed an 8.75 to win the title. He missed his two major release moves and crashed into the bar on another, botched a required element, and stopped in the middle of his routine. He scored a 7.35 and dropped to ninth overall.\nA few months later, Nemov competed in the World Championships in Sabae, Japan. The Russian team had an extremely poor showing during the qualifying round, finishing in 11th place, with Nemov in 96th position all-around. The team rebounded in the finals to finish 4th overall (still a disappointment since it marked the first time in decades that the Russians failed to medal in the team competition), while Nemov put up the highest optional score of all the competitors.\nAt the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, Nemov seemed poised to win the gold. Nemov won six medals (two gold, one silver, and three bronze). He performed solidly in the all-around, battling World Champion Li Xiaoshuang every step of the way. Nemov ruined his chances for gold, however, when he botched his middle tumbling run in the final event, finishing second by a narrow margin.\nWhile many questioned Nemov's dedication and fitness level, he continued to excel. Several shoulder injuries, as well as his marriage and the birth of his first son, along with perceived inconsistencies in character were cited as evidence of weak gymnastics prior to the 2000 Sydney Olympics. This led to increased concerns about Aleksei's lack of a major title. However, as a high-performance athlete, Nemov went into the 2000 Olympics in the best shape of his life – having never seen his newborn son (born in September 2000), and was able to take home to his son what he called a golden rattle, in reality an all-around gold medal. Except for still rings, he had won at least one Olympic medal in every other discipline of men's gymnastics by the end of the Sydney games.\n\n\n=== 2004 Olympics controversy and rule change ===\nAlthough injury took its toll, Nemov competed through to the 2004 Athens Olympics, mainly as an anchor for the fledgling Russian team. Though unable to defend his all-around title, Nemov's performances brought the house down on high bar in Athens and placed him in the middle of a judging controversy. After performing a routine with six release skills in the high bar event final (including four in a row – three variations of Tkatchev releases and a Gienger), the judges posted a score of 9.725, placing him in third position with several athletes still to compete. The crowd became unruly on seeing the results and interrupted the competition for almost fifteen minutes. Influenced by the crowd's fierce reaction, the judges reevaluated the routine and increased Nemov's score to 9.762, but this did not improve his placement and he finished without a medal. The crowd's reaction, even to this new score, was so strong that the next competitor, Paul Hamm, was not given the green light to compete. At the request of officials, Nemov stepped onto the podium and gestured to the audience to ask them to quiet down. For this act of sportsmanship he received the 2005 Fair Play Award from the International Fair Play Committee.\nThis scandal was just the latest of several judging disputes in the competition, such as the scoring controversy involving Korean gymnast Yang Tae-Young, and prompted a major reconstruction of the gymnastics scoring system, which was implemented in 2006. The rule changes are credited as having encouraged more acrobatic activity and increasing difficulties on the high bar apparatus seen in later competitions. The Russian Olympic Committee later awarded Nemov $40,000 in recognition of his character, and he retired from gymnastics soon after.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nNemov currently lives in his hometown of Tolyatti with his wife Galina and his son Alexei (born 2000) and his other son Dima (born 2009).\nIn 2015, he was awarded the rank of reserve colonel in the Russian Armed Forces by Minister of Defense Sergey Shoigu for his achievements in sports and service to the country.\nIn 2022, after the International Gymnastics Federation opened a disciplinary case against Ivan Kuliak for wearing the military symbol \"Z\" (used by Russian invading forces in Ukraine) at an international gymnastics medal ceremony, Nemov expressed support for him, saying that Kuliak had been \"provoked\" and that his actions showed \"courage\".\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Olympic medalists\nList of multiple Summer Olympic medalists\nList of multiple Olympic medalists at a single Games\nList of Olympic medal leaders in men's gymnastics\nList of Olympic male artistic gymnasts for Russia\n\n\n== References ==\n\nRussian Olympic Committee will award gymnast Alexei Nemov for performance in Athens Olympics from newsfromrussia.com\nList of competitive results at Gymn Forum\nAlexey Nemov entered the top ten athletes of modern Russia\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nAlexei Nemov at World Gymnastics\nAlexei Nemov at the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame\nAlexei Nemov at Olympics.comAlexei Nemov at Olympic.org (archived)\nAlexei Nemov at Olympedia"}
{"title": "Alfred Flatow", "requested": "Alfred Flatow", "extract": "Alfred Flatow (3 October 1869 – 28 December 1942) was a Jewish German gymnast.  He competed at the 1896 Summer Olympics in Athens. He was murdered in the Holocaust.\n\n\n== Biography ==\nFlatow was a successful competitor in 1896.  He won the parallel bars, was the runner-up in the horizontal bar, and was a member of the German team that took the gold medals in both the parallel bars and the horizontal bar team events.  He also competed in the vault, pommel horse, and rings competitions. Flatow's cousin, Gustav Flatow, was also a member of the German gymnastics delegation in 1896.\nAfter his return to Germany he and most of the other German gymnasts were suspended, because the Deutsche Turnerschaft (at this time the governing body of German gymnastics) boycotted the Olympic games with the reason that competing was \"unGerman.\"\nIn 1903, Flatow was a co-founder of the Judische Turnerschaft, the historic and pioneering Jewish sports organization in Europe. A gymnastics teacher since 1890, he started writing books about his sport in the early 20th century. In 1933, Flatow was forced to end his gymnastics club membership \"voluntarily\", as he was Jewish. He was prominent in German gymnastics until expelled by the Nazis in 1936. He was nevertheless honoured at the 1936 Olympics, where all German Olympic champions were invited.\nFlatow emigrated from Germany to the Netherlands in 1938 due to Nazi persecution of Germany's Jewish community. The Netherlands was invaded by Nazi Germany in May 1940. On 3 October 1942, Flatow was deported to Theresienstadt concentration camp in spite of appeals by the highly placed gymnastics official Christian Busch. He died there of starvation at the age of 73 before the end of the year.  His cousin Gustav Flatow was also murdered in the Holocaust. Alfred died in Theresienstadt Ghetto on 28 December 1942, Gustav on 29 January 1945.\n\n\n== Honours after death ==\n\nIn 1981, he was inducted into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.\nIn 1997, Berlin honoured Alfred and Gustav Flatow by renaming the Reichssportfeldstraße (a lane) near the Olympic Stadium to Flatowallee (Flatow-avenue).  There is also the Flatow-Sporthalle (sports hall) at Berlin-Kreuzberg with a commemorative plaque for both.  The Deutsche Post issued a set of four stamps to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the modern Olympic games.  One of these stamps shows the Flatows.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of select Jewish gymnasts\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nAlfred Flatow at Olympics.com\nAlfred Flatow at Olympedia"}
{"title": "Alfred Lane", "requested": "Alfred Lane", "extract": "Alfred Page Lane (September 26, 1891 – October 2, 1965) was an American sport shooter who competed at the 1912 and 1920 Summer Olympics. He is a five-time Olympic champion and is the first of five shooters to have won two Olympic individual gold medals.\n\n\n== Biography ==\n\nLane was born to Frederic Henry Lane and Louise Abbott Mosely. He started training in shooting at the Manhattan Rifle and Revolver Association in New York and, by the age of 19, won several U.S. Revolver Association (USRA) championships. After the 1912 Olympics, he held USRA Champion titles for three consecutive years. He was later employed by Remington Arms for their advertising campaigns and then became head of the photographic department for a magazine publisher.\nHis five gold medals and one bronze medal were on loan from his family and on display at the National Firearms Museum in Fairfax, Virginia. He was inducted into the United States International Shooters Hall of Fame in 1991.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nAlfred Lane at the International Shooting Sport Federation \nAlfred Lane at Olympics.com"}
{"title": "Allison Schmitt", "requested": "Allison Schmitt", "extract": "Allison Rodgers Schmitt (born June 7, 1990) is an American competition swimmer who specializes in freestyle events. She is a four-time Olympian and a ten-time Olympic medalist.\nIn her Olympic debut at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, Schmitt won a bronze medal as a member of the 4×200-meter freestyle relay.  Four years later, at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, she won a total of five medals, three of them gold, in the 200-meter freestyle (in which she set a new Olympic record), in the 4×200-meter freestyle relay, and in the 4×100-meter medley relay (in which a new world record was set); and she also won a silver medal in the 400 meter freestyle, and a bronze medal in the 4 × 100 meter freestyle relay.\nAt the 2016 Summer Olympics Schmitt won a gold medal in the 4×200 meter freestyle relay and a silver medal in the 4×100 m freestyle relay. It was the first Olympics where she served as captain of the US Olympic swim team. Schmitt was the only second-time captain for the US Olympic swim team at the 2020 Summer Olympics. At the 2020 Olympics, Schmitt won a bronze medal in the 4×100-meter freestyle relay, swimming in the prelims of the race, and a silver medal swimming in the final of the 4x200-meter freestyle relay.\nIn total, Schmitt has won twenty-five medals in major international competitions: thirteen gold, nine silver, and three bronze spanning the Summer Olympics, the FINA World Championships, the Pan Pacific Championships, and the Pan American Games.  She was a four-time National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) national champion in the 200- and 500-yard freestyle swimming events during college, and was a member of the Georgia Bulldogs team that won the NCAA Division I Women's team title in 2013.\nSchmitt was named SwimSwam's Swammy Award-winner for Female Swimmer of the Year in 2012.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nSchmitt was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1990 to Ralph and Gail Schmitt.  Raised as one of five siblings in what is still her hometown of Canton, Michigan (a suburb of Detroit), she went to Canton Charter Academy for elementary and middle school. Schmitt's father is a financial analyst and her mother is a system project manager.  Schmitt considers her parents to have been the most influential and helpful people in her life. \"They are so supportive of my dreams and ambitions,\" she said in 2008, adding, \"they have given me so many opportunities to excel in life and have set a good example for me to follow.\"\nShe has an older sister named Kirsten who earned her bachelor's degree from the University of Florida, and her Juris Doctor degree from the School of Law at Washington University in St. Louis.  Her older brother, Derek, swam for the University of Pittsburgh, and is an assistant coach for the Arizona State Sun Devils swim team in Tempe, Arizona.  Schmitt's younger twin sisters, Kari and Sara, played in the USA Hockey national championship games in 2008 and 2009, lettered in varsity both basketball and swimming during their four years in high school, and played hockey at Ohio State University.\nShe started swimming at age eight, saying she followed her older sister, Kirsten, into it.  \"I thought about quitting,\" Schmitt said, \"but stayed one more season and loved it.\"  Prior to settling on swimming, she said she tried soccer, dance, basketball, volleyball, softball; and though she said she had the equipment for hockey, she decided to swim instead.\nFrom ages 10 through 13, Schmitt swam with the Ann Arbor Swim Club (AASC) in Ann Arbor, Michigan (which, in 2006, merged into Club Wolverine). In an interview during the 2012 Summer Olympics, Josh Morgan, her then-AASC coach, said there was no indication in those years just how fast she would one day become.  He said she started to show real potential, later, in the spring of her junior year in high school when she went to a 2007 Junior National Team competition.  Calling it \"her first real breakout swim,\" he said she went \"from pretty fast to really fast,\" dropping four to five seconds off her 200-meter freestyle short course time of normally around a minute fifty-two seconds, down to around a minute forty-seven, thereby putting Schmitt in what Morgan called \"elite company.\"\nSchmitt went to Canton High School in Canton Township, Michigan, from which she graduated in the spring of 2008.  During her senior year, as she continued to swim at what had, by then, become Club Wolverine on the University of Michigan campus in nearby Ann Arbor, she began training alongside Olympian Michael Phelps under the guidance of Phelps's long-time coach, Michigan Wolverines head coach Bob Bowman. Before the Summer Olympics in Beijing, having ended his tenure at University of Michigan, Bowman moved to Baltimore in anticipation of being named the head coach and CEO of the prestigious North Baltimore Aquatic Club the following September. Both Phelps and Schmitt followed, with Schmitt moving to Baltimore just after her spring 2008 high school graduation in order to train full-time with Phelps and Bowman during the weeks leading-up to the 2008 Olympics  (at which Schmitt won her first Olympic medal, a bronze in the 4×200-meter freestyle relay).\nAfter the Summer Olympics, in the fall of 2008, Schmitt moved to Athens to become a freshman at the University of Georgia, majoring in psychology, and minoring in childhood and family development.  She joined coach Jack Bauerle's Georgia Bulldogs swimming and diving team, following her competition in the Summer Olympics under Bauerle, who was the women's swimming head coach. She participated in NCAA competition during her freshman, sophomore and junior years, ultimately becoming a four-time NCAA national champion by winning the 500-yard freestyle in 2009, 2010, and 2011, and the 200-yard freestyle in 2010.  While at college in Athens, Schmitt also became involved in Athens Bulldog Swim Club (ABSC) competitions on the University of Georgia campus.\nDuring her first three years at the university, she trained with Phelps and Bowman in Baltimore only during summers. However, in preparation for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, she took the 2011–2012 school year (her senior year) off and moved to Baltimore to train full-time with Bowman and Phelps at the NBAC; which consisted of at least four hours in the pool and one hour on dry land six days a week.\nAfter the 2012 Summer Olympics, Schmitt returned to the University of Georgia to complete her senior year of college,  She was the recipient of the Honda Sports Award for Swimming and Diving, recognizing her as the outstanding college female swimmer of 2012–13. Following her return from London, Schmitt started suffering from depression, finding the increased public attention to be overwhelming. Her anguish led to bad swimming results, leading her to not qualify for various international competitions. After sharing her feelings with Phelps and Bowman in January 2015, Schmitt decided to attend therapy sessions but did not disclose her depression to her family. Once Schmitt's cousin April Bocian took her own life in May, she opted to reveal herself to her family and also make her emotional issues public, feeling it would help others in the same situation.\nSchmitt wrote on the bio form for her USA Swimming organization membership that she enjoys scrapbooking, photography, playing outdoor sports and board games; and that her ultimate way to relax is watching a movie or getting a massage. Whenever she returns home to Canton she likes to visit the local youth swim clubs and high school swim teams, as a role model and mentor by swimming and talking with the young swimmers. \"I love motivating these kids when they're just starting to pave their own paths in life,\" she said.\nAbout it all, Schmitt has said:  \"I didn't start swimming competitively until I was 10 and didn't really focus on it until I was 12, yet it's such a huge part of my life and I can't imagine my life without it. It's been an amazing journey, but more than that, it's shaped who I am as a person. The best part is all the friends I have made. I believe that I literally have the best friends anyone could ever imagine hoping for, and I met almost all of them because of swimming. Taking in all the memories with these amazing people, I feel pretty lucky with the paths I have crossed, and the people I have met because of swimming.\"\nSchmitt is a good friend of Michael Phelps.\n\n\n== International swimming career ==\n\n\n=== 2008 Summer Olympics ===\n\nAt the 2008 Summer Olympics, Schmitt won a bronze medal in the 4×200-meter freestyle relay with Natalie Coughlin, Caroline Burckle and Katie Hoff.  Swimming the lead-off leg, Schmitt recorded a split time of 1:57.71 and the American team finished with a time of 7:46.33, an American record.  Schmitt also competed in the 200-meter freestyle, but did not advance past the semifinals, finishing in ninth place with a time of 1:58.01.\n\n\n=== 2009 World Aquatics Championships ===\nAt the 2009 World Championships in Rome, Schmitt competed in three events, the 200-meter and 400-meter freestyle, and the 4×200-meter freestyle relay.  In her first event, the 400-meter freestyle, Schmitt recorded the second best time in the heats with a time of 4:02.80. However, in the final she placed 4th with a time of 4:02.51.  In her second event, the 200-meter freestyle, she won a silver medal finishing behind world record holder Federica Pellegrini by 1.98 seconds.  Schmitt's time of 1:54.96 was good enough for the American record. In the 4×200-meter freestyle relay, she swam the final leg in 1:54.21 as the American team placed second to China.  The final time of 7:42.56 was just behind China's time of 7:42.08, but was good enough for the American record.\n\n\n=== 2011 World Aquatics Championships ===\nAt the 2011 World Aquatics Championships in Shanghai, Schmitt won a gold medal in the 4×200-meter freestyle relay with Missy Franklin, Dagny Knutson, and Katie Hoff, with the team finishing ahead of Australia and China.  As the anchor leg, Schmitt had a 1:56.49 split. Schmitt also competed in the individual 200-meter freestyle and finished sixth in the final (1:56.98).\n\n\n=== 2012 Summer Olympics ===\n\nAt the 2012 United States Olympic Trials in Omaha, Nebraska, the U.S. qualifying meet for the 2012 Olympics, Schmitt made the U.S. Olympic team by finishing first in the 200-meter and 400-meter freestyle, and third in the 100-meter freestyle.  In the 200-meter freestyle final, Schmitt broke her own American record of 1:54.96 with a time of 1:54.40.\nAt the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, Schmitt won a total of five medals: three gold, one silver, and one bronze.  In her first event, the 4×100-meter freestyle relay, Schmitt won bronze with Missy Franklin, Jessica Hardy and Lia Neal, with the U.S. team finishing third behind the women's relay teams from Australia and the Netherlands.  Swimming the anchor leg, Schmitt had a split of 53.54 seconds and the team finished with a total time of 3:34.24, an American record.  Schmitt won the first individual Olympic medal of her career, a silver, in the 400-meter freestyle, and in doing so, set the American record for the event.  Her time of 4:01.77 was just 0.32 seconds behind winner Camille Muffat.  In her second and last individual event, the 200-meter freestyle, Schmitt won gold while setting a new Olympic record of 1:53.61, which was also a new American record.  In the race, Schmitt won by a margin of 1.97 seconds over Muffat.  In the 4×200-meter freestyle relay, Schmitt earned her second gold after passing Australian Alicia Coutts and topping the field with a split of 1:54.09 as the anchor leg.  Also on the winning 4×200-meter relay team were Missy Franklin, Dana Vollmer and Shannon Vreeland.  In her final event, the 4×100-meter medley relay, Schmitt won gold with Missy Franklin, Rebecca Soni, and Dana Vollmer.  Swimming the freestyle leg, Schmitt recorded a time of 53.25, and the American team went on to set the world record with a time of 3:52.05, bettering the Chinese-owned record of 3:52.19 set in 2009.\n\n\n=== 2015 Pan American Games ===\n\nAfter missing both the 2013 World Aquatics Championships and the 2014 Pan Pacific Swimming Championships, Schmitt's performance at the 2014 National Championships was enough for the 2015 Pan American Games.  The Pan Am Games in Toronto marked her first international tournament since the 2012 Short-Course World Championship. Schmitt earned the gold in the 200-meter freestyle, and was a member of the teams who won the 4×200-meter freestyle and 4×100-meter medley relays, all with competition records.  She also earned a silver in the 4×100-meter freestyle relay.\n\n\n=== 2016 Summer Olympics ===\n\nThe 2016 United States Olympic Trials saw Schmitt finishing fourth at the 200m (1:56.72), qualifying her to the relay team. Schmitt became the ninth American female swimmer to appear in three Olympics, and only she and Elizabeth Beisel were members of each team since 2008. She was named one of the captains of the U.S. Olympic Swim Team, alongside Phelps, Beisel, Nathan Adrian, Anthony Ervin, and Cammile Adams. Schmitt earned her seventh Olympic medal by taking part in the qualifying heat of the 4 × 100 m freestyle relay, and during the finals the U.S. team won the silver. Schmitt earned her fourth gold medal, and eighth Olympic medal, by swimming in the finals of the 4 × 200 m freestyle relay with Leah Smith, Maya DiRado, and Katie Ledecky.\n\n\n=== 2018 Pan Pacific Championships ===\nAugust 2018, Schmitt won a silver medal as part of the women's 4x200-meter relay at the 2018 Pan Pacific Swimming Championships in Tokyo, Japan swimming the first leg of the relay in a 1:58.62.\n\n\n=== 2019 World Aquatics Championships ===\nIn July 2019, Schmitt competed at the 2019 World Aquatics Championships in Gwangju, South Korea. She won two silver medals, one in the 4x100-meter freestyle relay and one in the 4x200-meter freestyle relay.\n\n\n=== 2021 ===\n\n\n==== 2020 United States Olympic Trials ====\nOn day three of the 2020 USA Swimming Olympic Trials, the 15th of June 2021, Schmitt swam in the prelims of the 200-meter freestyle, ranking 3rd for all prelims heats with a time of 1:57.84. Later in the same day, Schmitt competed in the semifinals of the same event swimming a 1:57.53, ranking 4th, and advancing to the final. During the finals on day four, she placed 2nd in the 200m freestyle with a 1:56.79, once again securing a spot on the Olympic team. Schmitt's swim qualified her for the 2020 Summer Olympics in both the 200-meter freestyle individual event and 4x200-meter freestyle relay. This was the fourth Olympic Team Schmitt qualified for.\nOn day five of competition, Schmitt swam in the morning prelims of the 100-meter freestyle finishing with a time of 54.78, ranking 11th, and qualifying for the semifinals. In the semifinals, Schmitt placed 6th swimming a 54.08 and qualifying for the final. She swam a 54.12 in the final, finishing in sixth place, and giving her the potential of swimming on the 4x100-meter freestyle relay at the 2020 Summer Olympics for Team USA.\n\n\n==== 2020 Summer Olympics ====\n\nSchmitt was selected to serve as a USA swim team captain at the 2020 Summer Olympics, making it the second time she had been selected to serve as an Olympic team captain and making her the only second-time American swim team captain at the 2020 Olympics.\nOn day one of competition at the Olympic Games, Schmitt swam in the prelims of the 4x100-meter freestyle relay, helping the relay finish fifth overall and advance to the final. In the final, the relay finished third and Schmitt won a bronze medal for her efforts on the relay in the prelims.\nIn the prelims of the 200-meter freestyle on July 26, Schmitt qualified in 12th place for the semifinals with her time of 1:57.10. The next day, Schmitt finished tenth overall with a time of 1:56.87 in the semifinals and did not qualify for the final.\nOn day six of competition, Schmitt swam the first leg of the 4x200-meter freestyle relay in the final of the event and helped the relay set a new Americas record of 7:40.73 and win the silver medal. Schmitt's employment of a slow lead-off tactic, that is purposefully swimming a slower first leg of a relay to motivate the second, third, and fourth swimmers to split faster times than the first swimmer, caught the attention of People magazine who made her one of the headliners in an article published about the race as well as the USA Swimming Foundation who nominated her for a Golden Goggle Award for \"Relay Performance of the Year\" as part of the relay team.\n\n\n== Personal bests ==\nAs of July 31, 2012.\n\n\n== Awards and honors ==\n2012 Golden Goggle Award, Relay Performance of the Year: 4x100-meter freestyle relay\n2012 SwimSwam Swammy Award, Swimmer of the Year (female)\n2013 Honda Sports Award (Swimming & Diving)\n2015 Golden Goggle Award, Perseverance Award\n2019 Michigan Sports Hall of Fame.\n2021 Golden Goggle Award nominee, Relay Performance of the Year: 4x200-meter freestyle relay\n\n\n== See also ==\n\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of Olympic medalists in swimming (women)\nList of multiple Summer Olympic medalists\nList of United States records in swimming\nList of University of Georgia people\nList of World Aquatics Championships medalists in swimming (women)\nList of world records in swimming\nWorld record progression 4 × 100 metres medley relay\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nAllison Schmitt  at World Aquatics \nAllison Schmitt at the International Swimming League (archived)\nAllison Schmitt – University of Georgia athlete profile at GeorgiaDogs.com at the Wayback Machine (archived April 29, 2012)\nAllison Schmitt at USA Swimming (archived February 13, 2022)\nAllison Schmitt at Team USA (archive April 24, 2023)\nAllison Schmitt at Olympics.com \nAllison Schmitt at Olympedia \nAllison Schmitt at InterSportStats \nAllison Schmitt on Instagram"}
{"title": "Allyson Felix", "requested": "Allyson Felix", "extract": "Allyson Michelle Felix (born November 18, 1985) is an American track and field athlete who competes in the 100 meters, 200 meters and 400 meters. Over 200 metres, she is the 2012 Olympic champion, a three-time world champion (2005–2009), and a two-time Olympic silver medalist (2004 and 2008). At 400 metres, she is the 2015 world champion, 2016 Olympic silver medalist, 2020 Olympic bronze medalist, 2011 world silver medalist and 2017 world bronze medalist. Across the short distances, Felix is a ten-time U.S. national champion.\nShe played a key role on the United States women's relay teams, winning six additional Olympic gold medals: four consecutive medals at 4 × 400 meters (2008, 2012, 2016, and 2020) and two at 4 × 100 meters (2012 and 2016). The 2012 and 2016 U.S. Olympic 4 × 100 m teams set a world record of 40.82 s and the second fastest time of 41.01 s, respectively. Felix became the first female track and field athlete to ever win seven Olympic gold medals in 2021. She is the most decorated woman and the most decorated American in Olympic track and field history, having earned 11 total medals from five consecutive Olympic Games. Felix is the most decorated athlete, male or female, in World Athletics Championships history with 20 career medals. With a combined Olympic and World Championship total of 31 medals, she is also the overall most decorated athlete in track and field history, with 12 medals from individual events and 19 from relays. Felix was the first athlete in track and field history to medal in 3 different relays, 4 × 100 m, 4 × 400 m and mixed 4 × 400 m.\nAmong Felix's notable performances, her 200 meters personal best of 21.69 seconds, which was set at the 2012 U.S. Olympic trials, ranked at the time as the third-fastest time ever run by an American woman and sixth-fastest time by a female athlete in history. She also ran a 47.72-second leg on the U.S. women's 4 × 400 m relay team at the 2015 World Championships, recording the fastest split ever by an American woman, and third-fastest split ever by a female athlete. She is one of few athletes to have run sub-11 s for the 100 m, sub-22 s for the 200 m and sub-50 s for the 400 m.\nFelix, along with Alysia Montaño and Kara Goucher, is credited with stirring public outcry over Nike's refusal to guarantee salary protections for its pregnant athletes, prompting the sportswear brand to expand its maternity policy in 2019. Two years after her departure from Nike, she launched her own footwear company, Saysh, in June 2021. The same year, she became the first athlete in track and field history to win Olympic medals while wearing her own racing spikes, the Saysh Spike One. Having initially retired in 2022, Felix announced a comeback in 2026 to try to qualify for the 2028 Summer Olympics.\nShe was included in Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People of 2020 and 2021. In 2022, Felix received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from her alma mater USC and also served as the commencement speaker for that year's graduation ceremony. In July 2024, Felix was placed at number 63 on ESPN's list of the 100 greatest athletes of the 21st century.\n\n\n== Early life ==\nAllyson Felix was born on November 18, 1985, in Los Angeles, California. She is the daughter of Paul, an ordained minister and professor of New Testament at The Master's Seminary in Sun Valley, California, and Marlean, an elementary school teacher at Balboa Magnet Elementary. Her elder brother Wes Felix was also a sprinter, winning the 2002 USA Junior Championships in the 200 meters race and later, the Pac-10 championships in 2003 and 2004 as a collegiate athlete for USC. Wes now acts as the agent for his sister. Felix describes her running ability as a gift from God: \"For me, my faith is the reason I run. I definitely feel I have this amazing gift that God has blessed me with, and it's all about using it to the best of my ability.\"\n\n\n== Junior career ==\nAllyson Felix attended Los Angeles Baptist High School in North Hills, California, where she was nicknamed \"Chicken Legs\" by her teammates, because the five-foot-six, 125-pound sprinter's body had skinny legs despite her strength. Her slightness belied her speed on the track and strength in the gym, as she could deadlift at least 270 pounds while still in high school. Felix credits much of her early success to her high school sprint coach, Jonathan Patton.\nFelix began to discover her athletic talents after she tried out for track in the ninth grade. Just ten weeks after that first tryout, she finished seventh in the 200 meters at the CIF California State Meet. In the coming seasons, she became a five-time winner at the meet. In 2001, at the Debrecan World Youth Championships, Felix achieved her first international title in the 100 meters. In 2003, she was named the national girls' \"High School Athlete of the Year\" by Track and Field News. As a senior, Felix finished second in the 200 meters at the US Indoor Track & Field Championships. A few months later, in front of 50,000 fans in Mexico City, she ran 22.11 seconds, the fastest in history for a high school girl, though it could not count as a world junior record because there was no drug testing at the meet.\nFelix graduated high school in 2003, making headlines by forgoing college eligibility to sign a professional contract with Adidas via her agent Nik Visger. Adidas paid her an undisclosed sum and picked up her college tuition at the University of Southern California. She graduated in May 2008 with a degree in elementary education.\n\n\n== Professional ==\n\n\n=== Early career ===\n\nAt the 2003 U.S. national championships, the 17-year-old phenomenon finished second in the 200 meters sprint with a time of 22.59 seconds, earning her spot to the 2003 Paris World Championships. In the quarter-finals of the 200 meters in Paris, Felix finished sixth in 23.33 seconds.\nAt the age of 18, Felix earned an Olympic silver medal in the 200 meters at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, behind Veronica Campbell of Jamaica; in doing so, she set a world junior record over 200 meters with her time of 22.18 seconds. After leaving Athens, Felix and her coach Pat Connolly, who also guided the 1984 Olympic 100 meters champion Evelyn Ashford, parted ways as Connolly moved back to Virginia and Felix cited difficulties training alone. The young sprinter then sought the tutelage of controversial sprint coach Bob Kersee, whom she would train under for the next 18 years.\nNineteen-year-old Felix became the youngest world champion ever in the 200 meters at the 2005 Helsinki World Championships and then successfully defended her world title in Osaka two years later. At the 2007 Osaka World Championships, Felix caught Jamaican rival, Veronica Campbell, on the bend and surged down the straightaway to finish in 21.81 seconds, dipping under the 22-second barrier for the first time in her career. After the final, Felix stated in the post-race interview: \"I feel so good. I am so excited. I have been waiting for so long to run such a time, to run under 22 seconds. It has not been an easy road, but finally, I managed.\" At that time, she addressed her future, saying, \"My next goal is not the world record, but gold in Beijing. I want to take it step-by-step. I might consider doing both – the 200 and the 400 meters – there.\" Days later, after partaking in the winning U.S. 4 × 100 meters relay and also the 4 × 400 meters relay, in which she unofficially split 48.01 seconds on the second leg, Felix became only the second female athlete, after Marita Koch in 1983, to win three gold medals at a single IAAF World Championships in Athletics.\n\n\n=== 2008–09: First Olympic gold medal and third 200 m world title ===\nFelix qualified for the 2008 Summer Olympics at the 2008 Olympic trials by winning the 200 meters sprint in 21.82 seconds, but narrowly missed qualifying for the 100 meters sprint. In the Olympic 200 meter final, despite running her season's best time in the 200 meters at 21.93 seconds, she again finished second to Campbell, who ran 21.74 seconds, the fastest time of the decade, to win the gold medal. Felix avenged her disappointing loss by regaining the lead for the U.S. women's 4 × 400 meters relay team during her 48.55-second leg, allowing Team USA to eventually win and earning her first Olympic gold medal.\n\nIn the build-up to the 2009 World Championships in Athletics, Felix was part of a U.S. 4 × 100 meters relay team that ran the fastest women's sprint relay in twelve years. Lauryn Williams, Felix, Muna Lee and Carmelita Jeter finished with a time of 41.58 seconds, bringing them to eighth on the all-time list. In 2009, at merely 23 years old, Felix proceeded to claim her third 200-meter world championship gold medal, an unprecedented accomplishment in women's sprinting. Felix clocked 22.02 sec to comfortably beat Jamaica's Olympic 200-meter champion Veronica Campbell-Brown.\nAfterwards she said, \"It's really special to win a third world title. I wanted to do it in this stadium, represent my country and make Jesse Owens proud.\" But Felix admitted that she would rather have the one gold medal that she was missing. \"I would love to trade my three world championships for your gold,\" Felix jokingly said to Veronica Campbell-Brown of Jamaica at the medalists' news conference, referring to the 2008 Olympic gold medal in the 200 meters, a race Felix was heavily favored to win. Still distressed over finishing second to Campbell-Brown in Beijing, Felix stated: \"I don't think I ever want to get over it. I never want to be satisfied with losing.\" At the same time, she also commented, \"I'm just grateful to have had success quickly, and sometimes I do have to pinch myself and realize all this has happened in not that much time.\" Felix later claimed another gold medal by running a 48.75-second leg on Team USA's victorious 4 × 400 meters relay team.\n\n\n=== 2010–11: Four medals at the 2011 World Championships ===\nIn 2010, Felix focused on running more 400-meter races. Running the 200 meters and the 400 meters, she became the first person to win two IAAF Diamond League trophies in the same year. She continued her dominance by winning 21 out of 22 races, only losing to Veronica Campbell-Brown over 200 m at the New York Grand Prix. Felix also became the U.S. 100 meters champion, winning in 11.27 seconds against a strong −2.5 m/s headwind.\nAt the 2011 World Championships in Athletics, Felix ran in the 200 and 400 meters, as well as the 4 × 100 and 4 × 400 meters relay races. In the 400-meter event, Felix's best efforts yielded only a second-place finish despite straining down the homestretch to a personal best of 49.59 seconds, 0.03 behind winner Amantle Montsho of Botswana. In the 200-meter final, Felix finished third in a time of 22.42 seconds, with Campbell-Brown winning gold and Carmelita Jeter winning silver. In the relay events, Felix ran the second leg in both the 4 × 100 meters and 4 × 400 meters. Team USA won both events, attaining world-leading times in both finals as Felix added two world championship gold medals to her collection. The 25-year-old American sprinter was the only athlete to leave Daegu with four medals.\n\n\n=== 2012–13: Three Olympic golds ===\nIn 2012, Felix returned to the Olympic trials, choosing to race the 100 meters in addition to her main event, the 200 meters. The top three finishers in each event qualified for the 2012 Summer Olympics team. In the 100 meters final, she ran 11.07 seconds, placing third, but not without controversy. Officials ruled that Felix and her training partner Jeneba Tarmoh were in a dead heat for third place, the final qualification position, after initially declaring Tarmoh ahead. A run-off between Tarmoh and Felix was scheduled, but Tarmoh eventually withdrew due to emotional and physical fatigue, conceding the final 100-meter spot to Felix. In the 200 meters final at the 2012 Olympic trials, Felix recorded a personal best and a meet record of 21.69 seconds, the third-fastest time an American woman had ever run and the fourth-fastest ever clocked by a female athlete up until that point. Carmelita Jeter and Sanya Richards-Ross placed second and third, respectively. \nAt the 2012 Summer Olympics, Felix competed in four events: 100 meters, 200 meters, 4 × 100 meters relay, and 4 × 400 meters relay, placing fifth in the 100 meters and winning gold in the other three, thus becoming the first American woman to win three golds in athletics at an Olympics since Florence Griffith-Joyner at the 1988 Summer Olympics. In her first final, the 100 meters final, she placed fifth with a personal best of 10.89 seconds. The 200 meters final, a race she lost twice at the 2004 and 2008 Summer Olympics to Jamaican rival Veronica Campbell-Brown, proved to be her successful third attempt as she won in 21.88 seconds, outracing a stacked field that included Campbell-Brown, 2012 Olympic 100 meters champion Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, 2012 Olympic 100 meters silver medalist Carmelita Jeter, and 2012 Olympic 400 meters champion Sanya Richards-Ross. Felix pushed out of the blocks with a strong start and was on par with the Jamaican athletes coming off of the curve before pulling away in the final 50 meters to clinch her long-awaited individual Olympic gold medal. Fraser-Pryce won silver and American compatriot Jeter took the bronze medal.\nFelix took to the track again as part of the women's 4 × 100 meters relay team alongside Tianna Madison, Bianca Knight, and Jeter. The foursome won with a time of 40.82 seconds, breaking the long-held world record of 41.37 seconds, set by East Germany in October 1985. On the final night of Olympic athletics, Felix ran a 48.2-second leg on the U.S. women's 4 × 400 meters relay team that included DeeDee Trotter, Francena McCorory, and Richards-Ross, winning in a time of 3:16.87, the third-fastest time in Olympic history behind the Soviet Union and the United States at the 1988 Summer Olympics, and the fifth-fastest time overall, up until that point.\nAt the 2013 World Championships in Moscow, Felix entered in the 200 meters and was expected to also appear in the relays, but succumbed to a hamstring injury in the 200 meters final and was carried off the track by her brother. The race was won by Fraser-Pryce.\n\n\n=== 2014–15: World 400 m title ===\nAfter a nine-month layoff due to a hamstring injury, Felix resumed competition in the 400 meters at the Shanghai Diamond League meet in May 2014, in which she finished fifth with a time of 50.81 seconds. She later competed in the 200 meters at the Prefontaine Classic meet on 31 May, finishing third with a season's best of 22.44 seconds.\nAs the winner of the 2014 IAAF Diamond League 200-meter title, Felix received a bye into the 2015 World Championships in Athletics. Obligated to participate in the 2015 USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships but not required to run the 200 meters, she opted for the 400 meters. Felix won the event in 50.19 seconds with a late surge from fourth place at the 300-meter mark, catching Natasha Hastings right before the finish line to earn her ninth U.S. championship title. World number one ranked Francena McCorory and number two Sanya Richards-Ross failed to qualify for the 2015 Beijing World Championships.\nThe 2015 Beijing World Championships schedule placed the 400-meter final just over an hour after the 200-meter semi-finals, making it virtually impossible to perform to world championship level in both events. As of July 1, Felix held the fastest seed time in both the 400 (0.11 over the fastest competitor) and 200 (0.22 over the fastest competitor), leaving her with a difficult choice as to which event to put her full effort into. Felix eventually chose the 400 meters and later triumphed in the event final with a personal best of 49.26 seconds. She dominated the race from beginning to end, making up the stagger from the start of the gun and never relinquishing her lead to claim the 400 meters title. In doing so, Felix became the first woman to win world titles in the 200 meters and the 400 meters. Additionally, she has now won the most world championship gold medals, and most overall world championship medals, out of any American track and field athlete. She continued to add to her medal collection by earning silver medals in both the 4 × 100 meters relay and 4 × 400 meters relay. In the latter race, Felix received the baton with a significant deficit to the leading Jamaican team, prompting her to sprint a historic split time of 47.72 seconds to regain the lead for the American women before the final handoff. This was the fastest 4 × 400 meters split ever recorded by an American woman and third-fastest 4 × 400 meters split ever by any female athlete, after Jarmila Kratochvílová and Marita Koch. Running the final leg, Francena McCorory failed to hold onto the lead and was overtaken by Novlene Williams-Mills in the final meters.\n\n\n=== 2016–17: Two Olympic and World titles ===\nFelix began her 2016 season with an uncharacteristically slow start after a gym accident in April, when she dropped from a pull-up bar and landed awkwardly, twisting her right ankle and tearing multiple ligaments. Felix was slated to run in a Diamond League meet in Doha as well as the Prefontaine Classic, but pulled out of both meets. In early June, she ran the 400 meters in 51.23 seconds at a low-key San Diego meet.\n\nStill dealing with the physical repercussions from the accident, Felix raced the 200 meters and 400 meters anyway at the 2016 Olympic Trials in Eugene, Oregon, attempting to fulfill her goal of completing a 200–400 meters double victory at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics. In the 400 meters trials final, she surged from the middle of the pack down the homestretch and overtook the field in the final meters, recording a world-leading time of 49.68 seconds. Then, in the 200 meters final, the lack of speed work due to injury eventually caught up with her as she was narrowly edged out by Jenna Prandini, who dove across the finish line to secure the third and final spot on the team, beating Felix by 0.01 seconds (22.53 to 22.54 seconds). Felix took the rest of July and early part of August off to give her ankle more time to heal while she continued preparations for the Olympics.\nAt the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics, Felix bumped her overall Olympic haul to nine overall medals: six golds and three silvers, tying Jamaican legend Merlene Ottey's record for the most Olympic medals won by a female track and field athlete, although most of Ottey's medal collection consists of individual medals. Felix's hope of winning the 400 meters Olympic gold medal came up short after she lost by 0.07 to Shaunae Miller of the Bahamas, who made a legal but unusual dive across the finish line as Felix was quickly closing the distance. Felix recovered from the disappointing performance to win two golds with the U.S. 4 × 100 meters and 4 × 400 meters relay teams. The 4 × 100 meters relay win drew much controversy, as Team USA was initially disqualified in their semi-final run after Felix had dropped the baton during the handoff attempt to English Gardner. However, replays showed that the Brazilian sprinter in the neighboring lane swung her arm and accidentally impeded Felix right before the handoff, causing her to lose her balance. After the appeal was accepted, Team USA was awarded a solo run the next day. With a successful time trial, Felix and her teammates advanced to the final, where they won in 41.01 seconds, the second-fastest 4 × 100 meters relay time in history.\nThe following year, during the 2017 World Championships in London, Felix added three more medals to her collection, cementing her position as the most decorated athlete in IAAF World Championships history. Felix equaled Merlene Ottey's and Usain Bolt's 14 medal tally by winning a bronze medal in the 400-meter final with a time of 50.08 seconds. She admitted that the result was disappointing, as she was hoping to defend her title in the discipline. Just a month prior to the championships, Felix had won the London's Diamond League meet held at the same track with a world-leading time of 49.65 seconds. Felix earned two additional gold medals by partaking in the 4 × 100 relay and also the 4 × 400 meters relay, in which she ran a 48.7-second leg, bringing her tally up to 16 world championship medals.\n\n\n=== 2018–19 ===\n\n\n==== Pregnancy emergency ====\n\nFelix reduced her racing schedule in 2018, stating: \"In the 19 years that I've been running track, I've never taken a break. Never had a year where I took it easy. Now that this is kind of a year without a championship, I've had to force myself to have a different approach because my goal is 2020. So, if you guys don't see me at as many of the races as I usually run, don't worry. I'm fine. I'm just challenging myself to be smarter.\" Later in December 2018, Felix revealed her difficult pregnancy story to espnW. During her 32nd-week pregnancy checkup, doctors discovered that Felix had developed pre-eclampsia, a condition that is disproportionately prevalent in African-American women and is marked by high blood pressure along with potentially harmful childbirth effects. With the baby's heart rate steadily decreasing, Felix had to deliver her premature daughter via emergency C-section within 48 hours. Motivated by her life-threatening experience, Felix testified before the United States House Committee on Ways and Means on the topic of the black maternal mortality crisis: \"Research shows that racial bias in our maternal health care system includes things like providers spending less time with Black mothers, underestimating the pain of their Black patients, ignoring symptoms and dismissing complaints.\"\n\n\n==== Nike controversy ====\nFelix furthered her maternal advocacy work in May 2019 by penning an op-ed for The New York Times, accusing her longtime sponsor Nike of refusing to guarantee salary protections for female athletes in the months following pregnancy. Her story underscored the earlier allegations made by her former Nike teammates Alysia Montaño and Kara Goucher regarding their pregnancy disputes with the sportswear company. In the article, Felix explained that after her contract ended in December 2017, she and Nike negotiated for a contract renewal. Planning to start a family in 2018, Felix asked Nike for written financial security, in case her performance yielded subpar results while recovering from childbirth; the negotiators declined after already offering a 70 percent pay cut in this contract proposal. Soon after, Felix left and signed a clothing sponsorship deal with the Gap Inc.–owned apparel company Athleta in July 2019, becoming their first sponsored athlete. Following the public controversy, Nike altered their maternal policy in August 2019, promising to not apply any performance-related salary reductions for 18 consecutive months, starting eight months before the due date. During this period, the sportswear company would also not float the possibility of termination if the athlete chooses to not race due to pregnancy.\n\n\n==== Return to competition ====\nIn July 2019, Felix competed in her first race since giving birth in November 2018, finishing sixth in the 400-meter sprint at the U.S. national championships in Des Moines, Iowa. Although failing to qualify into the individual 400-meter event for the 2019 Doha World Championships, Felix's sixth-place finish still placed her in the U.S. 4 × 400 meters relay pool. In the first-ever mixed-gender 4 × 400 meters relay at the world championships, Felix competed with Michael Cherry, Wilbert London, and Courtney Okolo to set a world record time of 3:09.34. Felix ran a 50.4-second split for her leg. She earned another gold medal as a runner in the preliminary heats for the U.S. women's 4 × 400 meters relay, although she was not selected to participate in the final. With her 12th and 13th world championship gold medals, Felix surpassed Usain Bolt for the most golds by any athlete in World Athletics Championships history.\n\n\n=== 2020–2022: 2020 Olympics ===\nFelix trained during the COVID-19 pandemic with the aim of qualifying for her fifth Olympic Games – her first as a mother. She completed workouts on streets, empty soccer fields, and beaches after Gavin Newsom's quarantine measures were first enacted throughout California in March 2020. A former participant in the US Anti-Doping Agency's \"Project Believe\" program in 2008, she volunteered again for \"Project Believe 2020\" to help test an unprecedented sample collection procedure for athletes during the coronavirus stay-at-home orders.\n\n\n==== Founding Saysh ====\nIn June 2021, two years after she publicized her contract dispute with Nike, Felix launched her own footwear company, Saysh, and began wearing spikes created by the brand into competitions. Within the same month, at the U.S. Olympic trials, the 35-year-old American qualified for the 400 meters individual event by finishing second with a time of 50.02 seconds, a new masters athletics record (35–40 age group) and also her fastest time since July 2017.\n\n\n==== Medal Record ====\nLeading up to the 400 meters final of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, some doubted that Felix would stand on the podium again for her final individual Olympic event due to her age, U.S. Olympics trials performance, and semi-final time. Every finalist in the 400 meters final ran sub-50 seconds in their semi-final, with Felix running the second-slowest qualifying time of 49.89 seconds. Despite the odds, Felix ran 49.46 seconds in the final to claim the bronze medal, her 10th overall Olympic medal. This accomplishment lowered her 400-meter masters athletics record, tied her with Carl Lewis as the most decorated American track and field Olympian, and broke her tie with Merlene Ottey as the most decorated female track and field Olympian. Felix concluded her Olympic career after winning gold in the women's 4 × 400 meters final, alongside a team that included Sydney McLaughlin, Dalilah Muhammad, and Athing Mu. This 11th Olympic medal broke Felix's tie with Carl Lewis and officially established her as the most decorated American track and field athlete in Olympic history.\n\n\n==== Retirement ====\n\nIn April 2022, Felix announced that she would retire at the end of that year's season. Her last competition was the World Athletics Championships in Eugene in July 2022, where she won gold in the women's 4 × 400 meters relay and bronze in the mixed 4 × 400 meters relay.\n\n\n=== 2023-present ===\n\n\n==== Exit from retirement ====\nIn April 2026, Felix announced her intention to come out of retirement with the aim of competing in front of a home crowd at the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.\n\n\n== Achievements ==\nAllyson Felix is a five-time recipient of the Jesse Owens/Jackie Joyner Kersee Award, an accolade given by USA Track & Field to commend the chosen athlete of the year. She won the award for the first time in 2005, and then again in 2007, 2010, 2012 and 2015. After her success at the 2012 London Olympics, Felix received the 2012 IAAF Female World Athlete of the Year award. In 2022, Felix received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.\n\n\n=== Personal bests ===\n\nAt the 2012 Summer Olympics Felix ran the second leg of the 4 × 400 meters relay in a time of 48.2 seconds.\nAt the 2015 World Championships Felix ran the third leg of the 4 × 400 meters relay in a time of 47.72 seconds, which is the fastest 4 × 400 meters split ever by an American woman and third-fastest 4 × 400 meters split ever by any female athlete, after Jarmila Kratochvílová and Marita Koch.\n\n\n=== National titles ===\nSix-time national 200 meters champion – 2004 (22.28), 2005 (22.13), 2007 (22.34), 2008 (21.82), 2009 (22.02), 2012 (21.69)\nThree-time national 400 meters champion – 2011 (50.40), 2015 (50.05), 2016 (49.68)\nU.S. national 100 meters champion – 2010 (11.27 with −2.5 m/s headwind)\nNotes: The 2004, 2008, 2012, and 2016 U.S. championships double as the U.S. Olympic track and field trials. Felix is the first woman ever to win U.S. national titles in the 100 meters, 200 meters, and 400 meters in her career. She is also the second American woman, after Chandra Cheeseborough, to ever qualify for the Olympics (by placing in the top three) in the 100 meters, 200 meters, and 400 meters during her career.\n\n\n=== International competitions ===\n\n\n=== Golden League wins ===\n2008 (2) – Rome (400 m), Zurich (200 m)\n\n\n=== Diamond League wins ===\n2010 (7) – Doha (400 m), Eugene (400 m), Paris (200 m), Stockholm (200 m), London (400 m), Zürich (400 m), Brussels (200 m)\n2011 (3) – Doha (400 m), Rome (400 m), New York (200 m)\n2012 (2) – Doha (100 m), Eugene (200 m)\n2013 (1) – London (200 m)\n2014 (3) – Oslo (200 m), Stockholm (200 m), Brussels (200 m)\n2015 (2) – Doha (200 m), Lausanne (200 m)\n2017 (1) – London (400 m)\n\n\n=== Diamond League titles ===\n2010 Overall 200 m Diamond Race Title\n2010 Overall 400 m Diamond Race Title\n2014 Overall 200 m Diamond Race Title\n2015 Overall 200 m Diamond Race Title\n\n\n== Sports advocacy ==\n\nUnder the Obama administration, Felix served on the President's Council on Fitness, Sports, and Nutrition, an advisory committee dedicated to creating affordable and sustainable physical activity and nutrition programs to encourage healthy lifestyles among Americans of all ages. As a councilmember, she appeared in short clips promoting healthy school breakfasts, mediated youth panels, and participated in a \"Let's Move! Active Schools\" event hosted by First Lady Michelle Obama.\nIn November 2014, Felix traveled to Brazil as a Sports Diplomacy Sports Envoy for the U.S. Department of State. In this function, she worked with Josh George to conduct clinics, speeches and other events for 510 youth, many of whom had disabilities or came from marginalized communities. The program was designed to remove barriers and create activities that benefit audiences with and without disabilities, while speaking with a young, at-risk public about important life and sports values, such as respect, discipline and overcoming adversity.\n\n\n== Awards ==\nWorld Athletics Awards\nWorld Athlete of the Year (Women)：2012\nIn December 2024, Allyson Felix was included on the BBC's 100 Women list.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nShe is married to American sprinter and hurdler Kenneth Ferguson. They have a daughter, born in 2018, and a son, born in 2024. Felix is a Christian. She is an honorary member of the Alpha Kappa Alpha.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists in one event\n\n\n== References ==\n https://aka1908.com/bios/allyson-felix/\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nOfficial website \nAllyson Felix at World Athletics \nAllyson Felix at www.USATF.org\nAllyson Felix at Team USA (archive July 3, 2023)\nAllyson Felix at Olympics.com \nAllyson Felix at Olympedia \nAllyson Felix at InterSportStats \nAllyson Felix Pictures - Zimbio Profile"}
{"title": "Alvin Kraenzlein", "requested": "Alvin Kraenzlein", "extract": "Alvin Christian \"Al\" Kraenzlein (December 12, 1876 – January 6, 1928) was an American track-and-field athlete known as \"the father of the modern hurdling technique\". He was the first sportsman in the history of the Olympic games to win four individual gold medals in a single discipline at the 1900 Summer Olympics in Paris. As of 2016, Alvin Kraenzlein is the only track-and-field athlete who has won four individual titles at one Olympics. Kraenzlein is also known for developing a pioneering technique of straight-leg hurdling, which allowed him to set two world hurdle records. He is an Olympic Hall of Fame (1984) and National Track and Field Hall of Fame (1974) inductee.\n\n\n== Early years ==\nKraenzlein was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, a son of Johann Georg Kränzlein, a brewer, and Maria Augusta Schmidt, both of German origin. After his family moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, he attended Milwaukee's East Side High School, where he became involved in sports. In 1895, during the Wisconsin Interscholastic Championships, he won first places in the 100-yard dash, 120-yard high hurdles, 220-yard low hurdles, high jump, and shot put.\nHe attended the University of Wisconsin where he studied engineering. In 1896, he won the 220-yard low hurdles, the high jump and placed second in the 100-yard dash and shot put at the freshman-sophomore track-and-field meet. During the 1897 Intercollegiate Athletic Conference Championship, Kraenzlein won the 220-yard low hurdles and the high jump. He led the Wisconsin team to the team title. He also won the 1897 Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) title in the 220-yard low hurdles. In 1897, Kraenzlein set an indoor world record of 36.6 seconds in the 300-yard low hurdles.\nIn 1898, after being recruited by Mike Murphy, the University of Pennsylvania track-and-field coach, he moved to Philadelphia, where he studied at the Dental School, graduating in 1900.\nAfter winning his first national athletics title in 1897 – the 220 yards hurdles race at the AAU championship, Kraenzlein won five AAU titles in hurdling and long jump events, and eight Intercollegiate Association of Amateur Athletes of America titles in dash, hurdling, and the long jump. Being a student at Philadelphia University, he established world records for the 120 meter high hurdles and the 220 meter low hurdles, the last standing for quarter of a century. In 1899, Kraenzlein established the long jump world record of 24' 3 1/2\". He was a leader of the Penn track-and-field team that won four consecutive team IC4A titles.\nKraenzlein was noted for his hurdling technique, as he was among the first to practice the modern method of straight-lead-leg (the first leg over the hurdle remains straight and parallel with the ground) hurdle clearing. Arthur Croome from Great Britain first attempted the straight-lead-leg style in 1886, however, Kraenzlein perfected it and turned into a mainstream technique. This was a significant development, as it enabled athletes to overcome the hurdles without reducing speed.\n\n\n== The world's spotlight ==\n\nIn 1900, Kraenzlein was training in England in preparation for the Paris Summer Olympics. He won the British Amateur Athletic Association Championships in London in the 120 yards hurdles and the long jump at the 1900 AAA Championships. before entering the 1900 Summer Olympics in Paris, where he established a world record in the 120 yards hurdles for grass tracks.\nKraenzlein became the most successful athlete of the 1900 Olympics. During three days of competitions there, he won four titles, establishing new Olympic record each time:\n\n60-meters sprint (7.0 seconds)\n110-meters high hurdles (15.4 seconds)\n200-meters low hurdles (25.4 seconds)\nLong jump (7.185 m (23' 6 3/4\"))\nIn the 60 meters, he ran both the preliminary and final in 7.0 seconds, defeating Walter Tewksbury by bare inches in the finals. In His victory in the long jump, Kraenzlein defeated silver medalist Meyer Prinstein, his great rival from Syracuse University, by a single centimeter. Prinstein's mark had been set in the qualification, and he did not attend the final, because it was held on a Sunday. It was said the two had an informal agreement not to compete on Sunday, and when Prinstein learned that Kraenzlein did show up he became violent, allegedly punching Kraenzlein according to some accounts (others claim that Prinstein was restrained before he could land the punch).\n\n\n== Coaching ==\nAfter the 1900 Olympic Games, Kraenzlein eased down from athletic competition in late 1900, as the owner of six world and four Olympic records. However, he did successfully defend his British AAA title over 120 yards hurdles at the 1901 AAA Championships.\nHe returned to Milwaukee and started a dental practice. He also became a manager of the Milwaukee Athletic Association. In 1902, having returned to Philadelphia, he married Claudine Gilman, whom he knew from his student days. He practiced dentistry in Philadelphia until 1906, when he became the track-and-field coach at Mercersburg Academy, a selective prep school in Pennsylvania. Among his students was Ralph Craig, a future Olympic titleholder in both the 100 and 200 meters in 1912 Olympic Games.\nFrom 1910 to 1913 he was the head track-and-field and football coach (in 1910–1911) at the University of Michigan.\nIn 1913, he signed a five-year $50,000 contract with the German government to train the 1916 German Olympic track team (this was canceled because of the outbreak of World War I). With World War I coming, Kraenzlein served in the U.S. Army as a physical training specialist. When the war ended, he became an assistant coach for the University of Pennsylvania track team. He also coached at summer camps and at the Havana Golf and Tennis Club in Cuba in the winter.\nIn late 1927, he became affected by bouts of pleurisy. Kraenzlein died in early 1928 of endocarditis in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists at a single Games\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nAlvin Kraenzlein at the USATF Hall of Fame (archived)\nAlvin Kraenzlein at the Team USA Hall of Fame (archive June 5, 2023)\nAlvin Kraenzlein at Olympics.com Alvin Kraenzlein at Olympic.org (archived) \nAlvin Kraenzlein at Olympic.org at the Wayback Machine (archived 2009-10-22)\nThe Alvin C. Kraenzlein 1899–1900 scrapbook, University of Pennsylvania Archives and Records Center at the Wayback Machine (archived 2013-10-12)"}
{"title": "Amy Van Dyken", "requested": "Amy Van Dyken", "extract": "Amy Deloris Van Dyken-Rouen (born February 15, 1973) is an American former competitive swimmer, Olympic champion, former world record-holder, and national radio sports talk show co-host.  She won six Olympic gold medals in her career, four of which she won at the 1996 Summer Olympics, making her the first American woman to accomplish such a feat and the most successful athlete at the 1996 Summer Olympics.  She won gold in the 50-meter freestyle, 100-meter butterfly, 4×100-meter freestyle relay, and 4×100-meter medley relay.\nVan Dyken had severe asthma throughout her childhood and into adulthood. She began swimming on the advice of a doctor as a way to strengthen her lungs to cope with her condition and prevent future asthma attacks.\nShe was named Swimming World's American Swimmer of the Year in 1995 and 1996.\nOn June 6, 2014, Van Dyken was injured in a serious ATV accident that severed her spinal cord, leaving her paralyzed from the waist down.\n\n\n== Early life ==\nAt the 1992 U.S. Olympic Trials, Van Dyken placed 4th in the 50-meter freestyle, just missing the Olympic team. After high school, Van Dyken attended the University of Arizona for two years before transferring to Colorado State University, where she broke her first (of many more to come) United States record with a time of 21.77 seconds in the 50-yard freestyle at the NCAA championships in 1994. She also placed second in the 100-yard butterfly and the 100-yard freestyle to Olympian Jenny Thompson.  In 1994 she was named the NCAA Female Swimmer of the Year. After college, she moved to the United States Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado, to train full-time for the 1996 Olympics.\n\n\n== Olympic competition ==\n\n\n=== 1996 Summer Olympics ===\nAt the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia, Van Dyken became the first American female athlete to win 4 gold medals in a single Olympic games.  Her success in swimming won her a wide variety of awards and accolades, including: the ESPN Awards (ESPY) Female Athlete of the Year award; Swimming World magazine's female Swimmer of the Year award; induction into the Colorado Sports Hall of Fame; induction into the US Olympic Hall of Fame; named Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year, USOC Sports Woman of the Year, the Women's Sports Foundation Sports Woman of the Year and USA Swimming Swimmer of the Year.\nVan Dyken was also featured as one of Glamour magazine's Top 10 Women of the Year, named one of 25 most influential females in sport by Women's Sports and Fitness magazine and received the ARETE Courage in Sports award.  She has appeared on the cover of several newspapers and magazines, including USA Today, Newsweek, Time, Swimming World magazine, and Sports Illustrated. She was a guest on the Late Show with David Letterman, The Rosie O'Donnell Show, and the Today Show.\n\n\n=== 2000 Summer Olympics ===\nVan Dyken continued to compete after the 1996 Olympics, but was plagued by injury, including a shoulder injury which required several operations and which left her unable to train for over a year. She staged a comeback, however, and made the 2000 U.S. Olympic Team in the 50-meter freestyle, the 4×100 medley relay and the 4×100 freestyle relay. At the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia, Van Dyken won two gold medals in these latter two events, and placed 4th in the 50-meter freestyle. This brought her total career Olympic medal count to six gold medals. In addition to her Olympic accomplishments, Van Dyken won several world titles and set numerous American and world records.\nVan Dyken has the distinction of being one of the few Olympians whose medals are all gold.\nVan Dyken lost public support when she spat in the lane of rival Inge de Bruijn at the 2000 Summer Olympics. After losing to de Bruijn, Van Dyken responded by saying she, too, could have won a gold medal \"if I were a man.\"\n\n\n== Life after swimming ==\n\nVan Dyken retired from swimming after the 2000 Olympics and married former NFL punter Tom Rouen not long after. They split their time between Colorado and Arizona.\nAfter retiring from swimming, Van Dyken announced that she was going to compete in triathlon. In 2001, Van Dyken finished a one-third-mile swim, 15.2-mile bike ride and 3.1-mile run Sunday in two hours, 10.5 seconds in the Saturn Triathlon in Monument, Colo., to place 28th among 34 women in the 25-to-29 age group. On August 9, 2001, Van Dyken completed the Danskin Women's Triathlon in Denver with a time of 1:38:11, 109 out of 349 in the female 25-29 age group.\nIn 2003, Van Dyken was called to testify before a grand jury regarding the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO) steroid scandal. While Van Dyken was a regular client at BALCO, she has never tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs.\nSince her retirement, Van Dyken has toured on a number of speaking engagements to groups as varied as schools and multi-national corporations, has been a disc jockey on a sports radio show in Arizona, served as the side-line reporter for the Seattle Seahawks and Denver Broncos football teams, and acted in the award-winning stage-play the Vagina Monologues. She is actively involved in a number of charities, including the Make-A-Wish Foundation, and along with husband Rouen runs an annual celebrity fundraiser in Evergreen, Colorado, to raise money for disadvantaged youth. She was the head coach of the varsity swim team at Notre Dame Preparatory High School in Scottsdale, Arizona. On May 12, she was the only American swimmer to be inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame's Class of 2007. She was inducted into the United States Olympic Hall of Fame in July 2008.\nVan Dyken became the morning co-host at the #1 Ranked Mix 96.9 KMXP-FM in Phoenix, Arizona in July 2008 where she joined host Chris Parker. Eventually she and Parker moved over to rival KPKX-FM where she was morning drive-time host on 98.7 The Peak FM as a part of \"Chris and Amy in the Morning\" from 2010 to 2011. She resigned from 98.7 The Peak FM on July 12, 2011, to \"attend to some family issues that are going to take her back to Denver.\" She was the co-host of Fox Sports Radio's Fox Sports Tonight with Rob Dibble until December 2013.\n\n\n== ATV accident ==\nOn June 6, 2014, Van Dyken was in a serious ATV accident and severed her spinal cord at the T11 vertebra. She was conscious when rescued and airlifted to a hospital where she had emergency surgery to stabilize her spinal cord and vertebral column. The injury to the area came within millimeters of impacting and potentially rupturing her aorta. However, the accident left her paralyzed from the waist down.\nAfter two months of rehabilitation, Van Dyken left Craig Hospital in Englewood, Colorado, saying, \"I'm a better person than before the injury,\" and with the help of a walker and an apparent bionic device that aids her legs, took her first steps.\n\n\n== See also ==\n\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists at a single Games\nList of Olympic medalists in swimming (women)\nList of World Aquatics Championships medalists in swimming (women)\nWorld record progression 50 metres butterfly\nWorld record progression 4 × 100 metres freestyle relay\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nAmy Van Dyken  at World Aquatics\nAmy Van Dyken (USA) – Honor Swimmer profile at International Swimming Hall of Fame at the Wayback Machine (archived August 19, 2016)\nAmy Van Dyken at the Team USA Hall of Fame (archive July 20, 2023)\nAmy Van Dyken at Olympics.com \nAmy Van Dyken at Olympedia \nAmy Van Dyken Foundation at the Wayback Machine (archived August 13, 2016)\nAmy Van Dyken – Colorado Encyclopedia"}
{"title": "Anastasia Davydova", "requested": "Anastasia Davydova", "extract": "Anastasia Semyonovna Davydova (Russian: Анастасия Семёновна Давыдова; born 2 February 1983) is a Russian former synchronised swimmer and five-time Olympic gold medalist, and current coach.\n\n\n== Biography ==\nDavydova won gold medals in the duet competition with Anastasiya Yermakova at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, and was part of the Russian gold medal team in the 2004, 2008 and 2012 Olympics. After the London Olympics, Anastasia announced that she would retire from competition and take up coaching.\nIn September 2022, it was confirmed that she had left Russia, without any plans to return.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nAnastasia Davydova at World Aquatics\nAnastasia Davydova at the International Swimming Hall of Fame\nAnastasia Davydova at Olympics.com\nAnastasia Davydova at Olympedia\nAnastasia Davydova at InterSportStats"}
{"title": "Anastasiya Kuzmina", "requested": "Anastasiya Kuzmina", "extract": "Anastasíya Vladímirovna Kuzminá (Slovak: Anastázia Kuzminová, Russian: Анастаси́я Влади́мировна Кузьмина́; née Shipulina; born 28 August 1984) is a Russian-born Slovak biathlete.\n\n\n== Career ==\nKuzmina represented Slovakia from December 2008 and won the silver medal two months later in mass start at the 2009 Biathlon World Championships in Pyeongchang. She won a gold medal in the 7.5 km sprint and a silver medal in the 10 km pursuit at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Kuzmina's victory made her the second Slovak after Ondrej Nepela to win a Winter Olympic gold medal, and the first for independent Slovakia. She won another medal – bronze, at the 2011 Biathlon World Championships in Khanty-Mansiysk.  At the 2014 Winter Olympics, she again won the gold medal in the 7.5 km sprint. At the 2018 Winter Olympics, she took silver medals in the pursuit and the individual before taking the gold in the mass start, hitting 19 out of 20 targets to become the first biathlete to win gold medals in three consecutive Games, and tying her as the Slovak sportsperson with the most Olympic golds alongside canoeists Pavol and Peter Hochschorner.\nIn the 2017–18 season she took her first discipline World Cup titles, winning the Crystal Globes for the sprint and pursuit disciplines. She also finished the season second in the overall World Cup standings, three points behind champion Kaisa Mäkäräinen.\nHer brother Anton Shipulin is a Russian biathlete. Her husband, Daniel Kuzmin, is an Israeli cross-country skier and Kuzmina's personal coach. They have one son, Yelisey, and one daughter, Olivia. She, her husband and their children live in Banská Bystrica, Slovakia. She speaks Russian, Slovak and English.\nAfter almost 5 years into her retirement from competitive biathlon, Kuzmina returned to compete in the World Cup in October 2023, deciding to compete at the 2024 IBU Open European Championships in Osrblie where she finished 59th in sprint. She continued to compete in 2025/26 World Cup season.\n\n\n== Biathlon results ==\nAll results are sourced from the International Biathlon Union.\n\n\n=== Olympic Games ===\n6 medals (3 gold, 3 silver)\nKuzmina has won six medals from Olympic Games. In Vancouver she won a gold medal in the sprint and a silver medal in pursuit and in Sochi she won a gold medal in the 7.5 km sprint, becoming the first woman in biathlon to successfully defend an individual Olympic title. In Pyeongchang she won three medals, gold in the 12.5 km mass start event and silver in the 10 km pursuit and in the 15 km individual race.\n\n*The mixed relay was added as an event in 2014.\n\n\n=== World Championships ===\n3 medals (1 gold, 1 silver, 1 bronze)\nKuzmina has won three medals from World Championships. In Pyeongchang she won a silver medal in the 12.5 km mass start. In Khanty-Mansiysk she won a bronze medal in the 7.5 km sprint.\n\n\n=== World Cup ===\n\n\n=== Overall record ===\n\n* Results in IBU World Cup races, Olympics and World Championships.\n\n\n=== Individual victories ===\n\n*Results are from IBU races which include the Biathlon World Cup, Biathlon World Championships and the Winter Olympic Games.\nUpdated on 25 March 2018\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n Media related to Anastasiya Kuzmina at Wikimedia Commons\n\nAnastasiya Kuzmina at IBU BiathlonWorld.com Anastasiya Kuzmina at IBU BiathlonResults.com \nAnastasiya Kuzmina at Milano Cortina 2026\nAnastasiya Kuzmina at Olympics.com \nAnastasia Kuzmina at Olympedia \nAnastasia Kuzmina at InterSportStats \nAnastasia Kuzminová at Olympic.sk (in Slovak) \nAnastasija Kuzmina on Instagram"}
{"title": "Anastasiya Yermakova", "requested": "Anastasiya Yermakova", "extract": "Anastasiya Nikolayevna Yermakova (Russian: Анастасия Николаевна Ермакова, born 8 April 1983 in Moscow) is a Russian competitor in synchronised swimming and four-time Olympic champion.\nShe won gold medals in the duet competition with Anastasia Davydova at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens and 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, and was part of the Russian gold medal team in 2004 and 2008.\nShe trained with the Italian synchronized swimming team \"Rarinantes Savona\", and collaborated with the Italian national synchronized swimming team. She participated in the Italian program \"Vite in Apnea\", which was a reality show showing the training of the Italian national team of synchronized swimming, before the swimming world cup Barcelona 2013.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nAnastasiya Yermakova at World Aquatics\nAnastasiya Yermakova at the International Swimming Hall of Fame\nAnastasiya Yermakova at Olympedia\nAnastasiya Yermakova at InterSportStats\nhttps://web.archive.org/web/20161220071053/http://www.rarinantes.sv.it/index.php/newshidden/1056-syncro-campionato-italiano-estivo-junior--la-blu-shelf-carisa-savona-sara-impegnta-dal-18-al-21-luglio-a-busto-arsizio.html\nhttps://web.archive.org/web/20160303235654/http://www.rarinantes.sv.it/index.php/societa/284-syncro-anastasia-ermakova-nuova-allenatrice-biancorossa"}
{"title": "André Lange", "requested": "André Lange", "extract": "André Lange (German pronunciation: [ˈlaŋə]; born 28 June 1973) is a retired German bobsleigher and one of the most successful bob pilots of all time. Competing at the 2002, 2006 and 2010 Winter Olympics, he has won four gold and one silver medals. Lange originally started his sleighing career as a luger, taking up bobsleigh in 1993.\nAt the 2002 Winter Olympics, Lange won the four-man event with teammates Carsten Embach, Enrico Kühn and Kevin Kuske. At the 2006 Winter Olympics, Lange also won gold in the four-man event with teammates Kevin Kuske, René Hoppe and Martin Putze, in addition to winning the two-man event with Kuske. He competed in the 2010 Winter Olympics, winning gold in the two-man and silver in the four-man events.\nLange also won fourteen medals at the FIBT World Championships with eight golds (Two-man: 2003, 2007, 2008; Four-man: 2000, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2008), four silvers (Two-man: 2000, 2005; Four-man: 2001, 2009), and two bronzes (Two-man: 2004, Four-man: 2007).\nAt the Bobsleigh World Cup level, he has won three combined men's championships (2000-1, 2002–3, 2003–4), one two-man championship (2007–08), and four four-man championships (2000-1, 2002–3, 2003–4, 2007–8).\nIn April 2014 it was announced that Lange would become the head of the Thuringian Winter Sports Centre in Oberhof, which includes the DKB Ski Arena, the Oberhof sledding track, the Kanzlersgrund ski jumps and the town's indoor ski area, following the retirement of the previous head Wolfgang Filbrich that July. In May 2017 he announced that he was leaving this role. In August 2017 the Korea Luge Federation announced that Lange would join the South Korean luge team as a coach in October on a five-month contract to assist head coach Steffen Sartor to help prepare them for the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyongchang, South Korea.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nBobsleigh four-man Olympic medalists for 1924, 1932–56, and since 1964 Archived 23 March 2019 at the Wayback Machine\nBobsleigh two-man world championship medalists since 1931\nBobsleigh four-man world championship medalists since 1930\nList of combined men's bobsleigh World Cup champions: 1985–2007\nList of four-man bobsleigh World Cup champions since 1985\nList of two-man bobsleigh World Cup champions since 1985\nAndré Lange at IBSF\nAndré Lange at Olympics.com\nAndré Lange at Olympedia\nAndré Lange at InterSportStats"}
{"title": "Anita Włodarczyk", "requested": "Anita Włodarczyk", "extract": "Anita Włodarczyk (Polish pronunciation: [aˈɲita vwɔˈdart͡ʂɨk]; born 8 August 1985) is a Polish hammer thrower. She is the 2012, 2016 and 2020 Olympic champion, and the first woman in history to throw the hammer over 80 m; she currently holds the women's world record of 82.98 m. She is widely considered the greatest female hammer thrower of all time.\nShe was voted the Polish Sports Personality of the Year in 2016 and received the Commander's Cross with Star of the Order of Polonia Restituta in 2021 for her outstanding achievements in sport.\n\n\n== Career ==\n\n\n=== Early life and competition ===\nWłodarczyk won her first national U23 championships in 2007, and went on to compete in the 2007 European Athletics U23 Championships, although she did not progress beyond the qualifying round. She finished fourth in the hammer throw competition at the 2008 Olympic Games.\nWłodarczyk qualified for the 2008 World Athletics Final and won a bronze medal. The following year, she took part in the 2009 European Team Championships, winning her first gold medal at a major international competition.\nWłodarczyk achieved a personal best throw of 76.20 metres (250.0 ft), achieved on 30 May 2009 in Biała Podlaska, beating her previous record by 81 cm and improve 76.59 m in Golden Spike Ostrava. Prior to the 2009 World Championships in Athletics, she produced a national record-breaking performance in Cottbus, winning the competition with a world-leading 77.20-metre (253.3 ft) throw. This was fourth longest throw by a woman in hammer throw.\n\n\n=== First world record ===\nOn 22 August 2009, during the World Championships in Athletics in Berlin, Germany, Włodarczyk set a world record with a throw of 77.96 metres (255 ft 9 in). Her season ended prematurely when she twisted her left ankle during her celebration. Returning to competition at the Meeting Grand Prix IAAF de Dakar in April 2010, she easily won her event with a throw of 75.13 m. She then proceeded to break her existing world record with a 78.30-metre (256.9 ft) hammer throw at the Enea Cup in Bydgoszcz on 6 June 2010. She won the bronze at the 2010 European Athletics Championships and was ranked second overall for the season in the IAAF Hammer Throw Challenge, finishing behind Betty Heidler. She finished outside of the medals at the 2011 World Championships in Athletics, coming fifth overall.\n\n\n=== Olympic Games and further successes ===\nIn 2012, Włodarczyk finished third at the Ostrava Golden Spike and was the runner-up at the Prefontaine Classic. At the 2012 Summer Olympics, she won the silver medal with a throw of 77.60 m. On 11 October 2016, she was retroactively awarded gold after Russia's Tatyana Lysenko was stripped of the medal after testing positive for the prohibited substance dehydrochlormethyltestosterone (turinabol) in reanalysis of her stored doping samples.\nIn 2014, Włodarczyk won the European Championship with a throw of 78.76, which was a championship and national record.\nOn 1 August 2015 Włodarczyk set a new world record with a throw of 81.08 metres (266.0 ft) and became the first woman to throw the hammer over 80 metres (260 ft). She went on to win the gold medal at the World Championships, once again throwing over 80 metres (260 ft).\nOn 15 August 2016 Włodarczyk won the gold medal at the Olympic Games in Rio, setting a new world record with a throw of 82.29 metres (270.0 ft). On 28 August 2016, she threw 82.98 metres (272.2 ft), setting a new world record just two weeks after the Olympics at the EAA 7th Kamila Skolimowska Memorial in Warsaw. In competition, Włodarczyk uses some of the equipment that belonged to the late Skolimowska, as a tribute to her fellow hammer thrower.\nIn 2014, 2016 and 2017 she was given Track & Field News Athlete of the Year award.\nIn 2017, she received Polish Sportspersonality of the Year Award for her sports achievements in the previous year. She finished the year with a 42 contests winning streak which began in July 2014.\nAs of 2020, she holds all of the top 15 women's hammer throw results and 27 out of the top 30.\n\n\n=== Third consecutive Olympic gold medal ===\nAt the 2020 Summer Olympics, she won the hammer throw event with a throw of 78.48 m. Włodarczyk is the only woman to ever win this event three times in a row (in the men's competition, only John Flanagan did so, winning the event at the 1900, 1904 and 1908 Summer Olympics). She is also the first woman to win a specific individual athletics event three times in a row at the Olympic Games. With three Olympic gold medals, she ranks third in the all-time medal table among Polish athletes who competed at the Summer Olympics, behind racewalker Robert Korzeniowski and sprinter Irena Szewińska.\n\n\n== Awards and accolades ==\nSome of the selected awards and honours she received for her sports achievements include:\n\nKnight's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta, 2009 \nOfficer's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta, 2016 \nPolish Sports Personality of the Year awarded by the Przegląd Sportowy magazine, 2016\nHonorary Citizen of the town of Rawicz, 2016\nCommander's Cross with Star of the Order of Polonia Restituta, 2021 \nIn 2021, Mattel announced the creation of a Shero Barbie doll with Włodarczyk's image for her \"inspiration to others\" in pursuing their dreams. She became the third Polish woman to have one after Martyna Wojciechowska and Iwona Blecharczyk.\n\n\n== International competitions ==\n\n\n== See also ==\nSport in Poland\nList of Polish records in athletics\nList of Polish track and field athletes\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nAnita Włodarczyk at World Athletics\nAnita Włodarczyk at European Athletics\nAnita Włodarczyk at the Polish Athletic Association (in Polish)\nAnita Włodarczyk at Olympedia \nAnita Włodarczyk at Olympics.com\nAnita Włodarczyk at the Polski Komitet Olimpijski (in Polish) (archive)"}
{"title": "Anky van Grunsven", "requested": "Anky van Grunsven", "extract": "Theodora Elisabeth Gerarda \"Anky\" van Grunsven (born 2 January 1968) is a Dutch dressage champion who is the only rider to record three successive Olympic wins in the same event. Along with her Olympic successes, she has won numerous medals at the World Equestrian Games (WEG), and is the only rider to have competed at every WEG since they began in 1990. Between 1990 and 2006, she competed at the Games in dressage, but in 2010 she was named as part of the Dutch reining team, marking a major change in discipline.\nIn addition to her Olympic and World Equestrian Games successes, van Grunsven holds the record for the most wins at the Dressage World Cup, winning the event nine times between 1995 and 2008. She has also competed numerous times at the European Dressage Championships, winning seven individual medals and eight team medals between 1991 and 2009. Although van Grunsven has ridden many horses over her career, she won the majority of her top events on two horses: Bonfire and Salinero. Bonfire, upon whom she had many of her early successes, was retired in 2002. Salinero quickly took over as van Grunsven's top horse, and remained in that position until his retirement in 2013, after making a major comeback to compete in the 2012 Olympic Games. Van Grunsven has been closely linked with the controversial training method rollkur, although she has moved to distance herself from the practice after it was banned from international competition.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nVan Grunsven was born in Erp, North Brabant. She began training in dressage at the age of 12, after her horse Prisco (who she would later ride at the Olympics and World Equestrian Games) performed poorly in show jumping.\nVan Grunsven is married to Dutch national equestrian coach Sjef Janssen, with whom she has two children. She was pregnant with her first child, Yannick, when she competed at the 2004 Olympic Games, and gave birth in November of that year. Van Grunsven and Janssen married in Las Vegas in late 2005, and in March 2007 had her second child, Ava Eden.\nIn 1999, van Grunsven, \"frustrated by the lack of fashion in the equestrian world\", developed a line of equestrian clothing, now sold internationally.\n\n\n== Competitive career ==\n\n\n=== Olympics and World Equestrian Games ===\nVan Grunsven holds the record for winning the most Olympic medals by an equestrian, with nine medals, and is the only person to have won any equestrian event in three successive Olympics. She is also the only person to compete at seven successive Olympics in dressage. She has competed in every Olympic Games between 1988 and 2012, winning a total of three gold medals, five silvers and one bronze. At the 1988 Summer Olympics, riding Prisco, she was eliminated in the qualifying rounds of the individual dressage, and was the lowest-scoring member of the fifth-place Dutch team, meaning her score was not used to determine the team's standing. At the 1992 Summer Olympics, her performance improved, and riding Bonfire she took fourth individually and won her first silver medal in the team competition. At the 1996 Games, again riding Bonfire, she won double silver in the individual and team dressage competitions.\nWith her last Olympic ride on Bonfire, at the 2000 Summer Olympics, she won her first gold in the individual competition, while helping the Dutch team to their third consecutive silver. In 2004 in Athens, on her new mount, Salinero, she won her second gold in individual competition, while the Dutch team came in fourth. The 2008 Olympic Games, again riding Salinero, brought her her third consecutive individual gold, while the Dutch team returned to the medal podium with a silver. Riding Salinero in 2012 in London, van Grunsven slipped to sixth place individually, but helped the Dutch team to her first bronze medal. Van Grunsven was originally not expected to compete in the 2012 Olympics, as the horse she was riding at the beginning of 2012, IPS Upido, was injured. However, in April, she announced that she planned to compete for a spot on the Dutch Olympic team with the then-18-year-old Salinero, who had staged what the media called a \"comeback\" after previous injuries.\nAlong with her Olympic successes, van Grunsven has also won numerous medals at the World Equestrian Games. After competing in the 2010 World Equestrian Games, she became the only equestrian to have competed in every World Equestrian Games, which have been held every four years since 1990, and which include three sections of dressage competition, two individual and one team. At the 1990 World Equestrian Games, riding Prisco, she finished 23rd individually. Van Grunsven rode Bonfire at the 1994 and 1998 World Equestrian Games, winning individual gold and team silver at the first and double silver (one individual and one team) at the second. She was unhappy with the judging at the 1998 Games, held in Rome, and said that she \"thought [she] would quit dressage\", despite her high finish placement.\nAt the 2002 World Equestrian Games, riding Krack C, she finished 11th individually and rode to 5th place with the Dutch team. Her best finish was at the 2006 Games, riding Salinero, where she won an individual gold and two silvers, one individually and one team. At the 2010 Games, after her top horse Salinero was injured and second-best horse Painted Black was sold, she competed as part of the Dutch reining team, marking a major change in discipline. Riding Whizashiningwalla BB, she was eliminated in the qualifying rounds. At the Games, she also performed a reining demonstration at the presentation of the team dressage medal and participated in an exhibition of freestyle reining. Van Grunsven began riding reining horses around 2000, but only became a serious competitor in the sport after the 2008 Olympics. She won a team bronze in the 2015 European reining championships.\n\n\n=== Other competition ===\nVan Grunsven has won the Dressage World Cup nine times, in 1995, 1996, 1997, 1999, 2000, 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2008. She took second in 1998 and third in 2009. The World Cup features freestyle dressage (also called Kur Grand Prix), and her record number of wins has won van Grunsven the nickname \"Queen of the Kur\". She has also collected five gold medals, eight silver and two bronze at the European Dressage Championships. At the bi-annual European Championships, there is one team competition and three individual events: Individual Dressage, Kur Grand Prix and Special Grand Prix. Van Grunsven took first in the Individual Dressage portion in 1999 and 2005, and second in 1995 and 1997. In the Kur competition, she took first in 2007 and third in 2009. The Special Grand Prix has historically been her weakest event, only taking second in 2007. She has taken the greatest number of medals in the team competition, with the Dutch team taking first in 2007 and 2009; second in 1995, 1997, 1999, 2001 and 2005; and third in 1991.\nIn 2002, Bonfire was retired, after a nine-year international career. The pair's gold medal-winning freestyle dressage performance at the 1994 World Equestrian Games marked the first the time event had been held at the Games, and \"changed the world of dressage forever\", according to fellow Olympic gold medalist Carl Hester. A statue was erected in Erp to mark Bonfire's achievements. In October 2013, he was euthanized following illness. After Bonfire's retirement, Van Grunsven stated that she never thought she would find another horse as good as he was; however, his successor Salinero proved to be even more successful. In March 2013, Salinero was retired. Van Grunsven and Salinero have been called the \"pioneers of the modern freestyle test\", and were the first pair to have music written specifically for their performances. A horse known for his power and ability, he was also sensitive and, early in his career, prone to becoming tense, making him a more difficult horse to ride. Despite this, he was a star of the dressage world, winning numerous international competitions.\nIn January 2003, van Grunsven sustained a fracture of a bone in her upper leg in a fall from a horse in training, and required surgery. A metal plate was embedded in her leg to immobilize the bone during the healing process, and van Grunsven recovered, winning the 2003 Dutch Dressage Championships in June. In September, she underwent a second surgery to have the plate removed. In 2004, she became the first Dutch rider to win the CHIO Aachen dressage competition, a top international competition.\n\n\n== International and championship results ==\n\n\n== Rollkur ==\nVan Grunsven was closely linked with the controversial training method rollkur, and advocated use of the method as recently as 2007. She has since moved to distance herself with the method since the International Federation for Equestrian Sports (FEI) declared in February 2010 that this method \"is seen as an aggressive way of a deep moving horse. This is forbidden as well as any head-neck position which is obtained in an aggressive way.\"\nIn a lawsuit announced on 24 August 2010, van Grunsven claimed to have been defamed by journalist Astrid Appels on the website eurodressage.com. A release posted on that website announcing the lawsuit reported that \"according to Anky, images of her horses can not be connected to the controversial rollkur training method.\" The lawsuit was scheduled to begin 8 September 2010 in 's-Hertogenbosch but van Grunsven withdrew the case.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists in one event\nList of multiple Summer Olympic medalists\nList of athletes with the most appearances at Olympic Games\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nAnky van Grunsven at FEI (alternate link) \nAnky van Grunsven at Olympedia \nAnky van Grunsven at Olympics.com \nAnky van Grunsven at NOC*NSF (in Dutch) (English translation)"}
{"title": "Anton Heida", "requested": "Anton Heida", "extract": "Anton Heida (also known as Antonín Hejda, born December 24, 1878, Žižkov, date of death unknown) was an American gymnast who competed in the 1904 Summer Olympics, where he won five gold medals. He won the vault, horizontal bar, pommel horse, team competition and all-around titles, becoming the most successful athlete at the 1904 Olympics.\nHe was a member of American Sokol Organization. He reportedly lived in Philadelphia and Chicago, and later in Prague in the 1920s. He was a physical education teacher. During the World War I, he fought in the Czechoslovak Legions in Russia.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists at a single Games\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nAnton Heida at Olympics.com"}
{"title": "Archie Hahn (sprinter)", "requested": "Archie Hahn (sprinter)", "extract": "Charles Archibald Hahn (September 14, 1880 – January 21, 1955) was an American track athlete and is widely regarded as one of the best sprinters of the early 20th century. He is the first athlete to win both the 100 m and 200 m race at the same Olympic Games.\n\n\n== Biography ==\nHaving won sprint events at the 1903 American and Canadian championships, Hahn— born in Dodgeville, Wisconsin, but running for the University of Michigan— was among the favorites at the 1904 Olympic Games in St. Louis, which was poorly attended by European athletes.\nIn the first event at those Games, the 60 m, Hahn benefited from his quick start and won, making him a favorite for the remaining events he was entered in, the 100 m and 200 m. His run in the 200 m final delivered him the gold and a good time, although the latter was flattered, because the race was run on a straight course. In his third event, he again outclassed the field, thus winning all sprint events.\n\nIn 1906, the \"Milwaukee Meteor\" repeated his Olympic 100 m victory in Athens, a feat not equaled until 1988, when Carl Lewis won the 100 m twice in a row (after the disqualification of Ben Johnson). In 1910 he outran a racehorse in a 50-yard dash at the Wisconsin State Fair.\nAfter his running career, Hahn became a coach and wrote the classic book How to Sprint issued by the Spalding Athletic Library collection which was published by American Sports Publishing Co. He coached track and number of other sports at Pacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon, Monmouth College in Monmouth, Illinois, Whitman College, Brown University, Michigan, Princeton University, and the University of Virginia. At Virginia he led the Cavaliers to 12 state championships in 13 years. He died in 1955, in Charlottesville, Virginia.\nIn 1929 Hahn's book \"How to Sprint\" was issued by the Spalding Athletic Library.\nHahn was elected to the Wisconsin Athletic Hall of Fame in 1959. He was inducted into the University of Michigan Athletic Hall of Honor in 1984 and the Virginia Sports Hall of Fame in 1991.\n\nHe is the grandfather of the actor / comedian Archie Hahn.\n\n\n== Head coaching record ==\n\n\n=== College football ===\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nVirginia Sports Hall of Fame profile\ndataOlympics profile\nArchie Hahn at World Athletics\nArchie Hahn at Tilastopaja (registration required)\nArchie Hahn at the USATF Hall of Fame (archived)\nArchie Hahn at Athletics Podium\nArchie Hahn at Olympics.com\nArchie Hahn at Olympedia\nArchie Hahn at Find a Grave"}
{"title": "Ard Schenk", "requested": "Ard Schenk", "extract": "Adrianus \"Ard\" Schenk (born 16 September 1944) is a former speed skater from the Netherlands. His first Olympic success came in 1968, when he won a silver medal at the Winter Olympics. Between 1970 and the 1972 Winter Olympics, Schenk won three consecutive World Allround Speed Skating Championships. He won three gold medals at the 1972 Winter Olympics, becoming, along with Galina Kulakova of the Soviet Union, the most successful athlete there.\n\n\n== Biography ==\n\nSchenk competed in international meets from 1964 on, winning his first medal at the 1965 World Championships and his first gold medal at the 1966 European Championships. He won three gold medals at the Olympic Games in Sapporo (a fall in the 500 m precluded gold in all 4 distances). That same year, he also won the European Allround and the World Allround Championships. He became World Allround Champion by winning all 4 distances, a feat that nobody had achieved since Ivar Ballangrud 40 years earlier, and which only Eric Heiden has repeated since (in 1979). Finally, he won bronze that year at the World Sprint Championships.\nThe next season (1973), he turned professional with a number of other prominent speed skaters, thereby forgoing the opportunity of winning more championships. The professional circuit lasted two seasons and Schenk retired from speed skating at 30. Schenk also won five of the six 1000 meter races at World Sprint Championship he participated in. \n\n\n== Records ==\n\n\n=== World records ===\nSchenk was the first to skate the 10,000 meters within 15 minutes, and the first skater to finish the 1500 meters in less than 2 minutes. Over the course of his career he broke a total of 18 (senior) world records, a feat no skater before or after him has bettered. Among men, the sprint specialist Jeremy Wotherspoon came closest with his 16th world record in 2007, while among women long-distance specialist Gunda Niemann equalled Schenk's mark in 2001. By March 1971, Schenk held 6 of the 7 official world records at the same time, missing only the 500 m. His 1000 m record was broken in March 1972 by Erhard Keller, but the other five stood until 1975 to 1978, when world records started to be skated at the high-altitude rink of Medeo.\n\nSource: SpeedSkatingStats.com\n\n\n== Personal records ==\n\nSchenk has an Adelskalender score of 166.241 points. He was number one on the Adelskalender from 13 January 1966 until 27 February 1967 and again from 13 February 1971 until 19 March 1976 for a total of 6 years and 58 days. The Adelskalender is an all-time allround speed skating ranking.\n\n\n== Tournament overview ==\n\nSource:\n\nISSL = International Speed Skating League\nISU = International Skating Union\n\n\n== Medals won ==\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists at a single Games\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n=== Bibliography ===\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nArd Schenk at the International Skating Union (archived)\nArd Schenk at Olympics.com \nArd Schenk at Olympedia \nArd Schenk at InterSportStats\nArd Schenk at Speed Skating Hall of Fame\nShort biography from Evert Stenlund's Adelskalender pages at the Wayback Machine (archived March 13, 2007)\nArd Schenk at IMDb"}
{"title": "Ariarne Titmus", "requested": "Ariarne Titmus", "extract": "Ariarne Elizabeth Titmus  (born 7 September 2000) is a retired Australian swimmer. She is the reigning Olympic champion in the women's 400-metre freestyle, having won the event at the 2020 Summer Olympics and the 2024 Summer Olympics, and the world record holder in the long course 200-metre freestyle. Titmus is widely considered one of the greatest middle-distance swimmers of all time. In 2019 and 2020, she competed representing the Cali Condors in the International Swimming League. \n\n\n== Background ==\nIn 2015, when Titmus was 14 years old, she and her family, including father Steve Titmus, moved from Tasmania to Queensland for better training opportunities. She initially attended secondary school at St Patrick's College Launceston before switching to St Peter's Lutheran College in Brisbane. Titmus first trained as a swimmer at Launceston Leisure and Aquatic Centre. She is coached by Dean Boxall, who formerly coached Stephanie Rice and Leisel Jones. Titmus is a supporter of the Hawthorn Hawks in the Australian Football League.\n\n\n== Swimming career ==\n\n\n=== 2016–2017 ===\nIn December 2016, Titmus made her Australian team debut at the World Championships (25 m) in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. Her first event was the 800 m freestyle, where she finished fourth in a time of 8:17.95. She then competed in the 400 m freestyle, finishing sixth in a time of 4:02.70. Her final event was the 4 × 200 m freestyle relay, in which she split 1:55.14 on the third leg; Australia finished fourth in a time of 7:40.00.\n\nIn July 2017, Titmus competed at the World Championships in Budapest. Her first event was the 400 m freestyle, where she came fourth in a time of 4:04.26. She then competed in the 200 m freestyle, finishing seventeenth in a time of 1:58.79. She then swam in the 4 × 200 m freestyle relay, splitting 1:56.61 on the anchor leg; Australia won the bronze medal in a time of 7:48.51. Titmus' final event was the 800 m freestyle; she finished fourteenth in a time of 8:37.10.\nIn December 2017, Titmus competed at the Queensland Championships in Brisbane. She went 4:02.86 in the 400 m freestyle, breaking Jessica Ashwood's Australian record of 4:03.34 from 2015.\n\n\n=== 2018 ===\nIn February–March 2018, Titmus competed at the Australian Trials on the Gold Coast. She went 4:02.36 to set another Australian record in the 400 m freestyle.\n\nIn April 2018, Titmus competed at the Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast. She won the silver medal in the 200 m freestyle in a time of 1:54.85, 0.04 behind Canada's Taylor Ruck. Titmus then competed in the 4 × 200 m freestyle relay. She split 1:55.59 on the anchor leg, securing the gold medal in an overall time of 7:48.04; Australia broke the games record of 7:49.90 set by the nation in 2014. Titmus then swam in the 800 m freestyle, winning the gold medal in a personal best time of 8:20.02. Her final event was the 400 m freestyle, which she won in a time of 4:00.93. Titmus' time was a new games record, surpassing the mark of 4:04.47 set by New Zealand's Lauren Boyle in 2014, and was also a new Australian record.\n\nIn August 2018, Titmus competed at the Pan Pacific Championships in Tokyo. Her first event was the 800 m freestyle, in which she won the silver medal in a time of 8:17.07, breaking Ashwood's Australian record of 8:18.14 from 2016. Titmus then competed in the 4 × 200 m freestyle relay, splitting 1:55.27 on the first leg to give Australia an early lead. Australia won the gold medal in a time of 7:44.12, which broke the national record of 7:44.31 from 2008, and the championship record, set by the US in 2014, of 7:46.40. Titmus' final event was the 400 m freestyle. She won the silver medal in an Australian record time of 3:59.66, becoming the third woman to break the four-minute mark in the event.\n\nIn December 2018, Titmus competed at the World Championships (25 m) in Hangzhou. Her first event was the 200 m freestyle, winning the gold medal in a time of 1:51.38. This was a new Australian record, surpassing Emma McKeon's mark of 1:51.66 from 2015. She then competed in the 400 m freestyle; she won the gold medal in a world record time of 3:53.92, surpassing the mark of 3:53.97 set by China's Wang Jianjiahe in October 2018. She then competed in the 4 × 200 m freestyle relay, splitting 1:52.22 on the first leg. Australia won the bronze medal in a time of 7:36.40, breaking the national record of 7:37.57 from 2010. Titmus' final event was the 4 × 50 m freestyle relay, where she split 24.71 on the second leg in the heats, before being replaced by Emily Seebohm in the final. Australia eventually won the bronze medal.\n\n\n=== 2019–2020 ===\nIn April 2019, Titmus competed at the Australian Championships in Adelaide. She went 1:54.30 in the 200 m freestyle, breaking the Australian record of 1:54.83 set by McKeon in 2016. Titmus then went 3:59.66 in the 400 m freestyle, equalling her own Australian record.\nIn June 2019, Titmus competed at the Australian Trials in Brisbane. She went 3:59.35 in the 400 m freestyle, breaking the Australian record.\n\nIn July 2019, Titmus competed at the World Championships in Gwangju. She won the gold medal in the 400 m freestyle, a full second ahead of the US' Katie Ledecky; Titmus improved her Australian record to 3:58.76. She then competed in the 200 m freestyle, winning the silver medal in a time of 1:54.66. Her next event was the 4 × 200 m freestyle relay, where on the first leg, she went 1:54.27 to set a new Australian record in the 200 m freestyle. Australia won the gold medal in a final time of 7:51.50, breaking China's world record of 7:42.08 from 2009. Titmus' final event was the 800 m freestyle, in which she won the bronze medal in an Australian record time of 8:15.70.\nFrom October–December 2019, Titmus competed in the inaugural season of the International Swimming League, representing the Cali Condors, who finished in third place in the final match in Las Vegas, Nevada, in December. Titmus won the 400-metre freestyle several times throughout the season, including the final. \nIn October 2020, Titmus competed at the Australian Championships. She went 3:54.58 in the short course 400 m freestyle, which was at the time, the sixth-fastest time in history.\n\n\n=== 2021 ===\nIn June 2021, Titmus competed at the Australian Trials in Adelaide. She went 3:56.90 in the 400 m freestyle, which was a new Australian record and 0.44 slower than the world record. She then competed in the 200 m freestyle, swimming a time of 1:53.09 to set another Australian record, missing the world record by 0.11. Her final event was the 800 m freestyle, which she won in an Australian record time of 8:15.57.\nIn July 2021, Titmus competed at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. She went 3:56.69 in the 400 m freestyle, winning the gold medal 0.66 seconds ahead of Ledecky, setting a new Australian record in the process. Her next event was the 200 m freestyle, in which she trailed behind Hong Kong's Siobhán Haughey for the first 3 laps, before taking the lead on the final lap to win the gold medal in a time of 1:53.50. Titmus broke the Olympic record of 1:53.61 set by the US' Allison Schmitt in 2012. Titmus' next event was the 4 × 200 m freestyle relay, in which she split 1:54.51 on the first leg; Australia won the bronze medal in a national record of 7:41.29. The gold medal was won by China, who set a world record of 7:40.33. Titmus' final event was the 800 m freestyle. She won the silver medal in a time of 8:13.83, which was a new Australian record.\n\n\n=== 2022 ===\nIn May 2022, Titmus competed at the Australian Championships in Adelaide. She went 1:53.31 in the 200 m freestyle, which was   then the third-fastest time in history. She went 3:56.40 in the 400 m freestyle, breaking Ledecky's world record of 3:56.46 from 2016; Titmus' mark stood until March 2023. She qualified for the Commonwealth Games, but opted out of the World Championships.\n\nIn July–August 2022, Titmus competed at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham. Her first event was the 200 m freestyle. She led for most of the race, before receiving a late challenge from compatriot Mollie O'Callaghan. Titmus held on to win the gold medal in a time of 1:53.89, breaking Ruck's games record of 1:54.81 from 2018. Titmus then competed in the 4 × 200 m freestyle relay. She split 1:52.82 on the anchor leg, which was then the fastest relay split in history. Australia won the gold medal in a time of 7:39.29, breaking China's world record from 2021. Titmus' next event was the 800 m freestyle. She won the gold medal in a time of 8:13.59, breaking the games record of 8:18.11 set by Jazmin Carlin of Wales in 2014. It was also a new Australian record. Her final event was the 400 m freestyle, in which she won the gold medal in a games record time of 3:58.06.\n\n\n=== 2023 ===\nIn July 2023, Titmus competed at the World Championships in Fukuoka. Her first event was the 400 m freestyle. It was set up as a clash between the reigning Olympic champion (Titmus), defending world champion (Ledecky), and current world record holder (Summer McIntosh). Titmus led for most of the race, finishing in a time of 3:55.38 to break McIntosh's world record of 3:56.08; Titmus won by more than 3 seconds. Her next event was the 200 m freestyle. She again led for most of the race, but was overtaken by O'Callaghan in the closing stages. Titmus won the silver medal in a personal best time of 1:53.01, while O'Callaghan broke the world record. Titmus then competed in the 4 × 200 m freestyle relay. She split 1:52.41 on the anchor leg, which was the fastest relay split in history. Australia won the gold medal in a world record time of 7:37.50. Titmus' final event was the 800 m freestyle. She won the bronze medal in a time of 8:13.59, which equalled her own Australian record.\n\n\n=== 2024–2025 ===\nIn June 2024, Titmus competed at the Australian Trials in Brisbane. She won the 400 m freestyle in a time of 3:55.44, which was then the second-fastest time in history. She then competed in the 200 m freestyle. She and O'Callaghan were separated by no more than 0.25 for the entire race; Titmus won in a time of 1:52.23, breaking O'Callaghan's world record of 1:52.85 from 2023, and finishing 0.25 ahead of O'Callaghan. Titmus then competed in the 800 m freestyle, winning in a time of 8:14.06.\nIn July–August 2024, Titmus competed at the Olympics in Paris. Her first event was the 400 m freestyle, which was a rematch of what transpired in 2023. Titmus went 3:57.49 to win the gold medal. She then competed in the 200 m freestyle, winning the silver medal in a time of 1:53.81; her Olympic record was broken by gold medallist O'Callaghan. It was Australia's first gold-silver sweep in any Olympic event since 2004. Titmus then competed in the 4 × 200 m freestyle relay, splitting 1:52.95 on the anchor leg. Australia won the gold medal in an Olympic record time of 7:38.08, then the second-fastest time in history. Titmus' final event was the 800 m freestyle. She won the silver medal in a time of 8:12.29, breaking her own Australian record.\nIn January 2025, Titmus announced that she would opt out of the World Championships in Singapore.\nIn October 2025, Titmus retired from swimming at the age of 25.\n\n\n== Television work ==\nIn December 2022, Titmus was a poolside interviewer at the World Championships (25 m) in Melbourne. It was broadcast by Nine Network. She returned to broadcasting during her sabbatical year in 2025, working as a poolside interviewer at the Australian Trials in Adelaide, and the World Championships in Singapore. She continued to work in broadcasting after her retirement from swimming.\n\n\n== Career best times ==\n\n\n=== Long course metres (50 m pool) ===\nAs of 1 December 2025\n\n\n=== Short course metres (25 m pool) ===\nAs of 1 December 2025\n\n\n=== Notes ===\n\n\n== World records ==\n\n\n=== Long course metres ===\n\na  split 1:54.27 (1st leg); with Madison Wilson (2nd leg), Brianna Throssell (3rd leg), Emma McKeon (4th leg)\nb  split 1:52.82 (4th leg); with Wilson (1st leg), Kiah Melverton (2nd leg), Mollie O'Callaghan (3rd leg)\nc  split 1:52.41 (4th leg); with O'Callaghan (1st leg), Shayna Jack (2nd leg), Throssell (3rd leg)\n\n\n=== Short course metres ===\n\n\n== Olympic records ==\n\n\n=== Long course metres ===\n\na  split 1:52.95 (4th leg) with Mollie O'Callaghan (1st leg), Lani Pallister (2nd leg), Brianna Throssell (3rd leg)\n\n\n== Awards and honours ==\nSwimming Australia, Swimmer of the Year: 2019\nSwimming Australia, Short Course Swimmer of the Year: 2019\nSwimming Australia, Patron's Award: 2019\nSwimSwam, Top 100 (Women's): 2021 (#10), 2022 (#3)\nOlympics.com, Top 5 Moments: Swimming at the 2020 Summer Olympics (#1)\nMedal of the Order of Australia, 2022\nNominee for Laureus World Sports Award in Breakthrough of the Year: 2022\nLaunceston City Council name Aquatic Centre competition pool – Ariarne Titmus Competition Pool.\nNike commission large mural at the Launceston Aquatic Centre by artist Josh Foley.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nAriarne Titmus at the International Swimming League (archived)\nAriarne Titmus at World Aquatics\nAriarne Titmus at SwimRankings.net\nAriarne Titmus at Swimming Australia\nAriarne Titmus at Olympics.com\nAriarne Titmus at the Australian Olympic Committee\nAriarne Titmus at Olympedia\nAriarne Titmus at Commonwealth Games Australia\nAriarne Titmus at InterSportStats\nAriarne Titmus at the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games (archived)\nAriarne Titmus at the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games"}
{"title": "Ben Ainslie", "requested": "Ben Ainslie", "extract": "Sir Charles Benedict Ainslie (born 5 February 1977) is a British competitive sailor. Ainslie is the most successful sailor in Olympic history. He won medals at five consecutive Olympics from 1996 onwards, including gold at four consecutive Games from 2000 to 2012.\nHe is one of three men to win medals in five different Olympic Games in sailing, doing so after Torben Grael and Robert Scheidt, and the second to win four gold medals, after Paul Elvstrøm.\nAinslie is CEO of Athena Sports Group which includes the roles of team principal, CEO and skipper of Athena Racing and CEO of the Emirates Great Britain SailGP Team. He is also a Patron of the 1851 Trust, a British charity that supports young people in sailing and STEM education.\n\n\n== Early life and education ==\nAinslie was born in Macclesfield, England to Roddy and Sue Ainslie. Roddy captained a boat that took part in the first Whitbread Round The World Race in 1973. Ben's elder sister, Fleur, is married to Jerome Pels, former secretary general of the International Sailing Federation (ISAF). Ainslie was educated at two independent schools: at the Terra Nova School in a rural area near the village of Holmes Chapel in Cheshire in north west England, and Truro School in the city of Truro, Cornwall, followed by Peter Symonds Sixth Form, Winchester, Hampshire.\n\n\n== Career ==\nAinslie learned to sail at Restronguet Creek near Falmouth, Cornwall.\nHe started sailing at the age of eight and first competed at the age of ten. His first international competition was aged twelve at the 1989 Optimist world championships held in Japan where he placed 73rd. \n\n\n=== Olympics ===\nSilver in the 1996 Summer Olympics in the Laser class\nGold in the 2000 Summer Olympics in the Laser class\nGold in the 2004 Summer Olympics in the Finn class\nGold in the 2008 Summer Olympics in the Finn class\nGold in the 2012 Summer Olympics in the Finn class\nAinsle originally sailed the Laser but he gained a reported 18 kilograms (40 lb; 2 st 12 lb) and moved to the heavier weight Finn. Both his gold medal-winning Laser and Finn dinghies are currently displayed at the National Maritime Museum Cornwall.\nOn 19 May 2012, Ainslie became the first person to carry the Olympic torch in the UK. Starting the 70-day tour of the United Kingdom at Land's End, he was the first of 8,000 torch carriers. He was selected on 11 August 2012 to carry the flag for the Great Britain team at the London 2012 Olympics closing ceremony.\n\n\n=== World Championship ===\n\n\n==== World Championships titles ====\n1st 1993 Laser Radial World Championships\n1st 1995 IYRU Youth Sailing World Championships in Hamilton, Bermuda.\n1st 1998 Laser World Championships\n1st 1999 Laser World Championships\n1st 2002 Finn Gold Cup\n1st 2003 ISAF Sailing World Championships which effectively is the Finn Gold Cup\n1st 2004 Finn Gold Cup\n1st 2005 Finn Gold Cup\n1st 2008 Finn Gold Cup\n1st 2010 ISAF Open Match Racing World Championship\n1st 2012 Finn Gold Cup\n\n\n==== Other World Championships results ====\n73rd 1989 Optimist World Championship held in Japan\n109th 1991 Optimist World Championship held in Greece\n37th 1992 Optimist World Championship held in Argentina\n2nd 1994 IYRU Youth Sailing World Championships in Marathon\n43rd 1994 Laser World Championship\n21st 1995 Laser World Championship\n3rd 1996 Laser World Championship\n3rd 1997 Laser World Championship\n3rd 2000 Laser World Championship\n3rd 2009 Etchells World Championship\n11th 2011 ISAF Sailing World Championships which effectively is the Finn World Championship\nAt the 2011 ISAF Sailing World Championships he was in a winning position going into the closing stages of the regatta but was disqualified under rule 69 (gross misconduct) for physically threatening a photographer. Ainslie felt the photographer's boat's wake had prevented him from passing a competitor.\n\n\n=== America's Cup ===\n\nOne World Challenge – Seattle Yacht Club\nTeam New Zealand – Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron\nAt the beginning of 2005 Ainslie worked in the role of tactician in the New Zealand-based Team New Zealand who were preparing to compete in the challenger selection process to win the right to Challenge for the 32nd America's Cup. In May 2005 Ainslie took the decision to relinquish the role of tactician and focus on improving his match racing skills as helmsman of the 'B' boat used to practice and tune the race boat helmed by Dean Barker.\n\nTeam Origin – Royal Thames Yacht Club\nAinslie figure headed a British challenge for the Cup alongside Sir Keith Mills the team was named Team Origin. However this challenge withdrew without competing following a period of discussion regarding the future format of the event.\n\nOracle Team USA – Golden Gate Yacht Club\nFor the 2013 America's Cup, Ainslie was recruited as a tactician by Oracle Team USA, as a replacement for John Kostecki during an Oracle practice session on 11 September 2013. On 12 September, the following day, he replaced Kostecki going into race six of the 2013 America's Cup. His Oracle Team USA beat Team New Zealand in the America's Cup decider in San Francisco on 25 September.\n\nBen Ainslie Racing – Royal Yacht Squadron Racing Ltd\nIn January 2012, Ben Ainslie announced the formation of an eponymous team to compete in the America's Cup: Ben Ainslie Racing (BAR). His team competed in the AC45 class of the 2011–13 America's Cup World Series, 2014 Extreme Sailing Series and set a multihull record for the Round the Island Race. The team won the 2015–16 America's Cup World Series but were eliminated in the semi-finals of the 2017 Louis Vuitton Challenger's Trophy competition to determine the challenger for the 2017 America's Cup.\n\nINEOS TEAM UK – Royal Yacht Squadron Racing Ltd\nIn April 2018 Ainslie announced the Americas Cup team would be renamed INEOS TEAM UK in partnership with INEOS and Sir Jim Ratcliffe. Again based out of the Portsmouth HQ the team built two new 75-foot foiling monohull yachts to compete for the 36th Americas Cup set which took place in Auckland, New Zealand in 2021.\nOn 21 October 2020, Ben and INEOS TEAM UK launched their race boat for the 36th America's Cup from their HQ in Auckland, naming the AC75 race boat 'Britannia'\nFollowing a disappointing performance in the Auckland ACWS event in December 2020, the team spent the following three weeks making modifications to their boat Britannia ahead of the start of the Prada Cup qualifying series. This included a new mast and sails as well as modifications to the hull and foils. The team received support from INEOS sponsored Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team.\nINEOS Team UK dominated the Round Robin phase of the Prada Cup which saw them race and beat each of the two other challenger teams three times, securing their place in the Prada Cup Final beginning on 13 February 2021. The team's place in the Prada Cup final marked a significant point in their campaign, being the furthest any British challenge had progressed in the competition since the introduction of a challenger selection series.\nAfter Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli's win in the Prada Cup Semi-Finals against American Magic, the American team was eliminated from the event, securing the Italian team's place in the Prada Cup Final alongside INEOS Team UK.\nThe Prada Cup Finals were held in predominantly light wind (8-14 knots), with Luna Rossa showing great improvement in boat handling, winning the first 5 races consecutively. INEOS Team UK showed superior downwind pace in Race 6, taking their sole race win before Luna Rossa dominated Day 4 to take their sixth and seventh race win, winning the Prada Cup overall, and securing their place in the 36th America's Cup Match against Emirates Team New Zealand.\nOn 17 March 2021, following Emirates Team New Zealand's defence of their title (their seventh win overall), the Chairman of Royal Yacht Squadron Racing, Bertie Bicket, issued a pre-arranged, \"friendly\" challenge to the Commodore of the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron, Aaron Young. This made Royal Yacht Squadron Racing Ltd and their renamed sailing team INEOS Britannia the Challenger of Record for the 37th Louis Vuitton America's Cup.\n\nINEOS Britannia – Royal Yacht Squadron Racing Ltd\nThe challenge agreed that the 37th Americas Cup would be raced in the America's Cup 75 (AC75), a 23 m (75 ft) foiling monohull class, that there would be nationality rules in place, a cost reduction programme and that the America's Cup will be raced in Barcelona as a first-to-seven-wins series from 12 October 2024 (expected to be completed on or before 21 October 2024). The Royal Yacht Squadron's challenge is the first time a British team had competed in three consecutive America's Cup cycles since 1930 when Sir Thomas Lipton challenged in the yacht Shamrock V.\nOn 4 October 2024, after a 7–4 win, the yacht Britannia INEOS Britannia defeated Luna Rossa representing Circolo della Vela Sicilia winning the Louis Vuitton Challenger Selections Series to challenge Emirates Team New Zealand for the 37th America's Cup. This is the first time the UK has challenged the America's Cup since 1964 when Tony Boyden's sovereign (representing the Royal Thames Yacht Club) lost 4-0 to Eric Ridder's Constellation.\nThe match was raced between Taihoro, helmed by Peter Burling and Nathan Outteridge, and Britannia helmed by Ainslie and Dylan Fletcher, the winners of qualifying event - the 2024 Louis Vuitton Cup. Races were held, from 12 October – 19 October, with Reserve Days on 14-15 Oct, 17. Eventually losing the series 7-2, INEOS Britannia became the first UK challenger to score in an America's Cup match since 1934 when Sir Thomas Sopwith's Endeavor (representing the Royal Yacht Squadron) lost 4-2 to Harold S. Vanderbilt's Rainbow.\n\nAthena Racing – Royal Yacht Squadron Racing Ltd\nOn 23 January 2025 it was announced that Ben Ainslie had split from the INEOS sponsorship and that consequently he would be continue the 38th America's Cup as the Challenger of Record with the team renamed Athena Racing.\n\n\n=== World Match Racing Tour ===\nIn December 2010, Ainslie finished in first place in the World Match Racing Tour, and is the 2010 ISAF Match Racing Champion. \n\n\n=== The Extreme Sailing Series ===\nIn January 2014, it was announced that Ainslie would compete in the 2014 Extreme Sailing Series as part of his preparation for the America's Cup. He raced for J.P. Morgan BAR, finishing 5th.\n\n\n=== SailGP ===\nAinslie helmed the Great Britain SailGP Team's F50 in the SailGP Championship between 2021–22 and 2023-24 seasons.\n\n\n=== Other significant results ===\n1st 1993 Laser Radial European Championship, Greece\n1st 2006 Rolex Maxi Yacht Cup – Maxi – Alfa Romeo\n1st 2008 Rolex Maxi Yacht Cup – Mini Maxi – Alfa Romeo 3\n1st 2009 Transpac Race and monohull record time (5 days 14 hours) Alfa Romeo\n4th 2010 Team Origin – TP52 Audi Medcup\n2013 The Round the Island Race record and line Honors JPMorgan\n1st 2015/2016 Americas Cup World Series Land Rover BAR\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nAinslie lives in London. He is a member of the Sea View Yacht Club and is an honorary member of the Royal Yacht Squadron. He supports Chelsea.\nOn 20 December 2014, Ainslie married former Sky Sports News presenter Georgie Thompson. The couple have a daughter, Bellatrix, born in 2016. and a son, Fox, born in 2021.\n\n\n== Politics ==\nIn August 2014, Ainslie was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian expressing their hope that Scotland would vote to remain part of the United Kingdom in September's referendum on that issue.\n\n\n== Awards and honours ==\n1995: British Yachtsman of the Year, and in 1999, 2000 and 2002.\n1998: International Sailing Federation World Sailor of the Year, and also in 2002, 2008 and 2012. Ainslie was also nominated in 2004 and 2011.\n2001 New Year Honours: Appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for services to yachting\n2002: Honorary degree, University of Chichester\n2005 New Year Honours: Appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to sailing\n2005: Honorary Doctor of Laws, University of Exeter\n2007: Honorary Doctor of Sport, Southampton Solent University\n2008: Nominated for BBC Sports Personality of the Year and also in 2012 and 2013.\n2009 New Year Honours: Appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for services to sport\n2013 New Year Honours: Appointed Knight Bachelor for services to sailing\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nOfficial website\nBen Ainslie at World Sailing\nBen Ainslie at Team GB \nBen Ainslie at Olympics.com\nBen Ainslie at Olympedia \nBen Ainslie at InterSportStats \nBen Ainslie Booking Agency Profile\nAinslie Olympic profile Archived 25 February 2010 at the Wayback Machine\nInterview for TF90M at the Wayback Machine (archived 19 September 2008)\nNational Maritime Museum Cornwall website"}
{"title": "Betty Cuthbert", "requested": "Betty Cuthbert", "extract": "Elizabeth Alyse Cuthbert (20 April 1938 – 6 August 2017), was an Australian athlete and a four-time Olympic champion. She was nicknamed Australia's \"Golden Girl\". During her career, she set world records for 60 metres, 100 yards, 200 metres, 220 yards and 440 yards. Cuthbert also contributed to Australian relay teams completing a win in the 4 × 100 metres, 4 × 110 yards, 4 × 200 metres and 4 × 220 yards. Cuthbert had a distinctive running style, with a high knee lift and mouth wide open. She was named in 1998 an Australian National Treasure and was inducted as a Legend in the Sport Australia Hall of Fame in 1994 and the Athletics Australia Hall of Fame in 2000.\n\n\n== Early life ==\nCuthbert was born to Leslie and Marion alongside her nonidentical twin sister, Marie 'Midge'. She also had another sister, Jean and a brother, John. Cuthbert was born 20 minutes before Marie. According to Midge, the twins were not alike, but very special to each other. The daughter of nursery owners, Cuthbert was born in Merrylands, New South Wales, and grew up in the Sydney suburb of Ermington, where she attended Ermington Public School. Of her upbringing, Cuthbert stated \"My parents always encouraged me and I had a good home life. We were always taught to respect things and other people.\"\nMarion attended church and sent her four children to Sunday school. As a teenager, Cuthbert attended Parramatta Home Science School. She left school at the age of 16 to work in the family nursery.\n\n\n== Athletic career ==\n\nCuthbert was a member of the Western Suburbs Athletic Club. At the age of 18, with the 1956 Summer Olympics to be held in Melbourne, Cuthbert set a World Record in the 200 metres, making her one of the favourites for a gold in that event. Cuthbert first reached the finals of the 100 metres, setting an Olympic record of 11.4 seconds in her heat (also her personal best), while the Australian world record holder Shirley Strickland was eliminated.\nCuthbert won the final and was then the big favourite for the 200 metres title. She lived up to the expectations and became the Australian \"Golden Girl\". A third gold medal for Cuthbert came when she ran the final leg on in the 4 × 100 metres final, which the Australian team won in a new world record.\nDuring 1958 Cuthbert set world records for 100 and 220 yards but was beaten in both events by arch-rival and double-Olympic bronze medallist Marlene Mathews at the Australian Championships. Later in the year, at the 1958 British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Cardiff, Wales, Cuthbert could only place fourth in the 100y and second in the 220y, again behind Mathews.\nShe set a world record at 440 yards, which was broken in September 1959 by Maria Itkina of the Soviet Union.\nIn the lead-up to the 1960 Summer Olympics, in Rome, Cuthbert set a world 220 yards and 200 metres record of 23.2 seconds in winning the Australian championships. At the Rome Games, she suffered from injury and was eliminated from the quarterfinals of the 100 metres. Subsequently, she retired from the sport of track and field.\nHer retirement did not last long, though, for she returned at the 1962 British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Perth, Western Australia, helping Australia to a gold medal in the sprint relay.\nAfterwards, she concentrated on the 400 metres, and she competed in that event in the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, when it was on the Olympic program for women for the first time. Though not impressive in the heats, Cuthbert won the title for her fourth Olympic gold medal, beating Ann Packer of Great Britain in an Olympic record of 52.01. She is the only Olympian, male or female, to have won a gold medal in all sprint (running) events: 100, 200 and 400 metres. She subsequently verified her retirement for good after Tokyo. Also in 1964 she received the Helms Award for her sporting contributions.\nShe was coached by June Ferguson, who was her physical education teacher in high school.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nCuthbert had multiple sclerosis from 1969 and in 2002 had a severe brain haemorrhage. She stated that, despite her MS, she never once asked God 'Why me?', and instead \"knew that God wanted her to use it to help other people.\" In 1985, Cuthbert became a born-again Christian at the age of 47. Always believing she was a Christian, the speaker at a public rally said there were private-practising Christians present. She felt compelled to publicly declare her faith in Jesus. From then on, Cuthbert tried to share the good news of Jesus with as many people as possible. She did, however, initially want to be healed of her MS, and someone encouraged her to go to church where she could be healed. She claimed she went, looking for healing, instead of the Healer. In her own words: \"I found out about the healer, and then I couldn't care less about the healing. That's the best thing. I get so much joy out of it and I want to tell other people about it. I think that's why I was meant to come back to the Olympics in 1964 because now I'm well known and it helps me to tell people about Jesus.\"\nFollowing her diagnosis with multiple sclerosis, Cuthbert became a dedicated advocate for the disease and was an important player in the creation of MS Research Australia, attending the organisation's 2004 inauguration alongside then-PM John Howard. She was a tireless campaigner for national awareness of the disease, and, following her death in 2017, was credited by CEO of MS Research Australia, Dr. Matthew Miles, as having had an incredible impact on Australia's recognition and understanding of MS.\nIn 1991, Cuthbert left her home state, New South Wales, for Western Australia, where she settled in Mandurah. Cuthbert was one of the bearers of the Olympic Torch at the Opening Ceremony of the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Sitting in a wheelchair and accompanied by Raelene Boyle, she carried the Olympic Torch at the stadium, as one of the runners for the final segment, before the lighting of the Olympic Flame by Cathy Freeman.\nCuthbert died in 2017, aged 79, in Mandurah. She never married or had children. Rhonda Gillam, a 78-year-old West Australian mother-of-three, devoted the last 26 years of her life to caring for Cuthbert. Gillam stated that Cuthbert's MS also took her hearing. Cuthbert's twin sister, Midge Johnston, stated that Betty had been struggling with dementia in recent years, worrying that Betty would not remember her, but Betty always said \"Midge, of course I remember you.\"\n\n\n== Post-death ==\nThe day after her death, there was a minute's silence before the start of competition at the 2017 World Athletics Championships in London, and Australian athletes were granted permission by the International Association of Athletics Federations to wear black armbands in competition. Cuthbert was the only Australian among the 10 inaugural inductees to the IAAF Hall of Fame in 2012. There were many tributes to Cuthbert's career and life from significant Australians:\n\nCathy Freeman: Betty is an inspiration and her story will continue to inspire Australian athletes for generations to come. I'm so happy I got to meet such a tremendous and gracious role model, and Olympic champion.\nMarlene Matthews: I have never met anyone that had such great faith and determination. It was this faith that kept her going for so long and through the most difficult times.\nJohn Coates: Betty battled her illness for many years and showed tremendous courage, but more importantly she always managed to smile. Betty was a member of a unique band of athletes who inspired thousands of Australians.\nMalcolm Turnbull: Rest in Peace Betty Cuthbert – an inspiration and a champion on and off the track.\nBill Shorten: Rest in peace Betty Cuthbert, forever a golden girl.\nCuthbert's funeral was held on 16 August 2017 in Mandurah and her body was cremated at Fremantle Cemetery. Several hundred were present, including Margaret Court, Raelene Boyle, and Marjorie Jackson. Dawn Fraser (whom Cuthbert handed the Olympic Torch to during the opening ceremony of the 2000 Sydney Olympics) gave a speech. Her twin sister, Midge, lit a candle of remembrance; and niece and nephew, Louise and Peter, also gave speeches. A public memorial service for Cuthbert was held on 21 August 2017, at the Sydney Cricket Ground. Tributes were led by broadcaster Alan Jones and Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce. Also in attendance were former athletes Norma Fleming and Marlene Matthews.\n\n\n== Personal bests ==\n\n\n== World records ==\nCuthbert achieved 14 world records during her career comprising 10 individual and four relays. In addition she set a number of world best, including unclaimed records, and metric distance bests.\n\n\n=== Individual – manual and electronic timing ===\n\n\n=== Team – manual and electronic timing ===\n\n\n== Honours ==\n\n1956 – ABC Sportsman of the Year\n1960 – Captain of the women's section of the Rome Olympic team.\n1964 – World Trophy for Australasia (Helms Award)\n1965 – Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for her services to athletics in New South Wales\n1978–1980 – First female Trustee of the Sydney Cricket and Sports Ground Trust\n1983 – Olympic Order (Silver)\n1984 – Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for her services to sport and the community\n1985 – Inaugural inductee to the Sport Australia Hall of Fame\n1992 – the State Transit Authority of New South Wales named a RiverCat ferry after Cuthbert. In February 2023 the Rivercat \"Betty Cuthbert\" was retired from service and scrapped in July 2024.\n1994 – Sport Australia Hall of Fame Legend\n1998 – Named a National Living Treasure\n2000 – Inaugural inductee of the Athletics Australia Hall of Fame\n2000 – Australian Sports Medal\n2000 – Life Member of the Sydney Cricket and Sports Ground Trust\n2001 – Inducted to the Sydney Cricket and Sports Ground Trust Walk of Honour\n2001 – Victorian Honour Roll of Women\n2003 – Statue unveiled outside at the Melbourne Cricket Ground\n2007 – NSW Hall of Champions Legend\n2010 – Betty Cuthbert had a rose named after her\n2012 – Inaugural inductee of the IAAF Hall of Fame\n2017 – Australian Women's Health Sport Awards Hall of Fame\n2018 – A bronze sculpture of Cuthbert (and one of Marlene Mathews) was unveiled at the Sydney Cricket Ground in Sydney, Australia. This makes them the first female athletes added to the bronze sculptures in the Sydney Cricket Ground precinct.\nThe main street of Ermington shopping centre is named Betty Cuthbert Avenue in her honour\nBetty Cuthbert Grandstand at Sydney Olympic Park Athletic Centre\n2018 – Made a Companion of the Order of Australia for \"For eminent service to athletics at the national and international level, particularly as a gold medallist at the Melbourne and Tokyo Olympic Games, and as a role model, fundraiser, and advocate for research into a cure for multiple sclerosis.\"\nA tunnel boring machine used in New South Wales is named after her.\n\n\n== Notable athletics achievements ==\nAt the time of her death, she was the youngest ever 200 m gold medallist in Olympic history.\nShe won a gold medal at the inaugural Australian All Schools in 1951.\nCuthbert was the first Australian Olympian to win three gold medals at a Games (Murray Rose achieved this later in the 1956 Games).\nCuthbert is the only athlete to win the 100, 200 and 400 m at the Olympic Games.\n\n\n== Books ==\nThere are two books on Cuthbert's life: Golden girl as told to Jim Webster (1966) and Golden girl : an autobiography by Betty Cuthbert (2000).\n\n\n== References ==\n\nPrentis, Malcolm. \"Great Australian Presbyterians: The Game\". Uniting Church in Australia. Archived from the original on 11 December 2006. Retrieved 7 March 2007.\n\"Athletics Gold profile\". Archived from the original on 27 October 2009. Retrieved 2010-10-08.{{cite web}}:  CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)\n\n\n== External links ==\nBetty Cuthbert at World Athletics\nBetty Cuthbert at Tilastopaja (registration required)\nBetty Cuthbert at Australian Athletics Historical Results\nBetty Cuthbert at Athletics Podium\nBetty Cuthbert at Olympics.com\nBetty Cuthbert at the Australian Olympic Committee\nBetty Cuthbert at Olympedia\nBetty Cuthbert at the Sport Australia Hall of Fame\nBetty Cuthbert at InterSportStats\nBetty Cuthbert at the Athletics Australia Hall of Fame\nBetty Cuthbert at The Australian Women's Register"}
{"title": "Birgit Fischer", "requested": "Birgit Fischer", "extract": "Birgit Fischer (German pronunciation: [ˈbɪʁɡɪt ˈfɪʃɐ] ; born 25 February 1962) is a German former kayaker, who has won eight gold medals over six different Olympic Games, a record she shares with Aladár Gerevich and Isabell Werth, spanning seven Olympiads: twice representing East Germany (interrupted by the boycott of 1984), then four times representing the reunited nation.  After both the 1988 and 2000 games, she announced her retirement, only to return for the subsequent games.  She has been both the youngest- and oldest-ever Olympic canoeing champion (ages 18 and 42). In 2004, she was chosen as the German sportswoman of the year.\nFischer was born in Brandenburg an der Havel, then in East Germany. She attended an ASK (army sports club) boarding school in Potsdam, and worked as a sports instructor in the National People's Army, attaining a rank of major by the time of German reunification in 1990.  She was married from 1984 to 1993 to canoeist Jörg Schmidt, silver medalist in the C-1 1000 m event at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul. She lives with their two children in Brandenburg. In 1999 she stood unsuccessfully as a candidate for the FDP in the European Parliament election. Fischer's niece, Fanny, competed for Germany at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, winning a gold in the K-4 500 m event. Fischer's brother Frank won nine world championship medals between 1981 and 1986.\nShe also won 38 ICF Canoe Sprint World Championships medals between 1978 and 2005, including 28 golds. Fischer's career medal count was surpassed by Hungary's Katalin Kovács at the 2011 championships in Szeged.\nFischer is also a photographer and displays works through the Art of the Olympians.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists in one event\nList of multiple Olympic medalists\nList of multiple Summer Olympic medalists\nList of athletes with the most appearances at Olympic Games\n\n\n== References ==\n\nFotographie by Birgit Fischer (in German)\nKamber, Raymond, ed. (2008). Medal Winners – Olympic Games and World Championships (1936–2007) – Part 1: flatwater (now sprint). CanoeICF.com. International Canoe Federation. pp. 1–41 at the Wayback Machine (archived 5 January 2010). Additional archives: BCU.org.uk.\nKamber, Raymond, ed. (2008). Medal Winners – Olympic Games and World Championships (1936–2007) – Part 2: rest of flatwater (now sprint) and remaining canoeing disciplines. CanoeICF.com. International Canoe Federation. pp. 42–83 at WebCite (archived 9 November 2009). Additional archives: BCU.org.uk.\nKamber, Raymond, ed. (2008). \"Medal Winners – Olympic Games and World Championships (1936–2007)\" (PDF). CanoeICF.com. International Canoe Federation. pp. 1–83. Archived (PDF) from the original on 18 May 2018.\nOfficial website (in German)"}
{"title": "Bjørn Dæhlie", "requested": "Bjørn Dæhlie", "extract": "Bjørn Erlend Dæhlie (born 19 June 1967) is a Norwegian businessman and retired cross-country skier.  From 1992 to 1999, Dæhlie won the Nordic World Cup six times, finishing second in 1994 and 1998. Dæhlie won a total of 29 medals in the Olympics and World Championships between 1991 and 1999, making him the most successful male cross-country skier in history.\nDuring his career, Dæhlie measured a VO2 max of 96 ml/kg/min. Dæhlie's result was achieved out of season, and physiologist Erlend Hem who was responsible for the testing stated that he would not discount the possibility of the skier passing 100 ml/kg/min at his absolute peak.\nSince retiring, Dæhlie has become a successful businessman in real estate and fashion. His real estate investments have produced a fortune of more than half a billion kroner.\n\n\n== Early life and career ==\nBorn in Elverum, Norway, Dæhlie later moved to Nannestad Municipality, where he settled down. Dæhlie attributes much of his success in sports to his upbringing where he was active in hunting, fishing, hiking, kayaking, football and, of course, skiing from a very early age. For much of his childhood Dæhlie wanted to be a football player, but after being prompted by a coach, he tried Nordic skiing. Dæhlie did not have immediate success as a junior racer, but he consistently improved and eventually qualified for the FIS World Cup competitions.\nIn 2018 he claimed that his family comes from Alvdal Municipality; the claim was made while answering the public during a meeting prior to getting municipal recommendation in regard to building what media calls \"his Coop store\" - a store in the chain Coop.\n\n\n== Athletic career ==\nDæhlie was first on the Norwegian skiing team for the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, Canada. However, he did not participate in any races and was there to learn from more senior skiers. He later claimed these Olympics were the turning point for Norwegian skiing before their following period of success. He made his debut in the World Cup in January 1989, finishing 11th on the 15 km freestyle in Kavgolovo. In December of the same year, he won his first World Cup race. He finished first on the 15 km freestyle, the first World Cup race of the season.\nIn the FIS Nordic World Ski Championships 1991 in Val di Fiemme, Dæhlie won his first World Championship gold medal. He beat skiing legend Gunde Svan on the 15 km freestyle. The medal was unexpected, since Dæhlie was young and still largely unknown. It was Norway's first individual male gold medal in the World Championships since Oddvar Brå won gold in the same race in Oslo in 1982. Dæhlie also skied the last leg on the winning 4 × 10 km relay team.\nIn 1992, Dæhlie's period of dominance started. He won the World Cup overall for the first time, a feat he would accomplish five more times in the next seven years. In Albertville, Dæhlie won his first Olympic medals. He won gold in 10/15 km freestyle pursuit, 50 km freestyle and was on the winning team for the 4 × 10 km relay. He won a silver in 30 km classical style. Dæhlie also finished fourth on the 10 km freestyle, where his teammate Vegard Ulvang won the gold. Dæhlie completed the fourth leg of the relay, and crossed the finishing line backwards, having won by a margin of over one and a half minutes. Dæhlie and Ulvang completed a clean sweep of the cross-country skiing gold medals, each winning three golds and a silver. Dæhlie was awarded Fearnley's Olympic Prize for his performance, a prize given to the best performing Norwegian athlete in the Olympics.\nIn the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway, Dæhlie won gold in the 10 km classical style and the 15 km freestyle pursuit. He won silver in the 30 km freestyle, where he was beaten by his compatriot Thomas Alsgaard. The 4 × 10 km relay was a very tight race between Norway and Italy. The Italians won the gold after Silvio Fauner beat Dæhlie on the sprint on the last leg. In later years, Thomas Alsgaard took over the fourth leg on the Norwegian relay team with Dæhlie skiing the third leg, since Alsgaard was the better sprinter.\nThe 1997 Skiing World Championships were Dæhlie's most successful World Championships. In front of the home crowd in Trondheim, he won a medal in every race, taking gold in the 10 km classical race, the 10+15 km combined pursuit and the 4 × 10 km relay. In addition he won a silver in the 30 km freestyle and bronze in the 50 km classical. Dæhlie said the championships were like \"Lillehammer all over again\" and that \"For me, it's very special to compete in Norway\".\nDæhlie won three golds and one silver in his last Olympics in Nagano. He won the 10 km classical style, the 50 km freestyle and the 4 × 10 km skiing relay. In the 15 km freestyle pursuit, he got a silver medal having been beaten by Thomas Alsgaard on the sprint. Dæhlie won the 50 km freestyle ahead of Niklas Jonsson by only eight seconds. Both skiers collapsed on the finishing line, having given everything in pursuit of victory. Dæhlie described the race as his hardest ever. Dæhlie also formed a lasting friendship with Philip Boit, the Kenyan skier. Dæhlie waited for Boit on the finish line for 20 minutes following the 10 km race, saying Boit deserved encouragement. Philip went on to name one of his children Dæhlie Boit.\nDæhlie was planning to compete in the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, but he was prevented from participating by a career-ending roller skiing accident in August 1999. The resulting back injury prevented Dæhlie from adding more medals to his collection. He retired from the sport in March 2001, having tried extensive rehabilitation and surgery to come back. His decision to retire shocked the nation of Norway, where Dæhlie was idolized for his great winning record.\nDæhlie's eight Olympic titles were a long-time record for the Winter Olympics (his compatriot Johannes Høsflot Klæbo has surpassed him in 2026), as are his total of 12 Olympic medals (he also won four silver medals) which he amassed in three Olympics (Albertville, Lillehammer and Nagano). In addition to his achievements at the Olympics he had great success in the World Championships where he won 17 medals of which nine were gold medals. He was particularly successful in the Trondheim 1997 World Championships, where he earned medals in all five events. Despite his unanticipated early exit from the sport, Dæhlie is considered by many to be one of the greatest Winter Olympic athletes of all time. In his illustrious career, Dæhlie never won a race at the Holmenkollen ski festival, but he was still awarded the Holmenkollen medal in 1997 (shared with Bjarte Engen Vik and Stefania Belmondo).\nHe supports non-profit organisations that work for causes such as multiple sclerosis. In 2009 Dæhlie raced in the American Birkebeiner as a fundraiser for multiple sclerosis. Dæhlie competed in the classic race, which is 54 km long, finishing second in a photo finish.\nIn 2011, Dæhlie won the downhill event in the Kicksled World Championships in Hurdal Municipality. Also in 2011, Dæhlie announced a comeback, stating his intention to participate in long-distance races like Marcialonga and Vasaloppet\nDæhlie also participated in long-distance running in his youth, representing Ullensaker/Kisa IL. He participated in the Nordic junior match versus Denmark/Iceland, Finland and Sweden in 1987.\n\n\n== Cross-country skiing results ==\nAll results are sourced from the International Ski Federation (FIS).\n\n\n=== Olympic Games ===\n12 medals – (8 gold, 4 silver)\n\n\n=== World Championships ===\n17 medals – (9 gold, 5 silver, 3 bronze)\n\n\n=== World Cup ===\n\n\n==== Season titles ====\n8 titles – (6 overall, 2 sprint)\n\n\n==== Season standings ====\n\n\n==== Individual podiums ====\n46 victories\n81 podiums\n\n\n==== Team podiums ====\n16 victories\n27 podiums\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists at a single Games\nList of multiple Winter Olympic medalists\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n Media related to Bjørn Dæhlie at Wikimedia Commons\n\nOfficial website \nBjoern Daehlie at the International Ski and Snowboard Federation \nBjörn Daehlie at Olympics.comBjørn Dæhlie at Olympic.org (archived)\nBjørn Dæhlie at Olympedia \nHolmenkollen medalists at the Wayback Machine (archived 10 February 2011) – click Holmenkollmedaljen for downloadable pdf file (in Norwegian)"}
{"title": "Bobby Finke", "requested": "Bobby Finke", "extract": "Robert Christian Finke ( FINK; born November 6, 1999), better known as Bobby Finke, is an American competitive swimmer. He won two gold medals for the United States in the 2020 Summer Olympics: the men's 800-meter and 1500-meter freestyle swims. Finke successfully defended his title in 1500 m freestyle at the 2024 Summer Olympics, setting the world record. He added a silver medal in the 800 m freestyle. He swam for the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida, from 2018 to 2022 under Coach Anthony Nesty. He currently swims as part of the pro group at UF. Before swimming in college, Finke swam for coach Fred Lewis on the Saint Petersburg Aquatics club team (also known as SPA), located in Saint Petersburg, Florida.\n\n\n== Career ==\n\n\n=== Early career ===\nAt 14 years old, Finke broke the Florida Age Group State Championships (FLAGS) 800m freestyle meet record with a time of 8:25.20. He proceeded to break the 1500m freestyle meet record, dropping over 15 seconds, for a time of 15:56.82. Finke also won the USA Swimming Open Water Junior Nationals by finishing first of all swimmers under 18 years of age. Finke finished seventh overall in a field that included both the pro open water swimmers as well as collegiate swimmers.\n\n\n=== High school career ===\nFinke graduated from Countryside High School in Clearwater, Florida, where he competed with his high school team. He also swam club for Saint Petersburg Aquatics, where he was coached by Fred Lewis, and swam alongside notable swimmers, such as Melanie Margalis and Nic Fink. Finke accomplished much during his high school years. Finke became a Team USA World Championship qualifier at FINA in 2017, and a member of the USA Swimming National team. At the 2018 Phillips 66 National Championships Finke finished second in the 1,500-meter freestyle in 14:55.34. Finke posted the third-fastest time ever in the 1,500-meter freestyle at the 2018 Pan Pacific Championships with a mark of 14:48.79. He also became a two-time NISCA All-American and a two-time USA Swimming Scholastic All-America. Finke also was a state champion in several swimming events in Florida's Division 4A. Entering college, Finke was ranked the No. 18-ranked recruit overall, and No. 1 swimmer in the state of Florida for the 2018 class.\n\n\n=== College career ===\nRobert Finke swam for the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida from 2018 to 2022 where he was a top scorer for the team. Finke's college coach was Anthony Nesty. During his time at University of Florida, Finke earned a plethora of accolades. Some of these accolades are eleven-time All-American, 2020 All-SEC First Team, 2020 SEC Champion (1,650 Free), 2020 SEC Academic Honor Roll, 2019 SEC Champion (1,650 free and 400 IM), 2019 All-SEC First-Team, 2019 Co-SEC Freshmen Swimmer of the Year, 2019 SEC All-Freshman team, 2021 NCAA Champion in the 400yIM and the 1650y Freestyle and 2022 NCAA Champion in the 1650y Freestyle.  Finke turned professional following the 2022 NCAA Championships and has continued training at the University of Florida under coach Anthony Nesty.\n\n\n=== 2020 Olympic trials ===\nThe autumn before the 2020 Summer Olympics, in November 2020, Finke won the gold medal in the 1500 meter freestyle with a time of 15:09.14, the silver medal in the 800 meter freestyle with a 7:53.05, and the silver medal in the 400 meter individual medley with a 4:18.08 at the 2020 U.S. Open Swimming Championships. In June 2021, Finke became one of 53 swimmers named to represent the United States at the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games. He qualified in both the men's 800 meter freestyle and 1500 meter freestyle, placing first in both events at the 2020 US Olympic Trials in Omaha, Nebraska.\n\n\n=== 2020 Summer Olympics ===\n\nIn his first Olympic event, Finke won the gold in the men's 800m freestyle, setting a new American record with a time of 7:41.87. He also placed first in the men's 1500m freestyle with a time of 14:39:65, making him the first American man to win the event since 1984. In the finals of both events, Finke was behind with 50 meters to go, but made a last-minute surge to win. He swam the final 50 meters of the 1500 in just 25.78 seconds, more than a full second faster than any split by any other swimmer in the finals. It was also faster than any competitor's final lap in the men's 200m finals and more than half a second faster than the 26.39 seconds for his own final 50 meters in the 800m.\n\n\n=== 2024 Olympic trials ===\nIn June 2024, at the U.S. Olympic trials, Finke competed in both the men's 800m freestyle and the men's 1500m freestyle. He finished first in both events, securing his spot to defend his gold medal in the 2024 Paris Olympics.\n\n\n=== 2024 Summer Olympics ===\n\nFinke competed in both the men's 800m freestyle and the men's 1500m freestyle. He took a silver in the 800m freestyle, finishing in 7:38.75, about a half-second behind gold medalist Daniel Wiffen of Ireland. In the 1500m freestyle, he became the only U.S. male swimmer to win an individual gold medal, finishing in a world-record time of 14:30.67. Unlike his previous Olympic finals, Finke led the 1500m from start to finish, and swam the final lap in just 26.27 seconds to beat Gregorio Paltrinieri by 3.88 seconds.\n\n\n=== Records ===\nFinke set the world record in the 1500m Freestyle with a time of 14:30.67 to win gold at the 2024 Paris Olympics.\nFinke first swum an American Record at the 2020 Olympic Games in the men's 800m Freestyle. In the heats of the event, he went a time of 7:42.72. In the final, his time of 7:41.87 broke his record. He reset the record at the 2022 World Aquatics Championships with a time of 7:39.36. A year later, at the 2023 World Aquatics Championships, he lowered the record to a 7:38.67.\nAlso at the 2022 World Aquatics Championships, Finke broke the American record in the 1500m Freestyle with a time of 14:36.70. He again reset the record at the 2023 World Aquatics Championships by swimming a 14:31.59.\nFinke also holds the U.S. Open record (the fastest time on U.S. soil) in the 800m Freestyle. He first set it with a time of 7:43.32 from the 2022 Phillips 66 US International Team Trials. He then lowered it to 7:40.34 at the 2023 Phillips 66 US International Team Trials.\nFinke owns the U.S. Open record in the 1500m freestyle as well. He set it with a 14:42.81 at the 2023 Phillips 66 US International Team Trials. He later broke it at the 2024 U.S. Olympic Team Trials with a time of 14:40.28.\nIn the short course pool, Finke set the American record in the 1650y Freestyle with a time of 14:12.08 at the 2020 SEC Championships.\n\n\n== International championships ==\n\n\n== Personal bests ==\n\n\n== Awards and honors ==\nGolden Goggle Awards Male Athlete of the Year: 2022, 2024\nGolden Goggle Awards Male Race of the Year: 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nFinke was born in Tampa, Florida, on November 6, 1999. Finke's mother, Jeanne, swam for Ball State, while his father Joe is a swim coach with Saint Petersburg Aquatics. Finke also has two older sisters: Autumn Skye Finke, who swam for the University of Florida, and Ariel Summer Finke, who swam for Florida State University and North Carolina State University.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nBobby Finke  at World Aquatics \nBobby Finke at USA Swimming (archived)\nBobby Finke at Team USA (archive December 4, 2022)\nRobert Finke at Olympics.com\nBobby Finke at Olympedia \nBobby Finke at InterSportStats \nBobby Finke – Men's Swimming & Diving at FloridaGators.com\nBobby Finke – Bio at SwimSwam.com\nRobert Finke – detailed meet and event results, ranking, and LSC/Team records at MySwimIO.com\nBobby Finke on Instagram"}
{"title": "Bonnie Blair", "requested": "Bonnie Blair", "extract": "Bonnie Kathleen Blair (born March 18, 1964) is a retired American speed skater. She is one of the top skaters of her era, and one of the most decorated athletes in Olympic history. Blair competed for the United States in four Olympics, winning five gold medals and one bronze medal.\nBlair made her Olympic debut in Sarajevo in 1984 where she finished eighth in the 500 meters. At the time, Blair trained in both short-track and long-track speed skating. She won the 1986 short-track world championship. Blair returned to the Olympics in 1988 competing in long-track at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary. There she won her first Olympic gold medal in the 500 meters and a bronze medal in the 1,000 meter. Blair won two gold medals in the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville and her final two Olympic gold medals at the 1994 Lillehammer games. Blair continued competing through 1995 when the World Championships were held in Milwaukee, finally retiring in March 1995.\nAfter retiring from speed skating, Blair became a motivational speaker.  She has been inducted into the Chicagoland Sports Hall of Fame, the Wisconsin Athletic Hall of Fame, and the United States Olympic Hall of Fame.\n\n\n== Early life and education ==\nBlair was born in Cornwall, New York to Charlie and Eleanor Blair. She was the youngest of six children. Her godmother is Canadian speed skater Cathy Priestner. The family moved to Champaign, Illinois when Bonnie was a toddler. Bonnie first tried skating, already a hobby for her siblings,  at age two. She participated in her first skating meet at age 4. Early on, Blair competed in \"pack style,\" or short track speed skating, where several skaters race on the ice at once. At age 7, Blair won her age group at the Illinois Speed Skating Championship. She attended Jefferson Middle School and later Champaign Centennial High School In addition to skating, Blair was also a cheer leader and a member of the student council.\nIt wasn't until 1979 when Olympic medalist Cathy Priestner Faminow became Blair's coach that Blair switched from pack style to long track speed skating in which skaters compete for the fastest time. At age 15, Blair tried out for the national team, earning a spot on her first attempt. With her increased focus on the 1984 Olympics, Blair went to train in Europe. To finance the expense of training in Europe, the Champaign Policemen's Benevolent Association began helping to sponsor Blair. She completed her high school diploma through the mail in 1982. She moved to the Milwaukee area to train with the United States national speed skating team, living with a family friend while she trained. Blair took classes at Parkland College, although college classes were less of a priority than training and she did not receive a degree.\n\n\n== Career ==\n\n\n=== Early career and first Olympics (1984–1986) ===\nBlair made her international competitive debut at the 1984 World Sprinting Championships where she placed tenth. Later that year, Blair appeared at her first Olympic games at age 19 in Sarajevo. Blair had not been not considered a front-runner and later recalled she was happy just to be at the games and see her family in the stands. She failed to medal and finished eighth in the 500 meters. The U.S. failed to win any speed skating medals at the 1984 Olympics. After the 1984 Olympics, Blair worked closely with coach Mike Crowe to improve her skating skills to compete with the powerful East German skaters.\nA strong performance at the United States International Skating Association Metric All-Around Championships, held in West Allis, Wisconsin, earned Blair a spot on the U.S. long track women's sprint team for the 1985 World Championships. Blair won both the 500 meter and 1500 meter at the West Allis event, and was considered one of the U.S. team's strongest medal contenders.  On the 1985-1986 World Cup Circuit, Blair finished fourth in four distances: the 500 meter, 1,000 meter, and 1,500 meter. In May 1985, at a time when U.S. speed skating lacked unity, U.S. International Speedskating Association replaced national team coach Dianne Holum with Mike Crowe.\nDuring this time, Blair trained in both short-track and long-track. Blair won events at 1984, 1985 and 1986 short-track world championships and was the 1986 overall short-track world champion.\n\n\n=== Rise and becoming an Olympic medalist (1987–1989) ===\nEarly in 1987, Blair won World Cup titles in the 500 and 1,000 meters. She followed up her World Cup titles in by setting her first world record in the 500 meters with a time 39.43 seconds. Blair also proved she could beat East-German world champion Karin Enke-Kania in head-to-head match-ups. Although Blair was four inches shorter than Enke-Kania, Blair's technique and fast start time made her a formidable competitor. Blair held a world record at 500 meters until December 1987 when Christa Rothenburger beat her time at the World Cup. Blair, under the weather with a cough and cold, finished second in the event. Overall, Blair won 4 of 18 women's medals at the 1987 World Cup; East German skaters, including Rothenburger, won 13.\nAt the December 1987 U.S. speed skating trials for the 1988 Winter Olympics, Blair led the women's field in the 500,1,000, and 1,500 meters, securing her place on the U.S. Olympic team, as expected. Blair was considered a stronger competitor in the shorter distances, where she was seen as the United States' best chance at a gold medal in speed skating. U.S. speed skating failure to win a single medal at the 1984 Olympics added to the pressure and attention focused on Blair leading up to the 1988 games.\nBlair went on to the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, Alberta, where her first event was the 500 meters. Rothenburger skating first, setting a new world record. Blair responded to the challenge with her best start ever in the 500 meters, winning the gold medal in world record time of 39.10 seconds. For her second event of the games, Blair had a personal best and briefly set an Olympic record in the 1,000 meters. Two of Blair's competitors, who skated after her, subsequently beat her time; thus Blair won the bronze in the 1,000 meters. Blair's third and final event of the 1988 Winter Olympics was the 1,500 meters, in which she placed fourth. Blair's family friends in the stands, affectionately known as the \"Blair Bunch,\" became a staple of her competitive career. To end the games, Blair was chosen to carry the American flag at the closing ceremonies.\nDespite her success at the 1988 Olympics, Blair did not enjoy a windfall from endorsements. Holding Blair back from more advertisements was both her choice of sports, which was thought to be less marketable, and ABC's coverage of the games, which failed to resonate with viewers. Blair also took a break from skating, enrolling in Montana Technological University. She skipped the first two World Cup events of the 1989 season. Blair was back to competing later in the season and won the 1989 World Sprint Championships held in Heerenveen, Netherlands. At the event, Blair won the 500 meters twice and finished third and second in two 100 meters races for an overall victory. The win made Blair the first U.S. woman to win a world sprint championship in nearly a decade.\nFollowing the 1988 Olympics, Blair also tried track cycle racing, and was coached by former speed skater and cycling world champion Connie Paraskevin. Cycling became part of Blair's speed skating training as both sports utilized the same muscle groups. She made her competitive cycling debut in June 1989 at the Sundance Juice Sparkler Grand Prix. After placing fourth at U.S. Nationals and missing the opportunity to compete at the World Championships, Blair opted to give up competitive cycling and focus solely on speed skating.\n\n\n=== Repeat Olympic gold (1990–1992) ===\nThe 1990–1991 season had setbacks for Blair. She contracted a severe case of bronchitis that affected her breathing. The breathing problem lingered through the 1991 World Sprint Championships where she finished fifth. As confidence in coach Crowe had waned in the lead up to the 1988 Olympics, Blair helped to recruit Peter Mueller to coach the U.S. team. The coaching switch took place ten months before the 1992 Olympics. Training with Mueller in the summer before the Olympics, Blair regained her competitive edge.\nBlair again competed at Olympics in 1992, this time held in Albertville, France. Although she had won gold at the prior Olympics, Blair felt that her small stature made her an underdog against much larger East German competitors. Blair again won gold in the 500 meters, becoming the first woman to win the event in back to back Olympics, with a time of 40.33 seconds. Her winning time was slower than her record setting pace in Calgary, however, the venue in Albertville was outdoors creating conditions which were less conducive for speed skating. The second-place finisher, Ye Qiaobo of China, claimed to have been slowed down by an improper crossover from another skater. Although Ye claimed the crossover cost her the gold, the referee's rejected China's protest. Blair dedicated her gold medal to her father, Charlie, who had died from lung cancer two years earlier. Charlie had dreamed of Bonnie becoming an Olympic speed skater.\nIn her second event, the 1,500 meters, Blair finished 21st. The placement was due in part to the strategy of her coach, Peter Mueller; Mueller told Blair he would give her a signal to coast if he felt she was not on pace for a podium finish, allowing her to conserve energy. As Blair approached the final 400 meters, Mueller gave the signal. Blair won her second gold of the 1992 Olympics in the 1,000 meters (1:21.90). Her time was only 0.02 seconds faster than Ye. Blair's gold made her the most decorated U.S. woman in Winter Olympics of all time.\nHer success in the 1992 Olympics led to more attention for Blair. She was on the cover of Sports Illustrated. Blair also began to pick-up more endorsements, including sports marketing group Advantage International. After the Olympics, Blair moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin to train at the newly opened Pettit International Ice Center.\n\n\n=== Final Olympics (1993–1994) ===\nBack in 1986, the International Olympic Committee voted to stage the Winter Olympics and Summer Olympics in alternating four year cycles. Thus, the next Winter Games would be held in February 1994.  The attempt to compete at her fourth Olympics was not without its challenges; the 1993 season was lackluster for Blair. At the 1993 World Sprint Championships, Blair did not win any of her four races finishing behind rival Ye Qiabo. Blair felt as though she had lost her quickness and after failing to rectify the problem with coach Peter Mueller, she switched to Nick Thometz. At the 1994, U.S. Olympic long-track trials at the Pettit National Ice Center, Blair set track records in the first round of the 500 meter and 1,000 meter trails.\nThe 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway, were another success for Blair: She again won gold in the 500 meters (39.25) and 1,000 meters (1:18.74) races. Blair finished 0.36 seconds ahead of the second best time in the 500 meters. Her 1.38 second margin in the 1,000 meters race is the largest margin of victory in the history of the event. Blair's success at Lillehammer placed her among the most decorated American Olympians of all time. She became the first American woman to win five gold Olympic medals and the first American Winter Olympian to win six career medals.  In addition to the 500 and 1,000 meters races, Blair also competed in the 1,500 meter distance, missing the podium with a fourth-place finish. At her post race press conference, Blair confirmed Lillehammer would be her last Olympic games.\n\n\n=== Post-Olympic career ===\nAfter the 1994 Olympics, Blair continued to compete. Less than a month after Lillehammer Olympics, Blair set another world record in the 500 meters, becoming the first female to complete the race in under 39 seconds, achieving a time of 38.99 seconds. Blair topped her own World Record the following year, achieving a time of 38.69 on February 12, 1995, in Calgary. Blair continued on to the 1995 World Championships in her adopted home town of Milwaukee. The Blair Bunch, the name given to Blair's family and friends, accounted for 12% of the crowd at the Pettit National Ice Center. There, Blair won the 500 meters with a time of 39.54 seconds.  On March 18, 1995, she retired.\nAfter fellow speed skater Johann Olav Koss founded Right to Play in 2000, he recruited Blair to serve as one of the charities first celebrity ambassadors. Blair became involved with Right to Play, When the Winter Olympics returned to the United States in 2002, Blair was one of the final torchbearers to carry the Olympic flame into Rice-Eccles Stadium for the opening ceremony in Salt Lake City, Utah. As of 2002, Blair served on U.S. Speedskating's board of directors. As of 2014, Blair worked as a motivational speaker and corporate spokesperson. That same year she was a member of the U.S. Olympic delegation to Sochi. As of 2018, Blair serves on the board of the Pettit National Ice Center.\n\n\n== Awards and honors ==\n\nIn 1992, Blair became the third winter athlete to win the Sullivan Award. Blair won the 1992 Oscar Mathisen Award, the first female winner of this award. In 1992, Blair received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. She also was Female Athlete of the Year as selected by the Associated Press in 1994. Blair also won the World Cup points championship 11 times. Sports Illustrated named Blair their Sportswoman of the Year for 1994. By 1994, Blair's hometown of Champaign had renamed one of its streets Bonnie Blair Drive.\nShe is a member of the Chicagoland Sports Hall of Fame and the Wisconsin Athletic Hall of Fame. In 2004, she was elected to the United States Olympic Hall of Fame. She was awarded a star (#7) on The Flag for Hope on September 29, 2015, in recognition of her outstanding speed skating career and philanthropic efforts.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nBlair began dating fellow Olympic speed skater Dave Cruikshank in 1990. The pair married in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1996. Blair and Cruikshank have two children: a son, Grant, and daughter, Blair. Grant Cruikshank played hockey at Colorado College and as of 2021 for the University of Minnesota. Blair's daughter competed at the 2018 United States Olympic speed skating trials at the 500 meter distance, held at Pettit National Ice Center.\nIn 2021, Blair spoke out in opposition to allowing male-to-female transgender athletes to participate in organized athletics.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists in one event\nWest Allis Speedskating Club\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nBonnie Blair at SkateResults.com\nBonnie Blair at the Team USA Hall of Fame (archive October 22, 2021)\nBonnie Blair at Olympics.com \nBonnie Blair at Olympedia \nBonnie Blair at IMDb"}
{"title": "Boris Shakhlin", "requested": "Boris Shakhlin", "extract": "Boris Anfiyanovich Shakhlin (Russian: Борис Анфиянович Шахлин; 27 January 1932 – 30 May 2008) was a Soviet gymnast who was the 1960 Olympic all-around champion and the 1958 all-around World Champion. He won a total of 13 medals including seven gold medals at the Summer Olympics, and was the most successful athlete at the 1960 Summer Olympics. He held the record for most Olympic medals by a male athlete record until gymnast Nikolai Andrianov won his 14th and 15th medals at the 1980 Summer Olympics. He also won 14 medals at the World Championships.\n\n\n== Career ==\nShakhlin was born in Ishim, Russian SFSR. He began gymnastics at the age of 12. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, he \"set a career record of 10 individual titles in the world championships and also won gold medals at three successive Olympic Games. His tally of seven gold, four silver, and two bronze Olympic medals placed him among the most-decorated at the Games\".\nShakhlin retired from competition at the age of 35 after suffering a heart attack. He joined the FIG Men's Technical Committee in 1968 and continued to work on the Committee until 1992. In the 1990s and 2000s (decade), he worked as a lecturer at the University of Kyiv.\nHe was awarded the Red Banner of Labor in 1956 and the Order of Lenin in 1960. He was named an honorary citizen both in his birth town Ishim and in Kyiv where lived for many years. In 2002, he was inducted into the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame.\nHe died on 30 May 2008.\n\n\n== Philatelia ==\nThe Mongol Post issued a postage stamp - Boris Shakhlin (No.525, 1969).\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists at a single Games\nList of multiple Summer Olympic medalists\nList of Olympic medal leaders in men's gymnastics\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nBoris Chakline at World Gymnastics\nBoris Shakhlin at the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame\nBoris Shakhlin at Gymn Forum\nBoris Shakhlin at Olympics.com \nBoris Shakhlin at Olympedia"}
{"title": "Bradley Wiggins", "requested": "Bradley Wiggins", "extract": "Sir Bradley Marc Wiggins (born 28 April 1980) is a British former professional road and track racing cyclist, who competed professionally between 2001 and 2016. He became Great Britain's most decorated Olympian, amassing eight medals across five Games, and remains the only rider to have won World and Olympic titles on the track and road. In 2012, he was the first British winner of the Tour de France. \nThe son of the Australian cyclist Gary Wiggins, Wiggins was born to a British mother in Ghent, Belgium, and raised in London from the age of two. He competed on the track from the early part of his career until 2008. Between 2000 and 2008 he won ten medals at the track world championships, of which six were gold: three in the individual pursuit, two in the team pursuit and one in the madison. His first Olympic medal was a bronze in the team pursuit in Sydney 2000, before winning three medals including the gold in the individual pursuit at the Athens 2004, and two golds in the individual and team pursuit at the Beijing 2008.\nOn the road, Wiggins turned professional in 2001 but made it his focus from 2008. Initially viewed as a time trial specialist and rouleur, he showed his ability in stage races when he came fourth in the 2009 Tour de France; he was promoted to third after Lance Armstrong's results were annulled in 2012. He signed with the newly formed Team Sky in 2010, and in 2011 claimed his first victory in a major stage race in the Critérium du Dauphiné, as well as finishing third, later promoted to second, in the Vuelta a España. In 2012, Wiggins won the Paris–Nice, the Tour de Romandie, the Critérium du Dauphiné, and became the first British cyclist to win the Tour de France and the time trial at the 2012 Summer Olympics. Wiggins won Vélo d'Or award for best rider in 2012, the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award and a knighthood as part of the 2013 New Year Honours. In 2014, he won gold in the time trial at the road world championships, and founded the WIGGINS cycling team. Wiggins returned to the track at the 2014 Commonwealth Games, and in 2015 he set a new hour record with a distance of 54.526 km (33.881 mi). In 2016, he won a further world championship in the madison, and gold in the team pursuit at the Olympics, his fifth successive medal winning appearance at the Games. He retired from all forms of professional cycling in 2016.\nDuring his career and afterwards he faced allegations that he exploited a loophole in cycling's anti-doping regulations to use a performance-enhancing drug, injections of the powerful corticosteroid, triamcinolone. He did not receive any bans or suspensions in relation to doping during his career. In 2018, the British House of Commons Committee for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport concluded that Team Sky had used triamcinolone in 2012 under TUE (Therapeutic Use Exemption) \"to prepare Bradley Wiggins, and possibly other riders supporting him, for the Tour de France. The purpose of this was not to treat medical need, but to improve his power to weight ratio ahead of the race.\"\n\n\n== Early life and amateur career ==\nWiggins was born on 28 April 1980 in Ghent, Flanders, Belgium, to an Australian father, Gary Wiggins, and a British mother, Linda. His father lived in Belgium as a professional cyclist. His father left the family when Wiggins was two. Wiggins moved with his mother to her parents' house in Villiers Road, Willesden Green, northwest London, then to a Church Commissioners flat at Dibdin House estate in neighbouring Maida Vale. He was educated at St Augustine's junior school and then St Augustine's Church of England High School in Kilburn, where his mother was a secretary. He has a younger half-brother, Ryan, from his mother and her partner Brendan. Brendan and Linda separated when Wiggins was in his late teens.\nFootball was his first passion and he was an Arsenal fan, although he would watch rivals Tottenham Hotspur play because his friends supported them. He discovered cycling when his mother told him to watch the television coverage of the individual pursuit final of the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, which Briton Chris Boardman won. She explained it was one of the events at which his father had been successful. He watched the rest of the Olympics and fell in love with cycling and the Olympics itself.\n\nIn 1992, aged 12, he entered his first race, the West London Challenge 92, on the unopened A312 dual carriageway in Hayes, west London. Later that year he broke a collarbone in a road accident. He received £1,700 compensation for his injuries. He gave his mother £700 and used the rest to buy his first racing bicycle. \"At 12\", he recalled, \"I told my art teacher, I'm going to be Olympic champion, I'm going to wear the yellow jersey in the Tour.\" He joined the Archer Road Club, where his father had been a member in the late 1970s. He raced at Herne Hill Velodrome and on the road around Crystal Palace National Sports Centre. He gained domestic sponsorship from Condor Cycles's Olympia Sport and then Team Brite. He represented Westminster in the London Youth Games as a teenager. In recognition of his early achievements, 2010 he was inducted into the London Youth Games Hall of Fame.\nAt 16, he won the 1 km (0.6 mi) time trial at the 1996 junior national track championships at Saffron Lane sports centre in Leicester. Selectors invited him to train at weekends at Manchester Velodrome. After leaving school he enrolled on a BTEC foundation course in business studies, but left due to cycling commitments. At the 1997 junior national track championships he won the one-kilometre time trial, 3 km (1.9 mi) individual pursuit, points race and scratch race. He was the only British competitor for the 1997 junior track world championships in Cape Town, coming 16th in the individual pursuit and fourth in the points race.\nHis breakthrough came in June 1998, winning the three-kilometre individual pursuit at the junior track world championships in Cuba, aged 18. The following week, he retained his titles at the junior national track championships in Manchester. He represented England at the Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur, finishing fourth in the individual pursuit, and was a member of the team that won a silver medal in the team pursuit, his first senior medal. He became a full-time Lottery-funded athlete, with a grant of nearly £20,000 a year (equivalent to £39,000 in 2025).\nIn 1999, he began training with the Great Britain team pursuit squad and rode the PruTour – now known as the Tour of Britain, his first stage race at that level. In October he competed in the track world championships in Berlin, coming fifth in the team pursuit, and with partner Rob Hayles, came tenth in the Madison, securing qualification for the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney. At the Olympics he won a bronze medal in the team pursuit, beating France in the bronze medal match, and came fourth in the Madison with Hayles. In October 2000, he took silver in the team pursuit at the track world championships in Manchester, losing to Germany in the final by under half a second.\n\n\n== Professional career ==\n\n\n=== 2001–2004: Early years ===\nIn 2001, he signed for the Linda McCartney Racing Team, a British professional road cycling team, but it disbanded after internal problems. He was briefly seen in Sigma Sport colours after the collapse of the Linda McCartney team, but then secured further lottery funding, and began racing for the British national team. He came second in the prologue of the Tour of Rhodes, two seconds behind Fabian Cancellara of Mapei–Quick-Step, before winning the general classification in the Cinturón a Mallorca and Flèche du Sud. In September he crashed his bike, requiring two metal pins in his right wrist. Two weeks later he went to the track world championships in Antwerp, managing seventh place in the individual pursuit and consecutive silver in the team pursuit.\n\nHe joined the French team Française des Jeux in 2002, relocating to Nantes, and soon became homesick, finding it a huge contrast to the British Cycling set-up. At the Commonwealth Games in Manchester he won silver medals in the individual pursuit, losing to Française des Jeux teammate Bradley McGee (Australia) in the final, and team pursuit, beaten by Australia, who set a new world record with a time of three minutes and 59.583 seconds. At the track world championships in Copenhagen, he came fifth in the individual pursuit and won a bronze medal in the team pursuit. Wiggins was frustrated with his result in the individual pursuit at the world championships and became disillusioned with his future with Française des Jeux. British Cycling then enlisted the newly retired Chris Boardman as his mentor.\nIn May 2003, Wiggins made his Grand Tour debut at the Giro d'Italia. On the 18th stage he was eliminated from the race, finishing outside of the time limit in a group of 53 riders. In the summer he competed in the track world championships in Stuttgart, qualifying fastest in the individual pursuit, before beating Russia's Alexei Markov in the first round, setting up a place in the final against Australia's Luke Roberts. He beat Roberts by 0.736 seconds to win the gold medal, his first senior world title. He also came away with a silver medal in the team pursuit, beaten by Australia in the final, who broke their own world record with a time of three minutes and 57.280 seconds. In September, he won stage one of the Tour de l'Avenir, beating teammate Benoît Vaugrenard and Rabobank's Joost Posthuma by 14 seconds. In November, he won the Six Days of Ghent with Matthew Gilmore of Vlaanderen–T Interim.\n\nWiggins signed with Crédit Agricole for the 2004 season, advised by Boardman, who rode for them his entire professional road career. He began training for the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, at first struggling with illness and fitness, he arrived in peak form; he qualified for the individual pursuit with a time of four minutes and 15.165 seconds, an Olympic record and fifth fastest time in history. In the final, he beat McGee by over four seconds to win the gold medal. Wiggins was brought in to the team pursuit squad for the first round against France, replacing Bryan Steel, and advanced into the final, where the team were beaten by Australia, settling for the silver medal. Wiggins then partnered Rob Hayles in the Madison. With 90 laps left of the 200, Hayles crashed with Dutchman Robert Slippens, returning after a few laps. They lost a lap to their rivals, but with 30 to go Wiggins attacked, and they regained the lost lap, moving into second place. They lost points in the final sprint, moving them down to third, taking the bronze medal with 12 points, behind Switzerland on 15 and Australia on 22. Wiggins became the first British athlete in 40 years to win three medals at one Games, the last being Mary Rand at the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. On 31 December 2004, he was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2005 New Year Honours, for services to sport.\n\n\n=== 2005–2007: On the road ===\nIn early 2005, he revealed his desire to compete in road cycling, and in April won the 16 km (9.9 mi) time trial around the town of Briey in northeastern France, on the second stage of the Circuit de Lorraine. In September he won his first race stage since 2001, stage eight of the Tour de l'Avenir; finishing with teammate Saul Raisin, with third-placed Steve Cummings (Landbouwkrediet–Colnago) coming in three minutes and 24 seconds later. Wiggins competed in the Giro d'Italia, finishing 123rd overall. He came seventh in the time trial at the road world championships in Madrid, one minute and 31 seconds down on winner Michael Rogers of Australia. He moved to Cofidis for the 2006 season, and was selected to ride in the Tour de France, finishing his first Tour in 124th place.\nIn March 2007, Wiggins returned to the track for the track world championships in Palma, Majorca, his first appearance at the championships since 2004. In the qualifying round for the individual pursuit, he set his second fastest time since his personal best at the Olympics in Athens, with a time of four minutes and 15.976 seconds; he beat Germany's Robert Bartko in the final to win the gold, catching him after 2750 m. He then went on to win gold in the team pursuit, beating Ukraine in the final. He finished in 13th place in the Madison, with Rob Hayles.\n\nOn the road he won stage one of the Four Days of Dunkirk and the prologue of the Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré, before competing in the Tour de France and finishing fourth in the prologue in London. On stage six Wiggins launched a solo breakaway after 2 km (1.2 mi) of racing, leading the race for 190.5 km (118.4 mi), before being caught by the peloton with 7 km (4.3 mi) remaining. It was seen as a tribute to British rider Tom Simpson, on the 40th anniversary of his death in the 1967 Tour de France, but was a gift to his wife on her birthday, with Wiggins only finding out about the date's significance after the race. He received the stage's combativity award, for the most aggressive rider. Cofidis withdrew from the race before stage 16 after Cristian Moreni failed a doping test. Wiggins and his teammates were interviewed by police and had their hotel rooms searched. In the aftermath of the positive drug tests on Moreni and on race leader Alexander Vinokourov of Astana, Wiggins spoke out against dopers in the Tour and threw away his Cofidis kit in a bin in Pau Pyrénées Airport, vowing never to race for the team again.\nDespite this, Wiggins continued racing for Cofidis, and in August he won the time trial on stage four of the Tour du Poitou-Charentes. In September, with teammate Michiel Elijzen, he won the Duo Normand, a two-man team time trial over a course of 53.4 km (33.2 mi). His season on the road ended riding for Great Britain at the road world championships in Stuttgart, coming tenth in the time trial, two minutes and ten seconds behind winner Cancellara of Switzerland; a result he was disappointed with, after hoping to finish on the podium.\nIn September, he signed for the T-Mobile Team – later known as Team High Road – for the 2008 season, joining compatriot Mark Cavendish, forming a partnership in the Madison. Their first race was the Six Days of Ghent in November, finishing in tenth place; Wiggins still riding for Cofidis. Wiggins then made his only appearance for the T-Mobile Track Team – which is separate from the road team – at the Beijing round of the 2007–08 Track World Cup Classics in December, winning gold in the individual pursuit and silver in the Madison with Cavendish.\n\n\n=== 2008: Back to the track ===\nFor the 2008 season, Wiggins's focus was on the track and on the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, deciding not to compete in the Tour de France. In February he travelled to the United States to train, and rode the Tour of California, coming second in the prologue, behind Cancellara (Team CSC).\n\nIn March, Wiggins competed in the track world championships in Manchester, defending his individual pursuit title by beating Dutchman Jenning Huizenga in the final, his third world title in the discipline. He then won the team pursuit, setting a new world record of three minutes and 56.322 seconds in the final against Denmark. Wiggins was due to partner with Hayles in the Madison, but Hayles failed a routine blood test, and was subsequently banned for two weeks. Cavendish was then brought in as his replacement. At around halfway through the race they appeared to be out of contention, with their closest rivals all gaining a lap; but with 35 laps left to race, Wiggins launched an attack which helped them reach the field ten laps later, taking the lead, due to their superior points they had collected in the sprints. They held on to win the gold medal, finishing with 19 points, ahead of Germany on 13.\nWiggins then rode the Tour de Romandie and the Giro d'Italia, as preparation for the Olympics in August. At the Giro, he was part of the lead-out train that helped Cavendish win two stages. Wiggins came fourth in the final stage's 28.5 km (17.7 mi)-long time trial in Milan, six seconds behind teammate Marco Pinotti, finishing the race in 134th place, three hours, one minute and 39 seconds down on overall winner Alberto Contador of Astana.\nAt the Olympics, he began the defence of his title in the individual pursuit, qualifying with a time of four minutes and 15.031 seconds, breaking his own Olympic record from 2004. In the semi-final he beat Russia's Alexander Serov, before taking gold in the final against Hayden Roulston of New Zealand, becoming the first rider to defend an Olympic pursuit title successfully. He was a member of the team pursuit that broke the world record in the heats with a time of three minutes and 55.202 seconds. The following day, the team won the gold medal, beating Denmark by 6.7 seconds with another new world record of three minutes and 53.314 seconds, averaging a speed of 61.719 km/h (38.4 mph). He paired with Cavendish in the Madison, and as the reigning world champions, they were favourites for the gold medal, but they only finished ninth. Cavendish felt that Wiggins had not performed to the best of his ability in the Madison.\nIn September, Wiggins joined the American team Garmin–Slipstream for the 2009 season. On 14 December, he came ninth in the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award, with 5,633 votes, and was a member of the British cycling team that won the Team of the Year Award. On 31 December, he was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2009 New Year Honours.\n\n\n=== 2009: Tour de France breakthrough ===\nWiggins switched his focus to road and moved with his family to the city of Girona in north-east Spain, where Garmin–Slipstream were based. He started the season in February by helping the team win the opening team time trial of the Tour of Qatar, crossing the line first to take the leaders jersey. In March, he came second to Contador in the opening time trial of Paris–Nice, before riding Milan–San Remo and then placing second in the time trial at Critérium International. In April, he won the time trial on the final stage of the Three Days of De Panne, twenty seconds ahead of Vacansoleil rider Lieuwe Westra in second place, then had top-30 finishes in the Classics: Gent–Wevelgem and Paris–Roubaix. After finishing in 71st position in the Giro d'Italia and taking second place in the 14.4 km (8.9 mi)-long time trial on the final stage in Rome, he won the Beaumont Trophy, a domestic one-day race in Northumberland, using it as preparation for the Tour de France three weeks later.\n\nWiggins arrived at the Tour de France having lost 6 kg (13.2 lb), and was nicknamed \"Twiggo\", instead of the usual \"Wiggo\". He came third in the time trial on stage one in Monaco, 19 seconds behind Team Saxo Bank's Cancellara and one behind Contador. He then helped Garmin–Slipstream to second in stage four's team time trial, despite losing four riders. On stage seven he finished 12th in the first mountain finish and was in fifth place overall at the beginning of the second week. On stage fifteen in Verbier – the second mountain finish, Wiggins finished fifth, rising to third place overall. On stage 17 Contador, Andreas Klöden (Astana) and Team Saxo Bank riders Fränk and Andy Schleck attacked on the final climb – the Col de la Colombière, measuring 7.5 km (4.7 mi) at an average gradient of 8.5%, and was left with Astana's Lance Armstrong and Vincenzo Nibali of Liquigas, who let Wiggins do all the work before attacking one-kilometre from the summit. Wiggins failed to gain time on the descent and finished three minutes and seven seconds down on winner Fränk Schleck, dropping to sixth overall.\nWiggins moved back up to fourth, after finishing in second place in the time trial on stage 19, finishing in sixth place 42 seconds down on winner Contador. On stage 20 to Mont Ventoux, Wiggins was dropped by the yellow jersey group 1.4 km (0.9 mi) from the summit, finishing in tenth place and kept fourth overall, three seconds ahead of Fränk Schleck; he held that position in the final stage, equalling Robert Millar's highest ever finish by a British rider in the Tour. In October 2012, following the disqualification of Armstrong, who had originally placed third in the general classification, Wiggins was promoted to third place overall. This decision retroactively gave him the first podium finish by a British rider in Tour de France history.\nIn September, Wiggins won the national time trial championship in Buckinghamshire, and also in September at the road world championships in Mendrisio, Switzerland, was on course for a bronze medal in the time trial, until a mechanical problem and a delay getting a replacement bike ended with him finishing in 21st place. In October, he ended the season by winning the Herald Sun Tour in Victoria, Australia, after helping teammates for most of the race. He led the race after winning the time trial on stage five in Geelong, beating second-placed teammate Svein Tuft by fourteen seconds.\nWiggins had been contracted to ride for Garmin Slipstream again in 2010, but it was announced on 10 December that he was to leave to join Team Sky, having signed a four-year contract with the new British team.\n\n\n=== 2010: Move to Team Sky ===\nWiggins began 2010 as a team leader for the first time and his main target was to win the Tour de France. In February, he was part of the team that won the opening team time trial of the Tour of Qatar, before taking second place in the time trial on stage four of the Vuelta a Andalucía, behind Alex Rasmussen of Team Saxo Bank. He then went on to finish third at the Vuelta a Murcia in March, behind winner František Raboň of Team HTC–Columbia and Rabobank rider Denis Menchov in second.\n\nIn May, Wiggins took his first Grand Tour victory on the wet streets of Amsterdam in the opening time trial of the Giro d'Italia, becoming the second Briton to wear the pink jersey after Cavendish in 2009. A series of crashes on the second stage put him 32 seconds behind in the general classification to the new leader Cadel Evans (BMC Racing Team). Another crash on stage three cost him a further three minutes and 58 seconds. He recovered time on stage 11, finishing fourth, from a group of 56 riders, and lay tenth overall. He faded quickly towards the end of the race, however, losing time in the final stages. He came seventh in the 15.3 km (9.5 mi) final time trial in Verona. He finished the race 40th overall, one hour, 47 minutes and 58 seconds behind overall winner Ivan Basso of Liquigas–Doimo. Throughout the race he told the press he was saving himself for the Tour de France, when asked about his form, but in fact felt physically unfit.\nWiggins then went to a training camp in the Alps, testing the mountain stages used for the Tour; he struggled to find his fitness. He made a poor start in the Tour, taking 77th place in the prologue after an early starting position left him exposed to poor conditions. He finished eighth on stage three, as cobblestones troubled a number of favourites, but on stage eight at Morzine-Avoriaz, the first mountain summit finish of the Tour, he could only manage 19th place, losing one minute and 45-second to stage winner Andy Schleck (Team Saxo Bank). The following day, he lost more time, coming 13th and losing four minutes and 55 seconds to the main contenders. He finished in 36th place on stage fourteen, falling to 18th overall, 11 minutes and 30 seconds behind race leader Andy Schleck; to the press he described his form as \"consistently mediocre\". On stage 19's time trial from Bordeaux to Pauillac, he finished in ninth place, three minutes and 33 seconds behind winner Cancellara. Wiggins finished the Tour in 24th place, 39 minutes and seven seconds down on winner Contador and seven places behind teammate Thomas Löfkvist. In February 2012, Contador was found guilty of doping and Wiggins's overall position was upgraded to 23rd.\nHe returned to racing in August, at the GP Ouest–France in Plouay. In September, he retained his title at the national time trial championships, around the 52.7 km (32.7 mi)-long course in South Wales, before finishing the season at the Tour of Britain. His season ended at the Giro di Lombardia, where he was forced to abandon following a crash. Over the winter he trained with the Great Britain squad at Manchester Velodrome.\n\n\n=== 2011: Dauphiné and Vuelta ===\nWiggins was team leader of Team Sky again at the start of 2011. He opted not to enter the Giro d'Italia, concentrating instead on shorter events and the classics before undertaking altitude training to improve his climbing for the Tour de France. His season began at the Tour of Qatar in February, before winning the team pursuit at the Manchester round of the 2009–10 Track World Cup Classics, with a time of three minutes 55.438, the fifth-fastest time. He then came second in the 27 km (16.8 mi)-long time trial on the sixth stage of the Paris–Nice in March, 20 seconds behind Tony Martin of HTC–Highroad. He finished third overall, behind Martin and Team RadioShack rider Andreas Klöden. In April, he rode Paris–Roubaix, and then the Tour de Romandie, finishing third in time trial on stage and helped lead-out teammate Ben Swift to victory on the final stage. In March, he finished second in the time trial on the third stage of the Critérium International, four seconds down on Klöden. In May, he won the 26 km (16.2 mi)-long time trial on stage four of the Bayern Rundfahrt, beating Leopard Trek's Cancellara by 33 seconds, and finished the event in 14th place overall, while also helping teammate Geraint Thomas to win the event.\n\nHe then went for altitude training in the Alps, in preparation for the Tour. He took the overall lead in the Critérium du Dauphiné after finishing second in the time trial on stage three. On the final three mountain stages, Wiggins maintained his lead over second-placed Evans to win the race, at that time his biggest victory on the road. In June, Wiggins won the national road race championship in Northumberland. On the seventh stage of the Tour, a crash around 40 km (24.9 mi) from the finish in Châteauroux forced Wiggins to retire from the race with a broken collarbone.\nAfter he had recovered from his injuries, Team Sky confirmed that Wiggins would ride in the Vuelta a España for the first time, as well as in the road world championships. Wiggins also confirmed that he would take part the Tour in 2012, even though the Olympics would follow soon after. The Vuelta and the world championships were seen as a dress rehearsal for 2012. He had a difficult start to the Vuelta, as Team Sky finished 42 seconds behind winners Leopard Trek in the opening team time trial in Benidorm, but a strong first week brought him back into contention, leaving him twentieth overall after stage eight. On stage nine, Wiggins and teammate Chris Froome attacked on the final climb to finish fourth and fifth respectively, gaining time on Team Katusha rider Joaquim Rodríguez, Michele Scarponi (Lampre–ISD) and other contenders. Wiggins was expected to take the overall lead in the time trial on the following day, but Froome confounded expectations by finishing second on the stage, and Wiggins only rose to third overall. He eventually took the lead after the rest day. Stage fourteen saw Wiggins and Froome gaining on most of their rivals. However, Wiggins lost the lead to Geox–TMC's Juan José Cobo on stage fifteen, when he finished fifth on the climb up the Angliru and dropped to third in the standings, behind Froome, who was second. Wiggins finished the Vuelta in third place – his first podium finish in a Grand Tour.  In July 2019, Wiggins was retrospectively promoted to second place in the Vuelta after the UCI stripped Cobo of the win for an anti-doping violation.\nIn September, he competed in the road world championships in Copenhagen, he won the silver medal in the 46.3 km (28.8 mi) time trial, finishing one minute and fifteen seconds behind Germany's Martin, and four seconds ahead of reigning champion Cancellara (Switzerland) in third. Four days later, he was part of the Great Britain team that set up Cavendish's victory in the road race; Wiggins took over lead on the final lap of 17 around the 14 km (8.7 mi) circuit, setting a high pace to chase down the breakaway and stop attacks from developing.\n\n\n=== 2012: Tour de France and Olympic gold ===\nIn 2012, Wiggins continued to focus on road racing. The individual pursuit was removed from the programme at the Olympics later in the year, and in December 2011 coach Rod Ellingworth told The Guardian, \"The chances of him doing the team pursuit are really slim now\". He began his 2012 season with third place in the Volta ao Algarve, including victory in the concluding time trial, edging out world champion Martin (Omega Pharma–Quick-Step) by less than a second.\n\nIn March, Wiggins finished second in the opening time trial of the Paris–Nice, one second behind Vacansoleil–DCM's Gustav Larsson, who avoided the wet conditions, unlike Wiggins and the other favourites that set off later in the day. The following day, he took the lead in the race after being part of a 30-man breakaway as the peloton split into echelons. He held the lead for the rest of the event, winning the final stage, a time-trial on the Col d'Èze, to win the race by eight seconds overall and become the first British rider to win the race since Tom Simpson in 1967. His final stage victory was also good enough to give him the points classification. Wiggins's time is the fastest time for the traditional time-trial on the Col d'Èze.\nOn the stage one of the Tour de Romandie in April, Wiggins took a rare sprint victory from a group of 59 riders. He lost the jersey to Rabobank rider Luis León Sánchez after Sánchez won two consecutive stages, but won the final time trial, despite suffering a dropped chain, to take the overall victory and become the first Briton to win the race in its 65-year history.\nIn June, Wiggins competed in the Critérium du Dauphiné, and began the defence of his title with a second-place finish in the prologue, one second behind Team Jayco–AlUla's Luke Durbridge. He took the overall lead the following day, after Durbridge was dropped on one of the stage's six climbs. Wiggins won the fourth stage of the race, a time trial over a course of 53.5 km (33.2 mi), 34 seconds ahead of Martin, his nearest rival, extending his lead over him to 38 seconds. He held the lead to the end, eventually winning by over a minute, with teammate Rogers in second place.\n\nWiggins entered the Tour de France as one of the favourites to win it. Wiggins began the Tour with second place in the prologue, behind Cancellara of RadioShack–Nissan. He took over the yellow jersey by finishing third on stage seven, the first mountaintop finish, becoming the fifth British rider to wear the jersey, and first since David Millar in 2000. Wiggins won the time trial on stage nine. On stage ten, he and his team staved off an attack by Nibali on the descent of the Col du Grand Colombier, with Nibali subsequently accusing Wiggins of disrespecting him: \"According to Nibali, Wiggins taunted him at the finish. He turned, looked him in the face and waved\". Wiggins extended his lead on stage 11 after Froome helped him to bridge across to his rivals, who had attacked on the finishing climb to La Toussuire. Froome accelerated about 4 kilometres (2.5 mi) from the finish, and was ordered via his team radio to wait for his leader.\nDuring stage fourteen, a mountain stage, a spectator threw carpet tacks onto the narrow road at the top of the Mur de Péguère climb. Several riders suffered punctures, including Evans, the defending champion, who lost approximately two minutes while his team repaired his bicycle. Wiggins and his fellow members of Team Sky emerged without a puncture. Believing that a puncture resulting from an unfortunate incident should not determine the fate of a competitor, Wiggins then had his teammates and the rest of the peloton slow down to allow Evans and other affected cyclists to catch up. It was perceived as a generous act of sportsmanship and Wiggins was called \"Le Gentleman\" as a result. On stage 16, Wiggins and Froome were able to follow attacks by Nibali on the final climb of the day and finished with the same time as the Italian. On stage 17, the final mountain stage, Froome and Wiggins finished together in second and third place respectively, with Nibali coming in 19 seconds later. Wiggins won the time trial on stage 19, giving him a lead of three minutes and 21 seconds at the start of the final stage. On that stage, Wiggins helped teammate Cavendish achieve his fourth consecutive victory on the Champs-Élysées and confirmed his own overall victory in the process. Wiggins became the first, and is currently the only person in history to win the Paris–Nice, the Tour de Romandie, the Critérium du Dauphiné and the Tour de France in a single season.\n\nWiggins was selected to participate in two road cycling events at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London – the time trial and the road race. Wiggins finished 103rd in the road race. Wiggins won gold in the time trial ahead of Martin of Germany and Froome of Britain. By doing so he became the most decorated British Olympian, with seven medals, surpassing the six won by Sir Steve Redgrave. This record was soon shared with Sir Chris Hoy, who also obtained his seventh Olympic medal in 2012. Wiggins entered the Guinness World Records, becoming the first cyclist to win an Olympic gold medal and the Tour de France in the same year. Wiggins's boyhood idol Miguel Induráin won five consecutive Tours between 1991 and 1995, and won a gold medal at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.\nWiggins returned to racing at the Tour of Britain in September, pulling out on the sixth stage with a stomach bug. The road race at the road world championships in Limburg, Netherlands, was his last of the season. In October he was awarded the prestigious Vélo d'Or trophy in recognition of his achievements in 2012. In November he was involved in a road accident and taken to hospital with suspected broken ribs, but was released next day with only minor injuries. In December he won the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award with 492,064 (30.25%) of the votes cast. Wiggins was knighted in the 2013 New Years Honours for services to cycling, although he claimed he would use the title for 'comedy purposes', stating that he felt \"a little bit inferior\" to others receiving knighthoods saying \"I've won a bike race, you know, and I feel a little bit inferior to everyone\", saying \"I was just talking to some of the other people getting stuff, and asking them what they've been honoured for, and they're historic things, ground-breaking sciences or whatever\". He was among the nominees for the Laureus World Sports Award for Sportsman of the Year, with Jamaican athlete Usain Bolt taking the prize.\n\n\n=== 2013: Giro d'Italia and Tour of Britain ===\n\nIt was widely expected that Wiggins would ride to retain his Tour de France title in 2013. However, in February he asserted that his focus for the season would be the Giro d'Italia, after which he would ride the Tour de France in support of teammate Froome. In April he let it be known that he desired to win another Tour, and had hopes of achieving the Tour and Giro double – a feat that has not been achieved since Marco Pantani in 1998.\nWiggins participated in a winter training camp in Mallorca. His first race of the season was the Tour of Oman in February. On the first stage he was caught behind a crash, the time delay pushing him back to the back of the field. For the remainder of the race Wiggins helped Froome, who won the overall classification. Wiggins opted not to defend his title at the Paris–Nice, or ride the Tirreno–Adriatico, instead participating in a training camp on Mount Teide in Tenerife. He returned to action at the Volta a Catalunya in March, finishing the race in fifth place overall, 54 seconds behind winner Dan Martin of Garmin–Sharp.\nIn April, Wiggins rode the four-day Giro del Trentino in Northern Italy as preparation for the Giro d'Italia. The first day's race schedule consisted of a road race followed by a team time trial. An unexpected breakaway in the road race caused Wiggins to lose over six minutes. However, he led the team to victory later in the day during the team time trial. On stage two, he cut his deficit to race leader Maxime Bouet of Ag2r–La Mondiale in half, lifting Wiggins into the top-five overall. On the fourth and final stage, Wiggins suffered a mechanical problem at the foot of the final 14.6 km (9.1 mi) climb. He ended up finishing the race in fifth place, one minute and 40 seconds down on winner Nibali (Astana).\nWiggins entered the Giro d'Italia as one of the favourites for the general classification. Team Sky won the stage two team time trial on the island of Ischia, covering the distance of 17.4 km (10.8 mi) 14 seconds quicker than Nibali's Astana squad. On stage four, Wiggins lost 17 seconds after being delayed by a crash within the final 3 km (1.9 mi), dropping him in the standings from second to sixth. A wet stage seven saw Wiggins crash while making a descent some 6 km (3.7 mi) from the finish, placing him in difficulty.  Teammates Rigoberto Urán and Sergio Henao helped pace him back toward the leaders, but could not close the gap.  Wiggins finished 90 seconds down on the race favourites, dropping him out of the race's top 20. In the following stage, a 54.8 km (34.1 mi) time trial, Wiggins placed second to compatriot Alex Dowsett of Movistar Team. A bike change compelled by a puncture cost Wiggins some time, and he ended up finishing the race ten seconds down on Dowsett. Wiggins struggled on the wet roads of stage nine, losing touch with the peloton on the descent of the Vallombrosa some 60 km (37.3 mi) from the finish.  A group of teammates helped pace him back, and the gap was closed. Following stage 11 Wiggins revealed that he was suffering from a chest infection.  He withdrew from the race the following day, after losing over three minutes on the day's stage.\n\nThe presence of a knee injury was disclosed to the public on 31 May, which forced Wiggins to forgo defending his title in the Tour de France. He subsequently suggested he may never ride the Tour again. He returned to racing at the Tour de Pologne, winning stage seven's 37 km (23.0 mi) time trial, 56 seconds ahead of second placed Cancellara.\nIn September, Wiggins led Team Sky at his home race, the Tour of Britain. He won the time trial on stage three on roads around Knowsley Safari Park, close to his home in Lancashire. He held the lead for the rest of the week to win the race for the first time, and take his first stage race victory of the season. The following week at the world championships, he took the silver medal in the time trial, behind winner Tony Martin and ahead of Cancellara in a repeat of the 2011 podium. Wiggins was also selected to ride the road race, but abandoned after one lap, and was soon followed by the other British riders as none finished the race.\n\n\n=== 2014: World time trial champion and track return ===\n\nWiggins had stated that his main targets for 2014 were the Paris–Roubaix one day Classic, the Tour of California and the road world championships, as well as riding the Tour de France in support of Chris Froome.\nWiggins rode the Tour of Flanders as a replacement for the injured Ian Stannard, and finished 32nd, one minute 43 seconds behind the winner Fabian Cancellara, having helped Geraint Thomas on his way to eighth. Wiggins contested Paris–Roubaix for the first time since 2011, becoming the first former Tour de France winner to compete at the race since Greg LeMond in 1992, and secured ninth position, his only top ten finish in a monument as part of a group twenty seconds down on race winner Niki Terpstra.\nAt the Tour of California, Wiggins won the time trial on stage two by a margin of 40 seconds over second placed Rohan Dennis (Garmin–Sharp) to move into the overall lead which he would keep for the rest of the race. Despite that good result, Wiggins was not selected by his team to be riding the Tour de France, prompting his return to the track cycling team as preparation for the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.\nAt the Commonwealth Games in July, Wiggins participated in the 4000m team pursuit with Steven Burke, Ed Clancy and Andy Tennant, managing to win the silver medal. The following day, Wiggins announced that he was \"done with the road\" and that he would likely never ride a grand tour again. He did not rule out some road events but wants to concentrate his training on preparation for the team pursuit at the 2016 Summer Olympics.\nIn September, Wiggins rode the Tour of Britain, winning the final 8.8 km (5.5 mi) time trial in London and ending the race in third overall behind the winner, Garmin–Sharp's Dylan van Baarle, and Michał Kwiatkowski (Omega Pharma–Quick-Step). Wiggins then won gold in the time trial at the world road championships in Ponferrada, Spain, with a winning margin of 26 seconds over Tony Martin over the 47.1 km (29.3 mi) course.\n\n\n=== 2015: Paris–Roubaix, WIGGINS and hour record ===\n\nIn January 2015, it was confirmed that Wiggins had signed a contract extension with Team Sky to the end of April 2015, with a focus on attempting to win Paris–Roubaix, before transferring to his newly founded WIGGINS team in order to prepare alongside other members of the British track endurance squad for the team pursuit at the 2016 Summer Olympics. It was also confirmed that he would attempt to break the hour record in 2015. In March, he confirmed that he would make his debut with his eponymous team at the inaugural Tour de Yorkshire at the start of May.\nEarly in the season, Wiggins rode the Tour of Qatar, in which he lost out on contention for the general classification after being caught out by a split in the peloton and then finished third in the race's individual time trial stage behind Cancellara and Niki Terpstra, his first opportunity to wear his rainbow skinsuit. Wiggins then took part in the traditional opening race of the classics season, Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, finishing 44th as his teammate Ian Stannard took victory.\nWiggins returned to Paris–Nice, a race he had won in 2012. The race opened and closed with time-trials; Wiggins finished 12th in the prologue, did not feature in the following five stages, often riding at the back of the peloton, and then withdrew before the traditional mountain time-trial up the Col d'Èze, a stage for which Wiggins holds the fastest ever time, a legacy of his 2012 victory there. Again, his teammate Richie Porte was victorious in the race.\n\nWiggins was set to ride E3 Harelbeke in March, a return to the cobbled classics in the lead up to his main objective of Paris–Roubaix, but withdrew. Instead he rode Gent–Wevelgem two days later; however, he abandoned the race, which was hit by severe weather conditions with much heavy wind and rain, and only 39 riders finished the race. During the mid-week Three Days of De Panne, which began on 31 March, Wiggins acted as a lead-out man of Sky's sprinter, Elia Viviani, and then convincingly won the final stage's short time trial, expected to be his last in Sky colours, which also gave him 3rd place overall in the race.\nAt Paris–Roubaix, Wiggins's much publicised last race with Sky and primary goal of the early season, he finished in 18th position. He attacked with 30 km (18.6 mi) left to race, but was reabsorbed by the peloton. A few days after the race it was announced that Wiggins would make his bid to break the hour record on 7 June at Lee Valley VeloPark. He participated to the Tour de Yorkshire with WIGGINS Team, but did not register a significant result. A few weeks after leaving Team Sky, Wiggins said he felt \"liberated\" and \"happier\". On 7 June 2015, Wiggins broke the hour record, riding 54.526 km (33.881 mi), surpassing Dowsett's mark of 52.937 km (32.894 mi), set five weeks earlier, by more than 3%.\nRoubaix, his first top-ten finish in a 'monument' classic, effectively marked the end of Wiggin's elite road career. That career was unusually brief by professional standard; his unexpectedly high finish in 2009 Tour de France led to his high-profile transfer to Team Sky for the following year, and a difficult first season. From 2011 through 2015, however, he had a remarkable run of successes including world and Olympic time trial titles, a Tour de France title and podium place in the Vuelta a Espana in 2011, and wins in almost all the major one week stage races between 2011 and 2013, including a Paris-Nice and two Criteriums du Dauphine, becoming the first man to win a treble of the Paris-Nice, the Dauphine and the Tour du Romandie, and the Tour de France in one season during his annus mirabilis in 2012. By 2014, however, he had already been eclipsed by his super -domestique Chris Froome in the Sky pecking order, incentivizing his return to the track in time for one last run at the Olympic Games and a fifth Olympic gold medal.\nOn 16 August, Wiggins joined Cavendish on the track for the first time since the 2008 Olympics, winning the Madison in the first round of the Revolution cycling series at the newly opened Derby Velodrome. In October, Wiggins took his first gold medal at the European track championships when he was part of the British squad that won the team pursuit.\n\n\n=== 2016: Fifth Olympic gold and retirement ===\n\nWiggins competed at the world championships in London, where he took two medals: in the team pursuit, he was part of the British squad that qualified for the final, where they took the silver behind Australia despite leading with 500 metres to go and going on to set the fastest time in competition by a British quartet since 2012. However Wiggins said that he was happy with his performance, stating \"that (was) the strongest I've been in a team pursuit, so there's a bit of life left in me yet, and I've got another four or five months to get a bit better\". Subsequently, he raced with Cavendish in the madison, where they clinched their second world title in the discipline as a pairing using similar tactics to their 2008 win: accumulating points in the sprints in the early stages of the race, before making up a one lap deficit on their French, Colombian and Swiss rivals by working with the Spanish pairing of Sebastián Mora and Albert Torres in a breakaway, taking the lead and holding on for the win despite Cavendish crashing with 11 laps to go.\nThrough the spring of 2016 Wiggins focused on training for the Olympics, limiting his road racing to a small number of events, finishing low down the placings in all of them. As part of a five-man squad for the team pursuit, Wiggins was reported to be breaking world records in Olympic training, despite apparent disagreements between Wiggins and Cavendish, who was nominated as the squad's fifth rider in order to allow him to enter the omnium at the games. The team pursuit squad achieved the fastest time in qualification for the tournament, before reaching the final with a world record time in a victory against New Zealand. In the final, Great Britain defeated Australia to bring Wiggins his eighth Olympic medal, and his fifth gold. Subsequently, Wiggins announced his plan to retire after the Six Days of Ghent in November. He plans to expand his activities in supporting and running Team Wiggins, including an aim to create a women's team. In his penultimate racing event, the Six Days of London, Wiggins placed second overall with Cavendish, before the pair won his final event, the Six Days of Ghent. After the event, Wiggins confirmed that this had been his last race as a team with Cavendish, but that he may go back on his decision to retire, in the right circumstances. However, on 28 December 2016, he announced that he was retiring from professional cycling saying \"2016 is the end of the road for this chapter, onwards and upwards, 'feet on the ground, head in the clouds' kids from Kilburn don't win Olympic Golds and Tour de Frances! They do now.\"\n\n\n== Controversy around therapeutic use exemptions ==\nThe leaking of his personal medical history by a group of hackers called Fancy Bear, in September 2016, raised questions about Wiggins's use of therapeutic use exemptions (TUEs), which allow athletes with certified medical conditions to take otherwise banned substances so as to allow them to compete with healthy athletes.\nThe leaked files show that he received six TUEs during his career for substances which are otherwise banned by WADA. In 2008, he was granted TUEs for salbutamol (which has since been legalised), formoterol and budesonide to treat asthma. Wiggins later received three intramuscular injections of the drug triamcinolone, a powerful corticosteroid. Triamcinolone is a banned substance because it allows riders to lose weight while maintaining power. The injections were administered to treat hayfever shortly before the 2011 and 2012 Tour de France races, and the 2013 Giro d'Italia.\nDr. Jeroen Swart, the South Africa-based exercise physiologist who oversaw Chris Froome's independent physiological testing, has suggested that the 2012 injection of triamcinolone ahead of Wiggins's historic Tour de France victory may have been administered as a preventive measure, rather than to treat existing symptoms, even though it is not a first-line therapy.\nWhilst the use of banned performance-enhancing substances under TUEs is permitted by the sporting authorities provided the exemption was granted in terms of the WADA rules, questions have been raised about the in-competition use of such drugs. Dr Jeroen Swart questioned the choice of medication, the timing of the injections, the presence of disgraced doctor Geert Leinders on Wiggins's team at the time, and the fact that Wiggins said in his 2012 autobiography My Time that he had only ever received injections for immunisations and some drips.\nPrentice Steffen, who was team doctor at Garmin–Slipstream when Wiggins rode for the team in 2009, said in a 2016 interview with the BBC that he was \"surprised\" that Wiggins was granted TUEs for the injection of triamcinolone immediately before three Grand Tours, that the decision by the team to apply for these TUEs was \"questionable\", and that he felt they should not have been granted. Wiggins has denied that Geert Leinders had any direct involvement in his taking of the TUE drugs.\n\n\n=== Jiffy-bag scandal ===\nUK Anti-Doping (UKAD), an independent body which is responsible for planning and implementing anti-doping programs in UK sport, began a 14-month investigation in 2016 into the contents of a padded mailing bag which was delivered to Team Sky at the 2011 Critérium du Dauphiné for Wiggins's use. In November 2017, it found that there was insufficient evidence to conclude that the bag had contained a banned substance. UKAD reached its conclusion because of insufficient and lost medical records within British Cycling and Team Sky.\nThe package was collected from British Cycling's office in Manchester by the British Cycling women's manager, Simon Cope, on the request of Shane Sutton, then the technical director for British Cycling. Cope carried the package on a flight to Geneva, after which he drove to meet Richard Freeman, the British Cycling doctor who administered the drug to Wiggins. Cope denied knowing what was in the package.\nUKAD began its investigation in 2016 following a tip-off that the bag delivered to Wiggins contained the banned corticosteroid triamcinolone, which allows riders to lose weight while maintaining power. UKAD's investigation was hindered by Freeman, who was too ill to give evidence to the inquiry. Freeman had also failed to upload medical records as required, and later reported that his laptop had been stolen while on holiday. He had since resigned from British Cycling. The head of UKAD, Nicole Sapstead, had testified to parliament that there were no records of British Cycling purchasing Fluimucil in the UK. She told the MPs that British Cycling had however purchased significant amounts of triamcinolone, a corticosteroid generally banned in sport, which Wiggins is known to have used in other cases under a TUE.\nIn December 2016, Sir Dave Brailsford, who ran British Cycling and Team Sky in 2011, informed the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee that the package contained Fluimucil, a brand of legal expectorant, available over-the-counter at chemists in France without a prescription. Nigel Huddleston MP said it was \"extraordinary\" that a select committee was required for this simple fact to emerge, and he questioned \"the transparency, communication and governance of UK cycling\".\nUK Anti-Doping closed its investigation into the package after being unable to find evidence that it contained a banned substance. It released a statement which said that its investigation had been hampered by the lack of availability of detailed medical records. Parts of the investigation remain open, as UKAD has not yet been able to establish why products containing testosterone were delivered to the national cycling centre.\nDamian Collins MP, the chairman of the select committee, said that the decision was \"not an exoneration of anyone\", and that \"If Sky and British Cycling had kept proper medical records, this could have been wrapped up a lot sooner. It is unacceptable. A cloud now hangs over one of our greatest Olympians.\"\nWiggins has always denied any wrongdoing on his part, and has described the investigation as a \"malicious witch-hunt\".\nThe Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee made two major findings against Wiggins in a report released in March 2018. The committee believed Team Sky used the drug triamcinolone to \"enhance the performances of riders and not just to treat medical need\". The committee noted that there is no written evidence to substantiate a claim by Team Sky boss David Brailsford that the \"jiffy-bag\" contained Fluimucil. The committee stated that Team Sky doctor Richard Freeman, who had originally failed to record Wiggins's use of medical products, could no longer confirm that the contents of the bag were Fluimucil. It also noted that Freeman was \"the only reported source of this information.\"\n\n\n=== Report of the House of Commons Committee for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport ===\nOn 5 March 2018, the British House of Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee published their report called \"Combatting doping in sport\". Their inquiry spanned the work of two committees, and started in August 2015. Among other things, the committee looked into doping in cycling, in response to the Fancy Bear hacking into the database of WADA and their publication of Therapeutic Use Exemption certificates (TUEs) issued to Bradley Wiggins in 2011, 2012 and 2013. They specifically inquired into the medication used at that time by Wiggins and Team Sky. In their conclusions, in paragraph 110, they state as follows:\n\nFrom the evidence that has been received by the Committee regarding the use of triamcinolone at Team Sky during the period under investigation, and particularly in 2012, we believe that this powerful corticosteroid was being used to prepare Bradley Wiggins, and possibly other riders supporting him, for the Tour de France. The purpose of this was not to treat medical need, but to improve his power to weight ratio ahead of the race. The application for the TUE for the triamcinolone for Bradley Wiggins, ahead of the 2012 Tour de France, also meant that he benefited from the performance enhancing properties of this drug during the race. This does not constitute a violation of the WADA code, but it does cross the ethical line that David Brailsford says he himself drew for Team Sky. In this case, and contrary to the testimony of David Brailsford in front of the Committee, we believe that drugs were being used by Team Sky, within the WADA rules, to enhance the performance of riders, and not just to treat medical need.\nThe committee noted in its report that there is no written evidence to substantiate a claim by Team Sky boss David Brailsford that the \"jiffy-bag\" couriered to Team Sky at the 2011 Critérium du Dauphiné for Wiggins's use contained Fluimucil, a legal expectorant used for clearing mucus in case of chronic bronchitis, else as antidote in case of paracetamol overdose. The committee now says that Team Sky doctor Richard Freeman, who had failed to properly record Wiggins's use of medical products, can no longer confirm it was in fact Fluimucil. They also noted that Freeman was \"the only reported source of this information.\"\n\nThe BBC called the report \"A devastating blow to the reputations of some of the biggest names in British sport\", and The Irish Times reported that Wiggins's Tour de France win is now in question. The Guardian wrote that: \"It is only three months since we were last asking whether the latest crisis would signal the end for Team Sky. Now here we are again, wondering how much longer this organisation can continue when every scintilla of credibility they had as a completely clean team has been decimated by another inquiry.\"\nWiggins and Team Sky have continued to deny that any drugs were used without medical need.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\n\n\n=== Family ===\nWiggins was married to Catherine (née Cockram), whom he met during the 2002 Commonwealth Games, after first meeting as juniors in 1997; they have two children together, Ben and Isabella. Ben is also a racing cyclist, who has enjoyed success at the junior level, including winning the points race title at the 2022 European Track Championships and taking the silver medal in the time trial at the 2023 Road World Championships. Their family lived in Eccleston, Lancashire. In May 2020, it was announced that Wiggins and his wife had separated.\nBradley Wiggins endured a difficult relationship with his father Gary Wiggins, who made no effort to contact Bradley for 14 years, since leaving the family when Bradley was two years old. Bradley only knew his father had been a professional cyclist. Their first meeting was in 1999, when Bradley was at a training camp in Australia; also meeting his two half-sisters from relationships his father had in Australia before and after the one with his mother. They next met the following year, when Bradley was back in Australia training and had gone out three weeks in advance to stay with Gary. Bradley quickly became disillusioned at his father's alcohol and drug problems, and they never met again. Gary Wiggins died in Aberdeen, New South Wales in 2008, aged 55.  Bradley did not attend the funeral.\n\n\n=== Interests ===\n\nWiggins is a well-known mod and owns a collection of classic motor scooters and guitars from the 1960s and 1970s. He is a keen musician and guitarist and in December 2012, he made a surprise appearance at a Paul Weller charity concert, playing guitar on \"That's Entertainment\"; and together recorded a special for BBC Radio 6 Music discussing their love of music and mod culture, broadcast on Boxing Day. He supports Liverpool Football Club and Wigan Warriors rugby league club, and in 2012 the latter gave him a life membership, which he described as his highlight of the year. Wiggins presented the winner of the Super League's 2012 Man of Steel Award to the Warriors player Sam Tomkins.\nIn July 2012, it was announced that Wiggins would collaborate with the Fred Perry clothing label \"to develop an authentic, non-technical range of cycle wear\". The clothing range, known as the Bradley Wiggins X Fred Perry Collaboration, was launched in July 2012 under a six-year contract.\nAlso in 2012, Wiggins launched the Bradley Wiggins Foundation to draw people into sport and regular exercise. The foundation backed the professional women's team Wiggle–Honda, which launched for the 2013 season. However, in February 2015, Wiggins announced that the Foundation would be wound down in the run-up to the 2016 Olympics.\nIn August 2019, Wiggins announced his intention to become a social worker after enrolling for a degree at the Open University. He said that his upbringing, in Kilburn, London, gave him a \"mental toughness\" that would be helpful in supporting others. He also said that he doesn't \"give a shit\" about his cycling career and that he is \"detached from it\".\n\n\n=== Personal and financial problems ===\nIn a period after the 2004 Olympics, Wiggins started to drink heavily as he struggled to cope with his newfound fame. He stopped when his son Ben was born.\nIn July 2020, the High Court in London dismissed a bankruptcy petition brought against Wiggins for unpaid tax by the HMRC, after Wiggins managed to make an agreement with HMRC representatives for payment of tax. In October 2020, it was reported that Wiggins had wound up his cycling team, Team Wiggins, with £1m-plus debts. Wiggins had invested a considerable amount of his personal wealth into the enterprise, but it proved unsustainable due to the lack of commercial partners. Although it was reported at the time that the winding up of Wiggins' cycling firms did not affect Wiggins' personal solvency, Wiggins' financial troubles started to attract media attention in the coming years.\nIn November 2023, it was reported that Wiggins was at risk of facing bankruptcy proceedings as the liquidators of his company revealed that a claim against him for nearly £1m has still not been paid. It later emerged that Wiggins had entered into an individual voluntary arrangement in 2020, to try to avoid bankruptcy. In January 2024, Wiggins failed his IVA, and bankruptcy proceedings were initiated against him.\nWiggins was declared bankrupt at Lancaster County Court on June 3. Wiggins was reported to be 'homeless' and sleeping at various addresses, including his ex-wife's house. It was reported that Wiggins' dire financial situation may force him to sell his Olympic medals. Wiggins himself was reported to be 'embarrassed' by his financial predicament, and its becoming public. He revealed in 2025 that following his retirement from cycling, he had developed a cocaine addiction.\n\n\n=== Other ===\n\nAt the 2012 Olympics, Wiggins rang the Olympic Bell to mark the start of the opening ceremony inside the Olympic Stadium.\nWiggins has written a number of books about his career. The first, entitled In Pursuit of Glory, was published in 2008 and covers his success as a track cyclist up to the Beijing Olympics. It was updated in 2009 to include his 2009 Tour de France fourth place (later updated to third). On Tour was published in 2010 and covers that year's Tour de France. Following his success at the 2012 Tour de France he published The Bradley Wiggins Opus. That same year he also published My Time which largely deals with the 2012 Tour de France and Olympics. My Story was published in 2013 and is an edited version of My Time for younger readers. In 2015, he added My Hour which tells of his successful attempt at the Hour record. In 2018, he added a seventh book, Icons, which details some of the riders who inspired him.\nWiggins's power output has been measured to be over 450 watts at anaerobic threshold.\nIn March 2014, Wiggins made an appearance as himself in an episode of BBC Radio 4's soap opera The Archers as part of the Sport Relief charitable appeal. Two years later he appeared in a comedy sketch filmed at the London Olympic Velodrome with Michael Crawford on Sport Relief 2016 where Crawford reprised his Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em character Frank Spencer.\nA sculpture dedicated to and inspired by Wiggins was unveiled in 2014 at St Augustine's CE High School, his former school.\nOn 5 January 2017, it was announced that Wiggins would be a contestant on the Channel 4 winter sports reality television programme The Jump. However he was forced to withdraw from the show during the second week when he fractured his leg during training.\nIn June 2017, Wiggins revealed that he had taken up rowing on a serious basis after initially using it as a means to keep fit, with fellow Olympic champion James Cracknell as his coach. He stated that he was planning to compete in the British Indoor Rowing Championships in December of the same year with a view to competing at the 2020 Summer Olympics. He competed in the elite 2000m at the Championships, finishing 21st in a time of 6:22.5 after a slow start due to mistakenly believing that the race had false started.\nIn 2018, Wiggins launched The Bradley Wiggins Show, a cycle racing podcast produced in association with Eurosport, for a series of four episodes covering that year's Tour de France. The series received over a million downloads, and the show was renewed for a 20-episode run the following year, featuring discussion of the spring classics, Grand Tours and Road World Championships. He also took up punditry work for the channel in 2019, providing studio-based analysis for the Giro d'Italia before acting as a motorbike-mounted reporter for the Tour de France.\nIn July 2019, Comedy Central announced that it had approved the production of five episodes of Gods of the Game, a half-hour gameshow to be hosted by Wiggins featuring members of the public competing against elite sportspeople, including Mo Farah, Chris Hoy, Rebecca Adlington, Nicola Adams and Tim Henman, in \"comedy versions\" of their sports. Wiggins co-presented the programme with Tom Rosenthal. In a review of the show, Stuart Heritage of The Guardian wrote that \"Gods of the Game is shooting for high-concept absurdity, but for the most part it falls short and only manages to be slightly diverting\".\nWiggins said in an interview with Men's Health in 2022 that he had been groomed sexually by a cycling coach when he was 13. He said that he could not tell his stepfather about the abuse, because his stepfather was violent towards him. In May 2023, Wiggins revealed the name of the abuser.\n\n\n== Career achievements ==\n\n\n=== Major results ===\n\nSources:\n\n\n=== Road ===\n\n\n==== General classification results timeline ====\nSources:\n\n\n==== Monuments results timeline ====\n\n\n=== Track ===\n\n\n=== Major championships results timeline ===\nSources:\n\n\n=== World records ===\n\n\n=== Awards and honours ===\nCycling Weekly Cyclist of the Year: 2000\nAppointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire for services to sport: 2005 New Year Honours\nAppointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to sport: 2009 New Year Honours\nLondon Youth Games Hall of Fame: 2010\nGQ Lifetime Achievement: 2012\nVélo d'Or: 2012\nSports Journalists' Association's Sportsman of the Year: 2012\nCyclingnews.com Rider of the Year: 2012\nInternational Flandrien of the Year: 2012\nBidlake Memorial Prize: 2012\nBBC Sports Personality of the Year: 2012\nLaureus World Sports Sportsman of the Year Award (nominated): 2013\nAppointed Knight Bachelor for services to cycling: 2013 New Year Honours\n\n\n== See also ==\n\n2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics gold post boxes\nList of British cyclists\nList of British cyclists who have led the Tour de France general classification\nList of Grand Tour general classification winners\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists at a single Games\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Summer Olympic medalists\nList of Olympic medalists in cycling (men)\nList of people from Ghent\nList of sporting knights and dames\nWorld record progression track cycling – Men's team pursuit\nYellow jersey statistics\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== Sources ==\n\n\n== Further reading ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nTeam Wiggins at the Wayback Machine (archived 21 September 2017)\nBradley Wiggins at UCI\nBradley Wiggins at Cycling Archives (archive) \nBradley Wiggins at ProCyclingStats"}
{"title": "Brooke Bennett", "requested": "Brooke Bennett", "extract": "Brooke Marie Bennett (born May 6, 1980) is an American former competition swimmer and three-time Olympic champion.\n\n\n== Swimming career ==\n\n\n=== 1996 Summer Olympics ===\nBennett's first gold medal came in the 800-meter freestyle race at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia. This accomplishment, coming days after her grandfather died, was overshadowed by the fact that this was the last Olympic race in the career of swimming legend Janet Evans.\n\n\n=== 1998 World Aquatics Championships ===\nA new rival emerged for Bennett in the 800-meter freestyle, teammate Diane Munz who had beaten her in two separate races the past couple years.  However, Bennett led from the start and held off Munz's late finishing charge to win the 800-meter freestyle gold.  She also led the 400-meter freestyle most of the way, but was passed at the end by a swimmer of the controversial Chinese women's team, finishing with silver.\n\n\n=== 2000 Summer Olympics ===\nAt the 2000 Summer Olympics Brooke hit the peak of her swimming career.  She won two more gold medals in the 400- and 800-meter freestyle races, with the latter coming in Olympic record time. In the 400-meter freestyle she defeated a strong field that included her teammate Diana Munz who had beaten her at the U.S. Olympic trials, the 1996 Olympic 200 freestyle champion Claudia Poll, and that year's fastest performer, Hannah Stockbauer. Bennett's time was the fastest in the event in nine years.\nIn the 800-meter freestyle Bennett again faced competition from 200- and 400-meter medley Olympic winner Yana Klochkova, and Kaitlin Sandeno who had pulled a major upset in denying Diana Munz a place in the 800-meter freestyle at the U.S. Olympic trials.  Bennett led from the start, swam an aggressive and steady race, and won commandingly in the fastest 800-meter freestyle time in 10 years.\n\n\n=== Post 2000 Olympics ===\nHer attempt for a third straight Olympic appearance fell short in 2004, following operations on both of her shoulders in 2001.  She finished third in the 800-meter freestyle (with only the top two finishers qualify for the Olympic Team).\n\n\n== See also ==\n\nSwimming at the 1996 Summer Olympics\nSwimming at the 2000 Summer Olympics\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of Olympic medalists in swimming (women)\nList of World Aquatics Championships medalists in swimming (women)\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nBrooke Bennett – Official biography at PMGSports.com\nEvans, Hilary; Gjerde, Arild; Heijmans, Jeroen; Mallon, Bill; et al. \"Brooke Bennett\". Olympics at Sports-Reference.com. Sports Reference LLC. Archived from the original on April 17, 2020.\nBrooke Bennett (USA) – Honor Swimmer profile at International Swimming Hall of Fame at the Wayback Machine (archived April 2, 2015)"}
{"title": "Bud Houser", "requested": "Bud Houser", "extract": "Lemuel Clarence \"Bud\" Houser (September 25, 1901 – October 1, 1994) was an American field athlete. He won Olympic gold medals in the discus throw in 1924 and 1928 and in the shot put in 1924.\n\n\n== Biography ==\nHouser was born in Winigan, Missouri, but later moved to Oxnard, California to escape the drought after both his parents died in 1911.  He was raised by his sister Martha and her husband Walter Conklin.  He gained his strength working in the fields; during summers he would load hay bales in 110-degree heat in Corcoran, California.\nAs a student at Oxnard High School, Houser participated in the California State Track Meets between 1920–22. His six wins in shot put and discus, each time breaking a state record, made him the most successful meet participant ever. He was named \"Athlete of the Meet\" three years in a row.  During this time he developed a discus-throwing style of doing one and a half rapid turns in the circle before release that has been copied by many later athletes. He then enrolled at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, California to study dentistry.\nAt the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris, Houser won the gold medal in the shot put, ahead of fellow Americans Glenn Hartranft and Ralph Hills and in the discus, ahead of the Finn Vilho Niittymaa and the American Thomas Lieb. This was the last time a male athlete has won both the shot put and discus in the Olympics.\nHe won national championships in the discus in 1925, 1926, and 1928, and in the shot put in 1921 (while still in high school) and 1925. On April 3, 1926 in Palo Alto, in a USC dual meet with Stanford, he set a world record with a discus throw of 48.20 m.\nAt the 1928 Summer Olympics in Amsterdam he was the flag bearer for the United States team. There he retained his title in the discus throw, again leading a Finn, Antero Kivi, and an American James Corson.\nHouser became a dentist to many movie stars with a practice in Hollywood, California before moving to Palm Desert, California.  The stadium at Oxnard High School (the original location and now the new location) is named in his honor, the announcement a surprise at his graduation.  He is a member of the National Track and Field Hall of Fame and an inaugural member of the Ventura County Athletic Hall of Fame.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nPhoto of Clarence (Bud) Houser in 1926, PhillyHistory.org.\nBud Houser at the USATF Hall of Fame (archived)"}
{"title": "Buvaisar Saitiev", "requested": "Buvaisar Saitiev", "extract": "Buvaisar Hamidovich Saitiev (Russian: Бувайсар Хамидович Сайтиев, Chechen: Сайт КIант Бувайса; 11 March 1975 – 2 March 2025) was a Russian wrestler and politician. His total of nine world-level gold medals (three Olympics, six World Championships) in freestyle wrestling is second highest, behind Aleksandr Medved's 10. Saitiev is widely considered to be the greatest freestyle wrestler of all time; in 2007, he and Greco-Roman practitioner Aleksandr Karelin were voted the best wrestlers in the history of the sport by FILA.\nAfter his retirement from competition, Saitiev served as an acting deputy from Dagestan in the 7th State Duma from 2016 until he stepped down in 2021. In 2015, he became the President of the Chechen Wrestling Federation, a position he held until his death in 2025.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nSaitiev was born in Khasavyurt, Dagestan, Russian Federation on 11 March 1975, and was of Chechen descent. Saitiev left his hometown in 1992 in order to train at a prestigious wrestling center in Krasnoyarsk, Russian Federation. His younger brother Adam Saitiev later followed in his footsteps, winning gold in the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney.\nSoon after graduating from the training center, Saitiev began his quest to represent Russia on the world stage. Saitiev was decorated with the Order of Friendship by the Russian president. \nSaitiev's life philosophy was heavily influenced by Nobel Prize-winning poet Boris Pasternak. Saitiev repeated Pasternak's poem, \"It is not seemly to be famous,\" before every match, and according to Saitiev, the poem defined his life both inside and outside of wrestling.\nSaitiev had three sons and one daughter.\n\n\n=== Death ===\nSaitiev died in Moscow on 2 March 2025, at the age of 49. Executive director of the Russian Wrestling Federation, Makhmud Magomedov, stated that Saitiev died of cardiac arrest, and Russia's minister of sport Mikhail Degtyarev said Saitiev had been ill, frequently visiting medical centres. Saitiev's widow, Indira, stated Saitiev had fallen out of a second-storey window before his death, indicating it was a non-accidental death. Russian outlet Baza reported that a janitor found Saitiev lying injured on the ground near a residence on Minskaya Street, and called for an ambulance. Baza said Saitiev later died in hospital. Saitiev's death created an outpouring of grief. Khabib Nurmagomedov wrote on social media that \"Saitiev inspired millions of children around the world\", and Ramzan Kadyrov, head of the Chechen Republic, said Saitiev was \"not only a legendary athlete, but also a man of high honour.\" Kadyrov announced three days of mourning in Chechnya in honour of Saitiev. Saitiev was a practicing Muslim and was buried next to his father in his hometown of Khasavyurt, Dagestan, Russian Federation following Muslim tradition.\n\n\n== Wrestling career ==\nSaitiev won nine World-level gold medals. He was a six-time World champion and a three-time Olympic champion. His senior level international career began in 1994 and continued on through the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China. In thirteen years, he competed in eleven World or Olympic championship tournaments, winning nine gold medals at those events and losing only two bouts. Saitiev won at the World championships in 1995, 1997, 1998, 2001, 2003 and 2005, and at the Olympics in 1996, 2004 and 2008.\nIn 1999, Saitiev did not wrestle at the World championships, instead his weight class was represented by his younger brother Adam Saitiev, who went on to win the gold medal. Saitiev also did not compete at the World Championships in 2002. In 2007, according to media reports, Saitiev's training in was hampered by a neck injury.\nDespite his success, Saitiev suffered a number of losses in his senior career. He suffered his first loss in his senior career at the 1994 World Wrestling Cup to Davoud Ghanbari. At the 2000 Summer Olympics, Saitiev lost to Brandon Slay. Saitiev lost to Magomed Isagadzhiev at the 2002 Russian Nationals. Saitiev then lost to Mihail Ganev at the 2006 World Wrestling Championships. Saitiev lost at the 2007 Russian Nationals to Makhach Murtazaliev. He then lost at the 2008 Ivan Yarygin Grand Prix, also to Murtazaliev.\nHis Olympic gold medal at the 2008 Summer Olympics was his last wrestling competition and the final of his nine total World or Olympic level championships.\n\n\n== Legacy ==\nIn March 2025, it was decided to name a street in the Akhmatovsky District of Grozny, where the Republican Center for Wrestling is being built, after Buvaisar Saitiev.\nIn April 2025, the Russian Junior Wrestling Championship in memory of Saitiev was held in Grozny.\nSince 2009, the city of Eupen in Belgium has hosted an international tournament named after Buvaisar Saitiev. In 2014, the competition was dedicated to the Saitiev brothers. Since 2025, it has once again been held in memory of Buvaisar Saitiev.\n\n\n== Match results ==\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== Notes ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nBouvaisa Saitiev at the International Wrestling Database \nBuvaisar Saitiev at IMDb\nBuvaysar Saytiyev at Olympedia \nCHECHEN FIGHT CLUB\nBuvaysar's official website\nJISS Olympic Result Database information\nChechnya Free.ru article\nInterview with Buvaisar Saitiev (in Russian)\nFlowrestling Video Interview with Saitiev after 2008 Olympics"}
{"title": "Bärbel Wöckel", "requested": "Bärbel Wöckel", "extract": "Bärbel Wöckel (née Eckert; born 21 March 1955) is a former East German sprinter. She never ran a world record in the individual disciplines. However, she ran several world records as part of relay teams with Doris Maletzki, Renate Stecher and Christina Heinich over 4 × 100 meters, the last time on September 8, 1974, in Rome. At the GDR Championships she took first place in the 4 × 100-meter relay in 1974, 1977, 1978, 1981 to 1984. In 1976 she won third place with the team.\nDocuments uncovered after the fall of communism showed that during this time, Wöckel, like many of her East German colleagues, was forced to participate in the state-organized doping program. Despite this, her records and medals have been allowed to stand.\n\n\n== Career ==\nWöckel won four Olympic gold medals between the 200 metres race and 4 × 100 metres relay, two each in the 1976 and 1980 Olympics. In each of those years, Wöckel placed first in the 200 m and 4 × 100 metres relay races. She won a gold medal at the 1974 European Championships as the anchor of the 4 × 100 m relay, which set a world record of 42.50.\nIn Athens, she won the gold in the 200 m and as a part of the 4 × 100 m relay team as well as a silver in the 100 metres at the 1982 European Championships.\nBärbel Wöckel competed for the club SC Motor Jena during her active career. She won 4 national 200 metre championships, as well as an indoor title in 1984. She won 3 European Cup titles in 1981, 200, 4 × 100, 4 × 400 metres. In the IAAF World Cup 1981 she won 2 Gold Medals in 4 × 100 and 4 × 400 relays. Also finishing 3rd in the 200.\nHer rival, Marita Koch, complained in a letter that Bärbel received higher doses of steroids than her, because she had relatives in the company Jenapharm.\n\n\n== Awards ==\n1974: Patriotic Order of Merit (German: Vaterländischer Verdienstorden, or VVO) in Bronze\n1976: Patriotic Order of Merit in silver\n1980 and 1984: Patriotic Order of Merit in gold\n2018: DLV-Ehrennadel in gold \n\n\n== See also ==\nGerman all-time top lists – 100 metres\nGerman all-time top lists – 200 metres\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nEvans, Hilary; Gjerde, Arild; Heijmans, Jeroen; Mallon, Bill; et al. \"Bärbel Eckert-Wöckel\". Olympics at Sports-Reference.com. Sports Reference LLC. Archived from the original on 17 April 2020."}
{"title": "Caeleb Dressel", "requested": "Caeleb Dressel", "extract": "Caeleb Remel Dressel (born August 16, 1996) is an American competitive swimmer who specializes in freestyle, butterfly, and individual medley events. He won a record seven gold medals at the 2017 World Aquatics Championships in Budapest, nine medals, six of which were gold, at the 2018 World Short Course Swimming Championships in Hangzhou, and eight medals, including six gold, at the 2019 World Aquatics Championships in Gwangju. Dressel is a nine-time Olympic gold medalist and holds world records in the 100 meter butterfly (long course), and 100 meter individual medley (short course).\nAt the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Dressel won five gold medals, which made him the fifth American to win five gold medals in a single Olympic Games after 1970. Mark Spitz, Michael Phelps (3 times), Eric Heiden, and Matt Biondi were the other four. He also became the first male swimmer to win gold medals in the 50 meter freestyle, the 100 meter freestyle, and the 100 meter butterfly at the same Olympics. At the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, Dressel won gold medals in the 4×100 freestyle relay and 4x100 mixed medley relay, putting him in a joint tie for 2nd-most Olympic golds after Michael Phelps.\nDressel holds American records in the 50 meter freestyle, 50 meter and 100 meter butterfly (long course), and the 50 meter freestyle and 100 meter butterfly (short course). He also holds American records in the 50 yard and 100 yard freestyle events, and the 100 yard butterfly, and formerly held national records in the 100 yard breaststroke and the 200 yard individual medley. Over the course of his collegiate career, he won NCAA titles in the 50 yard freestyle, 100 yard freestyle, and 100 yard butterfly individual events. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest sprinters in swimming history.\n\n\n== Early life ==\nDressel was born on August 16, 1996, in Green Cove Springs, Florida, the son of Christina and Michael Dressel. His father is a veterinarian specializing in urgent care for cats and dogs. Dressel is the third of four children; his three siblings, one brother and two sisters, plus his father were all competitive swimmers setting records and earning honors across the high school and university levels. He and his siblings learned to swim at a young age, for him when he was 4 years old, and by the time Dressel was 8 years old he had committed to competitive year-round swimming.\nDressel attended Clay High School in Green Cove Springs, Florida, and trained with the Bolles School Sharks in Jacksonville where he met his then training partner and now wife, Meghan Haila. He was a collegiate swimmer at the University of Florida starting in 2014 and majored in Resources and Conservation.\n\n\n== Sport career ==\n\n\n=== 2012 ===\nHe led off a 50-yard free relay with a time of 19.82, becoming the first swimmer under 16 years old to break 20 seconds.\n\n\n==== 2012 US Olympic Trials ====\nAt the 2012 United States Olympic Trials, Dressel was the youngest male swimmer at 15 years of age and ranked 100th in the 200 meter individual medley in a time of 2:08.08, 121st in the 100 meter butterfly at 57.21 seconds, 121st with a time of 1:55.17 in the 200 meter freestyle, tied for 145th in the 50 meter freestyle with a time of 23.87 seconds, and tied for 152nd in the 100 meter freestyle with his time of 52.21 seconds. After not making the 2012 US Olympic Team, Dressel refocused and set his sights on the 2016 Summer Olympics.\n\n\n=== 2013 ===\n\n\n==== 2013 World Junior Championships ====\n\nWhen Dressel was 17 years old, he won six medals, including a gold medal in the 100 meter freestyle in which he broke the Championships record with his time of 48.97 seconds, at the 2013 FINA World Junior Swimming Championships in Dubai, United Arab Emirates in August 2013. His time also broke the National Age Group record set by Michael Phelps in the 100 meter freestyle in 2004 for the 17–18 year old age group by eight hundredths of a second. His other medals were in the 4x100 meter freestyle relay and the mixed 4x100 meter freestyle relay, where he won a silver medal in each event, and in the 50 meter freestyle, 4x200 meter freestyle relay, and the mixed 4x100 meter medley relay in which he won a bronze medal in each. In addition to the events Dressel medaled in, he competed in the 200 meter freestyle where he finished sixth with a time of 1:49.29 and swam in the final of the 4x100 meter medley relay which did not place as it was disqualified. In total, his medal breakdown was one gold medal, two silver medals, and three bronze medals.\n\n\n==== 2013 US Junior National Championships ====\nAt the 2013 Speedo Winter Junior National Championships (the USA Swimming sanctioned national championship meet for 18 and under swimmers), Dressel became the youngest swimmer in history to break the 19 second barrier in the 50 yard freestyle, swimming an 18.94 to lead off his club team's relay.\n\n\n=== 2015 ===\n\n\n==== 2015 NCAA Championships ====\nDuring his freshman year at the University of Florida, Dressel won the 2015 NCAA title in the 50 yard freestyle when he was 18 years old with a time of 18.67 seconds, which was his first NCAA title, the first NCAA title for the Florida Gators in the men's 50 yard freestyle, and set a new 17—18 national age group record in the event. With his performance, Dressel also became the fastest freshman in the 50 yard freestyle in the history of the NCAA and the second-fastest American in the event, only behind Nathan Adrian.\n\n\n==== 2015 National Championships ====\nAt the senior 2015 National Championships (long course) in San Antonio, Texas, he won two individual titles, in the 50 meter and the 100 meter freestyle. His winning time of 21.53 in the 50 meter freestyle ranked 4th in the world for 2015.\n\n\n=== 2016 ===\n\n\n==== 2016 NCAA Championships ====\nAt the 2016 Men's NCAA Division I Championships, he broke the American and US Open records in the 50-yard freestyle with a time of 18.20 and the 100-yard freestyle with 40.46.\n\n\n==== 2016 US Olympic Trials ====\nAt the 2016 US Olympic Trials, Dressel made the 2016 US Olympic Team in the 100 meter freestyle by finishing second with a time of 48.23 seconds, he also placed 4th in the 50 meter freestyle, 7th in the 100 meter butterfly, 32nd in the 200 meter freestyle, and was disqualified in the 200 meter individual medley for a false start. In addition to the five events he raced, Dressel had entered to compete in the 100 meter breaststroke with his best time of 1:02.26 and the 100 meter backstroke, and decided not to race the events. Dressel's performances leading up to and at the 2016 US Olympic Trials earned him recognition as America's best young sprinter by Sports Illustrated and CBS News. Overall, Dressel and coach Gregg Troy chose a forwards mentality to Dressel's training, with Troy expressing Dressel's best could still be four, eight, or more years down the road.\n\n\n==== 2016 Summer Olympics ====\n\nAt the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Dressel won his first Olympic medal, a gold medal, in the 4×100 meter freestyle relay. In the final, he swam the first leg in 48.10 seconds, which was the second-fastest lead-off relay leg in the finals heat, and was followed by relay teammates Michael Phelps, Ryan Held, and Nathan Adrian in that order. The American team recorded a time of 3:09.92. Of the 13 medals won by Florida Gators at the 2020 Summer Olympics, Dressel became the first athlete to win a medal from the university's sports teams with this gold medal. Dressel and his finals relay teammates earned USA Swimming's Golden Goggle Award for best relay performance of the year in 2016 for their efforts. Dressel and his teammates shared tears in the medal ceremony and while doing a victory lap around the pool after they received their medals, their tearful reactions were highlighted by local news outlet The Florida Times-Union. The relay was also highlighted by SwimSwam as one of their five unforgettable moments of the 2016 Summer Olympics.\nIn the 100 meter freestyle, Dressel finished sixth in the final in a time of 48.02 seconds with fellow United States swimmer Nathan Adrian taking the bronze medal and Kyle Chalmers of Australia winning the gold medal.\nDressel also swam freestyle in the heats of the 4×100 meter medley relay, and won his second gold medal of the 2016 Olympic Games when the finals relay of Ryan Murphy (backstroke), Cody Miller (breaststroke), Michael Phelps (butterfly), and Nathan Adrian (freestyle) placed first in Olympic record time. He swam a time of 47.74 seconds for the freestyle leg of the prelims relay consisting of him, David Plummer (backstroke), Kevin Cordes (breaststroke), and Tom Shields (butterfly).\n\n\n=== 2017 ===\n\n\n==== 2017 NCAA Championships ====\nHis junior year of collegiate swimming and leading up to the 2017 NCAA Championships, Dressel became the second person to split under 18.00 seconds for 50 yards of freestyle on a relay, splitting a 17.90 on the 4×50 yard medley relay at the 2017 Southeastern Conference Championships, which was just 0.04 seconds off the fastest split time of 17.86 seconds swam by Vladimir Morozov his junior year in 2013. At the 2017 NCAA Division I Championships, he broke the American and US Open records in the 100-yard butterfly and the 100-yard freestyle with times of 43.58 and 40.00, respectively. He also tied his 50 freestyle record with an 18.20, the same as the preceding year.\n\n\n==== 2017 World Championships ====\n\nAt the 2017 World Aquatics Championships in Budapest, Hungary, Dressel won seven gold medals and set numerous American records. Dressel was named the male swimmer of the meet. He also became the second swimmer to win seven gold medals at a single World Championships, after Michael Phelps in 2007.\nOn the first day of competition, July 23, Dressel set the American record in the 50 meter butterfly with a time of 22.76, topping the semifinals. Later that evening in the 4×100 meter freestyle relay, Dressel set the American record in the 100 meter freestyle with a time of 47.26 in the leadoff leg. Combined with Townley Haas, Blake Pieroni, and Nathan Adrian, the American team won gold with a time of 3:10.06, earning him his first gold of the Championships.\nOn day two, Dressel finished fourth in the 50 meter butterfly final with a time of 22.89, missing a medal by 0.05 seconds. On day four, Dressel took part in the 4×100 meter mixed medley relay, swimming the butterfly leg and splitting a 49.92. Along with teammates Matt Grevers, Lilly King, and Simone Manuel, the American team won gold in a new world-record time of 3:38.56. That time broke the record set earlier in the day by Ryan Murphy, Kevin Cordes, Kelsi Worrell, and Mallory Comerford. On day five, Dressel re-set the 100-meter freestyle American record with a 47.17 in the 100 meter freestyle final, en route to winning gold by a margin of 0.70 seconds over silver medalist and teammate Nathan Adrian.\nOn day seven, Dressel became the first swimmer ever to win three gold medals on a single day. He won the 50 meter freestyle in 21.15, a new world textile best time. Half an hour later he won the 100 meter butterfly in 49.86, again a new world textile best and 0.04 seconds above the world record held by Michael Phelps. The third gold medal came in the 4×100 meter mixed freestyle relay, where he led off in 47.22. Dressel and teammates Adrian, Comerford, and Manuel broke the world record for this relay with a time of 3:19.60.\nOn the eighth and last day of competition, Dressel won his 7th gold in the 4×100-meter medley relay. Swimming the butterfly leg, Dressel recorded a time of 49.76 and the American team of Matt Grevers, Kevin Cordes, and Nathan Adrian won with a time of 3:27.91.\n\n\n=== 2018 ===\n\n\n==== 2018 SEC Championships ====\nAt the 2018 Southeastern Conference, SEC, Swimming and Diving Championships in College Station, Texas, in February, Dressel lowered his best time in the 100 yard breaststroke from a 51.88 to a 50.03, which broke the former American, US Open, and NCAA records set by Kevin Cordes in 2014 at 50.04 by one hundredth of a second. Earlier in the Championships, Dressel also set a new American record in the 200 yard individual medley with his time of 1:38.13, lowering the record set by David Nolan in 2015 by 0.25 seconds. Dressel's 100 yard breaststroke record garnered the attention of 2016 Olympic bronze medalist in breaststroke, Cody Miller, who produced a perspective piece on the American record and posted it to his, Miller's, YouTube channel less than two weeks after Dressel broke the record. Later on, in August 2020, Dressel provided his analysis of the record in a video and put it on his own YouTube channel.\n\n\n==== 2018 NCAA Championships ====\n\nAt the 2018 NCAA Division I Men's Swimming and Diving Championships in March, Dressel won all three of his individual races, and won his first relay national title.\nOn day 2 of the competition, March 22, 2018, Dressel broke the NCAA, American, and US Open records in the 50 yard freestyle thrice. He first swam an 18.11 in the individual preliminaries race in the morning session. He later improved upon that record in the evening leading off The University of Florida's national championship winning relay with a 17.81 split, and finalized his record with a 17.63 in the 50 yard freestyle final. The next day, he broke the American and US open records in the 100 yard butterfly, swimming a 42.80. On the final day of competition, Dressel won the 100 yard freestyle by more than a second in a time of 39.90, completing his sweep of individual events for a second time. This secured him CSCAA Swimmer of the Meet honors for the third year in a row, as he became the first swimmer ever to break the 18 second 50 free barrier, the 40 second 100 free barrier, and the 43 second 100 fly barrier in the history of yards swimming. His split of 17.30 on the 4×50 yard medley relay marked the fastest 50 yard freestyle split time in the history of the NCAA.\n\n\n==== 2018 National Championships ====\nIn advance of the 2018 National Championships, Dressel was highlighted by NBC Sports as one of ten swimmers to watch at the meet with his entries in the 50 meter freestyle, 50 meter breaststroke, 50 meter butterfly, 100 meter freestyle, 100 meter breaststroke, 100 meter butterfly, 200 meter freestyle, and 200 meter individual medley. At the 2018 US National Championships held in July 2018 in Irvine, California, Dressel won the 100 meter butterfly with a time of 50.50 seconds after finishing second in the 50 meter butterfly and sixth in the 100 meter freestyle. Dressel's win in the 100 meter butterfly secured him a spot on the Pan Pacific Championships team, where he could also compete in the 100 meter freestyle even though he finished sixth because qualified athletes were allowed to compete in any event at the meet. He also placed second in the 50 meter freestyle with a time of 21.67, just 0.18 seconds behind Michael Andrew, and decided not to swim the 50 meter breaststroke, 100 meter breaststroke, 200 meter freestyle, and 200 meter individual medley.\n\n\n==== 2018 Pan Pacific Championships ====\n\nIn August 2018 at the 2018 Pan Pacific Championships in Tokyo, Japan, Dressel won the 100 meter butterfly after tying for second place in the 100 meter freestyle. His winning time of 50.75 seconds in the 100 meter butterfly set a new Championships record in the event. He won the silver medal in the 50 meter freestyle with a time of 21.93, finishing only behind fellow American Michael Andrew, and won a gold medal in the 4x100 meter medley relay alongside Ryan Murphy who swam backstroke, Andrew Wilson who swam breaststroke, and Nathan Adrian who swam freestyle. In the mixed 4x100 meter medley relay, Dressel swam the butterfly leg of the relay with a split time of 50.50 seconds, helping the relay consisting of him, Kathleen Baker, Michael Andrew, and Simone Manuel, finish third and win the bronze medal with a final time of 3:41.74. For the 4x100 meter freestyle relay, Dressel and his relay teammates Nathan Adrian, Zach Apple, and Blake Pieroni were disqualified for not swimming in the order they had submitted to the officials. After the meet, reports surfaced that Dressel had missed two weeks of training in June while recovering from a motorcycle accident, which had perhaps hampered his performance and prevented him for equaling his times from the previous year.\n\n\n==== 2018 World Short Course Championships ====\n\nAt the 2018 World Short Course Championships in Hangzhou, China in December 2018, Dressel tied Kelsi Dahlia for the most number of medals won at the World Championships meet with nine medals, he won six gold medals to Dahlia's seven. He swam on the same finals relay as Olivia Smoliga in the mixed 4x50 meter medley relay, both helping set a new swimming world record in the event and win the gold medal. Dressel's efforts contributed to Smoliga's winning eight gold medals at the Championships and breaking Dressel's former Guinness World Record for \"most number of gold medals won at a single FINA World Championships (individual)\", which he held from 2017 when he won seven gold medals.\nDressel won the silver medal in the 100 meter butterfly with a time of 48.71 seconds, twenty-one hundredths of a second behind gold medalist Chad le Clos of South Africa. In the 4x50 meter freestyle relay, Dressel swam in the final, helped the relay earn the gold medal and set a world record in the event, and split a 20.43 on the first leg of the relay, setting a new American record in the 50 meter freestyle. For the 50 meter freestyle individual race, Dressel won the silver medal with a time of 20.54 seconds.\nIn the 100 meter freestyle, Dressel won the gold medal in an American record time of 45.62 seconds. Along with Blake Pieroni, Michael Chadwick, and Ryan Held in the final of the 4x100 meter freestyle relay, Dressel won a gold medal with the relay finishing in a world record time of 3:03:03. He also won a gold medal in the mixed 4x50 meter freestyle relay in world record time, a gold medal in the 4x100 meter medley relay in Americas record and Championships record time, the silver medal in the 4x50 meter medley relay in American record time, and entered as one of two male American swimmers in the 50 meter butterfly, though decided not to swim in the event at the Championships.\n\n\n=== 2019 ===\nOn May 17, 2019, Dressel edged out Chase Kalisz in the 100 meter breaststroke at the 2019 Atlanta Classic in Atlanta with a time of 1:01.22 in the final, dropping over a second from his best time of 1:02.26 heading into the 2016 Olympic Trials, and qualifying for the 2020 US Olympic Trials in the event.\n\n\n==== 2019 World Championships ====\n\nAt the 2019 World Aquatics Championships held in Gwangju, South Korea, he first won a gold as part of the team in men's 4×100 meter freestyle relay. He then won gold in the 50 meter butterfly, an event he failed to win in 2017. He is the first American man to win that event, and he set a new national and championship record time of 22.35 seconds for the event. This is followed by a national record and the third fastest time in history (46.96) in the 100 meter freestyle.\nIn the 100 meter butterfly event, Dressel broke Michael Phelps' ten-year-old record by 0.32 second in the semi-final, setting a new world-record time of 49.50 seconds. He won gold in the final the following day. That same day within two hours, Dressel won two more gold medals – in the 50 meter freestyle in a Championships record time, and as part of the team in the mixed 4×100 meter freestyle relay, which was won in a world-record time of 3 minutes, 19.40 seconds.  This was a repeat of his achievement in Hungary in 2017, and it was also the first time anyone won three gold medals in one day at the Championships two times.\nIn the final day of the Championships, Dressel helped win a silver medal in the men's 4×100 meter medley relay. The medal was the eighth that Dressel won at the Championships, and the most medals of any type that a person had won at a single long course Championships. FINA named Dressel male swimmer of the meet, which he also won in 2017.\n\n\n==== International Swimming League ====\nIn 2019 he was a member of the inaugural International Swimming League representing the Cali Condors, who finished third place in the final match in Las Vegas, Nevada in December. Dressel won the Most Valuable Player of the match honor in all 3 matches he participated in as well as winning the skins race each time. Dressel swam the 50 meter freestyle in Las Vegas and beat Florent Manaudou's world record of 20.26 from 2014 by going a 20.24. He also won the 100 meter freestyle, 100 meter butterfly, and 50 meter butterfly.\n\n\n=== 2020 ===\n\n\n==== International Swimming League ====\nContinuing to represent the Cali Condors, Dressel broke four world records in the 100-meter butterfly (at 47.78 seconds) and the 50-meter freestyle world record, which he already held (to 20.16 seconds). He is the first person to swim the 100-meter butterfly in less than 48 seconds. He also broke his own 100 IM record twice, dropping it to 49.88 the first time, and 49.28 the second time. These two record breaks occurred one weekend after he was the first swimmer to ever do the  100-meter individual medley in under 50 seconds.\n\n\n==== 2020 US Olympic Trials ====\nIn total, Dressel qualified to compete in seven events at the Olympic Trials: the 50 meter freestyle, 100 meter freestyle, 200 meter freestyle, 100 meter butterfly, 200 meter butterfly, 100 meter breaststroke, and 200 meter individual medley.\nOn day two of the 2020 USA Swimming Olympic Trials (held in June 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic), June 14, 2021, Dressel competed in the 200 meter freestyle prelims in the morning, swimming a 1:46.63 and ranking 2nd overall for the heats. Dressel's swim moved him up in rankings to the all-time 20th fastest American in the event. Following his morning swim, Dressel decided not to swim in the event's semifinals.\nOn day four of competition, Wednesday June 16, 2021, Dressel ranked 5th out of all prelims heats in the 100 meter freestyle swimming a 48.25 and advancing to the semifinals. In the semifinals in the evening of the same day, Dressel ranked first with a time of 47.77 and advanced to the final. On day five, June 17, 2021, Dressel won the 100 m freestyle with a time of 47.39 and qualifying him for the US Olympic Swimming team in the 100 m freestyle and the 4 × 100 m freestyle relay for the 2020 Summer Olympics. He tied the US Open record and Championships record for the 100 meter freestyle with his swim. This marked the second Olympic Games Dressel qualified to compete at.\nOn day six, Dressel won the prelims heats of the 100 meter butterfly with a 50.17 breaking the US Open record and Championships record. On the same day in the semifinals, he improved further on his US Open record dropping it to a 49.76, earning Dressel the top 3 times in history in the event.\nIn the morning of day seven, Dressel swam a 21.29 in the prelims heats of the 50 meter freestyle, taking first, breaking the Championships record, and advancing to the semifinals. In the evening of day seven, Dressel swam in the final of the 100 meter butterfly and the semifinals of the 50 meter freestyle. In the final of the 100 meter butterfly, Dressel swam a 49.87, winning the final and swimming under 50 seconds for the fifth time. His swim qualified him to represent the United States in the 100 meter butterfly at the 2020 Summer Olympics. In the semifinals of the 50 meter freestyle, Dressel posted a 21.51, advancing as the fastest seed to the final.\nOn the final day, Dressel qualified to swim the 50 meter freestyle at the 2020 Olympic Games by winning the final with a time of 21.04. Dressel's swim also tied his personal best time and set a new US Open record.\nDressel's engagement with fans, including a look-alike, and embracing being a role model for swimmers across America during the Olympic Trials led Swimming World to herald Dressel as \"the face of USA Swimming's men's team\".\n\n\n==== 2020 Summer Olympics ====\n\nDressel was selected as one of two male USA swimming captains for the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Japan, held in August 2021, along with Ryan Murphy.\nOn day three of competition, Dressel won his first medal at the 2020 Olympics swimming in the finals of the 4x100 meter freestyle relay. He helped the relay win the gold medal, swimming the relay's lead-off leg and splitting the second fastest time among his relay teammates Blake Pieroni, Bowe Becker, and Zach Apple with a 47.26.\nOn day four, Dressel ranked second overall in the prelims heats of the 100 meter freestyle with a time of 47.73 and advanced to the semifinals. The following morning of competition, he swam a 47.23 in his semifinal heat and advanced to the final ranking second for both semifinal heats. Dressel won his first individual Olympic gold medal in the final of the 100 meter freestyle with a time of 47.02, a new Olympic record. Dressel finished six hundredths of a second ahead of Australian Kyle Chalmers, which was a changing of Olympic champion from the 2016 Summer Olympics where Chalmers won the gold medal and Dressel finished sixth in the 100 meter freestyle. People and Parade magazines highlighted Dressel and his wife, Meghan, for their tearful reaction to him winning the 100 meter freestyle in Olympic record time, with his wife's eruption of emotion leading People to dub Meghan as their pick for the \"Olympic gold medal for most celebratory spouse watching from halfway around the world in a pandemic\". People not only recognized his wife, they also recognized Caeleb Dressel for his physique, naming him as their \"Sexiest Olympian\" for the 2020 Olympic Games.\nIn the evening of day six, Dressel tied the Olympic record in the 100 meter butterfly with a time of 50.39 in the prelims heats. This first Olympic record in the 100 meter butterfly Dressel set less than nine hours after setting the Olympic record in the 100 meter freestyle. In the second semifinal heat of the 100 meter butterfly on day seven, Dressel swam a 49.71 and broke the Olympic record of 50.31 Kristóf Milák set in the first semifinal heat. Later on day seven, Dressel swam three hundredths of a second off from setting a new Olympic record in the prelims of the 50 meter freestyle with his time of 21.32 and advanced to the semifinals ranked first.\nOn day eight, Dressel won the final of the 100 meter butterfly in a world record time of 49.45. In his second race, Dressel ranked first overall in the semifinals of the 50 meter freestyle with a time of 21.42 and advanced to the final. In his last race of the day, the final of the 4x100 meter mixed medley relay, Dressel finished in fifth place with his relay teammates Ryan Murphy, Lydia Jacoby, and Torri Huske. His world record and gold medal win in the 100 meter butterfly was chosen by Olympics.com as their number three moment in swimming at the 2020 Olympic Games.\nOn the final day, Dressel won the gold medal in 50 meter freestyle with an Olympic record time of 21.07. Later in the same session, Dressel won the gold medal in the 4x100 meter medley relay and set a new world record for the event of 3:26.78 in the final with his relay teammates Ryan Murphy, Michael Andrew, and Zach Apple.\nBy winning gold in five events at a single Olympic Games, Dressel became the fifth swimmer to achieve this feat. For the addition of the world record in the 4x100 meter medley relay to Dressel's list, he was awarded the Guinness World Record for \"Most FINA world records held by an individual (current)\" on August 11, 2021, for his then current 9 FINA world records. His gold medal-winning performances at the 2020 Olympic Games also earned him the 2021 James E. Sullivan Award.\nAfter the Olympic Games, Dressel took a break from swimming for a few weeks due to mental health concerns, returning to competition in late August as part of the International Swimming League. In November 2021, Dressel amicably parted ways with his long-time coach Gregg Troy, regarding whom he has said \"I owe him everything.\" Dressel moved under the direction of Anthony Nesty, who succeeded Troy as the head coach at the University of Florida in 2018.\n\n\n==== International Swimming League ====\nIn the 2021 International Swimming League, Dressel was selected early on in the draft process as a protected swimmer to compete for the Cali Condors again. He started his competition in the 2021 season on August 28 in the second match of the season, and the first match of the season his team competed in, earning the second-most MVP points in the match with 93 points. For the fourth match of the regular season, Dressel earned match Most Valuable Player, MVP, honors with a total of 112.5 MVP points, which was over 50 points ahead of the next-highest scorer Kelsi Dahlia also of the Cali Condors. In match six, Dressel swam a personal best time of 1:51.14 in the 200 meter individual medley, finishing second only behind Daiya Seto of the Tokyo Frog Kings. His swim also registered Dressel as the second fastest American swimmer in the event, a slim second and a half slower than American Ryan Lochte who set the world record in the event at 1:49.63 in 2012. Partway through the regular season, in mid-September 2021, Dressel and team general manager Jason Lezak decided Dressel would withdraw from competing for the remainder of the regular season and return for the playoffs.\nFor the first match of the playoffs season, Dressel joined fellow Cali Condors teammate and Olympian Hali Flickinger in not partaking in match competition. For the fourth match of the playoffs season, Dressel was entered on the start lists for a number of events including the 50 meter freestyle where he entered to compete against Kyle Chalmers of London Roar. Come race time, Dressel placed third the 50 meter freestyle with a time of 21.04, finishing seven-hundredths of a second behind first-place finisher Kyle Chalmers and earning 6.0 points for his team. He swam the anchor leg of the 4x100 meter freestyle relay for his next race, splitting a 47.26 and helping the relay place third. In the 4x100 meter medley relay Dressel got his first win of the match, splitting the second fastest time, a 49.60, for the butterfly leg of the relay, faster than the third-fastest split of 50.03 by Kyle Chalmers and slower than the split of 48.83 by Tom Shields of LA Current. On the second and final day of match competition, Dressel won his first individual event of the playoffs season in the 100 meter individual medley with a time of 51.67 seconds that earned his team 10.0 points. In his final race of the match, the 4x100 meter mixed medley relay, Dressel helped his relay place fifth and earn 8.0 points for the Cali Condors.\nFollowing his playoffs match four performances, Cali Condors team manager Jason Lezak made the executive decision to have Dressel sit out of the final playoffs match so Dressel could conserve energy for the final match. On the first day of the final match, Dressel helped set new Americas and American records in the 4×100 meter medley relay with Coleman Stewart (backstroke), Nic Fink (breaststroke), and Justin Ress (freestyle), splitting a time of 49.01 seconds for the butterfly leg of the relay to help achieve a time of 3:19.64. Dressel also won the 100 meter individual medley in a time of 50.74 seconds, earning 9 points for his team, and won the 50 meter butterfly skins competition with a time of 23.05 seconds in the final head-to-head competition against Tom Shields.\n\n\n=== 2022 ===\n\n\n==== International team trials ====\nThe 2022 USA Swimming International Team Trials were from April 26 to April 30 in Greensboro, North Carolina. Caeleb Dressel swam the 50 freestyle, the 100 freestyle, the 50 butterfly, and the 100 butterfly. He won all four of those events and is set to swim them at the world championships in Budapest, Hungary.\n\n\n==== 2022 World Championships ====\n\nOn the first day of the 2022 World Championships, Dressel led-off the 4×100 meter freestyle relay in a time of 47.67 seconds, helping achieve the first relay gold medal of the Championships for the United States. The next day, he backed up the gold medal in the relay with a gold medal in the 50 meter butterfly, finishing first with a time of 22.57 seconds, which was over two-tenths of a second faster than silver medalist Nicholas Santos of Brazil.\nOn the fourth day of the world championships, Dressel swam the 100 meter freestyle in the prelims heats to achieve the second-fastest seed going into the semifinals. However, he decided to withdraw from further competition for health reasons.\n\n\n=== 2025 ===\nCaleb has teamed up with his college sprint coach, Stephen Jungbluth, in Jacksonville and has joined the Sporting Jax Aquatic Club.\n\n\n== Results in major championships ==\n\na  Dressel swam only in the heats.\nb  Dressel chose to withdraw from the 100 freestyle due to medical concerns.\n\n\n== Personal bests ==\nAs of September 11, 2021\n\n\n=== Long course meters (50 m pool) ===\n\n\n=== Short course meters (25 m pool) ===\n\n\n=== Short course yards (25 y pool) ===\n\n\n== World records ==\n\n\n=== Long course meters (50 m pool) ===\n\n\n=== Short course meters (25 m pool) ===\n\n\n== National records ==\n\n\n=== Long course meters (50 m pool) ===\n\n\n=== Short course meters (25 m pool) ===\n\n\n=== Short course yards (25 y pool) ===\n\n\n== Guinness World Records ==\n\"Most FINA world records held by an individual (current)\", August 11, 2021: 9 FINA world records in swimming.\n\n\n== Awards and honors ==\nESPY Award for Best Olympian, Men's Sports: 2022\nJames E. Sullivan Award: 2021\nPeople, Sexiest Olympian: 2021\nFINA, Top 10 Moments: 2020 Summer Olympics (#6)\nOlympics.com, Top 5 Moments: Swimming at the 2020 Summer Olympics (#3)\nSports Illustrated Athlete of the Year (male): 2021\nSports Illustrated's Fittest 50: 2019 (#22), 2020 (#10), 2021 (#7), 2022 (#3)\n2019 FINA World Championships: Best Male Swimmer\n2017 FINA World Championships: Best Male Swimmer\nFINA Athlete of the Year in Swimming (male): 2017, 2019, 2021\nUSA Swimming, Athlete of the Year: 2017, 2019, 2021\nGolden Goggle Award Male Athlete of the Year: 2017, 2019, 2021\nGolden Goggle Award Male Race of the Year (100 meter butterfly): 2017, 2019\nGolden Goggle Award Relay Performance of the Year: 2016, 2018, 2021\nSwimming World World Swimmer of the Year (male): 2017, 2019, 2021\nSwimming World American Swimmer of the Year (male): 2017, 2019, 2021\nSwimSwam Swammy Award Swimmer of the Year (male): 2017, 2019, 2020, 2021\nSwimSwam Top 100 (Men's): 2021 (#1), 2022 (#1)\nSwimSwam Swammy Award, NCAA Swimmer of the Year (male): 2017, 2018\nSoutheastern Conference (SEC), Male Swimmer of the Year: 2015–2016, 2016–2017, 2017—2018\nCollege Swimming & Diving Coaches Association of America (CSCAA), Division-1 Swimmer of the Year (Men's): 2015–2016, 2016–2017, 2017—2018\nSwimSwam Swammy Award, Age Group Swimmer of the Year 17—18 (male): 2013\nSwimSwam Swammy Award, SwimSwam Buzz Award: 2013\n\n\n== Personal life ==\n\n\n=== Swim analysis ===\nDressel began posting videos deconstructing some of his past swims to his YouTube channel in July 2020. In the first video, he analyzed one of his swims where he set a new world record in the 100-meter butterfly. He has also shared critique of his past races and swims with SwimSwam. Leading up to the 2020 Summer Olympics, he ventured into analyses of swimming in pop culture. Dressel provided his perspective to GQ on swimming scenes from various movies including scenes featuring survival swimming (such as in Cast Away and Kingsman: The Secret Service) and competitive swimming (as in Pride).\n\n\n=== Sponsorships and collaborations ===\nOn July 19, 2018, Dressel turned professional by signing a sponsorship deal with swimwear brand Speedo. In September 2020, SPIRE Institute and Academy announced collaborations with Dressel for providing support to students of SPIRE through various avenues such as curriculum development, training, and facilities design. Leading up to the 2020 Summer Olympics, one of Dressel's sponsors, Toyota, specially designed a vehicle inspired by his tattoos.\n\n\n=== Marriage ===\nIn 2013, Dressel started a romantic relationship with his future wife, Meghan, a child counselor and former breaststroker who competed collegiately for Florida State University, and in 2019 they were engaged. In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, planning the wedding was one way Dressel stayed busy during quarantine, as was hiking a 60-mile portion of the Appalachian Trail. They married on Valentine's Day weekend, February 13, 2021, in their shared home state of Florida. The couple welcomed a son, August, in February 2024 and a daughter, Josie, in June 2025.\n\n\n=== Religion ===\nHe was raised Christian in his youth and his faith grew while in college. His large eagle tattoo was inspired by the Bible verse Isaiah 40:31, which he shared with Sports Illustrated in 2016 is his favorite Bible verse. During his senior year of high school, Dressel gave up swimming for a time because of his struggle with \"mental demons\", speaking about that period in his life Dressel said:\n\nComing out of that, I started swimming again and really just put all my trust in God and knowing that he's going to take care of everything for me, good or bad. I really learned a lot, and I really learned to see the light at the end of the tunnel and trust what God is doing, whether it be a rough point in your life or a top pinnacle in your life. You've just got to take pauses and really trust what he's doing.\n\n\n== See also ==\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nCaeleb Dressel  at World Aquatics \nCaeleb Dressel at the International Swimming League (archived) \nCaeleb Dressel at USA Swimming (archived)\nCaeleb Dressel at Team USA (archive April 16, 2023)\nCaeleb Dressel at Olympics.com \nCaeleb Dressel at Olympedia \nCaeleb Dressel at IMDb \nCaeleb Dressel's channel on YouTube"}
{"title": "Cao Yuan", "requested": "Cao Yuan", "extract": "Cao Yuan (Chinese: 曹缘; pinyin: Cáo Yuán; born 7 February 1995) is a Chinese diver and an Olympic gold medalist, having won four golds, one silver and one bronze in the Olympics.  He has also won golds in diving at the World Championships and World Cups. Cao is considered the best male diver of all time.\n\n\n== Early life ==\nCao was born on February 7, 1995 in Hunan province. Cao started diving at age five. His mother wanted him to learn discipline, so she enrolled him in diving classes.\nHis life motto is \"Go your own way and see your own scenery. Be calm for life's ups and downs.\"\n\n\n== Career ==\nCao is the only diver in history to win 3 gold medals in a single World Diving Series event by winning gold medals in 3m synchro, 10m synchro, and 10m individual events of the 2014 World Diving Series in Canada.\nCao together with Yue Lin are the only divers to ever win two World Series gold medals on the same day of the competition by winning the 3m synchro and 10m synchro events on 30 May 2014.\nIn 2015, he partnered with Qin Kai on the men's 3m synchro springboard at the World Championships in Kazan and won gold.\nAt the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio, Cao led throughout the competition in the men's 3m springboard event, and won gold with a score of 547.60. He also won bronze in the 3m springboard synchronized dive with Qin Kai.\nIn 2017, at the World Championships in Budapest, Cao won silver pairing with Xie Siyi in the 3m synchro.  In the 2018 World Cup, he won a gold in the 3m synchro with Xie, as well as a silver in the individual 3m springboard.\nAt the 2019 World Aquatics Championships held in Gwangju, South Korea, Cao won gold in both the men's synchronised diving events. In the 3m synchro with Xie, the pair won with their last two dives, and he also won with Chen Aisen in the 10m synchro.\nAt the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Cao and teammate Aisen Chen won silver in men's synchronized 10m platform. He also won gold in individual 10m platform with 582.35 points.\nAt the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, he won the gold medal at the 10m platform event, capping off China's perfect eight-gold medal performance. Cao became the first athlete since Greg Louganis to win consecutive gold medals in this event.\n\n\n== Accolades ==\nIn 2014, he was named the Male Diver of the Year by the International Swimming Federation (FINA). He was again given the accolade in 2018.\nHe received the 4 May Youth Medal of Beijing in the People's Republic of China in 2014.\n\n\n== See also ==\nChina at the 2012 Summer Olympics\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nCao Yuan at World Aquatics\nCao Yuan at IAT Database Diving (in German)\nCao Yuan at Olympics.com\nCao Yuan at the Chinese Olympic Committee (archived)\nCao Yuan at Olympedia\nCao Yuan at InterSportStats"}
{"title": "Carl Lewis", "requested": "Carl Lewis", "extract": "Frederick Carlton Lewis (born July 1, 1961) is an American former track and field athlete who won nine Olympic gold medals, one Olympic silver medal, and 10 World Championships medals, including eight gold. Lewis was a dominant sprinter and long jumper whose career spanned from 1979 to 1996, when he last won the Olympic long jump. He is one of six athletes to win gold in the same individual event in four consecutive Olympic Games, and is one of two people to win gold in the same individual athletics event in four Olympic Games, along with USA discus thrower Al Oerter. He is the head track and field coach for the University of Houston.\nLewis topped the world rankings in the 100 m, 200 m and long jump events frequently from 1981 to the early 1990s. He set world records in the 100 m, 4 × 100 m and 4 × 200 m relays, while his world record in the indoor long jump has stood since 1984. His 65 consecutive victories in the long jump over a span of ten years is one of the sport's longest undefeated streaks. Lewis broke 10 seconds for the 100 meters fifteen times and 20 seconds for the 200 meters ten times. He also long jumped over 8.53 metres (28 ft) 71 times.\nHis accomplishments have led to numerous accolades, including being voted \"World Athlete of the Century\" by the International Association of Athletics Federations, \"Sportsman of the Century\" by the International Olympic Committee, \"Olympian of the Century\" by Sports Illustrated and \"Athlete of the Year\" by Track & Field News in 1982, 1983, and 1984.\nAfter retiring from athletics, Lewis became an actor and has appeared in a number of films. In 2011, he attempted to run for a seat as a Democrat in the New Jersey Senate, but was removed from the ballot due to the state's residency requirement. Lewis owns a marketing and branding company named C.L.E.G., which markets and brands products and services, including his own.\n\n\n== Athletic career ==\n\n\n=== Fame as a competitive athlete ===\n\nFrederick Carlton Lewis was born in Birmingham, Alabama, on July 1, 1961, the son of William Lewis (1927–1987) and Evelyn née Lawler Lewis. His mother was a hurdler on the 1951 Pan-Am team. His elder brother Cleveland Lewis played professional soccer for the Memphis Rogues. His parents ran a local athletics club that provided a crucial influence on both him and his sister, Carol. She became an elite long jumper, finishing ninth at the 1984 Olympics and taking bronze at the 1983 World Championships.\nLewis was initially coached by his father, who also coached other local athletes to elite status. At age 13, Lewis began competing in the long jump, and he emerged as a promising athlete while coached by Andy Dudek and Paul Minore at Willingboro High School in his hometown of Willingboro Township, New Jersey. He achieved the ranking of fourth on the all-time World Junior list of long jumpers.\nMany colleges tried to recruit Lewis, and he chose to enroll at the University of Houston where Tom Tellez was coach. Tellez would thereafter remain Lewis's coach for his entire career. Days after graduating from high school in 1979, Lewis broke the high school long jump record with a leap of 8.13 m (26 ft 8 in). By the end of 1979, Lewis was ranked fifth in the world for the long jump, according to Track and Field News.\nAn old knee injury had flared up again at the end of the high school year, and this might have had consequences on his fitness. Lewis worked with Tellez and adapted his technique so that he was able to jump without pain, and he went on to win the 1980 National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) title with a wind-assisted jump of 8.35 m (27 ft 4+1⁄2 in).\nThough his focus was on the long jump, he was now starting to emerge as a talent in the sprints. Comparisons were beginning to be made with Jesse Owens, who dominated sprint and long jump events in the 1930s. Lewis qualified for the American team for the 1980 Olympics in the long jump and as a member of the 4 × 100 m relay team. The Olympic boycott precluded Lewis from competing in Moscow, Russia; he instead participated in the Liberty Bell Classic in July 1980, which was an alternate meet for boycotting nations. He jumped 7.77 m (25 ft 5+3⁄4 in) for a bronze medal, and the American 4 × 100 m relay team won gold with a time of 38.61 s. He received one of 461 Congressional Gold Medals created specifically for the athletes on the 1980 U.S. Summer Olympics team. At year's end, he was ranked sixth in the world in the long jump and seventh in the 100 m.\n\n\n=== Breakthrough in 1981 and 1982 ===\nAt the start of 1981, Lewis's best legal long jump was his high school record from 1979. On June 20, Lewis improved his personal best by almost half a meter by leaping 8.62 m (28 ft 3+1⁄4 in) at the TAC Championships while still a teenager.\nWhile marks set at the thinner air of high altitude are eligible for world records, Lewis was determined to set his records at sea level. In response to a question about his skipping a 1982 long jump competition at altitude, he said, \"I want the record and I plan to get it, but not at altitude. I don't want that '(A)' [for altitude] after the mark.\" When he gained prominence in the early 1980s, all the extant men's 100 m and 200 m records and the long jump record had been set at the high altitude of Mexico City.\nAlso in 1981, Lewis became the fastest 100 m sprinter in the world. His relatively modest best from 1979 (10.67 s) improved to a world-class 10.21 the next year. But 1981 saw him run 10.00 s at the Southwest Conference Championships in Dallas on May 16, a time that was the third-fastest in history and stood as the low-altitude record. For the first time, Lewis was ranked number one in the world, in both the 100 m and the long jump. He won his first national titles in the 100 m and long jump. Additionally, he won the James E. Sullivan Award as the top amateur athlete in the United States.\nIn 1982, Lewis continued his dominance, and for the first time it seemed someone might challenge Bob Beamon's world record of 8.90 m (29 ft 2+1⁄4 in) in the long jump set at the 1968 Olympics, a mark often described as one of the greatest athletic achievements ever. Before Lewis, 28 ft 0 in (8.53 m) had been exceeded on two occasions by two people: Beamon and 1980 Olympic champion Lutz Dombrowski. During 1982, Lewis cleared 28 ft 0 in (8.53 m) five times outdoors, twice more indoors, going as far as 8.76 m (28 ft 8+3⁄4 in) at Indianapolis on July 24. He also ran 10.00 s in the 100 m, the world's fastest time, matching his low-altitude record from 1981. He achieved his 10.00 s clocking the same weekend he leapt 8.61 m (28 ft 2+3⁄4 in) twice, and the day he recorded his new low-altitude record 8.76 m (28 ft 8+3⁄4 in) at Indianapolis, he had three fouls with his toe barely over the board, two of which seemed to exceed Beamon's record, the third which several observers said reached 30 ft 0 in (9.14 m). Lewis said he should have been credited with that jump, claiming the track officials misinterpreted the rules on fouls.\nHe repeated his number one ranking in the 100 m and long jump, and ranked number six in the 200 m. Additionally, he was named Athlete of the Year by Track and Field News. From 1981 until 1992, Lewis topped the 100 m ranking six times (seven if Ben Johnson's 1987 top ranking is ignored), and ranked no lower than third. His dominance in the long jump was even greater, as he topped the rankings nine times during the same period, and ranked second in the other years.\n\n\n=== 1983 and the inaugural World Championships ===\nThe International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), the governing body of track and field, organized the first World Championships in 1983. Lewis' chief rival in the long jump was predicted to be the man who last beat him: Larry Myricks. But though Myricks had joined Lewis in surpassing 28 ft 0 in (8.53 m) the year before, he failed to qualify for the American team, and Lewis won at Helsinki with relative ease. His winning leap of 8.55 m (28 ft 1⁄2 in) defeated silver medalist Jason Grimes by 0.26 m (10 in).\nHe also won the 100 m with relative ease. There, Calvin Smith who had earlier that year set a new world record in the 100 m at altitude with a 9.93 s performance, was soundly beaten by Lewis 10.07 s to 10.21 s. Smith won the 200 m title, an event which Lewis had not entered, but even there he was partly in Lewis' shadow as Lewis had set an American record in that event earlier that year. He won the 200 m on June 19 at the TAC/Mobil Championships in 19.75 s, the second-fastest time in history and the low-altitude record, only 0.03 s behind Pietro Mennea's 1979 mark. Observers here noted that Lewis probably could have broken the world record if he did not ease off in the final meters to raise his arms in celebration. Finally, Lewis ran the anchor in the 4 × 100 m relay, winning in 37.86 s, a new world record and the first in Lewis' career.\nLewis' year-best performances in the 100 m and long jump were not at the World Championships, but at other meets. He became the first person to run a sub-10 second 100 m at low-altitude with a 9.97 s in Modesto on May 14. His gold at the World Championships and his other fast times earned him the number one ranking in the world that year, despite Calvin Smith's world record. At the TAC Championships on June 19, he set a new low-altitude record in the long jump, 8.79 m (28 ft 10 in) and earned the world number one ranking in that event. Track and Field News ranked him number two in the 200 m, despite his low-altitude record of 19.75 s, behind Smith, who had won gold at Helsinki. Lewis was again named Athlete of the Year by the magazine.\n\n\n=== 1984 Summer Olympics: emulating Jesse Owens ===\n\nAt the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, Lewis was entered into four events with realistic prospects of winning each of them and thereby matching the achievement of Jesse Owens at the 1936 Games in Berlin.\nLewis started his quest to match Owens with a convincing win in the 100 m, running 9.99 s to defeat his nearest competitor, fellow American Sam Graddy, by 0.2 s. In his next event, the long jump, Lewis won with relative ease. His behavior in winning this event stoked controversy, even as knowledgeable observers agreed that his tactics were correct. Since Lewis still had heats and finals in the 200 m and the 4 × 100 m relay to compete in, he chose to take as few jumps as necessary to win the event. He risked injury in the cool conditions of the day if he over-extended himself, and his ultimate goal to win four golds might be at risk. He knew that his first jump at 8.54 m (28 ft 0 in) was sufficient to win the event. He fouled on his next jump and then passed on his remaining four allotted jumps. Lewis easily won gold, and Gary Honey of Australia settled for the silver medal with a jump of 8.24 m (27 ft 1⁄4 in). The public was generally unaware of the intricacies of the sport and had been repeatedly told by the media of Lewis's quest to surpass Bob Beamon's legendary long jump record of 8.90 m (29 ft 2+1⁄4 in). Lewis himself had often stated it was a goal of his to surpass the mark. A television advertisement with Beamon appeared before the final, featuring the record-holder saying, \"I hope you make it, kid.\" So, when Lewis decided not to make any more attempts to try to break the record, he was loudly booed. When asked about those boos, Lewis said, \"I was shocked at first. But after I thought about it, I realized that they were booing because they wanted to see more of Carl Lewis. I guess that's flattering.\"\nHis third gold medal came in the 200 m, where he won with a time of 19.80 s, a new Olympic record and the third fastest time in history. Finally, he won his fourth gold in the 4 × 100 m relay when he anchored the final leg of the race; he broke the tape with a time of 37.83 s, setting a new world record.\n\n\n==== Lack of endorsements and public perception ====\nAlthough Lewis had achieved what he had set out to do, matching Jesse Owens' feat of winning four gold medals in the same events at a single Olympic Games, he did not receive the lucrative endorsement offers that he had expected. The long jump controversy was one reason and his self-congratulatory conduct did not impress several other track stars. Further, Lewis's agent Joe Douglas compared him to pop star Michael Jackson, a comparison which did not go over well. Douglas said he was inaccurately quoted, but the impression that Lewis was aloof and egotistical was firmly planted in the public's perception by the end of the 1984 Olympic Games.\nAdditionally, rumors circulated at that time that Lewis was gay. Although he denied the rumors, it likely hurt his marketability. Lewis' physical appearance at the Games, with a flattop haircut and flamboyant clothing, added fuel to the reports. \"It doesn't matter what Carl Lewis' sexuality is\", high jumper Dwight Stones said. \"Madison Avenue perceives him as homosexual.\" Coca-Cola had offered a lucrative deal to Lewis before the Olympics, but Lewis and Douglas turned it down, confident that Lewis would be worth more after the Olympics. But Coca-Cola rescinded the offer after the Games. Nike already had Lewis under contract for several years, despite questions about how it affected his amateur status, and he was appearing in Nike television advertisements in print and on billboards. Nike was faced with Lewis's new negative image and dropped him after the Games. \"If you're a male athlete, I think the American public wants you to look macho\", said Don Coleman, a Nike representative. \"They started looking for ways to get rid of me\", Lewis said. \"Everyone there was so scared and so cynical they did not know what to do.\" Lewis and Nike eventually did split, and Lewis signed an endorsement deal with Mizuno. Lewis himself would lay the blame on some inaccurate reporting, especially the \"Carl bashing\", as he put it, typified by a Sports Illustrated article before the Olympics.\nAt year's end, Lewis was again awarded the top rankings in the 100 m and the long jump and was additionally ranked number one in the 200 m, and for the third year in a row he was awarded the Athlete of the Year title by Track & Field News.\nThe Chicago Bulls drafted Lewis in the 1984 NBA draft as the 208th overall pick, although he had played neither high school nor college basketball. Lewis never played in the NBA. A poll on the NBA's website ranked Lewis second to Lusia Harris, the only woman to be drafted by the NBA, as the most unusual pick in the history of the NBA Draft. Ron Weiss, the head West Coast scout of the Bulls, and Ken Passon, the assistant West Coast scout, recommended Lewis because he was the best athlete available. Similarly, Lewis was drafted by the Dallas Cowboys as a wide receiver in the 12th round of the 1984 NFL draft, even though he did not play football in college. He never played in the NFL either.\n\n\n=== Ben Johnson and the 1987 World Championships ===\nAfter the 1984 Olympics, Lewis continued to dominate track and field, especially in the long jump, in which he would remain undefeated for the next seven years, but others started to challenge his dominance in the 100 m sprint. His low-altitude record had been surpassed by fellow American Mel Lattany with a time of 9.96 s shortly before the 1984 Olympics, but his biggest challenger would prove to be Canadian Ben Johnson, the bronze medalist behind Lewis at the 1984 Olympics. Johnson would beat Lewis once in 1985, but Lewis also lost to others, while winning most of his races. Lewis retained his number one rank that year; Johnson would place second. In 1986, Johnson defeated Lewis convincingly at the Goodwill Games in Moscow, clocking a new low-altitude record of 9.95 s. At year's end, Johnson was ranked number one, while Lewis slipped to number three, having lost more races than he won. He even seemed vulnerable in the long jump, an event he did not lose in 1986, or the year before, though he competed sparingly. Lewis ended up ranked second behind Soviet Robert Emmiyan, who had the longest legal jump of the year at 8.61 m (28 ft 2+3⁄4 in).\nAt the 1987 World Championships in Athletics in Rome, Lewis skipped the 200 m to focus on his strongest event, the long jump, and made sure to take all his attempts. This was not to answer critics from the 1984 long jump controversy; this was because history's second 29 ft long-jumper was in the field: Robert Emmiyan leapt 8.86 m (29 ft 3⁄4 in) at altitude in May, just 4 cm short of Bob Beamon's record. But Emmiyan's best that day was a leap of 8.53 m (27 ft 11+3⁄4 in), second to Lewis' 8.67 m (28 ft 5+1⁄4 in). Lewis cleared 8.60 m (28 ft 2+1⁄2 in) four times. \nIn the 4 × 100 m relay, Lewis anchored the gold-medal team to a time of 37.90 s, the third-fastest of all time.\nThe 100 m final was the most talked about event and caused the most drama. Johnson had run under 10.00 s three times in the year before Rome, while Lewis had not managed to get under the 10.00 s barrier at all. Lewis looked strong in the heats of the 100 m, setting a Championship record in the semi-final while running into a wind with a 10.03 s effort. In the final, however, Johnson won with a time that stunned observers: 9.83 s, a new world record. Lewis, second with 9.93 s, had tied the existing world record, but that was insufficient.\n\nWhile Johnson basked in the glory of his achievement, Lewis started to explain away his defeat. He first claimed that Johnson had false-started, then he alluded to a stomach virus that had weakened him, and finally, without naming names, said \"There are a lot of people coming out of nowhere. I don't think they are doing it without drugs.\" He added, \"I could run 9.8 or faster in the 100 if I could jump into drugs right away.\" This was the start of Lewis's calling on the sport of track and field to eliminate the illegal use of performance-enhancing drugs. His detractors noted that the problem had been in the sport for many years, and it only became a cause for Lewis once he was actually defeated. In response to the accusations, Johnson replied \"When Carl Lewis was winning everything, I never said a word against him. And when the next guy comes along and beats me, I won't complain about that either\".\n\n\n=== 1988 Summer Olympics ===\nLewis not only lost the most publicized showdown in track and field in 1987, he also lost his father. When William Lewis died of cancer at age 60, Lewis placed the gold medal he won for the 100 m in 1984 in his hand to be buried with him. \"Don't worry\", he told his mother. \"I'll get another one.\" Lewis repeatedly referred to his father as a motivating factor for the 1988 season. \"A lot happened to me last year, especially the death of my father. That caused me to re-educate myself to being the very best I possibly can be this season\", he said, after defeating Johnson in Zürich on August 17.\nAt the Olympic trials in Indianapolis, Lewis won the 100 m finals in 9.78 s, which appeared to be a new world record. However, the race was determined to have been wind-aided, so the record did not count.\nThe 100 m final at the 1988 Summer Olympics was one of the most sensational sports stories of the year and its unexpected outcome would rank as one of the most infamous sports stories of the century. In the Olympic finals, Johnson won in 9.79 s, a new world record, while Lewis set a new American record with 9.92 s. Three days later, Johnson tested positive for steroids, his medal was taken away and Lewis was awarded gold and credited with a new Olympic record.\nIn the long jump, Robert Emmiyan withdrew from the competition citing an injury, and Lewis's main challengers were rising American long jump star Mike Powell and long-time rival Larry Myricks. Lewis leapt 8.72 m (28 ft 7+1⁄4 in), a low-altitude Olympic best, and none of his competitors could match it. The Americans swept the medals in the event for the first time in 84 years. In the 200 m, Lewis dipped under his Olympic record from 1984, running 19.79 s, but did so in second place to Joe DeLoach, who claimed the new record and Olympic gold in 19.75 s. In the final event he entered, the 4 × 100 m relay, Lewis never made it to the track as the Americans fumbled an exchange in a heat and were disqualified.\nA subsequent honor would follow: Lewis eventually was credited with the 100 m world record for the 9.92 s he ran in Seoul. Though Ben Johnson's 9.79 s time was never ratified as a world record, the 9.83 s he ran the year before was. However, in the fallout to the steroid scandal, an inquiry was called in Canada wherein Johnson admitted under oath to long-time steroid use. The IAAF subsequently stripped Johnson of his record and gold medal from the World Championships. Lewis was deemed to be the world record holder for his 1988 Olympic performance and declared the 1987 100 m World Champion. The IAAF also declared that Lewis had also, therefore, twice tied the \"true\" world record (9.93 s) for his 1987 World Championship performance, and again at the 1988 Zürich meet where he defeated Johnson. However, those times were never ratified as records. From January 1, 1990, Lewis was the world record holder in the 100 m. The record did not last long, as fellow American and University of Houston teammate Leroy Burrell ran 9.90 s on June 14, 1991, to break Lewis's mark. Lewis also permanently lost his ranking as number one for the 200 m in 1988 and for the 100 m in 1989. He also lost the top ranking for the long jump in 1990 but was able to regain it in 1992.\n\n\n=== 1991 World Championships: Lewis' greatest performances ===\nTokyo was the venue for the 1991 World Championships. In the 100 m final, Lewis faced the two men who ranked number one in the world the past two years: Burrell and Jamaican Raymond Stewart. In what would be the deepest 100 meters race ever to that time, with six men finishing in under ten seconds, Lewis not only defeated his opponents, he reclaimed the world record with a clocking of 9.86 s. Though previously a world-record holder in this event, this was the first time he had crossed the line with \"WR\" beside his name on the giant television screens, and the first time he could savor his achievement at the moment it occurred. He could be seen with tears in his eyes afterwards. \"The best race of my life\", Lewis said. \"The best technique, the fastest. And I did it at thirty.\" Lewis's world record would stand for nearly three years. Lewis also anchored the 4 × 100 m relay team to another world record, 37.50 s, the third time that year he had anchored a 4 × 100 m squad to a world record.\n\n\n==== Long jump showdown versus Powell ====\nThe 1991 World Championships are perhaps best remembered for the long jump final, considered by some to have been one of the greatest competitions ever in any sport. Lewis was up against his main rival of the last few years, Mike Powell, the silver medalist in the event from the 1988 Olympics and the top-ranked long jumper of 1990. Lewis had at that point not lost a long jump competition in a decade, winning the 65 consecutive meets in which he competed. Powell had been unable to defeat Lewis, despite sometimes putting in jumps near world-record territory, only to see them ruled fouls or, as with other competitors such as Larry Myricks, putting in leaps that Lewis himself had only rarely surpassed, only to see Lewis surpass them on his next or final attempt.\nLewis' first jump was 8.68 m (28 ft 5+1⁄2 in), a World Championship record, and a mark bested by only three others beside Lewis all-time. Powell, jumping first, had faltered in the first round, but jumped 8.54 m (28 ft 0 in) to claim second place in the second round. Lewis jumped 8.83 m (28 ft 11+1⁄2 in), a wind-aided leap, in the third round, a mark that would have won all but two long jump competitions in history. Powell responded with a long foul, estimated to be around 8.80 m (28 ft 10+1⁄4 in). Lewis's next jump made history: the first leap ever beyond Bob Beamon's record. The wind gauge indicated the jump was wind-aided, so it could not be considered a record, but it would still count in the competition. 8.91 m (29 ft 2+3⁄4 in) was the greatest leap ever under any condition.\nIn the next round, Powell responded. His jump was measured as 8.95 m (29 ft 4+1⁄4 in); this time, his jump was not a foul, and with a wind gauge measurement of 0.3 m/s, well within the legal allowable for a record. Powell had not only jumped 4 cm further than Lewis, he had eclipsed the 23-year-old mark set by Bob Beamon and done so at low altitude. Lewis still had two jumps left, although he was now no longer chasing Beamon, but Powell. He leaped 8.87 m (29 ft 1 in), which was a new personal best under legal wind conditions, then a final jump of 8.84 m (29 ft 0 in). He thus lost his first long jump competition in a decade. Powell's 8.95 m (29 ft 4+1⁄4 in) and Lewis's final two jumps still stand, as of September 2025, as the top three low altitude jumps ever. The farthest anyone has jumped since under legal conditions is 8.74 m (28 ft 8 in).\nLewis' reaction to what was one of the greatest competitions ever in the sport was to offer acknowledgment of the achievement of Powell. \"He just did it\", Lewis said of Powell's winning jump. \"It was that close, and it was the best of his life.\" Powell did jump as far or farther on two subsequent occasions, though both were wind-aided jumps at altitude: 8.99 m (29 ft 5+3⁄4 in) in 1992 and 8.95 m (29 ft 4+1⁄4 in) in 1994. Lewis's best subsequent results were two wind-aided leaps at 8.72 m (28 ft 7+1⁄4 in), and an 8.68 m (28 ft 5+1⁄2 in) under legal conditions while in the qualifying rounds at the Barcelona Olympics.\nIn reference to his efforts at the 1991 World Championships, Lewis said, \"This has been the greatest meet that I've ever had.\" Track and Field News was prepared to go even further than that, suggesting that after these Championships, \"It had become hard to argue that he is not the greatest athlete ever to set foot on track or field.\" Lewis's 1991 outstanding results earned him the ABC's Wide World of Sports Athlete of the Year, an award he shared with gymnastics star Kim Zmeskal.\n\n\n=== Final years and retirement ===\nAfter the heights reached in 1991, Lewis started to lose his dominance in both the sprints and the long jump.\nHe anchored a world record 1:19.11 in the rarely run 4 × 200 m relay with the Santa Monica Track Club early in 1992, however he failed to qualify for the Olympic team in the 100 m or 200 m. In the latter race, he finished fourth at the Olympic trials behind rising star Michael Johnson who set a personal best of 19.79 s. It was the first time the two had ever met on the track. Lewis did, however, qualify for the long jump, finishing second behind Powell, and was eligible for the 4 × 100 m relay team.\nAt the Barcelona Olympics in 1992, Lewis jumped 8.67 m (28 ft 5+1⁄4 in) in the first round of the long jump, beating Powell who did a final-round 8.64 m (28 ft 4 in). In the 4 × 100 m relay, Lewis anchored another world record, in 37.40 s, a time which stood for 16 years. He covered the final leg in 8.85 seconds, the fastest officially recorded anchor leg.\nLewis competed at the 4th World Championships in Stuttgart in 1993, but finished fourth in the 100 m, and did not compete in the long jump. He did, however, earn his first World Championship medal in the 200 m, a bronze with his 19.99 s performance. That medal would prove to be his final Olympic or World Championship medal in a running event. Injuries kept Lewis largely sidelined for the next few years, then he made a comeback for the 1996 season.\nIn 1996, Lewis qualified for the Olympic team in the long jump for the fifth time, the first time an American man has done so. At the 1996 Olympics, injuries to world-record holder Mike Powell and the leading long-jumper in the world, Iván Pedroso, affected their performances. Lewis, on the other hand, was in good form. Though he did not match past performances, his third-round leap of 8.50 m (27 ft 10+1⁄2 in) won gold by 0.21 m (8+1⁄4 in) over second-place finisher James Beckford of Jamaica. He became the third Olympian to win the same individual event four times, joining Danish sailor Paul Elvstrøm and American discus thrower Al Oerter; the three would be joined by American swimmer Michael Phelps in 2016 and swimmer Katie Ledecky in 2024. Lewis's nine gold medals also tie him for second on the list of multiple Olympic gold medalists with Paavo Nurmi, Larisa Latynina, Mark Spitz and Katie Ledecky behind Phelps.\nLewis' 8.50 m (27 ft 10+1⁄2 in) jump was also officially declared tied with Larry Myricks for the masters record for the 35–39 age group.\nControversy struck when, as Track and Field News put it, \"Lewis' attitude in the whole relay hoo-hah a few days later served only to take the luster off his final gold.\" After Lewis's unexpected long jump gold, it was noted that he could become the athlete with the most Olympic gold medals if he entered the 4 × 100 m relay team. Any member of the American Olympic men's track and field team could be used, even if they had not qualified for the relay event. Lewis said, \"If they asked me, I'd run it in a second. But they haven't asked me to run it.\" He further suggested on Larry King Live that viewers phone the United States Olympic Committee to weigh in on the situation. Lewis had skipped the mandatory relay training camp and demanded to run the anchor leg, which added to the debate. The final decision was to exclude Lewis from the team. Olympic team coach Erv Hunt said, \"The basis of their [the relay team's] opinion was 'We want to run, we worked our butts off and we deserve to be here.'\" The American relay team finished second behind Canada.\nLewis retired from track and field in 1997.\n\n\n== Drug testing exoneration ==\nIn 2003, Wade Exum, the United States Olympic Committee's director of drug control administration from 1991 to 2000, gave copies of documents to Sports Illustrated that revealed that some 100 American athletes had failed drug tests from 1988 to 2000, arguing that they should have been prevented from competing in the Olympics but were nevertheless cleared to compete. Before showing the documents to Sports Illustrated, Exum tried to use them in a lawsuit against USOC, accusing the organization of racial discrimination and wrongful termination against him and cover-up over the failed tests. His case was summarily dismissed by the Denver federal Court for lack of evidence. The USOC claimed his case \"baseless\" as he himself was the one in charge of screening the anti-doping test program of the organization and clarifying that the athletes were cleared according to the rules.\nLewis was among the named athletes and Exum's documents revealed that at the 1988 Olympics trials he had three positive results on a combined test for pseudoephedrine, ephedrine, and phenylpropanolamine. All were and are banned in sport due to their activity as stimulants, though at the time all three were available over-the-counter as dietary supplements or treatments for cold and allergy symptoms. The combined concentrations of these stimulants detected in the three successive tests were 2 ppm, 4 ppm and 6 ppm.\nLewis defended himself, claiming that he had accidentally consumed the banned substances. After the supplements that he had taken were analyzed to prove his claims, the USOC accepted his claim of inadvertent use, since a dietary supplement he ingested was found to contain ma huang, the Chinese name for Ephedra sinica, an ephedrine-bearing plant which was then marketed as a weight loss aid. Fellow Santa Monica Track Club teammates Joe DeLoach and Floyd Heard were also found to have the same banned stimulants in their systems, and were cleared to compete for the same reason.\nThe highest level of the stimulants Lewis recorded was 6 ppm, which was regarded as a positive test in 1988. According to the IOC rules at the time, positive tests with levels lower than 10 ppm were cause of further investigation but not immediate ban. Neal Benowitz, a professor of medicine at UC San Francisco who is an expert on ephedrine and other stimulants, agreed in 2003 that \"These [levels] are what you'd see from someone taking cold or allergy medicines and are unlikely to have any effect on performance.\"\nFollowing Exum's revelations the IAAF affirmed that at the 1988 Olympic Trials the USOC indeed followed the correct procedures in dealing with eight positive findings for ephedrine and ephedrine-related compounds in low concentration. The federation also reviewed in 1988 the relevant documents with the athletes' names undisclosed and stated that \"the medical committee felt satisfied, however, on the basis of the information received that the cases had been properly concluded by the USOC as 'negative cases' in accordance with the rules and regulations in place at the time and no further action was taken\".\n\"Carl did nothing wrong. There was never intent. He was never told 'you violated the rules,'\" said Martin D. Singer, Lewis's lawyer, who also said that Lewis had inadvertently taken the banned stimulants in an over-the-counter herbal remedy. In an April 2003 interview, Lewis agreed that he tested positive three times in 1988 but he was let off as that was the normal practice in those times. \"The only thing I can say is I think it's unfortunate what Wade Exum is trying to do\", said Lewis. \"I don't know what people are trying to make out of nothing because everyone was treated the same, so what are we talking about? I don't get it.\"\n\n\n== Achievements and honors ==\n\nLewis was the only man to successfully defend an Olympic long jump title until the 2024 Olympics, when Miltos Tentoglou became the second to achieve it. Lewis is still the only one to defend the title three times (four gold medals in four consecutive Olympics).\nOutdoors, Lewis jumped 14 of the 20 furthest ancillary jumps of all time. (Ancillary marks are those that are valid, but were not the furthest in a series.)\n\n\n=== Personal best marks ===\n100 m: 9.86 s (August 1991, Tokyo)\n200 m: 19.75 s (June 1983, Indianapolis)\nLong jump: 8.87 m (29 ft 1 in) 1991, 8.91 m (29 ft 2+3⁄4 in) 1991 (both in Tokyo)\n4 × 100 m relay: 37.40 s (United States – Marsh; Burrell; Mitchell; Lewis – August 1992, Barcelona)\n4 × 200 m relay: 1:18.68 min (Santa Monica Track Club – Marsh; Burrell; Heard; Lewis – 1994; (former world record)\n\n\n=== Honors ===\nIn 1999, Lewis was voted \"Sportsman of the Century\" by the International Olympic Committee, elected \"World Athlete of the Century\" by the International Association of Athletics Federations and named \"Olympian of the Century\" by Sports Illustrated. In 2000 his alma mater University of Houston named the Carl Lewis International Complex after him.\nIn 2010, Lewis was inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame.\nIn 2016, Lewis was inducted into the Texas Track and Field Coaches Association Hall of Fame.\n\n\n=== Awards ===\nWorld Athletics Awards\n2× World Athlete of the Year (Men)：1988, 1991\n3× L'Équipe Champion of Champions: 1983, 1984, 1991\n2× Associated Press Athlete of the Year: 1983, 1984\n2× United Press International Athlete of the Year: 1983, 1984\nUSOC SportsMan of the Year: 1991\nJames E. Sullivan Award: 1981\nGazzetta Sports Awards\n4× World Sportsman of the Year: 1983, 1984, 1988, 1991\nTrack & Field News\n3× World Athlete of the Year: 1982, 1983, 1984\n7× U.S. Athlete of the Year: 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1987, 1988, 1991\n\n\n== Career after retiring from athletics ==\n\n\n=== Film and television ===\n\nLewis has appeared in numerous films and television productions. Among them, he played himself in cameos in Perfect Strangers, Speed Zone, Alien Hunter and Material Girls. He made an appearance on The Weakest Link. He also played Stu in the made-for-TV movie Atomic Twister.\nIn 2011, Lewis appeared in the short documentary Challenging Impossibility which features the feats of strength demonstrated by the late spiritual teacher and peace advocate Sri Chinmoy.\nLewis also appeared in the film The Last Adam (2006).\nIn 2024, Lewis appeared in the fourth season of Mask Singer: Adivina quién canta, the Spanish version of Masked Singer, under the Panda mask. He was eliminated in the season premiere.\n\n\n=== Bid for New Jersey State Senate ===\nOn April 11, 2011, Lewis filed petitions to run as a Democrat for the New Jersey Senate in the state's 8th legislative district in Burlington County. Two weeks later he was disqualified by Lieutenant Governor and secretary of state Kim Guadagno, as he did not meet the state's requirement that Senate candidates live in New Jersey for four years. Lewis appealed his decision to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals; the court initially granted his appeal but a few days later the court reversed itself and Lewis withdrew his name.\n\n\n=== Coaching ===\nAs of 2025, Lewis serves as the head track and field coach at his alma mater, the University of Houston. He was elevated from assistant coach in 2023.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nIn the 2025 documentary I'm Carl Lewis, Lewis revealed that he had never been in a long-term relationship out of fear that it would have affected his professional aspirations.  He has a son named Bakim aka Blew, who is a Director/Videographer and lives in Houston, Texas.\nLewis became a vegan in 1990, during his late twenties, and has credited his outstanding 1991 results in part to his vegan diet. He has said that it is better suited to him because he can eat a larger quantity without affecting his athleticism, and he believes that switching to a vegan diet can lead to improved athletic performance.\nAt a 2019 Pan American Games news conference, and in the aftermath of the deadly El Paso and Dayton shootings, Lewis called then‑U.S. President Donald Trump \"a racist who is prejudiced, misogynistic, who doesn't value anyone outside of himself\". Lewis later endorsed Kamala Harris in the 2024 United States presidential election.\n\n\n== See also ==\nCarl Lewis Athletics 2000, a video game\nList of vegans\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists at a single Games\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists in one event\n100 metres at the World Championships in Athletics\nList of multiple Summer Olympic medalists\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nCarl Lewis at World Athletics \nCarl Lewis at www.USATF.org \nCarl Lewis at the USATF Hall of Fame (archived) \nCarl Lewis at the Team USA Hall of Fame  (archive July 20, 2023)\nCarl Lewis at Olympics.com Carl Lewis at Olympic.org (archived) \nCarl Lewis at Olympedia \nCarl Lewis at IMDb"}
{"title": "Carl Osburn", "requested": "Carl Osburn", "extract": "Carl Townsend Osburn (May 5, 1884 – December 28, 1966) was a United States Navy officer and sport shooter from Jacksontown, Ohio. After graduating from the United States Naval Academy in 1906, Osburn went on to reach the rank of commander. He competed in the 1912 Summer Olympics, 1920 Summer Olympics, and 1924 Summer Olympics, winning a total of eleven Olympic medals: five gold (including two individual golds), four silver, and two bronze. He is the most successful shooter at the Olympic Games when individual and team medals are both taken into the account. His tally of eleven medals made him the leading male medal winner for the United States at the Olympic Games until Michael Phelps broke this record after Mark Spitz equaled it in 1972.\n\n\n== Military history ==\nOsburn was admitted to the U.S. Naval Academy as a midshipman on August 1, 1903, graduating in 1906, earlier than scheduled, to address a shortage of naval officers. He was assigned for his sea service as a midshipman on board USS Rhode Island (BB-17) from October 12, 1906, to June 1908. He was then assigned to USS Castine (PG-6), a gunboat serving as a submarine tender, from October 4, 1908, to May 1909, seeing service along the Atlantic coast.\nDuring operations off Cuba in 1908, he earned the right to wear the Cuban Pacification Medal. Osburn was commissioned an ensign on February 12, 1909. Additionally, in 1909. Continuing his sea duty, Osburn was assigned on October 2, 1909, to USS Mississippi (BB-23), seeing service off the coast of New England until January 1910.\nPromoted to lieutenant (j. g.) on February 12, 1912, Osburn was detailed in April from Mississippi to participate from June to July in the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm, Sweden, where he competed in rifle marksmanship.\nOsburn then embarked on another tour of duty at sea, this time in USS Des Moines (C-15), a cruiser, beginning on September 12, 1912, and lasting until June 1913. From September 22, 1913, until April 1915, Osburn saw shore duty at the U.S. Naval Academy, and then on May 13, 1915, returned to sea duty on board the presidential yacht USS Mayflower (PY-1), being promoted to lieutenant on July 29, 1915. He received promotion to the permanent rank of lieutenant commander on July 1, 1919. Osburn took command of USS Schenck (DD-159), a recently commissioned destroyer of wartime construction, and conducted patrols in the Caribbean until September 1921, when he was assigned to USS Relief (AH-1).\nOn December 18, 1922, Osburn was assigned as the naval inspector of ordnance at the Bausch & Lomb Optical Company in Rochester, New York, remaining there until March 1925. On April 14, 1925, Osburn took command of the newly re-commissioned USS Dallas (DD-199), which lasted until June 1927.\nReturning to shore duty on January 20, 1932, with the Bureau of Navigation, Osburn was promoted to captain on October 1, 1933. He returned to sea on July 27, 1934, in command of USS Henderson (AP-1), a billet he held until June 1936. On June 30, 1936, Osburn returned to shore duty with the 12th Naval District in San Francisco.\nIn 1937 he was made the Director, Naval Reserves, for the 12th Naval District. Osburn retired with the rank of captain in 1939 but was recalled to active duty in 1941 to serve as the war plans officer of the 12th Naval District, San Francisco until 1945.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nAfter the Second World War, Osburn settled with his wife, Mary, at St. Helena, in the Napa Valley, California, where he died on December 28, 1966.\nOsburn's widow donated his collection of medals, trophies and memorabilia to the Naval Historical Foundation in 1967. These artifacts are now in the custody of the Naval History and Heritage Command's Curatorial Management Branch.\nOsburn was inducted into the USA Shooting Hall of Fame in 1994, where he is listed as one of the country's nine greatest marksmen.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists at a single Games\nList of multiple Summer Olympic medalists\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nCarl Osburn at the International Shooting Sport Federation\nCarl Osburn at Olympics.com"}
{"title": "Carl Schuhmann", "requested": "Carl Schuhmann", "extract": "Carl August Berthold Schuhmann (12 May 1869 – 24 March 1946) was a German athlete who won four Olympic titles in gymnastics and wrestling at the 1896 Summer Olympics in Athens, becoming the most successful athlete at the inaugural Olympics of the modern era. He also competed in weightlifting.\n\n\n== Biography ==\nSchuhmann, who was a member of the Berliner Turnerschaft, was a member of the successful German gymnastics team that won the team events in the horizontal bar and parallel bars events. Schuhmann added a third title by winning the horse vault event. He also competed in the parallel bars, horizontal bar, pommel horse, and rings events without success. The only extant information about his placing in those events, besides not being a medallist, is that he placed fifth in the rings competition.\n\nSchuhmann then entered the wrestling competition, which he also won, even though he was much lighter and smaller than most of the other combatants. In the first round, he faced Launceston Elliot of Great Britain and Ireland, who had won the weightlifting competition. Schuhmann won easily. The semifinals resulted in a bye for the German. In the final, he faced Georgios Tsitas of Greece. The match went for 40 minutes before it was determined that it was too dark to continue and the bout was postponed until a second day. The next morning, Schuhmann quickly finished the bout with a win for a gold medal.\nHe also entered the weightlifting competition, placing fourth.\nSchuhmann was one of nine athletes to compete in the long jump. The only information known about his placing in the event is that he was not one of the top four. He also placed fifth in the triple jump and in the bottom three of a seven-man field in the shot put.\nSchuhmann tied for fourth place in the two-handed weightlifting competition now known as the clean and jerk. He and Georgios Papasideris of Greece both lifted 90.0 kilograms.\nIn 1936, he was part of a gymnastics exhibition at the Olympic Stadium.\nHis tombstone at Friedhof Heerstraße is inscribed with the five Olympic Rings, the epitaph \"Germany’s first Olympic champion\", and the legend \"Athens 1896\".\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multi-sport athletes\nList of multi-sport champions\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists at a single Games\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nCarl Schuhmann at World Athletics\nCarl Schuhmann at Tilastopaja (registration required)\nCarl Schuhmann at the International Wrestling Database\nCarl Schuhmann at Olympics.com\nCarl Schuhmann at Olympedia"}
{"title": "Carl Westergren", "requested": "Carl Westergren", "extract": "Carl \"Calle\" Oscar Westergren (13 October 1895 – 5 August 1958) was a Swedish wrestler who competed in the 1920, 1924, 1928, and 1932 Summer Olympics. He won gold medals in Greco-Roman wrestling in 1920, 1924 and 1932; in 1924 he also finished sixth in freestyle wrestling.\nIn Greco-Roman wrestling, Westergren also won the world middleweight title in 1922, as well as three European titles in different weight classes: middleweight in 1925, light-heavyweight in 1930, and unlimited in 1931. He worked as a bus driver and had two elder brothers who also trained in wrestling. He later became a keen pigeon breeder.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nCarl Westergren at Olympics.com \nCarl Westergren at InterSportStats \nCarl Westergren at databaseOlympics.com (archived) \nCarl Westergren at the International Wrestling Database"}
{"title": "Carlo Pavesi", "requested": "Carlo Pavesi", "extract": "Carlo Pavesi (10 June 1923 – 24 March 1995) was an Italian fencer. He won four gold medals in total at the 1952, 1956 and 1960 Olympics in the individual and team épée events. He competed at the Mediterranean Games in 1951, where he won a gold medal in the team épée event and a silver medal in the individual épée event, and in 1955, where he won a gold medal in the individual épée event and a silver in the team épée event.\n\n\n== References =="}
{"title": "Caroline Ouellette", "requested": "Caroline Ouellette", "extract": "Caroline Ouellette  (WEL-let; born May 25, 1979) is a Canadian former ice hockey player and current assistant coach of the Montreal Victoire of the Professional Women's Hockey League. She was a member of the Canadian national women's ice hockey team and a member of Canadiennes de Montreal in the Canadian Women's Hockey League. Among her many accomplishments are four Olympic gold medals, 12 IIHF Women's World Championship medals (six gold, six silver), 12 Four Nations Cup medals (eight gold, four silver) and four Clarkson Cup championships.\nOuellette is in the Top 10 in all-time NCAA scoring with 229 career points. She is a member of the Triple Gold Club (not officially recognized by the IIHF for women) as one of only three women to win the Clarkson Cup, an Olympic gold medal and an IIHF Women's World Championship gold medal. Along with teammates Jayna Hefford and Hayley Wickenheiser, Ouellette is one of only five athletes to win gold in four consecutive Olympic games.\nRetiring as an international player in 2018, she was inducted into both the IIHF Hall of Fame and the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2023.\n\n\n== Playing career ==\n\nOuellette played for Team Quebec at the 1995 Canada Winter Games, and won gold for Canada's Under 18 team in 1997. When the Canadian Under 19 women's hockey team was founded on May 15, 1996, Ouellette was one of the players named to the team. One of her teammates was future Olympic speed skater Cindy Klassen. The head coach was Daniele Sauvageau Ouellette represented Team Quebec at the 1998 Esso women's hockey nationals. She scored a goal and two assists in the bronze medal game, as Team Quebec was awarded the Maureen McTeer Trophy. During the 2011 IIHF Eight Nations Tournament, Ouellette assisted on all three goals as Canada defeated Finland by a 3–2 tally in round robin play. In the gold medal game of the 2011 Four Nations Cup, Ouellette notched a goal in a 4–3 loss. Ouellette has taken part in 3 Olympic Games, 9 World Championships and 9 Four Nations Cups. In 157 international games with Team Canada, Ouellette has racked up 169 points. In a game versus Russia at the 2012 IIHF Women's World Championship, Ouellette logged three assists in a 14–1 victory. Ouellette would score the game-winning goal in overtime versus the United States in the final game at the 2012 IIHF Women's World Championship, as Canada claimed the gold medal. She retired from Canada's national women's team on September 25, 2018.\n\n\n=== NCAA ===\nOuellette attended the University of Minnesota Duluth and played for the Minnesota Duluth Bulldogs women's ice hockey program. Ouellette set an NCAA record for most shorthanded goals in one game with 2. This was accomplished on November 14, 2003, versus North Dakota. In the 2004–05 season, Ouellette was a factor on more than 60 percent of goals scored by the Bulldogs. Among the top nine scorers on the Bulldogs, she had nine penalties, which were the fewest. Throughout her NCAA career, she never had double digits in penalties. By season's end, she was one of three finalists for the Patty Kazmaier Award.\nOuellette is ranked third in all-time leading scoring in Bulldogs history and was named to the WCHA All-Decade team in 2009. She joined the national team in 1999 and has won four world championships (1999, 2000, 2001 and 2004) and four Olympic gold medals with the team (2002, 2006, 2010 and 2014).\n\n\n=== CWHL ===\n\nDuring the 2000–01 NWHL season, Ouellette played with the Montreal Wingstar and finished third in league scoring with 53 points. She would also spend one season competing with the Minnesota Whitecaps in the former Western Women's Hockey League. In 2008–09, Ouellette joined the Montreal Stars. She won CWHL Top Scorer of the Month honours in November (tying the league record with 19 points in just six games) and December. At year's end, she was named CWHL Most Valuable Player. By winning a third gold medal in women's Olympic hockey, she became the Bulldog hockey player with the most gold medals.\nBy winning the 2009 Clarkson Cup, Ouellette became an unofficial member of the Triple Gold Club (the accomplishment by women is not yet officially recognized by the IIHF), as she became one of only three women (at the time) to win the Clarkson Cup, a gold medal in ice hockey at the 2002 Winter Olympics, and a gold medal at the IIHF World Women's Championships.\nIn 2010–11, Ouellette won the Angela James Bowl as the CWHL's scoring leader with 68 points. She also became the first two-winner of the league's Most Valuable Player award. In the championship game of the 2011 Clarkson Cup, Ouellette led all scorers with three points (one goal, two assists).\nOn December 11, 2016, Ouellette logged a pair of assists, eclipsing the 300-point mark. Of note, Ouellette became the first player in the history of the CWHL to reach this plateau.\n\n\n== Coaching career ==\nFor the 2007–08 season, Ouellette was an assistant coach with the University of Minnesota Duluth women's hockey team along with Julie Chu. Ouellette was an assistant coach for the Canada women's national under-18 ice hockey team during\na three-game series versus the United States in August 2008. She joined the coaching staff of the Concordia Stingers women's ice hockey program in the autumn of 2012. As of 2025, she became an assistant coach for the Montreal Victoire of the Professional Women's Hockey League.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nOuellette graduated from the University of Minnesota Duluth in 2005 with a degree in criminology and women's studies, and she graduated from the National Police Academy in Quebec in 2000. She played for Quebec in softball at the 1997 Summer Canada Games. On September 11, 2010, the Centre Etienne Desmarteau in Montreal, named one of the two rinks in the arena in Ouellette's honour. Caroline Ouellette is involved in raising funds for the Quebec Breast Cancer Foundation, a disease that has affected the Ouellette family. On January 21, 2011, Ouellette, along with University of Minnesota Duluth Bulldog alumni Jenny Potter and Maria Rooth, took part in a ceremonial faceoff to mark the first ever game at Amsoil Arena at her alma mater in Duluth.\nShe participated in various festivities commemorating the 2012 NHL All-Star Game in Ottawa, Ontario. Said festivities included an interview (along with a fan question and answer period) at the Sirius XM Stage at the Scotiabank NHL Fan Fair, the Energizer Night Skate at the Ottawa Rink of Dreams (relocated from the Rideau Canal), and attended the Molson Canadian NHL All-Star Skills Competition on Saturday, January 28, 2012. On April 17, 2012, Ouellette (along with Meghan Agosta, Gillian Apps, Courtney Birchard, and head coach Dan Church) took part in the opening faceoff of the playoff game between the Ottawa Senators and the New York Rangers at ScotiaBank Place.\nOuellette is married to American hockey player and Olympic silver-medalist Julie Chu. Ouellette and Chu announced the birth of their daughter Liv in November 2017. They welcomed their second child, Tessa, in May 2021.\n\n\n== Career statistics ==\n\n\n=== Regular season and playoffs ===\n\n\n=== International ===\n\n\n== Awards and honours ==\n\nIsobel Gathorne-Hardy Award, 2013\n2019 Hockey Canada Female Breakthrough Award\nIn the 2019 Canadian honours, she was appointed as an Officer of the Order of Canada.\nIn 2023, she was inducted into both the IIHF Hall of Fame and the Hockey Hall of Fame.\n\n\n=== CWHL ===\nClarkson Cup top forward, 2009\nClarkson Cup top scorer, 2009\nCWHL most valuable player, 2008–09 and 2010–11\nCWHL first all-star team, 2008–09\nAngela James Bowl, 2010–11\n\n\n=== NCAA ===\nCaroline Ouellette, 2003 NCAA Division I Women's Ice Hockey Tournament most valuable player \nCaroline Ouellette, NCAA leader, 2003–04 season, points per game, 2.38\nCaroline Ouellette, NCAA leader, 2003–04 season, assists per game, 1.47\nFebruary 7, 2005: Caroline Ouellette became the third Minnesota Duluth player to be named a Patty Kazmaier Top-10 finalist for two consecutive seasons.\nMarch 3, 2005: Caroline Ouellette is named UMD's first WCHA student-athlete of the year, was named to the all-WCHA first team, and the WCHA all-academic team.\nMarch 6, 2005: Caroline Ouellette is named to the WCHA all-tournament team.\nMarch 14, 2005: Caroline Ouellette becomes the second Bulldog to be named a Patty Kazmaier top-3 finalist.\nMarch 23, 2005: Caroline Ouellette is honored with the USCHO.com Sportsmanship Award and a Second Team selection.\nMarch 28, 2005: Caroline Ouellette is named a CCM all-America first team selection for the second consecutive season.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nBiographical information and career statistics from Eliteprospects.com\nCaroline Ouellette website\nLive The Dream, Caroline Ouellette, Life After the World Championships for Ouellette\n(in French) Interview de Caroline Ouellette à la revue Elle Québec"}
{"title": "Cate Campbell", "requested": "Cate Campbell", "extract": "Cate Natalie Campbell,  (born 20 May 1992) is an Australian former competitive swimmer. She is the current world record holder in the short course 100 m freestyle. She is also a former world record holder in the long course 100 m freestyle, breaking Britta Steffen's supersuit WR by 0.01.\nCampbell has eight Olympic medals, four of which are gold, across four Olympics. Campbell was Australia's joint flagbearer at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.\nShe was coached by Simon Cusack at the Commercial Swimming Club for over two decades, before moving to train with Damien Jones at the Rackley Swimming Club, then Vince Raleigh at Chandler in her fifth and final Olympic campaign bid.\nCampbell is regarded as one of the greatest Australian swimmers and one of the best relay swimmers of all time, holding four of the fastest 100 m freestyle splits in history at the time of her retirement. In particular, she has been credited as the doyen of the Australian women's sprinting dynasty alongside her sister Bronte.\n\n\n== Early life ==\nCate is the first of five children born to South African parents, Eric, an accountant, and Jenny, a nurse. She was born in Malawi. She has four younger siblings (three sisters and one brother): Bronte, Jessica, Hamish, and Abigail. Her brother Hamish has severe cerebral palsy and requires around-the-clock care.\nJenny used to be a swimmer and taught her three daughters to swim, in the pool at the family's home. Cate also recalls swimming near Hippopotami in Lake Malawi as a small child. Lake Malawi is the second deepest lake in Africa. It was in this lake that her father, Eric, would go sailing on weekends. Campbell and her siblings were homeschooled as children. Her mother also frequently read the Bible to her, while she was growing up. The Campbells lived in a big house, with no TV. They had many pets, including turkeys, guinea pigs, dogs, cats, and chickens. Campbell describes every morning like \"an Easter egg hunt; the chickens would lay eggs all around the house.\"\nDuring her schooling, Campbell states she could not sing or dance, but swimming was something she excelled at. She also stated she received top marks for public speaking at school. Aside from those, she claims she was an \"average student\".\nThe Campbells moved from Malawi to Australia in 2001 and Campbell took up competitive swimming soon after. She completed her secondary school studies at Kenmore State High School in Brisbane, Queensland. Her sister Bronte is also an Olympic swimmer and the pair competed in the same event at the 2012 Summer Olympics, and won the gold medal together at the 2016 Summer Olympics as members of the Australian women's 4 × 100 m freestyle team.\n\n\n== Career ==\n\n\n=== 2008 Olympics ===\nCate was the fastest qualifier into the 50 metre freestyle semi-finals, after recording a time of 24.20 seconds. This placed her in Lane 4 in the semi-finals against the world record holder Libby Trickett. In the second semi-final Cate placed second in a time of 24.42 seconds, placing her in Lane 5 for the final. In the final, she placed third in a time of 24.17. She also won bronze as part of Australia's women's 4 x 100 metre freestyle relay team.\n\n\n=== 2009 World Championship ===\nDespite doing a time trial of 53.40 seconds, with her 100-metre performance of 56.39 from 5 months earlier in March and having hip problems, she was scratched from the women's 4 × 100 metre freestyle. However, she still earned the right to swim the 50 metre freestyle from her runner-up swim at the world championships trials. In Rome she finished with a bronze, beating compatriot Libby Trickett and ending 0.02 of a second off the Commonwealth Record.\n\n\n=== 2012 Olympics ===\nIn 2010, Cate and her sister Bronte caught glandular fever; they worked against post-viral fatigue as they trained to qualify for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. Cate Campbell was a member of the Australian team that won the gold medal in the 4 × 100 metre freestyle relay at the Games. Before the individual 50 metre event, she contracted acute pancreatitis. In the women's 50 metre freestyle she and Bronte swam in the same heat, finishing third and second respectively, and qualifying for the semi-final in tenth and ninth place respectively.\n\n\n=== 2013 ===\nAt the 2013 Australian Swimming Championships she won gold in both the 50  and 100 metre freestyle events, qualifying for the 2013 World Aquatics Championships. At the World Championships, she teamed up with her sister Bronte, Emma McKeon and Alicia Coutts in the 4 × 100 metre freestyle relay where they won the silver medal, finishing 0.12 of a second behind the American team. On the sixth day of competition, Campbell won the 100 metre freestyle world title with a time of 52.34 seconds. Campbell finished ahead of Sarah Sjöström of Sweden and defending Olympic champion, Ranomi Kromowidjojo.\n\n\n=== 2015 ===\n\nAt the 2015 World Championships in Kazan, she won gold in the 4 × 100 metre freestyle relay, beating the Dutch and US teams by a comfortable lead. On the 100 metre freestyle event she finished third, behind Bronte Campbell and Sarah Sjöström. At the 2015 Australian Short Course Swimming Championships in Sydney, she broke the short course 100 metre freestyle world record in a time of 50.91, becoming the first woman to go under 51 seconds.\n\n\n=== 2016 ===\nAt the 2016 Australian Swimming Championships she won the 100-metre freestyle to qualify for the 2016 Summer Olympics. She broke the Australian record in the 50 metre freestyle in the semifinals with a time of 23.93, which was the fastest time ever in a textile swimsuit. She went on to win the final and qualify for the Olympics in the 50 metre freestyle, improving her time to 23.84. In addition, Campbell also qualified for the Olympic team in both the 4 × 100 m freestyle (winning gold in a new world-record time) & 4 × 100 m medley relays. At the 2016 Australian Grand Prix meet, she broke the long course 100 metre freestyle world record in a time of 52.06. This was 0.01 seconds faster than the previous world record set by Britta Steffen during the super suit era.\n\n\n==== 2016 Summer Olympics ====\nAt the 2016 Summer Olympics Campbell won a gold medal as a member of the Australian women's 4 × 100 m freestyle team. The team, which included Campbell's sister Bronte, set a world record time of 3:30.65. This was followed by a silver medal as a member of the women's 4 × 100 m medley team. In the Olympic final of the 100 m freestyle, Campbell was the favourite, however after leading at the first turn, she faded and finished 6th in 53.24, despite breaking the Olympic record in the heats and semifinals with times of 52.78 and 52.71, respectively. She narrowly missed a medal in the 50 m freestyle final, finishing 5th.\n\n\n=== 2017 ===\nAfter the Rio Olympics, Campbell took 2017 off from swimming competitively in order to recover from disappointment. She used most of the year to do \"normal things\" other people her age might do, taking her first real break from training since the age of 9. At the 2017 Australian Short Course Swimming Championships she broke the 100 metre freestyle world record in a time of 50.25, improving the previous mark by 0.33 seconds.\n\n\n=== 2018 ===\nCampbell returned to competition for the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games, winning gold and breaking the world record in the women's 4 × 100m freestyle relay, alongside sister Bronte, Emma McKeon and Shayna Jack. She then won gold for the women's 50m freestyle, with a time of 23.78, breaking a Commonwealth record. She also won gold for the women's 50m butterfly, despite having no prior experience in the stroke. She stated she opted for the event to \"shake things up\" and \"to try something new and different\". Campbell claimed the silver medal for the 100m freestyle with a time of 52.69, touching behind her sister Bronte, who had a time of 52.27.\n\n\n=== 2021 ===\nCampbell qualified for her 4th Olympics, Tokyo 2020, becoming the third Australian swimmer to do so, after Leisel Jones and Emily Seebohm. On 7 July 2021, she was announced as one of Australia's flagbearers for the Opening Ceremony, alongside basketball player, Patty Mills, and becoming the first Australian female swimmer to do so. Alongside Emma McKeon, Meg Harris, and sister Bronte, Campbell won gold in the women's 4 × 100 m freestyle relay, again breaking Australia's previous record. This also marked the 3rd time Campbell has won gold in the same event. She then went on to win the bronze medal in the 100m freestyle, behind Emma McKeon (gold) and Hong Kong's Siobhan Haughey (silver).\nOn day 9 of the Olympics, Campbell finished 7th in the 50m freestyle final. Half an hour later, she and the Australian team won gold in the women's medley relay, alongside Kaylee McKeown, Chelsea Hodges and Emma McKeon.\n\n\n=== 2024 ===\nCampbell took an 18 month break following the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 before announcing her tilt at a fifth and final Olympics, hoping to become the first Australian swimmer to do so. At the 2024 Australian Swimming Trials, Campbell placed 9th in the 100m freestyle heats, failing to progress to the final by 0.01. With her hopes to make a fifth Olympic team hinging on a top two finish in the 50 freestyle, Campbell placed seventh. After the race, Campbell was embraced by her sister Bronte and the other finalists. After receiving a standing ovation, she confirmed her retirement in a special post-race interview and bid an emotional farewell to the Chandler crowd - the same pool where Campbell begun her competitive career. Campbell's competitors paid homage to her for setting the standards in sprint freestyle nationally and internationally, as well as for being an inspiration in and out of the pool.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nIn 2015, Campbell opened up about her struggles with body image. She confessed that pressure from TV and magazine models made her want to be skinny, however it reached the point where she was getting sick. She read a chapter in Michael Phelps' book Beneath the Surface, where the line \"skinny swimmers aren't good swimmers\" stuck out in her head. Her mother encouraged her to see a dietitian, and now believes \"the sum of your worth is so much more than what you look like\".\nOn Campbell's Twitter profile, she identifies as an atheist, but she previously identified as Christian in 2010 and 2011, stating that she needed to rely on God for her \"strength and love\". At the time her family was attending a local Baptist church in Brisbane.\nSince 2011, Campbell has been studying a degree in Mass Communication at Queensland University of Technology. She has stated that she wants to pursue a career that combines her interest in the media industry with her love of sport, when she retires. She is a member of the QUT Elite Athlete program.\nUntil December 2016, Campbell lived with her sister Bronte. As of 2017, they are no longer housemates. She subsequently bought a house in Morningside, Queensland.\nCampbell enjoys hiking, listening to music, newspaper crosswords, and brewing Kombucha. She also owns a kayak.\nShe is a supporter of Nexus Care, a not-for-profit organisation, that aims to improve the lives of those living in poverty in the northern suburbs of Brisbane.\nIn November 2018, Campbell revealed she had been diagnosed with a stage one melanoma that developed in a mole she had had her whole life and had to get it removed. She urged her fans to get regular skin checks, stating \"an hour out of your day once or twice a year is all it takes\". She has since been praised for raising awareness of skin cancer.\n\n\n== Results in major championships ==\n\n\n== Personal bests ==\n\nNotes: WR = world record, CR = Commonwealth record, OC = Oceanian record, NR = national record\n\n\n== World records ==\n\n\n=== Long course metres ===\n\na  split 52.83 (2nd leg); with Tomaso D'Orsogna (1st leg), James Magnussen (3rd leg), Bronte Campbell (4th leg)\nb  split 52.16 (4th leg); with Bronte Campbell (1st leg), Melanie Schlanger (2nd leg), Emma McKeon (3rd leg)\nc  split 51.97 (4th leg); with Emma McKeon (1st leg), Brittany Elmslie (2nd leg), Bronte Campbell (3rd leg) \nd  split 51.00 (4th leg); with Shayna Jack (1st leg), Bronte Campbell (2nd leg), Emma McKeon (3rd leg)\ne  split 52.24 (4th leg); with Bronte Campbell (1st leg), Meg Harris (2nd leg), Emma McKeon (3rd leg)\n\n\n=== Short course metres ===\n\na  split 23.63 (4th leg); with Robert Hurley (1st leg), Christian Sprenger (2nd leg), Alicia Coutts (3rd leg)\nb  split 23.23 (4th leg); with Robert Hurley (1st leg), Christian Sprenger (2nd leg), Alicia Coutts (3rd leg)\nc  split 23.28 (4th leg); with Robert Hurley (1st leg), Christian Sprenger (2nd leg), Alicia Coutts (3rd leg)\nd  split 23.50 (4th leg); with Tomaso D'Orsogna (1st leg), Regan Leong (2nd leg), Bronte Campbell (3rd leg)\ne  split 23.10 (3rd leg); with Tomaso D'Orsogna (1st leg), Travis Mahoney (2nd leg), Bronte Campbell (4th leg)\n\n\n== Olympic records ==\n\n\n=== Long course metres ===\n\na  split 53.19 (2nd leg); with Alicia Coutts (1st leg), Brittany Elmslie (3rd leg), Melanie Schlanger (4th leg)\nb  split 51.80 (4th leg); with Madison Wilson (1st leg ), Brittany Elmslie (2nd leg), Bronte Campbell (3rd leg)\nc  split 51.97 (4th leg); with Emma McKeon (1st leg), Brittany Elmslie (2nd leg), Bronte Campbell (3rd leg)\nd  split 52.24 (4th leg); with Bronte Campbell (1st leg), Meg Harris (2nd leg), Emma McKeon (3rd leg)\ne  split 52.11 (4th leg); with Kaylee McKeown (1st leg), Chelsea Hodges (2nd leg), Emma McKeon (3rd leg)\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of Olympic medalists in swimming (women)\nList of World Aquatics Championships medalists in swimming (women)\nList of Commonwealth Games medallists in swimming (women)\nWorld record progression 100 metres freestyle\nWorld record progression 4 × 100 metres freestyle relay\n\n\n== References ==\n\nAustralian Olympic Committee profile\n\"Meet the next teen queen\", Sydney Morning Herald, 2 August 2008\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nCate Campbell at Swimming Australia (2022-07-10, 2018-04-01, 2015-09-06)\nCate Campbell  at World Aquatics \nCate Campbell at the International Swimming League (archived) \nCate Campbell at the Australian Olympic Committee\nCate Campbell at Commonwealth Games Australia\nCate Campbell at Olympedia \nCate Campbell at the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games (archived)\nCate Campbell at the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games (archived)\nCate Campbell on Instagram"}
{"title": "Charles Daniels (swimmer)", "requested": "Charles Daniels (swimmer)", "extract": "Charles Meldrum Daniels (March 24, 1885 – August 9, 1973) was an American competition swimmer, eight-time Olympic medalist, and world record-holder in two freestyle swimming events.  Daniels was an innovator of the front crawl swimming style, helping to develop the \"American crawl\".    \n\nDaniels was born in Dayton, Ohio on March 24, 1885.  He attended Dwight Prep school in New York City where he was captain of the school's basketball team, did the high jump, and ran the mile and half mile with the track team.  Familiar with strong swimming, Charles's father Thomas often swam a half mile out to sea when the family vacationed in Long Island.\n\n\n== NYAC and swimming highlights ==\nDaniels began his swimming career around the age of 18 with the New York Athletic Club (NYAC) in 1903, where he was mentored by Hall of Fame Coach Gus Sundstrom.  At NYAC, Daniels was also a squash and bridge champion. Swimmers of his era had been swimming the trudgen stroke that featured both arms fully extended in front of the body while stroking in turn, but used a breastroke style kick with each stroke cycle.  He transitioned from the trudgen stroke to the modern, universally accepted front crawl, also known as the Australian crawl, which used a more efficient and faster flutter kick and made it easier to rotate slightly to breathe and gain more power during arm strokes.  The flutter kick produced less drag and could be performed more times per arm cycle than the breaststroke kick. \nHe helped develop the crawl technique by increasing the number of kicks per arm cycle to around six and rapidly regained his preeminence, soon breaking numerous records.   In his career, Daniels captured freestyle world records in all distances from 25-yards to one mile. From 1907-11, he established seven world records of several distances in three countries.  The new crawl style was referred to by many as the American Crawl. Daniels' Coach Gus Sundstrom was the first swimming instructor and director at NYAC and served from 1885-1935.  According to swimming lore, Sundstrom studied the technique of the American Indian Big Red Fish who used an overarm stroke with a thrashing kick, to improve on the Australian crawl.\nFrom 1904 until he retired in 1911, he won Amateur Athletic Union Championships 31 times. In 1905, he posted 14 world records in a four day period.\n\n\n== Olympics ==\n\n\n=== 1904 St. Louis ===\nAt the 1904 Olympics in St. Louis, Missouri, he became the first American to win a gold in an Olympic games swimming event.  He captured the gold medal in the 220-yard freestyle with a time of 2:44.2, finishing ahead of American Frank Gailey by only 2 seconds.  In the 440-yard freestyle event he finished first for the gold in 6:16.2, finishing ahead of American teammates Frank Gailey and Otto Walle for an American sweep.  \nIn team competition, he won a gold representing the New York Athletic Club in the 4x50-yard freestyle relay which finished first with a combined time of 2:04.6, defeating the Chicago Athletic Association who took the silver and the Missouri Athletic Club who took the bronze. He took a silver in the 100-yard freestyle, one of his signature events, where he finished a somewhat disappointing second to Zoltan Halmay of Hungary.\n\n\n=== 1908 London ===\nFour years later, at the 1908 Olympics in London, Daniels won gold in the 100-meter freestyle with a world record time of 1:05.6, defeating former rival Zoltan Halmay of Hungary, who touched six-tenths of a second after him to take the silver, and Harald Julin of Switzerland who took the bronze. Daniels caught Zolmay at the 30-meter mark, but never had a commanding lead.  Both Daniels and Halmay broke the prior world record, though Zolmay was the early favorite, having set the Olympic record three years earlier in December, 1905.\nDaniels also took a bronze in the 1908 Olympics in the 4x200-meter freestyle relay with a combined team time of 11:02.8.\n\n\n=== Intercalated Games ===\nIn the 1906 Intercalated Games in Falirou, Peiraias, Athens, Greece, Daniels won the gold in the 100-meter freestyle with a final time of 1:13.0, touching before old rival Zoltan Halmay of Hungary.  The Intercalated Games were an international meet held prior to determining the Olympics would be held every four years, and were considered by much of the press to be the same as the Olympics.  The U.S. team placed fourth in the 250-meter freestyle relay.  The race distance was discontinued as an Olympic relay event, and the 1906 event was held in open water in a bay with high waves.\nOn June 8, 1909, Daniels married Florence Goodyear Wagner, formerly Florence Goodyear at New York's Plaza Hotel.  Florence was wealthy and had obtained a divorce from George Olds Wagner in Paris in March of 1908.  She was the daughter of Frank H. Goodyear, a former President of the Buffalo and Susquehanna Railroad.\n\n\n=== Post-swimming life ===\nDaniels retired from competitive swimming in 1910, and he and his wife Florence bought 5,000 acres in New York's Adirondacks mountain range. He had Sabattis Park constructed, which featured a 9-hole golf course for his personal use.  After several prior business ventures, he founded and operated one of the few silver fox farms in America, on his land in the Adirondacks.\nHe moved to the greater Monterey, California area in the late 1930's. In the 1940's, as a Lieutenant in the Navy during WWII, he taught swimming at the United States Maritime Officer's School in Alameda, California.   He enjoyed hunting, was an excellent rifle shot, and travelled the world in search of big game, later filling his estate with animal head trophies.  An expert in stocks and bonds, he was present with the Dawes Reparation Commission following the first World War. He retained his skills as a Bridgemaster, and continued to swim frequently into his 50's.\nIn both 1946 and 1948, he captured the California State Seniors championship as an amateur golfer.\n\n\n=== Honors ===\nDaniels was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame as an \"Honor Swimmer\" in 1965.  He was named Athlete of the Year in 1909 by the Amateur Athletic Union.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nDaniels and his wife, Gladys Landis, had a daughter and two sons. Following a long illness, Daniels died August 9, 1973 at his home in Carmel Valley, California, and was buried near where he spent much of his life at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Buffalo, New York.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of members of the International Swimming Hall of Fame\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists at a single Games\nList of multiple Olympic medalists at a single Games\nWorld record progression 100 metres freestyle\nWorld record progression 200 metres freestyle\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\n\"Eight Swimming Marks for Daniels\", New York Times, January 1, 1911\nCharles Daniels at Dayton Daily News, Dayton’s ‘Human Fish’: How Charles Daniels became the world’s greatest swimmer in the early 1900s\nCharles Daniels at the International Swimming Hall of Fame\nCharles Daniels at Olympics.com\nCharles Daniels at the Team USA Hall of Fame\nCharles Daniels at Olympedia\nCharles Daniels at InterSportStats"}
{"title": "Charles Hamelin", "requested": "Charles Hamelin", "extract": "Charles Hamelin (French pronunciation: [ʃaʁl amlɛ̃]; born April 14, 1984) is a Canadian retired short-track speed skater. In a competitive career that spanned nearly twenty years on the international circuit, Hamelin participated in five Winter Olympic Games (2006, 2010, 2014, 2018 and 2022) and won six Olympic medals, including a national-best four gold medals. Competing in all distances, he won thirty-eight medals at the World Championships, including fourteen gold medals, and also led Canada to five world relay titles. Hamelin was also the 2014 Overall World Cup season winner and the 2018 Overall World Champion, giving him all the achievements available in the sport.\nHamelin's early success at the 2003 World Junior Championships saw him win silver medals in the 500 m and the 1500 m races and a bronze in the 5000 m relay. After debuting on the senior level, he won two medals at the 2005 World Championships, including his first World gold in the 5000 m relay. In his first Olympics, he finished in fourth place in the 1500 m and won a silver medal as part of the Canadian relay team. He won his first two Olympic gold medals on home ice in Vancouver before picking up two more, the last in his final Olympic appearance in Beijing. Hamelin is the former world record holder in the 1000 m. Dubbed the \"Locomotive de Sainte-Julie\", Hamelin is widely considered one of Canada's finest athletes.\n\n\n== Career ==\n\n\n=== Junior career ===\nHamelin made his debut at the world junior championships in 2002, finishing fourth in the 500 m and helping the relay team to a silver medal. During the next World Junior Championships in 2003, he had his breakout year, finishing second in the 500 m, second in the 1500 m, fourth in the 1000 m, fifth in the super 1500 m, and then helping the relay team to a bronze in the 5000 m relay. Because of his accomplishments in 2003, he finished fourth overall at the world junior championships. He was seemingly following the footsteps of a long line of accomplished French-Canadian short track speedskaters like Marc Gagnon and Éric Bédard.\n\n\n=== Early senior career and 2006 Winter Olympics ===\n\nHamelin made his World Cup debut in the 2003–2004 season. His main role on the team at that time was on the relay team, which finished the season second overall. Going into the 2004 World Championships, the Canadian men's relay team was considered one of the favourites but only managed a fourth-place finish.\nThe 2004–2005 season was a breakout year for Hamelin. This was the first year that he skated every event in the World Cup. He finished third overall in the 500 m, fourth in the 1000 m, fifth in the 1500 m, and fifth overall on the season. He continued to skate on the relay team, which finished first in the final standings. The biggest success of his season would come at the 2005 World Championships, where he managed a silver in the 500 m and two fourth-place finishes in the 1000 m and 3000 m. This allowed him to finish fourth overall in the standings. That year he was also a part of the gold medal-winning Canadian squad at the World Team Championships.\nAfter making his first Canadian Olympic team for the 2006 Winter Olympics, Hamelin managed to qualify for the finals of the 1500 m. In the last lap and a half, he was comfortably in third place before being passed by two Chinese skaters. Although one of the Chinese skaters was disqualified, he still only finished a disappointing fourth. In the relay, the Canadian and Korean teams traded the lead back and forth throughout the race, but the Canadians lost the lead on the last turn but still managed to win silver. The silver medal on the relay was the first Olympic medal in his career.\nFollowing the 2006 Olympics, Hamelin won the gold medal in the 3000 m at the 2006 World Championships. Hamelin would go on to become the 500 m world champion in 2007, over the next three years this would soon be his strongest event. In addition to his 500 m gold, at the 2007 Worlds, he took silvers in the 1000 m and 5000 m relay as well as the overall silver medal. He also took a second gold at the World Team Championships that year. He captured silvers in the 500 m at the worlds and the World Team Championships in 2008, and in 2009, he once again became the 500 m world champion, alongside clinching bronzes in the 3000 m and the overall competition and another World Team silver.\n\n\n=== 2010 Winter Olympics ===\n\nWith the 2010 Winter Olympics taking place in Vancouver, expectations on the Canadian side were high. Hamelin was a medal favourite in the 500, 1000, 1500, and 5000-metre relay.  Going into the Olympics, he was the reigning 500 m world champion and reigning World Cup champion. As such Hamelin was the gold medal favourite going into the 2010 Games in his home country.\nHe began the Vancouver Olympics in the second 1500 m heat, where Hamelin placed second by 0.001 of a second to China's Liang Wenhao. As he only placed second in the heats, Hamelin was drawn into a tough group for the semi-finals, needing to beat one of his two main rivals, Lee Jung-Su or Apolo Ohno, to qualify for the final. Hamelin was in second for much of the race, with Jung-Su in the lead, but on the last lap was passed by Ohno and finished third. Only the top two qualified for the A-Final, and Hamelin was thus relegated to the B-Final, where he finished in first place. When asked about the race, Hamelin said, \"it was a really tough field, and I'm not disappointed with the races I had...I'll sleep well tonight\".\n\nDuring the 1000 m heats, Hamelin placed first, the result duplicating into the quarterfinals. In the semi-finals, Hamelin placed second behind Apolo Ohno and was nearly pushed by Korea's Sung Si-Bak, who trailed him by 0.006 seconds and avoided a disqualification. The final race, which held five skaters, included his younger brother. For three-quarters of the race, he stood in first position in front of François Hamelin and Apolo Ohno, only to be surpassed by Korea's Lee Ho-Suk in the sixth lap. Hamelin fell into third on the following lap, unable to sustain the high speeds much longer. The final lap saw Ohno move to third, leaving Charles and François in fourth and fifth, respectively. During the race the crowd at the Pacific Coliseum was cheering so loudly during the 1,000 m final that Hamelin felt an overwhelming sense of pride like never before, calling it \"amazing.\" Despite the crowd support, Hamelin remained disappointed as he had gone to the Olympics with a mind to win multiple medals.\nNext up for Hamelin was his best and most promising event, the 500 m race, Hamelin took the gold medal, with teammate François-Louis Tremblay winning the bronze. It was a close race as the world record holder, Korea's Sung Si-Bak, was in the lead until a slip in the final corner, which allowed Hamelin to pass to finish first. The same night, the Canadian team won the gold in the 5000 m relay. Hamelin shared that gold with his brother François, as well as Tremblay, Olivier Jean and Guillaume Bastille. Of his final and relieving success on the last day of short track at the Olympics, Hamelin said that \"they will be going crazy in Quebec, they will be going crazy in Montreal, party all night. I got two gold medals in 30 minutes, and it's incredible.\"\n\n\n=== Road to Sochi ===\nFollowing the Vancouver Olympics, Hamelin attended the 2010 World Championships but failed to medal in any event. He won a silver at the 2010 World Team Championships.\nBefore going into the 2010–11 season, Hamelin said he was using the year to focus on new techniques for 2014 Winter Olympics while not worrying about winning as much during the current season. Hamelin said, \"my goal is to try new strategies to make myself more dangerous for 2014...Now it's not to win medals, but to work on things that are difficult mentally – to put myself in situations where I'm not always in control so that even if I'm last, I won't panic and do stupid things.\" Hamelin was mostly focusing on trying to medal in the longer distances, though he had been dominant in the 500 m the South Koreans continued to own the longer distances, something Hamelin hoped to change. Despite a quiet year on the World Cup, Hamelin finished the 2011 World Championships with a gold in the relay and three silvers, including a second-place overall finish, making progress in his preseason goals.\nHamelin put up decent results through the 2012 season despite several nagging injuries and carried that success into the World Championships. There he won a silver medal in the 500 m trailing teammate Jean who won the gold. He went on to win the bronze in the 1,000 m after being pushed by a Chinese skater. Hamelin was injured in the fall and did not compete in the men's relay final, but he still won gold for his earlier participation in the semi-final.\n\n\n=== 2014 Winter Olympics ===\nAs part of his third Canadian Olympic team for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Hamelin reached the final of the 1500m while his brother made the B final of the same event. He started the race, pushed to the front of the seven-man pack, and retained that lead for most of the race. Towards the end of the race, Hamelin's lead was challenged by both China's Han Tianyu and Russia's Viktor Ahn, but Hamelin passed Han and held on to win the gold medal as Canada's second gold medal of the Sochi Olympics. The 1,500 m was often identified as a weakness for Hamelin and the Canadians. He was proud of the gold in the event, saying, \"it is the best I can dream of, coming in the Olympics and having that gold in the 1,500-metre. We always said in the last few years that it was our weakness, but I really worked hard to prove everyone wrong, and I think today was the day.\"   He had a strong overall season. and won his first overall World Cup title after coming close several times previously.\n\n\n=== 2018 Winter Olympics ===\nIn August 2017, Hamelin was named to Canada's 2018 Winter Olympics team, his fourth. The individual events in Pyeongchang proved a disappointment for Hamelin, as penalties knocked him out of the 500 and 1000 m in the early rounds, and he also took a penalty in the 1500 m final. He concluded the Games in the 5000 m relay, where the Canadian team won bronze, his fifth Olympic medal.\nHe rebounded from the disappointing Olympics to win his first ever World Championship overall title, taking gold in the 1000 m and 1500 m events and silver in the men's relay on home ice in Montreal, after several near misses previously. He was the first Canadian man since Marc Gagnon twenty years earlier to win the Overall World Championship. Hamelin had been widely expected to retire following the 2017–18 season but surprised many by announcing that he intended to continue for at least another year.\n\n\n=== Pandemic seasons and 2022 Winter Olympics ===\nHaving postponed his presumed retirement for a year, Hamelin announced in 2019 that he would continue to the 2022 Winter Olympics. His decision was influenced by the unexpected retirement of Samuel Girard after the 2018–19 season, as Girard, a gold medalist in Pyeongchang and part of the bronze medal-winning relay team had been widely seen as Hamelin's heir.\nThe onset of the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in the cancellation of many events in the second half of the quadrennial and greatly complicated Hamelin's training. While missing almost a year of on-ice training, they improvised other methods to stay in form while largely training separately. In his return to major international championships, he took the gold medal in the 1500 m at the 2021 World Championships in Dordrecht.\nIn January 2022, Hamelin was named to his fifth and final Olympic team. As well, Hamelin along with hockey player Marie-Philip Poulin were named as Canada's flagbearers during the opening ceremony.  Hamelin competed in only one individual event in Beijing, that being the 1500 m, in which he was the reigning world champion. He was disqualified for an illegal lane change in the semi-final, while teammate Steven Dubois won the silver medal. The final Olympic event of Hamelin's career was to be the 5000 m relay event, where the Canadian team would win the gold medal. This was Hamelin's fourth gold and sixth medal, the former tying a record set by women's hockey players Jayna Hefford, Caroline Ouellette, and Hayley Wickenheiser for the most gold medals for a Canadian Olympian. He said afterward that it \"was a difficult decision to continue training over the past four years for my fifth Olympics, but I believed in myself. It was a challenge to keep myself competitive against the world, but I did it.\" He considered it the finest win of his career.\nFollowing the Olympics, the 2022 World Championships, held in Montreal, were expected to be the final event of Hamelin's competitive career. He focused on the relay event, saying, \"hopefully, we'll come back with the gold medal like we did at the Olympics. I love what I do, and that's the reason why I'm still here.\" The Canadian team finished narrowly third, taking the bronze medal, the thirty-eighth and final World Championship medal of Hamelin's career.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nShort track is a family affair for Hamelin: his brother François Hamelin is a fellow Olympian and national short track member. The former director of the national short track team is his father, Yves Hamelin. Hamelin made Hello! Canada's 50 most beautiful Canadians list in 2010, along with his then-girlfriend, fellow speed skater and Olympian Marianne St-Gelais. In March 2018, after ten years as a couple, Hamelin and St-Gelais announced in a statement that they were splitting up.\nHe is presently engaged to sports journalist Geneviève Tardif, with whom he shares a daughter, Violette, born on April 23, 2020. The two were engaged in the summer of 2019, and were due to wed in 2020, but delayed their ceremony twice due to the COVID-19 pandemic.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nCharles Hamelin at the International Skating Union (archived former page)\nCharles Hamelin at Speed Skating Canada\nCharles Hamelin at ShortTrackOnLine.info\nCharles Hamelin at Olympics.com\nCharles Hamelin at Team Canada\nCharles Hamelin at Olympedia\nCharles Hamelin at InterSportStats\nCharles Hamelin on Instagram"}
{"title": "Charles Pahud de Mortanges", "requested": "Charles Pahud de Mortanges", "extract": "Charles Ferdinand Pahud de Mortanges (13 May 1896 in The Hague – 8 April 1971 in Leiden) was a Dutch horse rider who competed at the 1924, 1928, 1932 and 1936 Olympics and was the flag bearer for the Netherlands in 1932. He is only one of three equestrians (with Mark Todd and Michael Jung) to win two consecutive Olympic titles in the individual three-day event. Besides his riding achievements, de Mortanges was president or vice president of the National Olympic Committee (1946–1961) and a member of the International Olympic Committee (1946–1964). He was also a top commanding officer of the Royal Netherlands Motorized Infantry Brigade in 1944–1945 and later a senior army official overseeing the official ceremonies involving the Dutch royal family.\n\n\n== Early life ==\nDe Mortanges was the son of Sophia Kol from the family of Bank Vlaer & Kol financiers and Charles Ferdinand Pahud de Mortanges, a military officer overseeing the Dutch colonies. He and his elder sister were raised by their mother after their father died in 1903. From an early age, de Mortanges was fascinated with horse riding and the military, and in 1915 he was accepted to the Royal Military Academy. After graduating with honors on 12 August 1918, he was assigned to The Hague regiment, where in 1919 he became a horse riding instructor. In 1922 he was noticed by K. F. Quarles van Ufford, who headed the sports section of the Dutch military. Van Ufford became his mentor and enlisted him to the riding school of the Dutch cavalry in Amersfoort, where de Mortanges later worked as an instructor between July 1925 and October 1927. In 1924 he was selected for the national Olympic team.\n\n\n== Olympic career ==\n\nIn 1924 de Mortanges won the gold medal in the team three-day event and placed fourth in the individual three-day event.\nFour years later he won the gold medals in the team three-day event as well as in the individual three-day event.\nIn 1932 he won again the gold medal in the individual three-day event and the silver medal in the team three-day event.\nAt the 1936 Summer Olympics he finished out of medals at the individual and team three-day events.\n\n\n== Later life ==\nBesides the Olympics, between 1924 and 1936 de Mortanges took part in various international competitions and acted as a riding instructor with the Dutch cavalry. In 1938 he severely injured his right wrist in a riding accident, which halted his military and riding career. In 1942 he became a German prisoner of war. He escaped in Summer 1943 during a train transfer, and, after traveling through the occupied Belgium and France and through Spain and Portugal to Gibraltar, in February 1944 was flown to England. The same year, upon advice of his admirer Prince Bernhard, de Mortanges became a leading officer of the Royal Netherlands Motorized Infantry Brigade and later participated in the Normandy landings and liberation of the Netherlands.\nAfter the war de Mortanges returned to sport events. On 6 July 1946 he became president of the Dutch Olympic Committee, and remained in this position until 7 April 1961, with a break between 1951 and 1958 when he acted as a vice-president. He was also a member of the International Olympic Committee between 4 September 1946 and 7 October 1964. In parallel, upon recommendation of Prince Bernhard, he acted as Inspector General of the Royal Army (1946–1953). In 1953 after promotion to brigadier general he became vice-head and then head of the Royal Military House, where he was responsible for the organization of ceremonies involving the Dutch royal family until his retirement in December 1961.\nDuring his late years de Mortanges suffered from rheumatism and became eventually unable to walk. He died in 1971 at the Leiden University Hospital.\n\n\n== Family ==\nOn 16 December 1920 de Mortanges married Irma Clara baroness Snouckaert van Schauburg. They had one son, who was executed by the German military after a failed attempt to cross the Franco-Swiss border in 1942. After a divorce on 4 July 1949, on 23 July 1949 de Mortanges married Theresia Gijsbertha Bernardina Daamen.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nEvans, Hilary; Gjerde, Arild; Heijmans, Jeroen; Mallon, Bill; et al. \"Charles Pahud de Mortanges\". Olympics at Sports-Reference.com. Sports Reference LLC. Archived from the original on 17 April 2020.\nA.J.C.M. Gabriëls, \"Pahud de Mortanges, Charles Ferdinand (1896–1971)\", in Biografisch Woordenboek van Nederland"}
{"title": "Chen Meng", "requested": "Chen Meng", "extract": "Chen Meng (Chinese: 陈梦; born 15 January 1994) is a Chinese professional table tennis player and Olympic champion. She joined the provincial team when she was 9 and joined the national team when she was only 13 in 2007. She is the women's singles champion of the ITTF Women's World Cup in 2020, the ITTF World Tour Grand Finals in 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020 and also at the inaugural WTT Singapore Smash. She is also the silver medalist of women's singles in the 2019 World Table Tennis Championships and a double gold medalist in the 2020 Summer Olympics. She obtained her second gold medal in the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.\n\n\n== Career ==\n\n\n=== 2020 ===\nAfter competitive table tennis resumed following the pandemic, Chen swept the world cup, ITTF pro tour finals, and 2020 All China National Championships.\n\n\n=== 2021 ===\nIn May, Chen was selected to represent China in the women's singles and team event at the Tokyo Olympics. Chen won the first leg of the Chinese Olympic Scrimmage but lost to Wang Manyu in the finals of the second leg. Chen again lost to Wang in a closed-door scrimmage in June.\nIn an interview in July, Chen revealed that she had been in close contact with Ma Lin and Li Xiaoxia regarding mental preparations for the Tokyo Olympics.\nAt the 2020 Summer Olympics, Chen competed in the women's singles event, winning her semifinals match against Singapore's Yu Mengyu 4–0 and her quarterfinals match against Hong Kong's Doo Hoi Kem 4–2 after trailing 2–0. In the finals match, she defeated compatriot Sun Yingsha 4–2 to win the gold medal. After the match, Chen noted that both she and Sun were both very nervous but played okay, and that Chen's extra experience helped push her over the top. In the women's team event, Chen, along with Sun Yingsha and Wang Manyu, defeated Japan 3–0 in the finals to win the gold medal, continuing China's undefeated streak in the event.\nIn August 2021, Chen remarked that the level of play at the China National Games was harder than the Olympics. At the National Games of China in September, Chen placed fourth, but her bronze-medal-match opponent Liu Shiwen remarked that Chen was injured and playing far below her normal level.\n\n\n=== 2024 ===\nOn 3 August 2024, Chen Meng won the gold medal in the women's singles final at the Paris Olympics, defeating Sun Yingsha 4–2. On 10 August, she helped secure the women's team title alongside her teammates, earning the People's Republic of China its 300th gold medal at the Summer Olympics.\n\n\n== Titles (senior level) ==\n\n\n=== Singles ===\nITTF World Tour Grand Finals – 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020\nITTF World Tour (15) – China open 2012, 2013, 2019, Qatar open 2012, 2017, 2020, Swedish open 2013, 2019, Japan open 2015, Australian open 2017, German open 2017, 2020, Austrian open 2018, Korea open 2019, Hungarian open 2019\nWorld Cup – 2020\nSummer Olympics – Gold Medal 2020, Gold Medal 2024\nWTT Grand Smash – Singapore 2022, Saudi 2024\n\n\n=== Doubles ===\nITTF World Tour Grand Finals – 2017 (with Zhu Yuling)\nITTF World Tour (13) –\nwith Zhu: Kuwait 2012, China 2012, 2013, 2016, Australian 2017\nwith Liu Shiwen: China 2015, Japan 2019\nwith Mu Zi: Swedish 2015\nwith Wang Manyu: Qatar 2017, Australian 2019, Korea 2019\nwith Ding Ning: Korea 2018, Swedish 2019\n\n\n=== Team ===\nSummer Olympics Women's Team Gold Medal 2020, Gold Medal 2024\nwith Sun Yingsha: Wang Manyu\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nChen and actor Huang Xiaoming are second cousins; their paternal grandmothers are sisters. He congratulated her on Weibo right after she won the women's singles title.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nChen Meng at World Table Tennis\nChen Meng at Olympics.com\nChen Meng at the Chinese Olympic Committee (archived)\nChen Meng at Olympedia\nChen Meng at InterSportStats"}
{"title": "Chen Ruolin", "requested": "Chen Ruolin", "extract": "Chen Ruolin (Chinese: 陈若琳; pinyin: Chén Ruòlín; born 12 December 1992) is a Chinese platform diver and coach.  She is a five-time Olympic gold medalist (2008, 2012 and 2016), ten-time World championship medalist (including six golds), nine-time World Cup medalist (eight golds), four-time Asian Games medalist (three golds) and two-time Universiade gold medalist, making her one of the most accomplished female divers in history.\nAfter retiring from the sport in 2016 due to neck injury, Chen became a diving coach in 2021 and has been personally training 2020 Olympic gold medalist Quan Hongchan and multi-FINA world champion Lian Junjie, who have since both won gold medals at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris. On September 19, 2016, Chen Ruolin announced her retirement via social media.\n\n\n== Career ==\nChen was born in Nantong, Jiangsu. She won the gold medals in the women's 10m platform and 10m synchronized platform at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing for Team China, then duplicated the double gold performance at the London 2012 Summer Olympics.\nIn the 2011 World Aquatics Championships held in Shanghai, Chen won two gold medals for Women's 10 m platform and Women's 10 m synchro platform (partnering Wang Hao). She became the first Chinese female diver who claimed all the gold medals in women's platform events in Olympic Games, World Cup and World Championships.\nIn 2014, she lit the torch at the 2014 Summer Youth Olympics in the Nanjing Olympic Sports Centre.\nIn the 2016 Summer Olympics she won her fifth Olympic gold medal at the 10m synchronised platform event with her partner Liu Huixia, and became only the third Chinese athlete to win five Olympic gold medals.\nIn October 2016 Chen announced her retirement from diving due to a neck injury.\n\n\n== Performance timeline ==\n\n\n=== Women's 10 m platform ===\n\n\n=== Women's 10 m synchro platform ===\n\n\n== References ==\n\n2008teamchina\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nChen Ruolin  at World Aquatics \nChen Ruolin at Olympics.com \nChen Ruolin at Olympedia \nChen Ruolin at InterSportStats"}
{"title": "Choi Min-jeong", "requested": "Choi Min-jeong", "extract": "Choi Min-jeong (Korean: 최민정; born 9 September 1998) is a South Korean short track speed skater. She is a four-time Olympic Champion (2018, 2022, 2026), a four-time World Champion (2015, 2016, 2018, 2022), Four Continents Champion (2020), and the current world record holder for 1500m. Choi is widely regarded as the best female Korean short track speed skater of all time. With four golds, three silvers (seven medals in total), she is South Korea's most decorated Olympian across both Summer and Winter Olympic Games.\n\n\n== Career ==\n\n\n=== Junior career ===\nChoi won third overall behind teammates Noh Do-hee and Ahn Se-jung after winning 1000m gold and 1500m silver at the 2014 World Junior Championships.\n\n\n=== Senior career ===\nDuring the 2014–15 season at the senior level, Choi won her first World Cup gold medal ahead of  Arianna Fontana and Shim Suk-hee in Montréal. At just 16 years old, she took her first World title at the 2015 World Championships in Moscow after winning gold in 1000m and 3000m. A year later, she successfully defended her title in Seoul. During the 2016–17 season, Choi set a new world record time of 2:14:354 in 1500m in Salt Lake City.\n\nIn 2018, at the PyeongChang Winter Olympics, Choi became a two-time Olympic Champion after winning gold in the 1500m and 3000m relay. She set and currently holds the Olympic record in the 500m after breaking the previous Olympic record set by Elise Christie by 0.45 seconds. Choi was one of the big favourites heading to the A final, but she was penalized for interference having finished second. Choi went on to win the 1500m gold and led her team to the 3000m relay gold by more than eight seconds. She crashed and finished fourth after colliding with Shim Suk-hee in the 1000m finals.\nChoi won her third overall World title at the 2018 World Championships, collecting 110 points overall after winning gold in the 500m, 1500m, and 3000m Superfinal.\nAt the inaugural 2020 Four Continents Championships, Choi had a clean sweep after winning gold medals in every distance. She was crowned the first-ever Four Continents overall champion after finishing first overall ahead of teammate Seo Whi-min and Courtney Sarault by a staggering margin of 89 and 92 points, respectively. The 2020 World Championships in Seoul was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic and Choi withdrew from the 2021 World Championships due to the pandemic.\nDuring the 2021–22 season, she suffered knee and ankle injuries in separate collisions during the October World Cup opener in Beijing. She was unable to compete in at the following World Cup event in Nagoya due to her injuries. Choi also had to deal with off-ice issues when the leaked text messages from her longtime teammate Shim implied that Shim tripped her on purpose during the match.\nChoi competed for Korea at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games, winning gold in the 1500m, setting a new Olympic record in the quarterfinal. She also won two silver medals in the 1000m and women's 3000m relay.\nChoi was crowned the world short track speed skating champion at the 2022 World Championships after winning gold in the 1000m, 1500m, and 3000m Superfinals. This is her first world title in four years (vice world champion in 2019, world championships cancelled in 2020, withdrew in 2021) and her fourth overall world title. She also anchored Team Korea in the women's 3000m relay from the bronze medal position to gold in the final curve of the relay with an incredible move, finishing 0.034 seconds ahead of Team Canada.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nChoi took up skating as a hobby at the age of six and joined a local club to pursue skating further. Her role model is Jin Sun-yu. She is enrolled at Yonsei University.\n\n\n== Philanthropy ==\nOn 7 March 2022, Choi donated 50 million won to the Hope Bridge Disaster Relief Association to help the victims of the massive wildfire that started in Uljin, Gyeongbuk, and has spread to Samcheok, Gangwon.\n\n\n== Awards and nominations ==\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nChoi Min-jeong at the International Skating Union (archived former page)\nChoi Min-jeong at ShortTrackOnLine.info\nChoi Min-jeong at Olympics.com\nChoi Min-jeong at Olympedia\nChoi Min-jeong at InterSportStats"}
{"title": "Chris Hoy", "requested": "Chris Hoy", "extract": "Sir Christopher Andrew Hoy (born 23 March 1976) is a former track cyclist and racing driver from Scotland who represented Great Britain at the Olympic and World Championships and Scotland at the Commonwealth Games.\nHoy is an 11-time world champion and a six-time Olympic champion. With a total of seven Olympic medals, six gold and one silver, Hoy is the second most decorated Olympic cyclist of all time. Between 2012 and 2021, he was the most successful British Olympian and the most successful Olympic cyclist of all time. His 17 global titles across four disciplines make Hoy the second most successful track cyclist at the global level of all times behind Harrie Lavreysen.\nWith his three gold medals in the 2008 Summer Olympics, Hoy became Scotland's most successful Olympian, the first British male athlete to win three gold medals in a single Olympic Games since Henry Taylor in 1908, and the most successful Olympic cyclist of all time. After winning a further two gold medals (in the keirin and team sprint) at the 2012 Summer Olympics, Hoy has won the second-most Olympic gold medals (six) of all British athletes, behind Jason Kenny, and more total medals (seven) than any except fellow cyclists Kenny and Sir Bradley Wiggins. Hoy has won Olympic gold medals in more separate events — team sprint (twice), match sprint, keirin (twice) and kilo — than any other cyclist.\nIn September 2023, Hoy was diagnosed with stage 4 prostate cancer. In October 2024, he reported that his condition was terminal and that he had been given between two and four years to live.\n\n\n== Early life ==\nThe son of David and Carol Hoy, Chris Hoy was born on 23 March 1976 and grew up in Murrayfield, Edinburgh. He was privately educated at George Watson's College, followed by two years at the University of St Andrews studying Mathematics and Physics until 1996. He subsequently transferred to the University of Edinburgh, from which he graduated BSc (Hons.) in Applied Sports Science in 1999.\nHoy, whose first bike cost £5, was inspired to cycle at age six by the 1982 film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Hoy says the BMX bike he saw in the film is what inspired him to start cycling. Before track cycling, Hoy raced BMX between the ages of 7 and 14 and was ranked second in Britain, fifth in Europe, and ninth in the world. He received sponsorship from Slazenger and Kwik-Fit, and was competing in Europe and the USA. He first became aware of track cycling when he watched TV coverage of Scottish sprinter Eddie Alexander winning a bronze medal at the 1986 Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh. Hoy also represented the Scotland Junior Rowing Team and was second in the 1993 National Rowing Championships with Grant Florence in the coxless pairs. He played rugby as part of his school's team.\n\n\n== Early cycling career ==\nHoy joined his first cycling club, Dunedin C.C., in 1990, aged 14, and began concentrating on track cycling in 1993, when he joined the City of Edinburgh Racing Club. In 1997, he and fellow Scottish sprinter Craig MacLean were tipped as medal prospects by Phil Liggett.\nHoy won silver in Berlin, at the 1999 UCI Track Cycling World Championships in the team sprint, riding at man one, Craig MacLean at two and Jason Quealley at three. Regular teammates in the team sprint over the years included Craig MacLean, Ross Edgar, Jamie Staff, Jason Queally, Matthew Crampton, and Jason Kenny.\n\n\n== Olympics ==\n\n\n=== 2000 Sydney Olympics ===\nFollowing Jason Queally's gold medal in the Kilo TT early in the Games, Hoy joined with him and Craig MacLean to win his first Olympic Medal, a Silver in the Team Sprint or \"Olympic Sprint\" as it was then called. Although they were beaten by an excellent French team, the two medals won for GB were to become the start of a renaissance of British track cycling after the debacle of the Atlanta Games, for which he and track endurance contemporary Sir Bradley Wiggins would eventually become the figureheads along with road sprinter Mark Cavendish. All three would eventually win BBC Sports Personality of the Year as cycling became mainstream in Great Britain.\n\n\n=== 2004 Olympics: Athens ===\nHoy arrived in Athens in the form of his life. His main event was the Kilo Time Trial. He was ranked No. 1 and was last man off. The sea level World Record was broken four times as he sat in the track centre waiting for his start. He had been involved in an accident in the athlete's village just a few days prior to competition where he came off his bike in front of a village bus, narrowly avoiding serious injury. As he came out of the starting gate, his scarred arms and legs showed how close he was to not competing.\nThe previous rider was Arnaud Tournant who set the fastest ever sea-level kilo. Chris came next and, cheered on by thousands of loyal British fans, he bettered the time on each lap, setting a new sea-level World and Olympic Record of 1.00.711. This was the first of his Olympic gold medals, but he suffered disappointment as Great Britain could only finish fifth in the Team Sprint.\n\n\n=== Post-2004 Olympics ===\nAngered by the decision to remove his specialist event, the Kilo, from the Olympic programme after the 2004 games, Hoy sought to develop in other events. The first of these was the emerging keirin event. This event involves between six and eight riders following a small motorbike (the Derny) around the 250m track for 5.5 laps, as the bike slowly builds up the speed. The bike pulls off with 2.5 laps to go and the riders race for the line. Hoy attended keirin school in Japan during 2005 and had previously competed at the keirin in various events but one of his first major successes was at the Manchester round of the World Cup Classics Series in 2007, shortly before the World Championships, where he also won, ahead of his teammate Ross Edgar.\nHoy’s results indicated that he was transitioning from primarily power-based sprinting events, such as the Kilo and the Team Sprint, to performing strongly in more tactical sprint disciplines, including the keirin and the individual sprint. His performances in these newer events continued to reflect his capacity to produce high levels of power.\n\n\n=== 2007 world record attempt ===\nOn 12 May 2007, Hoy attempted the world record for the kilometre. He fell 0.005 seconds short, clocking 58.880. He set a record for the 500m flying start at 24.758 seconds, over a second less than the 25.850 set by Arnaud Duble. Hoy set the sea-level kilometre record of 1 minute 0.711 seconds by winning the Olympics in Athens in 2004. The outright record of 58.875 seconds is held by Arnaud Tournant (France), set during 2001 at altitude in La Paz, Bolivia, where Hoy also attempted to break the record. At the time, only 3 sub-60sec kilos had ever been ridden; Hoy recorded two of these over two days in La Paz.\nHoy's main achievement is in the individual sprint, considered the blue ribbon event of track cycling. Kilo riders like Hoy have historically not fared as well at this event, as they were less experienced in the tactical elements required for the sprint. Previously, Hoy had competed in the sprint at various World Cup events and Revolution meetings in Manchester, but it was not one of his main events and he did not compete in it at the World Championships or the Olympics.\nIn the semi-finals Hoy defeated Italian veteran Roberto Chiappa 2–0, to set up a meeting in the final against France's Kévin Sireau. Sireau was the World Cup Classics points winner for the season and had defeated Hoy 2–0 in their previous meeting only a few weeks earlier. However, with the vocal Manchester crowd behind him Hoy was not to be denied victory and he completed the win 2–0, the first British man to win the sprint title in 52 years since Reg Harris.\n\n\n=== 2008 Olympics ===\n\nHoy became the first British male Olympian for 100 years to claim three golds at one games at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. This came when he won the men's keirin, the men's team sprint and also the men's individual sprint.\n\n\n=== 2008/09 season ===\nHoy did not race at the first major event of the 2009/10 season, the World Cup Classics Event in Manchester on 4 October – 2 November. He instead made an appearance to sign autographs and commentate with the BBC.\nHe made his return to racing in the UK at the Revolution 22 event in Manchester in December. He received a standing ovation from the Manchester faithful at the start of the event when he was introduced to the crowd. At this event, Hoy won both the Sprint and Keirin competitions, defeating likes of Jason Kenny, Jamie Staff, Ross Edgar, Matthew Crampton and Teun Mulder along the way. Hoy competed in the World Cup Classics series' final event in Copenhagen, Denmark in February, helping his team to a gold medal in the team sprint event. However, he crashed out during the men's Keirin final and was forced to miss the final day of competition, including the men's sprint. Although at first, his injury seemed minor, he returned to Manchester where, following a scan, he was diagnosed with a serious degloving injury which finished his season and kept him off his bike for almost three months. He was unable to compete as planned at the Revolution 24 event in Manchester the following weekend, he did however make an appearance at the event. He had to pull out of the World Championships in Poland at the end of March, where he would have attempted to defend two World titles, because of the hip injury.\n\n\n=== 2009/10 season ===\n\nHoy started the 09/10 track season at the National Cycling Centre, Manchester, at the British National Championships where he took only his second (and third) ever individual national titles. He took gold medals in the Keirin, Sprint and was part of the Team Sprint Team representing team SKY along with Jamie Staff and Jason Kenny. Two weeks later, he raced in round one of the UCI World Cup at the same venue and took gold in the Men's Keirin. He then went into day 2 of the competition and took gold in the sprint event, beating fellow Brit Matthew Crampton in the final 2–0. A third World Cup gold came in the Team Sprint on the Sunday. Having ridden and won 12 events over the weekend, he withdrew from the International Japanese Keirin which was consequently won by Crampton.\nAt the 2010 UCI World Championships, Hoy was beaten in the quarter-final of the men's sprint event by his German opponent, Robert Förstemann, who won after making an attack from the start line. He was part of the GB men's team sprint that took the bronze. In the Keirin event, Hoy won the gold medal, despite crashing in the heats, to take his tenth world title.\n\n\n=== 2010/11 season ===\nHoy lost in the first round of the men's sprint at the European Championships to Ireland's Felix English. At the Manchester World Cup event in February 2011, Hoy lost in the semi-finals to Jason Kenny. Hoy took the match sprint title at the British National Championships in October 2011.\n\n\n=== 2011/12 track season ===\nAt the 2012 World Cup event held in the new London Velodrome, Hoy won three medals. He won gold in the keirin and bronze in the team sprint, before winning gold in the Men's Sprint, losing just one race in four rounds.\n\n\n=== 2012 Olympics ===\n\nHoy was an ambassador for the 2012 Olympic Games in London. Hoy led Team GB out as the team's flag carrier at the opening ceremony. He then went on to win gold in the team sprint with Jason Kenny and Philip Hindes, setting a new world record in the velodrome and becoming Team GB's joint gold record holder with Sir Steve Redgrave's tally of five gold medals with a total of six medals (5 gold, 1 silver).\nOn 7 August 2012, Hoy won gold in the Keirin to overtake Sir Steve Redgrave and become the most successful British Olympian ever, winning a total of 6 gold medals. This also made him the joint holder of most medals won by any British athlete in the Olympic Games with fellow cyclist Sir Bradley Wiggins and Jason Kenny.\n\n\n=== Retirement ===\nOn 18 April 2013, Hoy announced his retirement from competitive cycling. He said he was very proud to have taken part in the transformation of the sport.\nSince retiring, Hoy has been a regular pundit for BBC coverage of cycling events. The include three Commonwealth Games: Glasgow 2014, Gold Coast 2018 and Birmingham 2022, and three Summer Olympic Games: Rio 2016, Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024.\n\n\n== Motorsport career ==\n\nHoy's interest in motorsport competition led him to contest the inaugural season of the Radical Sportscars SR1 Cup, scooping his first motorsport podium at Snetterton in the same season. Hoy has since contested selected rounds of the Radical SR3 Challenge and Radical European Masters in Radical's SR3 RS and SR8 RX open sportscars. On 8 April 2014 it was announced that Hoy would be joining the British GT championship driving a Nissan GT-R Nismo GT3 with a view to competing in the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2016.\nHoy took his first victory in international competition at the opening round of the 2015 European Le Mans Series at Silverstone where he drove a Ginetta-Nissan to a class win alongside team-mate Charlie Robertson. The pairing took another two wins in the series' LMP3 class, including at the penultimate round at Circuit Paul Ricard, which clinched them the class title with a round to spare.\nHoy subsequently competed at the 2015 Race of Champions at the London Olympic Stadium, receiving a late invitation to race as part of Team All Stars in the Nations Cup alongside Romain Grosjean as a replacement for Jorge Lorenzo after the motorcyclist suffered leg burns as a result of post-race celebrations on his motorbike when he clinched that season's MotoGP title.\nHowever, Hoy and Grosjean were knocked out in the first round by the Young Stars team of Pascal Wehrlein and Jolyon Palmer.\nIn March 2016, it was confirmed that Hoy would be entered for the 2016 Le Mans 24 Hours, sharing a Ligier JS P2-Nissan with Andrea Pizzitola and Michael Munemann. He was the first Summer Olympic medallist to compete at Le Mans, the ninth former Olympian to race there and the second Olympic champion to do so, after alpine skier Henri Oreiller.\nHoy and his team-mates finished the race in 17th overall and 12th in class.\n\n\n=== Complete British GT Championship results ===\n(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position) (Races in italics indicate fastest lap)\n\n\n=== Complete European Le Mans Series results ===\n\n\n==== 24 Hours of Le Mans results ====\n\n\n=== 24 Hours of Silverstone results ===\n\n\n=== Complete FIA World Rallycross Championship results ===\n(key)\n\n\n==== Supercar ====\n\n\n== Hoy Bikes ==\nHoy unveiled the brand which bears his name in November 2012, three months after winning the double Olympic gold in London. The debut range included three road bikes and four city bikes, as well as a track bike. It was later extended by several other designs, including bicycles for children.\n\n\n== Personal life and illness ==\n\nHoy is married to Sarra Kemp, Lady Hoy, a lawyer from Edinburgh. They were married in 2010 at St Giles' Cathedral, Edinburgh. They have two children, a son and a daughter.\nHoy's autobiography was published in 2009. Hoy's first two children's fiction books, about a young cyclist called Flying Fergus, were published in 2016. In 2020, Hoy published another children's book titled Be Amazing.\nIn April 2013, Hoy accepted the appointment of ambassador to the Royal Air Force Air Cadets and assumed the rank of Honorary Group Captain RAFVR(T). He has since relinquished this role. In 2013, Hoy was appointed as an ambassador for UNICEF UK, having been an International Inspiration ambassador for UNICEF since 2009.\nHoy has been Ambassador for the Scottish Action for Mental Health since 2009. In that time he has devoted many hours to raising awareness of, and funds for, the mental health cause.\nIn December 2016 and December 2017, Hoy supported the Scottish social enterprise Social Bite by sleeping out at their Sleep in the Park events to raise money for homeless people.\nHoy is a supporter of Scotland rugby and has presented the match ball before selected games at Murrayfield Stadium. He is also a supporter of Heart of Midlothian Football Club.\n\n\n=== Terminal prostate cancer ===\nIn September 2023, Hoy was diagnosed with stage 4 prostate cancer, after complaining of a pain in his shoulder. News of his condition was made public on 16 February 2024, but no details were given and it was announced that Hoy was undergoing chemotherapy.\nIn October 2024, he made public the nature and severity of the disease, that it had spread to his bones and was now terminal. He said that he had been given between two and four years to live. In November 2024, Health Secretary Wes Streeting announced NHS England would review prostate cancer screening after Hoy called for change.\n\n\n== Medal history ==\n\n\n== Honours ==\n2005: Honorary Doctor of Science, University of Edinburgh\n2005: Appointed a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) \"for services to cycling\" in the 2005 New Year Honours.\n2005: Honorary Doctorate from Heriot-Watt University\n2008: Sportsman of the Year, elected by the Sports Journalists' Association, winning a ballot of its membership ahead of Formula One world champion Lewis Hamilton and Olympic sailor Ben Ainslie.\n2008: BBC Sports Personality of the Year. He finished ahead of Formula One world champion Lewis Hamilton and Olympic swimmer Rebecca Adlington. Hoy became the second cyclist ever to win the award after Tom Simpson in 1965.\n2009: Honorary Doctor of Science, University of St Andrews\n2009: Appointed Knight Bachelor in the 2009 New Year Honours \"for services to Sport\".\n2009: Inducted to the University of Edinburgh's Sports Hall of Fame.\n2009: Train operating company SouthEastern named a high-speed Class 395 train after him.\n2009: The Edinburgh Award.\n2012: The Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome, built for the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games, is named in his honour.\n2013: Honorary Group Captain RAFAC, Ambassador to the Royal Air Force Air Cadets.\n23 August 2013: Freedom of the City of Edinburgh.\n26 June 2025: Freedom of the City of London.\n\n\n== Bibliography ==\n\n\n=== Non-fiction ===\nChris Hoy: The Autobiography (2009, HarperCollins) ISBN 9780007311316\nHoy, Chris (2 October 2018), How to Ride a Bike : From Starting Out to Peak Performance, Hamlyn, an imprint of Octopus Publishing (published 2018), ISBN 978-0-600-63521-5\nBe Amazing! An Inspiring Guide to Being Your Own Champion (2020) ISBN 9781406394733\nAll That Matters (2024, Hodder & Stoughton) ISBN 9781399741842\n\n\n=== Children's fiction ===\n\n\n==== Flying Fergus series ====\nThe Best Birthday Bike (2016)\nThe Great Cycle Challenge  (2016, Bonnier Publishing Fiction); ISBN 9781848125629\nThe Big Biscuit Bike Off (2016)\nThe Championship Cheats (2017)\nThe Winning Team (2017)\nThe Cycle Search and Rescue (2017)\nThe Wreck-It-Race (2017)\nTrouble on the Track (2018)\nThe Secret Cycle Scoop (2018)\nThe Photo Finish (2019)\n\n\n== See also ==\n\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\n2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics gold post boxes\nCity of Edinburgh Racing Club\nAchievements of members of City of Edinburgh Racing Club\nCommonwealth Arena and Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== Further reading ==\nRichard Moore, Heroes, Villains and Velodromes: Chris Hoy and Britain's Track Cycling Revolution (June 2008), HarperCollins; ISBN 9780007265312.\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nOfficial website\nChris Hoy at UCI \nChris Hoy profile, cyclingweekly.co.uk at the Wayback Machine (archived 20 February 2009)\nHOY Bikes website, hoybikes.com at the Wayback Machine (archived 26 June 2015)\nChris Hoy at Team GB  (archive)\nChris Hoy at Olympics.com \nChris Hoy at Olympedia \nChris Hoy at Team Scotland\nChris Hoy at the Commonwealth Games Federation (archived) \nChris Hoy at the Scottish Sports Hall of Fame"}
{"title": "Christian d'Oriola", "requested": "Christian d'Oriola", "extract": "Christian d'Oriola (3 October 1928 – 29 October 2007) was a French fencer.\n\n\n== Career ==\n\nD'Oriola took part in the 1948, 1952, 1956, and 1960 Olympics, serving as the Olympic flag bearer for France in 1960.\nBetween 1947 and 1958, he won four gold and two silver medals at Summer Olympics and eight world titles in the foil. At the 1960 Olympics, he also competed in the team épée.\nHe also competed at the Mediterranean Games in 1951 where he won a gold medal in the individual foil event and a silver medal in the team foil event, and in 1955 where he won gold medals in the individual and team foil events. He won the French national title in the team épée event in 1970. In 1972, he was awarded the French Legion of Honor.\nAfter retiring from competitions, D'Oriola acted as a fencing judge and served as vice-president of the French Fencing Federation.\nD'Oriola was a cousin of the Olympic equestrian Pierre Jonquères d'Oriola. \n\n\n== References ==\n\nGeneral sources\nCohen, Richard (2002). By the Sword. New York: Random House. ISBN 0-375-50417-6.\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nChristian d'Oriola at Olympics.com\nChristian d'Oriola at databaseOlympics.com at the Wayback Machine (archived 8 March 2007)\nCome4News at the Wayback Machine (archived 1 November 2007)"}
{"title": "Chun Lee-kyung", "requested": "Chun Lee-kyung", "extract": "Chun Lee-kyung (Korean: 전이경; Hanja: 全利卿; born January 6, 1976, in Okcheon, Chungcheongbuk-do) is a retired South Korean short track speed skater. She is a four-time Olympic Champion and three-time Overall World Champion for 1995–1997. She was a dominant force in International Short Track Speed Skating during the mid-1990s.\nChun took part in the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville, France, at the age of 15, but failed to win much attention. In 1994, however, Chun won two gold medals at the Lillehammer Winter Olympic Games. She won the women's 1000 m final, defeating the reigning World Champion Nathalie Lambert and former World Champion Kim So-hee, and was part of the team that won the 3000 m relay in a world record time along with Kim.\nBetween 1994 and 1998 Winter Olympics, Chun won the Overall World Championship three times in a row, in 1995, 1996 and 1997 (becoming the second person to have won three consecutive Overall World Championships).  She shared the 1997 title though with Yang Yang (A), her most significant career rival.   She also won the Overall World Cup title for 1997–1998 season.\nIn 1998, at the Nagano Winter Olympics, Chun successfully defended both of her Olympic titles, by defeating China's Yang Yang (A) and Yang Yang (S) in the 1000 m final after trailing for most of the race.   Yang Yang (A) crossed the line together with Chun in what was ruled and reviewed as a photo finish, but was then disqualified for cross tracking Chun at the very end as Chun tried to pass on the inside (although the photo finish seemed to show Chun having defeated her for the gold regardless). She led the relay team to another Olympic victory with world record time, completing the first \"double-double\" in Olympic short track history.   She also added a 5th Olympic medal, a surprising bronze in the 500 metres, her weakest event and which she had never won a World Championship medal in.   She was advanced to the bronze after winning the B final, due to a major fall in the A final leading to the disqualification of Isabelle Charest, and the refusal to finish of Wang Chunlu.   She became the first quadruple Olympic Champion in Short Track Speed Skating and the first one from Korea.  One month later at the 1998 World Championships, her final major international meet, Chun won 4 medals including her 3rd title at 3000 metres, but was still narrowly denied a 4th consecutive Overall World Championship by Yang Yang (A) (the 2nd of Yang Yang (A)'s own 6 consecutive titles, after having tied Chun for the 97 title).  The key event to the final overall result was the 1000 metres, where just as in Nagano Chun and Yang Yang (A) crossed in a virtual dead heat over the distance, but this time with Yang emerging the victor and getting the crucial 1st place points to the overall title with it.   This provided the final chapter to the intense rivalry of the 2 all-time greats, as Chun would retire immediately after the meet.\nIn 2002, Chun was elected to the Athletes' Committee of the International Olympic Committee.\n\n\n== References =="}
{"title": "Clas Thunberg", "requested": "Clas Thunberg", "extract": "Arnold Clas (\"Classe\") Robert Thunberg (5 April 1893 – 28 April 1973) was a Finnish speed skater who won five Olympic gold medals – three at the inaugural Winter Olympics held in Chamonix in 1924 (along with a silver and a bronze medal) and two at the 1928 Winter Olympics held in St. Moritz. He was the most successful athlete at both of these Winter Olympics, sharing the honour for 1928 Winter Olympics with Johan Grøttumsbraaten of Norway. \nNo other athlete ever won such a high fraction of all Olympic events at a single Games. \nHe was born and died in Helsinki.\n\n\n== Short biography ==\nThunberg began with speed skating rather late, at the age of 18, having led a somewhat rowdy life as a compulsive smoker and drinker before he concentrated fully on his sport. However, from the age of 28 – when he turned up at his first European Allround Championships – and for the following ten years, he was by far the most-winning skater.\nThunberg's greatest strengths were the shortest distances, the 500 through 5000 metres. He never won an international 10000 metre event, although he did win a silver medal on the 10000 metres at the 1924 Winter Olympics – beaten by three seconds by compatriot Julius Skutnabb. Thunberg won three gold medals at the 1924 Olympics – the allround event, the 1500 metres and the 5000 metres. He remains the only person to have won an Olympic gold medal in allround speed skating, as despite the status of allround as the premier skating event, at least up until the 1990s, the event was abolished in the Olympics from 1928 onwards.\nThunberg won five World Allround Championships titles from 1923 to 1931, and also four European Allround Championships titles. He also took two more gold medals at the 1928 Winter Olympics, to end with five, and these two medals made him the oldest Olympic Speed Skating Champion, at the age of 34. However, despite his amazing run, he was occasionally vulnerable on the long distances. If his 500 and 1,500 metre events did not go exactly according to plan, then he could be beaten – as shown in the 1927 season when the 22-year-old Bernt Evensen pipped him to both the World and European title. Evensen, however, could never string together the long run of victories that Thunberg ended up with.\nDespite his amazing career record, Thunberg never reached the top of Adelskalender – a statistical invention which ranks skaters according to their personal bests and then converts them into allround performances, using a table. Oscar Mathisen's personal bests on the three longest distances were simply too good for Thunberg to match. However, Mathisen – who was born five years before Thunberg – turned professional during World War I, meaning that the two never met in an ISU-sanctioned event.\n\n\n== Record ==\n\n\n=== World records ===\nOver the course of his career, Thunberg skated four world records:\n\nSource: SpeedSkatingStats.com\n\n\n=== Personal records ===\n\nNote that Thunberg's personal record on the 3000 m was not recognised as an official world record.\nThunberg has an Adelskalender score of 192.633 points. His highest ranking on the Adelskalender was a second place.\n\n\n== Medals ==\nAn overview of medals won by Thunberg at important championships he participated in, listing the years in which he won each:\n\nSource: SpeedSkatingStats.com\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\n\n\n== References =="}
{"title": "Claudia Pechstein", "requested": "Claudia Pechstein", "extract": "Claudia Pechstein (German pronunciation: [ˈklaʊdi̯a ˈpɛçʃtaɪn]; born 22 February 1972) is a retired German speed skater. She has won five Olympic gold medals. With a total of nine Olympic medals, five gold, two silver, and two bronze, she was previously the most successful Olympic speed skater, male or female, of all time, (later superseded by Ireen Wüst during the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang). Pechstein is the most successful German Winter Olympian of all time. After the World Championships in Norway in February 2009, Pechstein was accused of blood doping and banned from all competitions for two years.\n\n\n== Biography ==\nPechstein was born in East Berlin. She held a world record on the 5000 m track with the time 6:46.91 achieved on the Utah Olympic Oval in Salt Lake City on 23 February 2002, which was beaten by Martina Sáblíková on the same oval five years later. Pechstein is a sergeant in the German Federal Police and trains at the force's sports training centre at Bad Endorf.\nPechstein is the first female Winter Olympian to win medals in five consecutive Olympics (1992–2006); she won the gold medal in the women's 5000 metres race in three consecutive Olympics (1994, 1998, 2002), with bronze in the first (1992) and the silver medal in the fifth (2006). In the 3000 metres, she won three medals, gold (2002), silver (1998), and bronze (1994). She won her fifth Olympic gold medal in the team pursuit at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin. After missing the 2010 Vancouver Games, she made her sixth Olympic appearance at the 2014 Sochi Games, finishing fourth in the 3000 metres and fifth in the 5000 metres. In 2018 she appeared in the Pyeongchang Games.\nAs reported by Olympic news outlet Around the Rings, Pechstein is aiming for an Olympic return, this time as a cyclist. \"I will start in the individual pursuit at the German Track Championships from 6 to 10 July in Berlin\", she said. \"I am also planning to race the individual sprint or the 500-meter time trial. I trust I can do this because as a skater I've trained a lot on the bike. I have nothing to lose. I don't know how this kind of competition works, so this alone is really exciting\".\nIn 2022, she returned to the Olympic Games and was the German flag-bearer for the opening ceremony in Beijing. It was her eighth participation in the Olympic Winter Games and a new record for most Winter Olympics for a female athlete.\n\n\n== Two-year ban for blood doping ==\n\nAfter the World Championships in Norway in February 2009, the International Skating Union accused Pechstein of blood doping and banned her from all competitions for two years. This ban was based on irregular levels of reticulocytes in her blood. These levels were highest during the Calgary World Cup 2007 and the Hamar World Championships in 2009; elevated levels were also found during a number of other competitions and training spot checks.\nIn \"Autonomy and Biopower in the Anti-Doping Establishment: A Rogue Agent of Governmentality,\" sport historian Daniel Rosenke reviews Pechstein's case, citing it as an example of the contentious nature of the biological passport. After collecting sample data on the skater for a period of nearly nine years, the ISU banned Pechstein from competition for an above threshold fluctuation in reticulocyte percentage, a blood parameter used in passport profiling. Notably, Pechstein argued her ‘%Retics’ of 3.49 fell into the normal range for women her age and asserted that the International Skating Union’s (ISU) threshold limit of 2.4 was far too low, basing this claim on a confluence of data in medical science. Two weeks following the 3.49 reading, Pechstein was tested again at 1.37, a difference considered by the ISU to be an unequivocal sign of doping. To defend herself, Pechstein cast doubt upon the accuracy of the ‘%Retics’ measurement, citing both her hemoglobin and hematocrit levels as exculpatory evidence. In short, she questioned the reliability and accuracy of the entire procedure's longitudinal sample collection, which ultimately led to her violation of the ISU's anti-doping code. Finally, Pechstein interrogated the burden of proof to be met by the ISU in proving a doping violation. She suggested as the CAS pointed out, that \"the ISU must convince the panel (of arbitrators) to a level very close to ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ that all alternative causes for the increase of %Retics can be excluded, and that additionally, the [a]thlete had an intention to use blood doping.\" An important consideration here is that the burden of proof should be proportional the severity of the accusation (according to the World Anti-Doping Code), and in legal terms, should fall closer to beyond a reasonable doubt than the ‘comfortable satisfaction’ of the panel. With the information presented, it seems Pechstein's assertion was valid and cast serious doubt on the so-called ‘clear-cut’ positive described by the ISU.\nPechstein denied that she had doped and appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in Lausanne, claiming, among other things, that she has an inherited condition explaining the abnormal measurements. The court affirmed the ban in November 2009, finding no evidence for an inherited condition in the expert testimony provided by Pechstein. This was the first case of doping based on circumstantial evidence alone; no forbidden substances were ever found during her repeated tests.\nIn December 2009, she asked the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland for an injunction. She was allowed to participate at a single 3000 m race in Salt Lake City so that she could qualify for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver should her appeal of the ban be successful. She finished 13th in the race on 11 December but would have needed a place among the top 8 to qualify for the Olympics.\nIn January 2010, the Swiss Federal Supreme Court refused to temporarily suspend Pechstein's ban for the Olympics. On 19 February 2010 the CAS ad hoc panel at the Vancouver Olympics rejected Pechstein's last-minute appeal to be admitted to the ice skating team events.\n\nIn February 2010, Pechstein filed a criminal complaint in Switzerland against the International Skating Union, alleging trial fraud.\nOn 15 March 2010, Gerhard Ehninger, head of the German Society for Hematology and Oncology, said that an evaluation of the case points to a light form of blood anemia called spherocytosis – apparently inherited from her father. Pechstein attempted to use this new evidence in her appeal before the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland. The International Skating Union issued a press release explaining their opposition to this appeal.\nPechstein stood to lose her position with the German Federal Police should blood doping have been proved \"beyond reasonable doubt\". Disciplinary proceedings against her were halted in August 2010 because no such proof was available. Pechstein applied for unpaid leave in order to be able to continue her training, which was denied. As a result, she suffered a nervous breakdown in September 2010.\nThe Swiss Federal Supreme Court issued its final ruling on 28 September 2010, rejecting Pechstein's appeal and confirming the ban. Pechstein returned to competition in February 2011.\nShe next won the bronze medal in the 2011 World Championships in the 5000 m race, finishing behind world champion Martina Sáblíková from the Czech Republic and her teammate Stephanie Beckert.\nAfter this, Pechstein charged the International Skating Union for damages before German courts. While on 7 June 2016, the lower Federal Court of Justice of Germany rejected her initial appeal, on 3 June 2022, the higher Federal Constitutional Court of Germany ruled that Pechstein's fundamental rights had been violated. Based on that decision, the case for damages was sent back to the lower courts for re-trial and is currently still pending.\n\n\n== Skating records ==\n\n\n=== Personal records ===\n\nShe is currently in 14th position in the adelskalender.\n\n\n=== World records ===\n\n\n=== Olympic records ===\n\n\n== Results ==\n\nSource: SpeedSkatingStats.com\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Winter Olympic medalists\nList of multiple Olympic medalists in one event\nList of people from Berlin\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nClaudia Pechstein at the International Skating Union (archived former page)\nClaudia Pechstein at SpeedSkatingStats.com\nClaudia Pechstein at Olympics.com \nClaudia Pechstein at Olympedia \nClaudia Pechstein at InterSportStats\nClaudia Pechstein at Team Deutschland (in German) \nOfficial website  (in German)\nPhotos of Claudia Pechstein at the Wayback Machine (archived 27 April 2006) (in German)"}
{"title": "Conrad Böcker", "requested": "Conrad Böcker", "extract": "Conrad Helmut Fritz Böcker (24 August 1870 in Leipzig – 8 April 1936 in Frankfurt) was a German gymnast.  He competed at the 1896 Summer Olympics in Athens. Böcker had little success in individual events.  He competed in the parallel bars, horizontal bar, vault, pommel horse, and rings events.  In none of them was he among the medallists. He did, however, win two gold medals as part of the German team in the two team events, on parallel bars and the horizontal bar.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nConrad Böcker at Olympics.com\nConrad Böcker at Olympedia"}
{"title": "Dana Vollmer", "requested": "Dana Vollmer", "extract": "Dana Whitney Vollmer (born November 13, 1987) is a former American competition swimmer, five-time Olympic gold medalist, and former world record-holder.  At the 2004 Summer Olympics, she won a gold medal as a member of the winning United States team in the 4×200-meter freestyle relay that set the world record in the event. Eight years later at the 2012 Summer Olympics, Vollmer set the world record on her way to the gold medal in the 100-meter butterfly, and also won golds in the 4×100-meter medley relay and 4×200-meter freestyle relay. She won three medals including a gold at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.\nVollmer won a total of thirty two medals in major international competitions, including nineteen gold medals, eight silver, and five bronze, spanning the Olympics, the World Championships, the Pan American Games, the Pan Pacific Championships, and the Goodwill Games, making her one of the most decorated female Olympians in swimming.\n\n\n== Early years ==\nVollmer was born in Syracuse, New York, and raised in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex region in Granbury, Texas.  As an age group swimmer, Vollmer swam for coach Ron Forrest at the Fort Worth Area Swim Team (FAST).\nIn 2003, Vollmer underwent heart surgery to correct a condition called supraventricular tachycardia, which produces a quickened pulse rate of about 240 beats per minute.  After that surgery, an electrocardiogram indicated to her cardiologists that she might have Long QT syndrome.  Further testing ruled out the condition. Her physicians recommended that she always have a defibrillator at the poolside whenever she swims in case of a heart emergency.\n\n\n== College career ==\nVollmer first enrolled in the University of Florida, and swam for the Florida Gators swimming and diving team under coach Gregg Troy in 2006.  As a freshman, she earned four honorable mention All-American honors.  After her first year, she transferred to the University of California, Berkeley, where she finished her NCAA career competing for the California Golden Bears swimming and diving team under coach Teri McKeever from 2007 to 2009. Vollmer was the Golden Bears' most valuable swimmer for three consecutive years, the Pac-10 Swimmer of the Year in 2009, and the 2008–09 recipient of the Honda Sports Award for Swimming and Diving, recognizing her as the outstanding college female swimmer of the year. She earned 20 All-American honors as a Golden Bear swimmer, won individual NCAA championships in the 100-yard butterfly in 2007 and 100-yard and 200-yard freestyles in 2009, and led the Golden Bears to their first NCAA team championship in 2009.\n\n\n== Swimming career ==\n\n\n=== Early career ===\nAt the age of 12, Vollmer was the youngest swimmer to compete at the 2000 U.S. Olympic Trials, but did not qualify for the U.S. Olympic team. She was also the youngest swimming competitor a year later at the 2001 Goodwill Games.\n\n\n=== 2004 Summer Olympics ===\n\nAt the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece, Vollmer won a gold medal as a member of the winning U.S. team in 4×200-meter freestyle relay, together with Natalie Coughlin, Carly Piper and Kaitlin Sandeno. In addition to winning the gold medal, the U.S. relay team broke the previous world record in the event that had stood for 17 years.\n\n\n=== 2005–2008 ===\nAt the 2007 World Aquatics Championships, Vollmer won a gold medal in the 4×200-meter freestyle relay. She also won the silver medal in the 4×100-meter freestyle relay and 4×100-meter medley relay.\nVollmer just missed making the 2008 Olympic team, placing seventh at the 2008 US Olympic Trials in the 200-meter freestyle with 1:58.67, 0.51 seconds behind the 6th-place finisher, 5th in the 100-meter butterfly with 58.64, and 9th in the 100-meter freestyle with 54.84, 0.03 seconds behind 8th place qualifier Amanda Weir.\n\n\n=== 2009–2011 ===\nOn February 25, 2009, Vollmer set her first individual American record, breaking Natalie Coughlin's 200-yard freestyle record with a time of 1:41.53.\nAt the 2009 World Championships in Rome, Italy, Vollmer won two medals, a silver and a bronze. In the 200-meter freestyle, Vollmer set an American record in the semi-final with a time of 1:55.29. In the final of the 200-meter freestyle, Vollmer placed third, and her American record was broken by Allison Schmitt. In the 4×200-meter freestyle relay, Vollmer swam the leadoff leg in 1:55.29. The American team finished in second place behind China with a time of 7:42.56.\nAt the 2011 World Aquatics Championships in Shanghai, Vollmer won a total of three medals, two gold medals and one silver. In her first event, the 4×100-meter freestyle relay, Vollmer won a silver medal with Natalie Coughlin, Jessica Hardy, and Missy Franklin. After setting the national record in the semi-finals of the 100-meter butterfly (56.47), Vollmer won the gold medal in the final with a time of 56.87. In the 4×100-meter medley relay, Vollmer the gold medal along with Natalie Coughlin, Rebecca Soni, and Missy Franklin with a time of 3:52.36, better than three seconds ahead of second-place finisher China. Swimming the butterfly leg, Vollmer had a split of 55.74. The final time of 3:52.36 for the medley relay was the second-fastest mark of all time, just behind the Chinese-held world record of 3:52.19.\n\n\n=== 2012 Summer Olympics ===\n\nAt the 2012 United States Olympic Trials, the U.S. qualifying meet for the Olympics, Vollmer qualified for the U.S. Olympic team for the second time by finishing first in the 100-meter butterfly and third in the 200-meter freestyle. In the final race of the 100-meter butterfly, Vollmer won in a time of 56.50 seconds, better than one second ahead of second-place Claire Donahue. In the semi-final, Vollmer had broken her own American record of 56.47 with her time of 56.42. Vollmer also competed in the 100-meter freestyle, but just missed a spot on the 4×100-meter freestyle relay by finishing seventh (54.61).\nAt the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, she again broke her American record and set an Olympic record with a time of 56.25 seconds in her 100-meter butterfly qualifying heat. In the 100-meter butterfly final, she won the gold medal and set a new world record with her time of 55.98. Vollmer also competed in the 4×200-meter freestyle relay. She swam the second leg with a time of 1:56.02, as the U.S. team won gold with a time of 7:42.92.  In her final event, the 4×100-meter medley relay, Vollmer won another gold with Missy Franklin, Rebecca Soni and Allison Schmitt. Swimming the butterfly leg, Vollmer recorded a split time of 55.48, as the U.S. team set a new world record with a time of 3:52.05, bettering the previous record of 3:52.19 set by China in 2009.\n\n\n=== 2016 Summer Olympics ===\n\nAt the 2016 United States Olympic Trials, the U.S. qualifying meet for the Rio Olympics, Vollmer qualified for the U.S. Olympic team for the third time by finishing second in the 100-meter butterfly. In the final race of the 100-meter butterfly, she swam a time of 57.21 seconds, finishing behind Kelsi Worrell. Vollmer also qualified for the 4x100 meter freestyle relay by touching sixth in the individual 100 meter freestyle.\nAt the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio, she won a bronze medal in the 100-meter butterfly with a time of 56.63. Vollmer also competed in the 4×100-meter freestyle relay the same night, in which she swam the third leg with a split of 53.18. The U.S. team of her, Simone Manuel, Abbey Weitzeil, and Katie Ledecky won silver with an American record time of 3:31.89. She also swam in the 4 x 100-meter medley relay, helping the US team win the gold medal. Her gold in the medley relay was the 1,000th gold medal for the US at the summer Olympics.\n\n\n=== 2017 ===\nOn 13 April 2017 Vollmer competed in the Women's 50 Free of the 2017 Arena Pro Swim Series Indy while six months pregnant. She participated in preparation for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics; time and placing was not important to her. She finished 55th in 27.59\". She announced by wearing a green TYR techsuit that her second child would be a boy. On July 4, 2017  Vollmer gave birth to their second child Ryker Alexander Grant .\n\n\n=== 2019 ===\nOn July 30, 2019, Vollmer announced her retirement from competitive swimming, stating that her last swim would be the 100 meter butterfly at the 2019 Phillips 66 National Swimming Championships in Stanford, California.\n\n\n== Life outside swimming ==\nVollmer is an ambassador for the American Heart Association's \"Go Red for Women\" program.\nShe is married to Andy Grant, a former swimmer for Stanford University. The couple announced they were expecting their first child on October 10, 2014, and she gave birth on March 6, 2015 to baby boy Arlen Jackson Grant. Andy and Dana announced on January 13, 2017, that they are expecting a second child due July 2017. On July 4, 2017, she gave birth to their second son, Ryker Alexander Grant.\n\n\n== Personal best times ==\n\n\n=== Long course ===\n\n\n=== Short course ===\n\n\n== See also ==\n\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of Olympic medalists in swimming (women)\nList of Pan American Games records in swimming\nList of United States records in swimming\nList of University of California, Berkeley alumni\nList of World Aquatics Championships medalists in swimming (women)\nList of world records in swimming\nWorld record progression 100 metres butterfly\nWorld record progression 4 × 100 metres medley relay\nWorld record progression 4 × 200 metres freestyle relay\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nOfficial website \nDana Vollmer  at World Aquatics \nDana Vollmer at Olympics.com \nDana Vollmer at Olympedia \nDana Vollmer at USA Swimming (archived January 25, 2022)\nDana Vollmer at Team USA (archive June 14, 2023)"}
{"title": "Daniela Silivaș", "requested": "Daniela Silivaș", "extract": "Daniela Viorica Silivaș-Harper (née Silivaș, Romanian: [daniˈela vi.oˈrika siliˈvaʃ]; born 9 May 1972) is a Romanian former artistic gymnast best known for medaling in every single event at one Olympics, winning six medals (three gold, two silver, and one bronze) at the 1988 Summer Games in Seoul. In doing so, she was the fourth female gymnast to achieve this, after Maria Gorokhovskaya (1952), Larisa Latynina (1960, 1964) and Věra Čáslavská (1968). As of 2024, Silivaș is the last gymnast, male or female, to have accomplished this feat.\nAlso, Silivaș is the first gymnast in history to win 3 Olympic and World individual titles on three (from four) apparatus: uneven bars and floor (1988 OG, 1987 and 1989 WC) and beam (1988 OG, 1985 and 1989 WC), an achievement equaled only by Simone Biles, 20 years later. She won 16 Olympic and World medals, 10 of which were gold. In 1987, she dominated the European Championships held in Moscow, medaling on every single event: 4 gold (individual AA, bars, beam and floor) and silver on vault. During her career, she earned 24 perfect 10 scores, of which 7 were earned in Seoul, equaling 1976 Nadia Comăneci's record. She was named the BTA Best Balkan Athlete of the Year in 1988.\nSilivaș was chosen as one of the \"Top Ten All-Around Gymnasts of All Time\", in a poll in Inside Gymnastics magazine. She was known for her technical excellence, difficult routines, charming performances, and artistic flair.\nIn 1989, Silivaș's training was hampered by a knee injury and by the closure of the Deva National Training Center during the Romanian Revolution. She retired in 1991 and moved to the United States, where she is now a gymnastics coach. In 2002, she was inducted into the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame.\n\n\n== Early life and career ==\nSilivaș was born in Deva, Romania, on 9 May 1972. She began gymnastics at age 6 and was coached by Béla Károlyi for six months before his defection in 1981. Silivaș won her school's championships in 1980, and was the Romanian junior national champion in 1981 and 1982. She continued to compete in various junior meets through 1984, with a particularly strong showing at the 1984 Junior European Championships, where she won the balance beam title, earned silver medals on the uneven bars and floor exercise, and placed fourth in the all-around. At the 1984 Junior Friendship Tournament (Druzhba), she won gold medals in the all-around and uneven bars over a strong field that included future Olympic and World medalists Svetlana Boguinskaya, Aurelia Dobre, and Dagmar Kersten.\n\n\n== Senior career ==\n\n\n=== Age falsification ===\nIn 1985, the Romanian Gymnastics Federation changed Silivaș's birth year from 1972 to 1970 to make her age eligible for the World Championships in Montreal. The falsification was suspected by some, but was never proven until Silivaș herself revealed it in 2002. She stated that she was never consulted about the matter: officials simply gave her a new passport, called her attention to the birth date, and informed her that she was now 15.\n\n\n=== 1985–1987 ===\nAlthough she was only 13 at the 1985 Worlds, Silivaș scored a perfect 10 en route to capturing the balance beam title, defeating the reigning Olympic champion, her teammate Ecaterina Szabo, in the process. She finished behind reigning co-world champion Yelena Shushunova in the individual all-around at the 1986 World Cup and quickly established herself as the leader of the Romanian gymnastics team.\nSilivaș's greatest triumph took place at the 1987 European Gymnastics Championships in Moscow, where she won the individual all-around, uneven bars, balance beam and floor exercise titles in addition to taking a silver medal on the vault. At the time, every dominant nation in women's gymnastics was located in Europe, and winning the European title over a deep field of Soviet, East German, and Bulgarian gymnasts was a major victory.\n\nAt the 1987 World Championships in Rotterdam, Silivaș helped the Romanian squad win the team title, defeating the Soviet team for the first time since 1979. She was a favorite for the all-around title, but—hampered by low scores carried over from the team optionals, where she had fallen on the balance beam on a split leap, as well as a shaky uneven bars routine in the all-around—she still managed to win the bronze medal behind teammate Aurelia Dobre and Shushunova, especially due to her strong scores, including two perfect 10.00s, during the team compulsory round. In the event finals, she won gold medals on the uneven bars and floor exercise.\n\n\n=== 1988 Olympics ===\nAt the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, the Romanian team finished second to the Soviets. Individually, Silivaș was one of the favorites, along with Dobre and Shushunova, for the all-around title.\nThe all-around was a hotly anticipated battle between Silivaș, the technician and dancer, and Shushunova, the powerhouse and tumbler. Both received scores of 10.0 on floor. Shushunova received her second 10.0 on vault; Silivaș received hers on the uneven bars. Silivaș was in the lead entering the final rotation, but a score of 9.950 on the vault dropped her to second place, 0.025 behind Shushunova.\nSilivaș's score on vault came under particular scrutiny. Of the six judges on the panel, three gave her first vault a 10.0; two others gave her 9.9s. However, the Soviet judge on the panel, Nellie Kim, gave her a 9.8. On her second vault, Silivaș took a hop on her landing; all six judges gave her 9.9s. Silivaș was visibly upset after Shushunova's scores were posted and at the medal ceremony; according to a report in International Gymnast, she said, \"After my last vault, I thought maybe I should be the champion.\" However, she did not argue the results publicly. Her former coach, Bela Károlyi, noted, \"This kid had the honesty and decency to shut up. She didn’t want to say 'I’m better' because she knows Shushunova is the Olympic champion, but she couldn’t praise a rival. So she just didn’t say a word. These kids have more decency than all the judges and coaches in the world.\"\nIn spite of the controversy, no score protests were ever filed by Silivaș, her coaches, or her federation, and no disciplinary measures were taken against any of the judges. In addition, even though Kim's first mark was considered questionable by many fans, it did not figure into Silivaș's final score: in 1988, the highest and lowest marks of the panel were dropped, and the final score was the average of the remaining four marks. Also, in spite of her vault score, Silivaș's all-around total was higher than that of Shushunova: if the competition had been held under the New Life rule, she would have won. In the third rotation, Shushunova was awarded 10s for her floor exercise by every judge except the Romanian judge, who gave her a 9.9, which did not count towards her final score.\nSilivaș returned in the event finals to win gold medals on the uneven bars, floor, and beam, as well as bronze on vault behind Soviet Svetlana Boguinskaya (gold) and teammate Gabriela Potorac (silver). In doing this, she became the only gymnast in Seoul to win medals in every event (team, all-around, and the four apparatus finals). She also equaled Nadia Comăneci's record of seven perfect 10 scores in a single Olympic Games.\n\n\n=== Post-Olympics ===\nDespite a serious knee injury in 1989, Silivaș successfully defended her floor exercise title at the European Championships and won three additional medals. In the all-around, she placed second to Svetlana Boguinskaya. Still injured, she went to the 1989 World Championships, where she placed 12th in the all-around after falling from the balance beam. In event finals, however, she captured three more gold medals on the bars, beam, and floor.\nAfter several more competitions in 1989, Silivaș underwent surgery on her knee. She intended to start training again afterwards, but the National Training Center at Deva was closed during the Romanian Revolution of 1989, putting an early end to her career.\n\n\n== Life after gymnastics ==\nSilivaș retired from gymnastics in 1991 and moved to the United States, settling in Atlanta. In 2002, she was inducted into the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame; she still holds the record as the youngest gymnast to receive this honor.\nSilivaș works full-time as a gymnastics coach at Jump Start Gymnasium in Sandy Springs, Georgia. In May 2003, she married Scott Harper, a sports management graduate living in the Atlanta area. The couple have three children: two sons, Jadan Scott (born 8 April 2004) and Rylan Bryce Harper (born October 2009), and a daughter, Ava Luciana (born 8 November 2005). They live in Marietta, Georgia.\n\n\n== Skills ==\nThe hallmarks of Silivaș's gymnastics were her impeccable form and execution, difficulty, and expressive dance. Many of the skills she performed in the 1988 Olympics still carry high difficulty ratings in the Code of Points today including the \"Silivas\" on floor, which is a double-twisting double back tucked somersault and has the third highest difficulty assignment of \"H\" in women's gymnastics. Between 1985 and 1988, the highlights of Silivaș's routines included:\nVault\n\nTucked Yurchenko full\nLayout Yurchenko full\nUneven bars\n\nStalder 1/2 pirouette directly into Endo 1/2 pirouette\nStraddled Deltchev\nStraddled Tkatchev\nShaposhnikova transition\nFree hip frontaway to front 1/2 dismount\nBalance beam\n\nThe \"Silivaș\" mount: shoulder stand–pirouette to chest stand\nBack handspring, two layout step-outs\nBack handspring, layout on two feet\nAerial front walkover\nDouble back tuck dismount\nFloor exercise\n\n\"Back to back\" tumbling: Round-off, back handspring, double twist, punch front, round-off, back handspring, double twist, punch front.\nTriple twist\nDouble twisting double back tuck (\"Silivaș\")\nTucked full-in\nPiked full-in\nDouble back tuck\nDouble tour–double pirouette\nThe \"Silivaș\" skill, which involved spinning on the ankles\n\n\n=== Eponymous skills ===\nSilivaș has two eponymous skills listed in the Code of Points.\n\n\n== Competitive history ==\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic medalists at a single Games\nList of Olympic female gymnasts for Romania\nList of top Olympic gymnastics medalists\nList of top medalists at the World Artistic Gymnastics Championships\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nDaniela Silivas at World Gymnastics\nDaniela Silivaș at the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame \nDaniela Silivas at Olympics.com\nDaniela Viorica Silivas at the Comitetul Olimpic și Sportiv Român (in Romanian) (archive)\nDaniela Silivaș at Olympedia \nDaniela Silivas at Gymn Forum\nSilivaș(Floor Exercise skills)\nUltima mare reprezentaţie a Danielei Silivaş, 3 noiembrie 2009, Marius Mihalcea, Jurnalul Național"}
{"title": "Danuta Kozák", "requested": "Danuta Kozák", "extract": "Danuta Kozák (Hungarian pronunciation: [ˈdɒnutɒ ˈkozaːk]; born 11 January 1987) is a Hungarian sprint canoeist. She has won one silver, one bronze and six Olympic gold medals, three of which in Rio de Janeiro in 2016, making her the first female to win K1, K2 and K4 at the same Olympics (a record equalled in 2024 by Dame Lisa Carrington). At the 2020 Summer Olympics, she won a gold medal in  Women's K-4 500 metres, and bronze medal in Women's K-2 500 metres.\n\n\n== Career ==\nKozák has competed since the late 2000s. She won a silver medal in the K-4 500 m event at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.  Kozák then won a gold medal at the London Olympics in the Kayak Four (K4) 500m team event with Gabriella Szabó, Katalin Kovács and Krisztina Fazekas Zur for Hungary. She also won the gold medal in the Kayak Single (K1) 500m. She won three gold medals in the Kayak Single (K1) 500m, Kayak Pairs (K2) 500m and Kayak Four (K4) 500m at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics; a feat compounded with her reeling from a stomach infection one day before the events. The latter results made her the most successful Hungarian sprint canoer and the only female athlete to win K1, K2 and K4 at the same Olympics.\nKozák has also won eighteen medals at the ICF Canoe Sprint World Championships with fourteen golds (K-1 500 m: 2013, 2014, 2018; K-2 200 m: 2011; K-2 500 m: 2009, 2010, 2015, 2018; K-4 500 m: 2009, 2011, 2013, 2014, 2018 and K-1 200 m relay: 2013), two silvers (K-1 500 m: 2011 and K-4 500 m: 2015) and two bronzes (K-1 500 m: 2019, K-2 1000 m: 2007).\n\n\n== Awards ==\nJunior Príma award (2008)\nKSI SE – Athlete of Year (2008)\nHungarian kayaker of the Year (5): 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2016\nPerpetual champion of Hungarian Kayak-Canoe (2011)\nHonorary Citizen of Budapest (2012)\nHonorary Citizen of Újpest (2016)\nOrders and special awards\n Order of Merit of the Republic of Hungary – Knight's Cross (2008)\n  Order of Merit of Hungary – Officer's Cross (2012)\n  Order of Merit of Hungary – Commander's Cross with Star (2016)\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nHer mother is of Polish descent.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\n\n\n== References ==\n\nKamber, Raymond, ed. (2008). Medal Winners – Olympic Games and World Championships (1936–2007) – Part 1: flatwater (now sprint). CanoeICF.com. International Canoe Federation. pp. 1–41 at the Wayback Machine (archived 5 January 2010). Additional archives: BCU.org.uk.\nKamber, Raymond, ed. (2008). Medal Winners – Olympic Games and World Championships (1936–2007) – Part 2: rest of flatwater (now sprint) and remaining canoeing disciplines. CanoeICF.com. International Canoe Federation. pp. 42–83 at WebCite (archived 9 November 2009). Additional archives: BCU.org.uk.\nKamber, Raymond, ed. (2008). \"Medal Winners – Olympic Games and World Championships (1936–2007)\" (PDF). CanoeICF.com. International Canoe Federation. pp. 1–83. Archived (PDF) from the original on 18 May 2018.\n\n\n== External links ==\nDanuta Kozák at Paddle Worldwide\nDanuta Kozák at Olympics.comDanuta Kozák at Olympic.org (archived)\nDanuta Kozák at Olympedia \nDanuta Kozák at InterSportStats\nDanuta Kozák at Magyar Olimpiai Bizottság (in Hungarian) (in English)"}
{"title": "Dara Torres", "requested": "Dara Torres", "extract": "Dara Grace Torres (born April 15, 1967) is an American former competitive swimmer, coach, and author who is a 12-time Olympic medalist and former world record-holder in three events.  Torres is the first swimmer to represent the United States in five Olympic Games (1984, 1988, 1992, 2000 and 2008), and at age 41, the oldest swimmer to earn a place on the U.S. Olympic team.  At the 2008 Summer Olympics, she competed in the 50-meter freestyle, 4×100-meter medley relay, and 4×100-meter freestyle relay, and won silver medals in all three events.\nTorres won 12 Olympic medals (four gold, four silver, four bronze), at the time this was the most Olympic women's swimming medals, tied with fellow American Jenny Thompson.  Torres won five medals at the 2000 Summer Olympics, when at age 33, she was the oldest member of the 2000 U.S. Olympic swim team.  She won at least one medal in each of the five Olympics in which she competed.\nTorres is currently the Head Coach of Boston College.\n\n\n== Early years ==\nTorres was born on April 15, 1967, to a family in Los Angeles, California, the daughter of Edward Torres, and Marylu Kauder.  Her father was a real estate developer and casino owner of Cuban origins; her mother Marylu was a former American model.  Torres grew up in Beverly Hills, California, the fifth of six children and the older of two girls.  As a seven-year-old, she followed in the footsteps of her older brothers by joining their community YMCA for swimming practice; afterward, she signed up for the swimming club in Culver City to train.  At 14, she won the national open championship in the 50-yard freestyle by defeating the then-current champion, Jill Sterkel, a college junior.\nShe attended the Westlake School for Girls (now Harvard-Westlake School), and competed for the Westlake swim team under coach Alison Esses from the seventh grade through her sophomore year in high school.  She was also a member of the Westlake basketball, gymnastics, and volleyball teams.  During her 1983–84 high school junior year, she left home to swim for the Mission Viejo Nadadores in Mission Viejo, California, while training for her first Olympics under coach Mark Schubert.  After the 1984 Olympics, Torres returned to the Westlake School to graduate in 1985.\n\n\n== College swimming career ==\nTorres accepted an athletic scholarship to attend the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida, where she swam for the Florida Gators swimming and diving team in National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) under coach Randy Reese from 1986 to 1989.  In her four years as a Gator swimmer, Torres won nine Southeastern Conference (SEC) individual championships, including the 50-yard freestyle (1987, 1988, 1989), 100-yard freestyle (1987, 1988, 1989), 200-yard freestyle (1987), and 100-yard butterfly (1988, 1989); she was also a member of 12 of the Gators' SEC championship relay teams.  Torres won three NCAA individual national championships (50-yard freestyle, 100-yard freestyle, 100-yard butterfly) in 1988; and was a member of six of the Gators' NCAA championship relay teams, including the 400-yard freestyle relay in 1986; the 200-yard and 400-yard medley relays, and the 400-yard freestyle relay in 1988; and the 200-yard and 400-yard medley relays in 1989.  She was named the SEC Athlete of the Year in 1988, SEC Female Swimmer of the Year in 1987 and 1989, and earned 28 All-American swimming honors—the maximum number possible during a college career.  Torres also lettered in volleyball at Florida, playing the sport in her fifth year after having exhausted her NCAA eligibility in swimming.\nTorres graduated from the university with a bachelor's degree in telecommunications in 1990 and was inducted into the University of Florida Athletic Hall of Fame as a \"Gator Great\" in 1999.  In November 2013, she was named as a recipient of the 2014 NCAA Silver Anniversary Award, presented annually to six distinguished former student-athletes on the 25th anniversary of their final school year of athletic eligibility.\n\n\n== International swimming career ==\n\n\n=== 1984, 1988 and 1992 Olympics ===\n\nAt the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, Torres was a member of the winning U.S. women's 4×100-meter freestyle relay team, swimming in the first-round qualifying heat and earning a gold medal in the event final.  Her winning teammates in that final included Nancy Hogshead, Jenna Johnson, and Carrie Steinseifer; Jill Sterkel and Mary Wayte also swam in the event's second-round qualifying heat.\nFor the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea, Torres qualified for the U.S. Olympic women's team in one individual event and two relay events.  Torres earned a bronze medal for swimming for the third-place U.S. women's team in the 4×100-meter freestyle relay final, together with teammates Mitzi Kremer, Laura Walker, and Mary Wayte.  She also earned a silver medal for swimming the freestyle leg of the 4×100-meter medley relay for the second-place U.S. team in the preliminary heats, but not the final.  Individually, Torres also placed seventh in the final of the 100-meter freestyle event.\nTorres qualified for the U.S. Olympic women's team in a single event for the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona.  She swam the second leg of the 4×100-meter freestyle relay for the winning U.S. team that included Nicole Haislett, Angel Martino, and Jenny Thompson, and earned a gold medal for her efforts in the event final and first-round qualifying heat.\n\n\n=== First comeback: 2000 Olympics ===\nAfter seven years out of competitive swimming, Torres began to train for an Olympic comeback in 1999 under the guidance of coach Richard Quick.  She won five medals at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, but saved her best for two of the major relay events of the U.S. Olympic women's team.  She swam the second leg for the winning U.S. women's team in final of the 4×100-meter freestyle relay that included Amy Van Dyken, Courtney Shealy, and Jenny Thompson.  Torres won a second gold medal for anchoring the winning U.S. team in the 4×100-meter medley relay, together with teammates B.J. Bedford, Megan Quann, and Jenny Thompson in the final.  Individually, Torres also earned bronze medals – her first Olympic medals in individual events – in each of the 50-meter freestyle, the 100-meter butterfly and the 100-meter freestyle, tying teammate and rival Jenny Thompson for third place in the last event.  At 33 years old, Torres became the oldest woman to win an Olympic medal in swimming.  She was the oldest member of the U.S. Olympic swim team, but won more medals (five) than any other U.S. team member.\n\n\n=== Second comeback: 2008 Olympics ===\n\nOn August 1, 2007, at age 40 and just 16 months after giving birth to her first child, Torres won the 100-meter freestyle at the U.S. Nationals in Indianapolis.  On August 4, she set a new American record in the 50-meter freestyle of 24.53 seconds, breaking her own record of 24.63 seconds set at the 2000 Summer Olympics.  She lowered her initial American record by 1.62 seconds.  Torres has broken or lowered her own American record in the 50-meter freestyle 10 times, which is the most by any American swimmer in any event.\nAt the 2008 U.S. Olympic Trials, Torres returned to the pool and qualified for a spot in her fifth Olympic Games at the age of 41, a first for an American female swimmer.  She became the oldest U.S. Olympic swimmer in history and the first American swimmer to appear in five Olympic Games.\nAt the trials, she qualified for the event finals in the 50-meter freestyle and broke the American record with a time of 24.38 seconds in the semifinal.  In the 50-meter finals, she broke that record for the ninth time, setting it at 24.25 seconds and winning the top American women's spot in the event.  Torres also qualified in the 100-meter freestyle, but later withdrew from the individual 100-meter freestyle event to focus her efforts on the 50-meter freestyle and 4×100-meter relay events.  On July 30, at the U.S. swim team's final training in Singapore, Torres, Amanda Beard, and Natalie Coughlin were elected captains of the U.S. Olympic women's swimming team.\nIn order to pre-empt any speculation that she might be taking performance-enhancing drugs, Torres volunteered for a new enhanced drug-testing program by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency.  \"I want to be an open book\", she said.  \"I want people to know that I'm 41, and I'm doing this right.  I'm clean.\"  In addition to employing her training team of coach Michael Lohberg, a sprint coach, a chiropractor, and two masseuses, Torres used resistance-stretching trainers, calling it her \"secret weapon\" for continued success.  Her $100,000-per-year training costs were partially subsidized by her corporate sponsors Speedo, Toyota, and Bloomberg L.P.\n\"I think this performance ranks up there with the biggest performances in sports ever ... It puts Dara in the ranks of Michael Phelps, Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods.  What she has done is really not measurable.\" Michael Lohberg, Torres's coach, discussing her winning three Olympic silver medals at the age of 41.\nAt the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, Torres won a silver medal as the anchor swimmer of the second-place U.S. team in the 4×100-meter freestyle relay.  It was the fifth time in five tries she earned an Olympic medal in the 4×100-meter freestyle relay.  With the American relay team's second-place finish, she became the oldest swimmer to win a medal in Olympic history, surpassing British swimmer William Robinson, who was 38 at the time of the 1908 Summer Olympics.\nOn August 17, 2008, she won the silver medal in the 50-meter freestyle, finishing in a new American record time of 24.07 seconds, one one-hundredth (0.01) of a second behind the winner, Britta Steffen.  Her second-place time was a new American record, and 0.18 of a second faster than she swam at the U.S. Olympic Trials.  Thirty-five minutes later, she won another silver medal swimming the freestyle anchor leg for the second-place U.S. team in the 4×100-meter medley relay.  Her split on the 4×100 medley relay (52.27 seconds) was the fastest 100-meter freestyle split in relay history.  The American record for the women's 100-meter freestyle as an individual event was 53.39 seconds as of August 2008, making Torres's time more than a full second faster.\nTorres's 12 Olympic medals tied the all-time medal record for a female Olympic swimmer set by fellow American Jenny Thompson in 2004; American Natalie Coughlin subsequently equaled the record in 2012.\n\n\n=== Aftermath and retirement ===\nAt the U.S. National Championships in 2009, Torres won the 50-meter freestyle with the fourth-best time in the world for the year (24.42), and she also placed in the 50-meter butterfly, qualifying her to compete in those events at the 2009 World Championships.  This was the first time since 1986 that Torres competed in the World Championships; she placed eighth in the 50-meter freestyle and she did not advance beyond the qualifying heats in the 50-meter butterfly.\nFollowing reconstructive surgery of one of her knees, she began training with the goal of competing in the 2012 Summer Olympics.  At the 2012 United States Olympic Trials, she placed fourth in the finals of the 50-meter freestyle, 0.32 of a second behind the winner, Jessica Hardy, and 0.09 of a second behind the second qualifier, Kara Lynn Joyce.  Only the top-two finishers in each trials event qualified for the 2012 U.S. Olympic team, and as a result, Torres concluded her Olympic career.  After the 2012 Trials, Torres announced her retirement from competitive swimming, concluding her career with 12 Olympic medals.  Her Olympic career spanned 24 years from 1984 to 2008 and five Olympic Games (1984, 1988, 1992, 2000, 2008).\nIn 2004 she was inducted into the Southern California Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.\n\n\n== Life outside swimming ==\n\nTorres has worked in television as a reporter and announcer for American networks NBC, ESPN, TNT, OLN, and Fox News Channel, and hosted the golf show, The Clubhouse on the Resort Sports Network.  She has also worked as a model, and was the first elite swimmer to model swimwear in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, appearing in the 1994 edition.  She was inducted into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in 2005.\nTorres and reproductive endocrinologist David Hoffman began dating in 2005, and then they became the parents of Tessa Grace Torres-Hoffman, born in 2006.  After the birth of their daughter, Hoffman, a masters swimmer, persuaded her to begin training again.\nTorres was part of the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire show with Regis Philbin, October 2000, a special edition featuring Olympians, in a multi-night event. She won $125,000 for her charity, Cystic Fibrosis.\nTorres is a veteran celebrity swimmer for Swim Across America, a charitable organization that raises funds for cancer research in which she has participated for several years.  She is the author of two books: Age is Just a Number: Achieve Your Dreams at Any Stage in Your Life (with Elizabeth Weil), and Gold Medal Fitness: A Revolutionary 5-Week Program (with Billie Fitzpatrick).\nTorres is also involved with the American chapter of the foundation of Princess Charlene of Monaco, a charitable organization at which she sits, as Vice-President, on the board of directors.\nIn August 2019, Torres joined CaniBrands, a CBD health and wellness company, as its Chief Wellness and Lifestyle Officer.\nOn June 18, 2024, Torres was named the Head Swimming and Diving Coach at Boston College.\nIn Winter 2025, Torres was named Head U17 Swim Coach for the Maccabi USA National Team but didn't end up going to the Games.\n\n\n== World records ==\n50 Meter Freestyle\n\nWomen's 4×100-meter freestyle relay\n\nWomen's 4×100-meter medley relay\n\n\n== See also ==\n\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists in one event\nList of multiple Olympic medalists in one event\nList of multiple Summer Olympic medalists\nList of notable Jewish swimmers\nList of Olympic medalists in swimming (women)\nList of United States records in swimming\nList of University of Florida alumni\nList of University of Florida Olympians\nList of University of Florida Athletic Hall of Fame members\nList of World Aquatics Championships medalists in swimming (women)\nWorld record progression 50 metres freestyle\nWorld record progression 4 × 100 metres freestyle relay\nWorld record progression 4 × 100 metres medley relay\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== Bibliography ==\nTorres, Dara, & Elizabeth Weil, Age is Just a Number: Achieve Your Dreams at Any Stage in Your Life, Broadway Books, New York, New York (2009). ISBN 978-0-7679-3190-8.\nTorres, Dara, & Billie Fitzpatrick, Gold Medal Fitness: A Revolutionary 5-Week Program, Broadway Books, New York, New York (2010). ISBN 978-0-7679-3194-6.\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nOfficial website \nDara Torres at the International Swimming Hall of Fame \nDara Torres  at World Aquatics \nDara Torres at USA Swimming (archived June 2, 2021)\nDara Torres at the Team USA Hall of Fame (archive July 20, 2023)\nDara Torres at Team USA (archived December 9, 2022)\nDara Torres at Olympics.com \nDara Torres at Olympedia \nAppearances on C-SPAN"}
{"title": "Dario Cologna", "requested": "Dario Cologna", "extract": "Dario Cologna (born 11 March 1986) is a Swiss retired cross-country skier. He has four overall World Cup victories, four Olympic gold medals, one World Championships gold medal and four Tour de Ski victories in his career.\nOn 3 November 2021, he announced his retirement from cross-country skiing following the 2021–2022 season.\n\n\n== Early life ==\nCologna is a native Rumantsch speaker. He was born in Santa Maria Val Müstair, in the Lower Engadine, to Italian parents. His father Remo is from Val di Non in Trentino, while his mother Christine is from Stelvio/Stilfs in South Tyrol.\nHe holds both Italian and Swiss citizenship.\nHe is the older brother of Swiss skier Gianluca Cologna.\n\n\n== Career ==\n\n\n=== Early career and the breakthrough 2008–09 season ===\nIn 2006, Dario Cologna won a bronze medal at the 10 km classic event in the Junior World Championships in Kranj, Slovenia. Cologna debuted in the FIS Cross-Country World Cup in Kuusamo in November 2006 and took his first points in Falun in March 2007. During the 2007–08 season, Cologna finished in the top ten four times and placed 37th overall.\nIn December 2008, Cologna took his first World Cup podium finish with second place in the 30-kilometre competition in La Clusaz. On 27 December, he won his first World Cup race as he finished first on the 15 km classic pursuit on stage two of the 2008–09 Tour de Ski. He went on to win the Tour in January 2009, finishing the final event almost a minute ahead of runner-up Petter Northug. Cologna also won the overall 2008–09 World Cup with more than 100 points in front of the runner-up after placing first twice and another three times on the podium.\n\n\n=== 2010 and 2014 Olympics ===\nHe finished the 2009–10 FIS Cross-Country World Cup fourth, winning a race and taking two other podiums. He also came in third in the 2009–10 Tour de Ski. In the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics, he won the gold medal in the men's 15km freestyle event. Cologna is the first Swiss to win a cross-country skiing gold medal at the Winter Olympics.\nCologna won the 2010–11 FIS Cross-Country World Cup with more than 300 points ahead of Petter Northug, who came second. This season he won four races and took six other podiums, winning the 2010–11 Tour de Ski with 27 seconds ahead of Northug.\nDuring the 2011–12 FIS Cross-Country World Cup season, Cologna won eight races and took twelve additional podium positions; his 20 podiums are, as of the 2018–19 season, still a record for most podiums in a season. On 8 January 2012, Cologna took his third Tour de Ski overall win in Val di Fiemme, winning the 2011–12 Tour de Ski. He finished more than a minute ahead of everyone else, with Marcus Hellner being second and Petter Northug third. With this performance, Cologna won his third Tour de Ski overall win, being the only male athlete ever to have done so. He also snatched the yellow jersey becoming world no. 1 in the 2011–12 FIS Cross-Country World Cup as of 8 January 2012.\nAt the World Championships 2013 in Val di Fiemme Cologna won the 30 km pursuit.\nHe won the 30 km skiathlon at the Sochi Olympics. Later in the games he successfully defended his title from the Vancouver Olympics in the 15 km race, this time in classic technique.\n\n\n=== 2017–18 season: Fourth Tour de Ski and third consecutive Olympic 15 km ===\nCologna won his fourth Tour de Ski title by winning the 2017–18 edition. He won two of the six stages of the Tour, both in Lenzerheide, and won the overall standings with a margin of one minute and 26.5 seconds to second-placed Martin Johnsrud Sundby. With 4 Tour de Ski wins, he is second only to Johannes Klaebo in total number of wins for men. At the PyeongChang Olympics, Cologna won the 15 kilometre freestyle. He became the first cross-country skier to win three consecutive 15 km Olympic events. On 10 March 2018, he became the first Swiss to win the prestigious Holmenkollen 50 km.\nHe was awarded the Holmenkollen Medal in 2021.\n\n\n== Cross-country skiing results ==\nAll results are sourced from the International Ski Federation (FIS).\n\n\n=== Olympic Games ===\n4 medals – (4 gold)\n\na Distance reduced to 30 km due to weather conditions.\n\n\n=== World Championships ===\n3 medals – (1 gold, 2 silver)\n\n\n=== World Cup ===\n\n\n==== Season titles ====\n8 titles – (4 overall, 4 distance)\n\n\n==== Season standings ====\n\n\n==== Individual podiums ====\n26 victories – (15 WC, 11 SWC)\n73 podiums – (40 WC, 33 SWC)\n\n\n==== Team podiums ====\n1 victory – (1 RL)\n2 podiums – (2 RL)\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nOfficial website (in German and English)\nDario Cologna at the International Ski and Snowboard Federation\nDario Cologna at Olympics.com\nDario Cologna at Olympedia \nDario Cologna at the Swiss Olympic Association (in German)"}
{"title": "Darya Domracheva", "requested": "Darya Domracheva", "extract": "Darya Uladzimirauna Domracheva (Belarusian: Дар’я Уладзіміраўна Домрачэва; born 3 August 1986) is a retired Belarusian biathlete and coach who competed in the Biathlon World Cup from 2006 to 2018. She won a gold medal in the 4×6 km relay and a silver medal in the mass start competition at the 2018 Winter Olympics, three gold medals in the pursuit, individual, and mass start competitions at the 2014 Winter Olympics, and a bronze medal in the individual competition at the 2010 Winter Olympics. She was a Biathlon World Cup overall winner for the 2014–15 season.\n\n\n== Career ==\nDomracheva started her sports career with cross-country skiing in 1992 but switched to biathlon in 1999. She originally represented Russia at the junior level but received an offer to transfer to Belarus in 2004. She joined Belarus’ national biathlon team in 2006. Domracheva won sprint and pursuit at the 2005 IBU Youth and Junior World Championships in Kontiolahti (Finland). She finished 40th in the individual race.\nDomracheva took 3rd place in the pursuit and 4th place in the individual events at the 2006 Junior World Championships in Presque Isle, Maine. In 2007, she picked up two silver medals in sprint and pursuit at the Junior World Championships in Martell, Italy.\nHer breakthrough came during the 2008/2009 season when she earned two third places and one second place.\nAt the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, she won the bronze medal in the Women's 15-kilometer individual race at the Whistler Olympic Park venue. Later in the same season, on 13 March, she won her first World Cup race in the sprint in Kontiolahti, Finland. The next day she also won the pursuit.\nDomracheva was named Belarus' Female Athlete of the Year in 2010, and was also given the title of Honoured Master of Sport that year.\nShe continued to improve after the Vancouver Olympics, winning 10 world cup races between the 2011–2013 seasons, as well as becoming the world champion in the pursuit in 2012, and the mass start in 2013. In 2014 Domracheva was given the Hero of Belarus medal, after winning three gold medals at the 2014 Winter Olympics.\nIn August 2015, Domracheva decided to skip the 2015–16 World Cup season due to mononucleosis which was diagnosed in July.\nDomracheva confirmed her pregnancy in April 2016, and said that she plans to return to compete in 2017. Domracheva returned to the World Cup in January 2017 for the 2016–17 season. Her comeback ended up being successful: she won a silver medal at the 2017 world championships in the individual pursuit in preparation for the 2018 Winter Olympic Games. At the 2018 Winter Olympics, she was unable to defend her Olympic titles from Sochi; however, she was still able to pick up a silver medal in the mass start individually, and she helped the Belarusian team win the historic first Olympic gold medal in the relay. She finished the 2018 season ranked 3rd overall in the Biathlon World Cup and announced her retirement in June, citing difficulties in combining both elite sport and parenting. She finished her career as Belarus’s most decorated winter Olympian and most decorated Olympian of either the winter or summer games to compete for Belarus as an independent nation; gymnasts Olga Korbut and Vitaly Scherbo both have more medals, but Korbut competed for the Soviet Union and Scherbo only received 4 of his medals competing for Belarus; his remaining medals were won as part of the Unified Team. She was coached by former World Champion and Olympic medalist Klaus Siebert.\nIn September 2019, she, along with her husband Ole Einar Björndalen, were appointed as biathlon coaches for the Chinese team, preparing the team for the 2022 Olympic Winter Games in Beijing.\n\n\n== World Cup of the Ski ==\nDomracheva won the Pursuit World Cup 2011–2012 and won the Mass Start World Cup 2011–2012. In the Total World Cup 2011–2012 she ended the season second with 1188 points behind Magdalena Neuner's 1216 points.\nIn the 2010–2011 season Domracheva won the Mass Start World Cup.\nHer biggest achievement was in the 2014–2015 when Domracheva won the Overall World Cup title with 1092 points, 48 points more than second and twice winner Kaisa Mäkäräinen. She also won the Sprint World Cup title in that season.\n\n\n=== Overall record ===\n\n* Results in all IBU World Cup races, Olympics and World Championships. Statistics as of 16 December 2007.\n\n\n== Record ==\n\n\n=== Olympic Games ===\n6 medals (4 gold, 1 silver, 1 bronze)\n\n\n=== World Championships ===\n7 medals (2 gold, 4 silver, 1 bronze)\n\n\n=== Individual victories ===\n34 victories (9 Sp, 11 Pu, 4 In, 10 MS) \n\n* Results are from UIPMB and IBU races which include the Biathlon World Cup, Biathlon World Championships and the Winter Olympic Games.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\n\nDomracheva was born in Minsk. When she was four, her parents, who are architects, moved to the small town of Nyagan in Siberia. Domracheva started skiing when she was six. In cross-country ski races she was competing with boys, as she had no rivals among girls. A biathlon school was opened in Nyagan in 1999, which Domracheva attended.\nDomracheva's family moved back to Minsk in 2003. There was no faculty of Sports Management in Minsk, so Domracheva changed to studying Tourism Management at the Belarusian State Economic University. In 2009, she was writing her diploma thesis on the subject: Advertising in the tourism industry. Until 2014, Domracheva was an employee of the Belarusian branch of security agency KGB, one of the few to have retained its name from the Soviet Union era.\nOn 5 April 2016, Norwegian biathlete Ole Einar Bjørndalen confirmed that he and Domracheva are in a relationship and that Domracheva would give birth to their first child in October 2016. They were married 16 July 2016. Domracheva gave birth to a daughter, Xenia, on 1 October 2016. She retired from competitions in June 2018 to focus on raising her daughter. She and Bjoerndalen welcomed a second daughter in 2023.\nDuring the 2020 Belarusian protests, Domracheva called on riot police to stop using violence against protesters and to resolve conflict through peaceful means.\n\n\n== Film ==\nDomracheva used a video camera to document herself, her teammates and athletes from other countries from 2008 until after the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. The 500 hours of material was edited into a 50-minute movie. The movie gives a unique insight into the life of world class athletes during the whole year, from the few weeks of relaxation and rest in the spring, through the hard training during the summer and the fall, to the competition season between December and March. The movie shows athletes from many countries, living together, traveling together and competing together.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nOfficial website\nDarya Domracheva at IBU BiathlonWorld.comDarya Domracheva at IBU BiathlonResults.com\nDarya Domracheva at the National Olympic Committee of the Republic of Belarus\nDarya Domracheva at Olympics.com \nDaria Domrachava at Olympedia"}
{"title": "Dawn Fraser", "requested": "Dawn Fraser", "extract": "Dawn Fraser (born 4 September 1937) is an Australian freestyle champion swimmer, eight-time Olympic medalist, a 15-year world record holder in the 100-metre freestyle, and a former politician. The winner of countless honours, she has enjoyed national prominence and controversy and sparked national pride in Australia. She is one of only four swimmers to have won the same Olympic individual event three times—in her case, the women's 100-metre freestyle.\n\n\n== Early life ==\nFraser was born in the Sydney suburb of Balmain, New South Wales, in 1937 into a poor working-class family, the youngest of eight children. Her father, Kenneth Fraser, was from Embo, Scotland. She was spotted at the early age of 14 by Sydney coach Harry Gallagher swimming at the local harbourside baths.\n\n\n== Swimming career ==\n\nAs a highlight of her swimming career, Fraser held 39 records and won eight Olympic medals for Australia, including four gold.  Adding to her popularity in her native country and the British Commonwealth, she captured six Commonwealth Games gold medals. She dominated the high profile 100 metres freestyle event, holding the record for 15 years from 1 December 1956 to 8 January 1972.\nShe is the first of only four swimmers in Olympic history (Hungarian Krisztina Egerszegi and Americans Michael Phelps and Katie Ledecky being the three others) to have won individual gold medals for the same event at three successive Olympics (100 metres freestyle – 1956, 1960, 1964).\nIn October 1962, she became the first woman to swim the 100 metres freestyle in less than one minute setting the record of 59.9, a feat that elevated her to national prominence and made her a hero in Australia, where swimming was a popular sport. It was not until 1972, eight years after Fraser retired, that her 100 m record of 58.9 seconds was broken.\nSeveral weeks before the 1964 Olympics, Fraser was injured in a car crash that injured a vertebra and resulted in the death of her mother, Rose. Her sister and a friend were also travelling in Fraser's car during the accident, but survived. This was a fresh tragedy for Fraser and her family following her older brother's death from leukaemia in 1950, and her father's death from cancer in 1960.\n\n\n=== 1964 Summer Olympics incidents and ban from swimming ===\nDuring the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Fraser angered swimming team sponsors and the Australian Swimming Union (ASU) by marching in the opening ceremony against their wishes (it was too close to the competition date), and wearing a swimming costume from the competitor of the sponsor in competition, as she found it more comfortable. She was also accused of stealing an Olympic flag from a flagpole outside Emperor Hirohito's palace, the Kōkyo. She was arrested but released without charge. In the end she was given the flag as a souvenir.\nFraser later denied having swum the moat to steal the flag, telling The Times in 1991: \"There's no way I would have swum that moat. I was terrified of dirty water, and that moat was filthy. There's no way I'd have dipped my toe in it.\" The Australian Amateur Swimming Association banned Fraser from competitive swimming for 10 years.\n\n\n== Post-swimming activities ==\nFraser became a publican at the Riverview Hotel, Balmain, and took up swim coaching.\nIn 1988, Fraser was elected as an independent to the New South Wales Legislative Assembly for the seat of Balmain. The Balmain electorate was abolished in 1991, and after failing to win the new seat of Port Jackson, she retired from politics.\nIn 1997, Fraser told the ABC: \"I mean I wish I could be as outspoken, I suppose, as Pauline Hanson and say, 'look, I'm sick and tired of the immigrants that are coming into my country.'\" Fraser also stated her interest in joining Hanson's One Nation Party.\nIn 2015, during an interview on the Today program, Fraser was asked about recent behaviour of Nick Kyrgios at Wimbledon and Bernard Tomic’s comments about Tennis Australia, which resulted in Tomic being removed from the Davis Cup team. Fraser said, \"They should be setting a better example for the younger generation of this country ... If they don’t like it, go back to where their fathers or their parents came from\". (Kyrgios is of Malay and Greek ancestry, while Tomic is of Croat extraction.) Kyrgios responded by describing her as a \"blatant racist\", and Fraser's comments were criticised by Australia’s Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane. Fraser \"unreservedly\" apologised for her comments.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nFraser married Gary Ware on 30 January 1965 at St. Stephen’s Church, Macquarie Street, Sydney. The marriage was short-lived. She has one daughter from the marriage, who has a son. She and her family live in Noosa on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland. This move north from Sydney to the warmer, subtropical climate of Noosa was intended to reduce the breathing problems caused by Fraser's asthma, as the warmer air and increased vitamin D from sunlight are beneficial for the condition.\nFraser is the great-aunt of Canadian soccer player Danielle Steer.\n\n\n== In popular culture ==\nIn 1979, a movie called Dawn! was made about Fraser's life and career. It starred Bronwyn Mackay-Payne as Fraser.\nFraser was played by Melissa Thomas in the 2003 film Swimming Upstream. Fraser herself is credited in the film as Dawn Fraser's coach.\nOn  1 September 2015, Dawn Fraser featured on Season 7, Episode 5, of the SBS genealogy television series Who Do You Think You Are?, which traced her heritage back to South America.\n\n\n== Honours ==\nLauded as an Australian hero, Fraser was named the Australian of the Year in 1964, was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame in 1965, was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) using her married name Dawn Ware in 1967, and was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in 1998.  She was named Australian Female Athlete of the Century by the Sport Australia Hall of Fame, who had inducted her as their first female member in 1985.  In 1999 the International Olympic Committee named her the World's Greatest Living Female Water Sports Champion. On 14 July 2000, Fraser was awarded the Australian Sports Medal for \"outstanding contribution as a swimming competitor\".\nShe was one of the bearers of the Olympic Torch at the opening ceremony of the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney. She carried the Olympic Torch at the stadium as one of the bearers for the final segment, before the lighting of the Olympic Flame.\n\nThe Australian Sport Awards include an award named in honour of and presented by Fraser. The harbourside baths in Balmain where she swam were named the Dawn Fraser Swimming Pool in her honour in 1964, and in 1992, the State Transit Authority named a RiverCat ferry after Fraser.\nShe was inducted onto the Victorian Honour Roll of Women in 2001.\nAs part of the 2018 Queen's Birthday Honours she was advanced to a Companion of the Order of Australia (AC).\nIn 2022, she was an inaugural inductee of the Swimming Australia Hall of Fame.\n\n\n== Olympic accomplishments ==\n\n1962 Perth Commonwealth Games\n110 yards freestyle – gold medal\n440 yards freestyle – gold medal\n4 × 110 yards (4 × 100.58 metres) freestyle relay – gold medal\n4 × 110 yards (4 × 100.58 metres) medley relay – gold medal\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of members of the International Swimming Hall of Fame\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists in one event\nList of multiple Summer Olympic medalists\nList of Olympic medalists in swimming (women)\nWorld record progression 100 metres freestyle\nWorld record progression 200 metres freestyle\nWorld record progression 4 × 100 metres freestyle relay\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nOfficial website\nDawn Fraser at the Sport Australia Hall of Fame \nDawn Fraser at The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia\nDawn Fraser at the International Swimming Hall of Fame \nDawn Fraser at the Australian Olympic Committee \nDawn Fraser at Commonwealth Games Australia\nDawn Fraser at Olympedia"}
{"title": "Debbie Meyer", "requested": "Debbie Meyer", "extract": "Deborah Elizabeth Meyer (born August 14, 1952), also known by her married name Deborah Meyer Weber, is an American former competition swimmer, a 1968 three-time Olympic champion, and a former world record-holder in five freestyle events: 200, 400, 800, and 1500 meters, and 880yd freestyle.\n\n\n== Early life ==\nMeyer was born in 1952 in Annapolis, Maryland, and lived in Haddonfield, New Jersey during childhood. She moved with her family to warm and sunny Sacramento, California when her father was transferred with Campbell Soup. She attended Sacramento's Rio Americano High School, and was trained during her high school years and beyond by Hall of Fame Coach Sherm Chavoor at the Arden Hills Swim Club in Carmichael, as were fellow 1968 U.S. team swimming Olympians Mark Spitz, Michael J. Burton, John Ferris, Sue Peterson, and John Nelson. Chavoor was one of the early coaches to challenge young elite women swimmers with \"overdistance training\", which focused on workouts that gave more total yardage and often featured mid-range and distance intervals to build greater endurance and speed.\nChavoor would also serve as Head Coach of the U.S. Women's Olympic swim team in 1968, where he would again coach Meyer, who may have had greater confidence and focus having Chavoor manage her at the Olympics.\n\n\n== 1968 Mexico City Olympics ==\n\nIn 1968, the women's freestyle races at 200-meter and 800-meter distances were added to the Summer Olympics for the first time, giving Meyer, a freestyle specialist, two new events where she could dominate the competition. Prior to 1968, the longest race for women was the 400-meter freestyle. In contrast, the male competitors had raced the 1,500-meter freestyle (the metric mile) for decades, dating back to 1896.\nDemonstrating unusual dominance in freestyle distance, Meyer set world records in the 200-meter and 800-meter freestyle swimming events at the 1968 U.S. Olympics trials. As the first woman swimmer to participate in the 800-meter Olympic event, Meyer opened the doors for women to compete in events that had been closed to them and demonstrated that with proper training, women could compete at the same distances as the men's teams. \nMeyer had obstacles to overcome in the 1968 Olympics, as she had developed a stomach ailment in Mexico City and had just recovered from a painful bout of bursitis in her left shoulder. Competing as a favorite in all three events, Meyer met and exceeded expectations despite her ailments and took gold in the 200-, 400-, and 800-meter freestyle races at age 15, becoming the first swimmer to win three individual gold medals in one Olympics. Katie Ledecky is the only other female swimmer to have won all three events, in the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio. Despite competing at the high altitude of Mexico City, her winning times at the Olympic Games were 2:10.5 for the 200-meter, 4:31.8 for the 400-meter, and 9:24.0 for the 800-meter distances, all of them new or first-time Olympic records. \nWith strong contributions by Meyer, Coach Sherm Chavoor's 1968 U.S. women's Olympic team won ten of a possible fifteen gold medals, eight silver of a possible twelve, and eight bronze of a possible twelve. In total, the U.S. women captured twenty-six medals out of a possible thirty-nine.\nWhile overcoming her problems with asthma, Meyer broke 15 world records in swimming during her career. She broke 24 American records and won 19 Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) national championships. Reluctant to continue training for the 1972 Olympics, Meyer retired from competitive swimming in 1970. She would attend UCLA, but not as a swimmer.\n\n\n=== Coaching and personal ===\nMeyer is married to Bill Weber, and has a daughter, son, and step-daughter. She owns the Debbie Meyer Swim School in Carmichael, California. According to the business website, Meyer has taught swimming in the area around Sacramento since the 1970s, and she opened her own school in 1993. Along with teaching both children and adults to be safe in the water, Meyer is coaching the Truckee Tahoe Swim Team in Truckee, California. As a tribute to her athletic successes, she uses the custom California automobile license plate \"3GOLD68\".\n\n\n=== Honors ===\nBefitting her many records and achievements in both national and international competition, particularly in the late 1960's, Meyer was the recipient of many honors. In 1968, she won the James E. Sullivan Award, given to the greatest athlete of the year. In 1969, she was named Associated Press Athlete of the Year. As an ongoing honor, she was recognized as Swimming World's World Swimmer of the Year in 1967, 1968 and 1969. Among her more selective honors, Meyer was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame in 1977, and the United States Olympic Hall of Fame in 1986. \nThese honors may have been bestowed partly as a result of her being the first woman to win three Olympic gold medals, and her continued dedication to the sport of swimming through her years as a coach.\nOn July 5, 2004, Meyer was inducted into the American National High School Hall of Fame.\n\n\n== See also ==\n\nList of Olympic medalists in swimming (women)\nList of University of California, Los Angeles people\nWorld record progression 200 metres freestyle\nWorld record progression 400 metres freestyle\nWorld record progression 800 metres freestyle\nWorld record progression 1500 metres freestyle\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nDebbieMeyerSwimSchool.net – Official website of Debbie Meyer Swim School at the Wayback Machine (archived May 20, 2007)\nDebbie Meyer (USA) – Honor Swimmer profile at International Swimming Hall of Fame at the Wayback Machine (archived April 2, 2015)\nDebbie Meyer  at World Aquatics \nDebbie Meyer at the Team USA Hall of Fame (archive July 20, 2023)\nDebbie Meyer at Olympics.comDebbie Meyer at Olympic.org (archived)\nDebbie Meyer at Olympedia"}
{"title": "Deborah Compagnoni", "requested": "Deborah Compagnoni", "extract": "Deborah Compagnoni Golden Collar of Sports Merit (born 4 June 1970) is an Italian former Alpine skier who won three gold medals at the 1992, 1994, and 1998 Winter Olympics.\n\n\n== Biography ==\nCompagnoni was born in Bormio, northern Lombardy, and skied with the G.S. Forestale club.\nShe soon attracted attention for her great talent. Her career was always marked by major successes, but also by serious accidents. After her first major victory, the World Junior title in giant slalom, and her first podium in World Cup, she broke her right knee in the Val d'Isère downhill. After surgery, she decided to stop competing in downhill races, where her talent could have permitted even greater successes than those she obtained in her still outstanding career.\nCompagnoni won her first race in the World Cup in 1992. She also won the gold medal at the Winter Olympics of the same year, again in the super-G; however, while racing the giant slalom one day later, she destroyed her left knee.\nIn the following years, she left the speed disciplines (downhill and Super-G), confirming herself as one of the best giant slalom specialists. Her fragile knees hindered Compagnoni's practice activity, and limited the number of victories in the World Cup; however, she always arrived in her best shape for the major championships. In 1994, at the Lillehammer Olympics, she won the gold medal in the giant slalom, a feat she repeated four years later in Nagano. In 1998, she won also a silver medal in the Slalom, finishing second by only 0.06 seconds.\nCompagnoni won the World Championship in giant slalom in 1996; in the following year's edition, she repeated the victory, alongside winning with the slalom title, a feat never accomplished by any other Italian female skier. She won a total of 16 races in the Alpine Skiing World Cup (13 giant slalom, two super-G, and one slalom), plus a giant slalom World Cup in 1997.\nDeborah Compagnoni is a famous Italian female skier, the equal of famous male champions like Gustav Thöni and Alberto Tomba. The World Cup skiing track in her native Santa Caterina Valfurva has been named after her.\nAt the 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympics opening ceremony, she was one of the three last torch bearers, lighting the Milan Olympic cauldron alongside Alberto Tomba.\nShe was married to Alessandro Benetton, and they have three children: Agnese, Tobias, and Luce; they lived in Ponzano Veneto, Italy. They separated in 2021. Her brother Jacopo Compagnoni, a fellow Alpine skier, died during an avalanche on Monte Sobretta on 16 December 2021, at the age of 40.\n\n\n== World Cup results ==\n\n\n=== Season titles ===\n\n\n=== Season standings ===\n\n\n=== Race victories ===\nThese are Compagnoni's World Cup victories.\n\n\n== Honours ==\n\n\n=== Orders ===\n CONI: Golden Collar of Sports Merit Collare d'Oro al Merito Sportivo - 1996\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Winter Olympic medalists\nItalian sportswomen multiple medalists at Olympics and World Championships\nItalian skiers who closed in top 10 in overall World Cup\nList of FIS Alpine Ski World Cup women's race winners\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nDeborah Compagnoni at FIS (alpine)\nDeborah Compagnoni at FIS (ski jumping)\nDeborah Compagnoni at Olympics.com\nDeborah Compagnoni at the CONI honored athlete website (in Italian)\nDeborah Compagnoni at Olympedia\nDeborah Compagnoni at InterSportStats\nDeborah Compagnoni at the Comitato Olimpico Nazionale Italiano (in Italian)"}
{"title": "Deng Yaping", "requested": "Deng Yaping", "extract": "Deng Yaping (Chinese: 邓亚萍; pinyin: Dèng Yàpíng; born February 5, 1973) is a Chinese table tennis player who won eighteen world championships including four Olympic championships between 1989 and 1997. She is regarded as one of the greatest players in the history of the sport.\n\n\n== Early life and education ==\nDeng was born in Zhengzhou, Henan, on February 5, 1973.\n\n\n== Career ==\nDeng began playing table tennis at age five, and four years later she won the provincial junior championship. She was age 13 when she won her first national championship.\nDespite her success, she was initially denied a spot on the national team because she was so short (she stood only 1.5 metres [4 feet 11 inches] tall). She was finally included on the national team in 1988. She teamed with Qiao Hong to win her first world championship title in the women's doubles competition in 1989. Two years later in 1991, Deng won her first singles world championship.\nAt the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, Spain, she won a gold medal in both the singles and doubles competitions and repeated the feat at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, USA. She also earned singles and doubles titles at the 1995 and 1997 world championships.\nWhen she retired at the age of 24, she had won more titles than any other player in this sport, including four Olympic gold medals, and had been World Champion 18 times. From 1990 to 1997, she retained the title of world No. 1 ranked female table tennis player for eight years. She was voted Chinese female athlete of the century, and joined the International Table Tennis Federation Hall of Fame in 2003.\n\n\n=== Successes ===\n40th World Table Tennis Championship (1989) - women's double gold\n1st Table Tennis World Cup (1990) - women's team gold\n41st World Table Tennis Championship (1991) - women's single gold, women's team silver, women's double silver\n2nd Table Tennis World Cup (1991–1992) - women's team gold, women's double gold\n25th Olympic Games (1992) - table tennis women's single gold, women's double gold\n42nd World Table Tennis Championship (1993) - women's team gold, women's double silver\n43rd World Table Tennis Championship (1995) - women's team gold, women's single gold, women's double gold, mixed double silver\n4th Table Tennis World Cup (1995) - women's team gold\n26th Olympic Games (1996) - table tennis women's single gold, women's double gold\n5th Table Tennis World Cup (1996) - women's single gold\n44th World Table Tennis Championship (1997) - women's team gold, women's single gold, women's double gold, mixed double silver\n\n\n== Post-playing career ==\nDeng is still deeply involved with the national Chinese table tennis scene and frequently speaks to the media. She also was a color-commentator for the Women's World Cup in 2020.\nIn June 2021, Deng claimed that Mima Ito was not a serious threat to the Chinese women's Olympic hopes.\nDeng was the CEO of Jike Search, a state-run search engine. Jike Search failed in 2013.\n\n\n== Personal and political life ==\nAfter retiring at the end of the 1997 season, Deng served on the International Olympic Committee's ethics and athletes commissions. She is also a member of the elite Laureus World Sports Academy, and a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.\nShe gained a bachelor's degree from Tsinghua University, an MRes degree in Contemporary Chinese Studies from the University of Nottingham in 2002, and a PhD degree in Land Economy from the University of Cambridge (Jesus College) in 2008. Her thesis title is: \"Olympic branding and global competition: the case of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games\". Her research work coincides with her professional focus on the marketing, management and development of the 2008 Beijing Olympics as a member of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games.\nIn 2007, she married Lin Zhigang, also a table tennis player, and later gave birth to a baby boy.\nIn 2010, she attracted controversy due to comments she made. A student asked her, \"how can one get promoted quickly?\" She answered, \"when your personal value overlaps with the interests of the state, your value will be enlarged without limit.\" Later, she said, \"In the 62 years since the establishment of the People's Republic of China, the People's Daily have not published a single piece of fake news.\"\nIn 2013, she was awarded an honorary DLitt degree from the University of Nottingham Ningbo China.\n\n\n== References =="}
{"title": "Diana Taurasi", "requested": "Diana Taurasi", "extract": "Diana Lorena Taurasi (born June 11, 1982) is an American former professional basketball player. She played 20 seasons in the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA), spending her entire WNBA career with the Phoenix Mercury. A global basketball icon, Taurasi helped grow the visibility of the women's game and is credited with elevating the WNBA's standard of play. She is often considered the greatest player in women's basketball history and holds the all-time WNBA scoring record. She is the most decorated Olympic athlete in any team sport, winning six Olympic gold medals with the United States women's national basketball team.\nTaurasi was the top recruit in her class and earned national player of the year honors at Don Antonio Lugo High School in her hometown of Chino, California. She played college basketball for UConn, which she led to three consecutive national titles. She was twice named national college player of the year and is regarded as one of the greatest collegiate players of all time. Selected first overall by the Mercury in the 2004 WNBA draft, Taurasi quickly emerged as the league's best scorer and gained a reputation for her clutch scoring ability and competitiveness, which earned her the nickname \"White Mamba\".  Her WNBA accolades include three league championships, two Finals Most Valuable Player awards, one MVP award, five scoring titles, 10 All-WNBA First Team selections, and 11 All-Star selections. Taurasi is the WNBA all-time leader in points, three-pointers, field goals, and free throws. She was also a decorated player overseas, playing in Russia and Turkey and winning six EuroLeague Women titles.\nInternationally, Taurasi was a central figure on the United States women's national team, and with former college teammate Sue Bird established it as one of the greatest sports dynasties. She won six Olympic gold medals and three FIBA World Cup championships, and is a four-time USA Basketball Female Athlete of the Year. Taurasi holds the team record for games played in the Olympics (44) and scored the second-most points in team history.\n\n\n== Early life ==\nTaurasi was born in Glendale, California and grew up in Chino, California. Taurasi's father, Mario, was raised in Argentina. He was a professional soccer player in Italy and played for several years as a goalkeeper. Taurasi's mother, Liliana, is Argentine. Mario and Liliana Taurasi emigrated from Argentina to the United States before Diana was born. She has an older sister named Jessika.\nWhen Taurasi was in middle school her parents moved the family back to Argentina to be closer to their extended family. After about a year, the family was robbed and held at gun point in their home. Following the incident Taurasi's parents decided to move the family back to California. Taurasi attended Don Antonio Lugo High School, where she graduated in 2000. In high school, Taurasi was the recipient of the 2000 Cheryl Miller Award, presented by the Los Angeles Times to the best player in Southern California. She was also recognized as the 1999 and 2000 Ms. Basketball State Player of the Year, the 2000 Naismith and \"Parade Magazine\" National High School Player of the Year. With 3,047 points, Taurasi concluded her prep career ranked fourth in state history. The Women's Basketball Coaches Association (WBCA) designated Taurasi an all-American in 2000. She participated in the 2000 WBCA High School All-America Game, where she scored twelve points and earned MVP honors.\n\n\n== College career ==\n\nFollowing a highly decorated high school career, Taurasi enrolled at the University of Connecticut (UConn) and began playing for the women's basketball team during the 2000–2001 season primarily as a point guard and shooting guard. After a poor shooting performance in UConn's 2001 Final Four loss to Notre Dame, Taurasi vowed, \"We will not lose another tournament game while I'm wearing this uniform.\" They proceeded to win three straight national titles. Leading up to the final championship win, her coach, Geno Auriemma, would declare his likelihood of winning with the claim, \"We have Diana, and you don't.\"\nTaurasi also received many personal accolades at UConn, including the 2003 and 2004 Naismith College Player of the Year awards, the 2003 Wade Trophy, the 2003 and 2004 Honda Sports Award and the 2003 Associated Press Player of the Year award. Additionally, Taurasi received honors and praise within the state of Connecticut. For example, state senator Thomas Gaffey nominated her to join Prudence Crandall as the state's heroine.\nShe averaged 15.0 points, 4.3 rebounds and 4.5 assists per game in her collegiate career. During her time at UConn, her team compiled a record of 139 wins and eight losses. In 2005, after taking a break from school to enter the WNBA draft, play in the Olympics, and then return to finish her first season in the WNBA, Taurasi went back to UConn and earned her bachelor's degree. As a first-generation college student, the first in her family to graduate from college, Taurasi said that earning her college degree \"meant just as much as any championship ring, banner or gold medal.\"\nIn 2006, Taurasi was a member of the inaugural class of inductees to the University of Connecticut women's basketball \"Huskies of Honor\" recognition program. In October 2025, the Associated Press selected Taurasi as one of the greatest collegiate players in the women's poll era alongside Caitlin Clark, Cheryl Miller, Candace Parker, and Breanna Stewart as the starting five players.\n\n\n== WNBA career ==\n\n\n=== 2004–2006: WNBA beginnings ===\nFollowing her collegiate career, Taurasi was selected first overall in the 2004 WNBA draft by the Phoenix Mercury, a team that went 8–26 in the 2003 season. In her WNBA debut, Taurasi scored 22 points in a 72–66 Mercury loss to the Sacramento Monarchs. For her rookie season, she averaged 17.0 points, 4.4 rebounds and 3.9 assists per game. Although the Mercury did not qualify for the playoffs, Taurasi was named to the Western Conference All-Star team and won the WNBA Rookie of the Year Award.\nIn 2005, Taurasi averaged 16.0 points, 4.2 rebounds and 4.5 assists per game while battling an ankle injury. She was an All-Star for the second straight year, but the Mercury faded down the stretch and again missed the playoffs. Former NBA coach Paul Westhead became the Mercury's head coach heading into the 2006 season and brought his up-tempo style to Phoenix. Taurasi went on to have a historic season under Westhead's coaching, leading the league in scoring and earning a third straight trip to the All-Star Game. She broke Katie Smith's league record for points in a season with 741 points. In 2006, Taurasi averaged a WNBA record 25.3 points, 4.1 assists and 3.6 rebounds per game, including a then-league record 47 points in a triple overtime regular season victory against the Houston Comets. During that game, she made a then-WNBA record eight three-pointers. Taurasi also set a WNBA record with 121 three-pointers in a single season. The Mercury finished 18–16 but missed the playoffs after losing a tie-breaker with Houston and Seattle.\n\n\n=== 2007–2009: Two WNBA championships ===\nIn 2007, Taurasi reached the WNBA playoffs for the first time. In the first round, the Mercury eliminated the Seattle Storm two games to none. Next, they swept the San Antonio Silver Stars, and Taurasi advanced to her first WNBA Finals, against the defending champion Detroit Shock. The Mercury went on to win their first WNBA title. With this victory, Taurasi became the seventh player ever to win an NCAA title, a WNBA title, and an Olympic gold medal.\nIn the 2009 season, Taurasi was named the WNBA MVP and later led the Phoenix Mercury to its second WNBA championship in three years by beating the Indiana Fever, three games to two, as Taurasi was named the WNBA Finals MVP. Taurasi was the second player, after Cynthia Cooper-Dyke, to win the season scoring title, the season MVP award, a WNBA Championship and the finals MVP in the same season.\n\n\n=== 2010–2013: Injury and return ===\n\nIn 2011, after being selected to her seventh All-WNBA First Team, Taurasi was voted one of the Top 15 players in the fifteen-year history of the WNBA by fans. In 2012, Taurasi had an injury-riddled season, playing only eight games. She had to sit out the rest of the season with a strained left hip flexor. The Mercury proceeded to finish the season 7–27 as the second-worst team in the league.\nIn 2013, Taurasi returned healthy for the season, and she played 32 games and averaged over 20 points per game for the sixth time in her career. The Mercury finished third in the Western Conference with a 19–15 record. They defeated the Los Angeles Sparks 2–1 in the first round, advancing to the conference finals, but would lose to the Minnesota Lynx in a two-game sweep.\n\n\n=== 2014: Third WNBA championship ===\nEntering the 2014 season, Taurasi reached the number two spot in career points per game, fifth place in career points, and ninth in career assists. In the 2014 season, with a supporting cast of all-star power forward Candice Dupree, rising star Brittney Griner and new head coach Sandy Brondello, the Phoenix Mercury finished 29–5, setting the record for most wins in a regular season and earning the top seed in the Western Conference. In the playoffs, they advanced to the WNBA Finals, where they would sweep the Chicago Sky, earning Taurasi her third championship. Taurasi also won the WNBA Finals MVP for the second time in her career.\n\n\n=== 2015–2016: WNBA sit out and return ===\nOn February 3, 2015, Taurasi announced that she would sit out the 2015 WNBA season at the request of her Russian Premier League team, UMMC Ekaterinburg. The team offered to pay Taurasi more than her WNBA salary to skip the 2015 WNBA season. For the 2014 WNBA season, Taurasi made just under the league maximum of $107,000. However, she made 14 times that – approximately $1.5 million – playing overseas.\nTaurasi returned to the Mercury for the 2016 WNBA season. She averaged 17.8 points per game, helping the Mercury to another playoff berth with a 16–18 record. With the WNBA's new playoff format in effect, the Mercury were the number eight seed in the league, facing the Indiana Fever in the first round. The Mercury advanced to the second round, beating the Fever in the first-round elimination game as Taurasi scored 20 points. During that game, Taurasi made her 113th playoff career three-pointer, passing Becky Hammon as the all-time WNBA leader in playoff career three-pointers made. In the second-round elimination game, the Mercury beat the New York Liberty and advanced to the semi-finals with Taurasi scoring a game-high 30 points in the win. In the semi-finals, the Mercury were swept by the defending champions, the Minnesota Lynx, in the best-of-five series.\n\n\n=== 2017: WNBA all-time leading scorer ===\n\nIn May 2017, Taurasi signed a multi-year contract extension with the Mercury. Later that month, Taurasi became the first player in league history reach 7,000 points, 1,500 rebounds and 1,500 assists following an 85–62 victory over the Indiana Fever. On June 18, 2017, Taurasi became the WNBA's all-time leading scorer, passing Tina Thompson's record. Taurasi would be selected into the 2017 WNBA All-Star Game, making it her eighth career All-Star game appearance. The Mercury would finish with an 18–16 record as the fifth seed in the league. In the first-round elimination game, Taurasi scored 14 points in a 79–69 win over the Seattle Storm. In the second-round elimination game, the Mercury defeated the Connecticut Sun 88–83, with Taurasi scoring 23 points in the win. The Mercury advanced past the second round for the second season in a row but were eliminated by the Los Angeles Sparks in a three-game sweep.\n\n\n=== 2018: Continued success ===\nIn the 2018 season-opener on May 18, 2018, against the Dallas Wings, Taurasi became the first player in WNBA history to make 1,000 3-pointers. On June 5, 2018, Taurasi became the first player in WNBA history to score 8,000 points in an 80–74 victory against the Liberty. Then on July 8, 2018, Taurasi became the league's all-time leader in field goals made in an 84–77 victory against the Connecticut Sun, surpassing Tina Thompson. Taurasi would also earn her ninth career All-Star appearance after being voted into the 2018 WNBA All-Star Game. On August 1, 2018, Taurasi scored a season-high 37 points in a 104–93 victory against the Las Vegas Aces. The Mercury finished off the season 20–14 with the number five seed in the league. In the first-round elimination game, the Mercury defeated the Dallas Wings 101–83. Taurasi scored 26 points in the win. In the second-round elimination game, the Mercury defeated the Connecticut Sun 96–86, advancing to the semi-finals for the third year in a row. In the series against the Seattle Storm, the Mercury came back from 0–2 to tie the series 2–2. In game 5, the Mercury lost 94–84, ending their season.\n\n\n=== 2019–2020: Injury and COVID-19 ===\n\nIn April 2019, the Mercury announced that Taurasi's wife, Penny Taylor, had been hired as an assistant coach. Taurasi started the 2019 WNBA season on the injured list after undergoing back surgery. A hamstring injury limited her to only six games with very minimal playing time. Without a healthy Taurasi, the Mercury barely made the playoffs as the number eight seed with a 15–19 record. The Mercury were eliminated in the first-round elimination game 105–76 by the Chicago Sky. In September 2019, Taurasi confirmed that she intended to play for the team in 2020.\nIn 2020, the season was delayed and shortened to 22 games in a bubble at IMG Academy due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Taurasi would come back healthy for the season and played 19 of the 22 games. On August 23, 2020, Taurasi scored a season-high 34 points in an 88–87 victory over the Washington Mystics while honoring the late Kobe Bryant on his birthday by wearing number 8 along with his last name on her jersey. The Mercury had finished 13–9 as the number five seed and defeated the Washington Mystics 85–84 in the first round elimination game; however, they were eliminated by the Minnesota Lynx in the second-round elimination game by a final score of 80–79.\n\n\n=== 2021–2024: Final seasons ===\nIn February 2021, Taurasi re-signed with the Mercury on a two-year deal. She injured her ankle and broke a bone in her foot late in the 2021 season and opted to sit out of the first-round elimination game against the New York Liberty. She returned for the second-round elimination game against the reigning champions Seattle Storm, which the Mercury won in overtime. In the best-of-five semi-final series against the Las Vegas Aces, Taurasi led her team to a tie series after a Game 1 loss. During that game, Taurasi, aged 39, made history as the oldest player in league history to score an over 30-point game. Her eight three-pointers were the second-most made in a playoff game in the WNBA's postseason history. The Mercury would go on to win the semi-finals in Game 5.\nIn August 2023, Taurasi became the first player in WNBA history to score 10,000 career points.\nIn February 2025, Taurasi, who was 42 at the time, retired.\n\n\n== Overseas career ==\n\n\n=== 2005–2010: Russian Premier League ===\nTaurasi's international career began in 2005 when she played for Dynamo Moscow, a team that had been dominant in the Russian league until the late 90s. Their 2005 EuroLeague tournament ended in the quarter-finals, where Dynamo was eliminated by former champions CSKA Samara. In 2006, Taurasi was recruited to play for the Russian team Spartak Moscow. The team had finished in 11th place in the Russian league when Shabtai von Kalmanovich decided to buy the team. The team would go on to win four consecutive EuroLeague championships from 2007 to 2010, and Taurasi was named Final Four MVP in 2009 and 2010.\n\n\n=== 2010–2012: Turkish Super League ===\nIn 2010, Taurasi played for the Turkish team Fenerbahçe, helping the team to repeat winning the national league. On December 24, 2010, Taurasi's lawyers revealed that she had tested positive for a mild stimulant. According to her lawyer, Howard Jacobs, the positive test came from an \"A\" sample and testing had been requested on a second \"B\" sample. Until the \"B\" sample could be tested, Taurasi was provisionally suspended from the Turkish league. In a statement, the Turkish Basketball Federation revealed that the WADA-list banned substance was modafinil. On February 16, 2011, Taurasi was cleared of doping allegations as the test was found to be a false positive.\nIn the 2011–2012 season, Taurasi played for Galatasaray, the other major team from Istanbul and Fenerbahçe's long-time rival. Taurasi joined WNBA stars Epiphanny Prince, Sylvia Fowles, Tina Charles and Ticha Penicheiro. The team ended up winning the Turkish Cup but lost to Fenerbahçe in the League Final and was eliminated in the Final Eight quarter-final round of the 2011–12 EuroLeague, again losing a decisive match to Fenerbahçe.\n\n\n=== 2012–2017: UMMC Ekaterinburg ===\nOn May 16, 2012, Taurasi signed a contract with UMMC Ekaterinburg, joining fellow WNBA star Candace Parker. The team dominated national and international competitions, winning the 2012–13 EuroLeague, Russian Championships and Russian Cup. The UMMC team repeated their Russian Championship and Cup win in the 2013–2014 season but fell short in EuroLegue competition, losing in the semifinal game against eventual champion Galatasaray. This was repeated in the 2014–2015 season, with UMMC losing in the EuroLeague final against the Czech Republic's USK Praha, in a game where Taurasi had to sit out with a broken hand.\nThe injury and the resulting loss in the EuroLeague final played a large role in the decision of UMMC club to offer Taurasi a deal to skip the 2015 WNBA season to rest. Taurasi accepted the deal, giving up her WNBA title defense but returning to the Phoenix Mercury in 2016. Her decision caused a debate in the United States about salary policies in women's basketball compared to Europe and China, where women's teams receive governmental support.\nIn 2015–2016, Taurasi was back to UMMC, leading the team to its third (and her sixth personal) Euroleague title, while also earning MVP honors. In 2016–2017, Taurasi would once again return to UMMC, helping the team to its eleventh league championship. Though expected to play through the end of the 2017–2018 season with the team, Taurasi announced her retirement from European competition in December 2017.\n\n\n== National team career ==\nTaurasi was a member of the United States women's U18 team that won the gold medal at the 2000 FIBA Americas Championship in Mar Del Plata, Argentina. In the closest match of the tournament, the semifinal game against Brazil, Taurasi connected on seven of her eleven three-point attempts and ended the game with 26 points. She averaged 12.6 points per game and led the team with 5.46 assists per game. Taurasi has also earned a bronze medal as a member of the 2001 U.S. junior World Championship team, and a gold medal as a member of the 2000 U.S. Women's junior World Championship qualifying team.\nOn May 12, 2004, Taurasi was selected to compete at the 2004 Olympics in Athens, Greece with the United States national team. She helped Team USA capture the gold medal, defeating Australia in the championship game. Taurasi was the second leading scorer on the U.S. national basketball team at the 2006 FIBA World Championship held in São Paulo, Brazil. The Americans earned the bronze medal. She represented the United States at the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing, China, where she started all eight games and helped lead the U.S. to the gold medal.\nTaurasi was invited to the USA Basketball women's national team training camp in the fall of 2009. The team selected to participate at the 2010 FIBA World Championship and the 2012 Olympics was primarily chosen from these players. At the conclusion of the training camp, the team traveled to Ekaterinburg, Russia, where they competed in the 2009 UMMC Ekaterinburg International Invitational.\nTaurasi was named as one of the national team members to represent the U.S. national team in the WNBA versus USA Basketball. This game replaced the WNBA All-Star game as part of the preparation for the 2010 FIBA World Championships. Taurasi was then selected to be a member of the national team for the World Championships. Because many team members were still playing in the WNBA until just before the event, the team had only one day of practice with the entire team before leaving for Ostrava and Karlovy Vary. Even with limited practice, the team managed to win its first game against Greece by 26 points. The team continued to dominate with victory margins exceeding 20 points in the first five games. The sixth game was against undefeated Australia — Team USA jumped out to a 24-point lead and ultimately prevailed 83–75. The Americans won their next two games by over 30 points before facing the host team, the Czech Republic, in the championship game. Team USA had a five-point lead at halftime, which the Czech team then cut to three points but never got closer. The U.S. team went on to win the championship and gold medal. Taurasi led the team in scoring with 12.0 points per game and was second on the team with 23 assists.\nTaurasi was selected to represent the United States at the 2012 Summer Olympics. Taurasi would win her third gold medal as the United States defeated France for the gold medal. She also played at the 2016 Olympics in Rio, earning her fourth gold medal while helping the United States overcome Spain 101–72 in the final. Taurasi was a key member of the gold medal-winning 2020 U.S. women's Olympic team in Tokyo, earning Taurasi a record fifth gold medal. Taurasi joined U.S. Olympic teammate Sue Bird as the only two Olympic basketball players of any gender to win five Olympic gold medals. At the 2024 Summer Olympics, Taurasi again won Olympic gold to become the only basketball player with six Olympic gold medals, and she joined dressage equestrian Isabell Werth of Germany and Hungarian sabre fencer Aladar Gerevich as the only Olympians to win six gold medals in the same event.\n\n\n== Off the court ==\n\n\n=== Personal life ===\nTaurasi is married to former teammate Penny Taylor.  Taylor at one time was the Phoenix Mercury Director of Player Development and Performance,  After eight years of dating, Taurasi wed Taylor on May 13, 2017. She later told People magazine in an interview, \"It was the most amazing and beautiful day of our lives. To be able to share our love with family and close friends meant the world to us.” On March 1, 2018, Taylor gave birth to the couple's son.\nTaylor expected to give birth to the couple's second child on October 6, 2021, but the pregnancy lasted beyond the due date. After a Game 4 loss in the semifinals, Taurasi played in a winner-take-all Game 5 that would decide whether the Phoenix Mercury would play in the 2021 WNBA finals. After a Game 5 win on October 8, 2021, Taurasi had a message for Taylor in her post-game interview, closing with \"Hold it in babe, I'm coming.\" Taurasi then flew from Las Vegas, where the game took place, back to Phoenix, arriving in time to witness Taylor give birth to their daughter—Isla Taurasi-Taylor—on October 9, 2021, at 4:24 am; with Taurasi by her side mere hours after Taurasi played the Las Vegas Aces in Las Vegas for game five of the 2021 WNBA Semifinals.\n\n\n=== Endorsements ===\nTaurasi has partnered with Nike for over 2 decades, since 2004. She debuted her signature sneaker, the Air Taurasi, in 2005 and then released a second edition, the Shox DT, the following year. She is set to release a sneaker, the Nike LeBron NXXT Gen AMPD PE, on October 1, 2024, in collaboration with LeBron James. She also has a deal with BodyArmor sports drink company earning her $1.35 million, as well as deals with Coca-Cola and State Farm, Waymo, DeloitteUS, Twelvebooks, Togetherx, Cox Communications, and JBL.\n\n\n=== Legal issues ===\nOn July 2, 2009, Taurasi was arrested for driving under the influence. She pleaded guilty on October 29 and spent a day in jail after a judge suspended nine days of her sentence.\n\n\n== Career statistics ==\n\n\n=== College ===\n\n\n=== WNBA ===\n\n\n==== Regular season ====\n\n\n==== Playoffs ====\n\n\n=== Euroleague ===\n\n\n== Filmography ==\n\n\n== See also ==\n\nUConn Huskies women's basketball statistical leaders\n2003–04 Connecticut Huskies women's basketball team\nList of athletes with the most appearances at Olympic Games\nList of WNBA career 3-point scoring leaders\nList of WNBA career assists leaders\nList of WNBA career blocks leaders\nList of WNBA career free throw percentage leaders\nList of WNBA career free throw scoring leaders\nList of WNBA career games played leaders\nList of WNBA career minutes played leaders\nList of WNBA career scoring leaders\nList of WNBA career steals leaders\nList of WNBA career turnovers leaders\nList of WNBA season scoring leaders\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== Further reading ==\nKelli Anderson, \"The Trials Of Diana Taurasi,\" Archived May 2, 2015, at the Wayback Machine Sports Illustrated, September 12, 2011.\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nOfficial website \n\nCareer statistics from WNBA.com  · Basketball Reference \nDiana Taurasi at FIBA (archive)\nDiana Taurasi at USA Basketball\nDiana Taurasi at Team USA (archive April 8, 2023) (archive April 5, 2006)\nDiana Taurasi at Olympics.com \nDiana Taurasi at Olympedia \nDiana Taurasi at IMDb\n\n\n=== Further reading ===\nWNBA Player 2004 Draft Prospectus at the Wayback Machine (archived January 9, 2015)\nfenerbahce.org Profile at the Wayback Machine (archived March 3, 2016)\nJockbio Bio at the Wayback Machine (archived October 25, 2016)\nUConn bio at the Wayback Machine (archived May 24, 2006)\ngalatasaray.org Bio at the Wayback Machine (archived August 17, 2011)"}
{"title": "Doina Ignat", "requested": "Doina Ignat", "extract": "Doina Ignat (born 20 December 1968) is a Romanian rower, who has won six Olympic medals during her career.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nDoina Ignat at World Rowing\nDoina Ignat at Olympics.com\nDoina Ignat at the Comitetul Olimpic și Sportiv Român (in Romanian) (archive)\nDoina Ignat at Olympedia"}
{"title": "Don Schollander", "requested": "Don Schollander", "extract": "Donald Arthur Schollander (born April 30, 1946) is an American former competition swimmer, five-time Olympic champion, and former world record-holder in four events.  He won a total of five gold medals and one silver medal at the 1964 and 1968 Summer Olympics.  With four gold medals, he was the most successful athlete at the 1964 Olympics.\n\n\n== Early career ==\nSchollander was born in Charlotte, North Carolina, and learned competitive swimming from his uncle, Newt Perry, who ran a swimming school in Florida. As a boy, Schollander moved with his family to Lake Oswego, Oregon. Although his first sporting passion was football, he was too small to compete in high school football. Instead, he joined Lake Oswego High School's swim team, and in 1960, helped lead the team to an Oregon state swimming championship as a freshman.\n\n\n== Olympics ==\nAs a teenager in 1962, Schollander moved to Santa Clara, California to train under legendary swim coach George Haines of the Santa Clara Swim Club. Two years later at the age of 18, he won three freestyle events at the AAU national championships. He made the U.S. Olympic team in two individual events and two relays.  Months later, he won four gold medals and set three world records at the 1964 Summer Olympics, at the time the most medals won by an American since Jesse Owens in 1936. His success helped earn him the James E. Sullivan Award as the top amateur athlete in the United States, and the AP Athlete of the Year, defeating runner-up Johnny Unitas by a wide margin. He was also named ABC's Wide World of Sports Athlete of the Year.\nSchollander appeared on an episode of To Tell the Truth immediately after winning his four gold medals.\nIn his biography, Schollander attributes a temporary decline in his endurance, technique, and speed after the 1964 Olympics as a result of time away from training while he recovered from mononucleosis, the shorter workout distances he swam at Yale as opposed to the distances he swam in high school at Santa Clara under George Haines, the absence of top competitors competing against him while he swam at Yale, and a short bout with Asian Flu.  With the help of George Haines's coaching in Santa Clara in the summer of 1965, Schollander believed he recovered much of his prior speed and endurance.\n\n\n== College and Olympic swimming ==\nSchollander attended Yale College where he was a member of Skull and Bones, a secret society, and the Delta Kappa Epsilon (Phi chapter) fraternity. He was the captain of Yale's swim team, winning three individual NCAA championships. At the 1968 Summer Olympics, Schollander won another gold medal in the 4×200-meter freestyle relay, but finished second in the 200-meter freestyle, the event that Schollander had considered to be his best. This was the first Olympics in which 200-meter swimming events were part of the competition.\nFollowing the 1968 Olympics, Schollander retired from competitive swimming.\n\n\n== After swimming ==\nSchollander was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame at age 19 in 1965. In 1983, he was one of the first group of inductees into the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame. He is also a member of Oregon Sports Hall of Fame.\nIn 1971, he published his first book, Deep Water (with Duke Savage) chronicling his swimming, his teammates and coaches, and the behind-the-scenes politics of international swimming, especially the Olympic Games.  He followed this book in 1974 with Inside Swimming (with Joel H. Cohen).\nSchollander and his wife  Cheryl reside in Lake Oswego, Oregon, where he runs Schollander Development, a real estate development company.  His gold medals are on display to the public at a Bank of America branch location in downtown Lake Oswego. Schollander has three children, Jeb, Kyle, and Katie.\n\n\n== See also ==\n\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists at a single Games\nList of Olympic medalists in swimming (men)\nList of Yale University people\nWorld record progression 200 metres freestyle\nWorld record progression 400 metres freestyle\nWorld record progression 4 × 100 metres freestyle relay\nWorld record progression 4 × 200 metres freestyle relay\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== Bibliography ==\nSchollander, Don, and Duke Savage, Deep Water, Pelham Books (1971).  ISBN 978-0720705423.\nSchollander, Don, and Joel H. Cohen, Inside Swimming, Contemporary Books (1974).  ISBN 978-0809289066.\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nDon Schollander  at World Aquatics \nDon Schollander at the Team USA Hall of Fame (archive July 20, 2023)\nDon Schollander at Olympedia \nDon Schollander at Olympics.com Don Schollander at Olympic.org (archived) \nDon Schollander (USA) – Honor Swimmer profile at International Swimming Hall of Fame at the Wayback Machine (archived December 13, 2020)\nWheaties Sports Federation – Archive video featuring Don Schollander at International Swimming Hall of Fame at the Wayback Machine (archived August 4, 2009)"}
{"title": "Ecaterina Szabo", "requested": "Ecaterina Szabo", "extract": "Ecaterina Szabo (Hungarian: Szabó Katalin, Hungarian pronunciation: [ˈsɒboː ˈkɒtɒlin]; born 22 January 1968) is a former Romanian artistic gymnast who won 20 Olympic, world and continental medals.\nSzabo won gold medals in the 1984 Olympics in three individual events (vault, balance beam (tie), and floor exercise), won the all-around silver medal, and contributed to the team gold. With her four gold medals and a silver medal, Szabo was the most successful athlete at the 1984 Summer Olympics. Afterwards, she led her team to the world title at the 1987 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships, defeating the USSR in the team competition for only the second time in the history of the competition. In 2000, Szabo was inducted into the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame.\n\n\n== Early life and career ==\nAn ethnic Hungarian from Transylvania, she was named Katalin, which was later changed  to Ecaterina by the Communists to try to hide her Hungarian background. Szabo's first language is Hungarian. She started gymnastics in 1973 at the Gymnastics School in Oneşti with coaches Maria Cosma and Mihai Agoston. Later she trained with Márta and Béla Károlyi. After the Károlyis' defection to the United States in 1981, she was coached by Adrian Goreac, Adrian Stan and Maria Cosma at Cetate Deva. She enjoyed tremendous success as a junior. Szabo became the first gymnast to win two Junior European all-around titles, competing against Lavinia Agache and Natalia Ilienko (in 1980) and Olga Mostepanova and Yelena Shushunova (in 1982). Individually, in 1980 she won gold on vault, beam and floor and placed fourth on uneven bars and in 1982 she won gold on vault and floor, silver on uneven bars and placed fourth on balance beam.\n\n\n== Senior career ==\n\n\n=== 1983 ===\nSzabo's first major international event was the 1983 European Championships in Goteborg. There she won gold on floor and uneven bars, silver on vault and bronze (tie) all around.\nAt the 1983 World Championships she placed third all around after Olga Mostepanova and Natalia Yurchenko. In this event she scored two perfect tens, one on floor and one on vault. In addition to her all around bronze she won gold on floor and silver on vault and uneven bars. She did not qualify for the beam finals. She also contributed heavily to the team silver medal by scoring perfect tens on floor and uneven bars in the team optional.\n\n\n=== 1984 Olympics ===\n\nIn response to the American-led boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, 14 Eastern Bloc countries and allies including the Soviet Union, Cuba and East Germany (but not Romania) boycotted the Games. In the absence of the Soviet competitors, Szabo entered the competition as the favourite. Even with the Soviets competing, Szabo would have been a strong contender. While preparing for the Olympics, Szabo scored a perfect 40.0 for her compulsory exercises at a dual meet held in Czechoslovakia.\nDuring the team section of the Olympic Games Szabo performed strongly, leading her team to their first Olympic title and qualifying second into the all-around (mainly due to a fall on bars in the team finals) and into three of the four event finals (vault, beam, and floor). Szabo was a heavy favorite to win to the all-around title and was dubbed \"the next Nadia\", after Nadia Comăneci. In the all-around competition, however, she lost the title by .05 to Mary Lou Retton and received the silver medal. Despite the second-place finish, she posted the highest cumulative score, which would have given her the title if the competition were held under the New Life rule. However, she had a strong comeback in the event finals, winning three gold medals on the three event finals she had qualified for; vault, beam and floor. Despite personal disappointment for not winning the all-around title, Szabo returned home to Romania a heroine. Later that year, she was elected the most successful athlete of the year in Romania.\n\n\n=== After the 1984 Olympics ===\n1985 was a disappointing year for the multiple Olympic champion. At the 1985 European Championships Szabo placed sixth on beam and floor, fifth all around and did not qualify in the uneven bars finals. However, she managed to win a silver medal on vault.  Later that year she had a similar showing at the 1985 World Championships; she placed fifth all around, fourth on floor, sixth on uneven bars. She left the competition with silver medals on beam, vault and with the team.\nBut in 1987, Szabo's hard work paid off. As a member of the tremendously successful Romanian team (five gold, one silver and four bronze) at the 1987 World Championships, Szabo and her teammates dealt a crushing defeat to the Soviets, winning the gold medal in the team event. Individually, she tied for bronze on beam with Svetlana Boginskaya and placed 14th all around.\n\n\n== Post-retirement ==\nAfter the 1987 Worlds Szabo retired from artistic gymnastics and she went to study at the University of Physical and Sports Education in Bucharest. After graduation, she worked as a coach at Deva where she trained among others Nadia Haţegan, Andreea Cacovean, and the 1999 World Champion Maria Olaru. In June 1991, Szabo married Christian Tamas, a former member of Romania's kayak team. The two later had two sons named Lorenzo and Zeno. In 1992, the family left Romania and settled in Chamalieres, France where she now works as a coach.\nIn 2005, she was featured in a two-part documentary series titled Székely sportolók Kelettől Nyugatig (Székely Athletes from East to West). The 30-minute portrait film about Szabo was captioned A zágoni üstökös (The Comet of Zagon). A kindergarten in her hometown of Zagon, the Szabó Kati Óvoda, bears her name since 2007. In 2008, the sports hall of Sfântu Gheorghe was renamed in the honor of the four-time Olympic champion.\n\nSzabo has been open about the systematic age falsification perpetrated by the Romanian Gymnastics Federation, to allow gymnasts to compete despite not meeting the minimum age requirement of 15 years. Although she revealed that her documents were falsified to indicate a 1967 birth year instead of 1968, it is unclear why this was done, as she was already age-eligible for her first major international senior competitions.\nCurrently, she is a part-time university student.\n\n\n== Skills ==\nA strong all-arounder with artistic sensibilities, Szabo had a clean form in execution and was rewarded 17 scores of perfect ten between 1983 and 1984. Her skills included a tucked backward salto with a full twist on beam (e.g. 1982 Ennia Cup). On floor she performed difficult passes such as 1½ twist back salto to 1½ twist back salto, punch front or 1½ twist back salto to 1½ twist back salto, salto forward 1/2, punch front.\nShe also mounted floor exercise with a double back flip with a full twist in a piked position.  At the 1983 Worlds and 1984 Olympic Games Event Finals she also dismounted with a double back flip with a full twist in a tuck position which was unheard of.  Most gymnasts at the time did not even mount with this move.  This cemented the Olympic title in the Floor Exercise for her in which she received a perfect 10.0 for the exercise beating both Julianne McNamara and Mary Lou Retton for the gold medal.\n\n\n== Competitive history ==\n\n\n== See also ==\n\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists at a single Games\nList of Olympic female gymnasts for Romania\nList of top Olympic gymnastics medalists\nList of top medalists at the World Artistic Gymnastics Championships\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nWhatever Happened to Ekaterina Szabo?\nList of competitive results at Gymn Forum\nEcaterina Szabo profile at GymnStands\nEcaterina Szabo at World Gymnastics\nEcaterina Szabo at the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame \nEcaterina Szabo at Olympedia \nEcaterina Szabo at Olympics.com \nEcaterina Szabo at the Comitetul Olimpic și Sportiv Român (in Romanian) (archive)"}
{"title": "Edoardo Mangiarotti", "requested": "Edoardo Mangiarotti", "extract": "Edoardo Mangiarotti (Italian pronunciation: [edoˈardo mandʒaˈrɔtti]; 7 April 1919 – 25 May 2012) was an Italian fencer.  He won a total of 39 Olympic and World championship medals, more than any other fencer in the history of the sport. His Olympic medals include one individual gold, five team golds, five silver, and two bronze medals from 1936 to 1960, making him the second-most decorated Italian Olympian of all time and the twelfth-most decorated Olympian of all time.\n\n\n== Fencing background ==\nFencing is one of the original sports from the 1896 Games. Electronic scoring equipment was introduced in 1936 in the épée events when Mangiarotti won a gold medal with the other members of the Italian team. He consistently won each épée event and was second only to expert Christian d'Oriola in the foil events. On a points for and against basis in international competition, Mangiarotti was the most successful fencer in history.\n\n\n== Early life ==\nEdoardo Mangiarotti was born into a famous fencing family on 7 April 1919. Giuseppe Mangiarotti, a Milanese fencing master and 17 times national épée champion, planned his son's championship career and molded him into an awkward opponent by converting a natural right-hander to a left-hander. Dario Mangiarotti, older brother of the Edoardo, won the world title in Cairo in 1949 and a gold and two silver in the Olympics. His brother Mario Mangiarotti was also a fencer.\n\n\n== Pre-World War II career ==\nEdoardo was a national junior foil champion at the age of 11. He won a place in the Italian senior team at age 16 and competed in the 1935 world championships. The following year young Mangiarotti rewarded his father for his conscientious coaching with an Olympic team épée gold medal in the Olympics.\nIn Paris, 1937, Edoardo Mangiarotti won a gold medal in a World Championships team event. The next year in Czechoslovakia he finished second in the individual épée, won a bronze in the team épée and a gold in team foil.\n\n\n== Career 1945-55 ==\nEven at such an early stage in his career, the young Mangiarotti showed the strong determination and personality that was to separate him from other international competitors in both foil and épée in the 1950s.\nAt the 1948 London Olympics, Mangiarotti finished with a bronze medal in the individual épée and two team silver medals.  Dario Mangiarotti could not compete because of an injury.\nIn 1949, Dario won the individual épée World Championship in Cairo while his younger brother participated in the winning épée and foil teams. Two years later Edoardo forged to the top in individual épée by winning the world championships in Stockholm.\nHe competed at the Mediterranean Games in 1951, where he won gold medals in the team épée and foil events and a bronze medal in the individual foil event, and in the 1955 where he won silver medals in the team épée and foil events and individual foil event.\n\n\n== 1952 Helsinki ==\nThe Helsinki Games in 1952 were the crowning glory for the Mangiarotti brothers.  Against a record field of 76 competitors Edoardo Mangiarotti won the Olympic épée individual gold medal with decisive style. After a somewhat shaky start in the final he ran out the winner with seven victories.  His brother had won the silver from Switzerland's Oswald Zappelli, who had beaten Edoardo for the silver medal in the previous Olympics.\nThe record created at the Helsinki Olympics by the Mangiarotti brothers may be second only to their countrymen the Nadi brothers.  While Edoardo secured two gold medals for the épée team and individual titles and two silver medals for the foil team and individual, his brother won a gold medal for the épée team event and a silver for the individual to give the family a remarkable six medals.  This compares with the 9 medals, 8 gold and 1 silver, won by Nedo Nadi (5 gold) and his brother Aldo Nadi (3 gold, 1 silver) in the 1920 Olympics, all in fencing. (reference www.olympic.org)\n\n\n== 1956 Melbourne ==\nBy the Melbourne Olympics, Edoardo was a fraction past his best but he refused to leave the international arena without a fight. In the individual épée, Australian spectators were treated to a dramatic finale.  Three Italians finished equal first, each with five wins and two losses.  A barrage had to be held to sort out the medal winners.  The drama heightened after the first section of the play off when Mangiarotti, Carlo Pavesi and Giuseppe Delfino all had one win and one loss.  The second barrage broke the deadlock; Mangiarotti tired towards midnight and lost both his bouts, then Pavesi beat Delfino to clinch the gold medal.  The Italians had a clean sweep of the medals with Mangiarotti taking the bronze.  As compensation he won gold in both épée and foil team events.\n\n\n== 1960 Rome ==\nAt the 1960 Games in Rome, Mangiarotti now a 41-year-old, and the oldest on the Italian team, won a silver medal in the team foil behind the Soviet squad that boasted individual champion Zhdanovich. The Italian épée squad which included Mangiarotti and individual gold medalist Delfino won the team event from a brilliant British squad led by Bill Hoskyns the 1958 World individual champion.\nThis was Mangiarotti's 13th and last Olympic medal, breaking the previous record of 12 by Paavo Nurmi at the 1928 Summer Olympics in Amsterdam. His record would stand until the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, when Larisa Latynina would win her 18th medal, a record which stood until broken by Michael Phelps on 31 July 2012 at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.\n\n\n== Post-Olympic retirement ==\nMangiarotti retired in 1961 and left the Olympic fencing arena as the greatest combined épée and foil fencer the world had ever seen.  His participation in world and Olympic championships spanned 25 years and resulted in an amazing 39 top three placings.  This five time Olympian was awarded a Bronze Olympic order in 1977.\n\n\n== International Olympic Committee award ==\nIn 2003, the International Olympic Committee awarded Edoardo Mangiarotti with a Platinum Wreath, with a document that stated that: \"Edoardo Mangiarotti's total of 39 gold, silver & bronze medals in Olympic & World Fencing Championships, which earns him the distinction of being the greatest Fencer in that sport's history.\"\n\n\n== See also ==\n\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists in one event\nList of multiple Summer Olympic medalists\nMultiple medallist at the World Fencing Championships\nItaly at the Olympics – Men gold medalist\nItaly national fencing team – Multiple medalists\nLegends of Italian sport - Walk of Fame\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nEdoardo Mangiarotti at Olympics.com\nEdoardo Mangiarotti at Olympedia\nEdoardo Mangiarotti at InterSportStats\nEdoardo Mangiarotti at the Comitato Olimpico Nazionale Italiano (in Italian)"}
{"title": "Edwin Flack", "requested": "Edwin Flack", "extract": "Edwin Harold Flack (5 November 1873 – 10 January 1935) was an Australian athlete and tennis player. Also known as \"Teddy\", he was Australia's first Olympian, being its only representative in 1896, and the first Olympic champion in the 800 metres and the 1500 metres running events.\nFollowing Flack's Olympic appearance, he did not compete in any major events again, opting to breed cattle and help his family's accounting firm. Flack died aged 61 following an operation, and was buried in his hometown of Berwick. He is commemorated with a bronze statue of him on High Street and a reserve bearing his name including several sporting grounds honoring his legacy and contributions to sports. Flack was also inducted into the Sport Australia and Athletics Australia halls of fame in 1985 and 2000, respectively.\n\n\n== Early life ==\nBorn in London, England, Edwin Flack was 10 months old when his family migrated to Australia, to live in Berwick, Victoria. Soon after leaving the Melbourne Church of England Grammar School in 1892, where he studied Greek history, Flack joined his father's accountancy firm, Davey, Flack & Co. From 1892 to 1894, Flack was active in middle and long-distance running in amateur athletics in the then colony of Victoria, competing with the Melburnian Hare & Hounds athletics club. In October 1892 he placed third in the inaugural Victorian 10-mile cross country championship, held at Oakleigh (Park) Racecourse, in a time of 1:02.42.0.\nOn 9 to 11 November 1893, an intercolonial meet described as the Australasian Athletics Championships was held at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, between athletes from the British colonies that were later to form the nations of Australia and New Zealand. This was the second such meet, the first having been held at Moore Park in Sydney on 31 May 1890. Flack competed in the 1893 event and won the mile championship in a time of 4:44.0, with a winning margin of two yards. He also competed in the 880 yards (won by Ken McCrae of New South Wales in 2:06.8) and three miles championship (won by Charles Herbert of Victoria in 15:33.6), but was unplaced in both events. By virtue of his win in the mile event he was also awarded the Victorian 1893 mile championship title and, on 30 September 1893, was third in the Victorian 10 mile cross country championship in a time of 1:05.21.\nOn 15 December 1894, Flack won both the 880 yards (2:07.2) and mile (4:49.4) Victorian 1894 championships and, earlier in the year, on 22 September 1894 was second in the 10-mile cross country championship (1:00.02). The 1894 event was Flack's last appearance in the Victorian Championships. The same year, Flack was sent to London to receive further training as an accountant with the firm Price, Waterhouse & Co (now PricewaterhouseCoopers). Flack joined the London Athletic Club and was intent on attending the coming inaugural Olympics. Flack attended the Olympics as a member of the London Athletic Club, but competed in his Melburnian Hare and Hounds colours.\n\n\n== 1896 Olympics ==\n\nFlack reached Athens after an uncomfortable six-day rail and sea trip, during which he was plagued with sea sickness. On the opening day of the Games he won his first race, the first heat of the 800 metres run, finishing in a time of 2 min 10.0 sec. On the second day he lined up against the American favourite, Arthur Blake, in the 1500 metres run. Running shoulder to shoulder with Blake in the final straight, Flack powered ahead near the end to win by more than five metres in a time of 4:33.2. On the fourth day of the Games, Flack earned his second gold medal, winning the 800 metres in 2 min 11.9 sec.\nIt may be noted that, even by the standards of the time, the times required to win the 800 m and 1,500 m at the first Olympics were slow. Although there was no official world record in that era, by way of comparison, the local 880 yards championship in Flack's home colony of Victoria was won that year in 2:04.4 and the previous year (1895) in 2:03.4. At the Australasian Championships of 1896, the mile run was won by New Zealander W. Bennett in a time of 4:28.6 – some 4.6s quicker than Flack's Olympic 1500 m time despite running 100 metres further.\nJust a day later, Flack tried for a treble with the marathon event despite never having run a race more than 16 kilometres. He was in second place behind Frenchman Albin Lermusiaux—bronze medallist in the 1500 m run, whom Flack had already beaten—for much of the race. After 30–32 kilometres, the Frenchman dropped out and Flack was left in the lead, but 4–8 kilometres later (sources vary), Flack collapsed. In his deliriousness, when a Greek spectator tried to help him, Flack punched him to the ground. Flack was removed from the course and transported to the stadium by a carriage, wherein he was tended to by Prince Nicholas.\nFlack also competed in the tennis singles and doubles at the Olympics. He lost in the first round of the singles to Aristidis Akratopoulos of Greece. In the doubles he was paired with an English friend, George S. Robertson. They reached the semi-finals after a walkover in the first round, but lost their only match to Dionysios Kasdaglis of Egypt and Demetrios Petrokokkinos of Greece. They placed third due to their semi-final appearance, but medals for third places were not yet awarded in 1896. The medals were retroactively awarded in January 2008.\nFlack was a popular competitor at the 1896 games, and was commonly referred to as the \"Lion of Athens\".\n\n\n== Later life ==\nIn 1898, Flack returned to Victoria and the Melbourne-based family accounting firm, was renamed Flack and Flack. Flack purchased a property near Berwick, where he stayed on weekends and bred Friesian cattle. He never competed for Victoria again (or for Australia after the country was formed in 1901), but he joined the Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) and was part of the first Australian delegation to attend an International Olympic Committee (IOC) Congress. After developing heart problems, Flack died in 1935, following an operation at a private hospital. He was cremated and his ashes were interred at Berwick Cemetery.\n\n\n== Legacy ==\n\nFlack is indeed commemorated by a bronze statue on the median strip of High Street, Berwick, Vicroria. This is statue was unveiled in 1998 by former middle-distance runner and later Governor of Victoria John Landy. The former Berwick Recreational Reserve was renamed Edwin Flack Reserve in 1996 to honour the town's first Olympic hero and medal winner. The reserve features multiple sporting facilities, including an athletics track, an Australian rules football oval, netball courts and soccer pitch. Melbourne Grammar School's sporting complex at Port Melbourne has been named Edwin Flack Park in honour of their past student.\nFlack was commemorated on a 45-cent Australian postage stamp in the Olympic centenary year of 1996. The AOC named one of the streets alongside Stadium Australia at Homebush Bay in Sydney, as Edwin Flack Avenue. Naming the avenue after him is a tribute to his legacy in Australian sporting history, especially in connection to the 2000 Sydney Olympics. In 1985, Flack was inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame, and he was inducted into the Athletics Australia Hall of Fame in 2000. Athletics Australia's Edwin Flack Award, which is awarded to \"an athlete who has rendered distinguished service to athletics\", is named in his honour.\nFlack was portrayed by English actor Benedict Taylor in the 1984 television mini-series The First Olympics: Athens 1896.\n\n\n== References ==\n\nFitzSimons, Peter (2006). Great Australian Sports Champions. Harper Collins Publishers. ISBN 0-7322-8517-8.\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nEdwin Flack at World Athletics\nEdwin Flack at Tilastopaja (registration required)\nEdwin Flack at Australian Athletics Historical Results\nEdwin Flack at Athletics Podium\nEdwin Flack at the International Tennis Federation\nEdwin Flack at Olympics.com\nEdwin Flack at the Australian Olympic Committee\nEdwin Flack at Olympedia\nEdwin Flack at the Sport Australia Hall of Fame\nEdwin Flack at InterSportStats\nBiography in Australian Dictionary of Biography"}
{"title": "Eileen Gu", "requested": "Eileen Gu", "extract": "Eileen Feng Gu (born September 3, 2003), also known by her Chinese name Gu Ailing (谷爱凌), is a Chinese-American freestyle skier and model. She has represented China in halfpipe, slopestyle, and big air events since the 2018–19 season. With three gold and three silver medals, Gu is the most decorated freestyle skier in Olympic history.\nGu was born and raised in the United States. She began competing for China in 2019. At age 18, she became the youngest Olympic champion in freestyle skiing after winning gold medals in big air and halfpipe, and a silver medal in slopestyle, at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. She is the first freestyle skier to win three medals at a single Winter Olympics.\nAt the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan-Cortina, Gu won gold in women's halfpipe and two additional silver medals in big air and slopestyle, setting the Olympic medal record in freestyle skiing, surpassing all previous competitors regardless of gender.\nTime named Gu as one of the 100 most influential people in the world under its Pioneers category on its annual list in 2022. She was subsequently featured on the magazine's February 9, 2026, edition. She was the fourth-highest earning female athlete in the world in 2025.\nGu won the Laureus World Action Sportsperson of the Year in 2023. She also co-hosted the 2026 Laureus World Sports Awards alongside Novak Djokovic. This marks the first time that two athletes hosted the Laureus World Sports Awards.\n\n\n== Early life and education ==\nEileen Gu was born on September 3, 2003, in San Francisco, California, United States. Her mother, Yan Gu (Chinese: 谷燕; pinyin: Gǔ Yàn), is a first-generation Chinese immigrant to the United States. Her father is American and a Harvard University graduate. Her maternal grandfather was the chief electrical engineer of the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development of China.\nYan studied chemistry and biochemistry and was a member of the short-track speed skating team at Peking University in the 1980s. After moving to the United States, she earned a master's degree in biochemistry and molecular biology  at Auburn University and an MBA  at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business.\nYan raised her daughter as a single mother in San Francisco's Sea Cliff neighborhood. At three years old, Gu began skiing in Lake Tahoe, where Yan once worked as a part-time ski instructor. She joined the Northstar California Resort free-ski team at eight and won her first national championship at nine.\nGu attended primary and middle school at the Katherine Delmar Burke School and went to high school at San Francisco University High. She attended a mathematics cram school during her summers in Beijing and scored 1580 out of 1600 on  the SAT.\nGu earned early admittance to Stanford University  in December 2020. She entered the freshman class in 2022, the same year she was presented as a debutante at Le Bal des débutantes in Paris. While at Stanford, she joined Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority and studied abroad at the University of Oxford's Magdalen College. An international relations major, Gu took time off in the 2025–26 academic year to prepare for the 2026 Winter Olympics. In June 2026, Gu graduated from Stanford University.\n\n\n== Sports career ==\n\nIn 2021, Gu became the first woman to land a forward double cork 1440 in competition history.\n\n\n=== Coaches and training ===\nGu's coaches have included Jamie Melton, head coach of the Chinese National Slopestyle and Big Air Training Team for the 2022 Winter Olympics, and Brad Prosser, who met Gu when she was ten. In 2018, he became the technical coach guide to the Chinese national team for the 2022 Winter Olympics. Her personal coach for the 2022 Olympics was Misra Noto Torniainen, the former coach of the Swiss freeski team. Torniainen coached Olympic medalists Sarah Höfflin and Mathilde Gremaud for the 2018 Winter Olympics.\nIn early 2025, the Beijing Municipal Sports Bureau released a public budget about allocating US$6.6 million for the training of Gu and fellow US-born athlete Zhu Yi ahead of the 2026 Milan games though later their names were removed from the document and articles on the topic were censored on several Chinese websites. The total payment from Beijing's sports bureau for Gu and Zhu was $14 million over the past three years prior to the 2026 games.\n\n\n=== X Games ===\n\nAt the 2021 Winter X Games, Gu won a bronze medal in Big Air and two gold medals in SuperPipe and Slopestyle, becoming the first rookie to win a gold medal in Women's Ski SuperPipe, the first rookie to medal in three events, and the first athlete representing China to win a gold medal at the X Games.\nGu withdrew from the 2023 Winter X Games due to a heavy crash in training where she injured her knee.\nAt the 2024 Winter X Games, Gu won gold in SuperPipe despite injuring her right hip during the X Games Slopestyle training. She wrote \"Pain is Temporary\" on her hand, and showed it to the cameras during the finals. Due to the pain, she did not participate in Slopestyle.\n\n\n=== World Championships ===\n\nGu competed at the FIS Freestyle Ski and Snowboarding World Championships 2021, winning two gold medals in Freeski Halfpipe and Freeski Slopestyle and a bronze medal in Freeski Big Air. Gu became the first freeskier to win two golds at the FIS Freeski World Championship. She competed without poles for the first time due to a broken hand, having fractured a finger and tearing the UCL in her thumb.\n\n\n=== 2022 Winter Olympics ===\n\nAt the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, Gu became the youngest gold medalist in freestyle skiing, winning the big air freestyle skiing event, the first to be held at the Olympics. Gu landed a double cork 1620, her first attempt in competition. She was the second woman to land the trick and the first woman to land a left-turn 1620; Tess Ledeux first successfully completed a double cork 1620 on 21 January 2022, at the X Games in Aspen, Colorado, Gu landed it again in her first run of the big air final at the 2022 Winter Olympics.\nGu won the silver medal in the slopestyle event. She won a second gold medal in the women's freeski halfpipe competition, becoming the first freestyle skier to win three medals at a Winter Olympics. She was awarded the Best Breakthrough Athlete and Best Female Action Sports Athlete ESPY Awards at the 2022 ESPY Awards.\n\n\n=== World Cup results ===\n\nGu ended the 2021–22 World Cup season with a perfect record in women's halfpipe, taking her first career crystal globe and becoming the first freestyle skier to win four consecutive World Cup competitions. She won a second crystal globe during the same season, placing first in park and pipe overall.\nAll results are sourced from the International Ski Federation.\n\n8 wins: 5 Halfpipe, 2 Slopestyle, 1 Big Air\n12 podiums: 6 Halfpipe, 5 Slopestyle, 1 Big Air\n\nResults current through 1 February 2022.\n\n\n=== 2026 Winter Olympics ===\n\nAt the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan-Cortina, Eileen Gu competed in all three women's freestyle skiing disciplines: slopestyle, big air, and the freeski halfpipe, medaling in each. Gu secured silver medals in both slopestyle and big air, and won the gold medal in the halfpipe, defending her title from the 2022 Winter Olympics. Gu posted a top score of 94.75 in the halfpipe final, finishing ahead of compatriot Li Fanghui's score of 93.00 (silver) and Great Britain's Zoe Atkin's 92.50 (bronze).\nWith three medals won in Milan-Cortina and three from the 2022 Beijing Games, Gu's total of six Olympic gold or silver medals in six events made her the most decorated freestyle skier in Olympic history. Alongside Russian cross-country skier Lyubov Yegorova, Gu became the second athlete in history to earn either gold or silver in each of their first six individual Winter Olympic events.\n\n\n== Results ==\n\n\n=== Olympic Winter Games ===\n\n\n=== World Championships ===\n\n\n=== World Cup ===\n\n\n==== Season standings ====\n\n\n== Nationality and citizenship ==\n\nGu competed for the United States at the 2018–19 FIS Freestyle Ski World Cup. She began competing for China in June 2019 after requesting a change of national affiliation with the International Ski Federation. Her goal was to compete for China in the 2022 Winter Olympics. She announced the change on Weibo and Instagram, stating that through skiing she hopes \"to help inspire millions of young people\" in China and \"to unite people, promote common understanding, create communication, and forge friendships between nations\".\nThere has been considerable controversy related to Gu's citizenship and nationality. The Chinese Consulate General in New York told BBC News that Gu would need to be naturalized or gain permanent residency status in China to compete for its team; in the same article, it was reported that China's Ministry of Justice in 2020 broadened rules for foreigners, allowing people who achieved international recognition in sport, science, culture and other fields to obtain permanent residency. The International Olympic Committee requires that any competitor in the Olympic Games must be a national of the country which they are representing. The Wall Street Journal reported in February 2026 that the Beijing Municipal Sports Bureau was set to pay Gu and another athlete a combined $6.6 million in training funds over a three-year period.\nIn an interview with  ESPN in 2021, she said:  \"Since I was little, I've always said when I'm in the U.S., I'm American, but when I'm in China, I'm Chinese.\" In 2022, in an interview with the South China Morning Post, she said: \"My appearance and the way I speak are completely American. No one can deny that I am American. When I go to China, no one can deny that I am Chinese because I speak fluent Chinese, am familiar with the culture here, and fully identify as Chinese.\" Following her gold medal victory in the halfpipe on 22 February 2026, Gu addressed the persistent scrutiny regarding her passports, noting that the perception of her decision is often affected by the geopolitical \"rivalry\" between the two nations.\n\n\n== Political positions ==\nGu has spoken out in the United States against anti-Asian racism and publicly supported the Black Lives Matter movement and the right to legal access to abortion. Critics accused her of being disloyal for representing China and for declining to comment on Chinese government policies, including allegations of human rights abuses against Uyghurs. Gu has stated that she does not comment on issues she is not personally certain about, and explained that she needs to review evidence firsthand before forming a judgment to avoid becoming a \"mouthpiece\" for any agenda.\n\n\n== Sponsorships, endorsements, and modeling career ==\nAs a \"young American freestyle champion\" at Nanshan Ski Resort, Gu had sponsorships in China at nine years old through connections with the resort's owner and China's ski industry. These included several Chinese sponsors, The North Face, and CCTV9.\nPrior to the start of the 2022 Winter Olympics, Gu was the face of multiple brands in China. Gu has endorsed brands in China across sports, fashion, and banking. Some of her partnerships in China include Mengniu Dairy, Luckin Coffee, JD.com, China Mobile, People's Insurance Company of China, Bank of China, Anta Sports, and Bosideng. \nGu is represented by IMG Models.  She has appeared on the covers of magazines such as the Chinese editions of Harper's Bazaar, Elle, Cosmopolitan, GQ, Marie Claire, V, L'Officiel, and Vogue. Gu has been featured in campaigns for Western luxury brands including Louis Vuitton and Tiffany & Co. and is a brand ambassador for IWC Schaffhausen and TCL Electronics. She is a Red Bull-sponsored athlete, a founding member of Victoria's Secret's VS Collective, and has an endorsement deal with Porsche.\nIt was reported that she earned over US$30 million in endorsements and advertising contracts in 2021 alone. According to media reports, her average fee per endorsement increased from $1 million in 2021 to $2 to $2.5 million in 2022. In 2023, Forbes listed Gu as the second-highest paid female athlete in the world. In 2024, she was the world's third-highest paid female athlete. In 2026, she was the fourth-highest paid female athlete in the world based on earnings of US$23.1 million in 2025.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nGu spent her childhood in California and spent summers in Beijing. Raised by her Chinese mother and grandmother in a single-parent household, she is fluent in both English and Mandarin Chinese and has spoken about her dual cultural identity: \"When I'm in the US, I'm American. When I'm in China, I'm Chinese.\" \nIn 2002, a year before Gu was born, Gu Yan's sister Gu Ling (谷凌; Gǔ Líng) died in a car crash. Gu's mother decided to name her Àilíng (爱凌), literally translating to \"Love Ling\" and anglicized as \"Eileen\", in her sister's honor. In China, she uses the nickname 青蛙公主 (qīngwā gōngzhǔ; \"Frog Princess\") on her Chinese social media accounts. The nickname comes from a green helmet she once wore during competition.\nGu plays the piano as a hobby. In May 2022, Gu mentioned that she had converted to Buddhism.\nGu's grandmother, Feng Guozhen, died during the 2026 Olympics. Gu learned of her grandmother's passing shortly after winning the gold medal in the women's halfpipe and spoke emotionally about her influence on her life and career at her post‑event press conference.\nGu has stated that her broad purpose from international attention is to have \"global beneficial impact\" through her fashion and skiing. One estimate from the Chinese government is that more than 300 million people began participation in ice and snow sports since the 2022 Winter Olympics when Gu first competed.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of Olympic medalists in freestyle skiing\nList of Youth Olympic Games gold medalists who won Olympic gold medals\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nEileen Gu at FIS (freestyle)\nEileen Gu at Olympics.com\nEileen Gu at Olympedia\nEileen Gu at the X Games\nEileen Gu at InterSportStats\nEileen Gu at the X Games\nEileen Gu at Milano Cortina 2026"}
{"title": "Einar Liberg", "requested": "Einar Liberg", "extract": "Einar Liberg (16 October 1873 – 9 September 1955) was a Norwegian rifle shooter who competed in the early 20th century. He won the gold medal with the Norwegian 300 metre free rifle team at the 1908 Summer Olympics in London, and four years later at the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm he won the silver medal with the free rifle team. At the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp, he competed in running deer and won two gold medals in team, running deer, single shot, and team, running deer, double shot. He also took the individual bronze medal in running deer, double shot. In the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris, he ended his long Olympic career by taking another gold medal in team, running deer, single shot, and a silver medal in team, running deer, double shot.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nEinar Liberg at databaseOlympics.com\nEinar Liberg at Olympedia\nEinar Liberg at InterSportStats"}
{"title": "Elaine Thompson-Herah", "requested": "Elaine Thompson-Herah", "extract": "Elaine Sandra-Lee Thompson-Herah, née Thompson, (born 28 June 1992) is a Jamaican sprinter who competes in the 60 metres, 100 metres and 200 metres. Regarded as one of the greatest female sprinters of all time, she is a five-time Olympic champion, the fastest woman alive in the 100 m, and the fifth fastest ever in the 200 m.\nThompson-Herah is the first-ever female sprinter, and the second sprinter after Usain Bolt, to win the \"sprint double\" at consecutive Olympics, capturing 100 m and 200 m gold at the 2016 Rio Olympics, and defending both titles at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. A six-time Olympic medallist, she rose to prominence at the 2015 World Athletics Championships, winning silver in the 200 m and, at the time, becoming the fifth-fastest woman in history over the distance. The next year at the Rio Olympics, she became the first woman since Florence Griffith Joyner in 1988 to win 100 m and 200 m gold at the Olympics.\nAfter the Rio Olympics, Thompson-Herah suffered an Achilles tendon injury, which affected her performance at the 2017 and 2019 World Athletics Championships. However, she returned to the top of athletics at the Tokyo Olympics, retaining her 100 m title in a new Olympic record of 10.61 s, and her 200 m title in a new personal best and national record of 21.53 s. After winning a third gold medal in the 4 × 100 m relay, she became the third sprinter after Griffith Joyner and Bolt to complete an Olympic sprinting triple.\nAt the 2021 Prefontaine Classic, Thompson-Herah set another 100 m personal best, Jamaican and Diamond League record of 10.54 s, becoming the first woman to break the 40 km/h barrier. For her 2021 season, she was voted Laureus Sportswoman of the Year, and World Athletics World Female Athlete of the Year. One of the most dominant sprinters in the world, she is the 100 m 2019 Pan American Games champion and a three-time Diamond League winner. In 2022, retired American sprinter Michael Johnson called Thompson-Herah and her compatriot Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce the two greatest female sprinters of all time.\n\n\n== Early life ==\nThompson is a native of Banana Ground in Manchester Parish, Jamaica. Running for Christiana High School and later Manchester High School, she was a good but not outstanding scholastic sprinter; her best result at the Jamaican ISSA Grace Kennedy Boys and Girls Championships came in 2009, when she placed fourth in the Class Two 100 metres in 12.01 seconds. In 2011, her final year at Manchester High, she was left off the track team for disciplinary reasons.\n\n\n== Athletics career ==\nAfter high school, Thompson was recruited to the University of Technology, Jamaica by Paul Francis, brother of MVP Track Club head coach Stephen Francis. With MVP coaching, her times started improving steadily.\nIn 2013, she clocked a seasonal best of 11.41 s at the Gibson Relays and placed second behind Carrie Russell at the Jamaican Intercollegiate Championships. At the Central American and Caribbean Championships in Morelia, she won gold in the 4 × 100 metres relay, running the first leg on the Jamaican team as it won in 43.58 s.\nIn 2014, Thompson won her first intercollegiate title, placed fifth in 11.26 s at the national championships, and had a seasonal best of 11.17 s. She represented Jamaica at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, running in the 4 × 100 metres relay heats; Jamaica won their heat in 42.44 s, and went on to win gold in the final with Thompson-Herah not in the line-up.\n\n\n=== 2015: Breakthrough and World medals ===\nThompson made her international breakthrough in 2015. She repeated as Jamaican intercollegiate champion in March and broke 11 seconds for the first time at the UTech Classic on 11 April, running a world-leading 10.92 s. She ran 10.97 s at the Jamaica International Invitational in Kingston, defeating a field that included Blessing Okagbare and Allyson Felix. At the Prefontaine Classic in Eugene, she was narrowly beaten by English Gardner in the B-race as both were timed in 10.84 s, a new personal best for Thompson.\nShe was expected to run the 100 metres at the Jamaican National Championships, which doubled as trials for the 2015 World Championships in Beijing; however, her coach Stephen Francis pulled her from that event and instead had her concentrate on the 200 metres, in which she had set a personal best of 22.37 s in May. The move generated controversy in Jamaica; Francis stated that Thompson was not ready to double and that she had been prepared for the 200 m in which her main weakness, the start, would not play as large a role. She won the national 200 m title in 22.51s, qualifying for the World Championships.\nAt the London Grand Prix on 25 July, Thompson won a non-scoring Diamond League 200 m race in 22.10 s, defeating Americans Tori Bowie and Candyce McGrone; the time was her new personal best and broke Merlene Ottey's meeting record from 1991.\nAt the Beijing World Championships, she won a silver medal in the 200 m, finishing just 0.03 s behind Dafne Schippers of Netherlands. Thompson's time of 21.66 s was faster than the previous championships record. Fellow Jamaican Veronica Campbell Brown was third in 21.97 s. She went onto be part of Jamaica's 4 × 100 m relay team, winning a gold medal.\n\n\n=== 2016: Double Rio Olympic champion ===\n\nThompson kicked off her season indoors running multiple 60 m races, including finishing second at the Glasgow Indoor Grand Prix in a new personal best of 7.14 s. At the World Indoor Championships in Portland, she would win a bronze medal in the 60 m final finishing with a time of 7.06 s, she had previously improved her personal best to 7.04 s in the semi-finals.\nOn 22 May, Thompson won her first scoring Diamond League event, triumphing over 100 m at the Rabat Diamond League in 11.02 s, beating a strong field that included Blessing Okagbare and Carmelita Jeter. She continued her good form by winning over the same distance at the Rome Diamond League in 10.87 s, her second-fastest clocking. At the Jamaican Championships, Thompson ran a new personal best and equal national record of 10.70 s to win over Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce and Christania Williams. Thompson won her heat in the 200 m in 23.34 s, but pulled out of the semi-finals due to injury. She was granted a medical exemption to compete in the 200 m at the Olympics.\n\nIn the 100 m final of the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Thompson won the gold medal with a time of 10.71 s, ahead of Tori Bowie (10.83 s), and the 2008 Beijing Olympics and 2012 London Olympics winner, fellow Jamaican, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce (10.86 s). In the 200 m final, she won her second gold, clocking 21.78 s; Dafne Schippers placed second in 21.88 s and Tori Bowie third in 22.15 s. She was the first female Jamaican sprinter to win both the 100 m and 200 m at a single Olympic Games. She was also the seventh sprinter to achieve this overall but the first for 28 years. She also ran in the 4 × 100 m relay final alongside Williams, Fraser-Pryce, and Veronica Campbell-Brown, winning silver in 41.36 s.\nThompson competed at the Lausanne Diamond League on 25 August, winning the 100 m in 10.78 s. At the Diamond League Finals in Zürich and Brussels, she won over both 100 m and 200 m in 10.72 s and 21.85 s, respectively.\n\n\n=== 2017–2019: Continued success ===\nOn 18 February, Thompson competed in the 60 m at the Birmingham Indoor Grand Prix, the final meeting of the 2017 IAAF World Indoor Tour. She ran a personal best of 6.98 s, making her the equal seventh-fastest woman of all time and one of eight to break the 7 second barrier over the distance at the time.\nAt the World Relays in Nassau, Thompson ran in the 4 × 200 m relay, with the team running a time of 1:29.04 to win gold. She enjoyed a strong start to her outdoor season, winning her first three individual international races, running 22.19 s to win the 200 m at the Doha Diamond League, whilst also clocking a world lead of 10.78 s to win over 100 m at the Shanghai Diamond League, and winning at the Jamaica International Invitational, running 22.09 s for 200 m. In June, Thompson won the Jamaican title over 100 m, running 10.71 s - just 0.01 s outside her personal best.\n\nAt the 2017 World Championships held in London, Thompson finished fifth in the 100 m final in a time of 10.98 s. She recovered from her disappointment at the Diamond League Finals, placing second behind Shaunae Miller-Uibo in the 200 m in 22.00 s and winning the 100 m in 10.92 s.\nIn 2018, Thompson competed at the World Indoor Championships in Birmingham, finishing fourth in the 60 m in 7.08 s. In April, she ran at the Commonwealth Games on the Gold Goast, finishing fourth in the 200 m and winning a silver medal in the 4 × 100 m relay. She retained her 100 m title at the Jamaican Championships in June, holding off Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce to win in 11.01 s.\nThe following year, Thompson was a part of Jamaica's team at the World Relays, where she won a bronze medal in the 4 × 200 m relay, running a time of 1:33.21 seconds. On 21 June, she took home her fourth successive 100 m title at the Jamaican Championships, winning in 10.73 s, beating out Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce by three-thousandths of a second. The race was the first time two women had gone sub-10.75 s in one race. She returned two days later to also win the 200 m, clocking 22.00 s. In August, she competed at the Pan American Games in Lima, winning gold in the 100 m in 11.18 s. Later that month, she secured victory over 100 m at the Paris Diamond League, running a time of 10.98 s.\n\nAt the 2019 World Championships in Doha, she finished fourth in the 100 m running 10.93 s. Thompson-Herah achieved a time of 22.61 s in winning her 200 m heat, qualifying for the semi-finals, but she was unable to start due to an Achilles tendon injury.\n\n\n=== 2020–2021: Triple Tokyo Olympic champion and 10.54 s clocking ===\nThompson recorded the fastest time in the COVID-19-interrupted 2020 season, running 10.85 s to win at the Rome Diamond League on 17 September. She followed it up by winning the same event at the Doha Diamond League on 25 September, in 10.87 s.\nIn 2021, Thompson-Herah enjoyed a strong start to her season, winning the 100 m at the Pure Athletics Sprint meet in Clermont on 2 May, in 10.78 s. At the Jamaican Championships, in June, she placed third in both the 100 m and 200 m, with times of 10.84 s and 22.02 s, respectively, qualifying for the delayed 2020 Tokyo Olympics in both events. On 6 July, at the Gyulai István Memorial, she won the 100 m in 10.71 s-a new meeting record and her fastest time since 2017.\nAt the Tokyo Games, Thompson-Herah won the 100 m final, winning a gold medal as Jamaica completed a medal sweep of the podium, with Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce and Shericka Jackson receiving silver and bronze medals, respectively. Running into an 0.6 m/s headwind, she achieved the joint second-fastest time in history of 10.61 seconds, setting both the Jamaican record and the Olympic record, breaking Florence Griffith Joyner's mark of 10.62 s set at the 1988 Seoul Olympics. Thompson-Herah ran a top speed of 39.7 km/h, the fastest speed ever achieved by a female sprinter; the previous top speed was from Griffith Joyner who reached 39.1 km/h in 1988. Competing in the 200 m, she first equalled her personal best of 21.66 s in the semi-finals. In the final, she won the gold medal with a new lifetime best of 21.53 seconds, also the then-second-fastest result in history. In addition, she was a part of 4 × 100 m relay team which won the competition in the third-fastest time ever and a new national record of 41.02 s to regain a title last won by Jamaica at the 2004 Athens Games.\nIn her first post-Olympic race on 21 August, competing at the Prefontaine Classic in Eugene, Thompson-Herah stormed to the 100 m victory with a new personal best of 10.54 seconds, the second-fastest time in women's history and only 0.05 s off the world record. She became the first woman to break the 40 km/h barrier. At the Athletissima meet, she placed second in the 100 m in 10.64 s, behind Fraser-Pryce who powered to her new lifetime best of 10.60 s, recording, however, the fastest runner-up time in history. She concluded her very successful season with wins at both the Meeting de Paris and Diamond League Final in Zürich with times of 10.72 s and 10.65 s, respectively, to take her third Diamond Trophy, breaking meeting records at both meets.\nAs of the end of the season, Thompson-Herah had many placements in the women's all-time top 10 in her specialist distances. She was the first woman to hold more than three marks in the all-time top 10 over 100 m (four) and more than two marks in the 200 m (three) simultaneously. She was also the first woman to run more than three legal times under 10.70 seconds (four), and the first woman to achieve more than two legal times under 21.70 seconds (three), respectively.\nFor her history-making season, Thompson-Herah received the World Athletics Female Athlete of the Year award, was named Sportswoman of the Year by Laureus, Best Female Athlete of the Year by the International Sports Press Association (529 journalists from 114 countries), Female Athlete of the Year by the North American, Central American and Caribbean Athletic Association, Athlete of the Year by Track & Field News, and Jamaican Person of the Year by the Best of Jamaica among many other accolades.\n\n\n=== 2022: World Bronze medal and Double Commonwealth champion ===\nIn her first outdoor international competition of the year on 16 April, Thompson-Herah ran a world lead of 10.89 s to win her heat at the USATF Golden Games, before pulling out of the final. On 28 May, she competed over 100 m at the Prefontaine Classic, winning in 10.79 s. She kept up her good form with another win at the Rabat Diamond League, in 10.83 s. At the Jamaican Championships, she placed third in the 100 m clocking 10.89 s and second in the 200 m, running 22.05 s.\nAt the World Championships in Eugene, Thompson-Herah finished third in the 100 m with a time of 10.81 s, being part of a Jamaican medal sweep with Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce winning gold and Shericka Jackson taking silver. In the 200 m, she finished seventh in 22.39 s, despite running 21.97 s in the semi-finals. She recovered from her disappointment to win a silver medal in the 4 × 100 m relay.\nIn August, she competed at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham. In the 100 m, she held off Julien Alfred to win in a time of 10.95 s. Thompson-Herah completed a sprint double by also winning over 200 m in a games record of 22.02 s. She won her third medal of the Games by winning bronze in the 4 × 100 m relay, later upgraded to silver due to Nigeria's doping disqualification.\n\n\n=== 2023–2025: World Silver medal and injury issues ===\nIn 2023, Thompson-Herah had an injury-disrupted start to the season, which culminated in her finishing fifth in the 100 m at the Jamaican Championships in 11.06 s, missing out on individual qualification for the 2023 World Athletics Championships in Budapest. She did compete in the heats of the 4 × 100 m relay in Budapest, winning a silver medal as Jamaica went onto place second in the final.\nIn the latter half of the season, Thompson-Herah's form improved as she finished third over 100 m at the Zürich Diamond League on 31 August in 11.00 s. On 4 September, she ran her first sub-11-second clocking of the season, running 10.92 s to take the win at the Galà dei Castelli meet in Bellinzona. She won again at the Brussels Diamond League on 8 September, running 10.84 s over 100 m. At the Diamond League Final on 16 September, Thompson-Herah finished third over 100 m, in a season's best of 10.79 s.\nThe following year, Thompson-Herah suffered an Achilles injury at the New York City Grand Prix on 9 June and had to be carried off the track. She announced she would miss the 2024 Summer Olympics as a result. \nConsequently, she took the 2025 season to nurse, rest and recover.\n\n\n=== 2026: The Return ===\nIn February 2026, we saw a return to the track with a pre-season opener at the Camperdown Classics in Kingston. After almost two years, Elaine competed in the 60 metres recording 7.24 (-1.7) for third. The fans were jubilant as she signed autographs and posed for pictures.   The following month in March, she ran the 200 metres at the Velocity Fest 18 at Independence Park clocking a 22.61 triumph.  On April 19, at Velocity Fest 19, Elaine dipped below 11 seconds in the heats for the first time in a couple years winning in 10.92 (+0.8) for the 100 metres creating a buzz throughout the track world about a gradual comeback to full form. She opted not to contend the final. \nIn light of this progression, the JAAA selected her to represent Jamaica at the 2026 World Athletics Relays in Gaborone, Botswana. In the final on Sunday May 3, she anchored the 4 × 100 m team to gold in 42.00s after easing up mid race. Later in a post interview, she spoke about heavy legs causing her to decelerate. \n\n\n== Personal life ==\nThe biggest influence in Elaine's life is the grandmother who raised her, Miss Gloria. \nThompson is married to former sprinter and coach Derron Herah.\n\n\n== Achievements ==\n\n\n=== Personal bests ===\n\n\n=== Progression ===\nAs of April 2022, Thompson-Herah has achieved 48 finishes under 11 seconds in the 100 metres.\n\n\n=== International competitions ===\n\n\n=== Circuit wins and titles ===\nDiamond League Overall 100 m winner:  2016  2017,  2021\n2015 (2): London (200 m), Zürich 4 × 100 m relay)\n2016 (6): Rabat (100 m), Rome (100 m), Lausanne (100 m), Zürich (200 m & 4 × 100 m relay), Brussels (100 m)\n2017 (8): Doha (200 m), Shanghai (100 m), Paris (100 m), London (100 m), Rabat (100 m), Birmingham (100 m), Zürich 4 × 100 m relay), Brussels (100 m)\n2019 (4): Rome (100 m), London (200 m & 4 × 100 m relay), Paris (100 m)\n2020 (2): Rome (100 m), Doha (100 m)\n2021 (4): London Grand Prix in Gateshead (200 m), Eugene (100 m MR DLR NR), Paris (100 m MR), Zürich (100 m MR)\n2022 (2): Eugene (100 m), Rabat (100 m MR)\n2023 (1): Brussels (100 m)\nWorld Indoor Tour (60 m)\n2017: Birmingham\n2019: Birmingham\n2022: Birmingham\n\n\n=== National titles ===\nJamaican Athletics Championships\n100 metres (4): 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019\n200 metres (2): 2015, 2019\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of Olympic medalists in athletics (women)\nList of World Athletics Championships medalists (women)\n100 metres\n200 metres\n2019 in 100 metres\n2020 in 100 metres\n\n\n== Notes ==\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nElaine Thompson-Herah at World Athletics\nElaine Thompson-Herah at Diamond League\nElaine Thompson-Herah at Tilastopaja (registration required)\nElaine Thompson-Herah at Athletics Podium\nElaine Thompson-Herah at Olympics.com\nElaine Thompson-Herah at Olympedia\nElaine Thompson-Herah at the Commonwealth Games Federation (archived)\nElaine Thompson-Herah at the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games (archived)\nElaine Thompson-Herah at InterSportStats\n2017 Interview at World Athletics"}
{"title": "Elena Belova", "requested": "Elena Belova", "extract": "Elena Dmitriyevna Novikova-Belova (Russian: Елена Дмитриевна Новикова-Белова, née Novikova, born 28 July 1947) is a retired Russian foil fencer, known professionally simply as Elena Belova. She competed at the 1968, 1972, 1976 and 1980 Olympics in the individual and team events and won four gold, one silver and one bronze medal, becoming the first female fencer to win four Olympic gold medals. She nearly won a fifth gold in 1976, but lost her last pool match to the last-placed fencer. Belova also won eight world titles, individually in 1969, and with the Soviet team in 1970–1979.\nShortly before the 1968 Olympics, she married Vyacheslav Belov, a future world champion in modern pentathlon, and hyphenated her last name from Novikova to Novikova-Belova. She retired after the 1980 Olympics, and gave birth in 1987, aged 40. After divorcing Belov, she married her second husband, composer Valery Ivanov, who devoted a waltz to her, while keeping the surname Novikova-Belova.\nIn 1970, Belova graduated from the Minsk Institute of Pedagogy, she holds a PhD in this discipline. In 1997 she was awarded the Olympic Order in Silver, and in 2007 the Pierre de Coubertin Medal. On 14 May 2021, Jovian asteroid 24426 Belova, discovered by astronomers with the LINEAR program in 2000, was named in her honor.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n \n\n\n== External links ==\nElena Novikova-Belova at Olympics.com\nYelena Novikova-Belova at Olympedia \nYelena Belova (Novikova) at the National Olympic Committee of the Republic of Belarus"}
{"title": "Elisabeta Lipă", "requested": "Elisabeta Lipă", "extract": "Elisabeta Lipă (Romanian pronunciation: [elisaˈbeta ˈlipə]; née Oleniuc on 26 October 1964) is a retired rower and government official from Romania.  She is the most decorated rower in the history of the Olympics, winning five gold, two silver and one bronze medals. She holds the record amongst rowers for the most years between gold medals, at 20 years.\nSince 2004, Lipă has served in various government positions including Minister of Youth and Sport under Dacian Cioloș from 2015 to 2017. Since 2009, she has also served as the president of the Romanian Rowing Federation and the Dinamo București Sports Club.\n\n\n== Career ==\n\nLipă made her debut at the age of 19 at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, California, where she won her first gold medal in the double sculls event. She won her most recent gold medal in the eight at the Athens Summer Olympics in 2004. She is the only person to win a gold medal in the two premiere rowing events: the single scull and the eight. She is also one of very few women to win a gold medal in both a sculling and a sweep event. (Canada's Kathleen Heddle and Marnie McBean accomplished the same, sculling and sweep gold medals, in 1992 and 1996. Also, Romanians Simona Radis and Ancuta Bodnar, gold in double sculls in Tokyo, 2020, and eight, in Paris 2024.)\nIn 2004, she became the first female rower and the second rower overall to compete at six Olympics. This was first done by Czechoslovak rower Jiří Pták (cox) in 1992 and equalled in 2008 by Canadian Lesley Thompson (cox), Estonian Jüri Jaanson, and Australian James Tomkins.\n\n\n== Later life ==\nIn 2008 she was awarded the Thomas Keller Medal at the Rowing World Cup in Lucerne and became an honorary citizen of her native town Siret. From November 2015 to January 2017, she served as the Romanian Minister of Youth and Sport in the Cioloș Cabinet.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of athletes with the most appearances at Olympic Games\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Summer Olympic medalists\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nElisabeta Lipa-Oleniuc at World Rowing\nElisabeta Lipa-Oleniuc at Olympics.comElisabeta Lipa-Oleniuc at Olympic.org (archived)\nElisabeta Lipa: The Most Decorated Rower (at IOC website) at the Wayback Machine (archived 30 December 2005)\nElisabeta Oleniuc-Lipă at Olympedia"}
{"title": "Ellery Harding Clark", "requested": "Ellery Harding Clark", "extract": "Ellery Harding Clark (March 13, 1874 – July 27, 1949) was an American track and field athlete and a writer. He was the first modern Olympic champion in high jump and long jump.\n\n\n== Biography ==\nClark is the only person to have won both the Olympic high jump and long jump. Clark achieved it in 1896, at the first modern Olympics in Athens. A Harvard student, he was given a leave of absence to compete because of his high grades - in contrast to another gold medal winner from Harvard, James Connolly. Clark was one of the top all-around athletes from 1893 to 1912.\nIn the long jump, Clark had used his hat to mark his runway. Twice the judge (King Constantine of Greece) had removed the hat, saying this was a practice of professionals. Only at the third attempt, and without the hat, did Clark achieve a valid jump, good enough for gold.  His final jump was of 6.35 meters.  Clark later won the high jump as well, clearing 1.81 meters.  The closest competitors were fellow Americans Connolly and Robert Garrett at 1.65 meters.  In the shot put, Clark was among the bottom three of the seven-man field.\nHe never won a national championship in either jump, but he was the 1897 and 1903 AAU champion in the all-around, an event similar to the decathlon. He won the 1897 American all-around championship with performances that would have won him the 1896 Olympic high jump, long jump, and shot put, and probably the 100 metres and the 110 metres hurdles as well.\nEllery also competed in the 1904 Olympics in St. Louis, in the all-around competition. Although he had to abandon the contest after five events due to bronchitis, he was still classed sixth. At age 32, he was still winning major meets. He competed as a walker until the age of 56.\nClark's professional life was equally varied. He excelled as an author, lawyer, track coach, teacher and Boston city alderman. He wrote 19 books including one which was made into a 1952 film, Caribbean.\nIn 1904 he married Mary Victoria Maddelena, a Swiss. The engagement and subsequent marriage caused something of a stir in the press - Clark was a millionaire and Maddalena was from the 'South end slums'.\nIn 1949, he died at the age 75 on a train en route from Boston to his home at Cohasset.\nClark was inducted into the USATF Hall of Fame in 1991.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n Media related to Ellery Clark at Wikimedia Commons\n\nEllery Harding Clark at World Athletics\nEllery Harding Clark at Tilastopaja (registration required)\nEllery Harding Clark at the USATF Hall of Fame (archived)\nEllery Harding Clark at Athletics Podium\nEllery Harding Clark at Olympics.com\nEllery Harding Clark at Olympedia\nThe First Americans at the Olympic Games by Ellery Clark\nWorks by Ellery Harding Clark at Project Gutenberg"}
{"title": "Emil Hegle Svendsen", "requested": "Emil Hegle Svendsen", "extract": "Emil Hegle Svendsen (born 12 July 1985) is a retired Norwegian biathlete. He has won nine medals at Winter Olympics (four gold) and five individual gold medals and seven relay gold medals at World Championships.\nHe skis with Trondhjems Skiskyttere, based in his hometown Trondheim.\n\n\n== Career ==\nThe 2005–06 season was Svendsen's first season on the World Cup tour. Previously, he had competed as a junior in the European Cup, now known as the IBU cup.\nDuring his first season in the World Cup, Svendsen finished fifth in three races, two of them in sprints (Brezno-Osrblie and Ruhpolding), and the other in a mass start (Holmenkollen). He also finished races in seventh, ninth, and four more within the top twenty (14th, 15th, 17th, 19th). He finished the overall season in 22nd place. He was 32nd in the pursuit, 21st in the sprint, and 7th in the mass start, only seven points behind Sven Fischer in fourth place.\nSvendsen was selected for the Olympics, to compete in the mass start, in which he came sixth, after hitting 18/20 targets and finished 53.8 seconds behind winner Michael Greis of Germany.\nAs a junior, Svendsen won four gold medals in junior World Championships, his first and second gold was in the pursuit, and the relay in Haute Maurienne in 2004, and the third and fourth gold in the individual and the sprint in Kontiolahti in 2005. He also has two bronze medals from the individual and the pursuit in Kościelisko in 2003.\nDuring his three seasons in the European Cup, Svendsen won two races (individual and pursuit), one second place (sprint), and came third three times (all in the sprint).\nFor his first season in the World Cup Svendsen had an 82% shooting average, making him the 42nd best shot of the tour, but the same shooting percentage as Halvard Hanevold and Vincent Defrasne. He hit 243 out of 295 targets. He shot both 82% in his prone and standing shoot, he averaged 70% in the individual, 84% in the sprint, 81% in the pursuit, 87% in the mass start, and 76% in the relay.\nOn 13 December 2007, Svendsen took his first world cup victory, at the 20 km in Pokljuka. However, his big breakthrough came when he won two individual gold medals at the 2008 World Championships, winning both the individual and the mass start ahead of Ole Einar Bjørndalen. He went on winning more victories and podiums for the rest of the season, and eventually finished third overall.\nThe 2008/2009 season started off well for Svendsen. By placing on the podium in every one of the first five races, he took the lead in the overall world cup. After the Christmas holiday however, Svendsen struggled to maintain the early season's results, and when he fell ill during the world championships and did not compete in several races, he lost the overall lead. After a couple of middle placings, he returned with a third place at the mass start event in Trondheim, and a fourth place and a victory in Khanty Mansiysk the consecutive week.\n\nHe won a silver medal in the 10 km sprint at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver on the first day of men's biathlon competition and then followed it up with two gold medals in the 20 km individual and the relay event.\nHe won 2 gold medals in 2014 Winter Olympics: in mass-start and mixed relay (together with Ole Einar Bjørndalen, Tiril Eckhoff and Tora Berger).\nSvendsen is 6 ft 1 in (185 cm) tall, and weighs 170 lb (77 kg, 12 st 2 lb)\nOn 9 April 2018, he announced his retirement from biathlon following the 2017–2018 season.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nSvendsen was in a relationship with a fellow biathlete Kaja Eckhoff, sister of the biathletes Stian and Tiril Eckhoff, for several years after meeting her in the early 2000s at the Norges Toppidrettsgymnas in Lillehammer where they both studied as teenagers, before breaking up in the summer of 2011.\nHe then was in a relationship with Samantha Skogrand from November 2013 to autumn 2022. They got engaged in December 2016, but never married. In January 2019 the couple became parents to a son whom they named Magnus and in July 2021 they welcomed their second child - daughter Elsa. The family resided in Oslo. They announced their separation in a joint statement on Instagram on 28 April 2023.\nAfter retiring from competition in 2018 Svendsen decided to study for a bachelor's degree in business administration. While studying he worked as a biathlon expert for the Norwegian TV channel NRK in 2019-2021 and a coach with the privately funded Norwegian biathlon youth team Meistebakken. As of 2023 he has finished his studies and is working for the Norwegian real estate company Fredensborg Fritid as a real estate developer.\n\n\n== Biathlon results ==\nAll results are sourced from the International Biathlon Union.\n\n\n=== Olympic Games ===\n8 medals (4 gold, 3 silver, 1 bronze)\n\n*The mixed relay was added as an event in 2014.\n\n\n=== World Championships ===\n21 medals (12 gold, 6 silver, 3 bronze)\n\n*During Olympic seasons competitions are only held for those events not included in the Olympic program.\n\n\n=== Junior/Youth World Championships ===\n\n\n=== World Cup ===\n\n\n=== Individual victories ===\n38 victories (8 In, 11 Sp, 12 Pu, 7 MS) \n\n*Results are from UIPMB and IBU races which include the Biathlon World Cup, Biathlon World Championships and the Winter Olympic Games.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nEmil Hegle Svendsen at IBU BiathlonWorld.com Emil Hegle Svendsen at IBU BiathlonResults.com \nEmil Hegle Svendsen at the International Ski and Snowboard Federation \nEmil Hegle Svendsen at Olympics.com \nEmil Hegle Svendsen at Olympedia \nYahoo! Sports profile for the 2006 Winter Olympics at the Wayback Machine (archived 6 April 2012)"}
{"title": "Emil Zátopek", "requested": "Emil Zátopek", "extract": "Emil Zátopek (Czech: [ˈɛmɪl ˈzaːtopɛk] ; 19 September 1922 – 21 November 2000) was a Czech long-distance runner who won three gold medals at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki. He came first in the 5,000 metres and 10,000 metres runs before he decided at the last minute to compete in the first marathon of his life, which he also won. Zátopek was nicknamed the \"Czech Locomotive\".\nIn 1954, Zátopek was the first runner to break the 29-minute barrier in the 10,000 metres. Three years earlier in 1951, he had broken the hour for running 20 km. He was considered one of the greatest runners of the 20th century and was also known for his brutally tough training methods. He popularised interval training after World War II.\nZátopek is the only person to win the 5,000 metres (24 July 1952), 10,000 metres (20 July 1952) and marathon (27 July 1952) in the same Olympic Games. In February 2013, the editors at Runner's World selected him as the greatest runner ever.\n\n\n== Early years ==\nZátopek was born in Kopřivnice as the seventh child in a family of modest means. Aged 16, he began working at the Baťa shoe factory in Zlín. He recalled: \"One day, the factory sports coach, who was very strict, pointed at four boys, including me, and ordered us to run in a race. I protested that I was weak and not fit to run, but the coach sent me for a physical examination, and the doctor said that I was perfectly well. So I had to run, and when I got started, I felt I wanted to win. But I only came in second. That was the way it started\". Zátopek finished second in a field of 100. After that, he took up a serious interest in running by joining a local athletics club, where he developed his own training programme modelled on what he had read about the great Finnish Olympian Paavo Nurmi.\nA mere four years later, in 1944, Zátopek broke the Czechoslovak records for 2,000, 3,000 and 5,000 metres. At the end of the war, he joined the Czechoslovak Army, became an officer and was gradually given more time for his gruelling training regimen.\n\n\n== Competitions ==\nZátopek was selected for the Czechoslovak national team for the 1946 European Championships in Oslo and finished fifth in the 5,000 m in 14:25.8, breaking his own Czechoslovak record of 14:50.2. At the 1948 Summer Olympics in London, Zátopek won the 10,000 m and finished second behind Gaston Reiff from Belgium in the 5,000 m run in a driving rainstorm.\n\nThe following year, Zátopek broke the 10,000 m world record twice and went on to better his own record three times over the next four seasons. He also set records in the 5,000 m (1954), 20,000 m (twice in 1951), one-hour run (twice in 1951), 25,000 m (1952 and 1955) and 30,000 m (1952). He won the 5,000 m and 10,000 m at the 1950 European Championships and the 10,000 m at the next European Championships.\nAt the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki, Zátopek won gold in the 5,000 m, 10,000 m and marathon, breaking Olympic records in each event. Zátopek is the only person to win these three long-distance events in the same Olympic Games. His victory in the 5,000 m came after a ferocious last lap in 57.5 seconds, during which he went from fourth place to first in the final turn, passing first Alain Mimoun of France, then Herbert Schade of West Germany and finally Chris Chataway of Great Britain. Zátopek's final medal came when he decided at the last minute to compete in the marathon for the first time; he won the race. His strategy for the marathon was simple: race alongside Jim Peters, the British world-record holder. After a punishing first fifteen kilometres, in which Peters knew he had overtaxed himself, Zátopek asked the Englishman what he thought of the race thus far. The astonished Peters told the Czech that the pace was \"too slow\", in an attempt to deceive Zátopek, at which point the latter simply accelerated away. Peters did not finish, while Zátopek won the race and set an Olympic record. Zátopek beat second-placed Reinaldo Gorno (Argentina) by 2:01 minutes.\nZátopek attempted to defend his marathon gold medal in 1956; however, he suffered a groin injury while training and was hospitalised for six weeks. He resumed training the day after leaving the hospital but never quite regained his form. He finished sixth in the marathon, which was won by his old rival and friend Alain Mimoun. Zátopek retired from competition in 1957.\nZátopek's running style was distinctive and very much at odds with what was considered to be efficient at the time. His head would often roll, face contorted with effort, while his torso swung from side to side. He often wheezed and panted audibly while running, which earned him the nicknames of \"Emil the Terrible\" or the \"Czech Locomotive\". When asked about his tortured facial expressions, Zátopek is said to have replied: \"It isn't gymnastics or figure skating, you know\". In addition, he would train in any weather, including snow, and would often do so while wearing heavy work boots as opposed to special running shoes. He was always willing to advise other runners. One example he often gave of how to be relaxed was to ensure that, while running, a person gently touched the tip of their thumb with the tip of an index or middle finger; that slight contact would ensure that arms and shoulders remained relaxed.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nHis wife Dana Zátopková (born the same day and year as her husband) won a gold medal in the javelin throw at the 1952 Olympics, only a few moments after Zátopek's victory in the 5,000 m. She also finished second at the 1960 Olympics. An example of the playful relationship between husband and wife came when he attempted to take some credit for his wife's Olympic victory: during her press conference, he claimed that his victory in the 5,000 m had \"inspired\" her. His wife's indignant response was: \"Really? Okay, go inspire some other girl and see if she throws a javelin fifty metres!”\nZátopek was known for his friendly and gregarious personality and for his ability to speak six languages. He was regularly visited at his home in Prague by international athletes he had befriended at competitions. His British rival Gordon Pirie described his as \"the merriest and gayest home I've been in\".\nEmil and Dana were the witnesses at the wedding ceremony of Olympic gold medalists Olga Fikotová and Harold Connolly in Prague in 1957, at the height of the Cold War. Zátopek had spoken to the Czechoslovak president Antonín Zápotocký to request help in getting national heroine Olga a permit to marry the American Connolly. The permit was received a few days later.\nIn 1966, Zátopek hosted the Australian Ron Clarke when he visited Prague for a race. Zátopek knew that while Clarke held many middle-distance track and field world records, he had failed to win an Olympic gold medal (including being beaten by Billy Mills in a major upset). At the end of the visit, Zátopek gave one of his gold medals from the 1952 Olympics to Clarke.\n\n\n== Later years and death ==\n\nA hero in his native country, Zátopek was an influential figure in the Communist Party. However, he supported the party's democratic wing and, after the 1968 Prague Spring, was stripped of his rank and expelled from the army and the party, removed from all important positions and forced to work in a string of menial manual labour positions.\nHe gained employment in \"Stavební Geologie\", one of the few companies not discouraged from employing out-of-favour citizens, and worked prospecting for natural resources around Bohemia, being able to visit his wife in Prague only infrequently. His work in such a field gave rise to a rumour that he had been sent (as many before him were) to the uranium mine labour camps; however, the camps and the last of the mines had closed many years before. It is also rumoured that Zátopek had a short stint at refuse collection, but was let go as he was unable to complete a round without a horde of citizens insisting on helping him, though no evidence exists of this ever happening.\nIn 1977, after five years away from his wife and friends, Zátopek's spirit was broken; the communist government, no longer deeming him a threat, allowed him back to Prague with the offer of a further humiliating and menial job in the ČSTV (Czechoslovak Union of Physical Education). As the only option to get back to Prague and his wife, Zátopek accepted the offer. Using his gift as a linguist, ČSTV put him to work monitoring foreign publications for the latest developments in sports science and training techniques. It was a lowly job shuffling papers in a small office under Strahov Stadium. He dutifully served until his retirement in the early 1980s.\nOn 9 March 1990, Zátopek was rehabilitated by Václav Havel.\nZátopek died in Prague on 21 November 2000 at the age of 78, from the complications of a stroke. His funeral at Prague's National Theatre was crowded with leading figures from the international sports world.\nZátopek was awarded the Pierre de Coubertin medal (the \"True Spirit of Sportsmanship\" medal) in 1975. In 2012, he was named among the first twelve athletes to be inducted into the IAAF Hall of Fame. A life-size bronze statue of Zátopek was unveiled at the Stadium of Youth in Zlín in September 2014.\n\n\n== In popular culture ==\nThe 2021 film Zátopek focuses on his personal life and sports career.\nThe most prestigious track race in Australia is named after him.\nFrench writer Jean Echenoz published an updated biography of Zátopek titled Courir (Running).\nA Bengali novel by Mati Nandi, Naran (নারান), mentioned him. In it he is the role model for the protagonist, a Bengali Hindu refugee from East Pakistan who relocated to Calcutta in 1947 to evade the religious onslaught and build up his life again from scratch.\nThe song \"Czech Locomotive\" by Australian psychedelic rock band Pond off of their album 9 is about him.\nBritish punk-rock band Zatopeks chose their name after Emil Zátopek.\nŠkoda Transportation named its electric locomotive family 109E after him.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nEmil Zátopek at World Athletics\nEmil Zátopek at Olympedia\nEmil Zátopek at Olympics.comEmil Zátopek at OlympicChannel.com (archived)Emil Zátopek at Olympic.org (archived)\nEmil Zátopek at Olympijskytym.cz (in Czech)Emil Zátopek at Olympic.cz (in Czech) (archived)\nEmil Zatopek at Running Times\nEmil Zatopek Biography\nRunning Past profile of Zatopek\nArchive Video of 5 km Olympic run from Runningpast.com"}
{"title": "Emma McKeon", "requested": "Emma McKeon", "extract": "Emma Jennifer McKeon,  (born 24 May 1994) is an Australian retired competitive swimmer. She is an eight-time world record holder, three current and five former, in relays. Her total career haul of 14 Olympic medals following the 2024 Olympic Games includes one gold medal from the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, four gold medals from the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo and one gold medal from the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris. With four gold and three bronze medals she was the most decorated athlete across all sports at the 2020 Summer Olympics, and tied for the most medals won by a woman in a single Olympic Games. She also won 20 medals, including five gold medals, at the World Aquatics Championships; and a record 20 medals, including 14 gold, at the Commonwealth Games.\nIn 2024, McKeon surpassed Ian Thorpe for the most number of Olympic gold medals won over the course of an Australian athlete's career with six total gold medals earned at her three appearances at the Olympic Games. She was also the highest scoring competitor, male or female, for the 2021 FINA Swimming World Cup where she earned a total of fourteen medals, including ten gold medals and four silver medals. She is the most decorated Australian Olympian of all time and the eighth-most decorated Olympian of all time. She is widely considered one of the greatest swimmers of all time.\n\n\n== Early life and education ==\nMcKeon was born on 24 May 1994 in Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia. She is the sister of Kaitlin, Olympian David McKeon, and the daughter of four-time Commonwealth gold medalist and two-time Olympian Ron McKeon, both of whom are also swimmers. Her mother, Susie, was also a swimmer who competed in the Commonwealth Games and her uncle, Rob Woodhouse, was a two-time Olympian. She completed her secondary education in 2012 from The Illawarra Grammar School and following graduation, at the age of 18, relocated to Brisbane to train under Vince Raleigh at the Chandler Aquatic Centre in 2014. In 2015, McKeon switched coaches again and began training under Michael Bohl, initially at Brisbane's St Peters Western Swimming Club before the pair relocated to Griffith University on the Gold Coast in 2017 where McKeon studied a bachelor's degree in public health and health promotion with a major in nutrition.\n\n\n== Swimming career ==\nMcKeon competed at the 2010 Summer Youth Olympics held in Singapore. She won a gold medal in the girls' 4 × 100 metre medley relay; silver medals in the 100 metre freestyle and the mixed 4 × 100 metre freestyle relay; and bronze medals in the 50 metre freestyle, 200 metre freestyle, and mixed 4 × 100 metre medley relay.\n\n\n=== Olympic Games ===\n\n\n==== 2012 Olympic Trials ====\nMcKeon missed out on being selected for the London 2012 Summer Olympics after failing to place in her freestyle and butterfly events at the 2012 Olympic Trials. The then 17-year-old agonisingly finished seventh in the 100 metres freestyle, one spot away from qualifying for her first Olympics in the 400 metres freestyle relay.\nAs a result, she took a break from swimming to help rejuvenate her drive and love of the sport.\n\n\n==== 2016 Summer Olympics ====\n\nMcKeon was selected as part of the Australian team for the 2016 Summer Olympics, held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Her brother David was also selected meaning the pair were the first brother and sister to swim at an Olympic Games for Australia since John and Ilsa Konrads in 1960. McKeon led off the 4 × 100 metre freestyle relay in a 53.41 split, and with an overall world record time of 3:30.65, won a gold medal. In the 100 metre butterfly, McKeon swam a 57.33 to advance ninth into the semifinal where she placed second in a time of 56.81. In the final, McKeon finished in sixth place in a time of 57.05. McKeon swam a 1:55.80 in the 200 metre freestyle preliminary heats to continue into the semifinals where she qualified sixth with a time of 1:56.29. In the final, McKeon collected the bronze medal in a time of 1:54.92. As part of the 4 × 200 metre freestyle, McKeon swam the second leg of the race and with a split of 1:54.64, helped Australia earn a silver medal with an overall time of 7:44.87. McKeon swam a 56.95 in the butterfly leg of the 4 × 100 metre medley relay, collecting a silver medal as Australia finished with an overall time of 3:55.00.\n\n\n==== 2020 Summer Olympics ====\n\nAt the 2020 Summer Olympics held in Tokyo, Japan, McKeon won seven medals, the most by a female swimmer at a single Olympic Games. Her feat equalled the most medals won by a female athlete in any sport at a single Olympic Games, tying Soviet gymnast Maria Gorokhovskaya. McKeon broke the record for the most Olympic medals ever received by an Australian, a title previously held by Ian Thorpe and Leisel Jones, after winning four gold and three bronze medals, and bringing her total medal count to 11.\nIn the 4 × 100 metre freestyle relay, McKeon swam a 51.35 split as the third relay leg, helping Australia to secure the gold medal and set a new world record with an overall time of 3:29.69. In the preliminary heats of the 100 metre butterfly, McKeon set a new Oceanian record with a time of 55.82 to advance into the semifinals, where she placed third with a time of 56.33. In the final, McKeon broke her Oceanian record with a time of 55.72, earning herself the bronze medal. McKeon swam the second leg of the 4 × 200 metre freestyle relay in a 1:55.31 split, helping Australia to win the bronze medal and set a new Oceanian record in an overall time of 7:41.29. In the 100 metre freestyle, McKeon advanced through to the semifinals after qualifying first in the preliminary heats with a time of 52.13. In the semifinal, she swam a 52.32 to make it through in first to the final, where she won the gold medal and set a new Olympic record with a time of 51.96, the second fastest time in history. McKeon anchored the mixed 4 × 100 metre medley relay final, and with a 51.73 freestyle split helped to win the bronze medal with an overall time of 3:38.95. In the 50 metre freestyle, McKeon swam a 24.02 in the preliminary heats to advance first into the semifinals, where she qualified first for the final in a time of 24.00. In the final, McKeon won gold and set a new Olympic record after swimming a time of 23.81. On the last day of competition, McKeon swam the butterfly leg of the 4 × 100 metre medley relay in a 55.91 split, her efforts helping Australia collect the gold medal and set a new Olympic record in an overall time of 3:51.60.\n\n\n==== 2024 Summer Olympics ====\n\nAt the 2024 Summer Olympic Games in Paris, France McKeon won 3 medals, one each of gold, silver and bronze. This brought her career Olympic medal tally to 14 medals equalling the total for most medals by a female swimmer.\nOn day 1 McKeon swam the fastest split (51.94) in the prelims of the 4×100 metre freestyle relay earning her a spot in the final swimming the 3rd leg for the Australian team. McKeon split 52.39 in the final with the Australians winning the gold medal with a time of 3:28.92. This was McKeon's 6th Olympic gold medal, the most gold medals won by any Australian Olympian.\nThe following day McKeon swam the final of the 100 metre butterfly finishing sixth with a time of 56.93. On day 7 she swam the butterfly leg in the prelims of the Mixed 4 × 100 metre medley relay with a 55.86 split earning a bronze medal when the Australians finished 3rd in the final.\nOn the final day of swimming at Paris McKeon swam the butterfly leg of the Women's 4 × 100 metre medley relay. The Australians finished 2nd in a time of 3:53.11 earning her a silver medal. McKeon's fly split was 56.25. This was the final swim of McKeon's career as she confirmed her retirement on 25 November 2024.\n\n\n=== World Championships ===\n\n\n==== 2013 ====\nIn 2013, McKeon won a silver medal in the 4 × 100 metre freestyle relay at the 15th FINA World Championships held in Barcelona, Spain. She also swam in the heats of the 4 × 100 metre medley relay and the 4 × 200 metre freestyle relay, helping Australia into the final, where they earned a silver medal in both events.\n\n\n==== 2015 ====\nIn 2015, McKeon competed at the 16th FINA World Championships held in Kazan, Russia. She won a gold medal in the 4 × 100 metre freestyle relay, swimming a 53.57 split as the second leg of the race. The team swam an overall time of 3:31.48, setting a new World Championships record. In the 4 × 100 metre medley relay, McKeon swam a 57.59 split for the butterfly leg and with an overall time of 3:54.44, earned the bronze medal. McKeon also finished fourth in the 100 metre butterfly with a time of 57.67, and in a time of 1:56.41 placed seventh in the 200 metre freestyle.\n\n\n==== 2017 ====\nMcKeon won four silver and two bronze medals at the 2017 World Swimming Championships in Budapest, Hungary. In the 100 m butterfly, McKeon advanced through to the semifinals after qualifying third in the preliminary heats with a time of 56.81. In the semifinal, she swam a time of 56.23, tying the Oceania record and placing second to make it through to the final. In the final, McKeon finished second behind Sarah Sjöström, with a time of 56.18, setting a new record of Oceania record and earning the silver medal. In the 200 m freestyle, McKeon swam a 1:56.61 in the preliminary heats to continue into the semifinals with the fourth fastest time. In the semifinals McKeon placed second in her heat and second overall with a time of 1:54.99 to advance into the final, where she finished equal second with a time of 1:55.15, sharing the silver medal with Katie Ledecky. McKeon anchored the 4×100 metre freestyle relay final and with a 52.29 split help to win a silver medal with an overall time of 3:32.01. As part of the 4 × 100 m mixed medley relay, McKeon swam the butterfly leg in a 56.51 split, and with an overall time of 3:41.21, the team set a new Oceanian record and helped themselves to the silver medal.\n\n\n==== 2019 ====\nAt the 2019 World Aquatics Championships at Gwangju in South Korea McKeon won six medals. She won three gold medals for the 4×100 metre freestyle relay, 4×200 metre freestyle relay and 4 × 100 m mixed medley relay. In the 4x200 metre relay the Australians broke the world record setting a time of 7:41.50 with McKeon swimming the anchor leg in a split of 1:54.90. McKeon also collected two silver medals for the 4×100 metre medley relay and the 4 × 100 m mixed freestyle relay. In the mixed 4×100 metre freestyle relay final, McKeon split 1:54.90 as the third leg of the relay, and helped set a new Oceanian and Australian record with an overall time of 3:19.97. In her individual events, McKeon received a bronze medal for the 100 metre butterfly with a time of 56.61, and finished fourth in the 100 metre freestyle in a time of 52.75.\n\n\n==== 2023 ====\nMcKeon won one gold and two silver medals at the 2023 World Aquatics Championships in Fukuoka, Japan. She won gold swimming the anchor leg for the Australian team in the 4×100 metre freestyle relay final with a 51.90 split. The Australians broke the world record by 1.73 seconds with a time of 3:27.96.  McKeon also earned a silver medal swimming the butterfly leg of the 4×100 metre medley relay final with a 56.44 split with an overall time of 3:53.37. She also collected a silver medal for swimming the butterfly leg (56.70) in the preliminaries of the mixed 4 × 100 m medley relay.\nIn individual events McKeon finished fourth in the 100 metre butterfly with a time of 56.88, fifth in the 50 metre freestyle (24.35) and fifth in the 100 metre freestyle (52.83).\n\n\n=== Commonwealth Games ===\n\n\n==== 2014 ====\n\nMcKeon was selected as part of the Australian squad for the 2014 Commonwealth Games, held in Glasgow, Scotland. On the first day of competition, McKeon set a new Games record in the preliminary heats of the 200 metre freestyle with a time of 1:56.57. In the final, she broke that Games record with a new time of 1:55.57 to win the gold medal. As part of the 4 × 100 metre freestyle relay, McKeon swam the third leg and in a split of 52.91 helped Australia to the gold medal and set a new world record time of 3:30.98. In the 100 metre butterfly, McKeon placed sixth in the preliminary heats with a time of 58.83 to continue into the semifinal where she swam a 58.40, advancing into the final in fourth place. In the final, McKeon finished third in a time of 57.66 to earn the bronze medal. McKeon swam a time of 54.19 in the preliminary heats of the 100 metre freestyle to advance into the semifinals, where she finished in third place in a time of 53.92. In the final, McKeon swam a 53.61 to finish third behind the Campbell sisters as Australia took all podium positions. As part of the 4 × 200 metre freestyle relay, McKeon kicked off the race in a split of 1:56.01, and with an overall time of 7:49.90, Australia earned the gold medal and set a new Games record. In the 4 × 100 metre medley relay, McKeon swam the butterfly leg in a time of 56.95, to help Australia win the gold medal and set a new Games record in an overall time of 3:56.23. McKeon's six medals equalled a Commonwealth Games record for swimmers previously set by Ian Thorpe and Susie O'Neill.\n\n\n==== 2018 ====\n\nMcKeon won the most number of medals in swimming at the 2018 Commonwealth Games in Gold Coast, Queensland, with four gold and two bronze medals; equalling her previous record set at the 2014 Commonwealth Games. Swimming in the 200 metre freestyle, McKeon placed second in the preliminary heats with a time of 1:57.40 to advance through to the final where earned the bronze medal in a time of 1:56.26. In the 4x100 metre freestyle relay, McKeon split a 52.99 as the third leg of the relay and with an overall time of 3:30.05, helped Australia win gold and set a new world record In the 100 metre butterfly, McKeon swam a time of 58.04 in the preliminary heats to continue into the semifinal where she finished third with a time of 57.94. In the final, McKeon swam 56.78 to win herself the gold medal and set a new Games record. McKeon started the 4 × 200 metre freestyle relay with a 1:56.62 split, which helped Australia win the gold medal and set a new Games record in an overall time of 7:48.04. McKeon qualified fourth in the 200 metre butterfly preliminary heats with a time of 2:09.55, making it through to the final where she picked up the bronze medal in a time of 2:08.05. As part of the 4x100 metre medley relay, McKeon split a 56.42 for the butterfly leg to help Australia win the gold medal and set a new Australian All Comers record with an overall time of 3:54.36.\n\n\n==== 2022 ====\n\nAs a result of her successful 2021 Olympics campaign, and under a new rule from Swimming Australia, McKeon was pre-selected for the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, England without having to take part in the Australian Swimming Championships. Having also chosen to sit out of the 2022 World Aquatics Championships in Budapest, the Commonwealth Games was the first time McKeon raced competitively in 2022. McKeon broke the record for the most Commonwealth Games medals ever received after winning six gold, one silver and one bronze medals, and bringing her total medal count to 20. She also equalled the most gold medals won at a single Games previously set by Susie O'Neill and Ian Thorpe; and her eight medals equals the most medals won at a single Games, a record previously held by Susie O'Neill.\nIn the mixed 4 × 100 metre freestyle relay, a new event for the Games, McKeon split a 52.21 in the final leg, securing a gold medal and helping to set a Commonwealth Games record with an overall time of 3:21.18. McKeon anchored the women's 4 × 100 metre freestyle relay final and with a 52.04 split help to win a gold medal with an overall time of 3:30.64. In the 50 metre freestyle, McKeon advanced through to the semifinals after qualifying second in the preliminary heats with a time of 24.52. In the semifinal, she swam a time of 24.51, placing third and making it through to the final, where she won the gold medal in a time of 23.99. McKeon swam a 26.65 in the 50 metre butterfly preliminary heats to qualify fourth for the semifinal where she advanced through in a time of 26.02. In the final, McKeon earned herself a gold medal after finishing first in a time of 25.90. In another new event for the Games, McKeon anchored the mixed 4 × 100 metre medley relay, helping to win a gold medal and setting a Games record with a 51.88 split for her freestyle leg, and an overall time of 3:41.30. In the women's 4 × 100 metre medley relay, McKeon swam a 56.59 split for the butterfly leg and with an overall time of 3:54.44, earned the gold medal. In the 100 metre butterfly, McKeon swam a 57.34 in the preliminary heats to qualify first for the semifinal where she swam a 57.49 and again qualified first for the final. In the final, she finished in second place with a time of 56.38 securing a silver medal. In her final event of the program, McKeon swam a 55.36 in the 100 metre freestyle preliminary heats to advance through to the semifinals after qualifying in sixth position. In the semifinal, she swam a time of 53.1, qualifying first for the final, where she swam a 52.94 to finish in third place, earning a bronze medal.\n\n\n=== International Swimming League (ISL) ===\nMcKeon was a member of the London Roar team and she competed in the 2019 and 2021 seasons of the International Swimming League (ISL). The ISL is an annual professional swimming league featuring a team-based competition format with fast-paced race sessions. 10 teams featuring the world's best swimmers compete.\n\n\n=== 2021 Swimming World Cup ===\n\n\n==== Stops 1—2: Berlin and Budapest ====\nMcKeon was the overall highest scoring female competitor at the short course 2021 FINA Swimming World Cup stop in Budapest, Hungary. Among the events she won in Budapest was the 50 metre butterfly in which she finished first with a time of 24.97 seconds. In the 100 metre freestyle, McKeon dropped almost half a second from her time at the first World Cup stop to win the gold medal in a time of 50.58 seconds which tied the World Cup record set by Sarah Sjöström of Sweden in 2017. Prior to stop two in Budapest, at the first stop in Berlin, she swam a personal best time in the 100 metre freestyle with a time of 50.96 seconds and won the gold medal. For the first two World Cup stops, Berlin and Budapest, McKeon was the highest scoring female competitor both at each individual stop and combined across both stops. McKeon's total score for the Budapest stop, 58.3 points, was the highest individual score by any competitor, male or female, for the first two stops of the World Cup circuit, with the only other competitors scoring in the 58 point range being Matthew Sates of South Africa who scored 58.2 points in Berlin, Tom Shields of the United States who scored 58.1 points in Budapest, and Kira Toussaint of the Netherlands who scored 58.1 points in Budapest. McKeon's moment where she tied the World Cup record set by Sarah Sjöström was ranked by FINA as the number five moment from the entire 2021 Swimming World Cup.\n\n\n==== Stop 3: Doha ====\n\nStar status landed McKeon at the top of the list of athletes to watch at the third World Cup stop, held in Doha, Qatar, as named by Swimming World and FINA in advance of the start of competition. Going for building consistency in her four individual events, McKeon entered to compete in the 50 metre freestyle, 100 metre freestyle, 50 metre butterfly, and 100 metre butterfly in Doha. On day one of competition, McKeon swam a 24.09 in the prelims heats of the 50 metre freestyle in the morning, ranking second by a twenty-three hundredths of a seconds after Ranomi Kromowidjojo of the Netherlands and advancing to the final in the evening. Finishing in a time of 23.54 in the final, McKeon won her first medal of the Doha stop, a silver medal. Having won the gold medal in the 50 metre freestyle in Berlin and Budapest, the silver medal was her first non-gold medal finish in the event for the year's World Cup circuit. The next day, 22 October, McKeon raced in the timed final of the 50 metre butterfly, finishing in a time of 25.07 seconds and making the podium by winning the bronze medal. The third and final day of competition in Doha, she started off with 51.82 in the prelims of the 100 metre freestyle, ranking first overall and advancing to the final. In the evening finals session, McKeon swam a 55.83 and won the gold medal in her first race of the evening, the 100 metre butterfly. She finished off her events in Doha in the final of the 100 metre freestyle, swimming a 51.15 and finishing first to win the gold medal. When scores were tallied across the first three stops of the World Cup, McKeon retained her overall lead amongst female competitors with her total score of 170.0 points, though Kira Toussaint was not far behind in second-place with a score of 169.2 points.\n\n\n==== Stop 4: Kazan ====\n\nHer entries in sprint events for both freestyle and butterfly at the fourth and final stop of the World Cup circuit, located at the Palace of Water Sports in Kazan, Russia for the year, were noted by FINA as races to watch during competition. McKeon spoke of competition for the last stop, providing context in terms of her history competing in Kazan and performance with a lack of spectators, at a FINA-hosted press conference preceding competition:\n\nWhat I expect is a very hot week-end, and very interesting finals. I am happy to be back to Kazan as well. I hope to keep my lead. But I will mostly be focused on my own swimming, I will try to improve my time. First I visited the city in 2015, for the world championships, where I had my first individual races. Then we competed at the stadium, now – in the Aquatics Palace of Kazan. All in all, Russia is very different from Australia, but I like it. The competition will be held without spectators, like we did in Tokyo. That's our new reality. That does not help to swim, but there is no choice.\nIn the prelims heats of the 50 metre freestyle on day one of competition, McKeon was the only swimmer under 24 seconds and advanced to the final ranked first with her time of 23.98 seconds. She followed up her strong morning performance with a gold medal-winning time of 23.53 seconds in the final in the evening, just three hundredths of a second off her personal best time in the event. The morning of day two, McKeon tied for first in the prelims heats of the 50 metre butterfly with a time of 25.50 seconds and advanced to the final. Later in the day, she won the silver medal with a personal best time of 24.94 seconds in the final of the 50 metre butterfly. For the last day of competition of the World Cup circuit, McKeon had a busy morning, she started off by ranking first in the 100 metre butterfly prelims heats with a time of 57.35 seconds, which was about four tenths of a second ahead of second-ranked Maria Ugolkova of Switzerland. In the 100 metre freestyle prelims heats, her second race of the morning, McKeon ranked first again, this time by over a second ahead of second-ranked competitor Madison Wilson of Australia with her time of 51.94 seconds. McKeon won the gold medal in the final of the 100 metre butterfly later in the day, swimming a time of 55.63 seconds. She won her second gold medal of the day in the final of the 100 metre freestyle with a time of 50.67 seconds. Her time of 50.67 seconds registered as the fourth fastest swim in history and made two of the four fastest times in the event hers, she also had the second fastest swim of 50.58 seconds. Speaking of her wins, McKeon told FINA, \"I am in pretty in good shape now. The preparations, which I took for the Olympics, still pay off.\" McKeon's performances across all four stops of the World Cup made her the highest overall scoring competitor of any gender, coming in at 228.3 total points and $144,000 of prize money. The only competitor to score higher than her at a single World Cup stop was male swimmer Daiya Seto of Japan who scored 58.9 points at the Kazan stop. In terms of total medals won by a female competitor, McKeon ranked third with her total of fourteen medals, which included ten gold medals, three silver medals, and one bronze medal, and in terms of similarity of medal count and breakdown with another competitor, male or female, she and Tom Shields of the United States had the exact same medal count and breakdown.\n\n\n=== 2022 Short Course Championships ===\n\n\n==== Australian Short Course Championships ====\nAt the Australian Short Course Swimming Championships held in Sydney, New South Wales in August 2022, McKeon swam a light schedule, competing in just two events. In the 100 metre freestyle, she swam 51.61 in the preliminary heats to qualify first for the final, where she won gold in a time of 51.03. McKeon again qualified first in the 50 metre freestyle preliminary heats with a time of 23.79. In the final, McKeon swam a 23.61 to finish first, earning herself a gold medal.\n\n\n==== FINA World Short Course Championships ====\n\nMcKeon was selected as part of a 36-person team for the FINA World Swimming Championships held in Melbourne, Victoria in December 2022. McKeon started her campaign swimming a 51.76 split in the women's 4 × 100 metre freestyle relay in the preliminary heats to advance first through to the final. In the final, McKeon anchored the relay splitting a 49.96 and becoming the first woman to swim a sub-50 freestyle short course split. Her efforts earned Australia a gold medal and a new World Short Course record with an overall time of 3:25.43. In the 100 metre freestyle, McKeon advanced through to the semifinals after qualifying third in the preliminary heats with a time of 52.23. In the semifinal, she swam a 51.28 to make it through in first to the final, where she won the gold medal and set a new World Championships record with a time of 50.77. McKeon split a 22.73 in the last leg of the women's 4 × 50 metre freestyle relay final and with an overall time of 1:34.23, earned a silver medal. As part of the mixed 4 × 50 metre freestyle relay, McKeon swam the final leg of the preliminary heats in a time of 22.98 to see Australia qualify second for the final. In the final, McKeon anchored the relay and with a 22.62 split, she not only helped Australia win the silver medal, but she also become the fastest women in history to split a 50-free leg. In the 50 metre freestyle, McKeon swam a 23.93 in the preliminary heats to advance sixth into the semifinals, where she qualified second for the final in a time of 23.51. In the final, McKeon won gold and set a new World Championships record after swimming a time of 23.04. McKeon swam the butterfly leg of the women's 4 × 50 metre medley relay preliminary heat in a split of 23.23, and with an overall time of 1:44.78 qualified first for the final, where she again swam the butterfly leg in a time of 24.43. Her efforts helped Australia win a gold medal and with an overall time of 1:42.35 established a new World Short Course record. As part of the women's 4 × 100 metre medley relay, McKeon split a 53.93 for the butterfly leg and with an overall time of 3:44.92, collected a silver medal.\n\n\n== Results in major championships ==\n\n\n== Career best times ==\n\n\n=== Long course metres (50 m pool) ===\nAs of 1 August 2022 \n\n\n=== Short course metres (25 m pool) ===\nAs of 18 December 2022 \n\n\n== World records ==\n\n\n=== Long course metres ===\n\na  split 52.91 (3rd leg); with Bronte Campbell (1st leg), Melanie Schlanger (2nd leg), Cate Campbell (4th leg)\nb  split 53.41 (1st leg); with Brittany Elmslie (2nd leg), Bronte Campbell (3rd leg), Cate Campbell (4th leg)\nc  split 52.99 (3rd leg); with Shayna Jack (1st leg), Bronte Campbell (2nd leg), Cate Campbell (4th leg)\nd  split 1:54.90 (4th leg); with Ariarne Titmus (1st leg), Madison Wilson (2nd leg), Brianna Throssell (3rd leg)\ne  split 51.35 (3rd leg); with Bronte Campbell (1st leg), Meg Harris (2nd leg), Cate Campbell (4th leg)\nf  split 51.90 (4th leg); with Mollie O'Callaghan (1st leg), Shayna Jack (2nd leg), Meg Harris (3rd leg)\n\n\n=== Short course metres ===\n\na  split 49.96 (4th leg); with Mollie O'Callaghan (1st leg), Madison Wilson (2nd leg), Meg Harris (3rd leg)\nb  split 24.43 (butterfly leg); with Mollie O'Callaghan (backstroke leg), Chelsea Hodges (breaststroke leg), Madison Wilson (freestyle leg)\n\n\n== Olympic records ==\n\n\n=== Long course metres ===\n\na  split 53.41 (1st leg); with Brittany Elmslie (2nd leg), Bronte Campbell (3rd leg), Cate Campbell (4th leg)\nb  split 51.35 (3rd leg); with Bronte Campbell (1st leg), Meg Harris (2nd leg), Cate Campbell (4th leg)\nc  split 55.91 for butterfly leg; with Kaylee McKeown (backstroke), Chelsea Hodges (breaststroke), Cate Campbell (freestyle)\nd  split 52.39 (3rd leg) with Mollie O'Callaghan (1st leg), Shayna Jack (2nd leg), Meg Harris (4th leg)\n\n\n== Continental and national records ==\n\n\n=== Long course metres ===\n\n\n=== Short course metres ===\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nMcKeon briefly dated fellow Australian swimmer Kyle Chalmers in 2021. In April 2022, McKeon began dating musician turned swimmer, Cody Simpson, although the couple did not confirm their relationship until July of the same year. It was confirmed in February 2026 the relationship with Simpson had ended.\nAt the 2022 'Better Future for All' forum held at Griffith University, McKeon suggested that while \"you do want to be inclusive\" it is \"not fair\" to expect cisgender women to compete against transgender women.\n\n\n== Awards and honours ==\nAustralian Women's Health Sport Awards, One to Watch: 2014\nMember of the Order of Australia (AM) in the 2022 Australia Day Honours for \"significant service to swimming as a Gold Medallist at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games\". McKeon was previously awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia in the 2017 Australia Day Honours for \"service to sport as a gold medallist at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games\".\nSwimSwam Top 100 (Women's): 2021 (#15), 2022 (#4)\nFINA, Top 10 Moments: 2021 Swimming World Cup (#5)\nFINA, Top 10 Moments: 2020 Summer Olympics (#8 for becoming the Australian athlete to win the most Olympic medals in any sport over the course of their career)\nSwimming World World Swimmer of the Year (female): 2021\nSwimming World Pacific Rim Swimmer of the Year (female): 2021\nFINA, Athlete of the Year, swimming (female): 2021\nSwimSwam Swammy Award, Oceania Swimmer of the Year (female): 2021\nSwimSwam Swammy Award, Swimmer of the Year (female): 2021\nThe Australian, Australian of the Year nominee: 2021\nIn 2022, McKeon received a nomination for the Laureus World Sports Award for Sportswoman of the Year.\nSwimming Australia, Olympic Program Swimmer of the Year: 2021\nYoung Australian of the Year: 2024.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of Olympic medalists in swimming (women)\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists at a single Games\nList of multiple Olympic medalists\nList of multiple Olympic medalists at a single Games\nList of multiple Summer Olympic medalists\nList of top Olympic gold medalists in swimming\nList of World Aquatics Championships medalists in swimming (women)\nList of Commonwealth Games medallists in swimming (women)\nList of Youth Olympic Games gold medalists who won Olympic gold medals\nWorld record progression 4 × 100 metres freestyle relay\nWorld and Olympic records set at the 2020 Summer Olympics\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nEmma McKeon at World Aquatics\nEmma McKeon at the International Swimming League (archived)\nEmma McKeon at Swimming Australia\nEmma McKeon at the Australian Olympic Committee\nEmma McKeon at Olympedia\nEmma McKeon at Commonwealth Games Australia\nEmma McKeon at InterSportStats\nEmma McKeon at the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games\nEmma McKeon on Instagram"}
{"title": "Eric Heiden", "requested": "Eric Heiden", "extract": "Eric Arthur Heiden (born June 14, 1958) is an American physician and a former long track speed skater, road cyclist and track cyclist. At the 1980 Winter Olympics, Heiden was the most successful athlete, setting four Olympic records, one world record, and winning an unprecedented five individual gold medals–more than any other athlete, and in fact more than any nation except for the Soviet Union (10) and East Germany (9). He was the most successful Winter Olympian from a single edition of any Winter Olympics until 2026 when cross-country skier Johannes Høsflot Klæbo won six golds, although two of his medals are in team events. Heiden's record of five individual Olympic gold medals at a single Winter Games remains unmatched. He delivered the Athlete's Oath at those same 1980 Games. His coach was Dianne Holum.\nHeiden is an icon in the speed skating community. His victories are significant, as few speed skaters (and athletes in general) have won competitions in both sprint and long-distance events. Heiden is the only athlete in the history of speed skating to have won all five events in a single Olympic tournament and the only one to have won a gold medal in all events. He is considered by some to be the best overall speed skater (short and long distances) in the sport's history. Heiden ranked No. 46 in ESPN's SportsCentury 50 Greatest Athletes of the 20th Century in 1999, the only speed skater to make the list. In 2000, a Dutch newspaper called him the greatest skater ever.\n\n\n== Early life, education and family ==\nHeiden was born in Madison, Wisconsin, on June 14, 1958. His father, Jack Heiden, was a longtime orthopedic surgeon in Madison. His sister, Beth Heiden, also became an accomplished cyclist, speed skater, and cross-country skier. In their hometown Shorewood Hills, Wisconsin (a suburb of Madison), Eric and his sister Beth were the driving forces behind the creation of the Heiden Haus, a small outpost where local children can warm up after skating or playing hockey on the ice rink (complete with underground clay platform). He graduated from Madison West High School in 1976.\nAfter starting his undergraduate education at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Heiden transferred to the University of California, San Diego and then to Stanford University in California, earning a B.S. degree in 1984 and an M.D. degree in 1991.\n\n\n== Athletic career ==\n\n\n=== Speed skating ===\nHeiden won the World Junior Speed Skating Championships in 1977 and 1978. During his brief speed skating career, Heiden won three World Allround Championships and four World Sprint Championships, becoming the youngest athlete to do so. Three times he broke the world record in the 1000 metres, twice in the 3000 metres, and once each in the 1500 metres and 10000 metres. He also broke the points world record in both allround and the sprinting distances.\nHeiden finished his speed skating career by finishing second behind Hilbert van der Duim at the 1980 World Allround Championships in Heerenveen. He stood at the top of the Adelskalender, a ranking system for long-track speed skating, for a record 1,495 days, and he won the Oscar Mathisen Award four times in a row from 1977 until 1980. As of 2026, he still is the only skater who has won the award four times.\nHe received the 1980 James E. Sullivan Award as the top amateur athlete in the United States. In 1983, he was inducted into the United States Olympic Hall of Fame.\nHeiden was elected to the Wisconsin Athletic Hall of Fame in 1990.\n\n\n==== World records ====\n\nOver the course of Heiden's career he skated 15 world records:\n\n\n=== Cycling ===\nAfter his speed-skating career Heiden became a professional cyclist.\n\n\n==== Track cycling ====\nAs a track cyclist Heiden competed at the 1981 UCI Track Cycling World Championships in Brno, but was not successful. He finished 19th and last in the men's individual pursuit event.\n\n\n==== Road bicycle racing ====\nHeiden became a professional racing cyclist. He was one of the first cross-over athletes, becoming a founding member of the 7-Eleven Cycling Team. Together with his former speed skating coach (and ex-bike racer), Jim Ochowicz, he conceived of the idea of a European-style sponsored team for North American riders Heiden won a few American professional races. He finished the 1985 Giro d'Italia and took part in the 1986 Tour de France, although he did not complete the race, crashing on a downhill stretch and suffering a concussion five days from the finish.\nHeiden is believed to have recorded one of the fastest times at 14:10 (1986 or 1987) on one of the local benchmark climbs in Woodside, California: Old La Honda Road. In 1985, Heiden won the first U.S. Professional Cycling Championship, becoming the American road race champion.\nIn 1999, Heiden was inducted into the United States Bicycling Hall of Fame.\n\n\n== Medical career ==\nHeiden completed medical school at Stanford University in 1991, and orthopedic residency training at University of California, Davis, in 1996, then spent a year at a sports medicine clinic in Birmingham, Alabama. He returned to California to practice as an orthopedic surgeon in Sacramento. At that time, he also served as team physician for the NBA's Sacramento Kings and the Sacramento Monarchs of the WNBA. In 2002, 2006, 2010 and 2014 he was team physician for the U.S. Olympic speed skating team. He opened a sports medicine-based practice at The Orthopedic Specialty Hospital (TOSH) in Murray, Utah, and expanded Heiden Orthopaedics with an additional office in Park City, Utah.\nIn 2008, Heiden and Massimo Testa published Faster, Better, Stronger, a book about exercise science and exercise programs.\nIn 2009, Heiden was one of the team of doctors assisting U.S. speed skater J.R. Celski as the latter recovered from a very bad speed skating crash during the U.S. Olympic trials. Despite cutting himself to the bone and requiring 60 stitches, Celski was able to recover in time for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, where he won the bronze medal in both men's 1500 m and 5000 m relay.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nHeiden met fellow medical student Karen Drews while the two were studying at Stanford, and they married in 1995. Karen is a hand surgeon. They have a daughter, Zoe, born in 2001.\nHeiden was offered many sponsorship opportunities after his record-setting performance in the 1980 Winter Olympics, but turned down most of them, saying he had enough money, and preferred the anonymity.\nA number of American former gold medal winners, including Heiden, were asked to participate in the ceremonies for the 2002 Winter Olympics held in Salt Lake City, Utah, but Heiden declined after he was passed over for the honor of lighting the Olympic torch.  The 1980 U.S. Hockey Team, which won the gold medal at the 1980 games, was given the honor instead. Heiden said in 2009: \"I was probably just too stubborn. I figured if they don't appreciate what I did as a skater, if they don't appreciate now what I am doing as a human being, I'd just as soon hang out with my buddies and watch it. I did not mean to slight the Olympic hockey team in any way.\"\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists at a single Games\nList of Olympic medalist families\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== Further reading ==\nWangrin, Mark (1999). \"Eric Heiden: True Gold\". In ESPN SportsCentury. New York: Hyperion-ESPN Books. pp. 252–3.\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nEric Heiden at the International Skating Union (archived)\nEric Heiden at SpeedSkatingStats.com\nEric Heiden at the Team USA Hall of Fame\nEric Heiden at Team USA (archived June 14, 2021)\nEric Heiden at Olympics.comEric Heiden at Olympic.org (archived)\nEric Heiden at Olympedia \nEric Heiden at InterSportStats"}
{"title": "Eric Lemming", "requested": "Eric Lemming", "extract": "Eric Otto Valdemar Lemming (22 February 1880 – 5 June 1930) was a Swedish track and field athlete who competed at the 1900, 1906, 1908 and 1912 Olympics in a wide variety of events, which mostly involved throwing and jumping. He had his best results in the javelin throw, which he won at the 1906–1912 Games, and in which he set multiple world records between 1899 and 1912. His last record, measured at 62.32 m, was ratified by the International Association of Athletics Federations as the first official world record.\nJavelin throw was not part of the 1900 Olympics, where Lemming finished fourth in the hammer throw, high jump and pole vault. At the 1906 Intercalated Games he won a gold medal in the javelin throw and three bronze medals, in the shot put, tug of war and ancient pentathlon, which consisted of a standing long jump, discus throw (ancient style), javelin throw, 192 m run, and a Greco-Roman wrestling match. He also finished fourth in the discus throw and stone throwing contests.\nAt the 1908 Olympics, Lemming won two gold medals in two types of javelin throw, and finished eighth in the hammer throw. He won another gold medal in the javelin at his last Olympics in 1912, where his half-brother Oscar placed tenth in pentathlon. Lemming died on 5 June 1930 at the age of 50.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nEric Lemming at World Athletics\nEric Lemming at Tilastopaja (registration required)\nEric Lemming at Athletics Podium\nEric Lemming at Olympics.com\nEric Lemming at the Swedish Olympic Committee (in Swedish)\nEric Lemming at Olympedia\nDe Wael, Herman. Herman's Full Olympians: \"Athletics 1900\".  Accessed 18 March 2006..\nMallon, Bill (1998). The 1900 Olympic Games, Results for All Competitors in All Events, with Commentary. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. ISBN 0-7864-0378-0."}
{"title": "Ester Ledecká", "requested": "Ester Ledecká", "extract": "Ester Ledecká (Czech pronunciation: [ˈɛstɛr  ˈlɛdɛtskaː], born 23 March 1995) is a Czech snowboarder and alpine skier. At the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, Ledecká won gold medals in the super-G in alpine skiing and in the parallel giant slalom in snowboarding, becoming the first person to not only compete in the Winter Olympics using two different types of equipment (skis and snowboard) but to go further and win two gold medals and do so at the same Winter Olympics. She was the second woman to win an Olympic gold in two separate disciplines but the first to do so at the same Winter Olympics. She was the first Czech to win the parallel giant slalom in snowboarding at the FIS Snowboard World Cup.\n\n\n== Early life ==\nEster Ledecká was born in Prague, to mother Zuzana, a figure skater, and father Janek Ledecký, a well-known musician in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. She comes from a sporting family: her maternal grandfather is a former ice hockey player Jan Klapáč, who was a seven-time World Championship and two-time Olympic medallist. In 2014, she was still at high school, attending a distance-learning programme in Prague.\nIce hockey was the first sport she took up as a child, before taking up skiing at the age of four and later adding snowboarding. \"I was following what my brother did,\" Ledecká says. \"He is one and a half years older than me, and so when he started with a board, I wanted to do it too. I was five years old when I started snowboarding, and I did freestyle snowboarding and boardercross until I was about thirteen years old. And again, it was my brother who started with alpine snowboarding, and I wanted to beat him, so I learned that too.\"\nHer hobbies include playing the guitar and singing. She also enjoys participating in summer sports such as beach volleyball and windsurfing.\n\n\n== Career ==\nLedecká competed in her first World Cup tournament in the 2012–13 competition, finishing in 13th place in the parallel giant slalom event. In March 2013, at the age of 17, she won gold in the parallel slalom event at the Junior World Championships, her second gold of the competition. She was named \"Junior Sportsperson of the year\" at the Czech Republic's 2013 Sportsperson of the Year awards.\nDuring the 2013–14 FIS Snowboard World Cup, Ledecká placed second behind Patrizia Kummer in the first parallel slalom event in Bad Gastein and third in the second event. She subsequently won gold at Rogla in the parallel giant slalom event at the same competition, becoming the first Czech to do so. In doing so, she also became just the third Czech to win any World Cup snowboarding event.\nAhead of the 2014 Winter Olympics, The Daily Telegraph's Andrew Lawton mentioned Ledecká as the \"one to watch\" in the women's snowboarding competition. She was among the Czech athletes most expected to win a medal at the games, along with Martina Sáblíková, Gabriela Soukalová and fellow snowboarder Eva Samková. After she had finished ninth in qualifying for the alpine skiing event at the Winter Olympics, the Czech Ski Association attempted to register her as a competitor. However, the FIS rejected the proposal, reiterating that only eight Czechs could compete.\nLedecká made her Olympic debut at the 2014 Winter Olympics on 19 February 2014 in the parallel giant slalom snowboarding event. She reached the quarter-final stage before being eliminated by Patrizia Kummer, who went on to win the gold medal in the event. Ledecká was classified as seventh overall.\nLedecká has combined her snowboarding career with competing in alpine skiing: she made her debut on the FIS Alpine Ski World Cup in February 2016, finishing 24th in her first race, the Kandahar downhill in Garmisch. She went on to score points in four of her first five World Cup races, competing in the downhill and Super-G disciplines.  In 2017 she became the first sportsperson to compete in World Championships in both skiing and snowboarding, taking a gold in the parallel giant slalom and a silver in the parallel slalom at the Freestyle Ski and Snowboarding World Championships in Sierra Nevada, Spain, and scoring top 30 finishes in the downhill, super-G and alpine combined at the Alpine Skiing World Championships in St. Moritz, Switzerland.\nLedecká made her Olympic debut in alpine skiing at the 2018 Winter Olympics while also being qualified for alpine snowboarding. She won the gold medal in super-G in alpine skiing at the 2018 Winter Olympics in a historic upset. She was visibly shocked after finishing 0.01 seconds ahead of the 2014 Olympics defending gold medalist Anna Veith, who had already been proclaimed the winner by many media outlets. Ledecká was ranked 49th in the event before the Olympics and had never medalled in any World Cup level international skiing event. To make the feat even more surprising to reporters, she was rumored to be allegedly racing on skis borrowed from Mikaela Shiffrin (both racers are sponsored by Atomic). She refused to remove her goggles for the post-victory press conference, insisting that this is her trademark (which is true), and when pressed by reporters, she stated that she had skipped wearing makeup as she had not expected to win the event. Her snowboard coach, American Justin Reiter, arrived at the start of the Ladies PGS event with his reversible Czech team jacket confidently already turned gold side out. After victory in the parallel giant slalom she became the first ever female athlete to win an Olympic gold medal in two different disciplines during the same Winter Olympics (Anfisa Reztsova had previously won gold in different disciplines but not at the same Olympics, nor using completely different equipment: cross country skiing in 1988 and biathlon in 1992 and 1994). Ledecká was chosen as the flag bearer for the Czech Republic at the closing ceremony.\nIn the 2018–19 Alpine Ski World Cup, Ledecká finished 24th in the downhill standings and 28th in super-G. In December 2019, Ledecká scored her first win on the Alpine Ski World Cup in downhill at Lake Louise, eclipsing her previous personal best World Cup downhill result of seventh at the same venue two years previously. In December 2020, she won her first  World Cup Super-G race.\nLedecká continued to split her time between snowboarding and Alpine skiing, finishing second in World Cup Alpine skiing in the downhill for the 2020 season and third for the 2022 season, as well as third in the combined in 2020, the last season it has been contested due to the COVID-19 pandemic.  In the 2022 Winter Olympics, Ledecká repeated as the snowboarding gold medalist in parallel giant slalom, while in Alpine skiing she finished fifth in super-G and fourth in \ncombined.  However, she was injured while training during the summer of 2022 and targeted a possible return during February 2023. Ultimately, she was unable to return for the Alpine skiing world championships in February but made it back for the final snowboarding races in March at Berchtesgaden, where she won the women's parallel slalom for her only win of the season.\nOn Thursday March 20, 2025, Ledecká made history as she claimed her third World Championship gold in the parallel giant slalom at St. Moritz, becoming the first athlete in the world to win two FIS World Championship medals in the same season, in two different disciplines.\n\n\n== World Cup results ==\nAll results are sourced from the International Ski Federation (FIS).\n\n\n=== Snowboarding ===\n\n\n==== Season titles ====\n7 titles – (4 parallel overall, 3 parallel giant slalom)\n\n\n==== Season standings ====\n\nStandings through 31 January 2026\n\n\n==== Race podiums ====\n26 wins – (20 PGS, 6 PSL)\n40 podiums – (29 PGS, 11 PSL)\n\n\n=== Alpine skiing ===\n\n\n==== Season standings ====\n\nStandings through 25 March 2026\n\n\n==== Race podiums ====\n4 wins (2 DH, 2 SG)\n12 podiums (7 DH, 4 SG, 1 AC), 49 top tens\n\n\n== Olympic results ==\n3 medals – (3 golds)\n\n\n=== Snowboarding ===\n2 medals – (2 golds)\n\n\n=== Alpine skiing ===\n1 medal – (1 gold)\n\n\n== World Championships results ==\n6 medals – (3 gold, 2 silver, 1 bronze)\n\n\n=== Snowboarding ===\n5 medals – (3 gold, 2 silver)\n\n\n=== Alpine skiing ===\n1 medal – (1 bronze)\n\n\n== See also ==\nCzech Republic at the 2014 Winter Olympics\nCzech Republic at the 2018 Winter Olympics\nDual sport and multi-sport Olympians\nList of multi-sport athletes - Snowboarding\nList of multi-sport champions\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists in one event\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nEster Ledecká at FIS (alpine)\nEster Ledecká at FIS (snowboarding)\nEster Ledecká at Olympics.com\nEster Ledecká at Olympedia\nEster Ledecká at InterSportStats\nEster Ledecká at Ski-DB Alpine Ski Database \nEster Ledecká at Olympijskytym.cz (in Czech)Ester Ledecká at Olympic.cz (in Czech) (archived)\nEster Ledecka at Milano Cortina 2026\nEster Ledecka at Sochi 2014 (archived)\nOfficial website"}
{"title": "Evelyn Ashford", "requested": "Evelyn Ashford", "extract": "Evelyn Ashford (born April 15, 1957) is an American retired track and field athlete, the 1984 Olympic champion in the 100-meter dash, and the world record-holder in the 60-yard dash. She ran under the 11-second barrier over 30 times and was the first woman to run under 11 seconds in an Olympic Games. Ashford has the distinction of owning the longest unbroken athletics record (60y dash).\n\n\n== Biography ==\nAs a 19-year-old, Ashford finished fifth in the 100 m event at the 1976 Summer Olympics. After beating the world record holders in the 100 m and 200 m in 1979 at the World Cup of Track and Field in Montreal, Ashford was one of the potential medalists for the 1980 Summer Olympics, but these Games were boycotted by the United States. Ashford also tore a quad muscle in 1980 and was out for the rest of the season.\nIn 1977, she won the first Broderick Award (now the Honda Sports Award) as the nation's best female collegiate track and field athlete.\nAshford was ranked No. 1 in the world by Track & Field News over 100 meters in 1979 and 1981, and over 200 meters in 1981. She also was named Track and Field News \"Athlete of the Year\" twice, in 1981 and 1984\nShe again won the sprint double, at the world cup in Rome, in 1981.\nOn July 3, 1983, she set her first world record for the 100 meters, running 10.79 seconds at the National Sports Festival in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and was one of the favorites to win the 100-meter title at the inaugural World Championships in Helsinki. In the final, however, she pulled a hamstring muscle and fell. The other main favorite, Marlies Göhr of East Germany (who had already beaten Ashford earlier that year), went on to win.\nAt the 1984 Summer Olympics, Ashford had a chance to win a gold medal. However, she had to withdraw from the 200 m heats with a minor injury. She competed in the 100 m, winning the event in a new Olympic record of 10.97 secs. As the anchor runner for 4 × 100 m relay team, she won a second gold medal. In the absence of World Champions and world record holders East Germany, the US team clocked one of the fastest times in history and won by the biggest margin ever at an Olympics, 1.12 seconds.\nLater in the season, she finally defeated her main rival Göhr at the Weltklasse meeting in Zürich, Switzerland. The race saw Ashford make up half a meter or so over Göhr and lower her own world record to 10.76 seconds. That race proved to be Ashford's personal record. It still ranks as the No. 13 individual all-time. Ashford regained her No. 1 Track & Field News ranking.\nAt the 1988 Summer Olympics, she was the flag bearer for the United States team at the Opening Ceremony. She was beaten in the 100 m by Florence Griffith Joyner, who had broken her world record earlier in the season at the Olympic Trials. In the 4 × 100 m relay she again ran the final leg, winning her third Olympic gold medal despite a less than perfect last exchange between Griffith-Joyner and Ashford that required Ashford to run a sensational final leg to overtake Göhr.\nAt her last Olympics in Barcelona, Ashford, aged 35, was eliminated in the 100 m semi-finals by 1/100 of a second; she went on to win her third straight Olympic 4 × 100 m relay gold, this time running the first leg. She is one of six women to have won four gold medals in track and field Olympic history.\nAshford came back from season-ending injuries three times, to reach the top of the sport in the following year. In 1980 she injured her quad, and returned in 1981 with the sprint double at the World Cup and the number one world ranking in both sprints. After an injury in 1983, she became double Olympic Champion in 1984. In 1987 a hamstring pull prevented her from competing at the World Championships, then a season later added an Olympic Silver and third Gold medal to her collection.\nOn May 30, 1985, she gave birth to her daughter Raina Ashley Washington, and again came back for an excellent 1986, losing only once over both the 100 m and 200 m, and winning the 100 meter title at the Goodwill Games; earning another No. 1 ranking by Track & Field News over the shorter distance.\nAfter parting ways with her coach Pat Connolly in 1985, Ashford was largely self-coached.\nIn 1997, Ashford was inducted into the National Track and Field Hall of Fame, where she is said to be \"one of the greatest track and field runners ever\". Ashford went to the University of California, Los Angeles and Roseville High School. She was inducted into the UCLA Athletics Hall of Fame in 1990.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nEvelyn Ashford at the USATF Hall of Fame (archived) \nEvelyn Ashford at the Team USA Hall of Fame (archive July 20, 2023)\nEvelyn Ashford at Olympics.com \nEvelyn Ashford at Olympedia"}
{"title": "Faith Kipyegon", "requested": "Faith Kipyegon", "extract": "Faith Chepngetich Kipyegon (born 10 January 1994) is a Kenyan middle and long-distance runner. Kipyegon is the world record holder for the 1500 metres and the mile, and she is the former world record holder for the 5000 metres. Kipyegon is the only three-time Olympic champion in the 1500 metres, having won a gold medal each at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro, 2020 Tokyo, and the 2024 Paris Olympics. She also won a gold medal in the 1500 metres at the 2017, 2022, 2023 and 2025 World Championships and in the 5000 metres at the 2023 World Championships.\nAt the 2024 Paris Olympics, Kipyegon became the first athlete ever to win three consecutive gold medals in the 1500 m women's race, where she also set a new Olympic record. In addition to the 1500 m, she had previously earned a silver medal in the women's 5000 m, after successfully appealing a disqualification.\nAs a junior, Kipyegon won gold medals at the 2011 and 2013 World Cross Country Championships and in the 1500 m at the 2011 World Youth Championships and the 2012 World Junior Championships. Kipyegon is one of only eleven athletes to win world championship titles at the youth, junior, and senior levels of an athletic event.\nKipyegon was cited as one of the Top 100 most influential Africans by New African magazine in 2017. On 21 November 2024, the University of Eldoret conferred its first honorary degree on Kipyegon in recognition of her accomplishments and for her \"humility and grace.\"\n\n\n== Early life and background ==\nKipyegon was the eighth of nine children growing up on a farm in a village near Keringet, Nakuru County in the Kenyan Rift Valley. She comes from the Kalenjin tribe. Her elder sister and former training partner Beatrice Mutai is a 10 km and half marathon specialist. Her father Samuel Kipyegon Koech was a 400 m and 800 m runner in his youth, while her mother Linah Koech also had contact with athletics. Faith was a football player until she was introduced to athletics at school aged 14. She lined up for a one-kilometre run in P.E. class and won that race by 20 metres. She attended Winners Girls High School in Keringet.\n\n\n== Personal life and coach ==\nKipyegon is married to middle-distance runner Timothy Kitum, the 2012 Olympic 800 m bronze medallist. They have a daughter, Alyn, born in June 2018.\nShe trains in Kaptagat (and Kapsabet) and has been coached since the end of 2017 by Patrick Sang, triple global 3000 m steeplechase silver medallist, who is also coaching marathon world record-holder Eliud Kipchoge. Up until 2017, Kipyegon was coached by former Dutch athlete Piet de Peuter.\n\n\n== Junior career ==\nIn 2010, at age 16, a barefooted Kipyegon made her international debut at the World Cross Country Championships held in Bydgoszcz, Poland, competing against athletes up to three years her senior. She placed fourth in the women's junior race as the youngest finisher in the top 21, and won the gold medal with her under-20 team (it was a Kenyan 1–4 sweep). Later that year, she showed her track potential by finishing third in the 1500 metres at the Kenyan World Junior Championship Trials in Nairobi.\n\nRunning barefoot again, Kipyegon improved by two places and won the individual gold medal at the 2011 edition in Punta Umbria, Spain, adding a silver with her team. A few months later, she raced the 1500 m at the World Youth Championships in Villeneuve-d'Ascq, France, taking the women's crown, ahead of two Ethiopian runners with a time of 4:09.48, breaking the championship record in the process.\nHer 2012 season started with a bang as, after the 800 metres race in April, she set a swift national junior 1500 m record of 4:03.82 at the Shanghai Diamond League meeting (5th) the following month. In June, the 18-year-old won the event at the Kenyan Junior Athletics Championships, and finished third at the Kenyan Olympic Trials to secure a spot on the national team for the 2012 Olympic Games in London. At the World Junior Championships held in July in Barcelona, she ran a championship record again to claim gold in her specialist event significantly ahead of the field with a time of 4:04.96; Serbian Amela Terzić and Ethiopian Senbere Teferi took second and third place respectively. She placed ninth in her heat at the London Olympics in August in a time of 4:08.78 (sixth after later doping disqualifications), failing to advance to the semi-finals.\nAt the beginning of the 2013 season, she defended her junior title at the World Cross Country Championships in Bydgoszcz (PL). On 10 May, at the Diamond League meeting in Doha, Qatar, she broke for the first time the 4-minute barrier in the 1500 m, clocking an African U20 and Kenyan senior record of 3:56.98. Kipyegon finished second behind Swedish runner Abeba Aregawi but beat Ethiopia's Genzebe Dibaba in third. In August, at the Moscow World Championships, the 19-year-old came fifth in the final in a time of 4:05.08.\n\n\n== Senior career ==\n\n\n=== 2014: Commonwealth champion ===\nIn March, she claimed victory in the senior women's race (8 km) at the African Cross Country Championships held in Kampala, Uganda, beating the silver medallist by more than eight seconds. In May, she was a member of the team which won the gold medal in the 4 × 1500 m relay at the first IAAF World Relays in Nassau, Bahamas, along with Mercy Cherono, Irene Jelagat and Hellen Obiri. The Kenyan team, ahead of the United States and Australia, set a new world record of 16:33.58. That same year in July, Kipyegon took her first senior 1500 m victory, becoming the Glasgow Commonwealth Games champion in Scotland with a time of 4:08.94. The 20-year-old finished fifth over the distance, however, at the African Championships staged in Marrakesh, Morocco in August, clocking 4:13.46.\n\n\n=== 2015: World championship silver medallist ===\nOn 25 August, Kipyegon won a silver in the 1500 m event at the World Championships held in Beijing. After a tactical race, she finished second in a time of 4:08.96 behind only then fresh world record holder Genzebe Dibaba who clocked 4:08.09. Sifan Hassan representing the Netherlands was third in 4:09.34.\nOn 11 September, she secured her first Diamond League victory, winning the mile race in Brussels. It was a notable success, as she set a meeting and African record of 4:16.71, beating Hassan who ran 4:18.20 in the final stretch.\n\n\n=== 2016: First Olympic title in Rio ===\nKipyegon's Olympic campaign kicked off to a strong start on 14 May, racing the 1500 m at the Shanghai Diamond League. She improved her own 2013 Kenyan record to 3:56.82 for the win, also setting the meeting record. Two weeks later, she repeated all these feats at the Eugene Diamond Race meet in Oregon, USA, lowering her national record to 3:56.41. She also notched up victory in the mile event at the Oslo Diamond League in June.\n\nThe then 22-year-old became the Olympic 1500 m champion in Rio de Janeiro, avenging her loss to Dibaba in the previous year's World Championships. She outsprinted Dibaba in the final 200 m in what was initially a very slow tactical race, with a third lap in 56.80 and last 800 m in a fast 800 m races pace of 1:57.2. Kipyegon clocked 4:08.92, Dibaba 4:10.27 and Jenny Simpson was third in 4:10.53.\n\n\n=== 2017: First senior world title ===\nKipyegon earned her first Diamond League 1500 m Trophy, winning three races in Shanghai, Eugene and Brussels. It was the first season of the series to feature the new championship-style system in which overall event winners are determined only by the results of the final meet. Kipyegon outsprinted her rival Sifan Hassan at the Brussels Final in September, 3:57.04 to 3:57.22.\n\nHer best success of that year was the first place at the London World Championships in August, becoming the first Kenyan female world 1500 m champion and only the third woman in history to win both the Olympic and World Championships finals over the distance. The 23-year-old ran 4:02.59 while a further three women also recorded times below 4:03, with Jenny Simpson in second and Caster Semenya in third. \"I won the Olympics in 2016 but the victory at the World Championships in 2017 was sweeter because I fought the hardest. In 2016 Rio, I was only wary of Genzebe Dibaba of Ethiopia because I had a fantastic season. In London, Caster Semenya, Dibaba, Sifan Hassan, Laura Muir and Jennifer Simpson were all gold medal prospects.\" Kipyegon said.\nAt this point she decided to start a family.\n\n\n=== 2018–2020: Motherhood and comeback, world championship silver medallist ===\nKipyegon followed her doctor's advice and trained until she was between four and five months pregnant. She gave birth to her first child, a daughter Alyn, in June 2018 by a caesarean section due to the wrong position of her baby. Kipyegon returned to training in January 2019 after an almost 18-month break. At the end of June six months later, 12 months after the childbirth, she made her racing comeback in style, winning her specialty in 3:59:04 at the Eugene Diamond League, the Prefontaine Classic, held that year in Palo Alto.\n\nKipyegon went on to take the silver medal at the World Championships in Doha, where she chopped more than two seconds from her 2016 Kenyan record in the final with a time of 3:54.22. Sifan Hassan came first in 3:51.95 while third-placed Gudaf Tsegay set a personal best of 3:54.38.\nIn 2020, she competed at the Diamond League and Continental Tour meetings staying unbeaten in all her six races. In August, she ran the second-fastest time ever, an African and Diamond League record in the 1000 metres at the Herculis meet in Monaco, with her result of 2:29.15 just 0.17 s short of the world record set back in 1996 by Svetlana Masterkova.\n\n\n=== 2021: Second back-to-back Olympic title in Tokyo ===\nIn 2021, Kipyegon greatly improved her 2019 Kenyan national record at the Diamond League meetings. On 10 June, she ran 3:53.91 at the Rome Golden Gala, staged in Florence, to finish second just behind Sifan Hassan who clocked 3:53.63. On 9 July at the Monaco Herculis, Kipyegon chopped nearly three seconds from that mark for a win, stopping the clock at a world-leading 3:51.07 – the fourth-fastest female performance in history at the time and just one second off Genzebe Dibaba's world record, which was also set in Monaco in 2015. She outsprinted Hassan in the home straight by about 2.5 s.\nIn the women's 1500 m final of the delayed 2020 Tokyo Olympics in August, Kipyegon overtook Hassan in the last 200 m to secure her second consecutive Olympic gold medal in the event in a time of 3:53.11, breaking the Games record which had stood for 33 years. She became the second woman in history to win back-to-back Olympic 1500 m titles, while Hassan faded in the home stretch (3:55.86 for third)\nIn September, she beat Hassan again at the Zürich Weltklasse Diamond League final to take her second 1500 m Diamond Trophy. Kipyegon won nine out of her ten races of the season.\n\n\n=== 2022: Second senior world title ===\nIn May, Kipyegon opened her season over 3000 m at the Doha Diamond League, finishing second behind Francine Niyonsaba in 8:38.05. She claimed victory in her signature event at the Eugene Diamond League, with a time of 3:52.59.\n\nAt the World Championships held also in Eugene in July, Kipyegon decisively won the 1500 m gold medal with a time of 3:52.96, which made her the first female athlete to win four global titles over the distance. Gudaf Tsegay placed second in 3:54.52 while Laura Muir earned bronze (3:55.28).\nOn 10 August at the Monaco Diamond League, Kipyegon came within 0.3 s of Dibaba's world record with 3:50.37 to set her new Kenyan record and the second-fastest performance in history at the time. She split 60.5 / 62.1 / 62.1 / 45.67 (last 400 m in 61.3 s), and as of May 2025, held seven of the thirteen fastest women's 1500 m marks in history. She ended her successful season with a clear victory at the Zürich circuit's final the following month, this time closing strongly after a tactical race (last lap in 57.75 and last 200 m in 27.8) to earn her third Diamond League 1500 m title. Kipyegon won all her six 1500 m races of the season.\nIn November interview with Athletics Weekly, she said that she would like to run marathons in the future.\n\n\n=== 2023: World 1500 m, mile, and 5000 m records ===\nKipyegon got her 2023 campaign off to a strong start on 4 February with a dominant victory at the Sirikwa Cross Country Classic (10 km) on home soil in Eldoret.\nOn 2 June, she eventually got the only thing that was missing on her resume, setting a world 1500 m record of 3:49.11 to become the first woman in history to break the 3:50-barrier in the discipline. The 29-year-old sliced almost a second from Dibaba's mark (3:50.07) while running a big negative split at the Rome Diamond League staged that year also in Florence. She hit 800 in 2:04.1, as a pacemaker was asked for (WR pace was 2:02.7), and passed the bell in 2:50.2 (Dibaba hit the bell at 2:50.3). Kipyegon was sensational over the final two laps, running her last 800 in 2:00.6, last 400 in 58.81, and last 200 in 29.2. The entire race field congratulated and embraced her after her lap of honour.\nKipyegon made it two world records in a week after breaking her own world record exactly seven days later, on 9 June, Letesenbet Gidey's 5000 metres world standard of 14:06.62 set in 2020. Faith's second world record came as a surprise as it was her first race over the distance since 2015 and her third ever. Racing in a thrilling duel with Letesenbet at the Paris Diamond League, she smashed her old PB (14:31.95) and sliced 1.42 s off that world record with a time of 14:05.20. She overtook her with 600 m to go but Letesenbet was closely following, with both lagging about six seconds behind the world record pace. Kipyegon ran a last lap in 60.6 s and dropped Letesenbet in a sprint finish in the last 200 m timed at 28.1 s, even faster than in her 1500 m world record race. She became only the second woman in history to hold both the 1500 m and 5000 m records simultaneously after Paola Pigni in 1969, and the first Kenyan woman to hold the latter. Kipyegon's 5000 metres world record has since been broken by Gudaf Tsegay, who ran 14:00.21 at the 2023 Prefontaine Classic.\n\nOn 21 July 2023, at the Monaco Diamond League, Kipyegon ran 4:07.64 in the mile, breaking Sifan Hassan's mile world record of 4:12.33 which had stood since 2019.\nAt the 2023 World Athletics Championships in Budapest, Kipyegon achieved the 1500 and 5000 m double, winning the former in 3:54.87 and the latter in 14:53.88.\n\n\n=== 2024: New 1500 m world record, back to back to back 1500 m Olympic gold, and Olympic 5000 m silver ===\nIn June 2024, at the 2024 Kenyan Olympic Trials in Nairobi, Kipyegon won both the 1500 and 5000 m, in times of 3:53.99 and 14:46.28, respectively.\nOn 7 July 2024, at the Meeting de Paris, Kipyegon broke her own 1500 m world record by seven hundredths of a second, running 3:49.04.\nAt the Paris 2024 Olympics, after initially winning the silver medal in the women's 5,000 metres, Kipyegon faced disqualification for obstruction of Ethiopian athlete Gudaf Tsegay. However, she was later reinstated to her silver medal position behind her compatriot, gold medalist Beatrice Chebet, following a successful appeal. Kipyegon ended her campaign at the Paris Olympics with gold in the 1500m, breaking her own Olympic record with a time of 3:51.29. She outsprinted silver and bronze medallists Jessica Hull and Georgia Bell to win by a margin of 1.27 seconds.\nOn 14 September 2024, Kipyegon won the 1500 metres at the 2024 Diamond League final in Brussels, Belgium, in a meeting record time of 3:54.75. On 26 September 2024, she won the first edition of Athlos, an all-woman track and field meeting at Icahn Stadium in New York City.\n\n\n=== 2025: Sub four-minute mile attempt, 1500 m world record improvement ===\n\nOn 26 April, Kipyegon set a meeting record in the 1000 metres at the Xiamen Diamond League, running 2:29.21. This time was 0.06 seconds off her personal best and 0.23 seconds off Svetlana Masterkova's world record of 2:28.98.\nOn 26 June, in a special event organized by Nike, Kipyegon attempted to become the first woman to break four minutes for the mile. She fell 6.91 seconds short of the barrier with a time of 4:06.91. Nike later subtracted the reaction time, adjusting her official time to 4:06.42. Similar to the Ineos 1:59 Challenge and Breaking2, World Athletics will not recognize the record. This event was announced in April 2025. She was assisted by 'the next generation of super shoes' and both male and female pacers.\nOn 5 July, at the Prefontaine Classic, Kipyegon improved her 1500-metre world record by 0.36 seconds to 3:48.68, becoming the first woman to break the 3:49 barrier.\n\n\n== Achievements ==\nAll information taken from World Athletics profile.\n\n\n=== Personal bests ===\n\n\n=== International competitions ===\n\n\n=== Circuit wins and titles ===\nDiamond League 1500 metres champion (3):  2017,  2021,  2022\n1500 metres wins, other events specified in parentheses\n2015 (1): Brussels Memorial Van Damme (One mile, WL AR)\n2016 (3): Shanghai Diamond League (WL MR NR), Eugene Prefontaine Classic (WL MR NR), Oslo Bislett Games (One mile, WL)\n2017 (3): Shanghai (WL), Eugene, Brussels (SB)\n2019 (1): Prefontaine Classic in Palo Alto (SB)\n2020 (3): Monaco Herculis (1000 m, DLR AR), Brussels (1000 m), Doha Diamond League (800 m, WL PB)\n2021 (4): Doha (800 m), Monaco (WL NR), Eugene (MR), Zürich Weltklasse\n2022 (3): Eugene (WL MR), Monaco (WL NR), Zürich\n2023 (3): Doha (WL), Rome Golden Gala in Florence (WR), Paris Meeting (5000 m, WR)\n2024 : Paris (Olympics). 1500 m, OR in Paris\nWorld Athletics Cross Country Tour\n2022–23: Sirikwa Cross Country Classic\n\n\n=== National titles ===\nKenyan Cross Country Championships\nSenior women's race: 2014, 2015\n\n\n== Awards and honours ==\nKenyan Sports Personality of the Year – Sportswoman of the Year: 2021, 2022\nWorld Athletics – World Athlete of the Year: 2023 (track)\nLaureus World Sports Award for Sportswoman of the Year: 2024 Nominee\nGolden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement: 2024 – presented by President William Ruto\n\n\n== Philanthropy ==\nIn January 2026, Kipyegon announced that she was starting a maternity ward in her hometown Keringet  that has been termed the Dare to Dream Maternity Ward. She said, “Growing up in Keringet, I saw too many women go into labour full of hope, only to return empty-handed because the care they needed was too far away or not good enough. This maternity wing is about changing that reality – giving mothers safety, dignity, and hope.” The maternity ward, supported by Nike, will be operated in partnership with the Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate Conception to ensure professional care and compassion for expectant mothers.\n\n\n== Notes ==\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of Olympic medalists in athletics (women)\nList of 2016 Summer Olympics medal winners\nList of African Olympic medalists\nList of World Athletics Championships medalists (women)\nList of Commonwealth Games medallists in athletics (women)\n1500 metres at the Olympics\n1500 metres at the World Championships in Athletics\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nFaith Kipyegon at World Athletics\nFaith Kipyegon at Diamond League\nFaith Kipyegon at Tilastopaja (registration required)\nFaith Kipyegon at Athletics Podium\nFaith Kipyegon at Olympics.com\nFaith Kipyegon at Olympedia\nFaith Kipyegon at InterSportStats"}
{"title": "Fanny Blankers-Koen", "requested": "Fanny Blankers-Koen", "extract": "Francina Elsje \"Fanny\" Blankers-Koen (pronounced [frɑnˈsinaː ˈʔɛlɕə ˈfɑni ˈblɑŋkərs ˈkun] ; née Koen, 26 April 1918 – 25 January 2004) was a Dutch track and field athlete, best known for winning four gold medals at the 1948 Summer Olympics in London. She competed there as a 30-year-old mother of two, earning her the nickname \"the Flying Housewife\", and was the most successful athlete at the event.\nHaving started competing in athletics in 1935, she took part in the 1936 Summer Olympics a year later. Although international competition was stopped by World War II, Blankers-Koen set several world records during that period, in events as diverse as the long jump, the high jump, and sprint and hurdling events.\nApart from her four Olympic titles, she won five European titles and 58 Dutch championships, and set or tied 12 world records – the last, in the pentathlon, in 1951 aged 33. She retired from athletics in 1955, after which she became captain of the Dutch female track and field team. In 1999, she was voted \"Female Athlete of the Century\" by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF). Her Olympic victories are credited with helping to eliminate the belief that age and motherhood were barriers to success in women's sport.\n\n\n== Early life ==\nFanny Koen was born on 26 April 1918 in Lage Vuursche (near Baarn) to Arnoldus and Helena Koen. Her father was a government official who competed in the shot put and discus. She had five brothers. As a teenager, she enjoyed tennis, swimming, gymnastics, ice skating, fencing and running. Standing 1.75 m (5 ft 9 in), she was a natural athlete. It soon became clear she had a talent for sports, but she could not decide which sport to pick. A swimming coach advised her to concentrate on running because there were already several top swimmers in the Netherlands at that time (such as Rie Mastenbroek), and she would have a better chance to qualify for the Olympics in a track event.\nHer first appearance in the sport was in 1935, aged 17. Her first competition was a disappointment, but in her third race, she set a national record in the 800 m. Fanny Koen soon made the Dutch team, although as a sprinter, not a middle-distance runner. At that time, 800 m was generally considered too physically demanding for female contestants and had been removed from the Olympic programme after 1928. The following year, her coach and future husband, Jan Blankers, a former Olympic triple-jumper who had participated in the 1928 Olympics, encouraged her to enter the trials for the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. At eighteen years old, she was selected to compete in the high jump and the 4 × 100 m relay.\nAt the Berlin Olympics, the high jump and the 4 × 100 m relay competitions were held on the same day. In the high jump, she took fifth place (shared with two other jumpers), while the Dutch relay team came in fifth in the final (the sixth team in the final, Germany, was disqualified). She also obtained the autograph of American athlete Jesse Owens; it became her most treasured possession.\nSlowly, Koen rose to the top. In 1938, she ran her first world record (11.0 seconds in the 100 yards), and she also won her first international medals. At the European Championships in Vienna, she won the bronze in both the 100 and 200 m, which were both won by Stanisława Walasiewicz. Many observers, and Koen herself, expected her to do well at the upcoming Olympics, which were due to be held in Helsinki in July 1940.\nHowever, the outbreak of World War II put a stop to the preparations. The Olympics were formally cancelled on 2 May 1940, a week before the Netherlands was invaded.\n\n\n== World War II ==\n\nJust prior to the invasion, Koen had become engaged, and on 29 August 1940, she married Jan Blankers (who was fifteen years her senior), thereupon changing her name to Blankers-Koen. Blankers was then a sports journalist and the coach of the Dutch women's athletics team, even though he originally thought women should not compete in sports – not an unusual opinion at the time. However, his attitude toward female athletes changed after he fell in love with Koen.\nWhen Blankers-Koen gave birth to her first child, Jan Junior, in 1942, Dutch media automatically assumed her career would be over. Top female athletes who were married were rare at the time, and it was considered inconceivable that a mother would be an athlete. Blankers-Koen resumed training only weeks after their son's birth.\nDuring the war, domestic competition in sports continued in the German-occupied Netherlands, and Blankers-Koen set six new world records between 1942 and 1944. The first came in 1942, when she improved the world mark in the 80 m hurdles. The following year, she did even better. First, she improved the high jump record by an unequalled 5 cm from 1.66 m to 1.71 m in a specially arranged competition in Amsterdam on 30 May. Then, she tied the 100 m world record, but this was never recognised officially, as she competed against men when setting the record. She closed out the season with a new world record in the long jump, 6.25 m on 19 September 1943. The latter record would stand until 1954.\nCircumstances were not easy, and it became harder to get enough food, especially for an athlete in training. Despite this, Blankers-Koen managed to break the 100 yd (91 m) world record in May 1944. At the same meet, she ran with the relay team that broke the 4 × 110 yd (100 m) world record. The German press was excited, as the previous record had been set by an English team. Months later, she helped break the 4 × 200 m record, which was held by Germany. In an act of defiance, the women wore outfits with national symbols while setting the record.\nThe winter of 1944–45, known as the Hongerwinter (hunger winter), was severe, and there was a serious lack of food, especially in the big cities. She gave birth to a daughter, Fanneke, in 1945 and in contrast to her previous post-birth activities, took seven months off from sport and only undertook limited training.\n\n\n== \"The flying housewife\" ==\n\nThe first major international event after the war was the 1946 European Championships, held in Oslo, Norway. The championships were a slight disappointment. In the 100 m semi-finals, held during the high jump final, she fell and failed to qualify for the final. Competing with bruises from the fall, she ended the high jump competition in fourth. The second day was more successful, as she won the 80 m hurdles event, and led the Dutch relay team to victory in the 4 × 100 m.\nAs the leading female athlete in the Netherlands – in 1947 she won national titles in six women's events – Blankers-Koen was assured of a place on the Dutch team for the first post-war Olympics, held in London. After her experience in Oslo, she decided not to take part in all events, but limit herself to four: she dropped the high jump and long jump to concentrate on the 100 m, the 200 m, the 80 m hurdles, and the 4 × 100 m relay (competition rules also prevented an athlete from competing in more than three individual track and field events).\nAlthough she displayed her form two months before the Games by beating her own 80 m hurdles world record – one of the six world records that she held at that time – some journalists questioned her, suggesting 30 years was too old for a woman to be an athlete. The British athletics team's manager, Jack Crump, opined that she was \"too old to make the grade\". Many in the Netherlands were concerned for the welfare of the family, saying that she should stay at home to look after her children, not compete in athletics events.\n\nHer first competition was the 100 m, and she qualified easily for the semi-finals, in which she set the fastest time. The final (2 August) was held on a muddy track and in rainy conditions. Blankers-Koen sped to the finish line in 11.9, easily beating her opponents Dorothy Manley and Shirley Strickland, who took second and third.\nFanny Blankers-Koen thereby became the first Dutch athlete to win an Olympic title in athletics, but she was more concerned with her next event, the 80 m hurdles. Her chief opponent was Maureen Gardner, also coached by Blankers-Koen's husband and who had equalled Blankers-Koen's world record prior to the Games, and would be running for her home crowd. Both athletes made the final, in which Blankers-Koen got off to a bad start (she would later claim she thought there had been a false start).\nShe picked up the pace quickly, but was unable to shake off Gardner, who kept close until the finish line, and the two finished almost simultaneously. When the British national anthem was played, the crowd in Wembley Stadium cheered, and Blankers-Koen briefly thought she had been beaten. However, the anthem was played in honour of the British royal family, which entered the stadium at that time. Examination of the finish photo clearly showed that not Gardner, but Blankers-Koen had won, although both received the same time (11.2 seconds).\nIn spite of her successes, Blankers-Koen nearly failed to start in the semi-finals of the 200 m, held the day after the hurdles final. Shortly before the semi-final, she broke down because of homesickness. After a long talk with her husband, she decided to run anyway, and qualified for the final with great ease. The final, on 6 August, was again held in the pouring rain, but Blankers-Koen completed the inaugural Olympic 200 m for women in 24.4, seven-tenths of a second ahead of runner-up Audrey Williamson – still the largest margin of victory in an Olympic 200 m final. Audrey Patterson placed in third, thereby becoming the first African American woman to win an Olympic medal.\n\nThe 4 × 100 m final was held on the final day of the track and field competitions. The Dutch team, consisting of Xenia Stad-de Jong, Netti Witziers-Timmer, Gerda van der Kade-Koudijs and Blankers-Koen, qualified for the final, but just before the final, Blankers-Koen was missing. She had gone out to shop for a raincoat, and arrived just in time for the race. As the last runner, she took over the baton in third place, some five meters behind the Australian and Canadian runners. In spite of a careful and slow exchange, she caught up with the leaders, crossing the line a tenth of a second before the Australian woman. In hindsight, the Dutch team should have been disqualified because the third runner crossed the line on the inside.\nFanny Blankers-Koen won four of the nine women's events at the 1948 Olympics, competing in eleven heats and finals in eight days. She was the first woman to win four Olympic gold medals, and achieved the feat in a single Olympics. Dubbed \"the flying housewife\", \"the flying Dutchmam\", and \"amazing Fanny\" by the international press, she was welcomed back home in Amsterdam by an immense crowd. After a ride through the city, pulled by four white horses, she received a lot of praise and gifts. From the city of Amsterdam, she received a new bicycle: \"to go through life at a slower pace\" and \"so she need not run so much\". Queen Juliana made her a knight of the Order of Orange Nassau.\n\n\n== After London ==\nNow known all over the world, Blankers-Koen received many offers for endorsements, advertisements, publicity stunts, and the like. Because of the strict amateurism rules in force at the time, she had to turn most offers down. However, a fortnight after the 1948 Olympics, she entertained 35,000 spectators by equalling her 100 m world record of 10.8 seconds on Lansdowne Road's \"heavy grass track\".\nAlso, in 1949, she travelled abroad to promote women's athletics, flying to Australia and the United States.\nBlankers-Koen had been chosen the 1948 Helms Athletic Foundation World Trophy Winner for Europe, and in 1949 she travelled to Los Angeles to compete in the Los Angeles Coliseum Relays.\n\nIn 1950, a controversial episode involving one of Blankers-Koen's competitors occurred. A year earlier, a new Dutch sprint talent, Foekje Dillema had made her breakthrough. In 1950, she broke the national record in the 200 m, and some journalists already dubbed her as the \"new Fanny\". That year, Dillema was the first subject of the International Association of Athletics Federations's mandatory sex verification policy and was subjected to a \"sex test\", the details of which were never revealed. As a result, she was expelled by the Royal Dutch Athletics Federation from athletics for the rest of her life and the 200 m record she took from Blankers-Koen was erased. Dillema, who never spoke publicly on the subject, died in December 2007.\nAfter the death of Dillema, a forensic test on body cells obtained from her clothing found that there was a Y-chromosome in Dillema's DNA, which indicated she was possibly a genetic mosaic or a true hermaphrodite. Most of the other women on the team at the time suspect it was an attempt by Blankers and Blankers-Koen to eliminate an opponent, although this has never been confirmed.\nThe same year, Blankers-Koen almost repeated her Olympic performance at the European Championships in Brussels. She won the titles in the 100 m, 200 m and 80 m hurdles, all with large margins of victory (four-tenths of a second or more), but narrowly missed out on a fourth win in the relay, which was won by the British team.\nAt age 34, she took part in her third Olympics, which were held in Helsinki. Although she was in good physical condition, she was severely hampered by a skin boil. She qualified for the 100 m semi-finals, but forfeited a start to save herself for the hurdles race. She reached the final in that event, but after knocking over the second hurdle, she abandoned the race. It was her last major competition. On 7 August 1955, Fanny Blankers-Koen was victorious for the last time, winning the national title in the shot put, her 58th Dutch title.\n\n\n== Later life ==\n\nAfter her athletic career, Blankers-Koen served as the team leader of the Dutch athletics team, from the 1958 European Championships to the 1968 Summer Olympics.\nIn 1977, Blankers-Koen's husband Jan died. Some years after his death, she moved back to her old hometown of Hoofddorp. In 1981, the Fanny Blankers-Koen Games, an international athletics event, were established. They are still held annually in Hengelo.\nBlankers-Koen's last moment of glory came in 1999. At a gala in Monaco, organized by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), she was declared the \"Female Athlete of the Century\". She was very surprised to have won, audibly asking \"You mean it is me who has won?\"\nIn the years prior to her death, Blankers-Koen suffered from Alzheimer's disease and lived in a psychiatric nursing home. She was also deaf. She died at age 85 in Hoofddorp on 25 January 2004.\nA year before her death, the first biography of Blankers-Koen was published, Een koningin met mannenbenen (A Queen with Men's Legs) by journalist Kees Kooman. Through many interviews with relatives, friends and contemporary athletes, it paints a previously unknown picture of her. During her successful years, Dutch and international media portrayed her as the perfect mother (hence her nickname \"the flying housewife\"), who was modest about her own achievements. Kooman's book portrays Blankers-Koen in a different light, as a woman who found it difficult to show affection and who was driven by a desire to win. Blankers-Koen had previously written an autobiography in 1949 with help from her husband.\nHer personal record on the 100 m of 11.5 remained the Amsterdam club record of Phanos for 62 years. It was finally broken in May 2010 by Jamile Samuel.\n\n\n== Awards and tributes ==\n\nBlankers-Koen received the following recognition:\n\nSauer Cup (Dutch Athlete of the Year): 1937, 1940, 1943\nAssociated Press Female Athlete of the Year: 1948\nKnight of the Order of Orange-Nassau: 1949\nMedal of the NOC*NSP: 1949\nRoyal Dutch Athletics Federation honorary member: 1949\nIAAF Female Athlete of the 20th Century: 1999\nIAAF Hall of Fame: 2012\nThe Fanny Blankers-Koen Carrièreprijs was created by NOC*NSF to honour the achievements of Dutch sportspeople and was first given on 9 December 2005. For its inauguration, five people were awarded the prize. Since then, the award has been given to an individual annually.\nShe was among the women included in the 1001 Vrouwen uit de Nederlandse geschiedenis, a dictionary of biography covering 1001 important Dutchwomen. In a 2004 national poll, Blankers-Koen ranked 29th for De Grootste Nederlander (The Greatest Netherlander); she was the third highest sportsperson (after footballers Johan Cruyff and Marco van Basten) and the seventh highest woman in the poll.\nTwo public statues of her have been erected in the Netherlands: the first was made by Han Rehm and placed in Rotterdam in 1954 and the second, made by Antoinette Ruiter, was placed on 9 May 2007 in Hengelo. Also in 2007, a text was installed on the fence of the sportspark at Olympiaplein in Amsterdam declaring \"Hier trainde Fanny Blankers-Koen\" (\"Fanny Blankers-Koen trained here\").\nSeveral locations have been named in her honour, including Blankers-Koen Park in Newington, New South Wales, the location of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Village, a fire station in Amsterdam (Fanny Blankers-Koenkazerne), a multisport stadium in Hengelo (Fanny Blankers-Koen Stadium), a sports park in Almere (FBK-sportpark), and a sports hall in Hoofddorp where she lived (Fanny Blankers-Koen hal).\nBlankers-Koen was honoured with a Google Doodle on 26 April 2018, on her 100th birthday.\n\n\n== Personal bests ==\n\n\n=== Individual events ===\n\n\n=== National records ===\n\n† Blankers-Koen ran national record times of 11.4 and 23.7 seconds for the 100 m and 200 m, respectively, at the 1952 Dutch Athletics Championships. However, these records were later rescinded after it was shown that the collapse of a nearby railway track had caused the running track to be excessively downhill.\n\n\n== Competition results ==\n\n\n=== International competitions ===\nInformation from her World Athletics profile unless noted otherwise.\n\n\n=== National titles ===\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== Bibliography ==\nBijkerk, Ton (May 2004). \"Fanny Blankers-Koen: A Biography\". Journal of Olympic History. 12–2: 56–60.\nBlankers, Jan; Van Leeuwen, Aad (1949). Fanny : de geschiedenis van 4 gouden medailles. 's-Graveland : Konings Pyramide.\nKooman, Kees (2003). Een koningin met mannenbenen. Amsterdam: nl: L.J. Veen. ISBN 90-204-0820-8. OCLC 56809653.\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nFanny Blankers-Koen at World Athletics\nFanny Blankers-Koen at Tilastopaja (registration required)\nFanny Blankers-Koen at Athletics Podium\nFanny Blankers-Koen at Olympics.com\nFanny Blankers-Koen at NOC*NSF (in Dutch)\nFanny Blankers-Koen at Olympedia\nFanny Blankers-Koen at InterSportStats"}
{"title": "Francesco Friedrich", "requested": "Francesco Friedrich", "extract": "Francesco Friedrich (born 2 May 1990) is a German bobsledder who has been active since 2006. At the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, he and his brakeman Thorsten Margis tied with Canada's Justin Kripps and Alexander Kopacz for the gold medal in the two-man competition. Friedrich also won gold outright in the four-man event alongside Margis, Candy Bauer and Martin Grothkopp, making Friedrich the fifth German pilot to win two-man and four-man golds at the same Games, after Andreas Ostler in 1952, Meinhard Nehmer in 1976, Wolfgang Hoppe in 1984 and André Lange in 2006. At the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, China, Friedrich and Margis again won the gold medal with both sleighs. Friedrich previously competed at the 2014 Winter Olympics in the doubles and fours and finished in eighth and tenth place, respectively.\nHe is the most successful athlete of the IBSF World Championships winning his first gold medal in the 2011 Königssee mixed team event. Between 2017 and 2021, he won all IBSF World Championships, two-man and four-man, increasing his number of titles to 13.\n\n\n== Career results ==\n\n\n=== Olympic Games ===\n\n\n=== World Championships ===\n\n\n=== Bobsleigh World Cup ===\n\n\n==== Two-man ====\n\n\n==== Four-man ====\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nFrancesco Friedrich at the International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation \nFrancesco Friedrich at Milano Cortina 2026\nFrancesco Friedrich at Olympics.com \nFrancesco Friedrich at Olympedia \nFrancesco Friedrich at InterSportStats \nFrancesco Friedrich at Team Deutschland (in German) \nFrancesco Friedrich on Instagram"}
{"title": "Fritz Hofmann (athlete)", "requested": "Fritz Hofmann (athlete)", "extract": "Friedrich Carl August \"Fritz\" Hofmann (born 19 June 1871 in Berlin, German Empire; died 14 July 1927 in Berlin, Weimar Republic) was a German athlete. He competed at the 1896 Summer Olympics in Athens.\n\n\n== 1896 Summer Olympics ==\nHofmann competed in the 100 metres. In the heats, he came in second out of five runners, qualifying for the final. There he again came in second, with his time of 12.2 seconds being 0.2 seconds behind the winner, Thomas Burke of the United States.\nHofmann also competed in the 400 metres. He placed second in his preliminary heat, advancing to the final. There, he finished in fourth place. He was credited as having finishing third for many years, but modern sources (based on 1896 documents) place him fourth behind Charles Gmelin.\nIn the high jump, Hofmann placed last of the five athletes. His best jump was 1.55 metres. He also placed either sixth or seventh (with Khristos Zoumis of Greece taking the other place) in the triple jump, as well as in the bottom three of the seven-man field in the shot put.\nHe also competed in three gymnastics events, rope climbing and the team parallel bars and horizontal bar. In the rope climbing, Hofmann reached the highest of the three gymnasts who did not finish, receiving a bronze medal behind the two Greek climbers, who reached the top of the 14-metre rope. Hofmann made it to 12.5 metres. In the team, Hofmann was the captain of the German team that won both competitions.\n\n\n== Later life ==\nHofmann, along with the rest of the 1896 German Olympic gymnastics team, was excluded from the German Gymnastics Association and banned from German national gymnastics competitions for competing in an international sporting event. He remained involved in athletics, however, captaining the German team at the 1900 Summer Olympics and 1904 Summer Olympics, as well as the 1906 Intercalated Games (at which he also competed again in the 100 metres, finishing 5th in his first-round heat). From 1904 to 1927, he served on the German National Olympic Committee \"Deutscher Reichsausschuss für Olympische Spiele\" (\"German Imperial Commission for Olympic Games\"), which was renamed Deutscher Reichsausschuss für Leibesübungen (\"German Imperial Commission for Physical Exercise\") in 1917.\nHofmann owned a sports articles business, opened a \"sports-bath\", and edited a health magazine.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nFritz Hofmann at World Athletics\nFritz Hofmann at Tilastopaja (registration required)\nFritz Hofmann at Athletics Podium\nFritz Hofmann at Olympics.com\nFritz Hofmann at Olympedia"}
{"title": "Fritz Manteuffel", "requested": "Fritz Manteuffel", "extract": "Julius Carl Fritz Manteuffel (11 January 1875 – 21 April 1941) was a German gymnast.  He competed at the 1896 Summer Olympics in Athens.\nManteuffel was a member of the German team that won two gold medals by placing first in both of the team events, the parallel bars and the horizontal bar.  He also competed in the parallel bars, horizontal bar, vault, and pommel horse individual events, though without success.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nFritz Manteuffel at Olympedia"}
{"title": "Fu Mingxia", "requested": "Fu Mingxia", "extract": "Fu Mingxia  (born August 16, 1978, in Wuhan, Hubei) is a retired Chinese diver, multiple Olympic gold medalist and world champion.  She won the platform-diving world championship in 1991 at the age of 12, making her the youngest diving champ of all time.  She is also famous for being one of the youngest Olympic diving champions, having earned a gold at the 1992 Barcelona Games when she was just 13 years and 345 days old.  Throughout the 1990s, Fu dominated the sport with her repertoire of extremely difficult dives.  During the 2000 Sydney Olympics, Fu won her fourth gold medal, joining Americans Pat McCormick and Greg Louganis as the world's only quadruple Olympic-diving champions.\n\n\n== Early life and career ==\nFu Mingxia was born into a working-class family in the city of Wuhan, located along the Yangtze River in central China. Inspired by an older sister, Fu enrolled in gymnastics at a local sports school at the age of 5. Though she was just a child, Fu demonstrated remarkable poise and body control. The coaches, however, felt that she was not flexible enough to make it as a gymnast. Instead, they suggested she pursue diving, though Fu, only about seven years old at the time, could not swim.\nFu made the transition from gymnast to springboard diver and was noticed by diving coach Yu Fen, who took Fu to Beijing in 1989 to train at a state-sponsored boarding school as a member of the state diving team. \nThrough a strenuous training program, Fu progressed quickly. Training sessions averaged four to five hours a day, seven days a week, with the occasional nine-hour day. At times, Fu practised 100 dives a day. In time, she was gliding so close to the platform during her dives that her short hair often touched the end during her descent toward the water.\nIn 1990, Fu made her international diving debut, winning a gold at the U.S. Open and also at the Goodwill Games, held that summer in Seattle. However, with pressure mounting, Fu placed third at the Asian Games held in Beijing in autumn 1990. Following this performance, she changed her routine, adding moves that were technically more difficult, but which she felt more comfortable performing.\nBy 1991, Fu was talented enough to attend the diving world championships, held in Perth, Australia. The competition was intense, and Fu found herself in eighth place in the final round because she had failed a compulsory dive. Fu pulled herself together, however, and ended up with the title, beating out the Soviet Union's World Cup winner Yelena Miroshina by nearly 25 points. At just 12 years old, Fu became the youngest international champion ever. It is a title she will hold forever because after the competition, swimming's national governing body changed the rules, requiring all competitors in international competitions be at least 14 years old.\nWhile Fu initially made her mark on the 10-meter platform, she also began competing on the three-meter springboard. In April 1992, she won the gold on the springboard at the Chinese international diving tournament in Shanghai.\nFu made her Olympic debut at the 1992 Games, held in Barcelona, Spain. She won gold in the platform competition. At 13, she was the youngest medal winner at the Olympics that year and the second-youngest in the history of the Games. She also qualified as the youngest Olympic diving champion, a title she still holds.\nFu's success in her first Olympics drove her toward her second. In preparing for the 1996 Olympics, held in Atlanta, Fu trained seven hours a day, six days a week. Her only other activities included listening to music, watching television and getting massages. Fu's coaches drilled her hard, but she said she found comfort and peace from the physically and mentally straining regimen through music. Fu was in top form at the 1996 Olympics and shone on both the platform and springboard, taking gold in both events. She was the first woman in 36 years to win both events in a single Olympics.\n\n\n== Career ==\nIn 1989, Fu Mingxia participated in the 2nd National Youth Games and won fifth place in the 10-meter platform diving event. In 1990, Fu Mingxia participated in the National Youth Diving Championships and won the Group B 10-meter platform title. In July, she took part in the Goodwill Games held in Seattle, USA. In September, she competed in the 11th Asian Games in Beijing and won the bronze medal in platform diving. On January 4, 1991, Fu Mingxia competed in the 6th World Swimming Championships in Perth, Australia, and won the women's 10-meter platform title with a score of 426.50 points. At the age of 13, she became the youngest world champion in the history of swimming and was listed in the Guinness World Records. She also participated in the China International Diving Open, winning the silver medal in the 3-meter springboard and the bronze medal in the 10-meter platform.\n\n\n== Awards and accomplishments ==\n1990 Goodwill Games – 10m platform 1st (11 years old)\n1991 Asian Games – 10m platform 3rd (12 years old)\n1991 World Swimming Championships – 10m platform 1st (12 years old)\n1992 Olympic Games – 10m platform 1st (13 years old)\n1993 FINA Diving World Cup – 3m springboard 3rd (15 years old)\n1994 World Swimming Championships – 10m platform 1st (16 years old)\n1994 Asian Games – 3m springboard 2nd (16 years old)\n1995 FINA Diving World Cup – 10m platform 2nd (17 years old)\n1995 FINA Diving World Cup – 3m springboard 1st (17 years old)\n1996 Olympic Games – 10m platform 1st (18 years old)\n1996 Olympic Games – 3m springboard 1st (18 years old)\n1999 University Games – 10m platform 1st (21 years old)\n1999 University Games – 3m springboard 1st (21 years old)\n2000 FINA Diving World Cup – 3m springboard 2nd (22 years old)\n2000 Olympic Games – 3m springboard synchronized (with Guo Jingjing) 2nd (22 years old)\n2000 Olympic Games – 3m springboard 1st (22 years old)\n\n\n== Retirement and comeback ==\nShortly after Atlanta, the triple-gold-medallist decided to retire and enrolled at Beijing's Tsinghua University to study management science. Fu also got involved in politics and in 1997 served as a delegate to the Communist Party's 15th Congress.\nFu spent about two years off the board. By 1998, however, Fu began diving with the university team, but on her own terms. On her own terms still meant a disciplined training schedule, but she reduced the number of hours per day down to five. Fu found that practicing just for the sake of practicing to be a pointless endeavor.\nAs a member of the university team, Fu competed in the 1999 Universiade in Palma, Spain, winning both the highboard and springboard titles. Less than a year back into it, she won silver at the Diving World Cup. Fu regained her spot on the national Olympic squad and also took up a new sport - three-meter synchronized diving - as she headed for the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, Australia. Fu and her partner, Guo Jingjing, practiced together for less than six months, yet earned a silver. The Russian pair that beat them had trained together for years. After the synchronized diving event, Fu went on to compete on the springboard. She won a gold, nailing her final dive, a reverse one-and-a-half somersault, two-and-a-half twist for nines when eights would have been enough to beat out Guo, her teammate. With her four gold medals and one silver, Fu became one of the most decorated Olympic divers of all time. She is one of only three divers to win an Olympic double-double in the individual events: Pat McCormick and Greg Louganis being the other two.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\n\n\n=== Family Life ===\nFu Mingxia's father, Fu Yijun, and her mother, Lin Xing'e, were once ordinary workers in Wuhan. Both have since retired early and been laid off. Fu Mingxia's elder sister, Fu Mingyan, once resigned from her job to take care of her during her pregnancy. Fu Mingxia's cousin, Fu Mingtian, is a badminton player for Singapore. Whenever Fu Mingtian competes in Hong Kong, Fu Mingxia always shows up in person to cheer her on.\n\n\n== Marriage and motherhood ==\nFu married Antony Leung, former Financial Secretary of Hong Kong, on July 15, 2002, in Hawaii.  Their marriage was not publicly revealed until July 30, 2002. They have a daughter (born February 26, 2003) and two sons (born December 12, 2004, and April 25, 2008).\nThough Fu is no longer diving, she was a member of the Beijing Olympic bid committee for the 2008 Olympics. Beijing won the bid, and Fu went on to serve as an ambassador at the event.\n\n\n== Public Activities ==\nOn September 30, 2001, Fu Mingxia attended the \"Heart Health Carnival\" event in Hong Kong, where she took a photo with children alongside Timothy Fok, the President of the Hong Kong Olympic Committee.\nIn December 2005, Fu Mingxia and Antony Leung attended the Heifer Christmas Charity Bazaar.\nOn October 25, 2008, Fu Mingxia and Antony Leung attended the Heifer \"Race to Feed 2008\" charity event to raise funds for the reconstruction efforts in the Sichuan earthquake-affected areas.\nOn March 30, 2010, Fu Mingxia attended the opening ceremony of the \"A Full 5000 Years\" World Cultural Tourism Expo, alongside Sony Entertainment Marketing Director Jiang Mingsheng and Hopewell Holdings Managing Director Thomas Wu.\nOn October 27, 2012, Fu Mingxia and Antony Leung attended the Heifer Charity Walk event.\nOn October 26, 2015, Fu Mingxia and her husband, Antony Leung, participated in the \"Heifer Race to Feed\" charity event along with their three children.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of members of the International Swimming Hall of Fame\nList of divers\n\n\n== References ==\nNew York Times, May 4, 1992.\nSouth China Morning Post, March 6, 1993; March 24, 2002.\nStraits Times (Singapore), February 28, 2003.\nWashington Post, May 22, 1991."}
{"title": "Félicia Ballanger", "requested": "Félicia Ballanger", "extract": "Félicia Ballanger (born 12 June 1971) is a French retired racing cyclist.\nShe won five world championships in the sprint and 500 m time trial. She was also a triple Olympic champion. She is 1.68 metres (5 ft 6 in) tall and weighs 70 kilograms (150 lb).\n\n\n== Biography ==\nFélicia Ballanger was born on 12 June 1971 in La Roche-sur-Yon. She is one of two children. Her mother named her Félicia after the Italian Tour de France winner Felice Gimondi and her brother, Frédéric, after the Spanish winner, Federico Bahamontes).\nBallanger was at first both a cyclist and a handball player. For cycling she was a member of Vendée la Roche Cycliste.\nShe came fourth in her first world championship and again the following year, 1992, at the Olympic Games in Barcelona. She crashed the following year, breaking a collarbone and having her thigh pierced by a splinter from the velodrome.\nHer first world championship medal came the following season. She took silver in the sprint. Trained by Daniel Morelon, the former world sprint champion, she won her first world championships in 1995, winning the 500 m time-trial and the sprint. She won both again in the four following years. She also won the Olympic sprint medal at Atlanta.\nHer last international was the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney. She won the 500 metres. In the same year she was awarded the Vélo d'Or français, and remained the only female awardee until 2022. In 2001, she became vice-president of the Fédération Française de Cyclisme.\n\n\n=== Personal life ===\nBallanger is married, has two children and has lived in Nouméa since 1998. She is involved in politics there. She was a television commentator during the Olympic Games in Beijing in 2008.\n\n\n== Palmarès ==\n\n\n=== Olympic Games ===\n 1996 1st sprint\n 2000 1st sprint, 1st 500m\n\n\n=== World championship ===\n 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999 1st sprint\n 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999 1st 500m\n 1994 2nd sprint\n1988 1st junior sprint\n\n\n=== National championships ===\nSprint: 1992, 1994...\nYouth sprint : 1986\n\n\n=== World records ===\nSource:\n\n500m 35\"811 3 July 1993 Hyères\n500m 35\"190 28 July 1993 Bordeaux\n500m 34\"604 3 July 1994 Hyères\n500m 34\"474 22 July 1994 Colorado Springs\n500m 34\"017 29 September Bogotá\n500m 34\"010 29 August 1998 Bordeaux\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nFelicia Ballanger at Cycling Archives (archive)\nFelicia Ballanger at databaseOlympics.com at the Wayback Machine (archived 10 March 2007)\nFelicia Ballanger at Olympics.com"}
{"title": "Félix Savón", "requested": "Félix Savón", "extract": "Félix Savón Fabre (born 22 September 1967) is a Cuban former amateur boxer who competed from 1980 to 2000. Considered one of the all-time greatest amateurs, he became three-time Olympic gold medalist, and the World Champion six times in a row, all in the heavyweight division. In 1988, when he was favored by many to win the gold medal at the 1988 Summer Olympics, the Cuban government boycotted the event. Savón is particularly known for having rejected numerous multimillion-dollar offers to defect and leave Cuba permanently to fight Mike Tyson as a professional.\n\n\n== Early life ==\nHe was born in San Vicente, in Guantánamo Province, Cuba. His ring debut occurred in 1980, in Guantánamo.\nSavón's inspiration to become a boxer was his renowned countryman, three-time Olympic champion Teófilo Stevenson (he later was perceived by the Western media as Stevenson's successor)\n\n\n== Career ==\nDuring his career, in which he did not turn professional, he managed a career record of 362–21, with the majority of his losses avenged. The only boxers, who got away with knockout victories over Savón unavenged were Soviet Usman Arsaliyev and North Korean Li Dal-Chen, whom he met only once.\nHe won his first important titles in 1985. At 19 he beat America's Michael Bentt on his way to win the 1987 Pan Am games. Besides winning the Cuban heavyweight title (which he would win each year until his retirement, except 1999 and 2000 when he lost to Odlanier Solís, who he would lose to twice and defeat once in their three meetings), he also won the Junior World Championships in 1985.\nThis set off his career, in which he would win six World Championships; his victory at the 1997 tournament was the result of the disqualification of an opponent, future professional world champion Ruslan Chagaev (whom Savón had previously beaten), who beat Savón in the final, but was later stripped of the gold medal for having two professional fights prior to the championships. Chagaev was reinstated as an amateur the following year when these fights were declared exhibitions, but did not regain the gold medal.\n\nIn 1998 during the Heavyweight final of the Goodwill Games from New York, Savón had an amazing knockout over U.S. Amateur Champion DaVarryl Williamson. At the 1999 tournament, he was to fight American Michael Bennett in the final, but the whole Cuban team retired from the competition to protest the result of another Cuban boxer in the tournament whom they considered had been \"robbed\" by the judges, meaning that Bennett won the final on default. In their bout at the 2000 Summer Olympics Bennett would lose 23–8 to Savón.\nSavón won three Olympic gold medals, a feat shared with only two other boxers, László Papp and compatriot Teófilo Stevenson. He could have been a four-time Olympic gold medalist, had the Cuban government allowed its team to participate in the 1988 Seoul, South Korea.\nSavón's critics said that he is a puncher instead of a boxer who is not satisfied with a decision, risking losses by going after knockouts even when he is far ahead on points. Roosevelt Sanders, a U.S. boxing coach, said Savon would have been immediately ranked between 5th and 10th in the world's professional boxing heavyweight division if he turned pro after the 1990 Goodwill Games. \"Cuba, since 1974 has been the king of amateur boxing in the world\", he said. \"That is why the media of other countries keep asking why we don't box professionally. Professionalism will abolish humanism and society.\" Savon said amateur athletes are revered in Cuba. \"Athletes are the most important thing in Cuba since Castro took over. We practice sports from the age of 8.\"\n\n\n=== Highlights ===\n\n\n=== Retirement ===\nSavón announced his retirement from the ring, but helped train Cuba's fighters for the 2004 Athens Olympics.\nAfter winning his third Olympic gold at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Savón announced his retirement at age 33.\n\n\n== Later life ==\nIn February of the following year with Fidel Castro also present, Savón had the song \"You Love Us\" dedicated to him by the Manic Street Preachers, who became the first western rock band to play in Cuba.\nIn 2018, Savón was arrested amid accusations that he had raped an underage boy. The Cuban authorities never officially disclosed any details about his trial and conviction. In January 2025 it was reported that Savón was released on parole at the end of 2024 with about two years left on his original sentence.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nBoxing record for Félix Savón from BoxRec (registration required)\nFélix Savón at Olympics.com \nFélix Savón at Olympedia \nAmateur career of Félix Savón (in Spanish) compiled by Pedro Cabrera Isidrón of the Cuban Olympics Committee. Last updated: September 17, 2008\nFélix Savón at IMDb"}
{"title": "Galina Kulakova", "requested": "Galina Kulakova", "extract": "Galina Alexeyevna Kulakova (Russian: Галина Алексеевна Кулакова, born 29 April 1942) is a Soviet-Russian former cross-country skier, arguably the best skier on distances shorter than 10 km in the early 1970s. She won four Olympic golds, two individual in 1972 and two relay golds in 1972 and 1976. She was the most successful athlete at the 1972 Winter Olympics, along with Ard Schenk of the Netherlands. Competing in the World Championships, she won three individual golds, two in 1974 and one in 1970, and also two relay golds in those years. Kulakova also won the 10 km event at the Holmenkollen ski festival in 1970 and 1979. Galina Kulakova was also 39 times Champion of the USSR between 1969 and 1981.\nFor her achievements she was awarded the Order of Lenin and the Order of the Badge of Honour. She was also awarded the silver Olympic Order in 1984 by the International Olympic Committee President Juan Antonio Samaranch. Galina Kulakova ended her sports career in 1982.\n\n\n== Drug controversy ==\nAt the 1976 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck, Kulakova finished third in the 5 km event, but was disqualified due to a positive test for banned substance ephedrine. She claimed that this was a result of using the nasal spray that contained the substance. Both the International Ski Federation and the International Olympic Committee allowed her to compete in the 10 km and the 4 × 5 km relay.\n\n\n== Cross-country skiing results ==\nAll results are sourced from the International Ski Federation (FIS).\n\n\n=== Olympic Games ===\n8 medals – (4 gold, 2 silver, 2 bronze)\n\n\n=== World Championships ===\n10 medals – (5 gold, 3 silver, 2 bronze)\n\n\n=== World Cup ===\n\n\n==== Season standings ====\n\n\n==== Team podiums ====\n1 podium\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Winter Olympic medalists\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nGalina Kulakova at the International Ski and Snowboard Federation\nHolmenkollen winners since 1892 – click Vinnere for downloadable pdf file (in Norwegian)"}
{"title": "Gary Hall Jr.", "requested": "Gary Hall Jr.", "extract": "Gary Wayne Hall Jr. (born September 26, 1974) is an American former competition swimmer who represented the United States at the 1996, 2000, and 2004 Olympics and won ten Olympic medals (five gold, three silver, two bronze). He is a former world record-holder in two relay events. Hall is well known for his \"pro-wrestling-like\" antics before a competition, frequently strutting onto the pool deck in boxing shorts and robe, shadow boxing and flexing for the audience.\n\n\n== Early life and swimming ==\nHall was born September 26, 1974 in Cincinnati, Ohio.  He attended the all male private school Brophy College Preparatory, in Phoenix, Arizona where he swam under Coach Bill Doebbler.  At the 1992 5A State Championships at Hildenbrand Aquatic Center, Hall set a meet record and five state records, and received All American Honors in each of the six swimming events.  He set a state record of 20.32 in the 50-yard freestyle, and set another state record of 43.85 in the 100-yard freestyle.  He also swam on teams that set state records in the 200-yard medley relay, the 200-yard freestyle relay, and the 400-yard freestyle relay.  As a high school swimmer, Hall Jr. was rated first nationally in the 50 and 100-yard freestyle.\nHis father, Gary Hall Sr., also competed in three Olympics as a swimmer (1968, 1972, and 1976). His maternal uncle, Charles Keating III, swam in the 1976 Olympics, and his maternal grandfather, Charles Keating Jr., was a national swimming champion in the 1940s.\nHall's cousin is Chief petty officer Charles Keating IV, a Navy SEAL, who was killed at age 31 in combat with ISIS in Iraq in 2016. He was posthumously awarded the Navy Cross for his actions in combat.\n\n\n=== University of Texas ===\nHall signed to attend the University of Texas in the Spring of 1993 while at Brophy College Preparatory School.  During his years at Texas, he swam under Hall of Fame Coach Eddie Reese.  At Texas, he specialized in freestyle and swam butterfly, and was outstanding in sprint events.  He won NCAA titles at Texas, and received honors as an All-American, though he did not graduate from the University, needing to shift his focus to international competition.\n\n\n== Olympics ==\n\n\n=== 1996 Atlanta games ===\nIn his first Olympics at the age of 21 in Atlanta, Hall had only 6 years of swimming experience yet he already had a well-known rivalry with Russia's Alexander Popov.  Hall and his teammates dominated the relay events, but Popov beat Hall and dominated in the individual events.\nHall won two individual silvers and two team relay golds at the games, including helping set the world record in both the 400 m freestyle and medley relays.\n\n\n=== 2000 Sydney games ===\nHall's success continued in the 2000 Summer Olympics held in Sydney, Australia. He won the gold medal in the individual 50 m freestyle, tying with his fellow U.S. Team member Anthony Ervin, and won the gold and silver in the team relays. He also won a bronze in the individual 100-meter freestyle race.\nPrior to the 4 × 100 m freestyle relay, Hall posted on his blog: \"My biased opinion says that we will smash them (Australia's 4 × 100 m team) like guitars. Historically the U.S. has always risen to the occasion. But the logic in that remote area of my brain says it won't be so easy for the United States to dominate the waters this time.\" The Australian media seized upon the \"guitars\" comment to fuel the upcoming rivalry between the Australians and Americans in the pool, with Hall vilified as an \"Ugly American\".\nHall swam the last leg in the relay, against Australian Ian Thorpe. He had a better start and came up a half body-length in front of Thorpe. Though he led the first length and was 0.23 seconds ahead at the turn, Thorpe fought back, and with 15 meters to go both swimmers were even; Thorpe finished first by a hand-length, inflicting the United States' with their only Olympic defeat in the event. The Australian team responded to Hall's remarks after the race by playing air guitar on the pool deck. Hall recalled the race, saying, \"I don't even know how to play the guitar...I consider it the best relay race I've ever been part of. I doff my cap to the great Ian Thorpe. He had a better finish than I had.\" Another member of Australia's victorious 4 × 100 team, Michael Klim, recalled that \"Hall was the first swimmer to come over and congratulate us. Even though he dished it out, he was a true sportsman.\" The decisive moment in the relay race had been Klim's opening leg where he set a new 100-meter world record of 48.18, gaining a 0.71-second advantage over Anthony Ervin, a lead which his Australian teammates successfully defended. Hall clocked a faster 100 meters than Thorpe (48.24 to 48.30), but got out-touched to the wall by Thorpe (who earlier in the night set a new world record to win gold in the 400 meter freestyle).\n\n\n=== 2004 Athens games ===\nAt the 2004 Summer Olympics, Hall again won the gold medal in 50 m freestyle.  At 29, he became the oldest American male Olympic swimmer since Duke Kahanamoku competed at age 34 in 1924. Despite having swum the fastest 50 in the year leading up to the 2004 Games, he was regarded as a long-shot to medal in the 50 m freestyle. He also won a bronze medal for competing in the preliminary heat of the 4 × 100-meter freestyle relay.\n\n\n=== 1996–2000 ===\nIn 1998, Hall was suspended by the International Swimming Federation (FINA) for marijuana use.\nIn 1999, he was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, commonly referred to as childhood or juvenile diabetes. Upon his diagnosis, Hall struggled with the possibilities and the effects he knew the medical condition would have on his life. He took a short hiatus from swimming, but returned to compete in the 2000 U.S. Olympic Trials. There he won the 50 m freestyle and placed second in the 100 m freestyle. His 50 m time of 21.76 seconds set a new American record, beating the ten-year-old record set by Tom Jager.\n\n\n=== 2008 Olympic trials ===\nOn July 5, 2008, Hall failed to qualify for the 2008 Olympic team after finishing fourth in the 50-meter finals at the US Olympic Trials in Omaha, Nebraska.\n\n\n== The Race Club ==\nThe Race Club is a swimming club founded by Hall and his father, Gary Hall Sr. The club, originally known as \"The World Team\", was designed to serve as a training group for elite swimmers around the world in preparation for the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games. To be able to train with the Race Club, one must either have been ranked in the top 20 in the world the past 3 calendar years or top 3 in their nation in the past year. The Race Club included such well-known swimmers as Roland Mark Schoeman, Mark Foster, Ryk Neethling, Ricky Busquet and Therese Alshammar. They were coached by University of Michigan coach Mike Bottom.\nThe Race Club offers various swimming camps, swim clinics, and swimming technique video recording year round for young swimmers at their Islamorada, Florida-based training center.\n\n\n== Shark attack ==\nIn the summer of 2006, Hall's sister, Bebe Hall, was attacked by a blacktip reef shark near Islamorada, while she and Gary were spearfishing, an attack for which Bebe Hall needed 19 stitches. Gary Hall repeatedly punched the shark and his sister shot a spear into it, after which the shark swam off.\n\n\n== Personality ==\nHall has long been one of competitive swimming's most colorful personalities. He often shadow-boxes before a race and is known for wearing a boxing robe in lieu of the usual warm-ups. The robe even earned Hall a fine during the 2004 Olympics, as the Everlast-made apparel violated the uniform supply agreement the team had with Speedo. His eccentricity has won him a great deal of fans, but what some perceive to be \"showboating\" has drawn substantial criticism.  He is also an outspoken critic of performance-enhancing drug use in swimming, and is one of the few prominent swimmers willing to publicly question the legitimacy of suspected individual accomplishments.  In 2008, he compared International Swimming Hall of Fame inductee Amy Van Dyken to disgraced track & field athlete Marion Jones, noting they were both clients of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO).\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nIn his post-swimming careers, after being diagnosed with diabetes, he consulted in healthcare focused on diabetes care, and providing market and public relations for the illness, and provided advocacy.\nOn January 7, 2025, Hall lost his home and his Olympic medals in the Palisades Fire. In response, IOC president Thomas Bach promised Hall that there would be replicas made for him.\n\n\n== Additional honors ==\nFormer American record holder in the 50-meter freestyle.\nHumanitarian Award winner at 2004 Golden Goggle Awards.\nOn April 30, 2012, it was announced that Gary Hall Jr. would be inducted into the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame in July 2012.\n\n\n== See also ==\n\nList of multiple Summer Olympic medalists\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Olympic medalists at a single Games\nList of Olympic medalists in swimming (men)\nList of University of Texas at Austin alumni\nList of World Aquatics Championships medalists in swimming (men)\nWorld record progression 4 × 100 metres freestyle relay\nWorld record progression 4 × 100 metres medley relay\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nGary Hall Jr. at the International Swimming Hall of Fame at the Wayback Machine (archived April 2, 2015)\nGary Hall Jr. at the Team USA Hall of Fame (archive July 20, 2023)\nGary Hall Jr. at usolympicteam.com at the Wayback Machine (archived May 14, 2008)\nGary Hall Jr. at Olympics.com \nGary Hall Jr. at Olympedia \nOfficial website of Gary Hall Jr. at the Wayback Machine (archived February 18, 2006)\nOfficial website of the Race Club at the Wayback Machine (archived February 6, 2010)"}
{"title": "Georg Hackl", "requested": "Georg Hackl", "extract": "Georg Hackl (born 9 September 1966), often named Hackl Schorsch (German pronunciation: [ˈhakl̩ ʃɔʁʃ] ), is a German former luger who was three time Olympic and World Champion. He is known affectionately as Hackl-Schorsch or as the Speeding Weißwurst, a reference to what he looks like in his white bodysuit coming down the luge at fast speeds.\n\n\n== Biography ==\nHackl was born in Berchtesgaden, Bavaria. He took up luge as part of his physical education lessons whilst at school, learning to slide at the Königssee track.\nHackl was known for his rivalry with Markus Prock, with Prock being dominant in World Cup competition whilst Hackl consistently achieved success at the Winter Olympics. Although Hackl was not as natural an athlete as Prock, he was noted as being extremely skilled at setting up his sled to suit particular ice conditions on a given day. In addition his coach and former luger Thomas Schwab highlighted Hackl's mental strength as being key to his success.\nHe won his first Winter Olympic Games luge medal in 1988 in Calgary, when he finished second in the singles event, while placing fourth in the doubles. Four years later, he improved his performance to win the gold, a feat he repeated in 1994 and 1998. In 1998, he won the gold by clocking the fastest time in all four runs, the first in Olympic history in the men's singles to do so (Vera Zozula of the Soviet Union did that feat in the women's singles event at the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York). That year he was named as German Sportsman of the Year. Hackl won the silver medal again in the 2002 Games, becoming the first Winter Olympian to win a medal in five consecutive Winter Olympics. Most recently, he placed 7th in the 2006 Winter Olympics.\nHackl retired from active participation and got involved in coaching after the 2006 Winter Olympics. He is responsible for a group of German lugers nicknamed the \"Sunshine Training Group\", alongside Patric Leitner, with Hackl having responsibility for their sleds. Members of the group include Felix Loch, Natalie Geisenberger, Tobias Wendl and Tobias Arlt, who between them took a clean sweep of the gold medals in luge at the 2014 Winter Olympics.\nHackl won a total of 22 medals at the FIL World Luge Championships, including ten golds (Men's singles: 1989, 1990, 1997; Mixed team: 1991, 1993, 1995, 2000, 2001, 2003, 2005), ten silvers (Men's singles: 1991, 1993, 1995, 1996, 2001, 2004, 2005; Men's doubles: 1987, Mixed team: 1996, 1997), and two bronzes (Men's singles: 2000, Mixed team: 1999).\n\nAt the FIL European Luge Championships, Hackl won twelve medals. This included seven golds (Men's singles: 1988, 1990; Mixed team: 1988, 1992, 1996, 2000, 2002), four silvers (Men's singles: 1994, 2000; Mixed team: 1990, 1994), and one bronze (Men's singles: 1992).\nHe won the overall Luge World Cup title in men's singles twice (1988–9, 1989–90) and also had his best overall finish of second in men's doubles twice (1986–7, 1987–8).\nHackl is also a nine-time wok racing world champion.\nHe was inducted into the International Luge Federation's Hall of Fame in 2013.\nIn 1999, Hackl married his long-term girlfriend, Margit (née Datzmann).\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists in one event\n\n\n== References ==\n\nFuzilogik Sports – Winter Olympic results – Men's luge at the Wayback Machine (archived 21 February 2010)\nHickoksports.com results on Olympic champions in luge and skeleton. at the Wayback Machine (archived 30 June 2007)\nDeprecated link at archive.today (archived 4 December 2012)\nList of European luge champions at the Wayback Machine (archived 25 March 2008) (in German)\nIOC profile\nList of men's doubles luge World Cup champions since 1978. at the Wayback Machine (archived 6 February 2008)\nList of men's singles luge World Cup champions since 1978. at the Wayback Machine (archived 6 February 2008)\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nGeorg Hackl at the International Luge Federation (archive)\nGeorg Hackl at Olympics.com Georg Hackl at Olympic.org (archived) \nGeorg Hackl at Olympedia"}
{"title": "Georg Hillmar", "requested": "Georg Hillmar", "extract": "Georg Otto Hillmar (10 October 1876 in Berlin – 12 December 1911 in Berlin), commonly known as Georg Hillmar, was a German gymnast. He competed at the 1896 Summer Olympics in Athens. Hillmar won two gold medals as a member of the German team that won both of the team events, the parallel bars and the horizontal bar. He had less success in the individual events, contesting the parallel bars, horizontal bar, vault, and pommel horse without earning any medals.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nGeorg Hillmar at Olympedia"}
{"title": "George Eyser", "requested": "George Eyser", "extract": "George Louis Eyser (August 31, 1870 – March 6, 1919) was a German-American gymnast who competed in the 1904 Summer Olympics, earning six medals in one day, including three gold and two silver medals. Eyser competed with a wooden prosthesis for a left leg, having lost his leg after being run over by a train. Despite his disability, he won gold in the vault, an event which then included a jump over a long horse without aid of a springboard.\n\n\n== Biography ==\n\nEyser was born on August 31, 1870, in Kiel, Germany, as the only child of Georg Sophus Jasper Eÿser and Auguste Friederike Henriette Eÿser (née Marxen). When he was 14, his family emigrated to the United States (Eyser obtained US citizenship in 1894). The family first lived in Denver, Colorado, but George moved to St. Louis, Missouri, sometime around 1902–1903, where he worked as a bookkeeper for a construction company. There, he joined a local gymnastics club Concordia Turnverein Saint Louis. At some point in his youth, he lost most of his left leg, which had to be amputated after a train ran over it. It was replaced by a wooden prosthesis, which allowed physical activities such as running and jumping. A keen sportsman, Eyser pursued training, aiming for the 1904 Olympics.\n\n\n== Olympic career ==\nThe 1904 Olympics, held in St. Louis, were the third Olympics held and the first where gold, silver, and bronze medals were introduced for the first three places. Cups or trophies were given to the winners at the previous games. The 1904 games generally had a confusing program of events, which were spread out over several months, and the gymnastics competition was no different. There were two sets of gymnastic events: International Turners' Championship, which was held on July 1–2 and comprised the all-around, triathlon, and team events, and Olympic Gymnastics Championships, held on October 29, which comprised seven individual apparatus events and the combined event. The individual all-around was a combination of the gymnastic triathlon competition and the athletics triathlon. The team competition was a combination of individual scores from the individual all-around. The parallel bars, horizontal bar, vault, and pommel horse scores for each gymnast were summed to get the \"combined\" score.\nEyser competed in both sets and did poorly in the first one. He was placed 10th in the gymnastic 9-event all-around competition, which included 3 routines on both the horizontal bar and parallel bars, two on the pommel horse, and one on the vault. Eyser was 71st in another gymnastic all-around event, which included the same devices but a smaller number of routines. He also competed in the athletics triathlon but finished the last with the results of 8 m (26.1 ft) in shot put, 15.4 s in 100 meters sprint, and 4 m (13 ft) in the long jump.\nEyser performed much better in the second competition set. On a single day, October 29, he won 6 medals in total, of which 3 were gold (parallel bars, long horse vault, and 25-foot rope climbing), two silver (pommel horse and 4-event all-around), and one bronze (horizontal bar). His main rival was another American, Anton Heida, who also won 6 medals, 5 gold and one silver. Heida shared gold with Eyser in the vault, was second after Eyser on parallel bars, but won the horizontal bar, pommel horse, all-around, and team competitions. In the team competition, which was then held by the clubs, Concordia finished fourth.\nBefore 2008, Eyser was the only person with an artificial leg to have competed at the Olympic Games. Later, in 2008 Natalie du Toit, a South African swimmer who lost her left leg in a traffic accident, participated in the 10 km swimming marathon at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing and finished 16th, and in 2012 Oscar Pistorius, a South African double-leg amputee runner, participated in the 2012 Summer Olympics in London in the 400-metre race and the 4x400 relay.\n\n\n=== Later life ===\nAfter his Olympic success, Eyser continued competing for Concordia, with the club winning the 1908 international meet in Frankfurt, Germany, and the 1909 national meet in Cincinnati, Ohio. He died by suicide on March 6, 1919, in Denver.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic medalists at a single Games\nOlivér Halassy\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nGeorge Eyser at Olympics.com\nGeorge Eyser at Olympedia\nGeorge Eyser at databaseOlympics"}
{"title": "Georges Miez", "requested": "Georges Miez", "extract": "Georges Miez (2 October 1904 – 21 April 1999) was a Swiss gymnast. He competed at the 1924, 1928, 1932 and 1936 Summer Olympics, winning a total of four gold, three silver and one bronze medals. Miez was the most successful athlete of the 1928 Games, whereas in 1932 he was the only medalist for Switzerland. Miez also won three medals at the 1934 World Championships.\nBetween the 1924 and 1928 Olympics Miez served in the Swiss army, coached gymnastics in the Netherlands, and worked for a Swiss sportswear company, where he designed a new type of gymnastic trousers. After that, he coached gymnastics in Chiasso. Switzerland did not send an Olympic team in 1932 due to the economic depression, but Miez volunteered to compete on his own and also returned the body of his brother who died in the United States. After winning a silver on the floor, Miez withdrew from the Games and toured the United States giving presentations at universities.\nMiez retired after the 1936 Games and worked as a national gymnastics coach and then as a Red Cross official. After World War II he founded several private schools, wrote books on sports medicine, and coached tennis. He spent most of his late years in Lugano, where he died of a stroke aged 94.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Summer Olympic medalists\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nGeorges Miez at Olympics.com"}
{"title": "Georgeta Damian", "requested": "Georgeta Damian", "extract": "Georgeta Damian (married name Andruanche, born 14 April 1976 in Botoșani) is a female rower from Romania and winner of five Olympic gold medals. She married the rower Valeriu Andrunache in 2006.\nDamian rowed in the Romanian Women's eight, that won the World Rowing Championships in 1997, 1998 and 1999, and the 2000 Summer Olympics, where she also won the Women's pairs. With Viorica Susanu, she won the World Championships in the pairs in 2001 and 2002, and at the 2004 Summer Olympics she won gold medals in both pairs and eights.  At the 2008 Summer Olympics, she won gold in the women's pairs with Susanu, and bronze in the eights.\n\n\n== Medals at Olympic Games ==\n2008 Summer Olympics\n1st, Women's coxless pair\n3rd, Women's eight\n2004 Summer Olympics\n\n1st, Women's eight\n1st, Women's coxless pair\n2000 Summer Olympics\n1st, Women's Eight\n1st, Women's Pair\n\n\n== Medals at World Championships ==\n1997\n1st, Women's Eight\n2nd, Women's Pair\n1998\n1st, Women's Eight\n1999\n1st, Women's Eight\n2001\n1st, Women's Pair\n2nd, Women's Eight\n2002\n1st, Women's Pair\n2003\n2nd, Women's Eight\n3rd, Women's Pair\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nGeorgeta Andrunache at World Rowing\nGeorgeta Andrunache at Olympics.comGeorgeta Damian at Olympic.org (archived)\nGeorgeta Damian-Andrunache at Olympedia\nGeorgeta Andrunache at the Comitetul Olimpic și Sportiv Român (in Romanian) (archive)"}
{"title": "Gert Fredriksson", "requested": "Gert Fredriksson", "extract": "Gert Fridolf Fredriksson (21 November 1919 – 5 July 2006) was a Swedish sprint canoeist. Competing in four Summer Olympics, he won eight medals including six golds (1948: K-1 1000 m, K-1 10000 m; 1952: K-1 1000 m, 1956: K-1 1000 m, K-1 10000 m; 1960: K-2 1000 m), one silver (1952: K-1 10000 m), and one bronze (K-1 1000 m). At the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Fredriksson was head coach of the Swedish team.\nHe was the most successful male canoeist ever, having gained medals in a succession of Swedish, Nordic, World and Olympic championships from 1942 to 1960. With six gold medals Fredriksson remains the most successful Swede at the Olympics.\nHe also won seven gold medals at the World Championships and 71 medals in the Swedish championships.\nFredriksson was awarded the Svenska Dagbladet Gold Medal in 1949. In 1956 he was awarded the Mohammad Taher trophy by the International Olympic Committee as the number one sportsman in the world, the only canoeist to be presented with this trophy.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\n\n\n== References ==\n\nKamber, Raymond, ed. (2008). Medal Winners – Olympic Games and World Championships (1936–2007) – Part 1: flatwater (now sprint). CanoeICF.com. International Canoe Federation. pp. 1–41 at the Wayback Machine (archived 5 January 2010). Additional archives: BCU.org.uk.\nKamber, Raymond, ed. (2008). Medal Winners – Olympic Games and World Championships (1936–2007) – Part 2: rest of flatwater (now sprint) and remaining canoeing disciplines. CanoeICF.com. International Canoe Federation. pp. 42–83 at WebCite (archived 9 November 2009). Additional archives: BCU.org.uk.\nKamber, Raymond, ed. (2008). \"Medal Winners – Olympic Games and World Championships (1936–2007)\" (PDF). CanoeICF.com. International Canoe Federation. pp. 1–83. Archived (PDF) from the original on 18 May 2018.\nInternational Olympic Committee biography\nSlam sports \"Swedish canoeist Gert Fredriksson, 6-time Olympic gold medallist, dies at 86\" July 6 2006\nWallechinsky, David and Jaime Loucky (2008). \"Canoeing: Kayak Pairs 1000 Meters\". In The Complete Book of the Olympics: 2008 Edition. London: Aurum Press Limited. p. 475.\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nGert Fredriksson at Olympedia \nGert Fredriksson at Olympics.com \nGert Fredriksson at Sveriges Olympiska Kommitté (in Swedish) (in English)"}
{"title": "Gillis Grafström", "requested": "Gillis Grafström", "extract": "Gillis Emanuel Grafström (7 June 1893 – 14 April 1938) was a Swedish figure skater. He was born in Stockholm, Sweden. He won three successive Olympic gold medals in Men's Figure Skating (1920, 1924, 1928) as well as an Olympic silver medal in the same event in 1932, and three World Championships (1922, 1924, 1929). Grafström is one of the few athletes who have competed in both the Summer and Winter Olympic games. He and Eddie Eagan are the only athletes to have won gold medals at both the Summer and Winter Olympic Games, although Eagan remains the only one to have managed the feat in different disciplines. He is one of the oldest figure skating Olympic champions.\n\n\n== Biography ==\nGrafström was born in Stockholm; his younger brother Lars Grafström was also a competitive figure skater and Swedish national champion. Gillis Grafström competed in his only European Championships in 1912 and won the \"senior men's\" category, separate from the European champion category. He began studying at KTH Royal Institute of Technology that same year. In 1914, Grafström competed at the last World Championships before the first world war. He came in seventh place after falling and hitting his head. While the war was ongoing, he won the men's competition at the 1917 Nordic Games.\nAfter the war, Grafström won the Olympic gold medal for the first of three successive times (1920, 1924 and 1928) and the silver medal at the 1932 Winter Olympics. As of the 2022 Olympics, he remains the only male figure skater to have won three individual Olympic gold medals (Sonja Henie and Irina Rodnina are other three-time Olympic Champions), and with his silver medal in 1932, is the most successful figure skater in Olympic history. At his first Olympics in Antwerp one of his skates broke, and he had to go to town to buy a new pair. Unfortunately, only curly-toed skates were available. Despite this, he was still able to win.\nHe competed in and won three World Championships in 1922, 1924, 1929, competing only intermittently between editions of Olympic Games. At his first World Championships in 1922, he fell during the compulsory figures. However, he performed so well in the free program that he was able to move into first place. In 1924, he traveled to the location of the competition, Manchester, at the last minute and skated in an exhibition before competing. Although he had won, when he needed money afterward, the Swedish federation refused his request for help; Grafström informed his club that at future competitions, he would enter as an individual rather than as a representative of Sweden.\nGrafström intended to compete at the 1926 World Championships. However, a document he needed to compete there was only approved by a narrow 3-2 vote, and he decided not to enter. Ulrich Salchow was unhappy with this decision, and Grafström was banned from both competitions and exhibition skating for one year. He continued training despite the ban and entered the 1928 Winter Olympics. Although he had an injured knee, he was second after the compulsory figures and won with his free skate.\nIn 1929, he was awarded the Svenska Dagbladet Gold Medal, shared with skier Sven Utterström.\n\nAt his last Olympics in 1932 in Lake Placid, he collided with a photographer on the ice and still managed to place second. He later coached Norwegian figure skater Sonja Henie.\nGrafström was one of the best skaters ever in compulsory figures and also had an interest in special figures. Despite the fact that they were no longer competed after WWII, he created more than fifty special figure designs, some of which were used for English figure tests. He also invented the Grafström-pirouette (on the back outside edge of the blade) and the flying sit spin. He was known for very elegant skating and was famous for his interpretation of music.\nFrom 1925 to his death he lived in Potsdam, Germany. He trained on the Bornstedter See (Bornstedt Lake) when it was frozen or in Berlin on the artificial ice rink at the Volkspark Friedrichshain. Grafström studied architecture at the Technische Hochschule in Charlottenburg (now Technische Universität Berlin) and worked later as an architect. He collected graphics, paintings and sculptures about skating. This collection was continued by his wife Cecilie Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (1898–1995). Today this collection belongs to the World Figure Skating Museum in Colorado Springs in the United States. Grafström was also a writer and an etcher.\nGrafström married in February 1938. Just two months later, he died in Potsdam, Germany, at the age of 44, of heart muscle inflammation, although his cause of death has often been reported as blood-poisoning.\nToday there is a street in Potsdam named after him. In 1976 he was admitted to the World Figure Skating Hall of Fame.\n\n\n== Results ==\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of Olympic medalists in figure skating\nWorld Figure Skating Championships\nList of Olympians who won medals in the Summer and Winter Games\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nGillis Grafström at Olympics.com"}
{"title": "Giorgio Zampori", "requested": "Giorgio Zampori", "extract": "Giorgio Zampori (4 June 1887 – 6 December 1965) was an Italian gymnast who competed in the Summer Olympic Games in 1912, 1920 and 1924.\n\n\n== Biography ==\nHe was part of the Italian team that won three consecutive gold medals in the men's gymnastics team event. He also won the gold medal in the Individual all-round in 1920.\n\n\n== Achievements ==\n\n\n== See also ==\nLegends of Italian sport - Walk of Fame\nItalian men gold medalist at the Olympics and World Championships\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nGiorgio Zampori at World Gymnastics\nGiorgio Zampori at Olympics.com\nGiorgio Zampori at the Italian National Olympic Committee (in Italian)\nGiorgio Zampori at Olympedia\nGiorgio Zampori at InterSportStats"}
{"title": "Giovanna Trillini", "requested": "Giovanna Trillini", "extract": "Giovanna Trillini (born 17 May 1970) is an Italian foil fencer. She is a 4-time Olympic champion (3 times in the team event, 1 time individual) and  won an additional silver and two bronze medals in individual Olympic competitions.\n\n\n== Biography ==\nShe has two brothers, Ezio and Roberto, who were both fencers. In 2001, she got her degree in Sport Science at the University of Urbino.Trillini won the bronze medal at the foil 2006 World Fencing Championships after she lost 15–8 to Margherita Granbassi in the semi-final. Later in the tournament she also won a silver in the team's foil event together with her teammates Elisa Di Francisca, Margherita Granbassi and Valentina Vezzali.\nIn 1998 she married Giovanni Battista Rotella. They have two children: Claudia, born on 12 September 2005 and Giovanni, born on 1 August 2009.\n\n\n== Achievements ==\nOlympic Games\n Foil individual (1992) and Foil team (1992, 1996, 2000)\n Foil individual (2004)\n Foil individual (1996, 2000) and Foil team (2008)\nWorld Championships\n Foil individual (1991, 1997) and Foil team (1990, 1991, 1995, 1997, 1998, 2001, 2004)\n Foil individual (1990, 1995) and Foil team (1986, 1994, 2006)\n Foil individual (1989, 1998, 2006, 2007) and Foil team (1987)\nEuropean Championships\n Foil team (1999, 2000)\n Foil individual (2001)\n Foil individual (1994) and Foil team (1998, 2007)\nMediterranean Games\n Foil individual (1997)\n Foil individual (1991, 1993)\nFencing World Cup\n Foil (1991, 1994, 1995, 1998)\n\n\n== Honours and awards ==\n Italy: Grande Ufficiale Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana (Italian for: Grand Officer Order of Merit of the Italian Republic), 1 September 2008\n\n\n== See also ==\nItalian sportswomen multiple medalists at Olympics and World Championships\nItaly national fencing team – Multiple medallist\nList of multiple Summer Olympic medalists\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nGiovanna Trillini at the International Fencing Federation\nGiovanna Trillini at the European Fencing Confederation\nGiovanna Trillini at Olympics.com\nGiovanna Trillini at the Italian National Olympic Committee (in Italian)\nGiovanna Trillini at Olympedia\nGiovanna Trillini at InterSportStats\nGiovanna Trillini at FIE\nOfficial website (in Italian)"}
{"title": "Giuseppe Delfino", "requested": "Giuseppe Delfino", "extract": "Giuseppe Delfino (22 November 1921 – 10 August 1999) was an Italian fencer and Olympic champion in épée competition.\n\n\n== Biography ==\nHe won a gold medal in the épée individual event at the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome. He won Olympic gold medals in the épée team events in 1952, 1956 and 1960, and silver in 1964.\nHe also competed at the 1955 Mediterranean Games where he won silver medals in the individual and team épée events.\n\n\n== See also ==\nItalian athletes with most Olympic medals\nItalian fencer multiple medallists at the Olympics\nLegends of Italian sport - Walk of Fame\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nGiuseppe Delfino at Olympics.com\nGiuseppe Delfino at the Italian National Olympic Committee (in Italian)\nGiuseppe Delfino at Olympedia\nGiuseppe Delfino at InterSportStats"}
{"title": "Greg Louganis", "requested": "Greg Louganis", "extract": "Gregory Efthimios Louganis (; born January 29, 1960) is an American Olympic diver who won gold medals at the 1984 and 1988 Summer Olympics on the springboard and platform. He is the only man and the second diver in Olympic history to sweep the diving events in consecutive Olympic Games. He has been called both \"the greatest American diver\" and \"probably the greatest diver in history\" as of 2015.\n\n\n== Early life and education ==\nLouganis was born in El Cajon, California, and is of Samoan and Swedish descent. His teenage biological parents placed him for adoption when he was eight months old and he was raised in California by his adoptive parents, Frances and Peter Louganis. His adoptive father was of Greek descent. Louganis reconnected with his biological father, Fouvale Lutu, in 1984. Through the help of DNA tests and his half-siblings, he found his biological mother in 2017.\nHe started taking dance, acrobatics, and gymnastics classes at 18 months, after witnessing his sister's classes and attempting to join in. By the age of three, he was practicing daily and was competing and giving public performances. For the next few years, he regularly competed and performed at various places including nursing homes and the local naval base. As a child, he was diagnosed with asthma and allergies, so to help with the conditions, he was encouraged to continue the dance and gymnastics classes. He also took up trampolining, and at the age of nine began diving lessons after the family got a swimming pool. He attended Santa Ana High School in Santa Ana, Valhalla High School in El Cajon, and Mission Viejo High School in Mission Viejo.\nSubsequently, in 1978, he attended the University of Miami, where he majored in drama and continued diving. In 1981, he transferred to the University of California, Irvine, where he graduated with a major in theater and a minor in dance in 1983.\n\n\n== Diving career ==\nAs a Junior Olympic competitor, Louganis caught the eye of Sammy Lee, two-time Olympic champion, who began coaching him. At 16, Louganis took part in the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, where he placed second in the tower event, behind Italian sport legend Klaus Dibiasi. Two years later, with Dibiasi retired, Louganis won his first world title in the same event with the help of coach Ron O'Brien of the Mission Viejo Nadadores.\nLouganis was a favorite for two golds in the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, but an American boycott of the games prevented him from participating. He was one of 461 athletes to receive a Congressional Gold Medal years later. Louganis won two titles at the world championships in 1982, where he became the first diver in a major international meeting to get a perfect score of 10 from all seven judges. At the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, with record scores and leads over his opponents, Louganis won gold medals in both the springboard and tower diving events.\nHe won two more world championship titles in 1986.\nAt the 1988 Seoul Olympics, he struck his head on the springboard during the preliminary rounds, leading to a concussion. He completed the preliminaries despite his injury. He then earned the highest single score of the qualifying round for his next dive and repeated the dive during the finals, earning the gold medal by a margin of 25 points. In the 10 m finals, he won the gold medal, performing a 3.4 difficulty dive in his last attempt, earning 86.70 points for a total of 638.61, surpassing silver medalist Xiong Ni by only 1.14 points. His comeback earned him the title of ABC's Wide World of Sports \"Athlete of the Year\" for 1988.\n\n\n=== HIV status and head injury ===\nSix months before the 1988 Seoul Olympics, Louganis was diagnosed with HIV and started antiretrovirals. After Louganis came out publicly as HIV-positive in 1995, people in and out of the international diving community began to question Louganis's decision not to disclose his HIV status at the time of his head injury during the 1988 Olympics, given that he had bled into a pool that others then dived into. Louganis has stated that, during the ordeal, he was \"paralyzed with fear\" that he would infect another competitor or the doctor who treated him. Ultimately, no one else was infected. John Ward, chief of HIV-AIDS surveillance at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, noted that the incident posed no risk to others because any blood was highly diluted by the pool water and \"chlorine kills HIV\". Since skin is an effective barrier to HIV, the only way the virus could enter would be through an open wound; \"If the virus just touches the skin, it is unheard of for it to cause infection: the skin has no receptors to bind HIV,\" explained Anthony Fauci who was with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the time.\n\n\n=== Endorsement deals ===\nLouganis got few endorsement deals following his 1984 and 1988 Olympic victories, his one major deal being Speedo, a partnership which lasted until 2007. Some of his fellow athletes blamed homophobia for his lack of deals, since he had been rumored to be gay even before he came out. Louganis has stated that he suspects that his sexuality played a part, although he feels that in part he was simply overshadowed in the public imagination by other American Olympians, most notably Mary Lou Retton.\nIn 2016, Louganis was pictured on boxes of Wheaties cereal, where prominent American athletes are famously featured, as part of a special \"Legends\" series that also included 1980s Olympians Janet Evans and Edwin Moses. This occurred approximately a year after a Change.org petition was launched that requested that he be featured, although General Mills denied any influence from the petition.\n\n\n=== Coaching ===\nIn November 2010, Louganis began coaching divers of a wide range of ages and abilities in the SoCal Divers Club in Fullerton, California.\nHe was a mentor to the U.S. diving team at the London 2012 Olympics and the Rio de Janeiro 2016 Olympics.\n\n\n== Media career ==\n\n\n=== Acting ===\nLouganis had been a theater major in college, and in the late 1980s and 1990s, he appeared in a number of movies, including Touch Me in 1997.\nIn 1993, he played the role of Darius in an Off-Broadway production of the play Jeffrey. In 1995, he starred for six weeks in the Off-Broadway production of Dan Butler's one man-show about gay life, The Only Thing Worse You Could Have Told Me, taking over from Butler himself. In the play he portrayed 14 different characters.\nIn 2008, he appeared in the film Watercolors, in the role of Coach Brown, a swimming instructor in a high school.\nIn 2012, he appeared in the ninth episode of the second season of IFC's comedy series Portlandia, playing himself.\n\n\n=== Television ===\nIn September 2000, Louganis appeared on Hollywood Squares as a member of the famous Olympic gold medalists \"Dream Team.\"\nIn 2013, Louganis was Dive Master in the celebrity diving show Splash on ABC, and a diving judge on Celebrity Splash! on Channel 7 in Australia.\nIn 2020, he was a diving judge on the second season of the ABC show Holey Moley.\n\n\n=== Books and video diary ===\nIn 1996, Louganis recounted his story in a bestselling autobiography, Breaking the Surface, co-written with Eric Marcus. In the book, Louganis detailed a relationship of domestic abuse and rape as well as teenage depression, and how he began smoking and drinking at a young age. The book spent five weeks at number one on The New York Times Best Seller list.\nIn 1998, Louganis released a video diary called Looking to the Light, which picked up where Breaking the Surface left off.\nIn 1999, Louganis co-wrote the book For the Life of Your Dog: A Complete Guide to Having a Dog From Adoption and Birth Through Sickness and Health with Betty Sicora Siino.\n\n\n== Dog agility competitions ==\nAfter retiring from diving, Louganis began to compete in dog agility competitions; he has said that being around the dogs gave him \"a sense of security, company and unconditional love\". His dogs have included Dr. Schivago; Captain Woof Blitzer; Nipper and son, Dobby, both champion Jack Russell Terriers; Gryff (Gryffindor), a Border Collie; and Hedwig, a Hungarian Pumi. Nipper was named for the RCA dog, while Gryff, Dobby and Hedwig were named for Harry Potter characters, as Louganis is a self-described \"huge Harry Potter fan.\"\n\n\n== Activism ==\n\nLouganis is a gay rights activist, as well as an HIV awareness advocate. He has worked frequently with the Human Rights Campaign to defend the civil liberties of the LGBT community and people diagnosed with HIV/AIDS.\nIn the October/November 2010 issue of ABILITY Magazine, Louganis stated that the \"Don't Ask, Don't Tell\" policy was \"absurd,\" \"unconstitutional,\" and a \"witch-hunt.\" He added that \"gay men and women have been serving this country for years ... [it's] basically encouraging people who are serving our country to lie to each other.\"\nLouganis is on the board of directors to the USA-based chapter of the charitable foundation of Princess Charlene of Monaco.\nIn 2023, it was reported that Louganis was auctioning three of his five Olympic medals in an effort to fund the Damien Center, Indiana's oldest and largest AIDS services center. \"The medals, they're in the history books,\" he said. \"Instead of holding on to them, I'm aiming to share my piece of Olympic history with collectors; together, we can help the Damien Center and its community to grow and thrive.\" Instead, Louganis auctioned the medals to fund his retirement to Panama.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\n\nFrom 1983 to 1989, Louganis was involved romantically with his manager, R. James \"Jim\" Babbitt. Louganis has described the relationship as abusive, saying that, at one point in 1983, Babbitt raped him at knife point. Louganis also accused Babbitt of taking 80 percent of his earnings. Six months before the 1988 Olympics, Louganis was diagnosed with HIV; he had contracted the virus from Babbitt. His doctor placed him on the antiretroviral drug AZT, which he took every four hours round the clock. In 1989, Louganis obtained a restraining order against Babbitt. Babbitt died of AIDS in 1990.\nWhen Louganis turned 33, in 1993, he agreed to gather friends and family for a birthday party, but one that he envisioned as a final goodbye, as he was in failing health and thought he would soon die of AIDS. But, with treatment, he kept going and, in 1994, at the opening ceremony at that year's Gay Games, Louganis came out publicly as gay in a pre-taped announcement, at the encouragement of the event's organizers. Even before then, however, he led a life that has been described as \"openly gay.\" In 1995, around the time of the release of his memoir, Breaking the Surface, Louganis revealed his HIV status in an interview with Barbara Walters, speaking openly, for the first time, about being both gay and HIV-positive.\nIn June 2013, Louganis announced, in People magazine, his engagement to his partner, paralegal Johnny Chaillot. The two were married on October 12, 2013, but on June 18, 2021, Louganis revealed on Instagram that he and Chaillot were ending their marriage.\n\n\n== In popular culture ==\nAs a follow-up to the success of the book, Canadian television and film director Steven Hilliard Stern directed Breaking the Surface: The Greg Louganis Story in 1997, starring Mario Lopez as Louganis, with Louganis also appearing in certain scenes of the television film and as narrator. Louganis also produced a video diary called Looking To the Light, which picked up where Breaking the Surface left off.\nActor Michael Fassbender took Louganis's gait and mannerisms as inspiration for his portrayal of an advanced humanoid robot in the 2012 film Prometheus, stating that \"Louganis was my first inspiration. I figured that I'd sort of base my physicality roughly around him, and then it kind of went from there.\"\nLouganis was the subject of the documentary Back on Board which aired on HBO on August 4, 2015.\n\n\n== Awards and honors ==\n\nIn 1984, Louganis received the James E. Sullivan Award from the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) as the most outstanding amateur athlete in the United States.\nIn 1988, he was awarded \"Athlete of the Year\" by ABC's Wide World of Sports.\nIn 1989, he was nominated for \"Best Male Athlete\" by the Kids' Choice Awards.\nIn 1991, Greg was inducted into the University of Miami Sports Hall of Fame.\nIn June 2013, Louganis was inducted into the California Sports Hall of Fame. He was among the first class of inductees into the National Gay and Lesbian Sports Hall of Fame on August 2, 2013.\nIn April 2015, Louganis was presented the Bonham Centre Award from The Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies, University of Toronto, for his contributions to the advancement and education of issues around sexual identification.\nIn July 2015, he was a torch bearer for the 2015 Special Olympics World Summer Games in Los Angeles.\nIn January 2017, he was a Grand Marshal of the Rose Parade in Pasadena, California.\n\n\n== Bibliography ==\n1996 – Breaking the Surface\n1999 – For the Life of Your Dog\n\n\n== Filmography ==\nDirty Laundry (1987) as Larry\nInside Out III (1992) as Max in the segment \"The Wet Dream\"\nD2: The Mighty Ducks (1994) as himself\nIt's My Party (1996) as Dan Zuma\nBreaking the Surface: The Greg Louganis Story (1997)\nTouch Me (1997) as David\nSports Theater with Shaquille O'Neal (episode: \"Broken Record\") (1997 TV movie) as Coach Hill\nWatercolors (2008) as Coach Brown\n30 for 30: \"Tim Richmond: To the Limit\" (2010)\nPortlandia, season 2, episode 9 (2012) as himself\nSplash (2013) as himself\nCelebrity Splash! (2013) as himself\nBack on Board: Greg Louganis (2014)\nSabre Dance (2015) as Salvador Dalí\nEntourage (2015) as a fictional version of himself\n30 for 30: Thicker than Water (2015)\n\n\n== See also ==\n\nWorld Fit\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nOfficial website \nGreg Louganis at the Team USA Hall of Fame (archive June 11, 2023)\nGregory Louganis at Olympics.comGregory Louganis at Olympic.org (archived)\nGreg Louganis at Olympedia \nGreg Louganis at IMDb \nGreg Louganis to keynote DBSA 2007 National Conference at the Wayback Machine (archived May 28, 2007)"}
{"title": "Gunda Niemann-Stirnemann", "requested": "Gunda Niemann-Stirnemann", "extract": "Gunda Niemann-Stirnemann (née Kleemann; born 7 September 1966) is a German former speed skater. She is a three-time Olympic gold medallist, winning the 3000 metres in 1992 and 1998 and the 5000 metres in 1992. She won a total of eight Olympic medals.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\n\nBorn as Gunda Kleemann in Sondershausen, Bezirk Erfurt, East Germany, she has lived in Erfurt for most of her life. Before German reunification in 1990, she skated for East Germany.\nShe changed her name to Gunda Niemann after her marriage in 1991 to judoka Detlev Niemann. After their divorce in 1995, she kept the name Niemann. She changed her name to Niemann-Stirnemann after marrying her Swiss long-time manager, Oliver Stirnemann, on 11 July 1997. Their daughter Victoria Stirnemann is also a competitive speed skater and a professional boxer.\nThe speed skating oval in Erfurt, the Gunda-Niemann-Stirnemann-Halle, was named after her.\n\n\n== Career ==\nNiemann-Stirnemann dominated women's speed skating for several years, especially on the longer distances. She has competed in four Olympics, from 1988 to 1998, and won eight Olympic medals (3 gold, 4 silver, and 1 bronze). In the nine years from 1991 to 1999, she won the World Allround Championships every year except 1994. She has a record number of 98 World Cup single distance victories and has won 19 overall World Cup titles. She was European Allround Champion 8 times. Over the course of her career, she set 18 world records. For her performances, she received the Oscar Mathisen Award three times: in 1995, 1996 and 1997.\nNiemann-Stirnemann left speed skating in 2001 to give birth to a daughter, but later returned to competition. She planned to make one last comeback and participate in the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, but a lingering back injury – which she suffered from since the 2004–05 season – made her quit. At the end of October 2005, a few days before the German Championships, she announced her retirement.\nExcept for one day in March 1998, Niemann-Stirnemann was number one in the Adelskalender, the all-time allround speed skating ranking, from 24 January 1993, until 2 March 2001 – a total of 2,958 days. She skated in Olympic, World, World Cup, European and national championships to 215 medals, thereof 163 gold medals.\n\n\n== World records ==\nOver the course of her career, Niemann-Stirnemann skated 18 world records:\n\nNote that the 10000 m was suspended as a world record event at the 1953 ISU Congress.\n\n\n== Personal records ==\nTo put these personal records in perspective, the last column (WR) lists the official world records on the dates that Niemann-Stirnemann skated her personal records.\n\nNiemann-Stirnemann has an Adelskalender score of 160.167 points. Her highest ranking on the Adelskalender was the first place.\n\n\n== Biography ==\nGunda Niemann-Stirnemann: Ich Will. Traumkarriere mit Tränen und Triumphen (2000). Das Neue Berlin.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nGunda Niemann-Stirnemann at SkateResults.com[link removed]\nGunda Niemann-Stirnemann at SpeedSkatingNews (in German)\nGunda Niemann-Stirnemann's personal site Archived 2013-04-06 at the Wayback Machine (in German)\nPhotos of Gunda Niemann-Stirnemann\nGunda Niemann-Stirnemann at Olympic.org"}
{"title": "Gunde Svan", "requested": "Gunde Svan", "extract": "Gunde Anders Svan (born 12 January 1962) is a Swedish former cross-country skier and auto racing driver. During his cross-country skiing career he won a total of four gold, one silver and one bronze medals at the Winter Olympics. Svan won a total of seven golds, three silvers, and one bronze at the FIS Nordic World Ski Championships. Svan also won the 15 km once (1983) and the 50 km twice (1986, 1990) at the Holmenkollen ski festival. In 1984, he earned the Svenska Dagbladet Gold Medal, and in 1985, he earned the Holmenkollen medal (shared with Anette Bøe and Per Bergerud). Svan won the Jerring Award in both 1984 and 1985. He is a board member of the International Ski Federation.\n\n\n== Biography ==\nDuring his skiing career he became known for his dedication and attention to detail. For instance, he used a lighter alloy on the tips of his ski poles, saving four grams (0.14 oz).  He won two golds (15 km and relay), one bronze (30 km) and one silver (50 km) at the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo.  At the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, he won two golds for 50 km and relay.  He also won the World championship gold six times and won the World cup five times.\nAs a competitor in rallycross he got one gold medal in the Swedish Championship and a bronze medal in the FIA European Championship for Rallycross Drivers (1995: Division 1 – Group N category; with a Toyota Celica GT-Four).  One of the reasons for getting into another sport was that some people called him a natural skier while he himself maintained that it's just a matter of will and dedication, according to his famous tagline \"nothing is impossible\".  He applied the same methods to his driving as his skiing and even built his own reaction-tester to practice for the rallycross eminently important starts. When his compatriot and teamboss, the late Christer Bohlin, was not able to fulfill his promise to upgrade his Toyota team for 1996 into the top ERC category (Division 2 by then), Svan quit and gave up rallycross.\nAfter retiring from his athletic career he has worked as the host for some game shows such as the Swedish versions of American Gladiators and Fort Boyard along the swedish national lotery Bingolotto.  He has played a seductive lady in the short movie En handelsresandes nöd, directed by rock group Svenne Rubins and starring Claes Månsson, Björn Skifs and Gert Klötzke.  He has also appeared in numerous commercials including a famous commercial where he impersonated fellow skier Thomas Wassberg.\nSvan resigned from his position as Chief of Cross-Country for Sweden on the week of 4 May 2009 after he was involved in its reorganization.\nHe participated in Let's Dance 2018 broadcast on TV4 where he finished third together with Jeanette Carlsson.\nHe retired to his 1,000-hectare (2,500-acre) forest farm, where he worked with his son, Ferry Svan, and now supports his children's careers.\n\n\n== Cross-country skiing results ==\nAll results are sourced from the International Ski Federation (FIS).\n\n\n=== Olympic Games ===\n6 medals – (4 gold, 1 silver, 1 bronze)\n\n\n=== World Championships ===\n11 medals – (7 gold, 3 silver, 1 bronze)\n\n\n=== World Cup ===\n\n\n==== Season titles ====\n5 titles – (5 overall)\n\n\n==== Season standings ====\n\n\n==== Individual podiums ====\n30 victories\n46 podiums\n\n\n==== Team podiums ====\n9 victories\n14 podiums\n\n\n== Racing record ==\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n Media related to Gunde Svan at Wikimedia Commons\nGunde Svan at the International Ski and Snowboard Federation\nGunde Anders Svan at Olympics.comGunde Anders Svan at Olympic.org (archived)\nGunde Svan at Olympedia \nHolmenkollen medalists - click Holmenkollmedaljen for downloadable pdf file at the Wayback Machine (archived February 24, 2007) (in Norwegian)\nHolmenkollen winners since 1892 - click Vinnere for downloadable pdf file at the Wayback Machine (archived February 24, 2007) (in Norwegian)\nMay 8, 2009 article on changes in cross-country skiing, including Svan's resignation."}
{"title": "Guo Jingjing", "requested": "Guo Jingjing", "extract": "Guo Jingjing (Chinese: 郭晶晶; pinyin: Guō Jīngjīng; born October 15, 1981, in Baoding, Hebei) is a retired Chinese diver, and multi-time Olympic gold medalist and world champion. Guo is tied with her partner Wu Minxia for winning the most Olympic medals (6) of any female diver and she won the 3m springboard event at five consecutive World Championships. She announced her retirement in 2011.\n\n\n== Career ==\n\nShe took up diving when she was six years old at the Baoding Training Base. She started training in competitive diving in 1988, and was selected to dive for the Chinese national team in 1992. Guo first competed at the Olympics in 1996. Had she duplicated her performances from many other events, including the 1995 Chinese Nationals, 1995 Dive Canada, or 1996 Chinese Olympic Trials, she would have easily won gold ahead of teammate Fu Mingxia, but had a disastrous final, missing all 5 dives, and finished in 5th place.  Her coach leading up to the 2008 Olympics was Zhong Shaozhen.\nDuring the 2004 Summer Olympics she won a gold medal in the 3-meter women's synchronized springboard along with Wu Minxia, before winning her first individual Olympic gold in the 3-meter women's springboard.\n\nAfter the 2004 Summer Olympics, Guo became a Chinese national sports figure, with a contract with McDonald's, as well as multiple other endorsement contracts. She was later banned by the national team for excessive commercial activities, but was accepted back to the team when she agreed to focus on diving and give up many promotional activities. She was also made to surrender nearly 4 million dollars she had earned from her endorsements. Tian Liang, a fellow Olympic gold medalist offered the same deal as Guo, declined to pay back the money to the government, and was excluded from the Olympic games. Guo is the leading member of the Chinese national women's diving team, and is known in China as \"The Princess of Diving\". Guo announced on November 23, 2006, she would retire following the 2008 Summer Olympics.\nGuo won two more gold medals at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. At the end of the Beijing Games, Guo became the most decorated female Olympic diver, and tied fellow Chinese athlete Fu Mingxia, and Americans Pat McCormick and Greg Louganis with the most gold medals (four).  Guo won the gold medal in the women's 3-meter springboard with a total of 415.35 points. The silver medal was awarded to Yuliya Pakhalina of Russia, whose score was 398.60, followed by Wu Minxia of China with 389.85 for the bronze medal.  In synchronized diving, the defending champions Guo, and Wu, who won the event in the 2004 Athens Olympics and three World Championships, had led the entire competition in Beijing, winning the gold medal, with Yuliya Pakhalina and Anastasia Pozdnyakova of Russia, who posted 323.61, winning Silver.\nIt was confirmed in January 2011 that Guo had decided to retire, and she would not compete in the 2012 Summer Olympics.  She was quoted as saying, \"I think I have fulfilled my task, so the London Games is not what I have in mind now. The chances should be left to other talents in the team.\"\nIn 2016, she and her husband Kenneth Fok participated in The Amazing Race China 3, based on a CBS's travel-reality program of the same name. After competing ten Olympic-themed legs, they emerged as the winning team of the season.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\n\nGuo's social activities after the Athens Olympics were the subject of scrutiny in Mainland Chinese and Hong Kong media news outlets. Guo made entertainment headlines in China when the paparazzi published a photograph of her dining with Kenneth Fok Kai-kong, the grandson of Hong Kong tycoon Henry Fok. Guo did not deny the relationship, and has been photographed many times with Kenneth Fok in public.\nThe couple married in Hong Kong on November 8, 2012. On August 27, 2013, Guo gave birth to a baby boy. She had a second baby, a girl, on April 21, 2017, and a third baby, another daughter, on January 1, 2019.\nDuring Guo's history in diving, including long-term high-pressure training, damaged her knees, her retina and contributed to her myopia. In September 2008, Guo had to undergo surgery to repair a detached retina in both her eyes and her surgery was undertaken by Hong Kong ophthalmologist Dennis Lam. Earlier in 2001, she underwent surgery to repair a detached retina in her right eye, but spent only a few months out of the water. Since then, her eyesight has declined markedly.\n\n\n== Major achievements ==\n1995 World Cup – 1st Synchronized Platform & 3m Synchronized Springboard\n1996 Olympic Games – 5th Platform\n1998 World Championships – 2nd 3m Springboard\n1999 World Cup – 1st 3m Synchronized Springboard; 3rd 3m Springboard\n2000 World Cup – 1st 3m Springboard; 2nd 3m Synchronized Springboard\n2000 Olympic Games – 2nd 3m Springboard & Synchronized Springboard\n2001 World Championships – 1st 3m Springboard & Synchronized Springboard\n2002 World Cup – 1st 1m & 3m Springboard; 2nd 3m Synchronized Springboard\n2002 Asian Games – 1st 3m Springboard & Synchronized Springboard\n2003 FINA Diving Grand Prix (Australia/China) – 1st 3m Springboard & Synchronized Springboard\n2003 World Championships – 1st 3m Springboard & Synchronized Springboard\n2004 World Cup – 1st 3m Synchronized Springboard; 2nd 3m Springboard\n2004 Olympic Games – 1st 3m Springboard & Synchronized Springboard\n2005 World Championships – 1st 3m Springboard & Synchronized Springboard\n2006 Asian Games – 1st 3m Synchronized Springboard\n2007 World Championships – 1st 3m Springboard & Synchronized Springboard\n2008 Olympic Games 1st Women's 3m Synchronised Springboard\n2008 Olympic Games 1st Women's 3m Springboard\n2009 World Championships – 1st 3m Springboard & Synchronized Springboard\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n2008 Beijing Olympics Diving News, images, and scores from NBC at the Wayback Machine (archived 2012-10-12)\n\"Guo Jingjing\", number 9 on Time’s list of \"100 Olympic Athletes To Watch\"\nGuo Jingjing at the International Swimming Hall of Fame \nGuo Jingjing  at World Aquatics \nGuo Jingjing at Olympics.com"}
{"title": "Gustav Flatow", "requested": "Gustav Flatow", "extract": "Gustav Felix Flatow (7 January 1875 – 29 January 1945) was a German gymnast.  He competed at the 1896 Summer Olympics in Athens and at the 1900 Summer Olympics in Paris. Flatow was Jewish, and was born in Berent, West Prussia. In 1892, he moved to Berlin.\n\n\n== Biography ==\nFlatow competed in the parallel bars, horizontal bar, vault, pommel horse, and rings individual events.  He won no individual medals, unlike his cousin and teammate Alfred Flatow. However, both were members of the German team that competed in the two team events, for parallel bars and the horizontal bar.  As Germany won both those events (the horizontal bar unchallenged), Gustav earned two gold medals.  He also competed at the 1900 Summer Olympics in Paris, but without winning medals.  He retired from gymnastics to manage his textile company, which he founded in 1899.\n\nAfter the Nazi takeover in Germany in 1933, he fled to the Netherlands to find refuge, but he was taken into custody ten years later. On New Year's Eve 1943, he was jailed for fleeing and in February 1944 was deported to Theresienstadt Ghetto, located in the fortress town of Terezín, in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia). This was the same camp to which his cousin who was in the Olympics had previously been sent. His cousin had already died there in 1942. Less than one year after his arrival, Gustav starved to death. He was 70 years old when he died on 29 January 1945, months before the Soviet army liberated the camp.\nIn 1986, journalists discovered his urn, which is now entombed in Terezín near the site of the concentration camp.\nIn 1989, he was inducted into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.\nIn 1997, Berlin honoured Alfred and Gustav Flatow by renaming the Reichssportfeldstraße (a lane) near the Olympic Stadium to Flatowallee (Flatow-avenue).  There is also the Flatow-Sporthalle (sports hall) at Berlin-Kreuzberg with a commemorative plaque for both.  The Deutsche Post issued a set of four stamps to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the modern Olympic games.  One of the stamps honors the Flatows.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of select Jewish gymnasts\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nGustav Flatow at Olympedia"}
{"title": "Gustav Schuft", "requested": "Gustav Schuft", "extract": "Fritz Richard Gustav Schuft (16 June 1876 in Berlin – 8 February 1948 in Cottbus) was a German gymnast. He competed at the 1896 Summer Olympics in Athens.\nSchuft was a member of the German team that won two gold medals by placing first in both of the team events, the parallel bars and the horizontal bar.  He also competed in the parallel bars, horizontal bar, vault, and pommel horse individual events, though without success.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nGustav Schuft at Olympedia"}
{"title": "Győző Kulcsár", "requested": "Győző Kulcsár", "extract": "Győző Kulcsár (18 October 1940 – 19 September 2018) was a Hungarian fencer. He competed in the individual and team épée events at the 1964, 1968, 1972 and 1976 Olympics and won four gold (one individual and three team) and two individual bronze medals. He also won three world titles with the Hungarian team, in 1970, 1971 and 1978.\nAfter retiring from competitions Kulcsár worked as a fencing coach, in Hungary (c. 1980–1988 and after 2001) and Italy (c. 1988–2000). His trainees include Tímea Nagy, Emese Szász and his nephew Krisztián Kulcsár.\nHe died on 19 September 2018 at the age of 77.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nGyozo Kulcsar at Olympics.com\nGyőző Kulcsár at Magyar Olimpiai Bizottság (in Hungarian) (in English)"}
{"title": "Halil Mutlu", "requested": "Halil Mutlu", "extract": "Halil Mutlu (born Halil Aliev (Bulgarian: Халил Алиев) on 14 July 1973 in Postnik, Bulgaria) is a Turkish former professional weightlifter with several World and Olympic championship titles. Mutlu is one of the six weightlifters who has achieved three consecutive gold medals at the Olympic Games. His weightlifting career includes five World championships, nine European championships and more than 20 world records at 52 kg (115 lb), 54 kg (119 lb) and 56 kg (123 lb) combined.\n\n\n== Career ==\nIn 1994, he won both the European and world championships, titles that would soon become commonplace for him. He made his first Olympic appearance in 1992 in the 52 kg category and finished fifth. In 1996, in the 54 kg category, the reigning world champion and world record holder, Mutlu broke the world record in the snatch and went on to win the gold medal by 7.5 kg. At the 1999 World Championships he beat silver medal winner Adrian Jigău by around 20 kg and set a new world record. He remained undefeated until the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, where he was even more dominant than he had been in Atlanta. This time he set world records in both the snatch and the clean and jerk and won by 17.5 kg in the 56 kg category.\nHe was suffering from a shoulder injury in 2003 and temporarily moved to the 62 kg class. His career appeared in doubt after a torn right rotator cuff and ruptured biceps tendon sidelined him for most of 2002.\nMutlu dominated in his weight class since mid-1990s. By the time of the Athens Olympics in 2004, Mutlu won the world championship five times, although he had missed the 2002 season because of injury. In Athens he out lifted Wu Meijin of China by 5 kg in the snatch and then extended his lead in the jerk to earn victory by 7.5 kg. At 31, he captured his third consecutive gold medal at the Olympics in Athens.\n\n\n=== Steroid ban ===\nIn 2005, Mutlu was banned from international competition by the International Weightlifting Federation for 2 years for use of anabolic steroid Nandrolone, although he insists that he never knowingly took steroids. The Turkish Weightlifting Federation itself had been suspended by the IWF for \"repeated anti-doping violations\" until May 2006. He pulled out of the 2008 Beijing Olympics stating that he was not able to \"lift my targeted weight in practice.\" As a penalty, he was expelled from the ASKI.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nMutlu is married and has lived in Ankara, Turkey since the early 1990s. He is a member of the Konya Kombassan Club in Konya and is coached by Ibrahim Elmali. Beside weightlifting, Mutlu enjoys wrestling.\n\n\n== Highlights ==\nWorld junior champion (1993),\nFive-time world champion (2003, 2001, 1999, 1998, 1994 - 1st; 1995, 1993 - 2nd.),\nNine-time European champion (2005, 2003, 2001, 2000, 1999, 1997, 1996, 1995, 1994),\n25 gold medals (8 Snatch, 8 Clean and Jerk, 9 Total) in total at European Championships, winner of the most gold medals second after David Rigert with 27 gold medals,\nOnly fourth weightlifter to win three Olympic gold medals (2004, 2000, 1996),\nNamed as the \"Sportsman of the year 1999\" in Turkey,\nHe is one of five men in history to lift three times his bodyweight,\n\n\n== Major results ==\n\n\n== Medals ==\nOlympics\n\nWorld Championships\n\nEuropean Championships\n\nCWR: Current world record\nWR: World record\n\n\n== See also ==\nAthletes with most gold medals in one event at the Olympic Games\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nHalil Mutlu at IWF\nHalil Mutlu at IWRP\nHalil Mutlu at IAT Database Weightlifting (in German)\nHalil Mutlu at Olympics.com\nHalil Mutlu at Olympedia\nHalil Mutlu at InterSportStats"}
{"title": "Hannes Kolehmainen", "requested": "Hannes Kolehmainen", "extract": "Juho Pietari \"Hannes\" Kolehmainen (Finnish: [ˈhɑnːes ˈkolehmɑi̯nen] ; 9 December 1889 – 11 January 1966) was a Finnish four-time Olympic gold medalist and a world record holder in middle- and long-distance running. He was the first in a generation of great Finnish long-distance runners, often named the \"Flying Finns\". Kolehmainen competed for a number of years in the United States, wearing the Winged Fist of the Irish American Athletic Club. He also enlisted in the 14th Regiment of the National Guard of New York, and became a U.S. citizen in 1921.\n\n\n== Biography ==\n\nKolehmainen, a devoted vegetarian and bricklayer by trade, was from a sportive family from Kuopio – his brothers William and Tatu were also strong long-distance runners.\nKolehmainen won the 1911 British AAA Championships 4 miles title at the 1911 AAA Championships.\nHannes was one of the stars of the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm, winning three gold medals. His most memorable was the one in the 5000 m. In that event, he ran a heroic duel with Frenchman Jean Bouin. After leading the field together for most of the race, Bouin was only defeated by Kolehmainen in the final metres, in world record time. In addition, Kolehmainen won the 10,000 m and the now-discontinued cross country event. With the Finnish team, he also obtained a silver place in the cross country team event.\nKolehmainen's sportive career was interrupted by the First World War, but he remained an athlete to be reckoned with, although his specialty had now shifted to the longer distances, especially the marathon. At the first post-war Olympics in Antwerp, he won the gold medal in this event. He would also enter the Olympic marathon in 1924, but did not complete that race.\nBy then, Kolehmainen had found a worthy successor in Paavo Nurmi. Together with Nurmi, as the final link in the torch relay, he lit the Olympic Flame at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki. He died in that same city, fourteen years later.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n Media related to Hannes Kolehmainen at Wikimedia Commons\nHannes Kolehmainen at World Athletics \nHannes Kolehmainen at Olympics.com \nHannes Kolehmainen at Olympiakomitea.fi (in Finnish)"}
{"title": "Hans Günter Winkler", "requested": "Hans Günter Winkler", "extract": "Hans Günter Winkler (German pronunciation: [ˈhans ˈɡʏntɐ ˈvɪŋklɐ] ; 24 July 1926 – 9 July 2018) was a German show jumper. He is the only show jumper to have won five Olympic gold medals and a total of seven Olympic medals, and to compete and win medals in six different Olympic Games. In the 1950s and 1960s Winkler was one of Germany's most popular athletes.\n\n\n== Career ==\nWinkler was born in Barmen, today part of Wuppertal, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, the son of a riding teacher. His father, Paul Winkler, died as a soldier during the last week of World War II. The boy was drafted as a Flakhelfer and was a prisoner of war for a short time. The house of his mother in Frankfurt was destroyed by bombing. He made money, to support his mother and himself, as a groom in the stable of the Landgravine of Hesse in Kronberg im Taunus. He was also a riding teacher of the Americans who occupied the area. He began an apprenticeship in a textile store in Frankfurt in 1948.\nWinkler participated in show jumping competitions and won for the first time on 10 October 1948, in Hünfeld, on Falkner. A new Olympic Committee for Riding (DOKR) was founded in 1949 by Gustav Rau, who moved it to Warendorf. He called Winkler to join in 1950. In the morning, Winkler trained horses for the committee, in the afternoon he worked as a carpenter.\nHalla was a horse that the committee intended for eventing. Rau found her unsuitable for the task and called her owner and breeder Gustav Vierling in Darmstadt to take her back. Vierling came and asked Winkler to take care of the mare, which he accepted. The mare became an important part of his equestrian career.\nWinkler won his first German championship in 1952, but could not participate in the Olympic Games in Helsinki that year because he was classified as a professional due to his teaching in the 1940s. On an initiative of Willi Daume, he was qualified as an amateur by the end of the same year. Winkler won the World Championship with Halla in 1954, again in 1955, and became one of the favorites for the 1956 Olympic Games. In 1956 the Equestrian Games were held in Stockholm, as the athletes and their horses were not allowed to travel to Melbourne due to quarantine restrictions. In the first round Winkler pulled a groin muscle at the penultimate obstacle after his mare took off early and threw him out of position.\nDespite the pain Winkler decided to ride in the second round as the German team would be eliminated without him. After he was given tranquilizers Winkler found that he was comfortable sitting, but riding was difficult and painful. Any drugs that could reduce the pain enough to make him comfortable in the saddle also would reduce his mental capacity, and therefore, he was only given black coffee before his ride to try to help reduce his dizziness and double-vision. Halla apparently sensed that her rider was not right and performed the entire course clear with only steering from Winkler, and their performance won them the individual and team gold.\n\nWinkler won five gold medals in jumping (in addition to the four individual medals with the German team) between 1956 and 1976, as well as a silver medal and a bronze medal. He is one of the most successful German Olympic athletes, third only to Isabell Werth and Reiner Klimke for gold medals produced in German equestrian competition. He was German Sportspersonality of the Year in 1955 and 1956. Winkler retired from jumping on 13 July 1986 with the conclusion of the Aachen tournament. Winkler worked as a trainer for the German Olympic teams, along with Paul Schockemöhle and Herbert Mayer, leading them to success in Seoul in 1988. He consulted companies who wanted to sponsor equestrian sport, organized tournaments, and worked for the development of young riders.\nHe later published numerous books on riding and in 1991 founded the HGW-Marketinggesellschaft, a sports marketing firm that has helped produce various equestrian competitions. He was also a member of the German Equestrian Federation's Jumping Committee and helped to select the 2000 Olympic Team for Germany. The German Equestrian Federation announced his death in Warendorf on 9 July 2018.\n\n\n== Awards ==\nIn May 2000, Winkler was the first recipient of the award, Goldene Sportpyramide, of the Stiftung Deutsche Sporthilfe. On 12 June 2008, he received the Federal Cross of Merit in Warendorf from Ingo Wolf, minister of interior and sport in North Rhine-Westphalia. He also received the media prize Bambi Award.\n\n\n== Major achievements ==\nOlympic Games\n1956 Stockholm: Team gold medal and individual gold medal on Halla\n1960 Rome: Team gold medal. Individually finished 5th on Halla\n1964 Tokyo: Team gold medal. Individually finished 16th on Fidelitas\n1968 Mexico City: Team bronze medal, individually finished 5th on Enigk\n1972 Munich: Team gold medal on Torphy\n1976 Montreal: Team silver medal, individually finished 10th on Torphy\nWorld championships\n1954 Madrid: Individual gold medal on Halla\n1955 Aachen: Individual gold medal on Halla/Orient\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of athletes with the most appearances at Olympic Games\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists in one event\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\n\n\n== Publications ==\nHans Günter Winkler (2007) [1st pub. 1958 as Meine Pferde und ich], Halla, meine Pferde und ich (in German), Warendorf: FN-Verlag der Deutschen Reiterlichen Vereinigung, ISBN 978-3-88542-430-7\nSpringreiten (in German), Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1979, ISBN 3-498-07282-X\n\n\n== Literature ==\nBryant, Jennifer O. Olympic Equestrian, A Century of International Horse Sport. Lexington, KY: Blood-Horse Publications, 2008\nLudwig, Dieter: Hans Günter Winkler. – Warendorf : FN-Verl., 1983. – ISBN 3-88542-025-2\nSchröter, Eckhard F.: The happiest place on earth. The life and career of German riders.. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1980, ISBN 3-596-23019-5\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nOfficial website\nHans Günter Winkler Archived 9 July 2018 at the Wayback Machine hall-of-fame-sport.de\nKim Kreling: Where are they Now? Hans Gunter Winkler horse-canada.com\nHans-Günter Winkler – an Olympic Jockey Archived 9 July 2018 at the Wayback Machine olympics30.com\nHans Günter Winkler olympic.org"}
{"title": "Harrie Lavreysen", "requested": "Harrie Lavreysen", "extract": "Harrie Lavreysen (born 14 March 1997) is a Dutch track cyclist who competes in sprint events. He is a five-time Olympic gold medalist, having won the sprint and team sprint event at the 2020 Summer Olympics, and adding the sprint, the team sprint and the keirin titles at the 2024 Summer Olympics. He has won 20 World Championship titles, including seven titles in the team sprint (2018–2021, 2023-2025), seven consecutive titles in the individual sprint (2019–2025), four in the keirin (2020–2022, 2025), and two (2024-2025) in the 1km time trial, making him the most successful track cyclist at World Championships of all time. His international debut was at the 2016 UEC European Track Championships in the team sprint event. He has since won 14 European Track Championship titles.\nFormerly a BMX rider, he is nicknamed \"The Beast\".\nIn the UCI Track Cycling World Championships he has the record for most total  gold medals (20), most gold medals in individual events (13) and most gold medals in a single edition (4 in 2025).\n\n\n== Major results ==\n\n\n=== Major championship results ===\n\n\n=== Track ===\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of European records in track cycling\nList of World Championship medalists in men's keirin\nList of European Championship medalists in men's sprint\nList of Track Cycling Nations Cup medalists\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nOfficial website \nHarrie Lavreysen at CycleBase\nHarrie Lavreysen at Olympics.com\nHarrie Lavreysen at NOC*NSF (in Dutch)\nHarrie Lavreysen at Olympedia\nHarrie Lavreysen at InterSportStats\nHarrie Lavreysen at TeamNL  (in Dutch)"}
{"title": "Harrison Dillard", "requested": "Harrison Dillard", "extract": "William Harrison \"Bones\" Dillard (July 8, 1923 – November 15, 2019) was an American track and field athlete, who is the only male in the history of the Olympic Games to win gold in both the 100 meter (sprints) and the 110 meter hurdles, making him the “World’s Fastest Man” in 1948 and the “World’s Fastest Hurdler” in 1952.\n\n\n== Early life and career ==\nDillard was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on July 8, 1923, and attended East Technical High School. He entered Baldwin-Wallace College in 1941 and joined Pi Lambda Phi International Fraternity, and two years later was drafted into the U.S. Army, serving in the all-black 92nd Infantry Division known as the Buffalo Soldiers.\nAccording to a 1962 article written by Trinidadian Olympic sprinter Mike Agostini for Australia's The Age newspaper, Dillard was first inspired as a youngster by Charley Paddock, who Agostini says visited Dillard at his high school and encouraged him to follow his dream of becoming an Olympic champion like himself.\nDillard returned to college in 1946, and resumed athletics, inspired by Jesse Owens, who, like him, was from Cleveland and had attended East Technical High School. He won the NCAA and AAU 120-yard and 220-yard hurdles in both 1946 and 1947, tying world records in both events with a 22.3 in the 220 in 1946 and a 13.6 in the 120. Between June 1947 and June 1948, he remained unbeaten in 82 consecutive finals, a record until broken by Ed Moses.\n\n\n== Olympic Games ==\n\nAt the trials for the 1948 Summer Olympics, Dillard failed to qualify for the 110 m hurdles event, but qualified for the 100 m after finishing third.\nAt the Games, Dillard reached the final, which seemed to end in a dead heat between Dillard and another American, Barney Ewell. The finish photo showed Dillard had won, equalling the World record as well. This was the first use of a photo finish at an Olympic Games. As a member of the 4 × 100 m relay team, he won another gold medal at the London Games.\nFour years later, still a strong hurdler, Dillard did qualify for the 110 m hurdles event, and won the event in Helsinki. Another 4 × 100 m relay victory yielded Dillard's fourth Olympic title. Dillard attempted to qualify for a third Olympics in 1956, but failed (finishing seventh in the trials final). Earlier he took part in and won the gold medal in the 110 m hurdles at the 1953 Maccabiah Games.\n\n\n== Later years ==\n\nDillard worked for the Cleveland Indians baseball franchise in scouting and public relations capacities, and hosted a radio talk show on Cleveland's WERE. He also worked for the Cleveland City School District for many years as its business manager. Dillard died on November 15, 2019, at the age of 96, of stomach cancer. At the time of his death he was the United States' oldest living Olympic gold medalist.\n\n\n== Competition record ==\n\n\n== Awards and honors ==\nFour-time Olympic Gold Medalist\nU.S. Olympic Hall of Fame inductee\nJames E. Sullivan Award winner, in 1955\nStatue at Baldwin Wallace University\nTrack at Baldwin Wallace named the Harrison Dillard Track\nUnited States National Track and Field Hall of Fame inductee in 1974 (the inaugural year)\nIAAF Hall of Fame inductee, in 2013.\nHarrison Dillard Trail, traveling through Cleveland's Rockefeller Park from Lake Erie to University Circle, dedicated in 1997.\n\n\n== World Rankings ==\nDillard was ranked among the best in the world in both the 100 m/100 y sprint and 110 m/120 y sprint hurdle events from 1947 to 1953, according to the votes of the experts of Track and Field News.\n\n\n== World Records ==\nDillard in his career posted the following world record and world best times.\nDillard achieved the following world records during his track career:\n\n120 y (110 m) hurdles of 13.6 s in Lawrence at the Kansas Relays on 17 April 1948;\n220 y hurdles (straight course) of 22.5 s in Delaware on 8 June 1946;\n220 y hurdles (straight course) of 22.3 s in Salt Lake City on 21 June 1947.\nHe also ran the following world best times that were never ratified by the sport's governing body, the IAAF:\n\n220 y hurdles (turn) of 23.0 s in Minneapolis on 22 June 1946;\n220 y hurdles (straight course) of 22.5 s in Berea, Ohio on 20 May 1947.\n\n\n== Notes ==\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== Further reading ==\nMcGraw, Daniel (July 12, 2016). \"The Forgotten Fastest Man\". Andscape. Retrieved February 27, 2017.\n\"Harrison Dillard '49\". Baldwin Wallace Yellow Jackets. November 18, 2019. Archived from the original on August 16, 2024. Retrieved January 26, 2020.\nCollins, Bud. \"Dillard Story Written By 1951 BW Graduate/ESPN Analyst Bud Collins\". Baldwin Wallace Yellow Jackets. Archived from the original on July 9, 2022. Retrieved January 26, 2020.\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nInterview with Harrison Dillard, recorded September 13, 2012, at Cleveland Public Library's Sports Research Center.\nHarrison Dillard 100m win at 1948 Olympics (video)\nEncyclopedia of Baldwin Wallace University History: Harrison Dillard\nHarrison Dillard at World Athletics \nHarrison Dillard at the USATF Hall of Fame (archived) \nHarrison Dillard at the Team USA Hall of Fame (archive March 23, 2023)\nHarrison Dillard at Olympics.com Harrison Dillard at OlympicChannel.com (archived) Harrison Dillard at Olympic.org (archived)"}
{"title": "Harry Hillman", "requested": "Harry Hillman", "extract": "Harry Livingston Hillman Jr. (September 8, 1881 – August 9, 1945) was one of the longest serving Dartmouth Track and Field Coaches from 1910–45, and an American track and field athlete who won three gold medals at the 1904 Summer Olympics and a silver at the 1908 Summer Olympics.\n\n\n== Biography ==\nBorn in Brooklyn, New York, Hillman was a member of three Olympic teams at the turn of the century. He also was a coach at Dartmouth College and was an associate Track coach for the American Olympic Team for three Olympics from 1924-32.\n\n\n=== Early life ===\nIn his youth, after Hillman graduated Boys High School of Brooklyn, he was a bank teller at New York's Bank of North America and later served for a few years as a stockbroker and salesman.  His achievements in Track allowed him to join the Star Athletic Club of Long Island City and then the Knickerbocker Athletic Club in 1899, later joining the New York Athletic Club, in 1902, where he could compete with top athletes and receive quality coaching. Like Lawson Robertson, and several other New York athletes, he served as a Lieutenant in the National Guard of New York—Company E of the old 13th Regiment of Brooklyn. Robertson, who became a University of Pennsylvania track coach, was on several Olympic Teams with Hillman, and was also a graduate of Brooklyn Boys School. \nHillman’s first major titles came in the 1902 AAU junior and senior 220-yard hurdles, and the following year he added the AAU senior title in the open quarter mile.  \n\n\n=== 1904 Olympics ===\nHillman won three gold medals at the 1904 Olympics in St. Louis, Missouri, taking the flat 400 metres, the 200 metres hurdles and the 400 metres hurdles. He had Olympic record times in all three events, but he tripped one hurdle in the 400 metres, which meant that his time of 53.0 seconds could not be counted as a world record (the record had stood at 57.2 seconds since 1891). In addition, the race was run over hurdles that were too low at 76 centimetres instead of the normal 91,4.\n\n\n=== 1906 Olympics ===\nEn route to Athens, Greece for the 1906 Summer Olympics, he was one of a half-dozen athletes who were injured by an enormous wave that washed over the deck of the ship. The injury to his knee diminished the quality of his performance. He finished fifth in the 400 metres, his only event that year.\n\n\n=== 1908 Olympics ===\nHillman won a silver medal in the 400 metres hurdles at the 1908 Summer Olympics, setting a short-lived record in the second round. He and Charles Bacon of the USA went over the last hurdle simultaneously, but Bacon won the run to the tape to win in a world record 55.0 seconds. Hillman's time in the race was 55.3 seconds.\nHe was married in May 1908 to Hazel Quantin of Brooklyn, who survived him with their son, Harold Quantin, a 1940 Dartmouth graduate, and their daughter, Madeleine Rogers Hillman.\n\nOn April 24, 1909, at the Military Games, Hillman and his friend Lawson Robertson set a record that has never been equaled, running the 100 yards (91 m) three-legged race in 11.0 seconds.  At those same Military Games on April 24, 1909, he entered six events and won five of them: the 100 yards, 220 yards, 440 yards, and 220 yard hurdles.  He won four Amateur Athletic Union titles, two each in the 200 metres and 400 metres hurdles.\nHillman later served in World War I as a lieutenant in the aviation corps.\n\n\n=== Dartmouth Track coach ===\nThe focal point of his career was serving as the track and field and cross-country coach at Dartmouth College for 35 years, from 1910 until his death in 1945. Hillman was elected an assistant professor of physical education at Dartmouth in 1919 and as assistant professor, without limitations, in 1922. He served as chairman of the department from 1921 to 1925.\nIn addition to his responsibilities as a track coach, he occasionally coached the Dartmouth football team, likely in conditioning. At Dartmouth, Hillman advised hurdlers to swallow raw eggs, which he believed to be \"excellent for the wind and stomach.\"  Some of the track athletes who were hurdlers or runners, sports in which he excelled, that he developed at Dartmouth were Don Burnham '44 in the mile; Gus Braun '15, Monty Wells '28, and Jack Donovan '38, in the hurdles.  In the high jump, intercollegiate champions he trained included Russ Palmer '10, Roy Brown '23, and Tom Maynard '29.  He also trained Mark Wright '13, C. E. Buck '13 and Laddy Myers '20 in the pole vault; Bud Whitney '15, Jack Shelburne '19, W. C. Beers '21, and Tony Geniawicz '37 in the shot.\n\n\n=== Olympic coach ===\nHe was on the Olympic track and field coaching staff in 1924, 1928, and 1932 Summer Olympics, as well as acting as trainer for the American Davis Cup team in 1935 where he convinced the players of the value of taking salt tablets to replace lost water. One of his most famous athletes was Canadian hurdler Earl Thomson, Dartmouth Class of 22, the winner of the gold medal in the 110 metres hurdles at the 1920 Summer Olympics. In 1930, Hillman, along with Thomson and Harold Barron, was involved in the design of a new safer hurdle, with a view to reducing the danger of bad falls and injuries.\nHillman also served as Secretary-Treasurer of the College Track Coaches Association of America. He wrote many articles on Track and Conditioning for newspapers and magazines that included The Boston Herald, The New York Times, The Athletic Journal, and The Scholastic Coach.\nHillman died at Dick's House, the College Infirmary at Dartmouth College on August 9, 1945  in Hanover, New Hampshire, from what was diagnosed at the time as a heart ailment, coronary thrombosis.  He was buried at Pine Knoll Cemetery in Hannover, and his gravestone marks his years as Dartmouth Track Coach, 1910-45.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nHarry Hillman at Olympics.com \nHarry Hillman at Olympedia \nHarry Hillman at the USATF Hall of Fame (archived)"}
{"title": "Hayley Wickenheiser", "requested": "Hayley Wickenheiser", "extract": "Hayley Wickenheiser (born August 12, 1978) is a Canadian former ice hockey player, physician, and former assistant general manager for the Toronto Maple Leafs. She was the first woman to play full-time professional men’s hockey in a position other than goalie. Wickenheiser was a member of Canada women's national ice hockey team for 23 years, from 1994 until announcing her retirement on January 13, 2017, and is the team's career points leader with 168 goals and 211 assists in 276 games. She represented Canada at the Winter Olympics five times, capturing four gold and one silver medal and twice being named tournament MVP, and one time at the Summer Olympics in softball, and is a seven-time winner of the world championships. She is tied with teammates Caroline Ouellette and Jayna Hefford for the record for the most gold medals of any Canadian Olympian, and is widely considered to be the greatest women's ice hockey player of all time. On February 20, 2014, Wickenheiser was elected to the International Olympic Committee's Athletes' Commission. In 2019, she was named to the Hockey Hall of Fame, in her first year of eligibility. She was also inducted into the IIHF Hall of Fame in 2019, and Canada's Sports Hall of Fame in 2022.\n\n\n== Ice hockey career ==\n\n\n=== Early years ===\nWickenheiser began playing minor ice hockey on outdoor rinks in her hometown of Shaunavon, Saskatchewan when she was five years old. She played exclusively on boys' teams until she was 13. Wickenheiser continued playing minor hockey in Calgary, Alberta after moving there with her family. In 1991, she represented Alberta at the 18-and-under Canada Winter Games. Alberta captured the gold medal in the tournament, with Wickenheiser scoring the game-winning goal and being named the Most Valuable Player of the final game.\n\n\n=== International competition ===\n\nAt the age of 15 (1994), Wickenheiser was named to the Canada women's national team for the first time and remained a member until her retirement in 2017. Her first international tournament was the 1994 World Championship, held in Lake Placid, New York.  She played three games, and picked up her first international point—an assist, and Canada won gold. Her second World Championship in 1997 also produced a gold medal and she earned a spot on the tournament All-Star team, the first of four such honours (1997, 1999, 2000, 2005). In 1999, Wickenheiser helped Canada to another gold medal and was named tournament MVP. Wickenheiser has seven World Championship gold medals (1994, 1997, 1999, 2000, 2004, 2007, 2012) and three silver medals (2005, 2008, 2009). She was named to Team Canada in 2001, but was unable to compete due to an injury, and was also on Canada's roster for the 2003 World Championship which was cancelled.\nWickenheiser was a member of Team Canada at the 1998 Winter Olympics, when women's hockey was introduced as a medal sport. She also played 21 games for Team Canada during their pre-Olympic tour. Canada won a silver medal at the event and Wickenheiser was named to the tournament all-star team. Her performance at the 1998 Olympics impressed Men's Team Canada General Manager Bobby Clarke so much, that he invited her to participate in the Philadelphia Flyers rookie camps in 1998 and 1999. 2002 was another chance at Olympic gold, and Wickenheiser was named to Canada's roster for the 2002 Winter Olympics held in Salt Lake City, Utah.  On Team Canada's pre-Olympic tour, Wickenheiser played 26 games and racked up 36 points. In a bit of redemption for 1998, Canada won the gold medal by defeating Team USA in the final game.  Wickenheiser was named Tournament MVP and she was the top scorer on the Women's side. At the 2006 Winter Olympics, Canada was defending its gold medal status. When the final match was set, Canada was facing off against Sweden, a surprise finalist. They won gold again, and Wickenheiser once more was named tournament MVP, Top Forward, and to a berth on the all-star team. She also led the tournament in scoring,\nwith five goals and 17 points in five games.\nWickenheiser captained Canada to a gold medal at the 1998 Christmas Cup (World Women's Under-22 Championship). She has also contributed to at least 10 gold medals for Canada at the 4 Nations Cup tournaments (1996, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2010).  At the 2006 Four Nations Cup, she served as team captain.\nOn February 17, 2010, Wickenheiser became the all-time leading Olympic goal scorer as Canada defeated Sweden 13–1 at the Vancouver Olympics. Wickenheiser reached her record total of 16 career Olympic goals by scoring once on Wednesday as Canada followed up their 18–0 win over Slovakia and 10–1 defeat of Switzerland.\nWickenheiser attended the World Hockey Summit in 2010, to address the status of women's hockey internationally. International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge stated that the tournament might be eliminated from the Olympics since the event was not competitively balanced. Either Canada and the United States had won the gold since the event began in 1998, and the two countries had also won each IIHF World Women's Championship since the event began in 1990. She explained that the talent gap between the North American and European countries was due to the presence of women's professional leagues in North America, along with year-round training facilities. She stated the European players were talented, but their respective national team programs were not given the same level of support as the European men's national teams, or the North American women's national teams.\nWith a third and fourth consecutive Olympic gold medal in women's hockey won by defeating the United States 2–0 in Vancouver and 3–2 in Sochi, Wickenheiser won 5 Olympic medals: 4 gold and 1 silver. She is one of only five athletes to win gold in four consecutive Winter Games, along with teammates Jayna Hefford and Caroline Ouellette. At her retirement in 2017 she was the Olympic tournament’s all-time leading scorer with 18 goals and 51 points. Wickenheiser took the athlete's oath in English at the 2010 Winter Olympics opening ceremony in Vancouver, British Columbia and was Canada's flagbearer at the Sochi Winter Olympics in 2014.\n\n\n=== Women's professional leagues ===\nIn 1996, Wickenheiser was named MVP of the Esso women's hockey nationals, helping Alberta to a fourth-place finish. In 1997 and 1998, Wickenheiser won Nationals with the Edmonton Chimos and Calgary Oval X-Treme respectively. She was named tournament MVP both years.  Between 1999 and 2001, Wickenheiser continued to play for her club teams at the Esso Women's National Championships, winning a gold medal and two silvers. She played 2004–05 with the Calgary Oval X-Treme, in the inaugural season of the Western Women's Hockey League. The X-Treme were league champions. Wickenheiser was the regular season leading scorer and named to the league's all-star team. She also played for Alberta at the Esso National Championships, where they won gold. She led the tournament in scoring and was named MVP.\n\n\n=== Men's professional leagues ===\n\nIn 2003, Wickenheiser became the first woman to score a goal playing in a men's semi-professional league (for HC Salamat in Suomi-sarja, Finland's third-division league). Over the course of the two seasons, Wickenheiser played 22 games, scoring 1 goals and 3 assists.  Wickenheiser joined a European league to play professional hockey, as the game is more open and less physical than North American leagues.  This attempt to play professional hockey was not an entirely smooth process, as Wickenheiser was initially slated to play in Italy, until the Italian Winter Sports Federation ruled that women were ineligible to play in a men's league.  She also turned down an offer from Phil Esposito to play for the Cincinnati Cyclones of the ECHL. Finland's Hockey Federation unanimously supported letting women play in a men's league, allowing her to debut with HC Salamat in the Suomi-sarja, the third highest hockey league in Finland, on January 10, 2003.  Wickenheiser played briefly with Salamat in 2004. They had won promotion to Mestis, Finland's second tier of professional hockey, and this was not as good a fit for her. She left the team after ten games.\nIn 2007, Wickenheiser had a week-long tryout contract with Swedish club IFK Arboga IK in the Swedish male third league. After two practice games, where Wickenheiser scored two goals in the first game, she was not offered a contract. In 2008, Wickenheiser signed a one-year contract with Eskilstuna Linden, also in the Swedish men's third league.\nWickenheiser was named one of the \"Top 100 Most Influential People in Hockey\" by The Hockey News—ranked #59 on the 2011 List—one of the \"25 Toughest Athletes\" by Sports Illustrated, and one of the \"Top 50 Most Powerful Women in Canada\" by The Globe and Mail.\nWickenheiser scored a goal as a member of Team Black in the 2nd Canadian Women's Hockey League All-Star Game. Appearing with the Calgary Inferno in the 2016 Clarkson Cup finals, she logged two assists as the Inferno emerged victorious in a convincing 8-3 final.\n\n\n=== Canadian university hockey ===\n\nWickenheiser joined the 2010–11 Calgary Dinos women's ice hockey team that competes in the Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS). The Dinos were playing their second season of CIS hockey, and Wickenheiser was expected to provide leadership to a young team.  While with the Dinos, Wickenheiser played for her former teammate, Danielle Goyette, the team's head coach. Wickenheiser also completed a degree in kinesiology at Calgary.  The Dinos were Wickenheiser's choice because the team practices every day, and she was able to stay in Calgary with her family. Under CIS rules, Wickenheiser began her first year of eligibility in 2010 because she had never played university hockey.  Players have up to five years of eligibility. In her CIS debut against the University of Regina, Wickenheiser scored two goals and added an assist in a 4–3 victory. There were 587 people in attendance. Wickenheiser was named the Canada West female athlete of the week on November 2, 2010 after scoring three goals and adding an assist in two games against the University of Alberta.  Despite only playing in 15 of the Dino's 24 regular season games, Wickenheiser finished tied for the conference lead in scoring with 40 points (17 goals and 23 assists), and finishing with a plus-minus of +22. She scored four short handed goals, and had five game winners.  At the end of the year, Wickenheiser was named the Canada West Most Valuable Player, and captured a spot on the conference's First All-Star Team. On March 9, 2011, Wickenheiser was named the Canadian Interuniversity Sport player of the year in women's hockey. She then became the first ever Dino to win the Brodrick Trophy as CIS MVP.\nIn the aftermath of the 2012-13 season, Wickenheiser was named to the CIS First Team All-Canadians. Among the other players named as First Team All-Canadians were Melodie Daoust and Katelyn Gosling.\n\n\n=== Post-playing career ===\nOn January 13, 2017, Wickenheiser announced her retirement from professional hockey to pursue medical school. On August 23, 2018, Wickenheiser was hired as the assistant director of player development for the Toronto Maple Leafs. On May 17, 2021, Wickenheiser was promoted to senior director of player development for the Toronto Maple Leafs.\nIn 2021 she collaborated with sports equipment maker Verbero Hockey and owner/CEO Andy Sutton in developing the \"Wick Stick\", part of a program to create branded equipment targeted toward women.\nIn 2022, Bell Media and Uninterrupted released a documentary film chronicling her life titled WICK .\nIn July 2022, she was named assistant general manager for the Toronto Maple Leafs. On July 10, 2026, she was fired by the Maple Leafs.\n\n\n== Softball career ==\nWickenheiser is an accomplished softball player. On June 24, 2000, she was named to the Canadian softball team for the 2000 Summer Olympics.  This was the culmination of a long ball career. In 1994, she participated at Canadian Midget Nationals, where she was named All-Canadian Shortstop and Top Batter. In 1995, Wickenheiser was a member of Team Canada at the World Junior Fastball Championships, held in Normal, Illinois. Canada finished fifth at this event. In 1997, Wickenheiser participated at Midget Nationals with the Silver Springs 76ers. Her team finished second and Wickenheiser was again named All Star Shortstop and Top Batter. In 1999, she also participated at Senior Nationals, where her team finished fourth. In 2000, Wickenheiser attended and competed for Simon Fraser University, and helped lead the team to a 38 and 13 record, en route to a 3rd-place finish at the NAIA National Championships. Later that summer she competed in the Summer Olympic games in Sydney, Australia, where she led Canada with the team's highest batting average. Canada was competitive, but finished the tournament with a 1–6 record, losing three games by one run. Since that Olympics, Wickenheiser has not been as active in softball.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nWickenheiser is the daughter of physical education teachers, Tom and Marilyn, and has a brother and a sister.  Wickenheiser lives in Calgary with her son, Noah. Former professional hockey player Doug Wickenheiser was her cousin, as well as his daughter, soccer player Carly Wickenheiser.\nWickenheiser's life story is the subject of a 2005 children's book written by Elizabeth Etue, titled Born to Play. On July 15, 2011, her hometown of Shaunavon named a new 14 million dollar recreational complex after her, Crescent Point Wickenheiser Centre. On June 30, 2011, she was named an Officer of the Order of Canada by Governor General David Johnston.\nWickenheiser graduated with a degree in kinesiology in 2013. After retiring from professional hockey, she completed medical school at the University of Calgary's Cumming School of Medicine in 2021. She completed her family medicine residency at University of Toronto's Department of Family and Community Medicine in 2023 and is currently pursuing an enhanced skills program in emergency medicine.\nHayley is the author of Gold Medal Diary – Inside the World's Greatest Sports Event, outlining her training with Team Canada and the events leading up to, during, and following the 2010 Winter Olympic Games.\nShe is the founder of WickFest, an annual event showcasing girls' and women's hockey, inviting female players from all over the world to several days of workshops, clinics and games learning from leading instructors, coaches and players.\n\n\n== Video game appearance ==\nEA Sports officially announced in September 2012 that Wickenheiser would be among the first two female hockey players featured in the NHL video game series, set to appear in NHL 13 along with Angela Ruggiero.\n\n\n== Career statistics ==\n\n\n=== Regular season and playoffs ===\n\n\n==== Women's Leagues ====\n\n\n==== Men's Leagues ====\n\n\n=== International ===\n\nSource for all stats: EliteProspects\n\n\n== Awards and honours ==\n2004 Honorary Degree Recipient, Nipissing University.\n2007 Most Valuable Player, Pool A, Esso Canadian Women's Nationals\n2007 Bobbie Rosenfeld Award\n2010 Gave the athlete's Olympic Oath at the 2010 Olympic Games\n2011 Canada West Player of the Year\n2011 Brodrick Trophy Winner (Most Outstanding Player in USports women's ice hockey)\n2011 Officer of the Order of Canada\n2011 Media All-Star team, IIHF Women's World Championship\n2014 Canada's Walk of Fame\n2014 Athletes in Excellence Award from The Foundation for Global Sports Development, in recognition of her community service efforts and work with youth\n2017 CAAWS Wall of Influence Award\n2019 Hockey Hall of Fame\n2019 IIHF Hall of Fame\n2021 Canada West Hall of Fame\n2022 Canada's Sports Hall of Fame\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of athletes with the most appearances at Olympic Games\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n Media related to Hayley Wickenheiser at Wikimedia Commons\n\nBiographical information and career statistics from Eliteprospects.com, or Eurohockey.com\nOfficial website\nHayley Wickenheiser on men's versus women's hockey in Maclean's magazine, October 14, 2010.\nHayley Wickenheiser  Video produced by Makers: Women Who Make America\nHayley Wickenheiser at Team Canada\nHayley Wickenheiser at Olympics.comHayley Wickenheiser at Olympic.org (archived)\nHayley Wickenheiser at Olympedia"}
{"title": "Henri Saint Cyr", "requested": "Henri Saint Cyr", "extract": "Henri Julius Reverony Saint Cyr (15 March 1902 – 27 July 1979) was a Swedish officer and equestrian. Competing in five consecutive Olympics, he won two gold medals in dressage in 1952, and two gold medals in 1956.\n\n\n== Early life ==\nSaint Cyr was born on 15 March 1902 in Stockholm, Sweden, the son of Lieutenant Esaias Saint Cyr and his wife Tyra (née Andersson).\n\n\n== Military career ==\nSaint Cyr was commissioned as an officer in 1924 and was assigned as a second lieutenant to Svea Artillery Regiment (A 1) the same year. He attended the Artillery and Engineering College from 1926 to 1928 when he was promoted to lieutenant. Saint Cyr then attended the Army Riding School from 1928 to 1929, from 1931 to 1932 and from 1934 to 1936. He served as a teacher at the Army Riding School from 1936 to 1940 and he was promoted to captain in 1938. Saint Cyr became major in 1944 and attended the Saumur Cavalry School in France from 1948 to 1950. He was transferred to the reserve in 1957.\n\n\n== Sports career ==\nHe competed at five consecutive Olympics from 1936 to 1960 and won two gold medals in 1952 and two in 1956, all in individual and team dressage. At his last Olympics in 1960 he finished fourth in the individual dressage.\nSaint Cyr was the national champion in eventing in 1935, 1937, and 1939 and won a world title in the individual dressage in 1953. He took the Olympic Oath at the 1956 Games in Stockholm.\nSaint Cyr was a board member of the Swedish Equestrian Federation (Svenska ridsportens centralförbund) from 1932 to 1948 and from 1950 to 1959.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nIn 1921 he married Ruth Constantin-Peterson (1904–1966), the daughter of Bror Constantin-Peterson, a chief physician, and Sophie Psilanderskjöld. He was the father of Madeleine (born 1930) and Guy (born 1934).\n\n\n== Awards and decorations ==\n  Knight of the Order of the Sword (1944)\n H. M. The King's Medal\n Knight of the Legion of Honour\n\n\n== Dates of rank ==\n1924 – Second lieutenant\n1928 – Lieutenant\n1938 – Captain\n1944 – Major\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nHenri Saint Cyr at Olympics.com\nHenri Saint Cyr at the Swedish Olympic Committee (in Swedish)\nHenri Saint Cyr at Olympedia"}
{"title": "Hermann Weingärtner", "requested": "Hermann Weingärtner", "extract": "Otto Ludwig Hermann Weingärtner (27 August 1864 – 22 December 1919) was a German gymnast.\nHe started his career in his hometown Frankfurt (Oder) at the local gymnastics club Frankfurter Turnverein 1860. Later on he moved to Berlin to compete for the Deutsche Turnerschaft.\nHe competed at the 1896 Summer Olympics in Athens. Weingärtner was a member of the German team that won two gold medals by placing first in both of the team events, the parallel bars and the horizontal bar.\nHe also won a number of individual medals, taking the gold in the horizontal bar, silver in pommel horse and rings, and bronze in the vault.  He competed in the parallel bars, but did not win a medal in that event.  His six medals arguably made him the most successful competitor at the first modern Olympic Games.\nAfter his return to Germany he and most of the other German gymnasts were suspended because the Deutsche Turnerschaft (at this time the governing body of German gymnastics) boycotted the Olympic games with the reason that competing is \"un-German\". So he moved back to Frankfurt (Oder) to manage the open-air swimming pool founded by his father on the Ziegenwerder island.\nHe drowned trying to rescue a person from drowning in the Oder.\nIn 1996, the main footpath on the Ziegenwerder island was named Hermann-Weingärtner-Weg.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic medalists at a single Games\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nHermann Weingärtner Olympic medals and stats\nHermann Weingärtner at Olympedia"}
{"title": "Hjalmar Andersen", "requested": "Hjalmar Andersen", "extract": "Hjalmar \"Hjallis\" Johan Andersen (12 March 1923 – 27 March 2013) was a speed skater from Norway who won three gold medals at the 1952 Winter Olympic Games of Oslo, Norway. He was the only triple gold medalist at the 1952 Winter Olympics, and as such, became the most successful athlete there.\nNicknamed King Glad for his famous cheerful mood, he was one of Norway's most popular sportsmen ever. Four statues of him were raised during his lifetime; in Trondheim, Hamar, Rødøy and outside Bislett Stadium in Oslo. He was honored with a funeral at the state’s expense.\n\n\n== Early life ==\nAndersen was born on Rødøya, an island off the coast of Nordland in Norway, where his mother hailed from. His father, who originally was from Hammerfest, was a boatswain. While Andersen was still a toddler, the family moved to Lademoen, a working-class neighborhood in Trondheim, where sport and friendship was an important part of life.\nHe began speed skating at the age of 10, and became a member of the sports club Falken. The club was part of the Workers' Sports Federation (AIF), and the first competitions he participated in were small, local competitions organized by the AIF. Other members of the club were Sverre Farstad and Henry Wahl; later Andersen, Farstad and Wahl would be known by the nickname The Falken Trio.\nAfter the German occupation of Norway in 1940, when Andersen was 17 years old, all organized sports competitions were halted as a result of the sports boycott against the Nazi regime. Like others of his generation, he had to wait until the winter of 1946 to take up his sports career again.\nProfessionally, he began working as a delivery boy in a sports store after having completed the folkeskole at about 14. He later worked as a lorry driver for several years. In 1950, when he was at the height of his speed skating career, he opened his own sports store in Trondheim, which he ran until 1960.\n\n\n== Career ==\n\nHe made his international debut at the 1948 Winter Olympic Games of St. Moritz, Switzerland, winning the qualifying race for 1500 m, but he was still not selected for the Norwegian team for this distance. He was selected for the 10000 m team, but because of the terrible ice conditions he did not finish the race.\nDuring the European Championship in Davos he recorded a personal best of 2:16.4 at 1,500 m and set a new world record in the 10,000 m with 16:57.4. He placed second overall in the championship.\nAndersen was the best skater of the world from 1950 to 1952. In each of those three years, he became World Allround Champion, making him one of only five male skaters to have won this title in three consecutive years – the other four being Oscar Mathisen (1912–1914), Ard Schenk (1970–1972), Eric Heiden (1977–1979), and Sven Kramer (2007–2010). In those same years, 1950–1952, he was also European Allround Champion and Norwegian Allround Champion, thus winning the \"triple\" (World, European, and National Allround Championships) for three consecutive years. He also set three world records in those three years.\nA notable event in his career was the European Championship in 1951 at Bislett Stadium. Speed skating was immensely popular in Norway at the time and 25,000 people cheered the skaters during the two-day event. King Haakon VII was present at the event.\nDuring the event, Andersen won the three first distances and was a clear favourite to become allround champion before the 10,000 metres.  After 11 laps, however, Andersen fell. He tried to continue on, but one of his skates had been damaged and he was taken off the rink. Andersen’s fall was soon linked to a flash used by photographer Johan Brun from Dagbladet at the moment of the fall. It was decided to let Andersen run the 10,000 metres for a second time, while a jury was to consider whether the second run should actually count. In the meantime, Brun rushed to Dagbladet to get his film developed. He returned with the photo he had taken when the fall happened. It showed that Andersen had his eyes shut at the time. The jury concluded that the flash had blinded Andersen.\nThe result from his second 10,000 metres run became official and he won both the 10,000 metres and the overall championship. Brun and Andersen had friendly contact later in life. Brun has stated that the electronic flash he had used couldn't possibly have blinded Andersen, and he believes the jury made a mistake due to lack of knowledge of photography equipment.\nIn a speed skating international between Norway and the rest of the world at Hamar on 10 February 1952, Hjalmar Andersen set a world record in the 10,000 meters  with the time 16:32.6. It was the first time a speed skater took less than 40 seconds to complete every lap in the 10,000 meters, and it was regarded as an amazing world record. In Norway, the record achieved legendary status, and is often referred to as the best known sports record ever. The record stood for eight years, until Kjell Bäckman broke it.\nThe record created enormous interest in Andersen in the 1952 Winter Olympics that started in Oslo one week later.  On 17 February,  Andersen won his first Olympic gold medal in the 5,000 meters with a new Olympic record. The next day, he won gold in the 1,500 meters, and he ended the competition by setting a new Olympic record in winning the 10,000 meters on 19 February. The three days of skating competitions were attended by 75,000 enthusiastic spectators.\nAndersen quit skating after the 1952 Olympics, but he was talked into giving it another try in 1954. He became Norwegian champion for the fourth time and won both the 5,000 m and 10000 m at the European Championships in Davos, Switzerland that year, winning silver in the overall standings. He qualified for the 1956 Olympics and earned sixth place on the 10,000 m.\nDuring his career, he set four world records. His 10,000 m world record in 1949 (16:57.4) was the first official world record below 17 minutes for the distance. As it was skated outside of Norway, it did not count as a Norwegian national record, of which Andersen set eight during his skating career. Andersen represented Sportsklubben Falken (Sports Club Falcon) in Trondheim.\n\n\n== Later years ==\nAfter he ended his skating career, Andersen moved to Tønsberg. In addition to his skating triumphs, Andersen was also a great cyclist on a national level, and he was awarded the Egebergs Ærespris in 1951 for his achievements in speed skating and cycling.\nHe started a long career in \"the welfare service for merchant shipping\", which he worked with until he reached retirement age in 1990.\nEarning the nickname \"Kong Glad\" (English: \"King Happy\") and known for his sense of humour, he was a popular speaker. He also published several books, partly memories from his sports career and partly humoristic stories.\nHe received the King's Medal of Merit in gold in 1998 and The Honor Prize at Idrettsgallaen together with Knut Johannesen in 2013, just two months before his death.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\n\nAndersen married his teenage sweetheart, Gerd, and they lived together until she died in 2004. They had three children.\n\n\n== Death and funeral ==\nOn 25 March 2013, Andersen suffered a serious fall in his home in Tønsberg, Norway, was rushed to the hospital and never regained consciousness. He died two days later on 27 March, two weeks after his 90th birthday. His survivors include three children and grandson Fredrik van der Horst, a speed skater who represented Norway at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia.\nThe Norwegian government decided that Hjalmar Andersen should be honored with a funeral at the state’s expense. He was the third athlete to be given this honor since 1998.\nPrime minister Jens Stoltenberg stated that “Hjalmar Andersen became a sport legend at a time when speed skating was part of the Norwegian identity, and got involved in the work for sailors at time when ship transport was interwoven with the nation’s soul. In this way, \"Hjallis contributed to forming post-war Norway in an important way and won a huge place in the hearts of several generations of Norwegians.”\nThe funeral ceremony in Tønsberg Cathedral on 4 April 2013 was attended by King Harald V and by Norway's Prime minister Jens Stoltenberg who gave a speech.\n\n\n== Medals and Records ==\nAn overview of medals won by Andersen at important championships he participated in, listing the years in which he won each:\n\nOver the course of his career, Andersen skated four world records:\n\nSource: SpeedSkatingStats.com\nNorwegian records\n\nNote that in the days Hjalmar skated a Norwegian record could only be skated in Norway itself, so his Davos world record could not become a Norwegian record as well.\nPersonal records\nTo put these personal records in perspective, the WR column lists the official world records on the dates that Andersen skated his personal records.\n\n\n== Ranking as speed skater ==\nAndersen had a final Adelskalender score of 187.446 points. He held first place on the Adelskalender for 708 days between 1952 and 1954.\n\n\n== Awards ==\nMorgenbladets gold medal, 1949\nEgebergs Ærespris, 1951\nFearnleys olympiske ærespris, 1952\nNorwegian Sportsperson of the Year, 1952\nOlavstatuetten (awarded by Adresseavisen), 1976\nKing's Medal of Merit in gold, 1998\nThe Honor Prize at Idrettsgallaen, 2013\n\n\n== Books ==\nHjalmar Andersen: Harde løp (1951). Self-published.\nHjalmar Andersen:Siste runde (1952). Norsk idrettsforlag.\nHjalmar Andersen and Sverre E. Mortensen: Hva idretten ga meg (1983). Gyldendal Norsk Forlag. ISBN 9788205147720\nHjalmar Andersen and Sverre E. Mortensen: Medaljens bakside (1985). Gyldendal Norsk Forlag. ISBN 9788205153578\nHjalmar Andersen:  Den gode, gamle, gale istida (1989). Det Norske Samlaget. ISBN 9788252134438\nHjalmar Andersen and Knut-Anders Løken: Gull og glis (1990) Det Norske Samlaget. ISBN 9788252136425\n\n\n== Notes ==\n\n\n=== Bibliography ===\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nHjalmar Andersen at Olympics.com Hjalmar Andersen at Olympic.org (archived) \nHjalmar Andersen at Olympedia \nHjalmar Andersen is dead NRK (Norwegian)\nHjalmar Andersen at SpeedSkatingStats.com\nHjalmar Anderson. Deutsche Eisschnelllauf Gemeinschaft e. V. (German Skating Association).\nEvert Stenlund's Adelskalender pages at the Wayback Machine (archived 12 February 2007)\nHistorical World Records. International Skating Union at the Wayback Machine (archived 5 February 2012)\nNational Championships results. Norges Skøyteforbund (Norwegian Skating Association).\nDevelopment of Norwegian records 1880–2007. Norges Skøyteforbund (Norwegian Skating Association)."}
{"title": "Hubert Van Innis", "requested": "Hubert Van Innis", "extract": "Gerard Theodor Hubert Van Innis (24 February 1866 – 25 November 1961) was a Belgian competitor in the sport of archery; he competed in two Summer Olympics 20 years apart and came away with a total of six gold medals and three silver medals.\nAs a young boy, the story goes he was forced to work as a milk delivery boy in the villages around Brussels, and at the end of his deliveries he would send his dog and cart home while he went off to practice his archery skills.\nWhen he was 13 years old, he won the first prize in a main competition in Antwerp. He also won the prize in 1893, 1894, 1895 and 1896. In 1881, he won the royan prize of Roozendaal.\nVan Innis was 34 years old when he competed at the 1900 Summer Olympics held in Paris, France. He entered four events; he won gold medals in the Au Cordon Doré 33 metres and the Au Chapelet 33 metres events, and he also came second behind Frenchman Henri Hérouin in the Au Cordon Doré 50 metres. His worst result of the Games was a fourth place in the Au Chapelet 50 metres.\nVan Innis had to wait another twenty years before competing on the Olympic stage. Aged 54, he entered the 1920 Summer Olympics held on his home soil in Antwerp, Belgium, where he added to his medal tally with two more individual gold medals in the Individual moving bird, 28 metres, beating Frenchman Léonce Quentin (his only competitor in this event) and the Individual moving bird, 33 metres. He then lost to Frenchman Julien Brulé in the Individual moving bird, 50 metres, to win a silver medal. He also added three team medals with two more golds in the Team moving bird, 50 metres; Team moving bird, 33 metres; and a silver medal in the Team moving bird, 28 metres. His final Olympic medal tally was six gold medals and three silver medals.\nUnbelievably—when aged 67 years old, 13 years after his final Olympic victories—he went on to win in the 1933 World Championships.\nHis legacy has continued through his family; his great-grandson Philippe Prieels has competed in the World Archery Championships, and his great-great-granddaughter Sarah Prieels has also competed in the World Archery Championships.\n\n\n== See also ==\nArchery at the 1900 Summer Olympics\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists at a single Games\nList of multiple Summer Olympic medalists\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nHubert Van Innis at Olympics.com \nHubert Van Innis at Team Belgium (in Dutch and French) \nMallon, Bill (1998). The 1900 Olympic Games, Results for All Competitors in All Events, with Commentary. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. ISBN 0-7864-0378-0."}
{"title": "Ian Ferguson (canoeist)", "requested": "Ian Ferguson (canoeist)", "extract": "Ian Gordon Ferguson  (born 20 July 1952) is New Zealand's second most successful Olympian. He won four Olympic gold medals competing in K1, K2, and K4 kayak events, and attended five Summer Olympics between 1976 and 1992. He also won two canoe sprint world championship titles.\n\n\n== Early life and family ==\n\nFerguson was born in Taumarunui on 20 July 1952, the son of Gilbert and Winsome Ferguson. He was educated at Palmerston North Boys' High School, and was an all-round sportsperson, achieving in running and rugby union, and becoming the school swimming champion. Ferguson studied at Victoria University of Wellington, completing a Bachelor of Commerce and Administration degree in 1976.\nIn 1973, Ferguson married his wife, Alyson, and the couple went on to have two children.\n\n\n== Sporting career and honours ==\nAt the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles he won three gold medals. In the same year he was named New Zealand sportsperson of the year.\nIn the 1985 New Year Honours, Ferguson was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire, for services to canoeing.\nNew Zealand's flagbearer at the opening ceremony of the 1988 Summer Olympics, he went on to win another gold medal and a silver medal at that Olympic Games in Seoul, South Korea. He was the first New Zealander to compete in five Olympic Games and his four gold medals was the New Zealand record for an individual haul at the Games until beaten by fellow canoeist Lisa Carrington in 2021. His five Olympic medals is the second-highest number of Olympic medals won by a New Zealander, a record he shares with fellow canoeist Paul MacDonald and equestrian Mark Todd.\n\n\n== Post professional sports ==\nIn 1990 Ferguson started a kayak retail and hire business named Ferg's Kayaks.\nFerguson also starred in the NZ TV show Clash of the Codes, having been in the winning team on two occasions.\nIn 2009, Ferguson began fronting a campaign to build an international whitewater canoeing stadium in Manukau City. Vector Wero Whitewater Park was opened in 2016, with Ferguson as general manager.\nFerguson's son, Steven Ferguson, has also represented New Zealand at the Olympic and Commonwealth Games, both in canoeing and swimming events.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nIan Ferguson at the New Zealand Sports Hall of Fame (archived) \nIan Ferguson at the New Zealand Olympic Committee \nIan Ferguson at Olympics.com\nIan Ferguson at Olympedia"}
{"title": "Ian Thorpe", "requested": "Ian Thorpe", "extract": "Ian James Thorpe (born 13 October 1982) is an Australian retired swimmer who specialised in freestyle, but also competed in backstroke and the individual medley. He has won five Olympic gold medals, the second most won by any Australian after fellow swimmer Emma McKeon. With three gold and two silver medals, Thorpe was the most successful athlete at the 2000 Summer Olympics, held in his hometown of Sydney.  Thorpe is widely considered one of the best swimmers of all time.\nAt the age of 14, Thorpe became the youngest male ever to represent Australia, and his victory in the 400 metre freestyle at the 1998 Perth World Championships made him the youngest-ever individual male World Champion. After that victory, Thorpe dominated the 400 m freestyle, winning the event at every Olympic, World, Commonwealth and Pan Pacific Swimming Championships until his break after the 2004 Olympics in Athens. At the 2001 World Aquatics Championships, he became the first person to win six gold medals in one World Championship. Aside from 13 individual long-course world records, Thorpe anchored the Australian relay teams, numbering the victories in the 4 × 100 m and the 4 × 200 m freestyle relays in Sydney among his five relay world records. His wins in the 200 m and 400 m and his bronze in the 100 m freestyle at the 2004 Summer Olympics made him the only male to have won medals in the 100–200–400 combination. He acquired the nickname \"Thorpedo\" because of his speed in swimming. Thorpe announced his retirement from competitive swimming in November 2006, citing waning motivation; he made a brief comeback in 2011 and 2012.\nIn total, Thorpe has won eleven World Championship gold medals; this is the fifth-highest number of gold medals won by any male swimmer. Thorpe was the first person to have been named Swimming World Swimmer of the Year four times, and was the Australian Swimmer of the Year from 1999 to 2003. His athletic achievements made him one of Australia's most popular athletes, and he was recognised as the Young Australian of the Year in 2000.\n\n\n== Early years ==\nBorn in Sydney, Thorpe grew up in the suburb of Milperra and hailed from a sporting family. His father Ken was a promising cricketer at junior level, representing Bankstown District Cricket Club in Sydney's district competition. A talented batsman, he once topped the season's batting averages ahead of former Australian captain Bob Simpson. However, paternal pressure detracted from Ken's enjoyment of cricket, and he retired at the age of 26. Thorpe's mother Margaret played A-grade netball, but he did not inherit his parents' ball skills. His elder sister Christina was advised to take up swimming to strengthen a broken wrist, so by chance, the five-year-old Thorpe followed her into the pool. Due to his unhappy experiences, Ken Thorpe regarded enjoyment as the most critical aspect of his children's participation in sport. A large baby, Thorpe weighed 4.1 kg (9.0 lb) and measured 59 cm (1 ft 11 in) in length at birth.\nAs a young child, Thorpe was sidelined by an allergy to chlorine. As a result, he did not swim in his first race until a school carnival at the age of seven. The allergy forced Thorpe to swim with his head out of the water; despite this ungainly technique, he won the race, primarily because of his significant size advantage. Thorpe gradually overcame the ailment and progressed to the captaincy of New South Wales for the Australian Primary Schools Championships in 1994. He subsequently won nine individual gold medals at the New South Wales Short Course Age Championships in September of the same year. In 1995, Thorpe started his secondary education at East Hills Boys Technology High School and switched coaches to swim alongside his sister under the tutelage of Doug Frost. It was a busy year for the family; Christina was selected for the Australian team to compete at the 1995 Pan Pacific Swimming Championships in Atlanta. Now six feet tall, Ian competed at his first Australian Age Championships, winning bronze medals in the 200 m and 400 m freestyle. He won all ten events at the New South Wales Age Championships.\n\n\n=== National competition ===\nThorpe competed at the 1996 Australian Age Championships in Brisbane, winning five gold, two silver and two bronze medals. His times in the 400 m freestyle and 200 m backstroke qualified him for the Australian Championships, which doubled as selection trials for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. Frost knew that Thorpe had no realistic chance of making the top two in any event, which would have meant Olympic selection at only 13 years and six months. He sent Thorpe to Sydney merely to gain competition experience at senior national level. As expected, Thorpe missed selection; he finished 23rd in the 400 m freestyle and 36th in the 200 m backstroke. At the end of the year, Thorpe qualified for the Australian Short Course Championships. It was another chance to gain national selection, as the event served as the selection trials for the 1997 FINA World Swimming Championships. Thorpe qualified in second place in the heats of the 400 m individual medley and reached his first national final. However, he swam more slowly in the final and missed selection.\nAt the New South Wales Championships in January 1997, Thorpe's time of 3:59.43 in the 400 m was eight seconds faster than his previous personal best; it made him the first 14-year-old to cover the distance in less than four minutes on Australian soil. Ranked fourth for the event countrywide, Thorpe went into the Australian Championships in Adelaide as a serious contender for selection in the national team for the 1997 Pan Pacific Swimming Championships in Fukuoka, Japan. With a top-three finish and a specific qualifying time required for selection, Thorpe focused on the 400 m freestyle after injuries to world record holder Kieren Perkins and Daniel Kowalski; both had won Olympic medals in the event. Thorpe went on to win bronze behind 16-year-old Queenslander Grant Hackett, setting a new personal best of 3:59.44. The time was a world record for his age group and the race was the first of many battles with Hackett.\nAged 14 years and 5 months, Thorpe became the 463rd and youngest ever male to be selected for the Australian team, surpassing John Konrads' record by one month. Frost said that Thorpe's selection catalysed his eventual focus on freestyle. Thorpe continued his good form at the Australian Age Championships. He contested all twelve events, winning ten individual gold and two bronze medals. He set six Australian records in the process.\n\n\n== Early international career (1997–1998) ==\n\n\n=== International debut (1997) ===\n\nIn June 1997, two months before the Pan Pacific Championships, Thorpe required an appendix operation, which caused him to miss two weeks of training. Upon reaching Japan, Thorpe placed fourth in his heat of the 200 m freestyle with a new personal best time of 1:51.46. Thorpe's time was not enough to qualify for the final, but earned him selection in the 4 × 200 m freestyle relay team. Along with teammates Michael Klim, Ian van der Wal and Hackett, Thorpe claimed silver, making him the youngest ever Pan Pacific medalist. In his first individual final at international level, Thorpe was fifth at the 300 m mark, but fought back to claim silver in the 400 m freestyle behind Hackett in a time of 3:49.64. His finishing burst was to become a trademark, and his time would have been enough to win silver at the Atlanta Olympics. In October 1997, a few days before his fifteenth birthday, Thorpe competed in qualifying trials in Brisbane for the 1998 World Aquatics Championships in Perth. Thorpe gained selection for the world championships by finishing fourth and second in the 200 m and 400 m freestyle respectively. He set new personal bests in both events.\n\n\n=== 1998 World Aquatics Championships ===\n\nThorpe's first international appearance in his home country, at the 1998 World Championships in Perth, began with the 4 × 200 m freestyle relay. Swimming the third leg after Klim and Hackett, Thorpe broke away from 200 m butterfly Olympic champion Tom Malchow to set a split time of 1:47.67. By the end of Thorpe's leg, the Australians were two seconds ahead of the world record pace, and three seconds ahead of the Americans, having extended the lead by two body lengths. Although anchorman Kowalski finished outside the world record, it was the first time that Australia had won the event at the global level since 1956. Thorpe was ranked fourth in the world before the 400 m final, which Hackett led from the outset. Hackett established a comfortable 2.29 s lead over Thorpe by the 300 m mark, and although Thorpe reduced the margin to 1.53 s at the 350 m mark, Hackett led until Thorpe passed him on the final stroke. Thorpe's time was the fourth fastest in history and made him the youngest ever male individual world champion, aged 15 years and 3 months.\nAs a result of the media attention generated by his win on home soil, Thorpe received multiple offers for television commercials and was often surrounded by autograph hunters. He became a high-profile supporter of the Children's Cancer Institute, after his sister Christina's future brother-in-law Michael Williams became gravely ill with cancer.\n\n\n=== 1998 Commonwealth Games ===\n\nThorpe's next competition was in March at the Australian Championships in Melbourne, which were selection trials for the 1998 Commonwealth Games in Malaysia. Thorpe's improvement continued when he defeated Klim in the 200 m freestyle in 1:47.24, faster than Klim's winning time at the World Championship two months earlier. Thorpe's time was a Commonwealth record and with it, he secured his first national title. He then claimed the 400 m freestyle title from Hackett and clocked 50.36 s in the 100 m freestyle. His time earned silver in his first 100 m race at the national level, gaining him Commonwealth selection in three individual events.\nThorpe's rise continued when the Australians arrived in Kuala Lumpur during September for the Commonwealth Games. Thorpe's first event was the 200 m freestyle, where he led throughout to record a time just one hundredth of a second outside Giorgio Lamberti's world record. He then combined with Klim, Kowalski and Matt Dunn in the 4 × 200 m freestyle relay to break the world record of the Unified Team set in 1992 by 0.09 s. Thorpe's run ended when a personal best of 50.21 s in the 100 m freestyle was only sufficient for fourth place, but he returned to victory with the 4 × 100 m freestyle relay team. He claimed a fourth gold in the 400 m freestyle, setting another personal best, just 0.55 s slower than Kieren Perkins' 1994 mark.\nThorpe left school at the end of the year after completing Year 10. His decision caused concerns that concentrating on swimming alone could lead to burn out. Thorpe disagreed, pointing to his informal search for knowledge, stating that \"Swimming is a small part of my life\". His impact in the swimming community was acknowledged when he became the youngest male swimmer to be named as the Swimming World Swimmer of the Year.\n\n\n== Record-breaking years (1999–2002) ==\n\nThe year 1999 began with heavy media expectations that Thorpe would inevitably break both 200 m and 400 m world records, given his continuing physical growth. The first opportunity came in late March at the 1999 Australian Championships in Brisbane, which doubled as a selection event for the 1999 Pan Pacific Swimming Championships. Thorpe again won the 400 m, but Perkins' record eluded him, this time by just 0.05 s. Hackett turned the tables in the 200 m event, passing Thorpe in the final 50 m to win Thorpe's title. Although both were outside Lamberti's mark, Hackett went on to break it the following night in a relay event. Thorpe finished the Championships by continuing his improvement in the 100 m freestyle, posting a time of 49.98 s, his first under the 50 s barrier. The Australian team then travelled to Hong Kong for the 1999 World Short Course Championships, where Thorpe broke Lamberti's mark in the 200 m freestyle, the longest standing world record at the time. However, Hackett defeated him in the 400 m. This was the start of a three-year phase where Thorpe was to set his 13 individual long course world records. He led the men's relay team to unprecedented success in relay events, scoring historic victories over the Americans. Thorpe was to peak in 2001 when he became the first person to win six gold medals at one world championships, setting three world records and helping Australia top the medal tally at a global meet for the first time since 1956. In this period, he was named Swimming World Swimmer of the Year three times.\n\n\n=== 1999 Pan Pacific Championships ===\n\nThe 1999 Pan Pacific Swimming Championships were held in August at Sydney Olympic Park, and were viewed as a rehearsal for the 2000 Summer Olympics to be held in the same venue. With Thorpe expected to deliver world records at his first international meet in Sydney, the event was shown live on Australian television for the first time. The opening night saw him pitted against Hackett and South Africa's Ryk Neethling in the 400 m freestyle final. The trio reached the 200 m mark in a group, on world record pace, before Thorpe broke away, recording a split time 1.86 s ahead of world-record pace at 300 m. He extended his lead to four body lengths by the 350 m mark and finished in a time of 3:41.83, cutting almost two seconds from the world record, and covering the second half in almost the same time as the first. Talbot reacted to the performance by dubbing Thorpe as \"the greatest swimmer we've [Australia] ever had\", whilst four-time American Olympic gold medalist Rowdy Gaines, commentating for NBC, said \"...he went into a balls-out sprint at 250 – and I have never seen anything like that...I have been around swimming a long time and it's the most amazing swim I've ever seen, hands down.\" A formula used by the International Swimming Statisticians Association to compare world records in different events gave his performance the highest score of all current world records. Thorpe promptly donated the A$25,000 prize money for breaking the first world record in the pool to charity.\nLater the same night, Thorpe anchored the Australians to a historic victory in the 4 × 100 m freestyle final, the first time the United States had lost the event. Thorpe set an Australian record relay split of 48.55 s. Even taking into account a 0.6–0.7 s for a flying relay start, his split time was almost 1 s faster than his individual best of 49.98 s. It was to be the first of many occasions in which he would anchor the Australian relay teams to victory over the Americans, with splits consistently faster than his equivalent individual times. The following night, in the semi-finals of the 200 m freestyle, Thorpe broke Hackett's world record by 0.33 s, clocking 1:46.34. The next day in the final, he again broke the record, lowering it to 1:46.00. He finished his competition by leading off the 4 × 200 m freestyle team with Klim, Hackett and Bill Kirby to victory. Their time lowered their own world record by more than three seconds, completing Thorpe's fourth world record in four nights.\nImmediately after the Pan Pacific Championships, Thorpe's management announced his signing to Adidas for an undisclosed six-figure sum, stating that he would race in their new bodysuit. This presented a dilemma, as the national team was sponsored and wore outfits designed by Speedo, leading to months of protracted discussions and uncertainty. To compound his commercial difficulties, Thorpe had an uncertain end to the sporting year when, in October, he broke a bone in his ankle whilst jogging. However his performance throughout the year was recognised when he was again named as the World Swimmer of the Year by Swimming World, and by Swimming Australia as its Swimmer of the Year. In a wider arena, he was named Young Australian of the Year, ABC Sports Star of the Year, and Male Athlete of the Year at the Australian Sports Awards.\n\n\n=== 2000 Olympic build-up ===\nThorpe started 2000 looking to add a third individual event to his Olympic schedule. He explored his options by contesting the 1500 m freestyle at the New South Wales Championships in January, which he won. Thorpe embarked on a European FINA World Cup tour to hone his racecraft, but this was overshadowed by comments made by German head coach Manfred Thiesmann accusing him of using steroids. Thiseman claimed that Thorpe's physical attributes were symptomatic of steroid use and that his ability to exceed prior records believed to be drug-fuelled made his feats worthy of suspicion. Thorpe's difficulties heightened at the subsequent German leg of the tour in Berlin, when a standoff over a drug-test arose when officials wanted to take an unsealed sample due to lack of containers. After the standoff was resolved, Thorpe proceeded to cut more than 1.5 s from his world short course record in the 200 m freestyle. Given the context of the race, Thorpe rated it as his best-ever performance, ahead of his victories at Olympic and World level. On returning from Europe, Thorpe faced further uncertainty until he was granted permission to wear his Adidas suit instead of the Australian uniforms provided by Speedo.\nWith the past uncertainties resolved, Thorpe proceeded to the Olympic selection trials at Sydney Olympic Park in May 2000. He again broke his 400 m world record on the first night of racing, lowering it to 3:41.33 to earn his first Olympic selection. The following day, he lowered his 200 m world record to 1:45.69 in the semi-finals, before lowering it again to 1:45.51 in the final. His attempt to secure a third individual berth failed after he finished fourth in the final of the 100 m and withdrew from the 1500 m.\n\n\n=== 2000 Summer Olympics ===\n\nEntering the Olympics, the Australian public expected Thorpe to deliver multiple world records and gold medals as a formality; Sydney's Daily Telegraph posted a front-page spread headlined Invincible. Thorpe cruised through the heats of the 400 m on the first morning of competition, posting a new Olympic record and shortening bookmakers' odds to 50–1. By the time the final was held that night, the pressure had intensified—the host nation had yet to win its first gold medal. Thorpe led throughout, and although Italy's Massimiliano Rosolino was within a body length at the 300 m mark, Thorpe's finishing kick extended the final margin to three body lengths. This set a new world record of 3:40.59. Secret tests carried out by the Italian National Olympic Committee prior to the Olympics later showed that Rosolino had abnormal levels of human growth hormone. Rosolino aside, Thorpe had left bronze medallist Klete Keller fifteen metres in arrears.\nThorpe lined up later in the night alongside Klim, Chris Fydler and Ashley Callus to anchor the 4 × 100 m freestyle relay, an event which the Americans had never lost at Olympic level. The third leg ended with Australia only an arm's length ahead of the United States. Thorpe timed his dive much better than Gary Hall Jr., and surfaced a body length ahead. Hall's sprinting ability allowed him to open a lead by the final turn, but Thorpe's finishing kick overhauled him in the final metres, sparking wild celebrations amongst the partisan crowd.\nPrior to the 4 × 100 m freestyle relay, Hall posted on his blog: \"My biased opinion says that we will smash them (Australia's 4x100m team) like guitars. Historically the U.S. has always risen to the occasion. But the logic in that remote area of my brain says it won't be so easy for the United States to dominate the waters this time.\" The Australian team responded to Hall's remarks after the race by playing air guitar on the pool deck. Hall recalled the race, saying, \"I don't even know how to play the guitar...I consider it the best relay race I've ever been part of. I doff my cap to the great Ian Thorpe. He had a better finish than I had.\" Another member of Australia's victorious 4x100 team, Michael Klim, recalled that \"Hall was the first swimmer to come over and congratulate us. Even though he dished it out, he was a true sportsman\".\nWhen Thorpe broke the 200 m freestyle Olympic record in the heats the following morning, his main rival Pieter van den Hoogenband of the Netherlands (with World No. 2 ranked and teammate Michael Kim bypassing the 200 metres) conceded defeat. However, van den Hoogenband showed his hand in the semi-finals by cutting more than a second off his personal best, to set a new world record of 1:45.35. Thorpe qualified second with a personal best of his own, 0.02 s slower, and was under immense pressure to win the final the following day after his double gold on the first night. Van den Hoogenband started quickly and Thorpe chased him, reaching the 100 m mark just 0.04 s behind. Both swimmers turned at 150 m in identical times. As a result of starting harder than usual, Thorpe faded as van den Hoogenband drew away to claim gold and equal his world record, stunning the home crowd. Thorpe touched in 1:45.83, the first time that he had swum slower in the final than in the qualifying rounds. Thorpe would never lose to van den Hoogenband in a long course 200 metres race again.\nThorpe returned to victory when he led off the 4 × 200 m freestyle relay the following night, setting up a 10 m lead over American Scott Goldblatt in the first leg. Although Thorpe was unable to reclaim the individual world record, he, Klim, Kirby and Todd Pearson lowered their world record to 7:07.05, over five seconds ahead of the Americans—the largest winning margin in an Olympic relay for half a century. Thorpe rounded off his Olympics by swimming in the heats of the 4 × 100 m medley relay, and collected a silver medal when the finals quartet finished behind the Americans. Thorpe's performances as Australia's leading medalist for the Games were recognised when the Australian Olympic Committee granted him the honour of carrying the flag at the closing ceremony. With three gold and two silver medals, Thorpe was the most successful athlete at the 2000 Olympic Games. At year's end, he was again named by Swimming Australia as the Swimmer of the Year, but van den Hoogenband usurped him as the leading male swimmer chosen by Swimming World Magazine.\n\n\n=== 2001 World Aquatics Championships ===\n\nWith the 2001 Australian Championships held in Hobart in March, Thorpe added the 800 m freestyle to his repertoire, after FINA had added the event for the 2001 World Aquatics Championships. Thorpe began his campaign by successfully defending his 400 m title with a time just 0.17 s outside his world record. The following night in the 800 m event, he drew away from Hackett in the last 100 m to break Kieren Perkins' 1994 world record by over four seconds. He earned his third title by cutting 0.66 s from van den Hoogenband's 200 m world record to set a new mark of 1:44.69. This performance made him the third male after John Konrads and Tim Shaw to hold world records over three distances simultaneously. His subsequent victory in the 100 m freestyle in a new personal best of 49.05 s made him the first since Konrads in 1959 to hold all Australian freestyle titles from 100 m to 800 m. This indicated that he could swim faster at the subsequent World Championships in Fukuoka, where he was looking to regain the ascendancy from van den Hoogenband.\nThorpe arrived in Fukuoka having been chosen by broadcaster TV Asahi as the marketing drawcard of the event. With the 4 × 100 m freestyle relay being held after the 400 m freestyle on the first night, Thorpe appeared to be conserving energy when he reached the 200 m mark two seconds outside his world record. Although he was 0.93 s behind at the final turn, a final 50 m burst in 24.36 s saw him cut a further 0.42 s from his world record. The relay saw him dive in fractionally ahead of American Jason Lezak after Klim, Callus and Pearson had completed the first three legs. Thorpe fell behind in the early half of the leg before kicking away in the closing stages, to seal gold with his fastest-ever relay split of 47.87 s. In the 800 m final, he shadowed Hackett for the first 750 m, staying within a body length. He then broke clear to win by a body length, lowering his world record by over two seconds. The 200 m freestyle rematch with van den Hoogenband provided Thorpe with a chance to rectify his strategy from the Olympics; this time he allowed the Dutchman to lead through the first 100 m. Thorpe pulled even at the 150 m mark and then broke away towards the finishing wall two body lengths clear. He lowered his world record to 1:44.06 in the process, prompting van den Hoogenband to raise his arm aloft.\nThorpe's winning streak was interrupted in the 100 m freestyle when his personal best of 48.81 s placed him fourth, but he returned to form in the 4 × 200 m freestyle relay. Anchoring the team of Klim, Hackett and Kirby, the Australians lowered their world record time by more than two seconds, leaving the Italians more than six seconds in arrears. Having overtaken Klim as Australia's leading 100 m freestyle swimmer, Thorpe was entrusted with anchoring the 4 × 100 m medley relay team on 28 July. After Matt Welsh, Regan Harrison and Geoff Huegill had finished their legs, Thorpe's change left him half a body length behind the new 100 m world champion Anthony Ervin of the United States. The Americans were expected to win, and with his typically slow start, Thorpe turned a body length behind with 50 m remaining. With an American victory seeming inevitable, Thorpe managed to accelerate and deprive Ervin of the lead in the last 5 m. This made Thorpe the only swimmer to have won six gold medals at a World Championships, and the first since Shaw in 1974 to win the 200–400–800 treble. His performances formed the basis for Australia's gold medal win over the United States 13–9. It was also the first time since the 1956 Summer Olympics that Australia had topped the medal tally at a global meet. Thorpe's achievements led to predictions that he could match Mark Spitz's seven gold medals at the 1972 Summer Olympics, which he played down.\n\n\n=== 2002 Commonwealth Games and Pan Pacific Championships ===\nThorpe began competition in 2002 at the Australian Championships in Brisbane in March, which were used to select the team for the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester and the 2002 Pan Pacific Swimming Championships. After his record six gold medals in Fukuoka, the meet was surrounded by further expectations of world records and speculation that he would match Spitz's seven gold medals. His winning time in the 400 m was the second fastest in history, but such was the expectation on him that his failure to break a world record was the talking point. He claimed the 100 m and 200 m events in times outside his best, making it the first time that he had failed to break a world record at a major meet since 1999. He also experimented by adding the 100 m backstroke to his repertoire, placing second. This earned him a Commonwealth spot in a seventh event, leading to further media speculation that he could match Spitz.\n\nBy this time, Thorpe's relationship with Frost was beginning to unravel. Thorpe had always insisted that his swimming was about enjoyment and improving himself in setting faster times, rather than victory or defeat. This contrasted with Frost, who had a more aggressive and combative mindset, often making bold public statements. Thorpe ignored Frost's advice and bulked up his upper body by a further 5 kg to 105 kg, making him the heaviest elite swimmer in history. His reasoning that the strength gains would outweigh any loss in flexibility raised concerns over his physiological strategy. On the first night in Manchester, Thorpe again lowered his 400 m mark by 0.09 s to 3:40.08, which remains the fastest ever 400m swim not swum in an LZR Racer before anchoring the 4 × 100 m freestyle relay team to another gold. Prior to the 200 m final, Thorpe was seen arguing with Frost in the warm-up area. Thorpe won, but was unusually angry at having failed to lower his previous best, publicly stating that he \"wasn't with it\" and that he had \"one of the worst warm-ups ever\". Thorpe did manage to lower his personal best in the 100 m freestyle to 48.73 s en route to his fourth gold, and anchored the 4 × 200 m freestyle and 4 × 100 m medley relays to comfortable victories. When he collected a silver in his first international race in the 100 m backstroke with another personal best behind world champion Matt Welsh, he was forced to rebuff media comparisons to Spitz. He emphasised personal performance, stating \"I think it's a limiting attitude to be competing against other people when you can be challenging yourself\". Despite Thorpe's assertion that he could not match Spitz, Frost predicted that Thorpe could win nine golds at one Olympics. In spite of the media disappointment, Thorpe's six gold medals equalled the record set by Susie O'Neill, completing all in Games or World record time. As a result, he was awarded the honour of carrying the flag at the closing ceremony.\n\nThe Pan Pacific Championships followed in Yokohama less than a month later, with media speculation about Thorpe and Frost overshadowing the racing. Thorpe began his campaign with a victory over Hackett in the 400 m freestyle in a time five seconds outside his world record. Afterwards, he revealed that both he and Hackett had deliberately conserved energy for the 4 × 100 m freestyle relay later in the night. Australia subsequently won the relay, with Thorpe again overtaking Jason Lezak in the last 50 m. He subsequently won the 200 m freestyle, and anchored the 4 × 200 m freestyle relay to victory to take his tally to four golds. After qualifying second in the 100 m freestyle, Thorpe came from fourth at the 50 m mark win his fifth gold in a time of 48.84 s. Thorpe's run ended in the 4 × 100 m medley relay final, when despite setting the second fastest ever relay split of 47.20 s, Australia were defeated.\n\n\n== Tracey Menzies era (2003–2006) ==\nAfter the 2002 Pan Pacific Championships, Thorpe announced that he was splitting with Frost to train with one of his assistants, Tracey Menzies, who had no prior international experience. Admitting that tension existed between him and Frost, Thorpe asserted that the split was amicable. He cited waning motivation for the split, stating \"I decided I either had to make the change or it was to walk away from the sport\". The retired Talbot expressed concerns that Thorpe was making a decision whilst he was physically and emotionally drained, while other coaches felt that the new relationship would end up with Thorpe, rather than Menzies, making the decisions. Despite a turbulent year, he was again named by Swimming World as its World Swimmer of the Year.\nAlong with the switch of coaches, Thorpe indicated that he would put more focus on improving his sprinting ability. He thus dropped the 800 m freestyle despite being the reigning world champion and record holder. During this period, his times in the 400 m and 200 m freestyle deteriorated, and both he and Menzies were criticised. The criticism continued to mount during their partnership, particularly during the build-up to the 2004 Olympics. Following his victory in the 200 and 400 events in Athens, Thorpe said that his results justified his decision, despite posting substantially faster times as a young swimmer under Frost.\nIn May 2002, Thorpe also hosted the Australian reality television show Undercover Angels on the Seven Network. The show ran for 11 episodes and was widely panned by media critics.\n\n\n=== 2003 World Aquatics Championships ===\n\nThe first major test of Thorpe's partnership with Menzies came at the Australian Championships held in Sydney in March. Thorpe did not threaten any of his world records, completing the 400 m and 200 m freestyle more than two and one seconds respectively off his best. Despite defeating Hackett in both races to retain his titles, he later admitted that he was \"pretty disappointed\" with his performances. When he tied with Ashley Callus in a time of 49.05 s, he was criticised by The Sydney Morning Herald which stated \"The measure of Thorpe's sprinting ability is that he could only match the efforts of a virus-riddled Callus\". Thorpe found some relief by setting a new Commonwealth record of 2:00.11 in his first long course 200 m individual medley outing, the fifth fastest time in the past year. Thorpe attracted further criticism when he withdrew from the inaugural Duel in the Pool with a medical complaint, despite travelling overseas for commercial and charity work.\nThorpe arrived for the 2003 World Championships in Barcelona for his first major international competition since Menzies' appointment under heavy media scrutiny following his non-improvement at the Australian Championships. On the first night of competition Thorpe defeated Hackett in the 400 m freestyle in a time 2.5 s outside his world record, making him the first to win three world titles in the same event. After his relatively slow 400 m, he was again under pressure in the 200 m freestyle after van den Hoogenband led at the 100 m mark ahead of world record pace. Thorpe managed to respond and retain his world title, and gained some relief after his sprint training yielded his first medal in the 100 m freestyle at a global competition; he finished third in 48.77 s. In all three freestyle events however, he had swum slower than his times under Frost. He ended his individual campaign on a promising note with his experiment with the 200 m individual medley, setting a new personal best of 1:59.66 to claim silver. Thorpe again anchored the 4 × 200 m freestyle team to retain the world title along with Hackett, Nicholas Sprenger and Craig Stevens, with a reduced margin over the Americans, who finished less than two seconds in arrears. Michael Klim's injuries left the relay teams weakened, with Thorpe anchoring the 4 × 100 m freestyle team to fourth, At the end of a difficult year in the water, his standing had fallen in the eyes of Swimming World, who rated him fourth in the world. He was again named as Australian Swimmer of the Year, jointly with Hackett.\n\n\n=== 2004 Summer Olympics ===\n\nAfter his feats at the 2003 World Championships, Speedo had generated significant media publicity by offering Michael Phelps US$1 million if he could match Spitz's seven golds. Thorpe was adamant that this was impossible, and scrapped his seventh event, the 200 m individual medley from his Olympic program. In late March 2004 at the Australian Championships in Sydney, Thorpe overbalanced whilst on the blocks in the heats of the 400 m freestyle and fell into the water, resulting in his disqualification and ending the defence of his Olympic 400 m title. This resulted in a large debate among the swimming and public community as to whether Thorpe should be given an exception to Australia's policy of selecting the first and second place getters, with Prime Minister of Australia John Howard describing the situation as a \"tragedy\". Despite the intense media spotlight, Thorpe managed to win the 100 m and 200 m freestyle events to ensure his selection for Athens. Craig Stevens, who had claimed the second qualifying position in the 400 m event, subsequently faced immense public pressure to relinquish his position to Thorpe, and later did so in a television interview for which he was paid. This generated ethical debate as to whether Stevens' decision had been bought, and criticism against Thorpe.\nThe pressure in the lead-up was further compounded by the media attention surrounding Phelps, who had decided that the 200 m freestyle would be one of the events in his quest for eight gold medals. This prompted many media outlets to label the race between Thorpe, van den Hoogenband, Phelps and Hackett as The Race of the Century. With the press spotlight growing, Thorpe tried to avoid media attention, resulting in a few terse media events. Thorpe's increasing focus on the 100 m event, coupled with the media pressure, resulted in speculation that he was vulnerable to Hackett in the 400 m event. Thorpe made a slow start in the final, reaching the 100 m mark one second outside world record pace. In a topsy-turvy performance at irregular pace, there were multiple changes of lead before Thorpe established a body-length lead by 350 m. He was closed down by Hackett, holding on by only 0.26 s in a time three seconds outside his own world record.\nWith Klim recently returning from a two-year injury layoff, and Callus ill, Thorpe could only anchor Australia to sixth in the 4 × 100 m freestyle relay. The 200 m began with van den Hoogenband again attacking immediately, reaching the 100 m mark more than a second under the world record split, with Thorpe half a body length behind. Thorpe gradually reduced the lead before passing van den Hoogenband in the last 50 m to win The Race of the Century by half a body length, in a new Olympic record of 1:44.71. Having achieved what had eluded him four years earlier, Thorpe reacted emotionally, immediately tearing off his cap, punching the air and screaming. The next day saw six years of Australian victory in the 4 × 200 m freestyle relay ended when Hackett, Klim and Sprenger had put Thorpe into the final leg 1.48 s behind Keller. Thorpe gradually reduced the margin but was unable to pass Keller in the last lap, the United States touching 0.13 s earlier. Thorpe found himself on the other side of a close result when he qualified last for the 100 m freestyle by 0.01 s. He capitalised in the final by coming from sixth at the 50 m mark to win bronze medal in a personal best of 48.56 s, making him the only person to medal in the 100–200–400 combination in Olympic history. After the Athens Olympics, Thorpe took a break from competitive swimming, skipping the 2005 World Aquatics Championships.\n\n\n=== 2006: Attempted return and retirement ===\n\nThorpe returned to competition at the New South Wales Championships in December 2005. He raced in the 200 m and stated his intention to retire after the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. Thorpe announced that due to a desire to concentrate on the 100 m freestyle, he had dropped his pet event, the 400 m. He was unmoved by national coach Alan Thompson, who implored him to continue swimming the event. In February, Thorpe qualified for the 2006 Commonwealth Games by winning the 100 m and 200 m freestyle in times of 49.24 s and 1:46.42 respectively. He expressed disappointment with his performances; he speculated that he may have misjudged his new training schedule and anticipated further improvement.\nSoon after, Thorpe announced his withdrawal from the Commonwealth Games due to a bout of bronchitis, which had stopped him from training. Thorpe's illness was later diagnosed as a strain of glandular fever, and after a further delay caused by a broken hand, he moved to the United States in July to work with Dave Salo. Further disruption followed when the Australian switched coaches, citing excessive and ongoing media attention. Thorpe's stay was constantly surrounded by rumours that he was suffering from ill discipline; this fuelled speculation that his international career was on the decline.\nUpon his return to Australia, Thorpe withdrew from the selection trials for the 2007 World Championships and announced his retirement on 21 November 2006. Thorpe said that he had been contemplating retirement for some time, but was afraid of the future because swimming had given him a \"safety blanket\". Thorpe stated that he retired despite reaching higher levels of fitness, noting \"As I got fit, physically fit, my mind also got fit\". He said a clear mind allowed him to reach his decision. He was close to tears when thanking the Australian public, but declared that his retirement was a \"joyous\" occasion of celebration.\nIn 2007, the French sports newspaper L'Équipe claimed that Thorpe \"showed 'abnormal levels' of two banned substances in a doping test\" in 2006 prior to his retirement. Thorpe denied the charges. The Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority (ASADA) confirmed that they had investigated Thorpe in the past, for abnormal levels of testosterone and luteinising hormone (LH), but had dismissed the result. FINA dropped its investigation and closed the case. Thorpe has never been found to have used banned substances, and has denied allegations against him while also speaking out against drug use. He has called for the introduction of blood testing, promised to surrender a frozen sample for retrospective testing and repeatedly criticised FINA for drug-testing procedures that he regards as inadequate.\n\n\n== Comeback (2011–2012) ==\nIn February 2011, Thorpe announced that he would come out of retirement and attempt to qualify for the 2012 Olympics in London. Thorpe's major focus was the 100 m and 200 m freestyle at 2012's trials, stating he could offer the most value to the Australian team in the relays. He would not swim the 400 m, claiming he would not have enough time to build up endurance for that event.\nThorpe swam the 100 m butterfly and 100 m medley in Singapore (4–5 November) and Beijing (8–9 November) before also taking on the 100 m freestyle in the Tokyo (12–13 November) round of the 2011 FINA Swimming World Cup.\n\n\n=== 2012: Australian Olympic Trials and aftermath ===\nThorpe's comeback attempt in the 200 m freestyle came to an abrupt end on Day Two of Australia's Olympic Trials in Adelaide, on 16 March 2012. No longer allowed to wear the full-body racing suit (covering from neck to ankles and wrists) banned by FINA rule changes, he competed wearing just the \"jammer\" (hip to thigh) racing shorts. He swam very well in the morning heats, cruising to 1:49.18, a time which placed him equal fifth fastest. However, in the semi-finals that evening he faded over the last 100 metres, finishing in 12th place at 1:49.91. Speaking to reporters immediately afterwards, Thorpe said, \"The last 100 was a struggle, I'm not sure why. This was slower than what I swam this morning, probably the inexperience of racing in the last 18 months held me up. The fairytale has turned into a nightmare.\" In the 100 m freestyle on day 3 (17 March), Thorpe won his heat (the 9th of 12) but failed to break 50 seconds and did not advance to the semi-finals with the top 16 sprinters. Thus, his bid to qualify for the London Olympics officially ended.\n\nIt was subsequently announced that Thorpe was targeting qualification for the 2013 World Championships in Barcelona and later the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, but was forced to abandon his plans due to a shoulder injury.\n\n\n== Athletic attributes ==\nThorpe's success has been attributed to his work ethic, mental strength, powerful kick, ability to accelerate and a physiology suited to swimming. This led former Australian head coach Don Talbot to label him as \"the greatest swimmer the world has seen\". Although Swimming World labelled Thorpe's technique as \"extraordinary\" and \"superior\", Talbot disagreed, stating his belief that Thorpe relied on his kick too heavily at the expense of his arms. He also cited Thorpe's ability to manage his workload and his day-to-day recovery between races during a meet as a deficiency. Thorpe was known for using his trademark six-beat kick to power away from his rivals in the closing stages of races, the effectiveness of which was attributed to his unusually large size 17 feet.\nFollowing his retirement, head coach of the US men's swimming team Bob Bowman—who also mentors Michael Phelps—called Thorpe \"the greatest middle-distance swimmer of all time and...the greatest relay swimmer I have seen\". Bowman further cited Thorpe's ability to raise the profile and popularity of swimming, noting that Phelps' public image was modelled on that of the Australian. Australian Olympic Committee President John Coates stated that \"In 50 years from now Australians will still marvel at the feats of Ian Thorpe\". Dawn Fraser, the first of only two swimmers to win the same Olympic event three times, said that Thorpe was the \"greatest [freestyle] swimmer in the world\", and lamented that he would not be attempting a hat-trick of 400 m titles.\n\n\n== Honours ==\n\nAside from his swimming achievements, Thorpe has received numerous honours and accolades during his life, including:\n\n2000: Young Australian of the Year\n2000: The Australian Sports Medal as \"Commonwealth Games Pan Pacific World Record Holder\".\n2001: Awarded Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for service to sport as a gold medallist at the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games.\n2001: The Centenary Medal for \"service to Australian society through the sport of swimming\".\n2007: Ian Thorpe Aquatic and Fitness Centre in Ultimo, Sydney named in his honour.\n2012: Awarded Human Rights Medal for his charity work with Indigenous children.\n2013: Conferred an honorary Doctor of Letters by the University of Western Sydney for his support for health and education services for Indigenous youth.\n2014: Conferred an honorary Doctor of Letters by the Macquarie University in recognition of his extraordinary contribution for the sport, philanthropy and Indigenous rights.\n2019: Advanced to Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in recognition of his \"significant service to youth and Indigenous education through charitable initiatives, and to swimming.\"\n2022: Swimming Australia Hall of Fame inaugural inductee.\n\n\n== Post-swimming career ==\nThorpe presented a two-part television documentary called Bullied on ABC Television, using hidden-camera footage to give a victim's-eye-view of bullying. It aired 14 March 2017. In 2021, Thorpe competed in Celebrity MasterChef Australia (series 2) and was fourth to be eliminated. During the series, the judges referred to Thorpe having written two cookbooks, \"Cook For Your Life\", published in 2011 and \"Eat Well Now\", released in 2016.\nIn December 2025, Thorpe made his debut as a yachtsman for LawConnect in its bid for third consecutive line honours for Sydney to Hobart yacht race.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\n\n\n=== Sexuality ===\nIn a July 2014 televised interview with British talk show host Michael Parkinson, Thorpe came out as gay, after years of denying his homosexuality publicly. He stated \"I'm comfortable saying I'm a gay man. And I don't want people to feel the same way I did. You can grow up, you can be comfortable and you can be gay.\" He added \"I am telling the world that I am gay… and I hope this makes it easier for others now, and even if you've held it in for years, it feels easier to get it out.\"\nIn 2016 he began dating model Ryan Channing. In December 2017, he said he did not plan to marry his boyfriend \"any time soon\". He would like to become a father. In June 2019, Thorpe split with Channing. Channing later died in Bali, Indonesia in May 2022.\nIn September 2020, the International Olympic Committee published a question and answer format interview with Thorpe, which touched on his sexual orientation and some of the challenges he faced due to his homosexuality in competitive swimming.\n\n\n=== Activism ===\nIn the lead up to the Australian Marriage Law Postal Survey, Thorpe campaigned for a 'yes' vote, encouraging people to enroll to vote at the City2Surf. He later appeared in a campaign advertisement with his partner saying Thorpe could update his electoral details faster than he could swim 100 metres.\n\n\n=== Sponsorship ===\n\nThorpe is known for his interests in fashion, and serves as an ambassador for Armani, and has his own line of designer jewellery and underwear. During his career, Thorpe was one of the most prominent and popular sportspeople in Australia. Despite competing in a sport in which the vast majority of international athletes' earnings are below the poverty line, marketing surveys consistently ranked Thorpe as the most sought-after Australian athlete for sponsorship deals, surpassing footballers who compete on a weekly basis in much larger stadia. Aside from his swimsuit sponsor Adidas, Thorpe was sponsored by Australian corporate giants such as Qantas, Telstra, and the Seven Network.\nThorpe's interests in fashion and culture led him to make frequent visits to New York City—which he describes as a second home—often for engagements with Armani and particularly because of the city's status as a global fashion capital. He was present at the World Trade Center on the morning of 11 September 2001, having stopped there on his jog, before returning to his hotel after forgetting his camera. It was during this trip that he appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, which was notable because of the relative lack of interest in competitive swimming in America. Thorpe later became a spokesperson for the unsuccessful New York bid for the 2012 Summer Olympics, even promising to continue his career until the games if New York won the hosting rights. Thorpe's interests have also seen him involved in television. In 2002, he played the lead role in the reality television show Undercover Angels, which imitated the Charlie's Angels series. In the program, Thorpe directed three young women who performed good deeds for people in need. Although it averaged more than a million viewers per episode, it was widely panned by critics. Thorpe has also appeared as an extra in the American sitcom Friends.\nThorpe is widely popular in Asia, particularly Japan. In 2000, TV Asahi identified him as the swimmer likely to be the most successful at the 2001 World Championships in Fukuoka, so they selected him as the event's marketing figurehead. In the lead-up, Thorpe visited Japan to promote Asahi in a series of television events, and upon returning for the competition, he was mobbed at the airport by youthful crowds 25 m deep; hundreds camped outside the Australian team's hotel. He was also praised by older sections of Japanese society as a role model for youth, due to what they interpreted as his humility and work ethic. It was estimated that more than 80% of the Japanese public watched his races on television. In 2002, in the wake of a tourism slump after 11 September terrorist attacks, Thorpe agreed to be an ambassador for the Australian Tourism Commission in Japan. The high-profile campaign included a meeting with the Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. The marketing drive resulted in an upturn in Japanese tourism to Australia, which was credited to Thorpe. In 2005, Yakult released a 'Thorpedo' energy drink—which featured a picture of the swimmer on the bottle—in Japan. This was part of an equity deal with the So Natural food group, in which Thorpe was given a 5% stake in the company—at the time worth A$1.1 m—in return for the use of his name and image on their products. The 15-year deal covers East and Southeast Asia and Thorpe's share in the venture could increase to 50% depending on its success.\n\n\n=== Philanthropy ===\n\nMore recently, Thorpe has also emerged as a philanthropist, starting the charity Ian Thorpe's Fountain for Youth in 2000. The organisation raises funds for research into childhood illnesses and sponsors a school in Beijing for orphaned children with disabilities. In addition, it works with The Fred Hollows Foundation to improve health standards and living conditions in Australian aboriginal communities. Citing a wish to \"...work directly with our Aboriginal partners and not compete for the meagre funding available from public and corporate donations\" the organisation was liquidated in 2014.\n\n\n=== Depression ===\nIn 2014, it was confirmed that Thorpe had been admitted to a rehabilitation clinic after neighbours found him dazed near his parents' Panania home. Thorpe was taken to Bankstown Hospital by police before being admitted to a rehabilitation clinic. In his 2012 autobiography This is Me, Thorpe stated he had considered suicide and had drunk 'huge quantities' of alcohol to deal with 'crippling depression'.\n\n\n== See also ==\n\nIan Thorpe: The Swimmer, 2012 documentary\nIan Thorpe and drug testing\nIan Thorpe Aquatic and Fitness Centre\nLGBT athletes in the Olympics\nList of Australian Olympic medalists in swimming\nList of Commonwealth Games medallists in swimming (men)\nList of Olympic medalists in swimming (men)\nWorld record progression 200 metres freestyle\nWorld record progression 400 metres freestyle\nWorld record progression 800 metres freestyle\nWorld record progression 4 × 100 metres freestyle relay\nWorld record progression 4 × 200 metres freestyle relay\n\n\n== Published works ==\nThorpe, Ian; Wainwright, Robert (25 October 2012). This is Me. Simon and Schuster Australia (published 2012). ISBN 978-1-4711-0122-9.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== Bibliography ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nIan Thorpe  at World Aquatics \nIan Thorpe at Swimrankings.net \nIan Thorpe at the Australian Olympic Committee \nIan Thorpe at Olympics.com \nIan Thorpe at Olympedia \nIan Thorpe at the Commonwealth Games Federation (archived) \nIan Thorpe at IMDb"}
{"title": "Inge de Bruijn", "requested": "Inge de Bruijn", "extract": "Inge de Bruijn (Dutch: [ˈɪŋə də ˈbrœyn]; born 24 August 1973) is a Dutch former competitive swimmer. She is a four-time Olympic champion and a former world record-holder in multiple swimming events.\n\n\n== Personal ==\nDe Bruijn was born in Barendrecht, Netherlands. Inge is the sister of Olympic water polo player Matthijs de Bruijn.\n\n\n== Swimming career ==\n\nDe Bruijn tried several sports before eventually specialising in swimming. De Bruijn debuted at the World Aquatics Championships in January 1991, winning a bronze medal with the 4×100 m relay team, with which she won the gold medal at the European LC Championships in August of that year.\nThe following year, de Bruijn made her Olympic debut at the 1992 Summer Olympics, and finished 8th in the 100 m and 4×100 m freestyle events. She did not compete at the 1996 Summer Olympics. In 1999, she won the 50 m freestyle at the European Championships. The following year, after having swum several 50 m freestyle world records, she competed in the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia. She won the 50 and 100 m freestyle, and the 100 m butterfly, setting world records in all three events. She also won a silver medal with the 4×100 m freestyle relay team. Her nickname became \"Invincible Inky\".\nShe was named by Swimming World as the \"Female World Swimmer of the Year\" in both 2000 and 2001. She won titles in three events at the 2001 World Championships. At the 2003 World Championships, de Bruijn successfully defended her 50 m freestyle and butterfly titles. At the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens she defended her gold medal in the 50 m free, and took silver in the 100 m free, and two bronze: one in the 100 m butterfly and another in the 4×100 m relay. This made her the oldest individual champion in Olympic swimming history. This record was only surpassed by Anthony Ervin at the age of 36, he won the gold medal for the men's 50m freestyle at the Rio 2016 Olympics. De Bruijn's 2004 title retains its place as the oldest female Olympic champion in swimming history.\nWith an Olympic medal total of four gold, two silver and two bronze, she is the fourth most successful Dutch Olympian of all time. Moreover, her combined nine individual titles won at the Olympics (four) and World Aquatics Championships (five) were a record for female swimmers until Katie Ledecky won her 10th at the 2016 Summer Olympics.\nIn March 2007, de Bruijn announced her retirement from competitive swimming.\n\n\n== International championships (50 m) ==\n\na  de Bruijn swam only in the heats\n\n\n== Post-swimming career ==\nDe Bruijn resides in Eindhoven, Netherlands, and previously trained in Portland, Oregon.\nShe was the face for Dutch lingerie brand Sapph, along with kickboxer Remy Bonjasky, the face for the men's line of the brand.\nShe appeared in a special episode of the Dutch naked dating reality television programme Adam Zkt. Eva VIP.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of members of the International Swimming Hall of Fame\nList of Dutch records in swimming\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists at a single Games\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Summer Olympic medalists\nList of top Olympic gold medalists in swimming\nList of individual gold medalists in swimming at the Olympics and World Aquatics Championships (women)\nWorld record progression 50 metres freestyle\nWorld record progression 100 metres freestyle\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nInge de Bruijn  at World Aquatics \nInge de Bruijn at Swimrankings.net \nInge de Bruijn at Olympedia \nInge de Bruijn at Olympics.com Inge de Bruijn at Olympic.org (archived) \nInge de Bruijn at NOC*NSF (in Dutch) (English translation)"}
{"title": "Ingrid Gulbin", "requested": "Ingrid Gulbin", "extract": "Ingrid Gulbin (née Krämer then Engel-Krämer, born 29 July 1943) is a diver from East Germany, a multiple Olympic champion who won Olympic gold medals in both springboard and platform.\n\n\n== Career ==\nKrämer competed in the 1960 and 1964 Summer Olympics for the United Team of Germany. She won gold medals in springboard and platform diving in 1960. She was the German flag bearer at the 1964 Games, where she competed under the name Engel-Krämer and won a gold medal in springboard and a silver medal in platform diving. Four years later at the 1968 Games she competed for East Germany and used the name Gulbin. She finished fifth in the 3 metre springboard competition.\nShe finished fourth in the springboard and eighth in the platform at the 1958 European Aquatics Championships and won both events in 1962.\nShe retired after the 1968 Olympics to become a successful diving coach, training such athletes as Martina Jäschke, Beate Jahn, Jan Hempel, Michael Kühne, Heiko Meyer and Annett Gamm. She lost her job after the reunification of Germany and worked as a bank clerk.\n\n\n== Personal life and awards ==\nIn November 1963 she married Hein Engel, a German weightlifter and coach, and at the 1964 Olympics competed as Engel-Krämer.\nShe was elected sportspersonality of the year 1960, 1962, 1963 and 1964 in East Germany. In 1960, she was also chosen sportspersonality of the year in West Germany, becoming the only person to win the award in both parts of Germany.\nShe was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame in Fort Lauderdale, Florida in 1975.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of members of the International Swimming Hall of Fame\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nIngrid Gulbin at World Aquatics\nIngrid Gulbin at the International Swimming Hall of Fame\nIngrid Gulbin at Olympics.com\nIngrid Gulbin at Olympedia\nIngrid Gulbin at InterSportStats"}
{"title": "Ireen Wüst", "requested": "Ireen Wüst", "extract": "Irene Karlijn \"Ireen\" Wüst (Dutch pronunciation: [iˈreːɱ ˈʋyst]; born 1 April 1986) is a Dutch former long track speed skater. Wüst became the most successful speed skating Olympian ever by achieving at least one gold medal in each of five consecutive Winter Olympic appearances. Wüst is the second athlete (after Britain's Steve Redgrave) to win a gold medal at five consecutive Olympics, Summer or Winter, and the first to do so in individual events.\nWüst is both the youngest Dutch Olympic gold medalist and the oldest speed skating gold medalist in the history of the Winter Games. At the age of nineteen, on 12 February 2006, she won the gold medal at the 2006 Winter Olympic Games 3000 metre event; four years later at the 2010 Winter Olympic Games she won the 1500 metre event; at the 2014 Winter Olympic Games she won two gold and three silver medals, making her the most decorated athlete at the Sochi Games. Following her record sixth speed skating gold medal in the 1500 metres and bronze in the team pursuit event at the 2022 Winter Olympics she has won a record thirteen Olympic medals, more than any other speed skater, making her the most successful athlete of the Netherlands at the Olympics. She is also a seven-time world allround champion, a fifteen-time world single distance champion, and a five-time European allround champion. In 2014, she was elected by Reuters as the Sportswoman of the World.\n\n\n== Skating career ==\nWüst debuted at the 2004 KNSB Dutch Single Distance Championships in November 2003 with ninth place in both the 500m and 1500m events. At the end of the season, she won the silver medal in the world junior championships in Roseville, Minnesota, USA. The following season she qualified for the 2004–05 World Cup during the 2005 KNSB Dutch Single Distance Championships with fifth place in the 1000m and fourth place in the 1500m. With a third place at the 2005 KNSB Dutch Allround Championships, she qualified for her first international senior tournament, the 2005 European Championships in Heerenveen. There she came fourth and secured a spot in the Dutch team for the 2005 World Allround Championships in Moscow, Russia, where she finished in fifth place. She then became World Junior Champion in Seinäjoki, Finland.\n\n\n=== Season 2005–2006 ===\nBefore the start of the season, Wüst signed a deal with TVM and started training under the guidance of Gerard Kemkers. At the 2006 KNSB Dutch Single Distance Championships, which also served as the Olympic Trials, Wüst won the 1000m, 1500m, and 3000m, which gave her a spot in the Dutch Olympic Team for the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin. Before the Olympics, she started in the 2006 European Championships in Hamar, where she won the bronze medal behind Claudia Pechstein of Germany and teammate Renate Groenewold.\n\n\n==== Olympic Games in Turin ====\nAt the 2006 Olympics, her first distance was the 3000 metres where Wüst beat Groenewold and Cindy Klassen of Canada for the gold medal and became The Netherlands' youngest ever Winter Olympics champion. She missed out on the podium in the 1000 metres, finishing fourth. At her last event, the 1500 metres, she won a bronze medal behind Cindy Klassen and Kristina Groves of Canada. At her last event of the season, the 2006 World Allround Championships, Wüst finished fourth after she had been ill a few days before the tournament.\nAfter the end of the season, Wüst was elected as the best Dutch Sportswoman of the Year 2006. She was also elected female skater of the year.\n\n\n=== Season 2006–2007 ===\nWüst started the season with two titles and one second place at the 2007 Dutch Distance Championships. She also won the 2007 Dutch Allround Championships. At the 2007 European Championships, Wüst led the championships after 3 of 4 distances but was beaten by Martina Sáblíková. The following weekend she competed in the 2007 World Sprint Speed Skating Championships in Hamar, again winning the silver medal. She became World Allround Champion during the 2007 World Allround Championships for the home crowd in Heerenveen. She won the 2006–07 World Cup in the 1500 m after winning two of the six races, as well as the 1000 m during the World Cup Final in Calgary. At the 2007 World Distance Championships, she won a gold medal in the 1000 m, breaking the national record, and another in the 1500 m. With Renate Groenewold and Paulien van Deutekom, she won silver in the team pursuit behind Canada.\n\n\n=== Season 2007–2008 ===\nAfter a difficult start to the season, Wüst won the European allround title in January 2008. Her main competitor this year was Paulien van Deutekom. Wüst finished second behind van Deutekom during the World Allround Championships in Berlin. In Nagano during the 2008 World Distance Championships, she won the gold medal in the team pursuit alongside Groenewold and Van Deutekom. Wüst won only one world race this season, the 1500m in Hamar.\n\n\n=== 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver ===\nAt the 2010 Winter Olympics she won a gold medal in the 1500 metres.\n\n\n=== 2014 Olympic Games in Sochi ===\n\nAt the 2014 Winter Olympics, she won gold medals in the 3000 metres and in the team pursuit, and silver medals in the 1000m, 1500m and 5000m.\n\n\n=== 2018 Olympic Games in Pyeongchang ===\nAt the 2018 Winter Olympics, she won a gold medal in the 1500 metres and a silver medal in the 3000 metres. Her 1500 m gold medal was her fourth consecutive medal at this distance at the Olympics, and this was the fourth Olympics in a row in which she won an individual gold medal, the first time this was achieved by a Winter Olympian. She also became the second speed skater to win the Olympic 1500 metres twice (after Lidiya Skoblikova in 1960 and 1964), and the first Dutch athlete to win five gold medals and ten medals overall at the Olympics. She also became the first speed skater, male or female, to win eleven Olympic medals, and the first female Winter Olympian to win nine individual medals.\n\n\n=== 2022 Olympic Games in Beijing ===\nAt the 2022 Winter Olympics, she won a gold medal in the 1500 metres, setting a new Olympic record time and becoming the first athlete to earn individual gold medals at five different Olympics (spanning 16 years).\n\n\n== Personal records ==\n\nShe is currently in 5th position on the Adelskalender with a score of 156.436 points.\n\n\n== Tournament overview ==\n\nSource:\n\n\n== World Cup overview ==\n\nSource:\n\n– = Did not participate\n* = 5000m\n(b) = Division B\nDNF = Did not finish\nDQ = Disqualified\nNC = No classification\nDNQ =Did not qualify\n\n\n=== Medals won ===\nupdated December 2021\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nOn 1 March 2006, Wüst was awarded as Knight of the Order of the Netherlands Lion for services to sport, i.e., winning the women's 3000 m speed skating competition at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin. On 22 February 2022, she was further appointed a Commander of the Order of Orange-Nassau for her outstanding performance in sport in general over the years and winning the women's 1500 m speed skating competition at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.\nWüst is bisexual and first discussed being in a relationship with a woman in a 2009 Dutch interview.\nThe umlaut \"ü\" in her family name, which is normally not used in Dutch, stems from a German ancestor who settled as a merchant in the Friesian town of Dokkum at the end of the 18th century.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Winter Olympic medalists\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nOfficial website \nIreen Wüst at the International Skating Union (archived former page)\nIreen Wüst at SpeedSkatingNews.info\nIreen Wüst at SpeedSkatingStats.com\nIreen Wüst at Olympics.com\nIreen Wüst at NOC*NSF (in Dutch)\nIreen Wüst at Olympedia\nIreen Wüst at InterSportStats\nIreen Wüst at TeamNL  (in Dutch)\nDeprecated link at archive.today (archived 3 August 2007)"}
{"title": "Irene Schouten", "requested": "Irene Schouten", "extract": "Irene Schouten (Dutch pronunciation: [iˈreːnə ˈsxʌutə(n)]; born 21 June 1992) is a retired Dutch speed skater who competed in allround marathon and inline-skating events. She is a five-time Olympic medalist and a triple Olympic Champion, having won the 3,000m, 5,000m, and mass start events at the 2022 Beijing Games. As of 12 February 2022, she holds the Olympic record in both distances (3000m & 5000m). Her coach is Jillert Anema. Schouten has announced that she is retiring as a competing speed skater.\nOn 2 March 2014, Schouten finished in third place at the 2014 Dutch Allround Championships and qualified for the 2014 World Allround Championships in Thialf, Heerenveen. At the 2018 Winter Olympic Games, she won the bronze medal in the mass start event.\nAt the 2022 Winter Olympic Games, Schouten became the most successful Dutch Olympic athlete of the event by winning four medals, including three gold. In comparison: Schouten would have ranked 13th in the overall medal ranking by country, by herself, outscoring the entire athlete delegations of notable wintersport nations like Italy and South Korea. \nSchouten is the current Olympic and Dutch record holder in the 5000 metres.\nIn February 2024, Schouten announced her retirement from competitions.\n\n\n== Records ==\n\n\n=== Personal records ===\n\nSchouten occupies the 3rd position on the Adelskalender with a score of 155.553 points.\n\n\n=== Olympic records ===\n\n\n== Tournament overview ==\n\nSource:\n\n\n== World Cup overview ==\n\nSource:\n\nDNQ = Did not qualify\nDQ = Disqualified\n– = Did not participate\n(b) = Division B\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nIrene Schouten at the International Skating Union (archived former page)\nIrene Schouten at Olympics.com \nIrene Schouten at Olympedia \nIrene Schouten at InterSportStats \nIrene Schouten at TeamNL  (in Dutch)\nIrene Schouten at NOC*NSF (in Dutch) (English translation)\nIrene Schouten on Instagram"}
{"title": "Isabell Werth", "requested": "Isabell Werth", "extract": "Isabell Werth (born 21 July 1969 in Issum) is a German equestrian who has competed in dressage at seven Olympic Games —1992, 1996, 2000, 2008, 2016, 2020, 2024— winning the gold medal in the team event in all seven, and one gold and six silver medals in the individual event. She stands alone in having medals from seven Olympics, or across a span of 32 years; her 14 medals are the most for any German or equestrian. She also has numerous titles in the World and European Championships and World Cups.\n\n\n== Career ==\n\nWerth rode Gigolo, owned by Uwe Schulten-Baumer, her coach from 1986 to 2001.   On Gigolo, she won all her championships between 1992 and 2000, save for the 1999 European Championships in Arnheim, where she rode Anthony FRH. In 2006, she started riding Warum Nicht FRH at the international level and with him won the 2007 World Cup in Las Vegas. Warum Nicht retired in 2012. Werth competed at the Olympic Games with Satchmo, who subsequently retired in November 2011. In 2010, Werth started riding El Santo at the international level until the horse was transferred in 2016 to Spanish rider José Antonio Garcia Mena.\nIn 2016, Werth secured the ride on Weihegold Old, with whom she won the team gold medal and a silver medal in the Individual Dressage at the Rio Olympics.\nIn July 2024, she was named to the German dressage team for the Paris Olympic games with Wendy. It will be her seventh Olympic games.\n\n\n== Controversies ==\nOn 24 June 2009, the forbidden substance fluphenazine was found in the A-sample from Werth's horse Whisper at a Whitsun tournament at Wiesbaden. She was suspended from all tournaments by the International Federation for Equestrian Sports (FEI). On 2 September 2009, the suspension was set by the FEI to six months from 23 June.\nWerth subsequently stated that the drug was given to the horse to treat equine shivers—mainly for the safety of the horse's handlers—and that she does not believe the drug influences a horse's ability to compete. She apologized for the positive result. The German Federation requested doubling Werth's suspension to one year as they considered the positive result to be intentional. Fluphenazine is not a medication approved for animal use in Germany.\nIn 2013, Werth was banned from competing once again after her mount El Santo was found to test positive for a prohibited medication, cimetidine at a competition in 2012.\nIn 2022, Werth was eliminated from the CHIO Aachen after blood appeared on her horse during the competition.\n\n\n== Computer game ==\nIn 2007, a PC Game was released called \"Isabell Werth – Reitsport\".  Made by French company Dancing Dots / German publisher Frogster Interactive, it is an Equestrian Simulation with 3-day Eventing, Show Jumping and Cross-Country Riding.  Isabell Werth takes a part as an on-screen trainer, giving advice and pointers on how to ride and handle horses during training and eventing.  Now out of print, the original websites can be seen at the Internet Archive Wayback machine, and the game itself is now available at Big Fish Games retitled – \"Ride! Equestrian Simulation\", with a French-man replacing Isabell as the trainer. Isabell's game character file is still in the data structure of the game, and using a patch still available, the game executable can be overwritten, converting it to the original German version, except for the German instructional audio which is missing.\n\n\n== International championship results ==\n\n\n== Notable horses ==\n\nWeingart – 1984 Chestnut Hanoverian Mare (Weinstock x Winkel)\n1989 European Championships – Team Gold Medal, Individual 13th Place\nGigolo FRH – 1983 Chestnut Hanoverian Gelding (Graditz x Busoni XX)\n1991 European Championships – Team Gold Medal, Individual Gold Medal\n1992 Barcelona Olympics – Team Gold Medal, Individual Silver Medal\n1993 European Championships – Team Gold Medal, Individual Gold Medal\n1994 World Equestrian Games – Team Gold Medal, Individual Silver\n1996 Atlanta Olympics – Team Gold Medal, Individual Gold Medal\n1998 World Equestrian Games – Team Gold Medal, Individual Gold Medal\n2000 Sydney Olympics – Team Gold Medal, Individual Silver Medal\nAntony FRH – 1986 Dark Bay Hanoverian Gelding (Argument x Wenzel I)\n1999 European Championships – Team Gold Medal, Individual 16th Place\n2000 FEI World Cup Final – Fourth Place\n2001 FEI World Cup Final – Silver Medal\n2001 European Championships – Team Gold Medal, Individual 16th Place\n2002 FEI World Cup Final – Fifth Place\n2003 FEI World Cup Final – Fourth Place\nSatchmo 78 – 1994 Dark Bay Hanoverian Gelding (São Paulo x Legat)\n2003 European Championships – Team Gold Medal, Individual 17th Place\n2006 World Equestrian Games – Team Gold Medal, Individual Gold Medal, Individual Bronze Medal Freestyle\n2007 European Championships – Team Silver Medal, Individual Gold Medal, Individual Silver Medal Freestyle\n2008 Beijing Olympics – Team Gold Medal, Individual Silver Medal\n2009 FEI World Cup Final – Silver Medal\n2011 FEI World Cup Final – Fifth Place\nApache OLD – 1993 Bay Oldenburg Gelding (Alabaster x Grundstein I)\n2004 FEI World Cup Final – Ninth Place\nWarum Nicht FRH – 1996 Chestnut Hanoverian Gelding (Weltmeyer x Wenzel I)\n2006 FEI World Cup Final – Silver Medal\n2007 FEI World Cup Final – Gold Medal\n2008 FEI World Cup Final – Silver Medal\n2010 FEI World Cup Final – Fourth Place\n2010 World Equestrian Games – Team Bronze Medal, Individual Tenth Place, Individual Sixth Place Freestyle\nEl Santo NRW – 2001 Bay Rheinlander Gelding (Ehrentusch x Rythmus)\n2011 European Championships – Team Silver Medal, Individual Seventh Place, Individual Seventh Place Freestyle\n2012 FEI World Cup Final – Fourth Place\n2014 FEI World Cup Final – Fifth Place\n2015 FEI World Cup Final – Sixth Place\nDon Johnson FRH – 2001 Bay Hanoverian Gelding (Don Frederico x Warkant)\n2013 FEI World Cup Final – Fifth Place\n2013 European Championships – Team Gold Medal, Individual 20th Place\n2015 European Championships – Team Bronze Medal, Individual Seventh Place, Individual Fourth Place Freestyle\nBella Rose 2 – 2004 Chestnut Westfalen Mare (Belissimo x Cacir AA)\n2014 World Equestrian Games – Team Gold Medal\n2018 World Equestrian Games – Team Gold Medal, Special Gold Medal\n2019 European Championships – Team Gold Medal, Special Gold Medal, Freestyle Gold Medal\nWeihegold OLD – 2005 Black Oldenburg Mare (Don Schufro x Sandro Hit)\n2016 Rio Olympics – Team Gold Medal, Individual Silver Medal\n2017 FEI World Cup Final – Gold Medal\n2017 European Championships – Team Gold Medal, Individual Gold Medal, Individual Gold Medal Freestyle\n2018 FEI World Cup Final – Gold Medal\n2019 FEI World Cup Final – Gold Medal\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists in one event\nList of multiple Summer Olympic medalists\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nIsabell Werth at FEI (alternate link)\nIsabell Werth at Olympics.com\nIsabell Werth at Team Deutschland (in German)\nIsabell Werth at Olympics at Sports-Reference.com (archived)\nIsabell Werth official website (in German)\n2000 Olympic Equestrian Results\n2007 European Dressage Championship Results at the Wayback Machine (archived 18 September 2008)"}
{"title": "Ivan Patzaichin", "requested": "Ivan Patzaichin", "extract": "Ivan Patzaichin (Romanian pronunciation: [iˈvan paˈt͡sajkin]; 26 November 1949 – 5 September 2021) was a Romanian canoe racing coach and sprint canoeist. He took part in all major competitions between 1968 and 1984, including five consecutive Olympics, and won seven Olympic and 22 world championship medals, including four Olympic gold medals. This makes him the most decorated Romanian canoeist of all time.\nHe later worked as a canoeing coach, attending five more Olympics in this capacity. In 1990 he was awarded the Olympic Order, and in 2006 a nationwide poll included him on the list of 100 Greatest Romanians of all time.\n\n\n== Biography ==\n\nPatzaichin was born in a Russian Lipovan family in the village Mila 23, Tulcea County. His father Vicol was a fisherman and his mother Alexandra was a dressmaker. He took up canoeing at an early age inspired by his grandfather, and decided to pursue a canoeing career after watching a television broadcast of two canoers from his village, more specifically Vicol Calabiciov and Serghei Covaliov, winning the 1966 world title in doubles. In 1967, aged 18, he moved to the Romanian capital Bucharest, where he joined the club Dinamo. One year later, in 1968, he was included in the national team and won an Olympic gold medal, paddling with Covaliov.\nAt the 1972 Olympics, Patzaichin broke his paddle and placed last in the singles heats. Yet he managed to finish the race, paddling with a piece of the floor board that he removed from the inside of his canoe, and was included in the repechage. He eventually won the repechage and the final race. In the doubles, he again teamed with Covaliov and placed second, just 0.03 seconds behind the winners.\nPatzaichin spent his entire career with Dinamo, first as a trainee and competitor, paddling 4,000–5,000 km per year in his prime, and then as a coach. His most famous trainees were Olympic champions Florin Popescu and Mitică Pricop. A statue of Patzaichin is installed outside of the Dinamo main office. Besides canoeing, he also founded the association Ivan Patzachin – Mila 23 and launched the national project Rowmania aiming to promote heritage tourism and other outdoor activities. Patzaichin owned his own line of clothing made from natural products.\nIn 1976, Patzaichin married Georgiana, a woman he met in August 1975. They have a daughter Ivona Beatrice (born c. 1979), who works at the National Commission of Hospital Accreditation.\nHe was involved in an animation project in 2020, dubbing into Romanian the character Scroop in the Disney movie Treasure Planet.\nIvan Patzaichin died on 5 September 2021, aged 71, in Bucharest, after having been hospitalized for three months with lung cancer.\n\n\n== Awards and honors ==\nSilver Olympic Order (1990)\nOfficer of the Order of Faithful Service (Romania, 2000)\n1st class Order of Sports Merit (Romanian: Meritul Sportiv, 2008)\nMilitary rank brigadier general (1 December 2004)\nNihil Sine Deo (2010)\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\n\n\n== References ==\n\nKamber, Raymond, ed. (2008). Medal Winners – Olympic Games and World Championships (1936–2007) – Part 1: flatwater (now sprint). CanoeICF.com. International Canoe Federation. pp. 1–41 at the Wayback Machine (archived 5 January 2010). Additional archives: BCU.org.uk.\nKamber, Raymond, ed. (2008). Medal Winners – Olympic Games and World Championships (1936–2007) – Part 2: rest of flatwater (now sprint) and remaining canoeing disciplines. CanoeICF.com. International Canoe Federation. pp. 42–83 at WebCite (archived 9 November 2009). Additional archives: BCU.org.uk.\nKamber, Raymond, ed. (2008). \"Medal Winners – Olympic Games and World Championships (1936–2007)\" (PDF). CanoeICF.com. International Canoe Federation. pp. 1–83. Archived (PDF) from the original on 18 May 2018.\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nIvan Patzaichin at IMDb\nIvan Patzaichin at Olympedia\nIvan Patzaichin at Olympics.comIvan Patzaichin at Olympic.org (archived)\nIvan Patzaichin at the Comitetul Olimpic și Sportiv Român (in Romanian) (archive)"}
{"title": "Ivar Ballangrud", "requested": "Ivar Ballangrud", "extract": "Ivar Eugen Ballangrud (né Eriksen, 7 March 1904 – 1 June 1969) was a Norwegian speed skater, a four-time Olympic champion in speed skating. As the only triple gold medalist at the 1936 Winter Olympics, Ballangrud was the most successful athlete there.\n\n\n== Biography ==\nIvar Ballangrud was one of the most successful speed skaters in the world for a period of 15 years, from 1924 to 1939. Coming from the small place Lunner on Hadeland, he was a member of the famous \"Hadeland Trio\", consisting of himself, Michael Staksrud and Hans Engnestangen. He represented the club Trondhjems Skøiteklub.\nBallangrud was four times World Allround Champion, four times European Allround Champion, five times Norwegian Allround Champion, and four times Olympic Champion. He won three Olympic titles at the 1936 Winter Olympics in Garmisch-Partenkirchen: 500 m (quite surprisingly), 5000 m, and 10,000 m. On the 1500 m during those Winter Olympics, he won silver – his teammate Charles Mathiesen being the only one to keep him from winning gold in all four speed skating events. Ballangrud had won his first Olympic gold 8 years earlier on the 5000 m at the 1928 Winter Olympics. In addition, he won a bronze medal (1500 m) in 1928 and a silver medal (10,000 m) at the 1932 Winter Olympics. He would have been the favourite for winning more Olympic gold in 1932 if the races had been held in the normal European way, not the American pack-style way where all competitors are on the ice at the same time.\nHe made his international debut as a 19-year-old rising star in 1924, although it was too late to compete in the Winter Olympics that year. However, he was paired with Julius Skutnabb – who had just become the Olympic 10,000 m Champion – in his first World Championships in Helsinki in 1924, and beat the champion on his homeground. In 1930, he dethroned Oscar Mathisen from the top of the Adelskalender and he would remain the number one on the Adelskalender for seven years.\nIn addition to his five official world records, Ballangrud skated 16:46.4 in a 10,000 m pack-style test race before the Olympic Games in 1932. This time was 31 seconds below the then-current world record and it would stand unbeaten as the fastest 10,000 m time for twenty years, until Hjalmar Andersen set his famous world record of 16:32.6.\nIn December 1932 it was announced that he became professional.\nBallangrud was born as Ivar Eriksen. His mother changed his last name when she remarried following her husband's death. In retirement Ballangrud worked at his sporting good store in Drammen, and later in Trondheim. A statue in his honor was raised in his native Jevnaker.\n\n\n== Records ==\n\n\n=== World records ===\nOver the course of his career, Ballangrud skated five world records:\n\nSource: SpeedSkatingStats.com\n\n\n=== Personal records ===\nTo put these personal records in perspective, the Notes column lists the official world records on the dates that Ballangrud skated his personal records.\n\nSource: EvertStenlund.se\nNote that Ballangrud's personal record on the 1500 m was not a world record because Hans Engnestangen skated 2:13.8 at the same tournament.\nBallangrud has an Adelskalender score of 188.806 points. He was number one on the Adelskalender for a total of 3,675 days, divided over two periods between 1930 and 1942.\n\n\n== Medals ==\nAn overview of medals won by Ballangrud at important championships he participated in, listing the years in which he won each:\n\nSource: SpeedSkatingStats.com & Skoyteforbundet.no \n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== Further reading ==\n\nEng, Trond. All Time International Championships, Complete Results: 1889–2002. Askim, Norway: WSSSA-Skøytenytt, 2002.\nEng, Trond; Gjerde, Arild and Teigen, Magne. Norsk Skøytestatistikk Gjennom Tidene, Menn/Kvinner, 1999 (6. utgave). Askim/Skedsmokorset/Veggli, Norway: WSSSA-Skøytenytt, 1999.\nEng, Trond; Gjerde, Arild; Teigen, Magne and Teigen, Thorleiv. Norsk Skøytestatistikk Gjennom Tidene, Menn/Kvinner, 2004 (7. utgave). Askim/Skedsmokorset/Veggli/Hokksund, Norway: WSSSA-Skøytenytt, 2004.\nEng, Trond and Teigen, Magne. Komplette Resultater fra offisielle Norske Mesterskap på skøyter, 1894–2005. Askim/Veggli, Norway: WSSSA-Skøytenytt, 2005.\nTeigen, Magne. Komplette Resultater Norske Mesterskap På Skøyter, 1887–1989: Menn/Kvinner, Senior/Junior. Veggli, Norway: WSSSA-Skøytenytt, 1989.\nTeigen, Magne. Komplette Resultater Internasjonale Mesterskap 1889–1989: Menn/Kvinner, Senior/Junior, allround/sprint. Veggli, Norway: WSSSA-Skøytenytt, 1989.\nIvar Ballangrud[link removed]. Deutsche Eisschnelllauf Gemeinschaft e.V. (German Skating Association).\nHistorical World Records. International Skating Union."}
{"title": "Ivar Johansson (wrestler)", "requested": "Ivar Johansson (wrestler)", "extract": "Ivar Valentin Johansson (31 January 1903 – 4 August 1979) was a Swedish wrestler who competed at the 1928, 1932 and 1936 Summer Olympics. In 1932 he won the gold medal in the Greco-Roman welterweight and freestyle middleweight events. Four years later he won the gold medal in the Greco-Roman middleweight competition.\n\n\n== Career ==\nAt the 1932 Olympics Johansson first competed as a freestyle middleweight. Despite being a favorite, he lost his first bout to Kyösti Luukko. Yet he won his all other bouts by fall, while Luukko lost in the semifinals and finished second. Two days later he was scheduled to compete as a Greco-Roman welterweight. For this purpose he shed five kilograms of bodyweight by fasting and sweating in a sauna, yet relatively easily won all four bouts. Later the same year he was awarded the Svenska Dagbladet Gold Medal.\nJohansson never competed at the world championships. At the European championships he won nine titles in 1931–1939, six in Greco-Roman and three int freestyle wrestling.\nJohansson grew up in a rural area near Norrköping, where he built his strength by manual labor at a farm. He then moved to Norrköping city to work as a police officer and then as a wrestling coach. The annual wrestling award \"Ivars Guldsko\" was established in Sweden in his honor after his death.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nIvar Johansson at the International Wrestling Database\nIvar Johansson at the Swedish Olympic Committee (in Swedish)\nIvar Johansson at Olympedia"}
{"title": "Jackie Joyner-Kersee", "requested": "Jackie Joyner-Kersee", "extract": "Jacqueline Joyner-Kersee, née Joyner, (born March 3, 1962) is an American former track and field athlete who competed in both the heptathlon and long jump. She won three gold, one silver, and two bronze Olympic medals at four different Olympic Games. Joyner-Kersee was also a four-time gold medalist (twice each in heptathlon and long jump) at the world championships. Since 1988, she has held the world record for heptathlon.\n\n\n== Early life ==\nJacqueline Joyner was born March 3, 1962, in East St. Louis, Illinois, and was named after Jacqueline Kennedy, the First Lady of the United States. She was born into a poor family. She found her love for running at the age of 9 when she joined a special community track program. She played basketball, volleyball, and ran track and field in high school. As a high school athlete at East St. Louis Lincoln Senior High School, she qualified for the finals in the long jump at the 1980 Olympic Trials, finishing 8th behind another high schooler, Carol Lewis. She was inspired to compete in multi-disciplinary track & field events after seeing a movie about Babe Didrikson Zaharias. Didrikson, the track star, basketball player, and pro golfer, was chosen the \"Greatest Female Athlete of the First Half of the 20th Century. Fifteen years later, Sports Illustrated for Women magazine voted Joyner-Kersee the greatest female athlete of all time, just ahead of Zaharias.\n\n\n=== UCLA ===\nJoyner attended college at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) from 1980 to 1985 where she starred in both track & field and basketball. She attended the school on an athletic scholarship. While she was in college, her mother died suddenly of meningitis. Joyner's coach, Bob Kersee, helped Joyner grieve the loss of her mother. After she graduated, the two got married.\nIn basketball, she was a starter at forward for each of her first three seasons (1980–81, 81–82, and 82–83) as well as in her senior (fifth) year, 1984–1985. She redshirted during the 1983–84 academic year to concentrate on the heptathlon for the 1984 Summer Olympics. She scored 1,167 points during her collegiate career, placing her 19th all time for the Bruins games. The Bruins advanced to the West Regional semifinals of the 1985 NCAA Division I Women's Basketball Tournament before losing to eventual runner-up Georgia.\nShe was honored on February 21, 1998, as one of the 15 greatest players in UCLA women's basketball. In April 2001, Joyner-Kersee was voted the \"Top Woman Collegiate Athlete of the Past 25 Years.\" The vote was conducted among the 976 NCAA member schools.\nIn track, Joyner won the Broderick Award (now the Honda Sports Award) as the nation's best female collegiate track and field competitor in 1983 and in 1985, and was awarded the Honda-Broderick Cup, given to the nation's best female collegiate athlete in 1985.\nJoyner graduated with a bachelor's degree in history in 1986.\n\n\n=== UCLA statistics ===\nSource\n\n\n== Competition ==\n\n\n=== 1984 Summer Olympics ===\nJoyner competed in the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles and won the silver medal in the heptathlon. She was the favorite heading into the event, but finished five points behind Australian athlete Glynis Nunn. She also placed fifth in the long jump.\n\n\n=== 1986 Goodwill Games ===\nJoyner became the first woman to score over 7,000 points in a heptathlon event during the 1986 Goodwill Games. In 1986, she received the James E. Sullivan Award as the top amateur athlete in the United States.\n\n\n=== 1988 Summer Olympics ===\nNow known as Jackie Joyner-Kersee after marrying her coach Bob Kersee, she entered the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, Korea and earned gold medals in both the heptathlon and the long jump. At the Games, she set the still-standing heptathlon world record of 7,291 points. Five days later, Joyner-Kersee won her second gold medal, leaping to an Olympic record of 7.40 m (24 ft 3+1⁄4 in) in the long jump. She was the first American woman to earn a gold medal in long jump as well as the first American woman to earn a gold medal in heptathlon.\nAt the 1988 Games she faced allegations of drug use from Brazilian runner Joaquim Cruz. This continued the following season in 1989 when Darrell Robinson accused Joyner-Kersee's husband and coach, Bobby Kersee, of distributing performance-enhancing drugs. Years later, doping insider Victor Conte asserted that in 1988 he personally witnessed an Olympic official at the Seoul games notifying Bobby Kersee that Joyner-Kersee had tested positive for PED use. Joyner-Kersee has consistently maintained that she competed throughout her career without performance-enhancing drugs.\n\n\n=== 1991 World Championships ===\nDuring the long jump event at the 1991 World Championships, having already won with a 7.32 m (24 ft 1⁄4 in) jump, Joyner-Kersee slipped on the take-off board and careened headfirst into the pit. She strained a hamstring and subsequently pulled out of the heptathlon during the 200 m at the end of the first day.\n\n\n=== 1992 Summer Olympics ===\nIn the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain, Joyner-Kersee earned her second Olympic gold medal in the heptathlon. She also won the bronze medal in the long jump which was won by her friend Heike Drechsler of Germany.\n\n\n=== 1996 Summer Olympics ===\nAt the Olympic Trials, Joyner-Kersee sustained an injury to her right hamstring. When the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta began, Joyner-Kersee was not fully recovered by the time the heptathlon started. After running the first event, the 100 m hurdles, she withdrew due to pain. She was able to recover to compete in the long jump; her final jump of 7.00 m (22 ft 11+1⁄2 in) was vaulted into the bronze medal position.\n\n\n=== Professional basketball career ===\nIn 1996 Joyner-Kersee signed to play pro basketball for the Richmond Rage of the fledgling American Basketball League. She appeared in 17 games, with a high of 15 points scored.\n\n\n=== 1998 Goodwill Games ===\nReturning to track, Joyner-Kersee won the heptathlon at the 1998 Goodwill Games, scoring 6,502 points.\n\n\n=== 2000 Olympic trials ===\nTwo years after retiring, Joyner-Kersee tried to qualify for the long jump event at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, Australia. She placed sixth in the trials at 21–10 ¾, and did not make the Olympic team.\n\n\n== Post-athletic career ==\nJoyner-Kersee is a philanthropist in children's education, racial equality and women's rights. She is a founder of the Jackie Joyner-Kersee Foundation, which encourages young people in East St. Louis to pursue athletics and academics. She collaborated with Comcast to create the Internet Essentials program in 2011, which provides high-speed internet access to low-income Americans.\nIn 2007, Joyner-Kersee was one of the co-founders of Athletes for Hope, a charitable organization that helps professional athletes get involved in charitable causes and inspires millions of non-athletes to volunteer and support the community.\nShe served on the board of directors for USA Track & Field the national governing body of the sport.\n\n\n== Awards and honors ==\n\n1983 Broderick Award (now Honda Sports Award)\n1985 Broderick Award (now Honda Sports Award)\n1986 James E. Sullivan Award\n1986 Jesse Owens Award\n1987 Jesse Owens Award\n1988 Sporting News Athlete of the Year\n1988 Missouri Athletic Club Jack Buck Awards: Sports Personality of the Year Award and Carl O. Bauer Award\n1989 National High School Hall of Fame inductee\n1992 George Thomas \"Mickey\" Leland Award from the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation\nWorld Athletics Awards\nWorld Athlete of the Year (Women): 1994\n1997 Jack Kelly Fair Play Award\n2000 St. Louis Walk of Fame inductee\n2005 was inducted as a Laureate of The Lincoln Academy of Illinois and awarded the Order of Lincoln (the State's highest honor) by the Governor of Illinois in the area of Sports\n2010 NCAA Silver Anniversary Awards honoree\n2011 Dick Enberg Award, College Sports Information Director of America (CoSIDA)\n2021 Webster University Doctor of Humane Letters\nSince 1981, the Jesse Owens Award has been given by USATF (and before its renaming, TAC) to the United States' track and field athlete of the year. In 1996, the award was split to be given to the top athlete of each gender. In 2013, the female award was renamed the Jackie Joyner-Kersee Award. In March 2023, she was inducted into the International Sports Hall of Fame.\n\n\n== Current world records ==\nJoyner-Kersee holds the world record in heptathlon along with the top six all-time best results. Her long jump record of 7.49 m is second on the long jump all-time list.\n\n\n== Personal bests ==\n\nPersonal bests\n\n100 metres hurdles : 12.61 s\nLong jump : 7.49 m (still currently #2 all time, 3 cm behind the world record and she did it twice)\nHigh jump : 1.93 m\n200 m : 22.30 s\nShot put : 16.84 m\nJavelin throw : 50.12 m\n800 m : 2 min 8.51\n\n\n== Women in Sports ==\nIn an interview with Atlanta Journal and Constitution Joyner reflected on how women's sports have changed over the years. She stated that her high school basketball team would often have to practice late at night because the courts were reserved for the men's basketball team. Joyner noted that now women have their own leagues to play in and female athletes are paid more, not more than men though. Women's sports have become more popular over the years and have gained more attention and fan commitment. Sports like volleyball and softball are popular among female high school athletes. In the interview Joyner noted that more women are becoming involved with the business side of sports, and she herself is a registered sports agent and owns a sports marketing firm.\n\n\n== TV appearances ==\nIn 2000, Joyner-Kersee played herself in an episode of The Jersey called \"Legacy\" where Nick Lighter (played by Michael Galeota) uses a magical jersey by jumping into her body as he is coached by her husband (Bob Kersee as himself) on how to put the shot for a track and field competition.\nIn 2023, Joyner-Kersee appeared on the PBS program Groundbreakers, hosted by Billie Jean King. She and other female athletes had one-on-one discussions about accomplishments in women's sports.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nJackie's brother is Olympic champion triple jumper Al Joyner, who was married to Olympic track champion Florence Griffith Joyner. Jackie married her track coach, Bob Kersee, in 1986.\nJoyner-Kersee suffered from severe asthma throughout her athletic career.\nJoyner-Kersee is an honorary member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nJackie Joyner-Kersee at World Athletics \nJackie Joyner-Kersee at the USATF Hall of Fame (archived)\nJackie Joyner-Kersee at the Team USA Hall of Fame (archive July 20, 2023)\nJackie Joyner-Kersee at usolympicteam.com at the Wayback Machine (archived August 20, 2004)\nJackie Joyner-Kersee at Olympics.com Jackie Joyner-Kersee at Olympic.org (archived) \nJackie Joyner-Kersee at Olympedia \nJackie Joyner-Kersee Early Lifehttps://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A16645079/ITOF?u=nysl_li_hofs&sid=oclc&xid=50ba2936\nJackie Joyner-Kersee On Women's Sportshttps://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A21239659/AONE?u=nysl_li_hofs&sid=oclc&xid=9b8f4035\nThe Jackie Joyner Kersee Foundation, which helps children and adults in the East St. Louis, Illinois/St. Louis, Missouri area"}
{"title": "James Brendan Connolly", "requested": "James Brendan Connolly", "extract": "James Brendan Bennet Connolly (Irish: Séamas Breandán Ó Conghaile, October 28, 1868 – January 20, 1957) was an American athlete and author. In 1896, he became the first modern Olympic champion.\n\n\n== Early life ==\nConnolly was born to poor Irish immigrants from the Aran Islands, fisherman John Connolly and Ann O'Donnell, as one of twelve children, in South Boston, Massachusetts. Growing up at a time when the parks and playground movement in Boston was slowly developing, Connolly joined other boys in the streets and vacant lots to run, jump, and play ball.\nHe was educated at Notre Dame Academy and then at the Mather and Lawrence grammar school, but never went to high school. Instead, Connolly worked as a clerk with an insurance company in Boston and later with the United States Army Corps of Engineers in Savannah, Georgia.\nHis predisposition to sport also became apparent. Calling a special meeting of the Catholic Library Association (CLA) of Savannah in 1891, he was instrumental in forming a football team. Soon thereafter, Connolly was elected captain of the CLA Cycling Club and aggressively sought to promote the sport on behalf of the Savannah Wheelmen.\nAltogether dissatisfied with his career path, Connolly sought to regain the lost years of high school through self-education. In October 1895, he sat for the entrance examination to the Lawrence Scientific School and was unconditionally accepted to study the classics at Harvard University.\n\n\n== Olympic Games ==\n\nAfter the creation of the International Olympic Committee in 1894 the first modern edition of the Olympic Games were scheduled for April 6 to 15, 1896 in Athens, Greece. Connolly decided to participate, and submitted a request for a leave of absence to the Chairman of the Harvard University Committee on the Regulation of Athletic Sports and was denied. According to Connolly himself, he was informed that his only course of action would be to resign and make a reapplication to the college. Connolly then claimed to have replied:\n\nI am not resigning and I'm not making application to re-enter. I'm getting through with Harvard right now. Good day!\nIt is unclear whether this really happened. Harvard records do show a request by Connolly for a leave of absence to Europe, which was denied. Connolly then requested an honorable withdrawal as a student, which was granted on March 19, 1896.\nRepresenting the Suffolk Athletic Club, which paid for most of Connolly's expenses (Connolly later claimed he paid it all himself), he left for Greece on a German freighter, the Barbarossa, along with most of the rest of the first American Olympic team. After arriving in Naples, Italy he was robbed and almost lost his ticket to Athens. He managed to retrieve it only after a pursuit against the robber. Finally he took the train to Athens, arriving there just in time for the Games.\nThe first final on the opening day was the triple jump (then known as the hop, skip and jump), one of the events in which Connolly competed. Connolly's style, taking two hops with the right foot, is no longer allowed in this event but was perfectly acceptable in 1896. With this style, he outjumped the field, finishing more than one meter ahead of his nearest opponent by jumping 13.71 m (45 ft 0 in) 11 3/4 in), earning him the first silver medal (gold medals did not yet exist). With this performance, he became the first Olympic champion since AD 385, when the Athenian Zopyrus won the pankration (other sources name the Armenian Varasdates, who won at boxing in 369).\nHe went on to take second place in the high jump (1.65 m; 5 ft 5 in) tying with Robert Garrett behind Ellery Clark, and third place in the long jump (5.84 m; 19 ft 2 in). Back home in Boston, Connolly was welcomed enthusiastically, and was presented a gold watch by the citizens of South Boston.\nConnolly competed at the 1906 Olympics in the Triple Jump and Long Jump.\nConnolly would also visit the second edition of the modern Olympics, held in Paris. There, he failed to retain his title in the triple jump, losing to compatriot Meyer Prinstein.\nIn the 1984 NBC miniseries The First Olympics: Athens 1896, he was portrayed by David Caruso. Contrary to what is portrayed in the film, Connolly did not emigrate to America from Ireland.\nConnollystraße in Munich is notably associated with the 1972 Summer Olympics and the tragic events of the Munich Massacre. It was on Connollystraße 31, within the Olympic Village, where members of the Israeli Olympic team were taken hostage by the Palestinian terrorist group Black September. The street is named in his honour. Thus, it holds both historical significance for its namesake and somber relevance due to its connection to the 1972 tragedy.\n\n\n== Writer ==\nThe 1904 Summer Olympics were also attended by Connolly, but as a journalist, not as an athlete. Earlier, he had already published his accounts of the Spanish–American War in the Boston Globe as Letters from the Front in Cuba. He served there in the Irish 9th Infantry of Massachusetts.\nConnolly became an authority on maritime writing, after spending years on many different vessels, fishing boats, military ships all over the world. In all, he published more than 200 short stories, and 25 novels. Furthermore, he twice ran for Congress of the United States on the ticket of the Progressive Party, but was never elected.\nHe never returned to Harvard, but received an honorary athletic sweater in 1948. A year later, he was offered an honorary doctorate by Harvard University, which he turned down. He was a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. Connolly died in New York City at the age of 88. A collection of items related to Connolly, including his triple jump silver medal, is housed in the library of Colby College in Maine.\n\n\n== Schooner championship ==\nConnolly was a crew member of the victorious schooner Esperanto in 1920, during the first International Fishing Schooner Championship Races in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He wrote of this in Collier's Weekly on December 25, 1920, and in The Book of the Gloucester Fishermen, published in 1927.\n\n\n== Politics ==\nIn 1912, Connolly was the Progressive nominee for Congress from South Boston and Dorchester. He was defeated by incumbent Congressman James Michael Curley.\nWhen Curley resigned to become Mayor of Boston in 1914, Connolly ran again in the special election to replace him, but finished third behind James A. Gallivan and Republican Frank Brier. He died in 1957 at 88.\n\n\n== References ==\nSeaborne: Thirty years avoyaging, by James B. Connolly, 1944.\nThe first Olympic champion, by Rusty Wilson, 2000. Appeared in the Journal of Olympic History, January 2000\n\"The unexpected Olympians: How Harvard dominated the first modern games—in spite of itself\", by Jonathan Shaw, 1996. Appeared in Harvard Magazine, January 1996.\n\"'The English as poor losers' and other thoughts on the modernization of sport. The literary works of James Brendan Connolly\", by Ralph C. Wilcox, 1997. Appeared in The Sports Historian, May 1997.\n\n\n== Novels ==\nConnolly's novels include\n\nOut of Gloucester (1902)\nThe Deep Sea's Toll (1905)\nThe Trawler (1914)\nRunning Free (1917)\nThe U-Boat Hunters (1918)\n\n\n== Notes ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nJames Connolly at the Team USA Hall of Fame (archive July 20, 2023)\nJames B. Connolly at Olympedia \nJames Brendan Connolly at Olympics.com \nA statue of James B. Connolly in South Boston\nJames Brendan Connolly Collection, Colby College\nColby Magazine article on Connolly's Olympic medal, May 1996\nWorks by James Brendan Connolly at Project Gutenberg\nWorks by or about James Brendan Connolly at the Internet Archive\nWorks by James Brendan Connolly at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks) \nFirst International Fishing Schooner Championship"}
{"title": "Jan Železný", "requested": "Jan Železný", "extract": "Jan Železný (Czech pronunciation: [jan ˈʒɛlɛzniː] ; born 16 June 1966) is a Czech former track and field athlete who competed in the javelin throw. He is a World and Olympic champion and holds the world record with a throw of 98.48 metres (323 ft 1 in). Widely considered the greatest javelin thrower of the modern era, he also has the fourth, fifth, and sixth best performances of all time. He broke the world record a total of four times.\n\n\n== Biography ==\nŽelezný was born in Mladá Boleslav, Czechoslovakia. He won the silver medal in the 1988 Olympics and the gold medal at the 1992, 1996 and 2000 Summer Olympic Games. He won World Championship titles in 1993, 1995 and 2001.\nŽelezný holds the world record of 98.48 metres (323 ft 1 in), set in 1996, and the World Championships record of 92.80 metres (304 ft 6 in), set in 2001. On 26 March 1997, in Stellenbosch, South Africa, he threw over the 90-metre barrier five times in a single meet. Until September 2020, he was also the only athlete to throw more than 95 metres with the new type of javelin, something he achieved three times.\nDuring his career, Železný had many great battles against the likes of Steve Backley, Sergey Makarov, Boris Henry, Seppo Räty, Raymond Hecht and Aki Parviainen.\nŽelezný planned to retire after the 2006 European Championships in Gothenburg, where he won the bronze medal with a throw of 85.92 metres (281 ft 11 in).\nHe took leave of his career on 19 September 2006 on exhibition in Mladá Boleslav, the place where he started with athletics.\nŽelezný coaches Vítězslav Veselý and is the former coach of Barbora Špotáková.\nFour days after winning a gold medal at the 1996 Olympics, Železný had a tryout as a baseball pitcher with the Atlanta Braves at Fulton County Stadium. Both Železný and the Braves treated the tryout seriously and not as a \"publicity stunt\" or \"sideshow\", though Železný had no baseball experience beyond throwing a ball at home with his young son.\n\n\n== International competitions ==\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists in one event\nList of European records in athletics\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nJan Železný at World Athletics\nJan Železný at Tilastopaja (registration required)\nJan Železný at Athletics Podium\nJan Železný at Olympics.com\nJan Železný at the Czech Olympic Committee (in Czech)\nJan Železný at Olympedia\nJan Železný at InterSportStats"}
{"title": "Janet Evans", "requested": "Janet Evans", "extract": "Janet Beth Evans (born August 28, 1971) is an American former competition swimmer who swam from 1989 to 1992 for Stanford University and specialized in distance freestyle events.  Evans was a world champion and world record-holder, and won a total of four gold medals in the 400 and 800-meter freestyle events at the 1988 and the 1992 Olympics.  In the late 1980s Evans was the first woman to hold three world records simultaneously in the 400, 800, and 1500-meter freestyle and was the first American woman to win four individual Olympic gold medals in swimming.\n\n\n== Career ==\n\n\n=== Early career ===\nBorn in Fullerton, California, Evans grew up in neighboring Placentia, where she started swimming competitively by the age of 5.  By the age of 11, she was setting national age group records in distance events.  She swam as a teenager for Fullerton Aquatics Sports Team  (FAST Swimming)  where her most influential coach in the mid-1980's was Bud McAllister.\nIn 1987, at age 15, Evans broke the world records in the 400-meter, 800-meter, and 1,500-meter freestyle distances.\n\n\n=== High school ===\nShe graduated from El Dorado High School, and when not competing or representing FAST, she swam meets and trained with El Dorado High, where she was coached by Tom Milich, a 1987 California Swimming Coach of the Year, and an American Swimming Coaches Association (ASCA) Distinguished Coach of the Year.\n\n\n=== College ===\n\n\n==== Stanford University ====\nEvans attended Stanford University, where she swam for the Stanford Cardinal swimming and diving team from 1989 to 1991 under Stanford's Hall of Fame Women's Head Coach Richard Quick. At Stanford, she received the Honda Sports Award for Swimming and Diving, recognizing her as the outstanding college female swimmer of the year in 1988–89. At Stanford, Evans was an All-American eight times, dominating  distance events. She captured all the 500 free and 1650 free events in both 1990 and 1991, and in 1990 also captured a 400 IM title. She also took two national titles in the 800 free relay during those seasons.\n\n\n==== University of Southern California ====\nWhen the NCAA placed weekly hours limits on athletic training time, she quit the Stanford swim team to focus full time on training.  She began training at the University of Texas at Austin the Texas Aquatic Club around 1992 under Coach Mark Schubert who helped prepare her for 1992 Olympic competition. Schubert served as Head women's coach in the 1992 Olympics, where Evans excelled. After enrolling for the Spring semester in 1993, Evans graduated from the University of Southern California with a bachelor's degree in communications in 1994, where Mark Schubert had moved and continued his coaching career.  At USC, Evans trained under Schubert, worked out with the USC team and the Trojan Swim Club, and served as a student Assistant Coach for two seasons for the USC Women's swim team.  She could not compete for USC, however, because she had accepted commercial endorsements in Spring, 1991 after her Sophomore season at Stanford.\n\n\n== Olympics ==\n\n\n=== 1988 Olympics ===\nAt the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea, she won three individual gold medals in the 400 and 800-meter freestyle and the 400-meter Individual Medley. At the games, she earned the nickname \"Miss Perpetual Motion\" due to her unique swimming style. In these Olympics, Evans set a new world record in the 400-meter freestyle event. This record stood for 18 years until France's Laure Manaudou broke it in May 2006.\nEvans held the 1,500-meter freestyle record, set in March 1988, through June 2007, when it was broken by American Kate Ziegler with her time of 15:42.54.\nEvans held the world record in the 800-meter freestyle, 8:16:22, that she set in August 1989, until it was broken by Rebecca Adlington of Britain in August 2008.  Adlington set the new record with her time of 8:14.10 in winning the race at the 2008 Summer Olympics.  Evans's 800-meter record was one of the longest-standing ones ever in swimming, and it went unbroken through four Olympic Games (1992–2004). Only the 100-meter freestyle swimming record set by the Dutch swimmer Willy den Ouden stood longer—from 1936 through 1956, during a period when international competition was interrupted by world war.\nFollowing her 1988 Olympics performance, Evans continued to dominate the world's long-distance swimming competitions, remaining undefeated in all of the 400-, 800-, and 1500-meter freestyle events for over five years.\n\n\n=== 1992 Olympics ===\nEvans became the first woman to capture back-to-back Olympic and world championship titles in any one swimming event by winning the 1988 and 1992 Olympic gold medals and the 1991 and 1994 world championships in the 800-meter freestyle race.  At the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, she won a silver in the 400-meter freestyle with a time of 4:07.37, taking second, and finished about .2 seconds behind German swimmer Dagmar Hase, whom she led for almost the entire competition but was narrowly caught at the end. Evans had held the record in the 400 since the 1988 Olympics, but her times in the event had been continually slowing.  At the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, she also won a gold in the 800-meter freestyle in 8:25.52, another signature distance event, finishing nearly 5 seconds ahead of Australia's Haley Lewis.\nEvans won the 400-meter and 800-meter freestyle events at the U.S. National Championships 12 times each, the largest number of national titles in one event by an American swimmer in the 100-year history of the competition.\n\n\n=== 1996 Olympics ===\nEvans ended her swimming career, for all practical purposes, at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia. She did not win any medals, but she did add one more highlight to her life.  She was given the honour of carrying the Olympic torch in the opening ceremony, handing it to the American boxing legend Muhammad Ali who lit the Olympic cauldron.\nOn July 27, 1996, she was in a building being interviewed by a German newsman when a bomb exploded nearby. The explosion very lightly shook the building and startled Evans. The incident traumatized her so much that she had a panic attack the next day while waiting for a train in an Atlanta subway station.\nIn 1996 Olympic heats, Evans finished ninth in the preliminaries of the 400-meter freestyle.  She did not qualify for the finals, as only the top eight finishers advance to the next level.  In the final swim of her career, Evans finished in sixth place in the 800-meter freestyle.\nAt the 1996 Atlanta Games, American swimming officials criticized Ireland's Michelle Smith about her unexpected gold medals, suggesting that she might have been using performance-enhancing drugs.  When asked about the accusations, Evans said that when anyone like Smith showed such a significant improvement, \"there's always that question.\"  American sportswriters sympathetic to Smith took this comment to mean that Evans was accusing Smith of steroid use as well, and they attacked Evans as being a sore loser.  Evans later insisted that she meant no such accusation and that her remarks were taken out of context.  In 1998, Smith received a four-year suspension for tampering with a urine sample.\n\n\n=== 2012 Olympic trials ===\nIn June 2011, it was reported that Evans was in the process of a comeback and had been training for six months with the goal of competing at the 2012 U.S. Olympic Trials. At the 2012 Olympic Trials, at the age of 40, she finished 80th out of 113 swimmers in the 400-meter freestyle and 53rd out of 65 swimmers in the 800-meter freestyle.\nAt the end of Evans's swimming career, she held seven world records, five Olympic medals (including four gold medals), and 45 American national titles – third only to Tracy Caulkins and Michael Phelps. She was the first American woman to win four individual Olympic gold medals in swimming.\n\n\n== Other activities ==\nIn 2010, Evans returned to competitive swimming as a United States Masters swimmer.\nOn November 3, 2016, Evans was chosen to serve as co-Grand Marshal of the 2017 Rose Parade.\nEvans served as Vice Chair and Athletes director for the Los Angeles 2024 Olympic bid committee and traveled with the team to promote Los Angeles as a candidate city. Los Angeles was ultimately awarded the 2028 Summer Olympics at the 131st IOC Session in Lima, Peru, on September 13, 2017. As of 2020, Evans works with the organizing committee for the 2028 Summer Olympics in the executive leadership role of chief athlete officer.\nAs of August 2019, Evans works as chief athlete officer for the 2028 Summer Olympics organizing committee.\n\n\n== Swim style and technique ==\nEvans was known for her unorthodox \"windmill\" stroke and her cardio-respiratory reserves. She had a higher stroke count than many distance swimmers, taking 55 strokes per 50 meters, when other distance swimmers took closer to 40.  Her endurance was at least partly a product of her training. In July 1986, at the height of her training, she was reputed to have often completed as much as 13,000 meters in a day of workouts, the equivalent of 8 miles. Slight of build and short of stature, she more than once found herself competing and winning against bigger and stronger athletes, some of whom were subsequently found to have been using performance-enhancing drugs.\n\n\n== Honors ==\nJanet Evans was the 1989 recipient of the James E. Sullivan Award as the top amateur athlete in the United States. She was named the Female World Swimmer of the Year by Swimming World Magazine in 1987, 1989, and 1990. In 1988, as a junior in high school, she was recognized as a \"Rising Star\" by the Los Angeles Times. Evans was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame as an \"Honor Swimmer\" in 2001. In 1995, Evans was inducted into the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nEvans married Bill Willson in Long Beach in 2004, with whom she has two children.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of members of the International Swimming Hall of Fame\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of Olympic medalists in swimming (women)\nList of World Aquatics Championships medalists in swimming (women)\nWorld record progression 400 metres freestyle\nWorld record progression 800 metres freestyle\nWorld record progression 1500 metres freestyle\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nOfficial website (archived) at the Wayback Machine (archived March 8, 2022)\nJanet Evans (USA) – International Swimming Hall of Fame\nJanet Evans at Olympedia \nJanet Evans at IMDb"}
{"title": "Janica Kostelić", "requested": "Janica Kostelić", "extract": "Janica Kostelić (pronounced [janitsa kostelitɕ]; born 5 January 1982) is a Croatian former alpine ski racer. She is a four-time Olympic gold medalist. In addition to the Olympics, she won five gold medals at the World Championships. In World Cup competition, she won thirty individual races, three overall titles, three slalom titles, and four combined titles. Kostelić's accomplishments in professional skiing have led some commentators, writers, and fellow ski racers to regard her as the greatest female ski racer of all time.\n\n\n== Biography ==\nKostelić is the only woman to win four gold medals in alpine skiing at the Winter Olympics (in 2002 and 2006), and the only woman to win three alpine skiing gold medals in one Olympics (2002).\nKostelić was the World Cup overall champion in 2001, 2003 and 2006. On 15 January 2006, Kostelić became the third woman in World Cup history (after Swede Pernilla Wiberg and Austrian Petra Kronberger) to win World Cup races in all of the sport's five disciplines. On 5 February 2006 Kostelić became the second female skier (after Petra Kronberger) to win all five disciplines in one season.\nIn the summer of 2006, she decided to not compete in the 2007 season, due to chronic knee and back pain. She had endured ten knee surgeries and thyroid surgery during her career. Following a year away from competition, Kostelić announced her retirement from racing in April 2007, at just 25 years old.\nSince 2016, Kostelić has been the State Secretary for Science, Education and Sports in the Croatian Government.\n\n\n== Career ==\n\n\n=== Early years ===\nKostelić was born in Zagreb, Croatia, then part of Yugoslavia, into a winter sports family. Her father Ante was also her trainer. Her older brother Ivica is a ski racer in his own right, the 2011 overall World Cup champion.  She started skiing at the age of three and began training at nine years old, and quickly became successful and won several junior competitions.\nAt the age of 16, Kostelić was selected for the Croatian team for the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano. Her best result was 8th place in the combined. She competed in all five disciplines. She won her first World Cup slalom in December 1999. Kostelić then suffered knee ligament damage which kept her out of competition until late 2000. She won the World Cup overall title that 2001 season with eight further victories.\n\n\n=== 2002 Winter Olympics ===\nAt the 2002 Winter Olympics she won three gold medals and a silver, the first Winter Olympic medals ever for an athlete from Croatia. No other female alpine racer has ever won four medals or three gold medals at a single Olympics.\nKostelić chose not to compete in the downhill and concentrated on the combined. She performed well in the downhill run and then won the gold medal after the two-run slalom. She then won a silver medal in the super-G, just behind Daniela Ceccarelli. The next race was the slalom, in which Kostelić won her second gold medal, narrowly beating Laure Péquegnot. Her final victory was in the giant slalom, a substantial 1.32 seconds ahead of silver medalist Anja Pärson.\n\n\n=== Later career ===\nKostelić won the World Cup overall title again in 2003, but missed the following season due to knee surgery in October, her fourth in ten months, and thyroid surgery in January 2004. This caused 2004 to be the only year from 1998 to 2006 that she was not recognized as \"Croatian Sportswoman of the Year.\"\nAfter more than 18 months aways from competition, she returned to World Cup competition at Sölden and finished eighth in the giant slalom in October 2004. At the World Championships in February 2005, she won three gold medals, despite being in ill health. She won the downhill and successfully defended her world titles in slalom and combined.\nIn the 2006 season, Kostelić won the World Cup overall title for the third time, but also was in Top 5 in all 4 disciplines, including number 1 in slalom.  She won her first World Cup races in giant slalom (2), super-G and downhill in 2006.\nAt the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino she won a gold medal in women's alpine combined. That was her fourth Olympic gold medal, making her the most successful female skier in the history of the Olympic Games. This record was set on 18 February 2006, only half an hour after Norway's Kjetil André Aamodt, winner of the men's super-G, became the first Alpine skier in men's competition to win four Olympic gold medals.\nShe also became the first alpine skier to win the \"Sportswoman of the Year\" award at the Laureus World Sports Awards in 2006, in part for her accomplishment of winning races in each discipline during the year.\nDue to recurring injuries, Kostelić has not competed since the conclusion of the 2006 season. As expected, she announced her retirement a year later on 19 April 2007, citing persistent pain from her injuries.\n\n\n=== World Cup ===\nShe won 3 overall World Cup titles: 2001, 2003 and 2006. In 2005 she was second overall, just three points behind winner Anja Pärson – the smallest difference between 1st and 2nd place in women's World Cup history. (In 2011, Maria Riesch beat Lindsey Vonn in the overall world cup by a margin of three points as well.)\nKostelić also won the slalom season title three times, the same years that she won the overall titles.  She also would have won the season trophy for the combined discipline four times (2001, 2003, 2005, 2006), but the discipline trophy for the combined was not awarded to women during her career, being added only in 2007.\nShe won a total of 30 World Cup races, including at least one in every discipline: 20 in slalom, 6 in combined, 2 in giant slalom, 1 in super-G, and 1 in downhill.\n\n\n== World Cup results ==\n\n\n=== Season titles ===\n6 titles – (3 overall, 3 slalom) plus 4 combined (unofficial)\n\n\n=== Season standings ===\n\n\n=== Race victories ===\n30 wins – (1 DH, 1 SG, 2 GS, 20 SL, 6 K)\n\n\n== World Championship results ==\n\n\n== Olympic results ==\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nOn 1 January 2019, Kostelić gave birth to her first child.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists at a single Games\nAnte Kostelić\nList of FIS Alpine Ski World Cup women's race winners\nCroatian national alpine ski team\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nJanica Kostelić at FIS (alpine)\nJanica Kostelić at FIS (ski jumping)\nJanica Kostelić at Olympics.com\nJanica Kostelić at Olympedia\nJanica Kostelić at InterSportStats\nJanica Kostelić at Ski-DB Alpine Ski Database \nOfficial website"}
{"title": "Jason Kenny", "requested": "Jason Kenny", "extract": "Sir Jason Francis Kenny (born 23 March 1988) is an English former track cyclist, specialising in the individual and team sprints. Kenny is the winner of most Olympic gold medals (7) and medals (9) by a British athlete. Kenny's seven Olympic gold medals place him joint 15th in gold medals won in the Summer Olympic games since 1896. He holds the records for both most Olympic golds and most Olympic medals won by a cyclist.\nWith seven gold and two silver medals, Kenny is both the most successful cyclist in Olympic history and the most successful British Olympian overall. His wife, Dame Laura Kenny, is the most successful female British athlete in the history of the games (with five gold medals and one silver); together they are the most successful married couple in Summer Olympic history where both spouses have won at least one gold medal.\nAfter winning World and European Junior titles in 2006 and achieving medals in the under-23 European championships in 2007, Kenny was selected to compete for Great Britain at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. With Chris Hoy and Jamie Staff, he won a gold medal in the team sprint, breaking the world record in the qualifying round. He finished behind Hoy in the final of the individual sprint, gaining a silver medal.\nIn January 2012, he gained his first world championship title, when Grégory Baugé's results were nullified after a backdated 12-month ban for missing a drugs test, and the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) promoted Kenny to the gold medal. At the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, he won gold medals in both the team sprint and the individual sprint, beating Baugé in the final. At the 2016 Summer Olympics Kenny again won in the Team Sprint and the Individual Sprint, and also won the Keirin.  In the 2020 Summer Olympics he won the Keirin again.\n\n\n== Early life ==\nKenny was born on 23 March 1988. Kenny's parents are Lorraine and Michael Kenny, and he has an older brother, Craig. He was educated at Mount St Joseph School in Farnworth.\nHe was a keen sportsperson during his youth, showing ability as a football goalkeeper as well as playing cricket and tennis, but having learned to ride a bicycle at a young age, became involved in track racing when he and his brother attended a track session at the National Cycling Centre in Manchester, when an uncle had booked a session and had some spare places.\n\n\n== Career ==\n\n\n=== Future Stars series ===\nKenny's first track competition was when he competed in the Future Stars series, a junior competition held as part of the Revolution series at the Manchester Velodrome. Kenny competed in a number of the ad hoc events during the first season of the Revolution in 2003/2004. In the second season, he competed in the first fully-fledged Future Series competition, taking part in a number of sprint and endurance events for 15- and 16-year-olds, during the season of four track meetings. When the 2004/2005 season finished in February 2005, Kenny was in the top 10 of the final standings.\n\n\n=== 2005–2007 ===\nDuring the 2005/2006 racing season, Kenny competed for Great Britain at a junior level as a sprinter and won world titles at the junior world championships. In the 2006/2007 season, he competed at a senior level for the team and took part in a number of World Cup Classics events across the world and Revolution events in Manchester, against some of the world's best Sprint riders. In the Revolution events in the 2007/2008 season, Kenny beat the world champion Theo Bos.\n\n\n=== 2008 ===\nKenny made his debut in the world championships in 2008, finishing fifth overall in the sprint competition. In the Olympic Games, he made the team sprint squad, replacing Ross Edgar at man 2 in the team just before the Games. The team defeated the French team that had beaten them to the world title in Manchester only months earlier by over half a second. In the sprint competition, Kenny reached the final, but was defeated by his teammate Chris Hoy 2–0. His rise as a cyclist had been rapid. He had progressed from competing in a domestic junior series to Olympic Champion in only 3+1⁄2 years.\nKenny was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2009 New Year Honours.\n\n\n=== 2009–2012 ===\nIn the season following the 2008 Games, Kenny scored three gold medals in the 2008–09 Track Cycling World Cup Classics, and took a silver in the team sprint at the 2009 UCI Track Cycling World Championships alongside Jamie Staff and Matthew Crampton, losing out to France. In 2010 he took his first title at the European Track Championships, winning the gold in the keirin. At the 2012 World Championships, Kenny took a silver in the sprint behind Grégory Baugé and a bronze in the keirin.\n\n\n=== 2012 Olympics ===\n\nAt the London 2012 Olympic Games Kenny won gold in the team sprint with Chris Hoy and Philip Hindes, setting a new world record in the London Velopark with a time of 42.6 seconds. He also won gold in the men's sprint final, setting a new Olympic record in qualifying and avenging his previous losses to Baugé with a 200m time of 10.308s in his final lap. Kenny was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2013 New Year Honours for services to cycling.\n\n\n=== 2013–2016 ===\nFollowing the 2012 Olympics Kenny competed at the 2013 World Championships, in the individual sprint and Team Sprint races he finished 7th and 6th respectively. He won the keirin event.\nHis 2013–14 season started with national titles in all three Olympic sprint, team sprint and the keirin. At the first round of the UCI Track World Cup he failed to qualify for the sprint event, whilst finishing 4th in the Keirin and winning a bronze medal in the Team Sprint.\nAt the second round of the World Cup, he secured silver medals in the Sprint and Team Sprint, but did not contest the Keirin. The World Cup/Championships season finished with the UCI World Championships where he failed to secure any medals, finishing 5th in all three events he contested.\nAt the Commonwealth Games he won a silver medal in the Team Sprint. In the Sprint event he qualified 11th out of 12 qualifiers, and went on to lose his first round against Eddie Dawkins of New Zealand. This left him in the repechage, where he beat his Great Britain teammates Callum Skinner and Lewis Oliva to make it to the 1/8 finals. Despite his poor form in the early rounds, in the 1/8 round he beat Matthew Glaetzer, the fastest qualifier (qualifying almost half a second quicker) and holder of the Commonwealth record, in two straight rides, to secure his way into the semi-finals, where he beat Peter Lewis after three rides. In the final he won a silver medal, losing 2–1 to Sam Webster.\nIn the 2014–15 UCI Track Cycling World Cup, Kenny took a gold in the team sprint in the round in Guadalajara. 2015 brought national titles in the 1 km time trial and the team sprint. In the run up to the Rio Olympics, he was part of the squad that won gold in the Hong Kong round of the 2015–16 Track World Cup alongside Hindes and Skinner and went on to win the gold in the sprint at the 2016 Track World Championships in London, defeating Matthew Glaetzer 2–1 in the final.\n\n\n=== 2016 Summer Olympics ===\nAt the Rio 2016 Olympic Games Kenny won gold in the men's team sprint with Philip Hindes and Callum Skinner. The trio broke the world record twice in the Olympic competition, first in qualifying and again in the final against New Zealand, after the latter had set a new world record themselves in the first round. He won gold in the men's individual sprint, beating Callum Skinner in the final after losing just one ride, to eventual bronze medallist Denis Dmitriev in the semi-finals. On 16 August Kenny won the gold medal in the final of the men's Keirin after the race was re-started twice due to derny infringements, to join Chris Hoy as the holder of 6 Olympic gold medals, more than any other GB athlete.\nKenny was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to cycling.\n\n\n=== 2017–2020 ===\nFollowing the Rio Games, Kenny made an unannounced retirement from competition, later stating that this was due to the physical and mental toll of cycle racing. However, after a year away from the track and the birth of his first child he decided to return to racing, stating in an interview in September 2017 that the break had \"refreshed\" him. Kenny made his comeback at a round of the Revolution series at Manchester Velodrome in January 2018, setting the fastest time in sprint qualifying ahead of a field that included rival Grégory Baugé and placing second in the sprint and keirin competitions. He returned to international championship competition at the 2018 UCI Track Cycling World Championships in Apeldoorn, where he was part of the silver medal-winning squad in the team sprint alongside Hindes, Jack Carlin, Ryan Owens and Joseph Truman, earning Team GB's first team sprint medal at the World Championships since 2011. Kenny, Carlin and Owens went on to earn two further team sprint silvers at the 2019 UEC European Track Championships, also held in Apeldoorn, and the 2020 World Championships on Berlin.\n\n\n=== 2020 Summer Olympics ===\nAt the delayed 2020 Tokyo Olympics in the summer of 2021, Kenny, Carlin and Owens took another team sprint silver, losing out to the Dutch team in the final. Although this was Kenny's first loss in an Olympic final, the medal made him Britain's most successful Olympian. In the sprint, he placed eighth in qualifying, and his bid to defend his title received a setback when he lost in the 1/8 finals to Denis Dmitriev: although he was able to secure a slot in the quarter finals by winning the repechage, he was knocked out in the last eight by Harrie Lavreysen, losing 2–0 to the Dutchman before finishing last in the small final, securing eighth place overall. In the keirin, Kenny took the gold medal after going on the attack when the derny pulled off the track with three laps to go, building on a gap that had already appeared between himself and the rest of the field led by Matthew Glaetzer and holding on to the lead to cross the finish line with a gap of over three quarters of a second over the second placed Azizulhasni Awang. The win gave him his  seventh gold medal and ninth medal overall, making him the British Olympian with most golds and most medals.\nKenny was made a Knight Bachelor in the 2022 New Year Honours for services to cycling, and therefore granted the title sir. His wife Laura was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the same list, also for services to cycling. In February of that year, Kenny announced that he was retiring from competition in order to take the role of men's podium sprint coach with British Cycling.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nOn 24 September 2016, Kenny married the track cyclist Laura Trott. As of 2016, the couple live near Knutsford in Cheshire. On 14 February 2017, it was announced that the couple were expecting their first child; their son Albie was born on 23 August 2017. In November 2021, his wife suffered a miscarriage at nine weeks, and in January 2022, his wife suffered an ectopic pregnancy. In January 2023, it was announced that they were expecting their second child. Their second son was born in July 2023. In December 2024, a third pregnancy was announced, and his wife gave birth to a daughter in May 2025.\nKenny is a motorsport enthusiast and has participated in car racing in his spare time, including racing a Ginetta G40, and scored a podium finish in a round of the Radical European Masters at the Nürburgring in 2014.\nTaken together, Jason and Laura Kenny have won 12 Olympic gold medals, which places them among the most successful Olympic medalist families of all time. He was knighted in the 2022 New Year Honours List. His wife received a damehood at the same time.\n\n\n== Major results ==\nSource:\n\n\n== See also ==\n2012 Olympics gold post boxes in the United Kingdom\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n Media related to Jason Kenny at Wikimedia Commons\n\nJason Kenny at UCI\nJason Kenny at ProCyclingStats\nJason Kenny at CycleBase\nJason Kenny at Olympics.com\nJason Kenny at Team GB\nJason Kenny at Olympedia\nJason Kenny at the Commonwealth Games Federation (archived)\nJason Kenny at InterSportStats"}
{"title": "Jason Lezak", "requested": "Jason Lezak", "extract": "Jason Edward Lezak (born November 12, 1975) is an American former competitive swimmer and swimming executive who competed for the University of California, Santa Barbara. Lezak specialized in the 50 and 100-meter freestyle races, and represented the United States in four Olympic Games where he won eight Olympic medals.\nLezak is known for his performance at the 2008 Summer Olympics as the anchor for the United States during the men's 4×100-meter freestyle relay, where his time of 46.06 seconds was the fastest 100 m freestyle split recorded to that date. Several sports historians and journalists considered the event one of the greatest and most memorable efforts by an American relay team of that era.\nLezak has served as the general manager of the Cali Condors, which is part of the International Swimming League.\n\n\n== Early life and swimming ==\nLezak was born in Irvine, California, the son of Linda (née Mann), a former elementary school science teacher, and David Lezak, a former leather goods salesman. He is Jewish. The name Lezak is pronounced Leh-Zhack and is Polish (short e). Lezak attended El Camino Real Elementary School (now Woodbury Elementary School) and Irvine High School.\nLezak trained and competed with the Irvine Novaquatics Swim Club under Dave Salo by 2000, subsequent to his collegiate swimming years.  He swam with the Novaquatics during his high school years according to a few sources.\nLezak attended Irvine High School, graduating in 1994, and swam for the Irvine High School Vaquero's swimming program, a strong team under Coach Ken Dory who was in his seventh year as the team's coach in 1994. In 1993, the Irvine High swim team were Champions of the Sea View League and placed third in the CIF Division II Championship, but did not place second in the CIF Southern Section Championships until the 1998 and 1999 season and did not place first until the 2000-2001 seasons, after Lezak's tenure with the team.  Lezak was twice an All American as a high school swimmer, and had finished in the top four in the CIF Section Championships in the 100 and 50-yard freestyle events.\n\n\n=== UC Santa Barbara ===\nEnrolling around 1995, Lezak attended the University of California, Santa Barbara, where  he swam for the UC Santa Barbara Gauchos swimming and diving team from 1995 to 1998 under Gregg Wilson, who directed the Santa Barbara men's team from 1975-2015.    A regional power, the UC Santa Barbara team under Wilson won the Big West Conference Swimming and Diving Championships each of the years Lezak swam with the team from 1995-1998.  Lezak was an All-American swimmer at Santa Barbara, and at the 2002 NCAA Championships, set 100-yard and 50-yard national records.  His 100-yard freestyle title in 2002, was his third, and he was subsequently honored as a Pac-10 Conference Swimmer of the Year. From 1996-1998, Lezak was honored in three successive years as a Big West Conference Swimmer of the Year.  Lezak graduated the University in 1999 with a degree in Economics.\nLezak lives in Orange County, California with his wife, the former Danielle DeAlva, a former swimmer and Olympic medalist.  The couple have 3 children, Ryan, Blake, and Layla.\n\n\n== Competition highlights ==\n\n\n== Olympic overview ==\nLezak has competed in four Olympic Games, in 2000, 2004, 2008, and 2012, and has won eight Olympic medals: two bronze, two silver, and four gold.\n\n\n== 2000 Sydney Olympics ==\nLezak earned his first long-course international swimming gold medal at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, where he was part of the 4×100-meter medley relay in the Olympics in Sydney. He also won a silver medal in the 4×100-meter freestyle relay.\n\n\n== 2004 Athens Olympics ==\nLezak competed in several events at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, Greece, and was a member of the 4×100-meter medley relay team that set a new world record and earned another gold medal at the games. Lezak also won a bronze medal in the 4×100-meter freestyle relay and finished fifth in the 50-meter freestyle.\n\n\n== 2008 Beijing Olympics ==\nAt the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, Lezak was the oldest male on the U.S. swim team.  He anchored the U.S. 4×100-meter freestyle relay team that won the gold medal and set a new world record. At the start of the leg, Lezak trailed French anchor Alain Bernard by nearly a full body length. In the final 25 meters, with Bernard still leading by half a body length, Lezak overtook Bernard. The American team's final time of 3:08:24 was just 0.08 seconds ahead of the French team's 3:08.32, making it the closest finish in the event's history. Both teams finished nearly four seconds ahead of the previous world record.\nLezak earned his first individual Olympic medal, having tied for bronze with Brazilian swimmer César Cielo Filho in the 100-meter freestyle with a time of 47.67.\nIn the final race of these games Lezak anchored the U.S. 4×100-meter medley relay to a gold medal securing Michael Phelps's final gold medal to break Mark Spitz's record.\n\n\n== 2012 London Olympics ==\nLezak qualified for his fourth Olympics at the 2012 United States Olympic Trials in Omaha, Nebraska. His sixth-place finish in the Olympic Trial finals qualified him for the London Games as a member of the U.S. 4×100-meter freestyle relay team.\nAt the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, United Kingdom, Jimmy Feigen, Matt Grevers, Ricky Berens and Lezak swam for the U.S. team in the preliminaries.  Nathan Adrian, Michael Phelps, Cullen Jones and Ryan Lochte swam in the finals, and together all these competitors earned a silver medal for the team's second-place finish in the finals. Lezak became the first male swimmer in Olympic history to win four medals in the same event, the 4×100-meter freestyle relay.\n\n\n=== Short course competitions ===\nIn short-course competitions, Lezak won five world championships: four relays including the 2002 4x100m freestyle and medley, and 2004 4x100m freestyle, and a gold in the 100-meter freestyle in 2004. Lezak has also won seven U.S. Championships, three times in the 50-meter freestyle and four in the 100-meter freestyle.\n\n\n== Maccabiah Games ==\n\nLezak passed up on attending the 2009 World Aquatics Championships to compete in the 18th Maccabiah Games in Israel from July 12 to 29, 2009. Lezak was given the honor of lighting the Maccabiah torch at the Opening Ceremony. At the 2009 Maccabiah Games, Lezak won gold medals in the 50-meter freestyle, 100-meter freestyle, 4×100-meter freestyle relay, and 4×100-meter medley relay.\nAt the 2017 Maccabiah Games, in the special 4x50m relay race between Israeli and American all-star teams, American Olympic champions Lezak, Lenny Krayzelburg (four Olympic golds), and Anthony Ervin (three Olympic golds), with masters swimmer Alex Blavatnik, swam a time of 1:48.23 and defeated Israeli Olympians Guy Barnea, Yoav Bruck, Eran Groumi, and Tal Stricker, who had a time of 1:51.25.\n\n\n== Executive career ==\nLezak serves as the general manager for the Cali Condors which is part of the International Swimming League. In 2019 the inaugural year of the league the Condors finished third place in the finals. As the top finishing American team, the Condors were led by high scorers Caeleb Dressel and Lilly King.\n\n\n== Personal bests ==\nHis personal bests (long-course) are:\n\n50 m freestyle: 21.90\n100 m freestyle: 47.58 (former American record)\n\n\n== Accolades ==\nIn 2003 he was inducted into the Southern California Jewish Sports Hall of Fame. In 2006 he was inducted into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.\n\n\n== See also ==\n\nList of select Jewish swimmers\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists in one event\nList of multiple Summer Olympic medalists\nList of Olympic medalists in swimming (men)\nList of United States records in swimming\nList of World Aquatics Championships medalists in swimming (men)\nList of world records in swimming\nWorld record progression 4 × 100 metres freestyle relay\nWorld record progression 4 × 100 metres medley relay\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nJason Lezak  at World Aquatics \nJason Lezak at Olympics.com \nJason Lezak at Olympedia \nJason Lezak at USA Swimming (archived April 7, 2022)\nJason Lezak at Team USA (archive July 11, 2022)\nSouthern California Jewish Sports Hall of Fame, Jason, Lezak"}
{"title": "Jayna Hefford", "requested": "Jayna Hefford", "extract": "Jayna Hefford (born May 14, 1977) is a Canadian retired ice hockey player and current executive vice president of hockey operations for the Professional Women's Hockey League (PWHL).\nHefford got her start in the sport of ringette but soon moved into ice hockey. During her hockey career, she won multiple medals at the Winter Olympics and IIHF World Women's Championships as well as titles in the National Women's Hockey League and Canadian Women's Hockey League. She helped Canada win four-straight Olympic gold medals from 2002 to 2014 and famously scored the gold medal-winning goal at the 2002 Winter Olympics. At the club level across three leagues, she scored 439 goals in 418 competitive games including a CWHL record 44 goals in 2008–09.\nShe was selected to be inducted to the Hockey Hall of Fame on June 26, 2018. On July 19, 2018, Hefford was named interim commissioner of the Canadian Women's Hockey League. She was named a 2019 Order of Hockey in Canada recipient.\nHefford was born in Trenton, Ontario. She previously played for the Mississauga Chiefs and Brampton Thunder.\n\n\n== Playing career ==\nAt the 1994 national under-18 championship, Hefford was part of the gold medal-winning Ontario team. In 1995, Hefford participated with the Ottawa Regional Select Team in a series against the U.S. National Under-18 Team. Hefford was the captain of Team Ontario at the 1995 Canada Winter Games.\n\n\n=== U of T Varsity Blues ===\nHefford played for the Toronto Varsity Blues women's ice hockey program, which represented the University of Toronto. In the 1997 OWIAA semifinal, Hefford was part of the Varsity Blues squad which defeated the Guelph Gryphons by a 4–1 tally. In that game, Hefford accumulated three helpers. In the 1997 OWIAA gold medal game, scored 23 seconds into overtime and she believed that the goal clinched the gold medal for the Blues. A little-known rule denied Hefford and her teammates the Blues second consecutive title. OWIAA league rules indicated that the first five-minute overtime session in a playoff game must be played in its entirety (as a regular period). It was advised that the game would continue after Hefford's goal and York won the game in the second overtime. Hefford joined former University of Toronto student-athlete Heather Moyse as the only University of Toronto graduates to claim a gold medal at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Games. She is currently an assistant coach with her former team.\n\n\n=== Hockey Canada ===\nAt the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, Hefford ranked second on Team Canada with 12 points (5 goals, 7 assists) in 5 games on the way to her fourth medal (third gold).\nIn the 2006 tournament, Hefford scored three goals and added four assists to finish third on the team in scoring and Canada again won the gold medal. It was her second gold medal while participating in her third Olympics. She also won a silver medal with the Canadian team at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano.\nIn the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City, Hefford scored the game-winning goal in the gold medal game against Team USA with four seconds remaining in the second period.\nHefford won the gold in six World Championships – 1997, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2004 and 2007. In 1999 and 2000, Hefford was Team Canada's leading scorer. Her two third period goals in the 2000 championship game pushed the contest into overtime, allowing Canada the opportunity to win. At the 2005 Esso National Women's Championships, she was named the Best Forward for Group A.\nOn January 1, 2010, in Ottawa, Ontario, she was honoured before a game versus Team USA for reaching the 200-game plateau in her Team Canada career in November. She would go on to score the lone shootout goal later that night.\nIn the first game of the 2011 IIHF Eight Nations Tournament, Hefford registered a hat trick in a 16–0 victory over Switzerland. In the third game of the tournament, she scored two goals in an 11–0 shutout over Slovakia. In an exhibition game versus the United States on August 29, 2011, Hefford scored a power play goal, and then scored twice in the shootout as Canada defeated the United States by a 4–3 tally. In a game versus Russia at the 2012 IIHF Women's World Championship, Hefford registered a four-point performance (two goals, two assists) in a 14–1 victory.\nHefford again played for Canada at the 2014 Winter Olympics, earning her fourth gold medal. After 17 years, four Olympic gold medals and multiple world championships, she retired from the national women's team at age 38, after sitting out the 2014–2015 season. She stands second only to Hayley Wickenheiser in all-time games played (267), goals (157) and points (291) for Canada. The pair are the only two Canadian women to have played in all five Olympic women's hockey tournaments starting in 1998, winning four gold and one silver medal. They are among only five athletes (with teammate Caroline Ouellette) to win gold in four consecutive Winter Games. Hefford also appeared in 12 of 16 women's world hockey championships earning seven gold medals.\n\n\n=== Club hockey ===\nJayna Hefford made her senior competitive debut with the Mississauga Chiefs in 1996–97, scoring 32 goals in 30 games and winning Rookie of the Year honours in the Central Ontario Women's Hockey League. After spending the 1997–98 season with Canada, she joined the newly formed Brampton Thunder for the 1998–99 season and finished second in the league with 34 goals scored in just 27 games (with the league renamed the National Women's Hockey League midway through the season). After scoring 25 goals in 1999–2000, she won her first goal-scoring title in 2000–01 with 36 goals. She also led the league in scoring with 69 points.\nAfter spending the 2001–02 season with Canada, she returned to the Thunder and scored 37 goals in 2002–03, an NWHL record 41 goals in 2003–04, and 39 goals in 2004–05. She was the NWHL's Player of the Year in 2004–05. She then spent the 2005–06 season with Canada, winning her third-straight Olympic gold medal.\nIn 2006–07, Hefford eclipsed the 40-goal plateau for the second time in her NWHL career, also leading the league with a career-best 70 points. In the playoffs, she helped the Thunder win the NWHL playoff championship.\nIn 2007–08, she led the new Canadian Women's Hockey League (CWHL) with 26 goals in 27 games for the Brampton Canadettes Thunder. She was named the CWHL's Most Valuable Player of the 2007–08 CWHL season, an award voted on by the league's six team captains. In addition, she was also a CWHL Central All-Star. Despite winning CWHL Top Scorer of the Month honours on four separate occasions (September, November, December, January), she lost the Angela James Bowl scoring race by three points to Jennifer Botterill's 61 points. It marked the first time since 1999–2000 that in a year when Hefford played a full season, she did not win her league scoring race. In the playoffs, Hefford helped Brampton win the first CWHL championship.\nIn 2008–09, she won the Angela James Bowl after scoring 69 points in 28 games. She set new league records with 69 points, 44 goals, 11 power-play goals, six shorthanded goals and seven hat tricks. She is the first player in the Canadian Women's Hockey League to record 100 career points. She recorded the record-setting point milestone on January 17, 2009, in a win over the Montreal Stars.\nIn 2009–10, she was absent from the Brampton Thunder for most of the season due to the centralization of Canada's women's hockey Olympic team. After Canada's win in Vancouver, she returned to participate in the Clarkson Cup and had a goal and an assist in Brampton's semi-final win over the Montreal Stars. Brampton lost to the Minnesota Whitecaps in the final.\nOn January 18, 2011, the Thunder competed against the Montreal Stars at the Invista Centre in Kingston, Ontario. This is team captain Jayna Hefford's hometown and she scored a goal in front of her closest friends, family and fans. In addition, her number 15 was raised to the rafters of the Invista Centre on behalf of the Kingston Area Minor Hockey Association. As of 2012, no sweaters bearing Hefford's number will be used in Kingston minor hockey.\nHefford scored 439 goals in 418 games in the COWHL, NWHL, and CWHL. She was the NWHL's all-time leading goalscorer with 252 goals from 1998–99 to 2006–07. In a seven-year stretch from 2000–01 to 2006–07, she won or co-won five NWHL scoring titles and won five NWHL goal-scoring titles. The only years in which she did not win were 2001–02 and 2005–06, the two years in which she missed most of the club campaign because she was away winning a gold medal with Canada's Olympic team.\nHefford also retired as the CWHL's all-time leader in goals (130) and points (234), although both records have since been broken. In 2017, she was named to the All-Time CWHL Team from the league's first decade.\n\n\n== Post-playing career ==\nIn 2016, the CWHL introduced the Jayna Hefford Trophy in her honour. Awarded to the most outstanding player in the regular season as judged by the players of the CWHL, the first winner of the Trophy was Marie-Philip Poulin, a former teammate of Hefford at the 2010 and 2014 Winter Games.\nHeading into the 2018–19 CWHL season, Hefford was appointed to the position of interim commissioner of the CWHL. Announced on July 19, 2018, replacing inaugural commissioner Brenda Andress, Hefford took on the role on August 1, 2018. A week after the 2019 Clarkson Cup Final, the CWHL announced that it was no longer viable, and would be closing down on May 1, 2019. The Professional Women's Hockey Players Association (PWHPA) was formed from the fall out, and the player members asked Hefford to be the operations consultant of the association.\nIn 2023, when the Professional Women's Hockey League (PWHL) was formed, Hefford ascended into her new role as senior vice president of hockey operations. Hefford led the initiatives for the implementation of new rules, including \"Jailbreak Goals\" and the \"No Escape Rule\" during her time as SVP. On Jan. 28, 2025, Hefford was promoted to executive vice president of hockey operations, with the league expressing its intention to continue to grow.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nHefford was raised by her parents Larry and Sandra along with her brother Mike; she calls Kingston, Ontario her home town. She began playing hockey around the age of six.\nHefford is mother to two daughters, Isla and Arwen, and a son, Lachlan, with her partner, former Team USA Olympian and Canadian Women's Hockey League co-founder Kathleen Kauth. Both have also served on the coaching staff for the University of Toronto Varsity Blues women's ice hockey program under head coach Vicky Sunohara.\nHefford is a national spokesperson for the Canadian Hockey Association's Initiation Programme. In 2009, she set up a charity golf tournament, the Jayna Hefford Links 4 Life Golf Classic, in July 2009. The tournament raised $15,000 for the cancer and palliative care undertaken at Kingston's university hospitals.\n\n\n== Career statistics ==\n\n\n=== Regular season and playoffs ===\n\n\n=== International ===\n\n\n== Awards and honours ==\n1996–97 OWIAA Rookie of the Year\nTop scorer in the OWIAA (1996–97)\nAngela James Bowl, 2008–09\nCWHL Most Valuable Player, 2007–08\nCWHL Top Forward, 2008–09\nCWHL First All-Star Team, 2008–09\nCWHL Central All-Stars, 2007–08\n1996/97 Ontario Women's Intercollegiate Athletic Association Rookie of the Year, as well as the 1998 Kingston and Ontario Amateur Athlete of the Year.\nRecognized at the 1999 and 2000 World Championships as the tournament's top goal scorer and scored at least one point in every game at the 2000 event in Canada.\nIn 2002, Hefford was inducted into the Brampton Sports Hall of Fame in 2002.\nTop Forward, 2003 Esso Women's Nationals\n2004 World Women's Championship Directorate Award as Top Forward and was named to the Tournament All Star team.\n2005 World Women's Championship Directorate Award as Top Forward\nTop Forward, 2006 Esso Women's National Hockey Championship, Pool A\nTop Forward at the 2008 Esso Women's National Championship in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island.\n2019 Order of Hockey in Canada recipient\nOrder of Sport, induction into Canada's Sports Hall of Fame in 2019.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nBiographical information and career statistics from Eliteprospects.com\nOfficial website\nNine questions with Jayna Hefford\nProfile on Canadian Olympic Committee"}
{"title": "Jean-Claude Killy", "requested": "Jean-Claude Killy", "extract": "Jean-Claude Killy (born 30 August 1943) is a French former World Cup alpine ski racer. He dominated the sport in the late 1960s, and was a triple Olympic champion, winning the three alpine events at the 1968 Winter Olympics, becoming the most successful athlete there. He also won the first two World Cup titles, in 1967 and 1968.\n\n\n== Early life ==\nKilly was born in Saint-Cloud, a suburb of Paris, during the German occupation of World War II, but was brought up in Val-d'Isère in the Alps, where his family had relocated in 1945 following the war. His father, Robert, was a former Spitfire pilot for the Free French, and opened a ski shop in the Savoie village, and would later operate a hotel. In 1950, his mother Madeline abandoned the family for another man, leaving Robert to raise Jean-Claude, age 7, his older sister (France), and their infant brother (Mic). Jean-Claude was sent to boarding school in Chambéry, 80 miles (130 km) down the valley, but he despised being shut up in a classroom.\n\n\n== Early career ==\nKilly turned his attention to skiing rather than school. His father allowed him to drop out at age 15, and he made the French national junior team a year later. As a young racer, Killy was fast, but did not usually complete his races, and the early 1960s were not entirely successful for him.\nIn December 1961, at age 18, Killy won his first international race, a giant slalom. The event took place in his home village of Val-d'Isère. Killy had started 39th, a position that should have been a severe disadvantage.\nThe French coach picked Killy for the giant slalom in the 1962 World Championships in Chamonix, France, 50 miles (80 km) away in the shadow of Mont Blanc. But Killy, unaware of his selection, was still attempting to qualify for the downhill event in northeastern Italy at Cortina d'Ampezzo. Only three weeks before the world championships, he skied in his typical reckless style. About two hundred yards (180 m) from the finish, Killy hit a stretch of ice in a compression and went down, rose immediately, then crossed the finish on just one ski—and the fastest time. Unfortunately, his other leg was broken, and he watched the 1962 World Championships on crutches.\nTwo years later, at age 20, Killy was entered in all three of the men's events at the 1964 Olympics, because his coach wanted to prepare him for 1968. Unfortunately, Killy was plagued by recurrences of amoebic dysentery and hepatitis, ailments that he had contracted in 1962 during a summer of compulsory service with the French Army in Algeria. His form was definitely off, and he fell a few yards after the start of the downhill, lost a binding in the slalom, and finished fifth in the giant slalom, in which he had been the heavy favorite. Yet a few weeks later, he dominated a giant slalom race at Garmisch-Partenkirchen, in Bavaria, counting for the prestigious Arlberg-Kandahar events, the oldest 'classic' in the sport. A year later, he also triumphed at another major competition, the slalom of the Hahnenkamm races at Kitzbühel that he clinched three times in a row until 1967.\nAlthough the first half of the decade was a relative disappointment, Killy began to strongly improve his results afterwards to become one of the best technical ski racers. In August 1966, the Frenchman, nicknamed 'Toutoune' by some of his colleagues and friends, scored his first win in a downhill race against an international field at the 1966 World Championships in Portillo, Chile, and also took gold in the combined. Killy was peaking as the first World Cup season was launched in January 1967, with the 1968 Winter Olympics in France only a year away.\n\n\n== Dominance – 1967–68 ==\n\n\n=== World Cup results ===\n\n\n==== Season standings ====\n\n\n==== Season titles ====\n6 titles – (2 overall, 1 DH, 2 GS, 1 SL)\n\n\n==== Race victories ====\n18 wins – (6 DH, 7 GS, 5 SL)\n24 podiums – (8 DH, 9 GS, 7 SL)\n\n^ Results from the 1968 Winter Olympics (and 1970 World Championships) were included in the World Cup standings.\n\nKilly was the first World Cup champion in 1967, winning 12 of 17 races to easily take the overall title. He also won the season standings in each of the three \"classic\" alpine disciplines; he won all five of the downhill races and four of the five giant slalom races.\nThe following year, Killy won the triple crown of alpine skiing with a sweep of all three Olympic gold medals (downhill, giant slalom, and slalom) in controversial circumstances at the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble, France. By finishing first in all races, he also captured the FIS world championship title in the combined event.\nElectrical timing by Omega was accurate to one-hundredth of a second. Killy relied on his upper-body strength to hit the bar while already moving forward, giving himself a slight edge. This spectacular start appears to have helped him to beat his teammate Guy Perillat by a few hundredths in the Olympic downhill.\nWith the Olympic events included (for the only time) in the World Cup standings, Killy easily defended his title in 1968 as the overall champion, placing first in the giant slalom and second in the downhill and slalom season standings. He retired following the 1968 season, and moved to Geneva, Switzerland, in 1969.\n\n\n== World Championship results ==\n\n1962: injured\n\n\n== Olympic results ==\n\n\n== Post-Olympic career ==\nKilly's success in Grenoble could not have come at a more opportune time for him: the 1968 Winter Olympics were the first to be extensively televised, in color, by the American Broadcasting Company. His all-conquering success, combined with his Gallic flair and looks, made him an overnight celebrity in the United States, especially amongst young women. In May 1968, Killy signed with International Management Group, the sports management firm headed by Mark McCormack. After racing on Dynamic VR17 and Rossignol skis during the part of his career when he was dominant, Killy signed a deal with Head Ski in the fall 1968 to endorse a metal and fiberglass ski named for him, the Killy 800. Head, which was acquired by AMF the following year, manufactured a line of Killy skis for at least two years.\nIn April 1969, he was awarded the Helms World Trophy.\nIn television advertisements, Killy promoted the American Express card. He also became a spokesman for Schwinn bicycles, United Airlines, and Chevrolet automobiles; the last, a role detailed by journalist Hunter S. Thompson in his 1970 article \"The Temptations of Jean-Claude Killy\" for Scanlan's Monthly.\nKilly starred as a ski instructor in the 1972 crime movie Snow Job, released in the UK as The Ski Raiders, and US TV as The Great Ski Caper. American children in the early 1970s knew Killy from a TV commercial where he introduces himself, his thick accent making his name into \"Chocolate Kitty.\"  Killy played himself in the 1983 movie Copper Mountain: A Club Med Experience, starring Jim Carrey and Alan Thicke, set at Copper Mountain, Colorado. Killy also stars in the noteworthy TV movie Peggy Fleming at Sun Valley (1971), in which he performs some remarkable skiing tricks alongside the three-time ice skating World Champion Peggy Fleming.\nJean-Claude Killy also had a short career as a racing driver between 1967 and 1970, participating in several car races including at Monza. Killy entered the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1969, partnered with Bob Wollek, another former skier turned racing driver. Killy and Wollek's car led its class for a while before pulling out of the race with only four hours to go. In team with fellow Frenchman Bernard Cahier, Killy was 7th overall in the 1967 Targa Florio in a Porsche 911 S and first in the GT classification.\nIn November 1972, Killy came out of ski racing retirement at age 29 to compete on the pro circuit in the U.S. for two seasons. After a spirited challenge from two-time defending champion Spider Sabich, Killy won the 1973 season title, taking $28,625 in race winnings and a $40,000 bonus for the championship.\nHe missed the next season, won by Hugo Nindl, due to a recurring stomach ailment, then returned in the fall of 1974. Injuries slowed him and he finished well out of the 1975 standings, won by Hank Kashiwa.\nIn addition to trying his skill as a car racer, Killy made two television series. One, The Killy Style, was a thirteen-week series that showcased various ski resorts, and the other, The Killy Challenge, featured him racing against celebrities, who were all given handicaps. He was also sponsored by a champagne company, Moët & Chandon, which paid him to be seen with a bottle of their champagne on his table everywhere he went.\nIn 1974 Killy, as part of this sponsorship deal was paid to ski down the previously unskied eastern slope of Mt Ngauruhoe (Peter Jackson's \"Mt Doom\") in New Zealand. The average slope on this side of the active volcano is 35 degrees. Radar recorded his speed at over 100 mph (160 km/h), and it took two takes, as cloud cover spoiled the first.\nIn 1975, Killy was hired to lead the new ski operations at Shawnee Mountain Ski Area, a resort in the foothills of the Pocono Mountains in northeastern Pennsylvania. In 1983, Bob Gillen wrote in Ski magazine about the growing reputation of Shawnee Mountain as a ski area.  He stated, \"Some of the initial interest was stimulated by hiring Jean-Claude Killy to represent the facility, and for several seasons he spent a number of days there.  The first time my wife ever skied with me, I saw Killy flash by at Shawnee—he was fast and smooth and he stopped frequently to check the time on his Rolex.\"\nFrom 1977 to 1994, he was a member of the Executive board of the Alpine Skiing Committee of the FIS. Killy served as co-president of the 1992 Winter Olympics, held in Albertville, France, and as the President of the Société du Tour de France cycling race between 1992 and 2001. From 1995 to 2014, he was a member of the International Olympic Committee and chaired the coordination committee for Turin 2006 and Sochi 2014. He has been an Honorary Member since then.\nKilly tried his hand at distance running and competed in the 1983 New York City Marathon, finishing in 3:58:33.\nThe ski area of Val-d'Isère and Tignes in the French Alps was given the name l'Espace Killy, in his honor.\nKilly became Grand Officer of the Légion d'honneur in 2000.\nIntrawest credits Killy with the design of a ski trail, \"Cupp Run\", at their Snowshoe resort in West Virginia.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nFrom 1973 to 1987, he was married to French actress Danielle Gaubert, until her death from cancer. Together they had a daughter, Émilie; he also adopted her two children from her first marriage to Rhadamés Trujillo, the son of Rafael Trujillo, the assassinated dictator of the Dominican Republic. Gaubert and Trujillo were divorced in 1968 and later that year she met Killy. He is known for being friends with Russian President Vladimir Putin. In an interview for the 1972 documentary Elvis on Tour, Elvis Presley named Jean-Claude as his favorite skier.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nJean-Claude Killy at FIS (alpine)\nJean-Claude Killy at FIS (ski jumping)\nJean-Claude Killy at FIS (ski jumping)\nJean-Claude Killy at Olympics.com\nJean-Claude Killy at Olympedia\nJean-Claude Killy at InterSportStats\nJean-Claude Killy at Ski-DB Alpine Ski Database"}
{"title": "Jenny Thompson", "requested": "Jenny Thompson", "extract": "Jennifer Beth Thompson (born February 26, 1973) is an American former competition swimmer.\nShe is one of the most decorated Olympians in history: twelve medals, including eight gold medals, in the 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2004 Summer Olympics.\nThompson, a Massachusetts native who calls Dover, New Hampshire, her hometown, began swimming at age 7 at a summer country club called Cedardale in Groveland, Massachusetts. During the indoor season, she swam at the Danvers YMCA from ages 8 to 10, and then at the Andover-North Andover YMCA from the ages of 10 to 12. At age 12 she began swimming for Seacoast Swimming Association under coaches Amy and Mike Parratto, and moved to Dover at age 13.\nShe first appeared on the international scene as a 14-year-old in 1987, when she won the 50-meter freestyle and placed third in the 100-meter freestyle at the Pan American Games. She won her first world championship in 1991, as part of the USA's winning 4×100-meter freestyle relay team, and held the world record in the 50-meter and 100-meter freestyle when she participated in the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona.\nThompson attended Stanford University, and swam for the Stanford Cardinal swimming and diving team in National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and Pacific-10 Conference competition. She was the recipient of the 1994–95 Honda Sports Award for Swimming and Diving, recognizing her as the outstanding college female swimmer of the year.\nIn 2006, Thompson received a medical degree from the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, completed a residency in anesthesiology at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, and then a fellowship in pediatric anesthesiology at Children's Hospital of Boston.\n\n\n== World competitions and records ==\n\n\n=== 1992 Olympics ===\n\nThought to be at the height of her competitive career at the time, Thompson was expected to win up to five gold medals at those Olympics. However, she failed to qualify for the final in the 200-meter freestyle, finished a disappointing fifth in the 50-meter, and finished second in the 100-meter, where she was beaten by Zhuang Yong of China. Thompson won two gold medals as part of the 4×100-meter freestyle and 4×100-meter medley teams. Considerable controversy was raised after the 100-meter freestyle when the U.S. team speculated on the loose doping policy standards in Barcelona—at that time the event winner did not have a mandatory doping test—only the second and fourth-place finishers were tested, based on a random draw. Thompson and her teammates believed that the Olympic champion should be tested and that rule was changed a few months later when nine members of the Chinese swimming team tested positive for steroid use.\n\n\n=== University years ===\nThompson continued her career as a member of the U.S. national team and a member of the Stanford University swimming team, and continued to rank among the world's best swimmers for the next four years. During Thompson's four years at Stanford, she was a member of four NCAA championship teams, considered to be some of the most dominant collegiate teams in NCAA history. During that time, Thompson amassed nineteen individual and relay NCAA titles. She competed as a member of the USA Finswimming Team at the 8th World Championship held in Hungary during August 1996. Thompson had a poor performance at the 1996 Olympic Trials which kept her from qualifying in her individual events.\n\n\n=== 1996 Olympics ===\nThompson won Gold medals on three relay teams at the Olympics; the 4×100-meter freestyle, 4×100-meter medley, and 4×200-meter freestyle.\nBetween 1997 and 1999, Thompson won eight more world championship titles, including three in a row in the 100-meter freestyle.\n\n\n=== 2000 Olympics ===\nAt the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia she won a bronze in the 100-meter freestyle and was fifth in the 100-meter butterfly. But in the relay events, she swam the anchor leg in helping the USA defend its titles in the 4×100-meter freestyle and the 4×200-meter freestyle relays. She also swam the butterfly leg in the winning 4×100-meter relays. The 4×100-meter freestyle and medley teams set new world records in the process.\n\n\n=== 2000 through 2004 ===\n\nAt the World Championships that year, she broke the world record in the 100-meter butterfly for the fourth time, winning a qualifying heat in a time of 56.56 en route to a gold medal in the event.\nThompson seemingly retired from competition after the 2000 season with 10 Olympic medals, eight gold, one silver and one bronze, and 12 gold medals at World Championships. In 2001, Thompson moved to New York City to begin studying at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. However, while attending medical school, she made a return to competition at the 2002 Pan Pacific Swimming Championships in Yokohama, Japan. Thompson won five medals in two days, setting a career-best time in winning the 50-meter freestyle. At the 2003 World Championships, she would win five medals, including two gold medals.\n\n\n=== 2004 Olympics ===\nAt age 31, Thompson was the oldest member of the 2004 U.S. Swimming and Diving team, competing in her fourth Olympics in Athens, Greece. She was the anchor member of the 400-meter freestyle relay, where she contributed to a national record of 3:36.39 and a silver medal. She earned another silver medal as a member of the 4×100-meter medley relay. During her Olympic career, Thompson won twelve medals, eight of which were relay gold; the most for any female Olympic swimmer in history.\n\n\n== Recent life and work ==\nIn 2006, Thompson received a medical degree from the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. She did her internship at the New York City Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and residency anesthesiologist at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. In June 2010, she was assaulted when two men attempted to steal her scooter, but she was able to fight off both of her attackers.\nThompson married Daniel Richard Cumpelik on September 5, 2010.\nThompson has volunteered as a celebrity swimmer for Swim Across America, a charitable organization that raises money for cancer research, since 1995.\n\n\n== Accolades and other recognition ==\nShe was the 1993 and 1998 USA Swimming Swimmer of the Year, and ranked as the 62nd greatest female athlete of all time in a 1999 poll conducted by Sports Illustrated. She was named by Swimming World Magazine as the Female World Swimmer of the Year in 1998, and as Female American Swimmer of the Year in 1993, 1998 and 1999. She was the Women's Sports Foundation's Athlete of the Year in 2000.\nHer adopted hometown of Dover, New Hampshire has a public swimming pool named in her honor.\n\n\n== See also ==\n\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists at a single Games\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists in one event\nList of multiple Olympic medalists\nList of multiple Summer Olympic medalists\nList of Stanford University people\nList of top Olympic gold medalists in swimming\nList of World Aquatics Championships medalists in swimming (women)\nWorld record progression 50 metres butterfly\nWorld record progression 100 metres butterfly\nWorld record progression 100 metres freestyle\nWorld record progression 100 metres individual medley\nWorld record progression 4 × 100 metres freestyle relay\nWorld record progression 4 × 100 metres medley relay\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nJenny Thompson  at World Aquatics\nJenny Thompson at the International Swimming Hall of Fame (archive)\nJenny Thompson at the Team USA Hall of Fame\nJenny Thompson at the U.S. Olympic Team at the Wayback Machine (archived May 12, 2008)\nJenny Thompson at Olympics.com Jenny Thompson at OlympicChannel.com (archived) Jenny Thompson at Olympic.org (archived) \nJenny Thompson at Olympedia"}
{"title": "Jens Lurås Oftebro", "requested": "Jens Lurås Oftebro", "extract": "Jens Christian Lurås Oftebro (born 21 July 2000) is a Norwegian Nordic combined skier. At the 2026 Winter Olympics, he won gold medals in all three Nordic combined events, becoming the second athlete after Samppa Lajunen in 2002 to achieve this.\n\n\n== Career ==\nAt the 2017 Junior World Championships, Oftebro competed in three events, recording an individual 17th place and a team competition 6th place. At the 2018 Junior World Championships he took a 10th place in the 5 kilometres event and won a bronze medal in the relay.\nOftebro made his Continental Cup debut in January 2017 in Høydalsmo and recorded his first podium in January 2018 in Rena. He made his World Cup debut in March 2018 in Holmenkollen, at the same time finishing among the top 30 for the first time with a 27th place. On 29 November 2019 he reached his first World Cup podium, finishing third in Ruka. Exactly one year later, also in Ruka, he won his first World Cup race.\nOftebro represents the sports club IL Jardar. He is a younger brother of Einar Lurås Oftebro.\n\n\n== Nordic combined results ==\nAll results are sourced from FIS.\n\n\n=== Olympic Games ===\n5 medals – (4 gold, 1 silver)\n\n\n=== World Championships ===\n8 medals – (4 gold, 2 silver, 2 bronze)\n\n\n=== World Cup ===\n\n\n==== Season titles ====\n3 titles – (3 BST)\n\n\n==== Season standings ====\n\n\n==== Individual podiums ====\n11 wins\n41 podiums\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nJens Luraas Oftebro at the International Ski and Snowboard Federation \nJens Luraas Oftebro at Milano Cortina 2026\nJens Luraas Oftebro at Olympics.com \nJens Lurås Oftebro at Olympedia \nJens Lurås Oftebro at InterSportStats \nJens Lurås Oftebro at Team Norway  (in Norwegian) \nJens Lurås Oftebro on Instagram"}
{"title": "Jenő Fuchs", "requested": "Jenő Fuchs", "extract": "Jenő Fuchs (also known as Jenő Fekete; 29 October 1882 – 14 March 1955) was a Hungarian sabre fencer. He competed at the 1908 and 1912 Olympics and won both the individual and team events at both Games. He missed the 1920 Olympics, where Hungary was not allowed to compete, and qualified for the 1924 Games but left his place in the team to younger fencers. In 1982 he was inducted into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.\nFuchs studied law at the University of Budapest, defended a PhD in 1911, and became a lawyer. Apart from fencing and law, he was a top-ranked rower and bobsledder in Hungary and worked with the Budapest stock market.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of select Jewish fencers\nList of Jewish Olympic medalists\n\n\n== References ==\n\nReferences to disputing slander 1.) https://www.passport-collector.com/olympic-gold-medal-winner-and-wife-saved-by-wallenberg/\n2.) http://www.jewishsports.net/BioPages/JenoFuchs.htm Archived 27 July 2019 at the Wayback Machine\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nJoseph Siegman (2000). Jewish Sports Legends. Brassey's. pp. 1–72. ISBN 1-57488-284-8. Retrieved 6 January 2015.\n\"From the Ghetto to the Games: Jewish Athletes in Hungary\"; 1985 at the Wayback Machine (archived 29 May 2008)\nJenő Fuchs at the Hungarian Olympic Committee (in Hungarian)\nJenő Fuchs at Olympedia"}
{"title": "Jesse Owens", "requested": "Jesse Owens", "extract": "James Cleveland \"Jesse\" Owens (September 12, 1913 – March 31, 1980) was an American track and field athlete. He made history at the 1936 Olympic Games by winning four gold medals, setting individual Olympic records in each event, plus another as a member of the 400-meter relay. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest athletes in track and field history.\nOwens excelled in short sprints and the long jump and was lauded in his lifetime as \"perhaps the greatest and most famous athlete in track and field history\". Earlier he won four events, set five world records, and tied another—all in less than an hour, at the 1935 Big Ten Championships in Ann Arbor, Michigan, a feat that has never been equaled and was called \"the greatest 45 minutes ever in sport\". He won four NCAA titles in both 1935 and 1936, bringing his total to eight—an unparalleled achievement still unmatched.\nHe achieved international fame at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Germany, by winning four gold medals: 100 meters, long jump, 200 meters, and 4 × 100-meter relay. He was the most successful athlete at the Games and, as a black American man, was credited by ESPN with \"single-handedly crushing Hitler's myth of Aryan supremacy\".\nThe Jesse Owens Award is USA Track & Field's accolade for the year's best track and field athlete. In a 1950 Associated Press poll, Owens was voted the greatest track and field athlete for the first half of the century. In 1999, he made the six-man short-list for the BBC's Sports Personality of the Century. That same year, ESPN ranked him sixth-greatest North American athlete of the twentieth century and the highest-ranked in his sport.\n\n\n== Early life ==\nJesse Owens, originally known as J. C., on September 12, 1913. He was the youngest of ten children (three girls and seven boys) born to Henry Cleveland Owens (1881–1942), a sharecropper, and Mary Emma Fitzgerald (1876–1940) in Oakville, Alabama. He was the grandson of a slave. At age nine, he and his family moved to Cleveland, Ohio for better opportunities as part of the Great Migration (1910–70) when millions of African Americans left the segregated and rural South for the urban and industrial North. When his new teacher asked his name to enter in her roll book, he said \"J. C.\", but because of his strong Southern accent, she thought he said \"Jesse\". The name stuck, and he was known as Jesse Owens thereafter.\nIn his younger years, Owens took menial jobs in his spare time: he delivered groceries, loaded freight cars, and worked in a shoe repair shop while his father and older brother worked at a steel mill. During this period, Owens developed a passion for running. Throughout his life, Owens attributed the success of his athletic career to the encouragement of Charles Riley, his track coach at Fairmount Junior High School. Since Owens worked after class, Riley allowed him to practice before school instead.\nOwens and Minnie Ruth Solomon (1915–2001) met at Fairmont Junior High School in Cleveland when he was 15 and she was 13. They dated steadily through high school. Ruth gave birth to their first daughter, Gloria, in 1932. They married on July 5, 1935, and had two more daughters together: Marlene (1937), and Beverly (1940). They remained married until his death in 1980.\nOwens gained national attention as a student of East Technical High School in Cleveland; he equaled the world record of 9.4 seconds in the 100-yard (91 m) dash, broke the national high school record with 20.7 seconds in the 220-yard (200 m) dash, and long-jumped 24 feet 9+1⁄2 inches (7.56 m) at the 1933 National High School Championship in Chicago. His 100-yard dash remained the national high school record until 1967, while his 200-yard dash remained the national record for 20 years.\n\n\n== Career ==\n\n\n=== Ohio State University ===\nOwens entered Ohio State University in 1933 after his father found employment, which supported the family. Affectionately known as the \"Buckeye Bullet\" and under the coaching of Larry Snyder, Owens won a record eight individual NCAA championships, four each in 1935 and 1936.  His career total of eight individual NCAA titles remains the most, despite only two years of varsity competition—which included an undefeated junior year in 1936 where he won all 42 events he entered. Though Owens enjoyed athletic success, he was forced to live off campus with other African-American athletes. When he traveled with the team, Owens was restricted to ordering carry-out or eating at \"blacks-only\" restaurants and had to stay at \"blacks-only\" hotels. Owens did not receive a scholarship, so he continued to work part-time jobs to pay for school. Owens struggled as a student at Ohio State, and was placed on academic probation in 1936 and 1940. He dropped out in 1941 without earning a degree.\nDay of days\nOn May 25, 1935, Owens won four events and established six world records in athletics at the Big Ten Championships. On that day, Owens battled through a lower back injury, set five world records, and tied a sixth in 45 minutes from 3:15–4 p.m. during the Big Ten meet at Ferry Field in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He equaled the world record for the 100-yard dash (9.4 seconds), and set world records in the long jump (26 feet 8+1⁄4 inches or 8.13 metres, a world record that lasted for 25 years); 220-yard (201.2 m) sprint (20.3 seconds); and 220-yard low hurdles (22.6 seconds, the first to break 23 seconds). Both 220-yard records had smashed the metric records for 200 meters (flat and hurdles), which counted as two additional world records from the same performances. \n1936 Big Ten Championships\nAt the 1936 Big Ten Championships, Owens dominated, winning the long jump, 100-yard dash, 220-yard dash, and 100-yard low hurdles. With these victories, he concluded his Big Ten Championship career undefeated—winning nine titles in nine events.\n\n\n=== USA Track and Field Championships ===\nAt the 1934 USA Indoor Track and Field Championships, Owens captured the long jump gold with a world-record leap of 25 ft 3+1⁄8 in (7.699 m). Two years later, at his final appearance at the Outdoor Championships in 1936, he again shattered the long jump world record with a leap of 26 feet, 8¼ inches. He also set a championship record in the 100 meters, clocking 10.4 seconds. Over the course of his career at these championships, Owens amassed six gold medals—five in the long jump and one in the 100 meters.\n\n\n=== 1936 Berlin Summer Olympics ===\n\nIn the months prior to the Games, a movement gained momentum in favor of boycotting them given their racist attitudes towards Africans. The NAACP Owens convinced to declare \"If there are minorities in Germany who are being discriminated against, the United States should withdraw from the 1936 Olympics.\" Yet he and others eventually took part after Avery Brundage, president of the American Olympic Committee branded them \"un-American agitators\".\n\nIn 1936, Owens and his US teammates sailed on the SS Manhattan to the Games. Just before the competitions, Adidas athletic shoe company founder Adi Dassler visited Owens in the Olympic village and persuaded him to wear Gebrüder Dassler Schuhfabrik shoes; this was the first sponsorship for a male African American athlete.\nOn August 3, Owens won the 100 m dash with a time of 10.3 seconds, defeating teammate and college friend Ralph Metcalfe by one tenth of a second and Tinus Osendarp of the Netherlands by two-tenths.\nOn August 4, he won the long jump with a leap of 8.06 metres (26 ft 5 in) (3¼ inches short of his own world record). He initially credited this achievement to the technical advice that he received from Luz Long, the German competitor whom he defeated, but later admitted that this was not true, as he and Long did not meet until after the competition.\nOn August 5, he won the 200-meter sprint with a time of 20.7 seconds, defeating fellow American teammate Mack Robinson (Jackie Robinson's older brother).\nOn August 9, Owens won his fourth gold medal in the 4 × 100 m sprint relay when head coach Lawson Robertson replaced Jewish-American sprinters Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller with Owens and Ralph Metcalfe, who teamed with Frank Wykoff and Foy Draper to set a world record of 39.8 seconds. \nOwens's record-breaking performance of four gold medals was not equaled until Carl Lewis won gold medals in the same events at the 1984 Summer Olympics. Owens had set the world record in the long jump with a leap of 8.13 m (26 ft 8 in) in 1935, the year before the Berlin Olympics, and this record stood until it was broken in 1960 by countryman Ralph Boston. Owens was a spectator at the 1960 Summer Olympics when Boston took the gold medal in the long jump.\nThe long-jump victory is documented, along with many other 1936 events, in the 1938 film Olympia by Leni Riefenstahl. On August 1, 1936, Nazi leader, Adolf Hitler, shook hands with the German victors only and left the stadium. International Olympic Committee president Henri de Baillet-Latour insisted that Hitler greet every medalist or none at all. Hitler opted for the latter and skipped all further medal presentations.\nOwens ran his first race on August 2. He ran in the first (10:30 a.m.) and second (3:00 p.m.) qualifying rounds. He tied the Olympic and world record in the first race and broke them in the second race, but this was wind-assisted. Later the same day, Owens's African-American team-mate Cornelius Johnson won gold in the high jump final (which began at 5:00 p.m.) with a new Olympic record of 2.03 meters. Hitler did not publicly congratulate any of the medal winners; even so, the communist New York City newspaper the Daily Worker claimed Hitler received all the track winners except Johnson and left the stadium in a \"deliberate snub\" after watching Johnson's winning jump. Hitler was subsequently accused of failing to acknowledge Owens (who won gold medals on August 3, 4 (two), and 9) or shake his hand. Owens responded to these claims at the time:\n\nHitler had a certain time to come to the stadium and a certain time to leave. It happened he had to leave before the victory ceremony after the 100 meters [race began at 5:45 p.m.]. But before he left I was on my way to a broadcast and passed near his box. He waved at me and I waved back. I think it was bad taste to criticize the \"man of the hour\" in another country.\nIn an article dated August 4, 1936, African-American newspaper editor Robert L. Vann described witnessing Hitler \"salute\" Owens for having won gold in the 100 m sprint (August 3):\n\nAnd then ... wonder of wonders ... I saw Herr Adolph [sic] Hitler, salute this lad. I looked on with a heart which beat proudly as the lad who was crowned king of the 100 meters event, get an ovation the like of which I have never heard before. I saw Jesse Owens greeted by the Grand Chancellor of this country as a brilliant sun peeped out through the clouds. I saw a vast crowd of some 85,000 or 90,000 people stand up and cheer him to the echo.\n\nIn 2014, Eric Brown, British fighter pilot and test pilot, aged 17 in 1936 and later becoming the Fleet Air Arm's most decorated pilot, stated in a BBC documentary: \"I actually witnessed Hitler shaking hands with Jesse Owens and congratulating him on what he had achieved\". Additionally, an article in The Baltimore Sun in August 1936 reported that Hitler sent Owens a commemorative inscribed cabinet photograph of himself. Later, on October 15, 1936, Owens repeated this claim when he addressed an audience of African Americans at a Republican rally in Kansas City, remarking: \"Hitler didn't snub me—it was our president who snubbed me. The president didn't even send me a telegram.\"\nOwens's success at the games caused consternation for Hitler, who was using them to show the world a resurgent Nazi Germany. He and other government officials had hoped that German athletes would dominate the games. Nazi minister Albert Speer wrote that Hitler \"was highly annoyed by the series of triumphs by the marvelous colored American runner, Jesse Owens. People whose antecedents came from the jungle were primitive, Hitler said with a shrug; their physiques were stronger than those of civilized whites and hence should be excluded from future games.\"\nIn Germany, Owens was allowed to travel with and stay in the same hotels as whites, at a time when African Americans in many parts of the United States had to stay in segregated hotels. When Owens returned to the United States, he was greeted in New York City by Mayor Fiorello La Guardia. During a Manhattan ticker-tape parade in his honor, someone handed Owens a paper bag. Owens paid it little mind until the parade concluded. When he opened it up, he found that the bag contained $10,000 in cash (equivalent to $232,000 in 2025). Owens's wife, Ruth, later said: \"And he [Owens] didn't know who was good enough to do a thing like that. And with all the excitement around, he didn't pick it up right away. He didn't pick it up until he got ready to get out of the car\".\nAfter the parade, Owens was not permitted to enter through the main doors of the Waldorf Astoria New York and was instead forced to travel to the reception honoring him in a freight elevator. President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) never invited Jesse Owens to the White House. When the Democrats bid for his support, Owens rejected those overtures: as a staunch Republican, he endorsed Alf Landon, in the 1936 presidential race. Owens was employed to do campaign outreach for African American votes for Landon.\n\n\n== Later life ==\n\nOwens was quoted saying the secret behind his success was, \"I let my feet spend as little time on the ground as possible. From the air, fast down, and from the ground, fast up.\"\nAfter the 1936 Olympics, Avery Brundage organized a European exhibition tour to profit the AAU and USOC, both of which he led. Owens, exhausted but pressured to compete, ran multiple races across Europe with little rest, food, or support. Despite such treatment, Brundage continued booking events across Scandinavia. Owens, drained and frustrated, eventually refused to continue. Brundage retaliated by having Owens permanently suspended from amateur competition, which immediately ended his career. Owens was angry and stated that \"A fellow desires something for himself.\" As Ruth Owens later recalled, \"That Avery Brundage feller tore a big hole inside Jesse.\" Owens argued that the racial discrimination he had faced throughout his athletic career, such as his ineligibility for scholarships in college and his inability to take classes between training and working to pay his way, meant he had to give up on amateur athletics in pursuit of earning a living.\n\nAfter returning to the US, racism back home led to financial difficulty despite his successes. Owens struggled to find work and took on menial jobs as a gas station attendant, playground janitor, and manager of a dry cleaning firm and at times resorted to racing against motorbikes, cars, trucks, and horses for a cash prize. People say it was degrading for an Olympic champion to run against a horse, but what was I supposed to do? I had four gold medals, but you can't eat four gold medals. Owens broke racial barriers and did things that no other man had done before him. Yet after he returned home, he was not greeted with the glory and praise that White Olympians had received. Owens stated, \"No one had offered me a job\" and \"I had jumped farther and run faster than any man ever had before, and it left me with next to nothing.\" He wasn't treated like an Olympic gold medalist but instead, as any other African American. Another quote said, \"So I sold myself into a new kind of slavery. I was no longer a proud man who had won four Olympic gold medals. I was a spectacle, a freak who made his living by competing—dishonestly—against dumb animals.\" Despite his athletic triumphs, he was not spared from poverty and was forced to take on degrading work to afford basic necessities.\nOwens bridged the gap between racial disenfranchisement and opportunity. His Olympic medals showed the Jim Crow South and the world what was possible when African Americans were given a fair chance. Though many resisted racial integration, Owens served as a key figure for the beginning building blocks of the civil rights movement.\nOwens was banned from attending amateur events to enhance his visibility, and soon discovered that commercial opportunities had almost completely disappeared. In 1937, he briefly toured with a twelve-piece jazz band under contract with Consolidated Artists but found it unfulfilling. He also made appearances at baseball games and other events.\nOwens was involved politically and lent his support to the Republican Party and Landon in the 1936 United States Presidential Election, saying that Hitler congratulated him, but that he was snubbed by President Franklin Roosevelt. In 1942, Willis Ward—a friend and former competitor from the University of Michigan—who was then working at Ford Motor Company as Assistant Personnel Director, invited Owens to Detroit. Ward worked for the Ford Motor Company's \"ad hoc civil rights division, serving as the liaison between black and white workers\" and was an advocate for African American employees. Owens wound up replacing him and remained with Ford until 1946. In the late 1940s, Owens moved his family to Chicago and opened his own public relations agency.\nIn 1946, Owens collaborated with Abe Saperstein to establish the West Coast Negro Baseball League, where he served as Vice-President and owned the Portland (Oregon) Rosebuds franchise in Oregon. He toured with the Rosebuds, sometimes entertaining the audience in between doubleheader games by competing in races against horses. The WCBA disbanded after only two months.\nOwens helped promote the exploitation film Mom and Dad in African American neighborhoods. He tried to make a living as a sports promoter, essentially an entertainer. He would give local sprinters a 10- or 20-yard start and still beat them in the 100-yd (91-m) dash. He also challenged and defeated racehorses; as he revealed later, the trick was to race a high-strung Thoroughbred that would be frightened by the starter's shotgun and give him a bad jump. On the lack of opportunities, Owens added, \"There was no television, no big advertising, no endorsements then. Not for a black man, anyway.\"\nDuring spring training in 1965, Owens was hired by the New York Mets as a running instructor.\nOwens ran a dry cleaning business and worked as a gas station attendant to earn a living, but he eventually filed for bankruptcy. In 1966, he was convicted of tax evasion. At rock bottom, President Dwight D. Eisenhower enlisted Owens as a goodwill ambassador in 1955 and sent him to India, the Philippines, and Malaya to promote physical exercise and American freedom and economic opportunity. He continued his goodwill tours in the 1960s and 1970s. Although he lost his patronage job with the Illinois Youth Commission in 1960, Owens continued his product endorsement work for corporations such as Quaker Oats, Sears and Roebuck, and Johnson & Johnson. Owens traveled the world and spoke to companies such as the Ford Motor Company and stakeholders such as the United States Olympic Committee. In 1972, he and his wife retired to Arizona.\nOwens initially refused to support the black power salute by African-American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos at the 1968 Summer Olympics. He told them:\n\nThe black fist is a meaningless symbol. When you open it, you have nothing but fingers—weak, empty fingers. The only time the black fist has significance is when there's money inside. There's where the power lies.\nFour years later, in his 1972 book I Have Changed, he revised his opinion:\n\nI realized now that militancy in the best sense of the word was the only answer where the black man was concerned, that any black man who wasn't a militant in 1970 was either blind or a coward.\nOwens traveled to Munich for the 1972 Summer Olympics as a guest of the West German government, meeting West German Chancellor Willy Brandt and former boxer Max Schmeling.\nFrom 1974 to 1977, Owens served on the Boys Town Board of Directors, frequently meeting with students to share his life experiences and the challenges that he had overcome.\nA few months before his death, Owens unsuccessfully tried to convince President Jimmy Carter to withdraw his demand that the United States boycott the 1980 Moscow Olympics in protest of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. He argued that the Olympic ideal was supposed to be observed as a time-out from war and that it was above politics.\n\n\n=== Death ===\n\nOwens was a pack-a-day cigarette smoker for 35 years, starting at age 32. Beginning in December 1979, he was hospitalized on and off with an extremely aggressive and drug-resistant type of lung cancer. He died of the disease at age 66 in Tucson, Arizona, on March 31, 1980, with his wife and other family members at his bedside. He was buried next to the Lake of Memories at Oak Woods Cemetery in Chicago, near where his children and extended family still lived. The grave is inscribed:\n\nJesse Owens. Olympic Champion. 1936. Athlete and humanitarian. A master of the spirit as well as the mechanics of sports. A winner who knew that winning was not everything. He showed extraordinary love for his family and friends. His achievements have shown us all the promise of America. His faith in America inspired countless others to do their best for themselves and their country. September 12, 1913 – March 31, 1980.\nPresident Jimmy Carter issued a tribute to Owens, stating: \"Perhaps no athlete better symbolized the human struggle against tyranny, poverty, and racial bigotry.\"\n\n\n== Legacy ==\n\nOwens is widely considered one of the greatest athletes in history. Over the course of his career, he earned nine Big Ten titles, eight NCAA titles, and six USA Track & Field titles. His international legacy was cemented at the Olympics, where he won gold in all four events he entered—each in Olympic record time–delivering a powerful rebuttal to Hitler's ideology of Aryan supremacy and dealt a symbolic blow to the Nazi's racist propaganda. Several of his world records endured for decades, including his long jump record, which lasted 25 years, and his 100-meter dash record, which stood for 20.\nFollowing his athletic career, Owens experienced difficulties securing financial stability, a circumstance attributed in part to limited opportunities available to African Americans. Later in life, his contributions to sport and society were acknowledged through honors such as the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1976 and the Congressional Gold Medal posthumously in 1990.\n\n\"Giants like Jesse Owens show us why politics will never defeat the Olympic spirit. His character, his achievements have continued to inspire Americans as they did the whole world in 1936.\"—Gerald Ford\n\nOwens was honored by naming schools, streets, and athletic facilities after him—including Jesse Owens Memorial Stadium—and his life inspired documentaries, books, and the biopic Race. Notably, the documentary Olympic Pride, American Prejudice highlights his story as part of a broader examination of the 18 Black American athletes who competed in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. He is a member of several halls of fame, including the U.S. Olympic and National Track and Field Hall of Fame.\nThe dormitory that Owens occupied during the Berlin Olympics was fully restored into a living museum, with pictures of his accomplishments, and a letter (intercepted by the Gestapo) from a fan urging him not to shake hands with Hitler.\n\n\n== Athletic achievements ==\nSources:\n\n\n=== Fairmount Junior High School ===\nNote:\nAnnual Cleveland Athletic Club Indoor Meet at Cleveland Public Hall\n\n3× High jump champion (1928–1930)\n40-yard low hurdles champion (1929)\n40-yard dash champion (1929)\n\n\n=== East Technical High School ===\nNote:\nMansfield Interscholastic Relays\n\n2× Long jump champion (1932, 1933)\n100-yard dash champion (1933 tied H.S. record)\n220-yard dash champion (1933)\n4 × 220 yard relay champion (1933)\nIntraschool Meet in Cleveland (June 3, 1933)\n\n100 metres champion\n200 metres champion\nLong jump champion (H.S. record)\n4 × 220 yard relay champion\nOHSAA State Championships\n\n2× State Champions – East Technical HS (1932, 1933)\n3× Long jump champion (1931–1933 H.S. record)\n2× 100-yard dash champion (1932, 1933)\n2× 220-yard dash champion (1932, 1933 H.S. record)\n2× 4 × 220-yard relay champion (1932, 1933)\nNational High School Championships(June 17, 1933)\n\nNational Champions – East Technical HS\n100-yard dash champion (tied WR)\n220-yard dash champion (H.S. record)\nLong jump champion\nOhio State Fair (August 31, 1933)\n\n100-yard dash champion\n\n\n=== College – Ohio State University ===\nNote:\nWest Virginia Indoor Relays (February 10, 1934)\n\n60 metres champion (tied WR)\nFreshman Dual Meet vs. Indiana (February 20, 1934)\n\n60-yard dash champion\nLong jump champion\nFreshman Dual Meet vs. Michigan (February 26, 1934)\n\n60-yard dash champion (tied WR)\nLong jump champion\nFreshman Dual Meet vs. Chicago (March 3, 1934)\n\n60-yard dash champion\nLong jump champion\nAAU Meet in Cleveland (March 24, 1934)\n\n50-yard dash champion (tied WR)\nCity of Cincinnati AAU Indoor Meet (March 31, 1934)\n\n50-yard dash champion (tied WR)\nLong jump champion\nFreshman Dual Meet vs. Purdue (May 4, 1934)\n\n100-yard dash champion\n220-yard dash champion\nLong jump champion\nFreshman Dual Meet vs. Michigan (May 11, 1934)\n\n100-yard dash champion\n220-yard dash champion\nLong jump champion\nAnnual Intramural Meet (May 22, 1934)\n\n100-yard dash champion\n220-yard dash champion\nLong jump champion\nBig Ten Freshman Championships (May 26, 1934)\n\n100-yard dash champion\n220-yard dash champion\nLong jump champion\nMillrose Games (February 2, 1935)\n\n60-yard dash champion\nDual Meet vs. Indiana (February 9, 1935)\n\n60-yard dash champion\nLong jump champion\nDual Meet vs. Illinois (February 15, 1935)\n\n60-yard dash champion\n70-yard high hurdles champion\n75-yard low hurdles champion\nLong jump champion\nDual Meet vs. Michigan (March 2, 1935)\n\n65-yard low hurdles champion\nSt. Louis Relays (April 5, 1935)\n\n50-yard dash champion (tied WR)\nDrake Relays (April 26, 1935)\n\n100-yard dash champion\nLong jump champion (NR)\nDual Meet vs. Notre Dame (May 4, 1935)\n\n100-yard dash champion\n220-yard dash champion\nLong jump champion\nDual Meet vs. Michigan (May 11, 1935)\n\n100-yard dash champion\n220-yard dash champion\n220-yard low hurdles champion\nLong jump champion\nQuad Meet vs. Wisconsin, Northwestern and Chicago (May 18, 1935)\n\n100-yard dash champion (tied WR)\n220-yard dash champion\n220-yard low hurdles champion (WR)\nLong jump champion\nDual Meet vs. USC (June 15, 1935)\n\n100-yard dash champion\n220-yard dash champion\n220-yard low hurdles champion\nLong jump champion\nButler Indoor Relays\n\n2× 60-yard dash champion (1935 WR, 1936)\n2× 60-yard low hurdles champion (1935, 1936)\nLong jump champion (1936)\nPenn Relays (April 25, 1936)\n\n100 metres champion\nLong jump champion\nSprint medley relay champion\nDual Meet vs. Michigan (May 2, 1936)\n\n100-yard dash champion (tied #WR)\n220-yard dash champion\n220-yard low hurdles champion\nLong jump champion\nTri-Meet vs. Notre Dame and Michigan State (May 9, 1936)\n\n100-yard dash champion\n220-yard dash champion\n220-yard low hurdles champion\nLong jump champion\nDual Meet vs. Wisconsin (May 16, 1936)\n\n100-yard dash champion (#WR)\n220-yard dash champion\n220-yard low hurdles champion\nLong jump champion\nDual Meet vs. USC (June 13, 1936)\n\n100-yard dash champion (tied WR)\n220-yard dash champion\n220-yard low hurdles champion\nLong jump champion\nCentral Intercollegiate Conference Championships (1935, 1936)\n\nCentral Intercollegiate Conference Champions – Ohio State University (1935)\n2× 100-yard dash champion (1935, 1936)\n2× 220-yard dash champion (1935, 1936)\n2× Long jump champion (1935, 1936)\nBig Ten Indoor Championships (March 9, 1935)\n\n60-yard dash champion (1935 WR)\nBig Ten Outdoor Championships\n\n2× Long jump champion (1935 WR, 1936)\n2× 100-yard dash champion (1935 tied WR, 1936)\n2× 220-yard dash champion (1935 WR, 1936)\n2× 220-yard low hurdles champion (1935 WR, 1936)\nNCAA Championships\n\n2× Long jump champion (1935, 1936)\n100-yard dash champion (1935)\n100 metres champion (1936 WR)\n2× 220-yard low hurdles champion (1935, 1936)\n220-yard dash champion (1935)\n200 metres champion (1936)\n\n\n=== USA Track and Field Championships ===\nUSA Outdoor Track and Field Championships\n\n100 metres silver medalist (1934)\n2× 100 metres bronze medalist (1933, 1935)\nLong jump silver medalist (1935)\n100 metres gold medalist (1936)\n3× Long jump gold medalist (1933, 1934, 1936)\nUSA Indoor Track and Field Championships\n\n60 metres silver medalist (1935 WR, semi-final heat)\n2× Long jump gold medalist (1934 WR, 1935 WR)\n\n\n=== 1936 Olympics ===\nOlympic Trials\n\n100 metres champion\n200 metres champion (WR)\nLong jump champion\nOlympics\n\n100 metres gold medalist (OR)\n200 metres gold medalist (WR)\nLong jump gold medalist (OR)\n4 × 100 metres relay gold medalist (WR)\n\n\n=== World records ===\nSources:\n50-yard dash\n\n1933: 5.2 seconds\nFebruary 19, 1939: Broken by Henry Norwood Ewell in 5.1 seconds\n60-yard dash (indoor)\n\nMarch 23, 1935: 6.09 seconds\nFebruary 28, 1959: Broken by Herb Carper in 6 seconds flat\n60 metres dash (indoor)\n\nFebruary 23, 1935: 6.6 seconds\nMarch 12, 1955: Broken by Heinz Fütterer in 6.5 seconds\n100-yard dash\n\nJune 17, 1933: Tied WR in 9.4 seconds\nMay 15, 1948: Broken by Melvin E. Patton in 9.3 seconds\n100 metres dash\n\nJune 20, 1936: 10.2 seconds\nAugust 3, 1956: Broken by Willie Williams in 10.1 seconds\n220-yard dash\n\nMay 25, 1935: 20.3 seconds\nMay 7, 1949: Broken by Melvin E. Patton in 20.2 seconds\n200 metres dash (curve)\n\nAugust 5, 1936: 20.7 seconds\nMay 26, 1951: Broken by Andy Stanfield in 20.6 seconds\n220-yard low hurdles\n\nMay 25, 1935: 22.6 seconds\nJune 8, 1940: Broken by Fred Wolcott in 22.5 seconds\nLong jump\n\nMay 25, 1935: 26 feet 8¼ inches or 8.13 metres\nAugust 12, 1960: Broken by Ralph Boston with a leap of 26 feet 11¼ inches or 8.21 metres\nLong jump (indoor)\n\nFebruary 23, 1935: 25 feet 9 inches or 7.85 metres\nFebruary 20, 1960: Broken by Irvin Roberson with a leap of 25 feet 9.5 inches or 7.86 metres\n4 × 100 metres relay\n\nAugust 9, 1936: 39.8 seconds along with Ralph Metcalfe, Foy Draper, and Frank Wykoff\nDecember 1, 1956: Broken by Ira Murchison, Leamon King, Thane Baker, and Bobby Morrow in 39.5 seconds\n\n\n=== Non-standard world records ===\nSource:\n90-yard dash\n\nSet by Charles Paddock in 1921 with a time of 8.8 seconds\nBroken by Jesse Owens on May 4, 1934, with a time of 8.6 seconds\n100-yard dash (15-yard head start)\n\nSet by Frank Wykoff in 1930 with a time of 8.7 seconds\nBroken by Jesse Owens on April 23, 1935, in 8.6 seconds\n120-yard dash\n\nSet by Howard Drew in 1914 with a time of 11.6 seconds\nBroken by Jesse Owens on May 4, 1934, with a time of 11.5 seconds\n\n\n== Recognition ==\n\n\n=== Halls of Fame ===\nHelms Athletic Foundation Hall of Fame – Inaugural Class of 1949\nDrake Relays Hall of Fame – Inaugural Class of 1959\nAlabama Sports Hall of Fame – Class of 1970\nOATCCC Hall of Fame – Class of 1970\nNational Track and Field Hall of Fame – Inaugural Class of 1974\nGreater Cleveland Sports Hall of Fame – Inaugural Class of 1976\nOhio State Athletics Hall of Fame – Inaugural Class of 1977\nNSMA Hall of Fame – Class of 1978\nU.S. Olympic Hall of Fame – Inaugural Class of 1983\nNational High School Hall of Fame – Class of 1983\nArizona Runner's Hall of Fame – Class of 2012\nNational High School Track and Field Hall of Fame – Inaugural Class of 2018\nCollegiate Athlete Hall of Fame – Inaugural Class of 2022\nUnited States Athletics Hall of Fame – Inaugural Class of 2023\nOhio Sports Hall of Fame – Inaugural Class of 2024\nEast Technical High School Hall of Fame – Honorary Inductee\n\n\n=== Awards and tributes ===\n1930: The city's athletic council voted him the most outstanding junior high athlete.\n1936: The Associated Press named Owens the most outstanding athlete of the Olympic Trials.\n1936: AP Athlete of the Year (Male)\n1936: Four Olympic oak saplings, one for each Olympic gold medal, from the German Olympic Committee, planted.\n1950: Voted the greatest black athlete of all time and the greatest track and field athlete for the first half of the century in a poll conducted by the Associated Press.\n1950: At the 50th anniversary of the Big Ten Championships, Owens was unanimously named the top track athlete of the half-century and the only athlete selected for the all-star team in more than one individual event—earning spots in the 100-yard dash, 220-yard dash, 220-yard low hurdles, and long jump.\n1955: President Dwight D. Eisenhower honored Owens by naming him an \"Ambassador of Sports\".\nOctober 18, 1955: Track and Field magazine names Owens all-time Track and Field athlete.\n1956: Owens was elected an honorary member of OSU's chapter of the Senior honor society Sphinx.\n1959: Owens returned to Des Moines and was celebrated at the Drake Relays as the most outstanding athlete to compete in the first 50 years of the competition.\nOctober 1963: Track & Field News named Owens the athlete of the decade from 1931–1940.\n1965: The Ohio State Alumni Association presented Owens with the Alumni Citizenship Award.\n1970: Receives OSU Centennial Award.\n1971: The Ivory Coast named the street on which the U.S. embassy is located \"Rue Jesse Owens\".\n1972: The Ohio State University awarded Owens an honorary doctorate of athletic arts.\n1974: The NCAA presented Owens with the Theodore Roosevelt Award.\n1976: Awarded Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Gerald Ford.\n1976: Recipient of the Silver Olympic Order for his quadruple victory in the 1936 games and his defense of sport and the ethics of sport.\n1978: Receives the Roy Wilkins Award from the NAACP.\n1979: Awarded Living Legend Award by President Jimmy Carter.\n1979: The Spirit of America Festival honored Owens with the Audie Murphy Patriotism Award.\n1980: Asteroid newly discovered by Antonín Mrkos at the Kleť Observatory named 6758 Jesseowens.\n1980: Jesse Owens Academy in Chicago was named in his honor, but it closed in 2013 and merged with Gompers Elementary. Following public outcry, the merged school was once again named after him.\n1980: The Chicago Park District renamed Stony Island Park, Jesse Owens Park in his honor.\n1980: Jesse Owens Park, in Tucson, Arizona, is a center of local youth athletics there.\n1980: The Ohio Stadium track and University Recreation Centers were named after Owens.\n1981: USA Track and Field created the Jesse Owens Award which is given annually to the country's top track and field athlete.\n1981: The International Athletic Association has annually presented the Jesse Owens International Trophy, with the exception of a ten-year break from 2004 to 2014.\n1982: In Cleveland, Ohio, a statue of Owens in his Ohio State track suit was installed at Fort Huntington Park, west of the old Courthouse.\n1982: The Big Ten Athlete of the Year award is named in his honor.\n1983: Track and field stadium at Cal State Los Angeles is named in Owens's honor.\n1984: Street south of the Olympic Stadium in Berlin renamed Jesse-Owens-Allee\n1984: For his contribution to sports in Los Angeles, Owens was honored with a Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum \"Court of Honor\" plaque by the Coliseum commissioners.\n1984: Secondary school Jesse Owens Realschule/Oberschule in Lichtenberg, Berlin named for Owens.\n1987: NYC Parks named the playground at Stuyvesant and Lafayette Avenues the Jesse Owens Playground.\nMarch 28, 1990: Posthumously presented a Congressional Gold Medal by President George H. W. Bush.\n1990 and 1998: Two U.S. postage stamps have been issued to honor Owens, one in each year.\n1996: Owens's hometown of Oakville, Alabama, dedicated the Jesse Owens Memorial Park and Museum along with a statue in his honor at the same time that the Olympic torch came through the community, 60 years after his Olympic wins. An article in the Wall Street Journal of June 7, 1996, covered the event and included this inscription written by poet Charles Ghigna that appears on a bronze plaque at the park:\n\n1999: Ranked the sixth greatest North American athlete of the twentieth century and the highest-ranked in his sport by ESPN.\n1999: On the six-man shortlist for the BBC's Sports Personality of the Century.\n2001: Ohio State University dedicated Jesse Owens Memorial Stadium for track and field events. A sculpture honoring Owens occupies a place of honor in the esplanade leading to the rotunda entrance to Ohio Stadium. Owens competed for the Buckeyes on the track surrounding the football field that existed prior to the 2001 expansion of Ohio Stadium. The campus also houses three recreational centers for students and staff named in his honor.\n2002: Scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Owens on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.\n2005: Posthumously receives the IAAF Golden Order of Merit.\n2009: At the 2009 World Athletic Championships in Berlin, all members of the United States Track and Field team wore badges with \"JO\" on them to commemorate Owens's victories in the same stadium 73 years before.\n2009: The Drake Relays honored Owens as the Athlete of the Century.\n2010: Ohio Historical Society proposed Owens as a finalist from a statewide vote for inclusion in Statuary Hall at the United States Capitol.\nNovember 15, 2010: The city of Cleveland renamed East Roadway, between Rockwell and Superior avenues in Public Square, Jesse Owens Way.\n2011: Ohio State University paid tribute to Owens by unveiling the Jesse Owens Memorial Statue outside the Jesse Owens Memorial Stadium.\n2011: In the Big Ten Icons countdown of the Top 50 Athletes on the Big Ten Network, Owens was ranked the third greatest athlete in Big Ten history.\n2012: 80,000 individual pixels in the audience seating area were used as a giant video screen to show footage of Owens running around the stadium in the London 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony, just after the Olympic cauldron had been lit.\n2012: The Jesse Owens Room, named in his honor at the NCAA campus in Indianapolis.\n2016: A portion of Highway 36 beginning at I-65 Exit 328 and ending at the Lawrence County line just west of Danville was renamed Jesse Owens Parkway.\n2016: The Jesse Owens Olympic Spirit Award is presented annually by the U.S. Olympic Committee to recognize those who have served as an inspiration in society.\n2017: Inaugural recipient of the AAU Gussie Crawford Lifetime Achievement Award.\nJuly 2018: Ohio governor John Kasich dedicated the 75th state park, Jesse Owens State Park. It is located on AEP reclaimed mining land south of Zanesville, OH.\n2021: A horticulturally propagated tree from the original Jesse Owens Olympic Oak was planted by the Rockefeller Park Lagoon. In 2022, another was planted beside the original tree at James Ford Rhodes High School.\n2023: The team at University Circle Inc. dedicated the Jesse Owens Olympic Oak Plaza in Rockefeller Park.\n2024: Posthumously received the Olympians for Life award by World Olympians Association.\n2024: Named the greatest U.S. Summer Olympic athlete of all time by The Sporting News.\n2024: A plaque in honor of Owens's track and field accomplishments on the Day of days is dedicated outside the University of Michigan's Ferry Field.\n2024: The former home of Owens was unanimously approved to become a Cleveland landmark.\nPhoenix, Arizona named the Jesse Owens Medical Centre in his honor, as well as Jesse Owens Parkway.\nLA County Parks and Recreation renamed Sportsman Park to Jesse Owens Park in his honor.\nP.S. 26 in Brooklyn, New York, is named the Jesse Owens School.\n\n\n=== Literature ===\n2006: The Book Thief by Markus Zusak is released, in which a character named Rudy Steiner idolizes Owens.\n2025: The book Jesse Owens by Alain Foix was awarded the Sportilivre Prize by the Voies Civiles think tank.\n\n\n== The Jesse Owens Rising Star Award ==\nBeginning in 2024, a collaboration among the Owens family, the Jesse Owens Foundation, and the Wanda Diamond League recognized two exceptional emerging top-performing male and female athletes, aged 23 or under.\nEach winner receives a bronze statuette of Owens designed by Belgian sculptor Jan Desmarets. Two oak trees are planted in the host city in honor of the two winners.\nThe inaugural awards ceremony was held in Brussels in September 2024, honoring 2023 World Championship silver medalist Diribe Welteji as the top female performer and 2024 Olympic gold medalist Letsile Tebogo as the top male performer.\n\n\n== Filmography ==\n\n\n=== Other ===\n2017: In Get Out, a film directed by Jordan Peele, the villainous patriarch Roman Armitage lost the qualification round for the 1936 Olympics to Owens, instigating his neurosurgical research and theft of young black men via brain transplant.\n2019: In Jojo Rabbit, directed by Taika Waititi, an incarnation of Adolf Hitler refers to the character Elsa as \"a little female Jewish Jesse Owens\".\n2023: In The Boys in the Boat, Jyuddah Jaymes portrays Owens in a cameo as the University of Washington Eight rowing team enters the stadium with the United States Olympic team.\n\n\n== Further reading ==\nNeimark, Paul G. (1970). The Jesse Owens Story. Putnam. p. 109.\nNeimark, Paul G. (1985). Jesse: The Man Who Outran Hitler. Ballantine Books. p. 224.\nJeremy Schaap (2007). Triumph: The Untold Story of Jesse Owens and Hitler's Olympics. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. p. 272.\nEdmondson, Jacqueline (2007). Jesse Owens: A Biography. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 136.\nJeff Burlingame (2008). Jesse Owens: I Always Loved Running. Enslow Publishing. p. 128.\nGentry, Tony; Wagner, Heather Lehr (2009). Jesse Owens: Champion Athlete. Infobase Publishing. p. 116.\nBuckley, James (2015). Who Was Jesse Owens?. Penguin Workshop. p. 112.\nBrooks, F. Erik; Jones, Kevin M. (2022). Jesse Owens: A Life in American History. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 200.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists at a single Games\nNCAA Track and Field Championships\nUSA Track and Field Championships\nJesse Owens Memorial Stadium\nJesse Owens International Trophy\nNight of Legends awards\n\n\n== Notes ==\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nOfficial website\nJesse Owens Museum\nJesse Owens Information\nFootage of Jesse Owens winning 100m Olympic gold in 1936\nJesse Owens Archived February 24, 2017, at the Wayback Machine – An American Experience Documentary\nThis is your Life: Jesse Owens, with Ralph Edwards (video, 25 min.). NBC, 1960\nObituary, New York Times, April 1, 1980\nJesse Owens at IMDb\nJesse and Me (2019) at IMDb\nOfficial \"Jesse Owens Movie\" Website at the Wayback Machine (archived November 29, 2006)\nOwens's accomplishments and encounter with Adolf Hitler (ESPN)\nJesse Owens video newsreel\nJesse Owens video in Riefenstahl's Olympia (1936) Archived February 27, 2021, at the Wayback Machine\nJesse Owens at the United States Olympic Team at the Wayback Machine (archived July 5, 2006)\nPath of the Olympic Torch to Owens's birthplace in North Alabama at the Wayback Machine (archived March 24, 2005)\nJesse Owens article at the Wayback Machine (archived October 6, 2013), Encyclopedia of Alabama\nJesse Owens at the USATF Hall of Fame (archived)\nJesse Owens at the Team USA Hall of Fame"}
{"title": "Jessica Fox (canoeist)", "requested": "Jessica Fox (canoeist)", "extract": "Jessica Esther Fox  (born 11 June 1994) is a French-born Australian Olympic and world champion slalom canoeist.\nFox made her Olympic debut at 18 years of age in the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, where she won a silver medal in the K1 event. She won a bronze medal in the same event four years later in the Rio de Janeiro Olympics, and again at the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics, before finally winning the gold medal in the K1 event in Paris at the 2024 Summer Olympics. Fox is the sole Olympic champion in the C1 event, having won the gold medal in Tokyo at the 2020 Summer Olympics when the event debuted at the Olympic Games, and again finishing first at the 2024 Summer Olympics. Her six olympic medals make her the most decorated canoe slalom paddler, male or female, in Olympic history. She also won a gold medal at the 2010 Summer Youth Olympics in the K1 event.\nFox has won 25 medals at the ICF Canoe Slalom World Championships with 17 golds (C1: 2013, 2014, 2015, 2018; K1: 2014, 2017, 2018, 2023, 2026; C1 team: 2013, 2015, 2019; K1 team: 2023, 2026; Kayak cross: 2021, 2022; Kayak cross individual: 2026), five silvers (C1: 2019, 2022; K1: 2019, 2022; C1 team: 2017) and three bronzes (C1: 2010, 2023; K1 team: 2017). Her 12 gold medals in individual events make her the most successful paddler, male or female, in World Championship history.\nFox has won the overall World Cup title seven times in the C1 class (2013, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2023, 2024) and six times in the K1 class (2018, 2019, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2026). She has finished the year as the World No. 1 in C1 12 times, including an uninterrupted streak from 2013 to 2023, and World No. 1 in K1 eight times.\nFox, a 12-time individual world champion, 13-time World Cup champion and three-time individual Olympic champion, is considered the greatest individual paddler of all time.\nDuring the Paris 2024 Olympic Games Fox was elected to the IOC Athletes' Commission as one of four new members until the Brisbane 2032 Games.\n\n\n== Early life ==\nFox was born in Marseille, France, and when she was four years old, she moved to the suburb of Penrith, in Sydney, with her family. Fox is Jewish, as is her mother, whereas her father is not. Her parents are Richard Fox and Myriam Fox-Jerusalmi, who both competed as canoeists at the Olympics: her father for Great Britain at the 1992 Games, and her mother for France at the 1996 Games, where she won a bronze medal. Her father is Second Vice President of the International Canoe Federation, as well as Australian Canoeing's high-performance manager, and a five-time world champion. Her younger sister Noemie Fox is also a world and Olympic champion slalom canoeist, and her aunt Rachel Crosbee is a former world championship slalom canoe silver medalist.\nFox attended Leonay Public School and then Blaxland High School, where she completed her HSC year in 2011 by ranking first in New South Wales for PDHPE, and achieved an ATAR score of 99.1. She studied in the Elite Athlete Program at the University of Sydney, where she is working on a degree in media/communications. She is studying for a Bachelor of Social Science (Psychology) at Swinburne Online. She is bilingual in English and French.\nFox suffered a back injury that impacted her performance in 2012. In 2025, she underwent surgery to remove a kidney tumour, forcing her withdrawal from the Canoe Slalom World Cup in Europe.\n\n\n== Career ==\n\nFox races in K1, C1 and Kayak Cross events and is coached by her mother, Myriam. She started in the sport in 2005 by canoeing on the Nepean River. She has a scholarship and is affiliated with the Australian Institute of Sport and the New South Wales Institute of Sport. In club competitions, she represents the Penrith Valley Canoe Club.\n\n\n=== 2009–2012: Rise through the ranks ===\nIn September 2009, Fox made her Australian senior national team bid. She competed at the 2009 ICF World Ranking in Merano, Italy, finishing third in the K1 event. At the 2009 AYOF event in Penrith, New South Wales, she finished first in the women's K1 event.\nFox placed 5th in the K1 event and won a bronze medal in the C1 event at the 2010 World Championships in Tacen. At the 2010 Summer Youth Olympics in Singapore, she won the gold in the girls' K1 slalom event. At the 2010 Junior World Championships in Foix, she won gold in K1, and won the inaugural C1 event at that level. She won her first World Cup by taking out the C1 event at the third round in La Seu d'Urgell. Domestically, Fox won the C1 event and placed 9th in the K1 event at the Oceania Continental Championships in Penrith (counting to World Cup points), and placed 1st and 3rd at the National Championships in Eildon, Victoria, in the C1 and K1 events, respectively.\nIn 2011, Fox won gold medals in the C1 event at World Cups 2 and 3. At the 2011 World Championships in Bratislava, Slovakia, she finished 19th, which gave Australia an automatic spot in the event at the 2012 Summer Olympics. She won silver medals at Australian Open and the Oceania Championships in the women's K1 event in 2011.\nIn 2012, Fox was selected to represent Australia for the first time at the Olympics in the women's K1 event, where she won the silver medal at the age of 18. Her pre-Olympic schedule included training on the Olympic course in London in April, and World Cup competitions in Wales, France and Spain, plus the Junior World Championship in the United States. Her result has been described as competitive revenge against the 44-year-old Czech paddler Štěpánka Hilgertová, who had beaten Fox's mother Myriam to the K1 gold medal sixteen years earlier in the 1996 Summer Olympics. Her silver medal improved on her mother's bronze from Atlanta 1996 and her father's fourth place in Barcelona 1992, and earned her the nickname \"the Silver Fox\" from teammates and the press.\n\n\n=== 2013–2016: Ascendancy to the top ===\nFox won her first World Championship titles in the C1 event and the C1 team event at the 2013 World Championships in Prague.\nAt the 2014 World Championships at Deep Creek Lake, in the United States, Fox became the first athlete to win the C1 and K1 events at the same World Championships, besting Jana Dukátová, who became the first to do it at separate events winning a world championship title in K1 in 2006 and C1 in 2010.\nAt the 2016 Summer Olympics, Fox won her second Olympic medal, with a bronze in the K1 event in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. After winning multiple World Cup races, she won the overall World Cup title in the Kayak Single Slalom (K1) and was second overall in Canoe Single Slalom (C1). She also won the U23 World Championships in K1 and C1 in Kraków, Poland. Additionally, she also won the Oceania Championships Slalom C1 in Penrith, Australia.\n\n\n=== 2017–2020: Record breaking dominance ===\nIn 2017, Fox won the K1 event at the 2017 World Championships. Fox won the C1 and finished second in the K1 for the 2017 World Cup, and was awarded the Canoeist of the Year award, and the NSW Athlete of the Year award.\nIn 2018, Fox was a double ICF Canoe World Champion in both the C1 and K1 at the 2018 World Championships, and again won a number of World Cups in both disciplines, finishing first in both the C1 and K1 2018 World Cup standings. Her 2018 season featured an undefeated run in C1, sweeping all five World Cups and the World Championships, including three consecutive 'Golden Doubles' at the first three World Cups. In 2019, Fox repeated her World Cup dominance, again finishing first in both the K1 and C1 World Cup standings. Fox won the Oceania Championships in Canoe Slalom again, and won silver in both K1 and C1 events at the 2019 World Championships .\n\n\n=== 2021–2023: Olympic heartbreak to glory ===\nAt the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, held in 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Fox finished third to win the bronze medal in the Women's K1. Fox's final run included a penalty time of 4 seconds, ultimately putting her final time 1.23 seconds behind the winner Ricarda Funk. During the event, Fox also gained media attention for using a condom to repair her kayak. Fox was also the fastest qualifier for the final of the inaugural women's C1 event at the Olympics, where she went on to win her first Olympic gold medal, beating silver medalist Mallory Franklin of Great Britain by more than three seconds with a penalty-free run.\nAt the 2021 World Championships in Bratislava, Fox did not progress to the final of either the K1 or C1 for the first time in her entire career, after incurring 50-second penalties in the semi-finals of both. On the final day of competition she became World Champion in the kayak cross, an 8th individual world title in a 3rd unique event, in just her third international appearance in the event.\n\n\n=== 2024: Paris Olympics ===\nFox was selected as the opening ceremony flag bearer to represent Australia at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, France. In her fourth Olympic Games, Fox was able to claim her first Olympic gold medal in the K1 event, having previously won one silver and two bronze medals in this event. Fox also managed to defend her C1 title. In doing so, Fox became the first paddler, male or female, to win and hold both K1 and C1 Olympic titles, and also became the most decorated athlete in canoe slalom at the Olympics. In the inaugural kayak cross event at the Olympics, Fox was eliminated in the heats, finishing 26th overall, in a race that featured her sister, Noemie Fox, who went on to win the gold medal.\n\n\n== Awards and honours ==\nFox was the 2010 Penrith Press Junior Sports Star of the year and NewsLocal Medal winner.\nShe has also served as the ambassador for the Premier's Sporting Challenge.\nIn 2010, she was also named the Cumberland Courier Junior Sport Star, NSWIS Junior Athlete of the Year and the Pierre de Coubertin AOC award.\nIn 2009, 2010 and 2011, she was named the Junior Canoeist of the Year Australian Canoeing.\nIn 2011, she was named the Australian Canoeing Athlete of the Year.\nShe earned the AIS Secondary Education award in 2011.\nShe was awarded AIS Sport Performance Awards – Athlete of the Year for 2014.\nFrom 2014 to 2019 she was named Maccabi World Union Australia's Outstanding Jewish Sportswoman.\nIn 2018, she won AIS Sport Performance Award Female Athlete of the Year.\nIn 2021, Fox was appointed member of the IOC Athletes' Commission. In 2024, she was elected to that committee.\nIn the 2022 Australia Day Honours Fox was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia.\n\n\n== Television ==\nIn 2017, Fox appeared as a celebrity contestant on the Australian version of Hell's Kitchen. She came 7th overall.\nIn August 2024, Fox filled in for Alex Cullen on the Nine Network's Today as a sport presenter.\n\n\n== Career statistics ==\n\n\n=== Major championships results timeline ===\n\n\n=== World Cup individual podiums ===\n\n1 Oceania Canoe Slalom Open counting for World Cup points\n\n\n=== Complete World Cup results ===\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of select Jewish canoeists\nList of Jewish Olympic medalists\nList of Youth Olympic Games gold medalists who won Olympic gold medals\nList of flag bearers for Australia at the Olympics\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nJessica Fox at Paddle Worldwide\nJessica Fox at the Australian Olympic Committee \nJessica Fox at Olympics.com \nJess Fox at Olympedia \nJess Fox at InterSportStats \nOfficial website"}
{"title": "Jessica von Bredow-Werndl", "requested": "Jessica von Bredow-Werndl", "extract": "Jessica von Bredow-Werndl (born 16 February 1986 in Rosenheim) is a German Olympic dressage rider.\n\n\n== Career ==\nVon Bredow-Werndl began riding at the age of four. Von Bredow-Werndl received her first horse at the age of seven, a Lewitzer pony named Little Girl. Paul Elzenbaumer was the first trainer for Jessica and her brother Benjamin. From 1995 to 2007, Stephan Münch helped them proceed from E level to Grand Prix.\nIn 1998 and 1999, Von Bredow-Werndl and her horse Nino the Champ qualified for the finals at the German Bundeschampion in Warendorf. At the age of 15, when she transitioned to riding larger horses she qualified for the top three at the Preis der Besten in Waredorf. She competed with a horse named Nokturn.\nOne year later in 2002, she went to the European championships. The horses Bonito and Duchess helped her achieve six gold and two silver medals in just three years. In that time, she also managed to win three German national titles. By 2006 she had worked her way up to the Grand Prix level.\nJessica and Benjamin decided to establish themselves at the Grand Prix level with the young horses that they trained themselves. They were assisted by Isabell Werth. In the five years that she assisted the siblings, she brought them together with Jonny Hilberath. They began working with him in 2011. They also work with Andreas Hausberger, a head rider of the Spanish riding school in Vienna.\nIn 2012, Von Bredow-Werndl began working with Unee, a black stallion. They have developed significantly since their first success in regional tournaments. Since then, they have made their way onto the international scene and have begun to gain attention.\nVon Bredow-Werndl qualified for the 2014 Dressage World Cup Final in Lyon after finishing fourth in the Western European League rankings. She won the Western European League qualifying stage in Gothenburg during the 2013/2014 season. At the finals held in Lyon's expo center she finished seventh.\nVon Bredow-Werndl also competed at the following World Cup finals in 2015 in Las Vegas, Nevada. This time she finished third, getting a podium, scoring above 80%. Von Bredow-Werndl successfully defended her third-place finish at the next edition of the World Cup Final in 2016.\nShe was selected to be a part of the German team at the 2015 European Dressage Championships where she won a bronze medal in the team competition and finished seventh in the freestyle competition.\nJessica became the individual Olympic Champion during the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo with her mare Dalera, scoring 91.732% in the individual freestyle. She also earned the gold team medal with Isabell Werth and Dorothee Schneider.\nShe also won Individual gold during the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, riding TSF Dalera BB, and Team gold alongside Isabell Werth and Frederic Wandres.\n\n\n== Personal bests ==\n\n\n== International championship results ==\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nJessica von Bredow-Werndl at FEI (alternate link) \nJessica von Bredow-Werndl at Olympics.com\nJessica von Bredow-Werndl at the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics (archived)\nJessica von Bredow-Werndl at Olympedia \nJessica von Bredow-Werndl at InterSportStats\nJessica von Bredow-Werndl at Team Deutschland (in German) \nJessica von Bredow-Werndl on Instagram"}
{"title": "Jim Lightbody", "requested": "Jim Lightbody", "extract": "James Davies Lightbody (March 16, 1882 – March 2, 1953) was an American middle distance runner, winner of six Olympic medals (two of which are no longer recognized by the International Olympic Committee following its downgrading of the 1906 Intercalated Games) in the early 20th century.\nLightbody, born in Pittsburgh and graduating from Central High School in Muncie, Indiana, had great success at the 1904 Summer Olympics, held in St. Louis, Missouri, United States. He was not favoured in any of the three individual events in which he competed, but nevertheless won all three.\nFirst, he won the 2590 metre steeplechase, and then sprinting to the 800 metres title days later. Finally, he won the 1500 metres in a new world record. Later that day, he added a second place to his tally, when he competed with the Chicago Athletic Association in the 4-mile team event.\nIn 1905, Lightbody won AAU titles in both the 800 and 1500 metres, and the following year he competed in his second Olympics, the 1906 Intercalated Games of in Athens. He successfully defended his 1500 metres title, and placed second in the 800 metres.\nLightbody competed again in the 1908 Summer Olympics. In the 800 metres, he placed only fourth in his first round heat. Lightbody lost a close race to fellow American James Sullivan in the first round of the 1500 metres, eliminating him from further competition. He was defeated by a mere ten yards by Harry Sewell in the first round of the 3200 metre steeplechase and did not qualify for the final.\nLightbody died in 1953, two weeks short of his 71st birthday in Charleston, South Carolina.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== Sources ==\nCook, Theodore Andrea (1908). The Fourth Olympiad, Being the Official Report. London: British Olympic Association.\nDe Wael, Herman (2001). \"Athletics 1908\". Herman's Full Olympians. Archived from the original on 27 September 2006. Retrieved 27 July 2006.\nWudarski, Pawel (1999). \"Wyniki Igrzysk Olimpijskich\" (in Polish). Archived from the original on 16 February 2009. Retrieved 27 July 2006.\nEvans, Hilary; Gjerde, Arild; Heijmans, Jeroen; Mallon, Bill; et al. \"Jim Lightbody\". Olympics at Sports-Reference.com. Sports Reference LLC. Archived from the original on 2013-04-30.\n\n\n== External links ==\nJames Lightbody at World Athletics\nJames Lightbody at Tilastopaja (registration required)\nJames Lightbody at Athletics Podium\nJames Lightbody at Olympics.com\nJames Lightbody at Olympedia"}
{"title": "Jin Jong-oh", "requested": "Jin Jong-oh", "extract": "Jin Jong-oh (Korean: 진종오; pronounced [tɕin.dʑoŋ.o]; born 24 September 1979) is a South Korean sports shooter who competed at the 2004, 2008, 2012 and 2016 Summer Olympics. The only individual four-time Olympic champion in shooting, he is the most successful individual shooter at the Olympics, being the only athlete to have won three consecutive Olympic gold medals in an event (men's 50 metre pistol) in shooting. He holds the world record in both 10 metre air pistol and 50 metre pistol and held the final world record in 50 metre pistol until Jitu Rai broke it in 2017.\n\n\n== Career ==\nOn 17 August 2004, Jin won the silver medal in the men's 50 m pistol at the 2004 Summer Olympics, with two low-scoring shots in the final round after winning the qualification round.\nOn 12 August 2008, Jin won the gold medal in the men's 50 m pistol at the 2008 Summer Olympics. He also gained the silver medal in the men's 10 m air pistol on 9 August of the same year.\nOn 28 July 2012, Jin won the gold medal in the men's 10 m air pistol at the 2012 Summer Olympics. On 5 August, he won the gold medal in the 50m, becoming the first man to successfully defend the 50-metre pistol Olympic title. By doing so, Jin also became the first man to win the 10 metre air pistol and 50 metre pistol gold medals at the same Olympics, and one of the five shooters to win two individual gold medals at one Olympics, being the first man to have done so since Otto Olsen of Norway at the 1920 Summer Olympics. He is one of three shooters to have won three Olympic individual gold medals, along with Ralf Schumann of Germany and Kim Rhode of the United States. He became the first Korean athlete to win three individual Olympic gold medals, to win four (and five) individual Olympic medals, to defend an individual title in the Summer Olympics (while Sim Kwon-Ho won Olympic gold medals for Greco-Roman wrestling in 1996 and 2000, he won two different weight divisions), to win two individual gold medals at one Summer Olympic Games and to win an individual medal for one event at three consecutive Olympic Games (Kim Soo-Nyung won individual gold, silver and bronze medals respectively for archery in the 1988, 1992 and 2000 but these Olympics were non-consecutive).\nOn 9 September 2014, Jin won the 50 metre pistol gold medal at the 2014 World Shooting Championships after shooting 583 points out of possible 600 in the qualification, thereby breaking the 34-year-old World Record of 581 points set by Soviet Aleksandr Melentyev at the 1980 Summer Olympics. In doing so, Jin also set several milestones not seen in 50-metre pistol since the current quadrennial intervals between the world championships were established after the 1954 World Championships; World championships were previously held annually until 1931 (with exceptions) then biennially until 1954. He became the first shooter since 1952 (and fourth overall) to have won three world-level championships (Olympics and world championships) and the first since the 1956 Summer Olympics (fourth overall) to simultaneously hold the Olympic and World titles in the discipline. He also became the second 50-metre pistol shooter (after Ragnar Skanåker in 1993) to have won the Olympics, the world championships and the World Cup Final. Two days later he also won the 10 metre air pistol gold medal at the same world championships.\nOn 6 August 2016, Jin placed 5th in 10 metre pistol at the 2016 Summer Olympics held in Rio de Janeiro after placing second in the qualifications. On 10 August, he placed first in the qualifications and went on to win the gold medal for 50 metre pistol at the same Olympics, coming back from 7th place during the final round. In doing so Jin became the first athlete to have won three consecutive gold medal in one event in shooting (Schumann's three gold medals in 25 metre rapid fire pistol were non-consecutive) and the first shooter to have won four individual gold medals at the Olympic Games. He also matched Chinese shooter Wang Yifu's records of six individual medals at the Olympics and most consecutive Olympic medals (four) in one event, including the silver medal he won for 50 metre pistol at the 2004 Summer Olympics. He became the first person since Torsten Ullman of Sweden in 1937 to have won three consecutive World level Championships in 50 metre pistol. With four gold and two silver medals, he became the most successful Olympian in Korean history, becoming the first Korean to have won three consecutive Olympic gold medals in one event, three Olympic gold medals in one individual event (Kim with four gold, one silver and one bronze medal won non-consecutive gold medals in Archery Team event), four individual gold medals, six individual medals, and a medal in one event at four consecutive Olympic Games.\nOn 6 September 2018, Jin won the 10 metre air pistol gold medal at the 2018 World Shooting Championships after a shoot-off against Russia's Artem Chernousov, trailing for most of the final round. Jin became the first man to win two (consecutive) World Championships in the event. He did not defend his title at the 50 metre pistol event, which was excluded from the Olympic program from the 2020 Summer Olympics.\n\n\n== World records ==\n\n\n== Ambassadorship ==\nAmbassador for the 2022 Incheon Korea Art Festival\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nJin Jong-oh at ISSF\nJin Jong-oh at Olympedia\nJin Jong-oh at InterSportStats"}
{"title": "Johan Grøttumsbråten", "requested": "Johan Grøttumsbråten", "extract": "Johan Hagbart Pedersen Grøttumsbraaten (24 February 1899 – 24 January 1983) was a Norwegian skier who competed in Nordic combined and cross-country. Dominating both events in the 1920s and early 1930s, he won several medals in the early Winter Olympics. Most notably, he won two gold medals at the 1928 Winter Olympics, and as one of the only two entrants to win two gold medalists from St. Moritz, was the most successful athlete there, along with Clas Thunberg of Finland. He previously won three medals (one silver, two bronzes) at the inaugural Winter Olympics held in Chamonix in 1924, and went on to defend his Olympic title in Nordic Combined Skiing at the 1932 Winter Olympics.\nIn addition, he won three gold medals at the FIS Nordic World Ski Championships: In 1931 he won both the cross-country 18 km and Nordic combined, after winning the Nordic combined event earlier in 1926.\nGrøttumsbråten is one of only four people to ever win the Holmenkollen ski festival's Nordic combined event five times (1923, 1926, 1928, 1929 and 1931). In 1924, he shared the Holmenkollen medal with fellow Norwegian Nordic combined athlete Harald Økern.\n\n\n== Cross-country skiing results ==\nAll results are sourced from the International Ski Federation (FIS).\n\n\n=== Olympic Games ===\n6 medals – (3 gold, 1 silver, 2 bronze)\n\n\n=== World Championships ===\n1 medal – (1 gold)\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== Further reading ==\nBø, Olav (1999). Johan Grøttumsbråten. Skikonge og motstandsmann (in Norwegian).\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nJohan Groettumsbraaten at the International Ski and Snowboard Federation (cross-country)\nJohan Groettumsbraaten at the International Ski and Snowboard Federation (Nordic combined)\nHolmenkollen medalists – click Holmenkollmedaljen for downloadable pdf file (in Norwegian)\nHolmenkollen winners since 1892 – click Vinnere for downloadable pdf file (in Norwegian)"}
{"title": "Johann Olav Koss", "requested": "Johann Olav Koss", "extract": "Johann Olav Koss (born 29 October 1968) is a former speed skater from Norway. He won four Olympic gold medals, including three at the 1994 Winter Olympics in his home country.\n\n\n== Biography ==\nJohann Olav Koss was born in Drammen, Buskerud County, Norway. Koss became the Norwegian Junior Champion in 1987, but he could not compete with the world top skaters in the 1986 and 1987 World Junior Championships. In 1988, he debuted with the seniors at the World Championships in Alma-Ata, but failed to qualify for the final distance. The following year, he finished eighth in the same tournament (after a fifteenth place in the European Allround Championships), placing second on the 1,500 m. His breakthrough came in 1990, winning the World Allround Championships in Innsbruck, Austria. The following four years, he would win two more world titles (1991 and 1994), while finishing second in 1993 and third in 1992. He won the European Allround Championships in 1991 and finished second in the next three editions. Koss had a total of twenty-three World Cup wins, while winning four overall World Cup titles (the 1,500 m in 1990 and 1991, and the combined 5,000/10,000 m in 1991 and 1994).\nKoss made his Olympic debut at the 1992 Winter Olympics, finishing seventh on the 5,000 m, five days after undergoing surgery because of an inflamed pancreas. He would recover to win gold on the 1,500 m (by only 0.04 seconds over his countryman Ådne Søndrål) and silver on the 10,000 m (behind Dutch skater Bart Veldkamp).\nIn 1994, the final year of his speed skating career, Koss also gained fame outside the speed skating world by winning three gold medals at the 1994 Winter Olympics in his native Norway, winning all races in new world records, two of which would remain unbeaten until the clap skate era. For his performance, he was named Sports Illustrated magazine's Sportsman of the Year in 1994, together with Bonnie Blair. In addition, he received the Oscar Mathisen Award three times: in 1990, 1991, and 1994.\nAfter his speed skating career, Koss trained as a physician at the University of Queensland in Australia. He became a UNICEF ambassador and a member of the International Olympic Committee (until 2002). He married Canadian businessperson and politician Belinda Stronach on 31 December 1999, but they divorced in 2003.\nin 2000, Koss founded the Canadian-based International Humanitarian Organisation, Right To Play, which uses sport and play as a tool for the development of children and youth in the most disadvantaged areas of the world. The organization operates in more than 20 countries reaching over one million children each week and is supported by more than 620 staff worldwide and over 14,900 volunteer coaches.  In August 2015, Koss transitioned into the role of founder at Right To Play, where he still stays very active in a variety of fundraising initiatives, and where he maintains his seat on the International Board of Directors.\nHe married his second wife, Jennifer Lee, in New York on 23 May 2009. Lee's friend Chelsea Clinton was one of the bridesmaids.  Lee is a Harvard College, University of Oxford, and Harvard Business School graduate, and a former cellist who studied at The Juilliard School. She is the granddaughter of Kim Chung Yul, the former Prime Minister of South Korea and Chief of the Korean Armed Forces during the Korean War. She is the co-founder of a retail business called BRIKA which sells products from under-the-radar artisans and makers. Lee is a former management consultant and most recently a private equity investment professional at Ontario Teachers' Private Capital in Toronto. They have four children together, Aksel, Annabelle, Andreas and Aleksander.\nIn November 2009, after American Peter Mueller was stripped of his coaching role with Norway for an inappropriate comment to a female team member, Koss was appointed head coach, despite no previous coaching experience. Association sporting director Oystein Haugen told Reuters that Koss has been a revelation despite no previous coaching experience.\nKoss completed his Executive MBA at the Joseph L. Rotman School of Management in the University of Toronto in Canada. He has Honorary Doctorates from several universities - Brock University, University of Calgary, Vrije Universiteit Brussels, and the University of Agder in Norway. In July 2015, Koss was made an Honorary Member of the Order of Canada (CM).\nAt the 2018 Olympic Games Koss was inducted into the Olympians for Life project for using sport to make a better world.\n\n\n== Controversy regarding medical advice ==\nIn later years, Koss's medical guidance during his peak years came under scrutiny following the release of the 2012 documentary When Heroes Lie (Finnish: Sinivalkoinen valhe), directed by Arto Halonen. The film alleged that Koss was among several elite Norwegian athletes who received medical advice from the controversial Italian physician Francesco Conconi in the early 1990s. Conconi was later linked to the systematic introduction of EPO in professional sports.\nKoss confirmed he had visited Conconi but maintained that the visits were strictly for physiological testing and training optimization. He has consistently and firmly denied any allegations of doping, calling the claims in the documentary \"absurd\" and \"groundless.\" While no physical evidence has ever surfaced to prove he used performance-enhancing drugs, the documentary sparked significant debate due to the unprecedented nature of his 1994 Olympic performances. At the 1994 Winter Olympics, Koss famously lowered his own world record in the 10,000m by nearly 13 seconds. His decision to retire from the sport that same year at the age of 25 has also been a subject of retrospective discussion, although Koss maintained he left to pursue his medical studies and humanitarian work.\n\n\n== Medals ==\nAn overview of medals won by Koss at important championships he participated in, listing the years in which he won each:\n\n\n== Records ==\n\n\n=== World records ===\nKoss skated ten world records:\n\nSource: SpeedSkatingStats.com\n\n\n=== Personal records ===\nTo put these personal records in perspective, the WR column lists the official world records on the dates that Koss skated his personal records.\n\nSource: SpeedskatingResults.com\nKoss was number one on the Adelskalender, the all-time allround speed skating ranking, for a total of 1,998 days, divided over three periods between 1992 and 1997. He has an Adelskalender score of 155.099 points.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists at a single Games\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== Other sources ==\nEng, Trond. All Time International Championships, Complete Results: 1889 - 2002. Askim, Norway: WSSSA-Skøytenytt, 2002.\nEng, Trond; Gjerde, Arild and Teigen, Magne. Norsk Skøytestatistikk Gjennom Tidene, Menn/Kvinner, 1999 (6. utgave). Askim/Skedsmokorset/Veggli, Norway: WSSSA-Skøytenytt, 1999.\nEng, Trond; Gjerde, Arild; Teigen, Magne and Teigen, Thorleiv. Norsk Skøytestatistikk Gjennom Tidene, Menn/Kvinner, 2004 (7. utgave). Askim/Skedsmokorset/Veggli/Hokksund, Norway: WSSSA-Skøytenytt, 2004.\nEng, Trond and Teigen, Magne. Komplette Resultater fra offisielle Norske Mesterskap på skøyter, 1894 - 2005. Askim/Veggli, Norway: WSSSA-Skøytenytt, 2005.\nTeigen, Magne. Komplette Resultater Norske Mesterskap På Skøyter, 1887 - 1989: Menn/Kvinner, Senior/Junior. Veggli, Norway: WSSSA-Skøytenytt, 1989.\nTeigen, Magne. Komplette Resultater Internasjonale Mesterskap 1889 - 1989: Menn/Kvinner, Senior/Junior, allround/sprint. Veggli, Norway: WSSSA-Skøytenytt, 1989.\n\n\n== External links ==\nJohann Olav Koss at SpeedSkatingStats.com\nPersonal records from Jakub Majerski's Speedskating Database\nEvert Stenlund's Adelskalender pages\nPage honouring Johann Koss on the website of the 2008 Summer Olympics"}
{"title": "Johannes Høsflot Klæbo", "requested": "Johannes Høsflot Klæbo", "extract": "Johannes Høsflot Klæbo (born 22 October 1996) is a Norwegian cross-country skier who represents Byåsen IL. He holds multiple records, among them for being the youngest skier in history to win the FIS Cross-Country World Cup, the Tour de Ski, a World Championship event, and an Olympic event in cross-country skiing.\nDuring the 2019–20 World Cup season, Klæbo became the most successful male sprinter in World Cup history in terms of individual race victories and set a new record for the most overall sprint titles, with 4. He is currently the most successful male overall race winner in the competition's history.\nKlæbo won three gold medals at the 2018 Winter Olympics, in his debut Olympic appearance. As of 2026, he is a 13-time Olympic medalist, with eleven gold. At the 2026 Winter Olympics, he broke the records for the most gold medals won at a single Winter Olympics and most career gold medals won by any Winter Olympic athlete, and now trails only swimmer Michael Phelps on the list of athletes with the most all-time Olympic gold medals.\n\n\n== Career ==\n\n\n=== 2015–16: World Cup debut ===\nKlæbo made his debut in the World Cup in the 2015–16 season in the classic sprint in Drammen, Norway on 3 February 2016. He finished 15th in the race.\n\n\n=== 2016–17: Breakthrough season ===\nIn the following 2016–17 season, Klæbo achieved his first World Cup podium after finishing third in the classic sprint in Ruka, Finland, on 26 November 2016. Later in the 2016–17 season, on 18 February 2017, Klæbo got his first World Cup victory when he won the sprint freestyle in Otepää, Estonia. He competed at the FIS Nordic World Ski Championships 2017 in Lahti, Finland, winning a bronze medal at the Men's sprint competition. On 17 March 2017 in Quebec City he won his first small crystal globe in the Sprint World Cup and also won the Helvetia U23 overall ranking after winning the end-of-season mini tour. He finished his second World Cup season with three victories.\n\n\n=== 2017–18: Olympic success and World Cup overall ===\nKlæbo participated in his first Olympics at the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea. Before the Olympics, he had nine victories in the 2017–18 World Cup. He made his Olympic debut by finishing 10th in the men's skiathlon event. On 13 February 2018 he became an Olympic champion after winning the men's sprint. This victory made him the youngest ever male to win an Olympic event in cross-country skiing. He skied the last leg on the Norwegian teams that won both the 4 × 10-kilometre relay and the men's team sprint. A steep hill on the Olympic course was dubbed \"Klæbo-bakken\" (\"Klæbo hill\") by Norwegian media after Klæbo overtook his competitors several times in this climb throughout the games. With three gold medals, he tied with French biathlete Martin Fourcade for most gold medals won in the games.\nKlæbo won the overall 2017–18 World Cup with a gap of 119 points down to Dario Cologna, making him the youngest ever winner of the World Cup. He also beat the record for the most sprint victories in a single World Cup season, with seven wins.\n\n\n=== 2018–19: Tour de Ski, World Championships, and World Cup overall ===\nKlæbo won the 2018–19 Tour de Ski in his first appearance in the Tour. 22 years and 76 days old, he became the youngest skier to win the overall Tour de Ski.\nKlæbo won three gold medals at the 2019 World Championships in Seefeld in Tirol, Austria. He started the championships with a World Championship title in the individual sprint. By winning the sprint, Klæbo became the youngest male winner of a World Championship race in cross-country skiing. He finished 30th in the skiathlon after not keeping up at the classic part of the race. The result at the skiatlon made Klæbo give away his spot at the 15-kilometre classic to Sjur Røthe. Together with Emil Iversen, Klæbo won the team sprint after beating Russia's Alexander Bolshunov in the last stages of the final leg. On 1 March, Klæbo raced the 4th leg on Norway's team who won the 4 × 10-kilometre relay on the second-to-last event of the championships.\nKlæbo won the overall 2018–19 World Cup and extended his own record of most sprint victories in a single World Cup season, with eight wins. He also leveled Emil Jönsson's all-time World Cup record of most sprint victories, with 16 wins, and tied with Emil Jönsson and Ola Vigen Hattestad for the most overall sprint titles, with 3.\n\n\n=== 2019–20: Hand injury and fourth World Cup sprint title ===\nAfter a shorter season as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as a hand injury resulting in a short absence from competing, Klæbo placed second overall in the 2019–20 World Cup. He also placed third in the 2019–20 Tour de Ski and achieved his best end-of-season ranking in the distance discipline, placing sixth. Klæbo also won his fourth overall sprint title, thereby setting the record for most overall sprint titles in history. He also overtook Emil Jönsson's all-time World Cup record of most individual sprint victories, extending his own record to 24.\nIn June 2020, Klæbo announced that he had signed a five-year contract with the Uno-X Pro Cycling Team, fitting in cycle training and racing around his skiing commitments.\n\n\n=== 2020–21: Pandemic-disrupted World Cup and World Championship success ===\nKlæbo enjoyed a strong start to the 2020–21 season at the Nordic Opening in Ruka, taking second in the opening sprint competition before winning the 15 km classic and clinching the Ruka Triple overall after the pursuit. However, the next World Cup stop on home snow in Lillehammer was cancelled due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, and the race programme of Klæbo and his team-mates was further disrupted after the Norwegian, Swedish and Finnish teams elected not to compete in the subsequent World Cup rounds in December due to concerns regarding the risks of the pandemic and then also withdrew from the Tour de Ski after the three Nordic nations' request for the race to be shortened were refused by the International Ski Federation. Whilst the rest of the Norwegian team returned to the World Cup circuit at the first post-Tour meeting in Lahti, Klæbo elected to return at the next round in Falun at the end of January. In Falun he finished second in the 15 km classic mass start, being pipped in the final sprint by Bolshunov, before taking the win in the classic sprint.\nAt the World Championships in Oberstdorf, Klæbo started his campaign by successfully defending his title in the sprint, leading home team-mates Erik Valnes and Håvard Solås Taugbøl in a clean sweep of the podium positions for Norway, becoming the first man to win consecutive sprint world titles and the second skier overall, after fellow Norwegian Marit Bjørgen. He took his second gold medal of the championships in the team sprint alongside Valnes, overcoming a 4.3 second deficit going into the final lap of the race and attacking on the final climb to secure the win by 1.68 seconds. Klæbo secured another gold in the relay, where he took the anchor leg after team-mates Pål Golberg, Hans Christer Holund and Emil Iversen, holding off Bolshunov for the win. However, he missed out on a fourth title at the worlds when he was disqualified in the 50 km classic after being first to cross the finish line, as he was judged to have obstructed Bolshunov in the final sprint, handing the victory to team-mate Iversen. At the last meeting of the World Cup season in Engadin, Klæbo finished second in the 15 km behind Bolshunov and fourth in the 50 km freestyle pursuit. He finished third in the season's overall World Cup standings.\nHe was awarded the Holmenkollen Medal in 2022.\n\n\n=== 2025–2026: Continued Olympic success and record-breaking achievements ===\nKlaebo won the men's overall and sprint championships in the 2024–25 FIS Cross-Country World Cup. At the FIS Nordic World Ski Championships 2025, he became the first individual to win all six cross country skiing events at a single world championship competition. He was also the first to sweep all events since Yelena Välbe, who won all five cross country skiing events at the FIS Nordic World Ski Championships 1997. Klaebo's victories left him with a career total of \n15 career World Championships gold medals, second only to Marit Bjørgen. During the 2025–26 FIS Cross-Country World Cup, Klaebo became the first male athlete to amass 100 World Cup victories, and the second athlete to do so after Bjørgen. He also won the 2025–26 Tour de Ski, becoming the first cross-country skier to win the Tour De Ski on five occasions.\nKlæbo won his seventh Olympic gold medal on 10 February 2026, earning gold in the men's sprint as he finished in the final with a time of 3:39.74, having already won gold at the 2026 Milano Cortina Games in the men's 20km skiathlon. He then won his 8th Olympic gold medal on 13 February in the 10 km freestyle. On 15 February, he won his ninth Olympic gold medal as part of Norway's team in the men's 4 × 7.5 kilometre relay, breaking a record for the most gold medals won by a Winter Olympic athlete in history. On February 18, Klæbo won the 10th Olympic gold medal in the team sprint with teammate Einar Hedegart. Klæbo took his 11th Olympic gold medal on 21 February in the men's 50 km classical race.\nKlaebo won the gold medal in all six men's cross-country skiing events at the 2026 Winter Olympics, thereby becoming the first athlete to win six gold medals at a single Winter Olympic Games. With a career total of 11 gold medals at the end of the 2026 Games, Klaebo holds more gold medals than any other Winter Olympian, and among all Olympians trails only swimmer Michael Phelps, who won 23 gold medals. Among Winter Olympians, Klaebo's 13 overall medals trails only biathlete Ole Einar Bjørndalen and Bjørgen, the latter of whom holds the record with 15 medals.\nReturning to the 2025–26 World Cup competition following the Olympics, Klaebo clinched the World Cup overall season title for the sixth time, tying the record held by Bjorn Daehlie. He also won his eighth sprint title, adding to his own record for most sprint titles. With a win in the final race of the season, Klaebo won his first distance title, becoming the first male cross-country skier since Thomas Alsgaard in 1997–1998 to sweep the overall, sprint, and distance titles.\nIn the spring 2026 he was awarded the Marca Leyenda award given by the Spanish sports newspaper Marca to the best sport professionals in history.\n\n\n== Cross-country skiing results ==\nAll results are sourced from the International Ski Federation (FIS).\n\n\n=== Olympic Games ===\n13 medals – (11 gold, 1 silver, 1 bronze)\n\na Distance reduced to 30 km due to weather conditions.\n\n\n=== World Championships ===\n18 medals – (15 gold, 2 silver, 1 bronze)\n\n\n=== World Cup ===\n\n\n==== Season titles ====\n18 titles – (6 Overall, 1 Distance, 8 Sprint, 3 U23)\n\n\n==== Season standings ====\n\n\n==== Individual podiums ====\n113 wins – (79 WC, 34 SWC)\n142 podiums – (102 WC, 40 SWC)\n\n\n==== Team podiums ====\n9 wins – (3 RL, 6 TS)\n9 podiums – (3 RL, 6 TS)\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nKlæbo was born in Oslo, the capital of Norway. He lived there until he was five years old before he and his family moved to Trondheim. He grew up there and still lives there today. Klæbo is very close to his family and spends a lot of time with them. His father, Haakon Klæbo, is his manager and his grandfather, Kåre Høsflot, is his coach.\nOutside sports, Klæbo and his younger brother, Ola, run a YouTube channel where they upload weekly vlogs about Klæbo's everyday life as an athlete. He started his channel because he wanted people to see what cross-country skiers do outside competitions and off-season. His siblings help him out by editing and translating the videos. As of October 2019, Klæbo has over 102,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel and totals over 12 million views from over 100 videos.\nHe was a part of Norway's elite sprint team until mid-2019, when he became a part of Norway's men's elite allround team. He switched back to the elite sprint team before the 2020–21 FIS Cross-Country World Cup season.\nIn March 2019, Klæbo was sentenced to 16 days of non-custodial prison and was fined 10,000 Norwegian kroner for causing a collision on 12 December 2018 that injured a twelve-year-old girl. He allegedly failed to notice that a car had stopped at a pedestrian crossing, then drove into the car, which in turn hit the girl. He was also disqualified from skiing for nine months.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n Media related to Johannes Høsflot Klæbo at Wikimedia Commons\n\nJohannes Hoesflot Klaebo at the International Ski and Snowboard Federation \nJohannes Hoesflot Klaebo at Milano Cortina 2026\nJohannes Hoesflot Klaebo at Olympics.com \nJohannes Høsflot Klæbo at Olympedia \nJohannes Høsflot Klæbo at InterSportStats \nJohannes Høsflot Klæbo at Team Norway  (in Norwegian) \n\"Johannes Høsflot Klæbo\". Store norske leksikon (in Norwegian). Foreningen Store norske leksikon. \nJohannes Høsflot Klæbo on Instagram"}
{"title": "Johannes Thingnes Bø", "requested": "Johannes Thingnes Bø", "extract": "Johannes Thingnes Bø (born 16 May 1993) is a Norwegian former biathlete who has achieved significant success in the sport. Thingnes Bø has won the Biathlon World Cup five times, in the 2018/19, 2019/20, 2020/21, 2022/23, and 2023/24 seasons. He is the male biathlete with the second most individual World Cup victories in history, totaling 91, including victories at the Winter Olympic Games.\n\n\n== Career ==\n\n\n=== Early career (2009–2019) ===\nIn 2009, Johannes Thingnes Bø competed in the sprint at the Hovedlandsrennet in Beitostølen, securing a medal in the relay alongside Jarle Midthjell Gjørven, Runar Netland, and Johan Eirik Meland. Later that year, he won two gold medals at the Norwegian National Championships in roller ski shooting in Vik i Sogn, in the Men's 17 category, in both the sprint and pursuit events.\nThingnes Bø's international success began in 2010 and 2011, earning several medals. In 2012, he became a three-time junior world champion and joined the Norwegian senior national team.\n\n\n=== Breakthrough and dominance: 2018/19 season ===\nJohannes Thingnes Bø emerged as a dominant force in the 2018/19 World Cup season. Overcoming a pre-season back injury, Thingnes Bø won six of the first eight individual races and led the World Cup standings by 116 points before Christmas. He continued his exceptional form into the new year, securing podium finishes in every race until the events in Soldier Hollow.\nDuring the 2019 Biathlon World Championships in Östersund, Thingnes Bø won the sprint and three team-event gold medals, adding to his World Cup dominance. He set a record for most individual victories in a single World Cup season, with 16 wins, surpassing Martin Fourcade's record of 14.\n\n\n=== 2019/20 season: Parental leave and continued success ===\nDespite taking parental leave in January 2020, Thingnes Bø maintained his dominance and won the World Cup title for a second consecutive year. His season highlights included victories in Hochfilzen, Le Grand-Bornand, and Nové Město, as well as a strong performance at the World Championships in Antholz-Anterselva, where he won six medals, including individual gold in the mass start.\nThe 2019/20 season concluded amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, with events in Kontiolahti held without spectators and others canceled. Thingnes Bø secured the overall World Cup title in a dramatic final race, edging out retiring rival Martin Fourcade by two points.\n\n\n=== Later career and achievements ===\nThingnes Bø continued to excel in subsequent seasons, cementing his status as one of the sport's all-time greats. His achievements include multiple World Cup titles, Olympic medals, and recognition with the Holmenkollen Medal in 2021 for his contributions to the sport.\nIn March 2025, Johannes Thingnes Bø and his brother Tarjei Bø retired from competitions.\n\n\n== Awards and honors ==\nHolmenkollen Medal (2021)\n\n\n== Biathlon results ==\nAll results are sourced from the International Biathlon Union.\n\n\n=== Olympic Games ===\n9 medals (5 gold, 2 silver, 2 bronze)\n\n*The mixed relay was added as an event in 2014.\n\n\n=== World Championships ===\n\n43 medals (23 gold, 14 silver, 6 bronze)\n\n*During Olympic seasons competitions are only held for those events not included in the Olympic program.\n**The single mixed relay was added as an event in 2019.\n\n\n=== World Cup ===\n\n\n==== Season standings ====\n\nStandings through 23 March 2025\n\n\n==== Individual podiums ====\n91 victories – (40 Sp, 27 Pu, 16 MS, 6 Ind, 2 Short Ind)\n143 podiums\n\n*Results are from UIPMB and IBU races which include the Biathlon World Cup, Biathlon World Championships.\n\n\n==== Team podiums ====\n43 victories – (28 Relays, 12 Mixed relays, 3 Single mixed relays)\n77 podiums\n\n\n== Distinctions ==\n\n\n=== National distinctions ===\n2012 – Karolineprisen – awarded national talents within culture and sports.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nJohannes Thingnes Bø married Hedda Kløvstad Dæhli on 30 June 2018. The couple has two children: a son, Gustav, born in January 2020, and a daughter, Sofia, born in the summer of 2023.\nHe is the younger brother of fellow biathlete Tarjei Bø, who is also a successful competitor in the sport.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n Media related to Johannes Thingnes Bø at Wikimedia Commons\n\nJohannes Thingnes Bø at IBU\nJohannes Thingnes Bø at the Norway Football Association (in Norwegian)\nJohannes Thingnes Bø at FIS (cross-country)\nJohannes Thingnes Bø at Olympics.com\nJohannes Thingnes Bø at Team Norway (in Norwegian)\nJohannes Thingnes Bø at Olympedia\nJohannes Thingnes Bø at InterSportStats\n\"Johannes Thingnes Bø\". Store norske leksikon (in Norwegian). Foreningen Store norske leksikon. \nJohannes Thingnes Bø at NRKs Fylkesleksikon at the Wayback Machine (archived 3 November 2013) (in Norwegian)\nJohannes Thingnes Bø on Instagram"}
{"title": "John Flanagan (hammer thrower)", "requested": "John Flanagan (hammer thrower)", "extract": "John Joseph Flanagan (sometimes spelled Flannigan; January 28, 1868 – June 3, 1938) was an Irish-American three-time Olympic gold medalist in the hammer throw, winning in 1900, 1904, and 1908.\n\n\n== Biography ==\nJohn Flanagan was born in the townland of Ballinvreena and raised in Kilbreedy East, near Martinstown in County Limerick, Ireland. John was the first son of Ellen Kinkead and Michael Flanagan (married Feb 1867), then a farm steward for the Gabbett's of Kilmallock. As was often the case in those times his mother Ellen went home to her birth family,  the Kinkeads of Ballinvreena, to have her first child.\nHe became the British hammer throw champion after winning the AAA Championships title at the 1896 AAA Championships.\nHe emigrated to the United States of America in 1896. At that time he already held the world record for the hammer throw. He competed for both the New York Athletic Club and the Irish American Athletic Club, and was part of a group of Irish-American athletes known as the Irish Whales.\nFlanagan returned to London (this time as an American) to win a second AAA Championships title at the 1900 AAA Championships. Shortly afterwards Flanagan represented his new country at the Olympic Games. Flanagan, the only non-college man to medal for the Americans, outdistanced American athlete Truxtun Hare by 4.75 meters in the hammer throw. Hare and Josiah McCracken, both college football players from University of Pennsylvania, took silver and bronze. Flanagan also competed in the discus throw, finishing seventh.\nFlanagan joined the New York City Police Department (NYPD) in 1903, and his first assignment was to the Bureau of Licenses, where he had a lot of time on his hands, which was mostly used to train at the Irish American Athletic Club in Queens. It was during that time that he became one of the masters of the three-turn technique. In the 1904 Olympic Games, sporting the Winged Fist of the Irish American Athletic Club, Flanagan set a new world record of 168 feet, 1 inch. He placed second to the Canadian, Étienne Desmarteau, in the 56-pound throw event.\nIn 1905, while attached to the 37th Precinct, Flanagan competed in the Police Athletic Association games held at Celtic Park in New York. \"Not only did he win four of weight-throwing events, but, as if to show that he could do a little sprinting as readily as he can outclass his competitors with the 16 and 56 pound weights, he not only had the temerity to enter the fat men's race, but actually won it,\" giving him a total of five first place victories, \"a most commendable showing, for there were many mighty policemen arrayed against him.\"\nIn the 1908 Olympics in London, Flanagan broke his own record with a hammer throw of 170 feet, 4.5 inches. The silver that year went to another New York City police officer, the former record holder Matt McGrath. John Flanagan competed in the tug-of-war as well. On July 24, 1909, at the age of 41 years, 196 days, Flanagan set his last world record in the hammer, with a throw of 56.18 meters. This constituted the oldest person in the sport of athletics to break a world record (pre IAAF jurisdiction).\nFlanagan quit the police force in 1910, after his public office squad was abolished and he was transferred to the West 68th Street Station and forced to walk a beat along Central Park West, giving him no time to train and compete. He returned home to Limerick in 1911 and took over the family farm following the death of his father in 1912. He continued to compete in Ireland and won his final international event when competing against Scotland in 1911. He also won the Irish Hammer Championships of 1911 and 1912. Following his retirement, he coached a number of athletes, including Patrick O'Callaghan, who went on to win two Olympic gold medals in the hammer throw at the 1928 and 1932 games. He died at home in Limerick, aged 70, on 3 June 1938. A statue of Flanagan was erected beside Martinstown Church in Limerick in 2001.\n\n\n== References ==\n\nCook, Theodore Andrea (May 1909). The Fourth Olympiad London 1908 Official Report (PDF). London: British Olympic Association. Archived from the original (PDF) on 27 September 2007. Retrieved 29 December 2008.\nDe Wael, Herman (2001). \"Athletics 1908\". Herman's Full Olympians. Archived from the original on 27 September 2006. Retrieved 29 December 2008.\nGreenberg, Stan (1987). Olympic Games: The Records. London: Guinness Books. ISBN 0-85112-896-3.\n\n\n== External links ==\nJohn Flanagan at World Athletics\nJohn Flanagan at Tilastopaja (registration required)\nJohn Flanagan at the USATF Hall of Fame (archived)\nJohn Flanagan at Athletics Podium\nJohn Flanagan at Olympics.com\nJohn Flanagan at Olympedia\nIrish America Archives - NYU\nWinged Fist Organization\nJohn Flanagan - Modern Hercules"}
{"title": "John Naber", "requested": "John Naber", "extract": "John Phillips Naber (born January 20, 1956) is an American former competitive swimmer, five-time Olympic medalist and former world record-holder in multiple events.\nBorn in Evanston, Illinois, Naber studied in England and Italy where his father worked as a management consultant. He graduated from Woodside High School in Northern California, then completed his bachelor's degree in psychology in 1977 at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. While at USC, he led the Trojans to four consecutive NCAA titles (1974–1977).\n\n\n== 1976 Olympics ==\n\nAt age twenty, Naber won four gold medals at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, Quebec. Each of these victories was swum in world-record time; he swept the two backstroke events and was a member of two winning relay teams. He also won a silver medal in the 200-meter freestyle, part of a U.S. sweep for that event.\nOne of Naber's gold medals was for the first 200-meter backstroke completed in under two minutes; his world record time of 1:59.19 stood for seven years.  His world record of 55.49 seconds in the 100-meter backstroke also stood for seven years.\nFor these accomplishments in Montreal and elsewhere, Naber won the 1977 James E. Sullivan Award, which is presented to the top American amateur athlete of the year.  He was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame as an \"Honor Swimmer\" in 1982.\n\n\n== After swimming ==\nNaber joined The Walt Disney Company in 1977 as a marketing representative, then became a full-time \"roving ambassador\" for the swimwear maker Speedo. He later was a sports broadcaster, motivational speaker, and professional writer. He was a member of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics Organizing Committee.\nIn May 2014, Naber was inducted into Woodside High School's Community Hall of Fame.\n\n\n== See also ==\n\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists at a single Games\nList of Olympic medalists in swimming (men)\nList of University of Southern California people\nList of World Aquatics Championships medalists in swimming (men)\nWorld record progression 100 metres backstroke\nWorld record progression 200 metres backstroke\nWorld record progression 4 × 100 metres medley relay\nWorld record progression 4 × 200 metres freestyle relay\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n Media related to John Naber at Wikimedia Commons\nOfficial website\nJohn Naber  at World Aquatics\nJohn Naber at the Team USA Hall of Fame\nJohn Naber at Olympics.com John Naber at Olympic.org (archived) \nJohn Naber at Olympedia"}
{"title": "Johnny Weissmuller", "requested": "Johnny Weissmuller", "extract": "Johnny Weissmuller ( WYSSE-mul-ər; born Johann Peter Weißmüller, German: [ˈjoːhan ˈpeːtɐ ˈvaɪsmʏlɐ]; June 2, 1904 – January 20, 1984) was an American Olympic swimmer, water polo player and actor. He set world records alongside winning five gold medals in the Olympics. He won the 100m freestyle and the 4 × 200 m relay team event in the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris and the 1928 Summer Olympics in Amsterdam. Weissmuller also won gold in the 400m freestyle, as well as a bronze medal in the water polo competition in Paris.\nFollowing his retirement from swimming, Weissmuller played Edgar Rice Burroughs's Tarzan in twelve feature films from 1932 to 1948; six were produced by MGM, and six additional films by RKO. Weissmuller went on to star in sixteen Jungle Jim movies over an eight-year period, then filmed 26 additional half-hour episodes of the Jungle Jim TV series.\n\n\n== Early life ==\nJohann Peter Weißmüller was born on June 2, 1904, in Szabadfalva, in the Kingdom of Hungary into an ethnically Banat Swabian family. An ancestor had immigrated from Baden, Holy Roman Empire c. 1749. Three days later he was baptized into the Catholic faith by the Hungarian version of his German name, as János. Early the next year, January 26, 1905, his father, Peter Weißmüller, and mother, Elisabeth Weißmüller (née Kersch), took him on a twelve-day trip on the S.S. Rotterdam to Ellis Island.  Soon they arrived in Windber, Pennsylvania, to live with family. Johnny's brother Peter was born the following September.\n\nThree years later they relocated to Chicago to be with his mother's parents. His parents rented a single level in a shared house where he lived during his childhood. At age nine, Weissmüller contracted polio. His doctor recommended swimming to help his recovery from the disease.  Fullerton Beach on Lake Michigan is where Johnny's love for swimming took off, for he took his first swimming lessons there. He excelled immediately and began entering and winning every race he could. Johnny's father deserted the family when Johnny was in the eighth grade. He left school to begin working in order to support his mother and younger brother.\nWhen Weissmuller was 11 he lied to join the YMCA, which had a 12-year-old age minimum rule to join. He won every swimming race he entered and also excelled at running and high jumping. He eventually swam for one of the nation's best teams, the Illinois Athletic Club.\n\n\n== Swimming career ==\n\nWeissmuller tried out for swimming coach Bill Bachrach, then associated with the Illinois Athletic Club. Impressed with what he saw, Bachrach took Weissmuller under his wing, and served as a strong father figure and mentor for Johnny. On August 6, 1921, Weissmuller swam one of first meets, entering and winning four Amateur Athletic Union races. He set his first two world records at the A.A.U. Nationals on September 27, 1921, in the 100m and 150yd events.\nOn July 9, 1922, Weissmuller broke Duke Kahanamoku's world record in the 100-meter freestyle, swimming it in 58.6 seconds. \n\n\n=== Olympics ===\nHe won the title for the 100-meter freestyle at the 1924 Summer Olympics, beating Kahanamoku for the gold medal. He also won the 400-meter freestyle and was a member of the winning U.S. team in the 4×200-meter relay.\nFour years later, at the 1928 Summer Olympics in Amsterdam, he won another two gold medals. It was during this period that Weissmuller became an enthusiast for John Harvey Kellogg's holistic lifestyle views on nutrition, enemas and exercise. He went to Kellogg's Battle Creek, Michigan, sanatorium to dedicate its new 120-foot swimming pool, and break one of his own previous swimming records after adopting the vegetarian diet prescribed by Kellogg.\nIn 1927, Weissmuller set a new world record of 51.0 seconds in the 100-yard freestyle, which stood for 17 years. He improved it to 48.5 seconds at Billy Rose World's Fair Aquacade in 1940, aged 36, but this result was discounted, as he was competing as a professional.\nAs a member of the U.S. men's national water polo team, he won a bronze medal at the 1924 Summer Olympics. He also competed in the 1928 Olympics, where the U.S. team finished in seventh place.\nIn all, Weissmuller won five Olympic gold medals and one bronze medal, 52 United States national championships, and set 67 world records. He was the first man to swim the 100-meter freestyle under one minute and the 440-yard freestyle under five minutes. He never lost a race and retired with an unbeaten amateur record. In 1950, he was selected by the Associated Press as the greatest swimmer of the first half of the 20th century.\nDuring the 1930s, before he acted as Tarzan, Weissmuller was a swimming instructor at the Miami Biltmore Hotel. He broke a world record at the Biltmore pool.\n\n\n== Film career ==\nWeissmuller's first film was the non-speaking role of Adonis in the movie Glorifying the American Girl. He appeared wearing only a fig leaf while hoisting actress Mary Eaton on his shoulders. He was noticed by the writer Cyril Hume, which led to his big break playing Tarzan in Tarzan the Ape Man in 1932.\n\nWhen asked to play Tarzan, Weissmuller was already under contract to model BVD underwear. MGM agreed to have actresses such as Greta Garbo and Marie Dressler featured in BVD ads so that he could be released from his BVD contract. The author of Tarzan, Edgar Rice Burroughs, was pleased with Weissmuller, although he so hated the studio's depiction of Tarzan as an individual who barely spoke English that he created his own concurrent Tarzan series starring Herman Brix as a suitably articulate version of the character (as is true to the original books).\nWeissmuller is considered the definitive Tarzan. He originated the famous Tarzan yell, which was created by sound recordist Douglas Shearer. Shearer recorded Weissmuller's normal yell, but manipulated it and played it in reverse.\nWeissmuller went on to play the lead in the film Jungle Jim. He appeared in sixteen Jungle Jim movies over eight years, going on to film 26 episodes of the Jungle Jim TV series.\nWeissmuller retired from acting in 1957.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\n\nWeissmuller was married five times: to band and club singer Bobbe Arnst (married 1931, divorced 1933); to actress Lupe Vélez (married 1933, divorced 1939); to Beryl Scott (married 1939, divorced 1948); to Allene Gates (married 1948, divorced 1962); and to Maria Gertrude Baumann (born 1921, died 2004; they were married from 1963 until his death in 1984).\nWith his third wife, Beryl, Weissmuller had three children: Johnny Weissmuller, Jr. (1940–2006), Wendy Anne Weissmuller (born 1942), and Heidi Elizabeth Weissmuller (1944–1962), who was killed in a car crash. He also had a stepdaughter with Baumann, Lisa Weissmuller-Gallagher.\nWeissmuller saved many people's lives throughout his own life. One very notable instance was in 1927 during training for the Chicago Marathon, when Weissmuller saved 11 people from drowning after a boat accident. On July 28, 1927, 16 children, 10 women, and 1 man drowned when the Favorite, a small excursion boat cruising from Lincoln Park to Municipal Pier (Navy Pier), capsized half a mile off North Avenue in a sudden, heavy squall. When the boat tipped over, 75 women and children and 6 men sank with the boat, but rescuers saved over 50 of them. Weissmuller was one of the Chicago lifeguards who saved many.\n\n\n== Later life ==\nIn 1974, Weissmuller broke both his hip and leg, marking the beginning of years of declining health. While hospitalized he learned that in spite of his strength and lifelong daily regimen of swimming and exercise, he had a serious heart condition. In 1977, Weissmuller suffered a series of strokes. In 1979, he entered the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, California, for several weeks before moving with his last wife, Maria, to Acapulco, Mexico, the location of his last Tarzan movie.\nOn January 20, 1984, Weissmuller died of pulmonary edema at the age of 79. He was buried just outside Acapulco, Valle de La Luz, at the Valley of the Light Cemetery. As his coffin was lowered into the ground, a recording of the Tarzan yell he invented was played three times, at his request. He was honored with a 21-gun salute, befitting a head of state, which was arranged by Senator Ted Kennedy and President Ronald Reagan.\n\n\n== Legacy ==\nFor his contribution to the motion picture industry, Johnny Weissmuller has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.\nHe is on the album cover of The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967).\nHis former co-star and movie son Johnny Sheffield wrote of him, \"I can only say that working with Big John was one of the highlights of my life. He was a Star (with a capital \"S\") and he gave off a special light and some of that light got into me. Knowing and being with Johnny Weissmuller during my formative years had a lasting influence on my life.\"\nIn 1973, Weissmuller was awarded the George Eastman Award, given by George Eastman House for distinguished contribution to the art of film.\nThe Piscine Molitor in Paris was built as a tribute to Weissmuller and his swimming prowess.\nEdgar Rice Burroughs himself paid tribute to Weissmuller's powerful screen persona in the last Tarzan novel that he completed\n\nBut what seemed a long time to them was a matter of seconds only. The tiger's great frame went limp and sank to the ground. And the man rose and put a foot upon it and, raising his face to the heavens, voiced a horrid cry—the victory cry of the bull ape. Corrie was suddenly terrified of this man who had always seemed so civilized and cultured. Even the men were shocked.\nSuddenly recognition lighted the eyes of Jerry Lucas. \"John Clayton,\" he said, \"Lord Greystoke—Tarzan of the Apes!\" Shrimp's jaw dropped. \"Is dat Johnny Weismuller? [sic]\" he demanded. Tarzan shook his head as though to clear his brain of an obsession. His thin veneer of civilization had been consumed by the fires of battle. ...\nWeissmuller was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame in 1965 after becoming its founding chairman.\n\n\n== Filmography ==\n\n\n== Published works ==\nWeissmuller, Johnny; Bush, Clarence A. (1930). Swimming the American Crawl. London: G. P. Putnam's Sons. Autobiography, excerpts of which were published in The Saturday Evening Post.\n\n\n== See also ==\n\nList of athletes with Olympic medals in different disciplines\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists at a single Games\nList of Olympic medalists in swimming (men)\nList of Olympic medalists in water polo (men)\nList of multi-sport athletes\nWorld record progression 4 × 200 metres freestyle relay\nWorld record progression 100 metres freestyle\nWorld record progression 200 metres freestyle\nWorld record progression 400 metres freestyle\nWorld record progression 800 metres freestyle\nList of members of the International Swimming Hall of Fame\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n=== Notes ===\n\n\n=== Citations ===\n\n\n== External links ==\nJohnny Weissmuller at World Aquatics\nJohnny Weissmuller at the International Swimming Hall of Fame\nJohnny Weissmuller at Olympics.com\nJohnny Weissmuller at the Team USA Hall of Fame\nJohnny Weissmuller at Olympedia\nJohnny Weissmuller at InterSportStats\nJohnny Weissmuller at the Team USA Hall of Fame\nJohnny Weissmuller at IMDb \nLouis S. Nixdorff, 1928 Olympic games collection, 1926–1978, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution.\nThe passenger list of the ship that brought the Weissmullers to Ellis Island Archived September 27, 2011, at the Wayback Machine\n\"Serbia: Monument to Tarzan\", The New York Times, February 17, 2007. The article states that Johnny Weissmuller was born in Serbia.\nJohnny Weissmuller at Find a Grave\nJohnny Weissmuller Official Website"}
{"title": "Jon Olsen", "requested": "Jon Olsen", "extract": "Jon C. Olsen (born April 25, 1969) is an American former competition swimmer, four-time Olympic champion, and former world record-holder. Olsen was a successful relay swimmer for the U.S. national team in the late 1980s and 1990s. He has won a total of 27 medals in major international competition, 20 gold, 5 silver, and 2 bronze spanning the Olympics, the World, Pan Pacific, and the Pan American championships.\n\n\n== Swimming career ==\nOlsen represented the United States at two consecutive Olympic Games, and won a total number of five Olympic medals, including four golds.  At the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain, he won his first gold medal as a member of the winning U.S. team in the men's 4×100-meter freestyle relay, together with teammates Joe Hudepohl, Matt Biondi and Tom Jager.  He won a second gold medal for swimming the freestyle anchor leg for the first-place U.S. team in the men's 4×100-meter medley relay. With his medley relay teammates Jeff Rouse (backstroke), Nelson Diebel (breaststroke), and Pablo Morales (butterfly), he tied the world record in the event of 3:36.93. He also received a bronze medal as a member of the third-place U.S. team in the men's 4×200-meter freestyle relay.  Individually, he also placed fourth in the final of the men's 100-meter freestyle with a time of 49.51 seconds.\nFour years later at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia, Olsen again won a gold medal as a member of the first-place U.S. team in the men's 4×100-meter freestyle relay with fellow team members Josh Davis, Brad Schumacher and Gary Hall, Jr., and set a new Olympic record of 3:15.41. He received another gold for swimming for the winning U.S. team in the preliminary heats of the men's 4×200-meter freestyle relay.  He also competed in the individual men's 100-meter freestyle and placed ninth overall in the B Final of the event with a time of 49.80 seconds. Olsen was elected captain of the U.S. Olympic swim team at the 1996 Games by his teammates.\nDuring his career, Olsen was trained by former freestyle sprinter Jonty Skinner.  He was also coached by the current Laurel Swim Association head coach, Warren Holladay, who was previously an assistant coach at the University of Alabama.  Olsen attended the University of Alabama, where he swam for Alabama Crimson Tide swimming and diving team.  He currently resides in the Florida Keys with his family where he coaches swimming.  He has two daughters and a son.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of Olympic medalists in swimming (men)\nList of University of Alabama people\nList of World Aquatics Championships medalists in swimming (men)\nWorld record progression 4 × 100 metres freestyle relay\nWorld record progression 4 × 100 metres medley relay\n\n\n== References =="}
{"title": "Jørgen Graabak", "requested": "Jørgen Graabak", "extract": "Jørgen Nyland Graabak (born 26 April 1991) is a Norwegian former Nordic combined skier. With four victories, he has won more Olympic gold medals in the sport than any other athlete.\n\n\n== Biography ==\nHe hails from Trondheim Municipality and represents the club Byåsen IL.\n\n\n== Career ==\nGraabak has seven world cup victories. He competed for Norway at the 2014 Winter Olympics. After not participating in the Normal Hill race, he replaced Mikko Kokslien in the large hill event and won gold, having placed 6th after the jumping stage. In the Men's Nordic combined relay, he won a second gold, racing Norway's final leg.\nHe was awarded the Holmenkollen Medal in 2022.\n\n\n== Record ==\n\n\n=== Olympic Games ===\n6 medals (4 gold, 2 silver)\n\n\n=== World Championships ===\n8 medals (3 gold, 4 silver, 1 bronze)\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nJørgen Graabak at FIS (Nordic combined)\nJørgen Graabak at Olympics.com\nJørgen Graabak at Team Norway (in Norwegian)\nJørgen Graabak at Olympedia\nJørgen Graabak at InterSportStats\nJørgen Graabak on Instagram"}
{"title": "Kakhi Kakhiashvili", "requested": "Kakhi Kakhiashvili", "extract": "Kakhi Kakhiashvili (Georgian: კახი კახიაშვილი, Greek: Ακάκιος \"Κάχι\" Κακιασβίλης; born 13 July 1969 in Tskhinvali, Georgian SSR, USSR) is a Georgian-Greek weightlifter, one of only six weightlifters to have won three consecutive gold medals at Olympic Games. He won his first at Barcelona 1992, competing with the Unified Team, and later as a citizen of Greece at Atlanta 1996 and in Sydney 2000. He won three Senior World Championships (1995, 1998, 1999), was twice a silver medalist at the Senior World Championships (1993 and 1994), and set seven world records during his career. He was named the 1996 and 1999 Greek Male Athlete of the Year.\nKakhiashvili was born in Tskhinvali, Georgia, to a Georgian father and a Greek mother, Maria Lamprianidi. He is renowned in weightlifting circles for his uncanny ability to lift exactly what was required to win. Dubbed as a \"computer\" by some competitors, he also had the ability to block out everything that was not relevant to the competition at hand.\n\n\n== Career ==\nAt the 1992 Summer Olympics lifting for the Unified Team in the 90 kg category, he went against the instructions of his coach Vasily Alexeev, the all-time weightlifting great. His coach wanted his Russian teammate Sergey Syrtsov to win the contest and did not let Kakhiashvili try to lift heavier to beat the Russian. During the snatch portion of the competition, it looked like Sergey Syrtsov was going to win, with a 12.5 kg lead over Kakhiashvili from an Olympic Record 190.0 kg snatch. During the clean & jerk portion of the competition Kakhiashvili lifted 225.0 kg on his second attempt, giving him a total of 402.5 kg, a full 10.0 kg less than Syrstov. Kakhi ordered 10 kg more to be put on the bar in order to beat his Russian teammate. He successfully lifted the 235.0 kg clean and jerk, giving him a total of 412.5 kg. Event though his total tied Syrstov, Kakhiashvili won the gold medal due to virtue of a lighter bodyweight, (89.25 kg vs. 89.45 kg) this performance established his right to the title of one of the sports elite lifters.\n\n\n== Major results ==\n\n\n== Notes ==\na  Not a world record at the time of the competition, became a world record when IWF decided to eliminate the world standards from the list of World Records on 24 June 2008.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nAkakide Kakhiashvilis at Lift Up\nAkakide Kakhiashvilis at the Lift Up Hall of Fame\nAkakide Kakhiashvilis – Hall of Fame at Weightlifting Exchange\nAkakios Kakiasvili at Olympedia \nAkakios Kakiasvilis at Olympics.com \nKahi Kahiasvilli at the Hellenic Olympic Committee"}
{"title": "Kamil Stoch", "requested": "Kamil Stoch", "extract": "Kamil Wiktor Stoch (Polish pronunciation: [ˈkamil stɔx]; born 25 May 1987) is a Polish former ski jumper. He is one of the most successful ski jumpers in the history of the sport, having won two World Cup titles, three Four Hills Tournaments (two of them consecutively), three individual gold medals at the Winter Olympics, individual and team gold at the Ski Jumping World Championships, and individual silver at the Ski Flying World Championships. His other tournament wins include Raw Air (twice), the Willingen Five, and Planica7.\nStoch is among only three ski jumpers in history, alongside Sven Hannawald and Ryoyu Kobayashi, to win the \"grand slam\" of all four competitions in a single Four Hills Tournament. In 2018, at age 30, Stoch became the oldest individual Olympic gold medallist and World Cup titlist in the history of ski jumping. He was voted Polish Sports Personality of the Year in 2014 and 2017. Stoch retired at the end of the 2025-26 season.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nStoch was born in Zakopane and raised in nearby Ząb. He has two older sisters. In 2006, he graduated from the School of Sports Championships in Zakopane. In 2012, he graduated from the University School of Physical Education in Krakow with a master's degree in physical education (MPhEd). On 7 August 2010, he married Ewa Bilan.\n\n\n== Career ==\nHe was three years old when he first started skiing. A year later, he started ski jumping. When he was six years old, he received his first ski-jumping skis from his uncle. He joined the club ŁKS Ząb as an eight-year-old boy, where his first coach was Mirosław Małuda. He initially trained in the sport of Nordic combined.\nAt the 2006 Ski-flying World Championships in Kulm, Stoch finished 9th in the team event and 35th in the individual event. He competed at his first Olympics in 2006, in Turin, Italy. Having qualified for the finals in the normal hill and large hill, he finished 16th and 26th, respectively. He also qualified for the team competition (large hill), where Poland placed 5th.\nStoch won the Polish Championship in 2007. At the 2007 FIS Nordic World Ski Championships in Sapporo, Stoch finished 5th in the team large hill and 11th in the individual normal hill. He also won a World Cup Summer Grand Prix competition in Oberhof in 2007.\nIn 2008, Stoch was 6th in the individual world cup in Val di Fiemme. In 2009, he was 4th in individual World Championship in Liberec on the normal hill.\n\n\n=== 2009/2010 ===\nAt the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, the Polish ski jumping team was led by Adam Małysz (who would win the silver medal in both individual events). Stoch again qualified for the finals in all three events, finishing 27th in the Normal hill and 14th in the Large hill, while the Polish team placed sixth in the team competition. Stoch won a 2010 Summer World Cup competition in Wisła and 2011 World Cup events in Zakopane (rescheduled from Harrachov), Klingenthal, and Planica.\n\n\n=== 2010/2011 ===\nOn 23 January 2011, on Wielka Krokiew in Zakopane, Poland, he won a World Cup competition for the first time in his career. It was his first time on the podium in this series. He became the fourth Polish ski jumper, after Stanisław Bobak, Piotr Fijas, and Adam Małysz, to win a World Cup competition.\nA week later, the team competition, held annually in Willingen with jumps devoted to distance 139 m and 130 m, contributed to gaining third place for the Polish team. On 2 February 2011, he won second World Cup competition in Klingenthal, Germany. On 22 February 2011, he won the third title of Polish Champion in Szczyrk, where he jumped twice at 101.5 m. During World Cup in Lahti, Finland, he gained third place with the team again. The season 2010/2011 ended in Planica, Slovenia, where for the third time in the history of Polish ski jumping – two ski jumpers were on the podium together. On 20 March 2011, Stoch won third in his career World Cup competition, and Adam Małysz was third. A day earlier, during a trial run before the competition team, Stoch set his new personal record and landed at 226 m. The Polish national team was ranked third place in the Nations Cup. Stoch ended the season in 10th place in the general individual classification.\n\n\n=== 2011/2012 ===\nOn 26 December 2011, Wisła Malinka, Poland, held Polish Championship. In the first series, Stoch jumped 123.5 m. In the second, he jumped 136 meters, which set a new record and also won him the gold medal.\nOn 20 January 2012 was held the first of two World Cup competitions in Zakopane. After the jump on a distance of 125.5 m in the first series held the second position. On the other hand, he jumped 135 m, the longest distance in the competition. The second series gave Stoch a fourth career victory, the second in Zakopane.\nIn the first competition in Predazzo, after the landings at 123.5 mi 126 m, peaked at 7th place, with a loss of 4.2 points to the podium. In both series, he jumped in adverse wind conditions. The next day of the competition on Trampolino dal Ben he jumped a distance of 125,5 mi 131.5 m, which gave him the victory before Gregor Schlierenzauer and Anders Bardal. This moved him up to fourth place in the overall standings, ahead of Thomas Morgenstern.\nSeason 2011/2012 graduated on the best in his career – fifth place in the overall World Cup with the acquis 1078 points and a loss of 247 points to the winner of the Crystal Ball – Anders Bardal. This season, Stoch was on the podium seven times – twice victorious, second twice and third three times. The classification of flights was sixth, which was also his best result. He lost 162 points to the best aviator season – Robert Kranjec, but he stood on the podium one contest flight – was third in Tauplitz.\n\n\n=== 2012/2013 ===\nOn 25 January 2013, he became the joint holder of the Polish ski flying distance record (tying the mark held by Piotr Żyła) with a jump of 232.5 metres.\nIn the first competition in Val di Fiemme during the 2013 Ski Jumping World Championships, Stoch earned the highest score in the trial before the contest, jumping to 103 m in the first round competition, jumped a distance of 102 m and was ranked second place, losing 2.8 points to the leader – Anders Bardal. The second series reached 97 m, with a weak landing and fell to eighth place. Stoch, in post-competition interviews, stated that he is very unhappy with the obtained result – despite the relaxation made a mistake during the jump.\nOn 28 February 2013, achieved the title of World Champion 2013. In the first series of the competition, he showed the longest jump of 131.5 m and earned high marks for style, including the \"20\" from the Swiss judge. He was the leader after the first round. In the final series, like most of the top competitors, he competed with reduced at the request of the coach – the nineteenth beam. Stoch jumped 130 m, again without providing any judicial note below \"19\" and won the gold medal with 6.1 points more than Peter Prevc, but about 6.7 from the third Anders Jacobsen. Immediately after the competition, Stoch and Prevc were threatened with disqualification for image suits. This provision was to be introduced the day before; ultimately, the judges rejected the anonymous protest. Stoch won the gold a day later in Cavalese. He won the title of World Champion in Val di Fiemme – exactly ten years after winning the first title of World Champion by Adam Małysz. On 2 March 2013, Stoch participated in the team competition on the large hill, which was submitted to the fourth group of players. Before his first attempt, Poland was classified in fifth place. Makes a stroke on the 134-meter and, after the first round, Poland took fourth place, losing five points to the third Germans. The second started at the request of head coach Łukasz Kruczek, with a reduction of two positions beams and reached 130 meters. The Polish team, consisting of Stoch and his teammates Dawid Kubacki, Piotr Żyła and Maciej Kot, won a bronze medal in the team competition. The Polish team originally took fourth place, but after recounting the scores because of Thomas Morgenstern, who noticed a mistake in points and at the request of the Germans, they finished in third place (The Norwegian team was originally in front of the Polish team, but Anders Bardal's jump was badly counted).\nIn the overall World Cup season, the 2012/2013 Polish representative came in third. He scored 953 points but lost 667 points to the winner of the Crystal Ball – Gregor Schlierenzauer and 46 points to the second Anders Bardal. His advantage over fourth Severin Freund totaled 30 points. He won two World Cup competitions, five times on the podium.\n\n\n=== 2013/2014 ===\nAt the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, Stoch entered as a medal favorite. On 9 February 2014, after qualifying easily in the first competition on the normal hill, he then landed the longest jumps in both rounds of the finals to win the title of Olympic Champion. He won by 12.7 points, the fourth-largest margin of victory in a men's normal hill at the Winter Olympic Games. It was Poland's first Olympic ski jumping gold medal since Wojciech Fortuna won the large hill at the 1972 Olympics. While competing, he wore a helmet painted in military green in tribute to the Polish Air Force (with a red & white Polish Air Force checkerboard insignia on the left side of his helmet.). On 15 February 2014, Stoch won his second gold medal, this time on the large hill, becoming the third man in history to win both hills individual events in a single Olympics after Matti Nykänen in Calgary 1988 and Simon Ammann in Salt Lake City 2002 and Vancouver 2010. He jumped 139 m and 132.5 m. His advantage over the second-placed Japanese Noriaki Kasai was 1.3 points, and 3.9 points over the third-placed Slovene Peter Prevc.\nIn March 2014, he won the overall FIS World Cup classification. Season 2013/2014 ended with his six victories.\n\n\n=== 2014/2015 ===\n\nKamil Stoch sustained an ankle injury before the FIS World Cup opening in Klingenthal, which prevented him from participating in the first competitions of the season. He resumed training before the Four Hills Tournament. He took 10th place at Four Hills Tournament. On 18 January 2015 won FIS World Cup in Zakopane at Wielka Krokiew. It was his first victory after serious injury. On 30 January 3015, won the 15th World Cup in career, this time in Willingen. In February 2015 took part in the World Championships. He was 17th in normal hill and 12th in large hill competition. On 28 February 2015 (exactly two years after winning the World Champion title by Stoch) Polish team in squad: Stoch, Piotr Żyła, Klemens Murańka and Jan Ziobro achieved the bronze medal of World Championships 2015 in the team event. For Stoch, it is his second bronze medal in the team event at the World Championships.\nOn 21 March 2015, set a new Polish record of ski flying with a jump of 238 metres at Letalnica, Planica during the trial round. He took 9th place in FIS World Cup general classification. Season 2014/2015 ended with two victories, two-second place, and one third place.\n\n\n=== 2016/2017 ===\n\nCompeting in Klingenthal on 3 December 2016, the Polish national team, again composed of Żyła, Stoch, Kubacki and Kot, won their country's first-ever World Cup team event. On 11 December 2016, he achieved his 16th victory in World Cup competition ahead of the second-placed Maciej Kot with predominantly 0.6 a point.\nDuring the 2016–17 Four Hills Tournament, he achieved second place twice, in Oberstdorf and Garmisch-Partenkirchen. In the trial before the competition in Innsbruck, Stoch fell while landing after a long-jump. He had a very painful shoulder injury and hematoma. Despite the injury, he continued to participate in the tournament. In the windy competition in Innsbruck, he took fourth place, and the overall was second with a loss to leader Daniel-Andre Tande 1.7 points. On 6 January 2017, he won the last competition in Bischofshofen and won overall (997.8 points) with a predominance over the second overall Piotr Żyła 35.3 points. Since Bischofschofen, Stoch won two individual competitions in Wisła and one in Zakopane. He has not lost since in individual competitions. In Zakopane, the Polish team, including Stoch and his teammates – Kubacki, Kot, and Żyła, achieved second place in the team competition. On 28 January 2017, Poland won their second team competition in history in Willingen.\nOn 4 March 2017, the Polish national team, again consisting of Żyła, Kubacki, Kot and Stoch, achieved their first title in the team event at the 2017 World Championships. They beat Norway and Austria at Salpausselkä K116 in Lahti, Finland.\n\n\n=== 2017/2018 ===\nIn the 2017-18 Four Hills Tournament, Stoch became the second jumper in history – after Sven Hannawald – to win all four competitions in the Tournament, taking his second victory in a row with a total score of 1108.8 points and 69.6 points of advantage over the second-placed Andreas Wellinger.\nOn 20 January 2018, he achieved the silver medal of the 2018 Ski Jumping World Championships. In the three-part competition, he became the ski flying World Championships runner-up behind Daniel Andre Tande from Norway and ahead of Richard Freitag from Germany. It was the second medal in history for Poland in the Ski Flying World Championships after the bronze of Piotr Fijas in 1979. The next day, Stoch and his teammates Hula, Kubacki, and Żyła, won the first ever medal, a bronze, for Poland in ski flying in team competition.\n\nOn 4 February 2018, Stoch won overall classification in the newest tournament Willingen Five 2018. He won qualifications and took 4th and 2nd place in the following competitions.\nStoch was in good shape at the beginning of the 2018 Winter Olympic Games and had good jumps at training sessions and qualifications. At the normal hill event, he placed 4th. On 17 February 2018, he won a gold medal ahead of Andreas Wellinger and Robert Johansson at the large hill event. This was his third title of Olympic Champion. On 19 February 2018, Stoch and his teammates Maciej Kot, Stefan Hula and Dawid Kubacki achieved Poland's first medal in the team event at the Olympics. They claimed a bronze behind Norway and Germany.\n\n\n== Olympic Games ==\n\nStoch competed at the Olympic Games six times – in Turin 2006, Vancouver 2010, Sochi 2014, PyeongChang 2018, Beijing 2022 and Milano Cortina 2026. In his first one in Turin, he was 16th on normal hill K95 and 26th place on large hill K125. In the team competition, he was with the Polish team in 5th place. In Vancouver, he was 27th on normal hill (weaker than in Turin) and 14th on large hill. In the team competition, in which he also jumped, Poland was ranked 6th.\nIn Sochi, Russia, in the individual competition on the normal hill, he won the title of Olympic Champion. At the same Olympics, Kamil Stoch also won the Olympic title in the individual competition on the large hill K125. He is the third man in history to win both hills individual events in single Olympics after Matti Nykänen in Calgary 1988 and Simon Ammann in Salt Lake City 2002, Vancouver 2010.\nOn 21 January 2018, coach Stefan Horngacher officially appointed Kamil Stoch to the 2018 Winter Olympics. Stoch took 4th place at normal hill event and 1st (earning him a gold medal) at the large hill event. It was his third title of Olympic Champion. Two days later, he added the fourth Olympic medal to his collection, a bronze with the Polish team (Poland's first-ever Olympic medal team).\n\n\n== World Championships ==\nKamil Stoch took part in FIS Nordic World Ski Championships eight times. He debuted in Oberstdorf, where he finished in 37th place on the large hill. Later he appeared in Sapporo, Liberec and Oslo. In 2013 he became a World Champion in Val di Fiemme. On 24 February 2017, he established a new hill record (103.5 m) at Salpausselkä HS97 in qualifications before the first competition of 2017 World Championships.\n\n\n== Ski Flying World Championships ==\nStoch became the runner-up of the 2018 Ski Flying World Championships in Oberstdorf. It was the second medal in ski flying for Poland after 39 years. Also, the next day he achieved, with the Polish team, a first medal in ski flying in team for Poland.\n\n\n== World Cup ==\n\n\n=== Season standings ===\n\n\n=== Individual starts ===\n\n\n=== Victories ===\n\n\n=== Podiums ===\n\n\n=== Team victories ===\n\n\n== State awards ==\n2014  Knight's Cross of Polonia Restituta\n2017  Honorary Badge of Lesser Poland Voivodeship – Cross of Małopolska\n\n\n== Other awards ==\n2014, 2017 Polish Sportspersonality of the Year\n2015 Holmenkollen Medal\n\n\n== See also ==\nSport in Poland\nPoland at the Winter Olympics\nList of Poles\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nKamil Stoch at the International Ski and Snowboard Federation \nKamil Stoch at Milano Cortina 2026\nKamil Stoch at Olympics.com\nKamil Stoch at Olympedia \nKamil Stoch at InterSportStats\nKamil Stoch at the Polski Komitet Olimpijski (in Polish) (archive)\nKamil Stoch on Instagram"}
{"title": "Kaori Icho", "requested": "Kaori Icho", "extract": "Kaori Icho (Japanese: 伊調 馨, Hepburn: Ichō Kaori; born 13 June 1984) is a Japanese freestyle wrestler.  She is a ten-time World Champion and four-time Olympic Champion, winning gold in 2004, 2008, 2012 and 2016. Icho was undefeated between 2003 and 2016. On 29 January 2016 at the Golden Grand Prix Ivan Yarygin 2016 Icho lost to Pürevdorjiin Orkhon of Mongolia. This was her first loss after a long domination.\nShe is the first female in any sport to win individual-event gold at four consecutive Olympics.\nOn October 20, 2016, she was awarded the People's Honour Award by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for her achievements, the second wrestler to receive the highest award, after Saori Yoshida in 2012. She is the younger sister of Chiharu Icho.\n\n\n== Controversy ==\n\nOn January 18, 2018, a formal complaint was filed with the Japanese Cabinet Office, accusing Japan Wrestling Federation development director Kazuhito Sakae (栄和人) of power abuse against Kaori after she left his coaching in 2009 and moved to Tokyo.\nSpecific alleged acts included ordering Icho’s new coach, Chikara Tanabe (田南部力) to stop coaching her; banning her from the Keishicho (Metropolitan Police) wrestling club where she trained; and prohibiting her from joining men’s training camps. Additionally, Sakae directed others to harass Tanabe when he refused to refused to stop coaching Icho, and excluded Icho from the 2010 Asian Games team despite her qualifications. It was reported that the Shigakkan University clique supported Sakae's ongoing harassment of Icho.\n\n\n== Championships and accomplishments ==\nTokyo Sports\nWrestling Special Award (2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016)\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists in one event\nList of multiple Olympic medalists in one event\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nKaori Icho at United World Wrestling\nKaori Icho at the International Wrestling Database\nKaori Icho at Olympics.com\nKaori Icho at Olympedia \nKaori Icho at InterSportStats\nKaori Icho at Team Japan (in Japanese) (in English)\nKaori Icho at IMDb"}
{"title": "Karin Enke", "requested": "Karin Enke", "extract": "Karin Voss (née Enke, formerly Busch, Kania and Richter; born 20 June 1961) is a former speed skater, one of the most dominant of the 1980s. She is a three-time Olympic gold medallist, winning the 500 metres in 1980, the 1000 metres in 1984 and the 1500 metres in 1984. She won a total of eight Olympic medals, representing East Germany.\n\n\n== Short biography ==\nKarin Enke started her sport career as a figure skater at the club SC Einheit Dresden. Representing East Germany she came in ninth place at the European Figure Skating Championships in 1977. Later she changed to speed skating.\nDominant on all distances (being reigning World Allround Champion and World Sprint Champion, and having won German Single Distance Championships titles on all five distances in 1983), Enke was the favourite for all four distances at the 1984 Winter Olympics of Sarajevo, but she won \"only\" two gold and two silver medals. At the World Cup, Enke had 21 single-distance victories, but won only one overall World Cup. She retired from speed skating after the 1987–88 season.\nBorn as Karin Enke, she married in 1981 and competed as Karin Busch during the 1981–82 winter. The marriage did not last long and during the 1982–83 and 1983–84 winters, she competed as Karin Enke again. After marrying her longtime former trainer Rudolf Kania in 1984, she competed as Karin Kania for the rest of her speed skating career. After her career had ended, she divorced and married again and became Karin Enke-Richter.\nLike several other female East German skaters who got married after the season had ended (and several of them more than once over the course of their careers), Enke caused some confusion among the speed skating public when she—a skater with a name unfamiliar to them—suddenly won major titles in her \"first\" season. To alleviate the confusion, Enke kept her maiden name as the first part of her last name after her third marriage, just like Gunda Kleemann (also known as Gunda Niemann and Gunda Niemann-Stirnemann) kept Niemann (the name of her first husband) as the first part of her last name even after her divorce and both before and after her second marriage, which is unusual in most Western European countries.\n\n\n== Doping use ==\nOn 3 January 2010, Giselher Spitzer, a German sport historian and researcher of the Humboldt University of Berlin, claimed in the Dutch TV documentary Andere Tijden ('Other Times') that back in 1984, Karin Enke had been prepared with doping. He based his claim on Stasi-documents, which were shown during the programme. Citation: \"[Dem Arzt] war bekannt, dass Karin ENKE zu den Olympischen  Spielen zu den ausgewählten Athleten gehörte, die mit erheblichen Mengen Testosteron und gleichzeitigen Gegenspritzen von Epitestosteron auf ihre Wettkämpfe vorbereitet würden.\" (\"It was known to the medic, that Karin ENKE at the Olympic Games belonged to those athletes who were prepared for the Games with relevant measures of Testosteron and, synchronously, with contrasting measures of Epitosteron.\").\n\n\n== Medals ==\n\nAn overview of medals won by Enke at important championships she participated in, listing the years in which she won each:\n\n\n== World records ==\nOver the course of her career, Enke skated 10 world records:\n\n\n== Personal records ==\nTo put these personal records in perspective, the last column (WR) lists the official world records on the dates that Enke skated her personal records.\n\nNote that Enke's personal record on the 500 m was not a world record because Bonnie Blair skated 39.10 at the same tournament (the 1988 Winter Olympics). Enke's personal record on the 1000 m was not a world record either because (again at the same 1988 Winter Olympics) Christa Rothenburger skated 1:17.65 – 0.05 seconds faster.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nKarin Enke at SkateResults.com Archived 3 January 2007 at the Wayback Machine\nKarin Enke at DESG (Deutsche Eisschnelllauf Gemeinschaft) (in German)"}
{"title": "Karl Neukirch", "requested": "Karl Neukirch", "extract": "Karl Bruno Paul Neukirch (3 November 1864 – 27 June 1941) was a German gymnast. He was born and died in Berlin. He competed at the 1896 Summer Olympics in Athens.\nNeukirch was a member of the German team that won two gold medals by placing first in both of the team events, the parallel bars and the horizontal bar. He also competed in the parallel bars, horizontal bar, vault, and pommel horse individual events, though without success.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nKarl Neukirch at Olympedia"}
{"title": "Kathrin Boron", "requested": "Kathrin Boron", "extract": "Kathrin Boron (born 4 November 1969) is a German sculler, and four-time Olympic gold medallist. She's an athlete of the SV Dynamo / SG Dynamo Potsdam.\nBoron won the women's double sculls at the 1992 Summer Olympics with Kerstin Köppen and 2000 Summer Olympics with Jana Thieme, and the women's quad sculls at the 1996 Summer Olympics and 2004 Summer Olympics. At the 2008 Summer Olympics, she finished third in the quad sculls. In addition, Boron has won seven World Championship Gold Medals and five Silver, starting with gold in the double sculls at Tasmania in 1990.\nBoron was honoured for her outstanding career in rowing with the 2009 Thomas Keller Medal.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nKathrin Boron at World Rowing"}
{"title": "Katie Ledecky", "requested": "Katie Ledecky", "extract": "Kathleen Genevieve  Ledecky (  lə-DEK-ee; born March 17, 1997) is an American competitive swimmer. She is the most decorated female swimmer in history and the most decorated American woman in Olympic history, with a total of 14 Olympic medals, including nine golds. She is widely regarded as the greatest female swimmer of all time.\nLedecky has won a record 18 individual gold medals at the World Aquatics Championships, and is the world record holder in the women's 800- and 1500-meter freestyle long course and 1500-meter freestyle short course, as well as the former world record holder in the women's 400-meter freestyle (long course) and 800-meter freestyle (short course). In her international debut at the 2012 London Olympic Games as a 15-year-old, Ledecky unexpectedly won the gold medal in the women's 800-metre freestyle. Four years later, she left Rio de Janeiro as the most decorated female athlete of the 2016 Olympic Games, with four gold medals, one silver medal, and two world records.\nAt the 2020 Olympic Games, Ledecky emerged as the most decorated U.S. female athlete and became the first American female swimmer to win an individual event in three straight Olympiads. In 2025, she won gold in the 800 meter World Championship, becoming the first swimmer—male or female—to win seven World Championship gold medals in the same event. In total, she has won 58 medals (41 golds, 14 silvers, and 3 bronzes) in major international competitions, spanning the Summer Olympics, World Championships, and Pan Pacific Championships. During her career, she has broken 17 world records.\nLedecky's success has earned her Swimming World's Female World Swimmer of the Year a record five times. Ledecky was also named Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year in 2017 and 2022, international female Champion of Champions by L'Équipe in 2014 and 2017, United States Olympic Committee Female Athlete of the Year in 2013, 2016 and 2017, Sportswoman of the Year by the Women's Sports Foundation in 2017, and the ESPY Best Female Athlete in 2022. In 2024, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Joe Biden.\n\n\n== Early life, swimming, and education ==\nLedecky was born in Washington, D.C. and raised in the suburb of Bethesda, Maryland, the daughter of Mary Gen (née Hagan) and David Ledecky. Her Czech-born paternal grandfather Jaromír Ledecký arrived in New York City on September 8, 1947, as a student. He later became an economist and married an Ashkenazi Jewish woman named Berta Ruth Greenwald in Brooklyn, New York, on December 30, 1956. Through her paternal grandmother, Ledecky has relatives who were murdered in the Holocaust. Ledecky's mother is of Irish descent. She was raised Catholic and continues to practice the faith, often praying the Hail Mary before her races. Her uncle Jon Ledecky is a businessman and a co-owner of the NHL team New York Islanders.\n\nLedecky began swimming at the age of six under the influence of her older brother, Michael, and her mother, who swam for the University of New Mexico. In Bethesda, she attended Little Flower School through eighth grade and graduated from Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart in 2015.\n\nDuring her high-school swimming career, Ledecky twice set the American and US Open record in the 500-yard freestyle, and she twice set the national high-school record in the 200-yard freestyle. During the summers prior to 2012, she swam for MCSL's Palisades Swim Team in Cabin John, Maryland. During the summer of 2012, she trained with the Nation's Capital Swim Club (formerly the Curl Burke Swim Club) under coach Yuri Suguiyama. Following Suguiyama's departure to coach for the University of California, Berkeley, she continued to train with the Nation's Capital Swim Club under coach Bruce Gemmell through the 2016 Summer Olympics. Ledecky accepted an athletic scholarship to Stanford University, where she swam for coach Greg Meehan's Stanford Cardinal women's swimming team.\nIn December 2016, Ledecky was chosen as one of the sponsors of the US Navy aircraft carrier USS Enterprise alongside Olympic gold medal-winning gymnast Simone Biles. They were the first Olympians to be given this honor. In December 2020, she completed a Bachelor of Arts in psychology and minor in political science from Stanford University, and graduated in June 2021.\n\n\n== Swimming career ==\n\n\n=== 2012 ===\n\n\n==== 2012 US Olympic Trials ====\nAt the 2012 United States Olympic trials in Omaha, Nebraska (her first senior national competition), Ledecky made the Olympic team by placing first in the 800-meter freestyle with a time of 8:19.78, which was over two seconds ahead of second-place finisher Kate Ziegler. In Omaha, Ledecky also placed third in the 400-meter freestyle (4:05.00) and ninth in the 200-meter freestyle (1:58.66). Her third-place finish in the 400-meter freestyle was the fastest time ever swum by a 15- to 16-year-old American. At 15 years, 4 months, and 10 days, she was the youngest American participant at the 2012 Olympic Games.\n\n\n==== 2012 Summer Olympic Games ====\n\nAt the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, Ledecky qualified to swim in the final of the 800-meter freestyle by placing third overall in the heats with a time of 8:23.84. In the final, Ledecky stunned the field, winning gold by more than four seconds, with a time of 8:14.63, the then second-fastest effort of all time just behind Rebecca Adlington's world record of 8:14.10 set in 2008. In addition, she broke Janet Evans' American record of 8:16.22 that had stood since 1989. In the final, Ledecky went out hard and, by the 200-meter mark, she had already established an almost body-length lead. Her 400-meter split was 4:04.34, a personal best for Ledecky in that distance, and would have placed fifth in the individual 400-meter freestyle. At the 750-meter mark, Ledecky was 3.42 seconds ahead of Mireia Belmonte García, and 0.31 seconds under world record pace. Ledecky won by 4.13 seconds and just missed the world record by 0.53 seconds. Her gold was the first international medal of her career, earning her the 2012 Best Female Performance of the Year and Breakout Performer of the Year at the Golden Goggle Awards.\n\n\n=== 2013 ===\n\n\n==== 2013 USA Swimming Championships ====\nAt the 2013 US National Championships, Ledecky qualified to swim in four individual events and the 4×200-meter freestyle relay at the 2013 World Aquatics Championships in Barcelona, Spain, though she later dropped the 200-meter freestyle from her program. At the National Championships, she finished first in the 400-, 800- and 1500-meter freestyle, and second in the 200-meter freestyle.\n\n\n==== 2013 World Championships ====\n\nAt the 2013 World Championships, Ledecky won gold in the 400-, 800-, and 1500-meter freestyle, and in the 4×200-meter freestyle relay, and set two world records. In winning the 400 through 1500-meter titles, she became the second woman ever to win the events in a World Championships since German Hannah Stockbauer in 2003. In her first event in Barcelona, the 400-meter freestyle, Ledecky became a world champion for the first time by winning in 3:59.82, setting a new American record and becoming the second-fastest performer of all time in the event.\n\nIn her second event, Ledecky won gold in the 1500-meter freestyle in a world record time of 15:36.53, breaking the record held by compatriot Kate Ziegler by six seconds. The hard-fought race saw Ledecky overcome Dane Lotte Friis in the final few hundred meters after losing the lead at the 300-meter mark and included a final 50 split of 29.47. In her third, and first relay event of her international career, the 4×200-meter freestyle, Ledecky and teammates Shannon Vreeland, Karlee Bispo, and Missy Franklin won gold in 7:45.14. Anchor Missy Franklin overtook Australian Alicia Coutts in the last 200 meters, giving the US the gold. Ledecky provided the US with an early lead, swimming the first leg in a personal best of 1:56.32. In her fourth and last event, the 800-meter freestyle, Ledecky won gold in a world record of 8:13.86, bettering Rebecca Adlington's world record of 8:14.10. Much like the 1500-meter freestyle, Ledecky let Lotte Friis lead most of the race, making a move at the 650-meter mark to eventually win the race by 2.46 seconds.\nLedecky scored more points than any other swimmer to earn the FINA trophy for best female swimmer of the meet. At year's end, Ledecky was named the American Swimmer of the Year and the World Swimmer of the Year by Swimming World magazine. She was also named the best female swimmer for 2013 by FINA Aquatics World magazine.\n\n\n=== 2014 ===\nLedecky began the year by breaking her own world records in the 800- and 1500-meter freestyle at the 2014 Woodlands Swim Team Senior Invitational in June. Despite being in season and swimming multiple events, Ledecky was able to first break the world record in the 1500-meter freestyle with a time of 15:34.23, bettering her previous mark of 15:36.53. Three days later, Ledecky then broke the world record in the 800-meter freestyle with a time of 8:11.00, bettering her previous mark of 8:13.86.\n\n\n==== 2014 USA Swimming Championships ====\nAt the 2014 US National Championships, the qualifying meet for both the 2014 Pan Pacific Swimming Championships and the 2015 World Aquatics Championships, Ledecky finished first in the 200-, 400-, and 800-meter freestyle. In the 400-meter freestyle, Ledecky set her third world record of the year by breaking Federica Pellegrini's 2009 world record of 3:59.15 with a time of 3:58.86. With her mark in the 400, Ledecky became the first female since Janet Evans to hold world records simultaneously in the 400-, 800-, and 1500-meter freestyles.\n\n\n==== 2014 Pan Pacific Championships ====\n\nAt the 2014 Pan Pacific Swimming Championships in Gold Coast, Australia, Ledecky won five gold medals and broke two world records. Her wins came in the 200-, 400-, 800-, and 1500-meter freestyle and the 4×200-meter freestyle. Ledecky almost broke the world record in the 800-meter freestyle, finishing with a time of 8:11.35. Her world records came in the 400- and 1500-meter freestyles, with times of 3:58.37 and 15:28.36, respectively. She became the first woman to win four individual gold medals at a single Pan Pacific Championship.\n\nIn the 200-meter freestyle final, Ledecky had over a half-second lead on the field at the halfway point before winning by 1.46 seconds with a meet record time of 1:55.74. Less than an hour later, Ledecky won the 800-meter freestyle, swimming under her world record pace for most of the race before touching in at 8:11.35, the second-fastest time ever, to win by 7.52 seconds over New Zealand swimmer Lauren Boyle.\nThe next day, Ledecky added her third meet record by swimming on the American 4×200-meter freestyle relay team with Shannon Vreeland, Missy Franklin, and Leah Smith. Swimming the anchor leg, Ledecky erased a 1.2-second deficit going into the final leg of the race, passing Australia's Melanie Schlanger with a 1:54.36 split over the final 200 meters. She also swam in the 100-meter freestyle heats. On the third day of the meet, Ledecky set her fourth meet record in the 400-meter freestyle prelim heats with a time of 4:03.09. That night, Ledecky lowered the record again, setting the first world record ever at the new Gold Coast Aquatic Center with a time of 3:58.37. Ledecky's winning time was over six seconds quicker than American teammate and silver medalist Cierra Runge.\nOn the meet's final day, Ledecky set her fifth world record of the year, lowering her record in the 1500-meter freestyle by nearly six seconds with a time of 15:28.36. Ledecky swam the second half of the race faster than the first, completing the final 800 meters in 8:14.11—faster than any other woman has completed a regular 800-meter race in a textile suit. Ledecky lapped three competitors in the final and finished 27.33 seconds ahead of silver medalist Boyle. National Team Director Frank Busch described Ledecky's 1500 performance as \"the most impressive race I have ever seen, and I've been in the sport for 50 years.... She's blazing a completely different trail than anyone who has come before.\" During the championships' closing ceremonies, Ledecky was named the female swimmer of the meet. At year's end, Ledecky was named the World Swimmer of the Year and American Swimmer of the Year by Swimming World Magazine.\n\n\n=== 2015 ===\n\n\n==== 2015 World Championships ====\n\nAt the 2015 World Aquatics Championships in Kazan, Russia, Ledecky won five gold medals and broke three world records. Her wins came in the 200-, 400-, 800-, and 1500-meter freestyles and the 4×200-meter freestyle. Her world records came in the 800- and 1500-meter freestyles. Ledecky became the first and only swimmer—male or female—to win the 200-, 400-, 800- and 1500-meter freestyles in a major competition. Ledecky was also named the female swimmer of the meet. Ledecky began the World Championships by winning gold in the 400-meter freestyle in a time of 3:59.13, a new championship record and almost four seconds ahead of her closest competitor.\nIn the heats of the 1500-meter freestyle on the second day of competition, Ledecky broke her own world record in a time of 15:27.71. On the third day of competition during the morning session, Ledecky swam in the heats of the 200-meter freestyle and qualified first with a time of 1:55.82. In the evening session, Ledecky faced a tough double with the 1500-meter freestyle final and the semi-finals of the 200-meter freestyle shortly after. In the 1500-meter freestyle, Ledecky broke her own world record in a time of 15:25.48. Twenty-nine minutes later, Ledecky qualified 6th in the 200-meter freestyle with a time of 1:56.76.\nIn her only event on the fourth day of competition, the 200-meter freestyle, Ledecky won her third gold medal of the meet, winning in a time of 1:55.16. Unlike her other races, it was not an easy win for Ledecky, which featured the likes of Missy Franklin and Federica Pellegrini. In the end, Ledecky was able to hold off a fast charging Pellegrini, eventually winning by a 0.16 margin. Ledecky's final 50-meter split of 29.33 was the second-fastest in the field behind Pellegrini's 29.23.\nOn the fifth day of competition, Ledecky, with Missy Franklin, Leah Smith, and Katie McLaughlin won gold in the 4×200-meter freestyle relay. Swimming the anchor leg, Ledecky recorded a split of 1:55.64 and the Americans finished with an aggregate time of 7:45.37. On the seventh day of competition, Ledecky completed her World Championships run by winning gold in the 800-meter freestyle in a world record time of 8:07.39, breaking her own record by 3.61 seconds.\n\n\n=== 2016 ===\nLedecky began 2016 at the Arena Pro Swim Series at Austin. On the final day of competition, she reset her world record in the 800-meter freestyle, clocking a time of 8:06.68. Earlier in the meet, she set world-leading times in the 200- and 400-meter freestyles and a U.S.-leading time in the 100-meter freestyle.\n\n\n==== 2016 US Olympic Trials ====\nAt the 2016 United States Olympic trials in Omaha, Nebraska, Ledecky won the 200-, 400- and 800-meter freestyles to qualify for her second Olympic team. Ledecky opened the Trials with a win and meet record in the 400-meter freestyle (3:58.98). Two days later, she recorded a time of 1:54.88 en route to winning the 200-meter freestyle. On July 1, Ledecky broke Janet Evans's 28-year-old national championship record in the morning preliminary heats of the 800-meter freestyle (8:10.91) before placing seventh that evening in the 100-meter freestyle (53.99). The next day, Ledecky lowered her meet record, winning the 800-meter freestyle final by nearly 10 seconds (8:10.32). With her pair of swims in the 800-meter freestyle, Ledecky took control of the top 11 fastest times in the event's history. At the conclusion of the week, Ledecky was named the female swimmer of the meet.\n\n\n==== 2016 Summer Olympic Games ====\n\nLedecky's first event in the 2016 Summer Olympics was the 4×100-meter freestyle relay, swimming the anchor leg for the United States in both the prelims and final. Ledecky recorded a split of 52.64 in the heats. In the final, she joined Simone Manuel, Abbey Weitzeil, and Dana Vollmer and recorded a split of 52.79, helping the team earn a silver medal (behind Australia) with a time of 3:31.89, a new national record for the United States.\nHer first individual event was the 400-meter freestyle. Ledecky qualified in the heats with a time of 3:58.71, an Olympic record. In the final, she won the gold medal with a world record time of 3:56.46––nearly two seconds faster than her previous record from 2014 and almost 5 seconds ahead of the silver medalist, Jazmin Carlin.\n\nLedecky won a second gold in the 200-meter freestyle with a personal best of 1:53.73, beating Sarah Sjöström by 0.35 seconds. Ledecky claimed her third gold in the 4×200-meter freestyle relay, with Allison Schmitt, Leah Smith, and Maya DiRado. Swimming the anchor leg again, Ledecky provided the fastest split of the field (1:53.74) to turn a 0.89-second deficit into a 1.84-second victory, stopping the clock at 7:43.03.\n\nLedecky won a fourth gold in her final individual event, the 800-meter freestyle. She qualified in the heats with an Olympic record, 8:12.86, and set a world record in the finals of 8:04.79, over 11 seconds faster than the silver medalist, Jazmin Carlin. With three individual titles, she became the first swimmer to win the 200, 400 and 800 m freestyle at the same Olympics since Debbie Meyer did so in 1968 in Mexico City. Ledecky's final medal total (four golds, one silver) is the most decorated single-Olympics performance by a U.S. female athlete in terms of gold medals, topping Missy Franklin (2012; four golds, 1 bronze), Simone Biles (2016; four golds, 1 bronze), and Amy Van Dyken (1996; four golds). Ledecky was also the 2nd most decorated Olympian at the 2016 games behind Michael Phelps (5 golds, 1 silver).\n\n\n=== 2017 ===\n\n\n==== 2017 NCAA season ====\nDuring the 2016–17 NCAA season, Ledecky set 12 NCAA records and nine American records while swimming as a freshman for Stanford University. At the Ohio State Invitational in November 2016, Ledecky lowered her American and U.S. Open marks in the women's 500-yard freestyle and 1650-yard freestyle. At the Pac-12 Championships in Federal Way, Washington, Ledecky earned Swimmer of the Meet honors with four American records as Stanford won its first conference title in four years. On the first day of the meet, Ledecky anchored the 800-yard freestyle relay with a 1:40.28 split to break the NCAA, American, and U.S. Open record in the 800-yard freestyle relay with Lia Neal, Katie Drabot, and Ella Eastin. The next day, Ledecky lowered her own mark again in the 500-yard freestyle with a time of 4:25.15.\nOn the meet's third day, she won the 400-yard individual medley in a new American record of 3:57.68 before finishing second to teammate Simone Manuel in the 200-yard freestyle with a personal best time less than a half hour later. On the meet's final day, Ledecky joined Manuel, Neal, and Janet Hu to break the NCAA and American record in the 400-yard freestyle relay. At the NCAA Championships in Indianapolis, Ledecky helped lead Stanford to its first team title since 1998. She reset her American, NCAA, and U.S. Open records in the 800-yard freestyle relay, 500-yard freestyle, and 400-yard freestyle relay and won a meet-best five race titles overall. On the meet's first day, she recorded the team's fastest split to lower the 800-yard freestyle relay record to 6:45.91 with Manuel, Neal, and Eastin. The next day, she lowered her own record in the 500-yard freestyle with a time of 4:24.06, beating the second-fastest performer of all time, Leah Smith, by nearly five seconds. On the meet's third day, Ledecky's 20th birthday, Ledecky recorded a personal-best time of 1:40.36 in the 200-yard freestyle to edge Manuel and tie Louisville sophomore Mallory Comerford for the title.\nOn the meet's final day, Ledecky set an NCAA record in the 1000-yard freestyle (9:06.90) en route to a championship record in the 1650-yard freestyle (15:07.70), defeating runner-up Smith by 21.19 seconds and lapping all other competitors. In the meet's final event, Ledecky joined Manuel, Neal, and Hu to swim the second leg of Stanford's 400-yard freestyle relay. The team lowered its previous record with a time of 3:07.61, securing a 526.5–366 decision over runner-up California-Berkeley, the largest championship margin of victory since 2003. Following the season, Ledecky became the first freshman in 35 years to receive the Honda Cup, which recognizes the nation's top female collegiate athlete.\n\n\n==== 2017 USA Swimming Championships ====\nAt the 2017 USA Swimming Championships, the qualifying meet for the 2017 World Aquatics Championships, Ledecky won the 200-meter freestyle (1:54.84), 400-meter freestyle (3:58.44), and 800-meter freestyle (8:11.50) and earned a spot on six events.\n\n\n==== 2017 World Championships ====\n\nAt the 2017 World Aquatics Championships in Budapest, Ledecky broke the World Aquatics Championships' all-time female gold medal record, winning five golds and one silver to bring her career title total to 14. In her first event, the 400-meter freestyle, Ledecky successfully defended her world title, finishing with a championship record time of 3:58.34. Later that evening, Ledecky swam the third leg of the 4×100-meter freestyle. Joined with Mallory Comerford, Kelsi Worrell, and Simone Manuel, Ledecky recorded a split of 53.83, helping the team win gold with a time of 3:31.72, a new national record for the United States.\n\nOn the third day of competition, Ledecky defended her 1500-meter freestyle title, winning with a time of 15:31.82. With this win being Ledecky's twelfth World Championship gold medal, Ledecky passed Missy Franklin for the most gold medals won by a female swimmer in long course World Championships history.\nOn the fourth day of competition, Ledecky tied for silver in the 200-meter freestyle (with Emma McKeon), finishing behind Federica Pellegrini with a time of 1:55.18. This was Ledecky's first international loss in a final in individual event. Notably, in the semifinals the day prior, Ledecky recorded the top time in the semifinals with a time of 1:54.69. She achieved this result less than an hour after swimming the 1500-meter freestyle final. On the fifth day of competition, Ledecky, with Leah Smith, Mallory Comerford, and Melanie Margalis won gold in the 4×200-meter freestyle relay. Swimming the anchor leg, Ledecky recorded a split of 1:54.02, and the Americans finished with an aggregate time of 7:43.39. Ledecky concluded the meet with a win in the 800-meter freestyle, her fifth-straight title in the event across Olympics and World Championships.\n\n\n=== 2018 ===\n\n\n==== 2018 NCAA season ====\nDuring the 2017–18 NCAA season, Ledecky set another three NCAA records and two American records while helping lead Stanford to its second straight team title. At the Texas A&M Invitational in November 2017, Ledecky lowered her American and U.S. Open mark in the 1650-yard freestyle with a time of 15:03.31. Following another undefeated dual meet season, Ledecky earned Swimmer of the Meet honors for the second straight year at the Pac-12 Championships in Federal Way, sweeping the 500-yard freestyle, 400-yard individual medley, and 200-yard freestyle. In the 400-yard individual medley, Ledecky broke Katinka Hosszú's all-time record by one-hundredth of a second, finishing in 3:56.53. Stanford earned its second team title in as many years.\nAt the NCAA Championships, Ledecky won the 500 and 1650-yard freestyle events by record margins and anchored the winning 800-yard freestyle relay team of Katie Drabot, Brooke Forde, and Ella Eastin. Ledecky finished second in the 400-yard individual medley to Eastin, who lowered the record Ledecky set a month earlier at the Pac-12 Championships. In the 1650-yard freestyle, Ledecky re-set her NCAA record in the 1000-yard free with a split of 9:05.89 en route to winning by more than 28 seconds. In the team standings, Stanford beat runner-up California-Berkeley by 220 points, the largest margin of victory in 25 years.\nA week following Stanford's championship win, Ledecky announced at the National Press Club that she will forego her final two seasons of NCAA eligibility in order to accept professional endorsement and sponsorship opportunities. She signed with Wasserman sports agent Dan Levy for representation. At the academic year's conclusion, the College Sports Information Directors of America named Ledecky the Division I Academic All-America Team Member of the Year for her athletic and academic achievements.\n\n\n==== Professional career ====\nLedecky made her debut as a professional swimmer on May 16, 2018, at the TYR Pro Swim Series in Indianapolis, Indiana, where she beat her old world record in the 1500-meter freestyle, setting a new world record of 15:20.48. She broke the existing mark by five seconds. Ledecky signed her first sponsorship deal with TYR Sport, Inc. on June 8, 2018.\n\n\n==== 2018 USA Swimming Championships ====\nIn July 2018, at the 2018 USA Swimming Championships in Irvine, Ledecky qualified for the 2018 Pan Pacific Championships by finishing first in the 200-, 400-, and 800-meter freestyle.\n\n\n==== 2018 Pan Pacific Championships ====\n\nAt the 2018 Pan Pacific Championships in Tokyo, Ledecky led all swimmers with three individual titles, winning golds in the 400-, 800-, and 1500-meter freestyle. She also took bronze in the 200-meter freestyle and silver in the 4x200-meter freestyle. On the first day of competition, Ledecky won gold in the 800-meter freestyle with a championship-record time of 8:09.13, topping runner-up Ariarne Titmus of Australia by 7.94 seconds. Just over an hour later, Ledecky took third in the 200-meter freestyle (1:55.15), finishing behind Canada's Taylor Ruck (1:54.44) and Japan's Rikako Ikee (1:54.85).\nThe next day, Ledecky anchored the United States team of Allison Schmitt, Leah Smith, and Katie McLaughlin in the 4x200-meter freestyle relay. Entering the water with a 2.88-second deficit, Ledecky swam the fourth-fastest relay split in history (1:53.84), nearly overtaking Australian Madeline Groves, who touched 0.25 seconds ahead of Ledecky to set a new championship and national record. On the third day, Ledecky defeated Titmus wire-to-wire in the 400-meter freestyle. Ledecky concluded the championships with another gold medal in the 1500-meter freestyle, winning by a margin of 21.11 seconds (15:38.97).\n\n\n=== 2019 ===\n\n\n==== 2019 World Championships ====\n\nAt the 2019 World Aquatics Championships in Gwangju, South Korea, Ledecky battled illness and withdrew from two events before winning her fourth-straight World Championship title in the 800-meter freestyle. On the first day of competition, Ledecky led Australian Ariarne Titmus into the final wall of the 400-meter freestyle final before fading to second. The next morning, Ledecky struggled through her preliminary heat of the 1500-meter freestyle despite qualifying first for the event's final. She subsequently announced her withdrawal from the 1500 and 200-meter freestyle due to illness.\nLedecky returned to competition three days later to swim the final of the women's 4x200-meter freestyle relay. The Americans (Simone Manuel, Ledecky, Melanie Margalis and Katie McLaughlin) set a new American record and swam under the existing world record with a time of 7:41.87, yet placed second to the Australian team (7:41.50). Still recovering from illness, Ledecky qualified second the next day for the final of the 800-meter freestyle. In the final, Ledecky swam to an early lead before Italian swimmer Simona Quadarella took over midway through the race. Ledecky trailed Quadarella into the final wall. Ledecky passed Quadarella and pulled away in the final 50 meters to win by 1.41 seconds.\nIn the inaugural season of the International Swimming League, Ledecky represented DC Trident. For the seventh-straight year, Ledecky finished the year with the top times in the world in both the 800- and 1500-meter freestyle (8:10.70 and 15:35.98). Ledecky collected several end-of-decade honors. Fifty-two percent of SwimSwam.com readers voted Ledecky the top swimmer of the decade, ahead of Michael Phelps. Readers of The London Evening Standard voted Ledecky the International Sportswoman of the Decade. She finished third in the Associated Press's Female Athlete of the Decade voting, behind Serena Williams and Simone Biles.\n\n\n=== 2020 ===\nLedecky began 2020 at the TYR Pro Swim Series in Des Moines, Iowa, where she won the 200-, 400- and 1500-meter freestyle races. Ledecky withdrew from the 800-meter freestyle race due to illness. Ledecky did not compete at any other events during 2020.\n\n\n=== 2021 ===\nLedecky began 2021 at the TYR Pro Swim Series at San Antonio, Texas. She won the 200-, 400-, 800- and 1500-meter freestyle races. On Thursday May 20, 2021, at the Longhorn Aquatics Elite Invite Ledecky won the long course 100 meter freestyle final by one one-hundredth of a second in a time of 53.82 with second place going to Simone Manuel.\n\n\n==== 2021 US Olympic Trials ====\nAs part of the NBC evening telecast for day one of the 2020 USA Swimming Olympic trials (postponed to June 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic), Ledecky was featured in an interview discussing Stanford University's commencement, finishing her college degree, and training for the Olympic Trials. Because training facilities were closed during the pandemic, Ledecky and her colleague Simone Manuel trained for the Olympics in a 25-yard private pool in Atherton, in the backyard of masters swimmer Tod Spieker.\nOn the second day, June 14, 2021, Ledecky competed in the prelims of the 400 meter freestyle in the morning, swimming a 4:03.07, ranking 1st out of all prelims heats, and advancing to the final in the evening. The 400 meter freestyle was the first race on Ledecky's schedule where she had the opportunity to make the 2020 USA Olympic Team. In the evening final of the 400 meter freestyle, Ledecky finished first with a time of 4:01.27, securing her first spot on her third US Olympic Team swimming the 400 meter freestyle at the 2020 Summer Olympics. This accomplishment was highlighted by various news outlets including NBC Sports, Newsweek, and USA Today.\nIn the morning of day three, Ledecky swam a 1:57.58 in the 200 meter freestyle prelims, ranking second fastest of all heats. Two events later, she swam a 15:43.10 in the 1500 meter freestyle prelims, ranking as the fastest swimmer of prelims heat, advancing to the final, and setting a new Championship Record over four seconds faster than the previous record she set in 2013. Later the same day in the evening semifinals for the 200 meter freestyle, Ledecky finished first with a time of 1:55.83.\nOn day 4, June 16, she won both the 200m and 1500m freestyle finals in the evening. Ledecky swam a 15:40.50 in the 1500 meter freestyle, lowering her Championship Record from the day before and becoming the first winner of the women's 1500 meter freestyle at the US Olympic Trials. She swam a 1:55.11 in the 200 meter freestyle. These two swims secured her spots on the US Olympic Team for the 2020 Summer Olympics in the 1500 meter freestyle and 200 meter freestyle individual events as well as the 4 × 200 meter freestyle relay. Ledecky won the 200 meter and 1500 meter freestyle finals in a time span of about 70 minutes as well as collecting her medal at the 200 meter freestyle medal ceremony and eating a snack. On June 18, 2021, the sixth day of competition, Ledecky won with a time of 8:16.61 in the prelims heats of the 800-meter freestyle and advanced to the final. The following day in the final, Ledecky won with a time of 8:14.62 and qualified to swim the 800 meter freestyle at the 2020 Summer Olympics for the United States.\n\n\n==== 2020 Summer Olympic Games ====\n\nAt the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Japan, Ledecky won two gold medals and two silver medals, making her the most decorated U.S. female athlete for a second straight Summer Olympics. Ledecky began her racing in the prelims of the 400 meter freestyle, ranking first overall with her time of 4:00.45 and advancing to the final. However, she finished second to Australian swimmer Ariarne Titmus to win the silver medal, trailing Titmus by half a second after leading at the 300m mark. Ledecky's time of 3:57.36 was the second-fastest time of her career and fourth-fastest in history. This was Ledecky's first loss in an individual event at the Olympics.\nIn the debut of the women's 1500 meter freestyle at the Summer Olympics, Ledecky set an Olympic record in her heat with a time of 15:35.35 and advanced to the final ranked first overall. In the same prelims session as the 1500 meter freestyle, Ledecky ranked first in the 200 meter freestyle with a time of 1:55.28 and advanced to the event's semifinals. She swam a 1:55.34 in the semifinals of the 200 meter freestyle and advanced to the final ranking third overall. In the finals of these two events, Ledecky failed to reach the podium for the 200 m freestyle, placing 5th behind Titmus, Haughey, Oleksiak, and Yang, but placed 1st in the 1500 m race, leading teammate Erica Sullivan (silver) by 4 seconds, clinching her first gold medal of the Games. She finished the final in 15:37.34, but her record from the preliminary round still holds.\nThe next day, Ledecky anchored for Team USA in the women's 4 × 200 freestyle relay, winning a silver medal alongside teammates Allison Schmitt, Paige Madden, and Katie McLaughlin behind China. Before she entered the pool, the United States was trailing both Australia and China, but she swam a time of 1:53.76 to finish the race 0.4 seconds behind the Chinese swimmer Li Bingjie and ahead of Australia, who were the favorites coming into the competition. Ledecky's split was the fastest of all swimmers in the relay finals. Ledecky won her second gold medal of the Olympics and her seventh of all time in the 800-meter freestyle. Her six individual gold medals are the most of any female Olympic swimmer and female US Olympian, and the second-most of all Olympic swimmers behind Michael Phelps. She became the first swimmer to win a distance event three times in a row, as well as the youngest and oldest person to win the 800 free (at age 15 in 2012 and age 24 in 2021). Following the Olympic Games on September 22, Ledecky announced her intention to train with coach Anthony Nesty at the University of Florida. Additionally, Ledecky signed on to be a volunteer swim coach for the Florida Gators.\n\n\n=== 2022 ===\n\n\n==== 2022 US International Team Trials ====\nAt the 2022 USA Swimming International Team Trials in Greensboro, Ledecky qualified for the 2022 World Aquatics Championships by finishing first in the 200-meter freestyle (1:55.15), the 400-meter freestyle (3:59.52), the 800-meter freestyle (8:09.27) and the 1500-meter freestyle (15:38.99).\n\n\n==== 2022 World Championships ====\n\nAt the 2022 World Aquatics Championships in Budapest, Ledecky won all four of her events: the 400 meter freestyle, 1500 meter freestyle, 4 × 200 freestyle relay, and 800-meter freestyle. With four golds, Ledecky expanded her career World Championships medal haul to 22, passing Natalie Coughlin for most for a female swimmer. Ledecky earned FINA's female swimmer of the meet trophy for a third time.\nOn the first day of competition, Ledecky won the 400-meter freestyle in a championship record 3:58.15, besting Canadian silver medalist Summer McIntosh by 1.24 seconds. Ledecky's swim was the seventh-fastest performance in history. Ledecky won the 1500-meter freestyle two days later in a time of 15:30.15, over 14 seconds faster than runner-up and teammate Katie Grimes. Ledecky's time was the sixth-fastest ever (behind only her own performances) and over 7 seconds faster than her winning time at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.\nLedecky joined Claire Weinstein, Leah Smith, and Bella Sims on the U.S. 4 × 200 freestyle relay on day five. Swimming the third leg, Ledecky passed Australia and Canada to take the lead with the third-fastest split in history (1:53.67). Sims anchored the team to a championship record time of 7:41.45. On day 7, Ledecky won her final event by over 10 seconds, recording a time of 8:08.04 in the 800-meter freestyle. The swim was the fifth-fastest in history and earned Ledecky the 28 fastest times in the distance. With the victory, Ledecky became the first swimmer, male or female, to win five consecutive world championship titles in an individual event.\n\n\n==== 2022 USA Swimming Championships ====\nAt the 2022 USA Swimming Championships in Irvine, Ledecky won three gold medals by finishing first in the 200-meter freestyle (1:54.50), the 800-meter freestyle (8:12.03), and the 400-meter individual medley (4:35.77).\n\n\n==== 2022 FINA Swimming World Cup ====\nOn October 29, during the Toronto round of the FINA Swimming World Cup, Ledecky swam the 1500m short course event for the first time. She set a time of 15:08.24, breaking the previous world record set by German swimmer Sarah Köhler by almost 10 seconds. The following week at the World Cup's Indianapolis stop, Ledecky broke the world record in the 800m short course freestyle. Her time of 7:57.42 surpassed Mireia Belmonte's mark from 2013.\n\n\n=== 2023 ===\n\n\n==== 2023 USA Swimming Championships ====\nAt the 2023 USA Swimming Championships in Indianapolis, Ledecky won three gold medals (400-, 800- and 1500-meter freestyle) and a silver medal (200-meter freestyle). Her times in the 800-meter freestyle (8:07.07) and 1500-meter freestyle (15:29.64) were the third- and sixth-fastest times in history, trailing only her own performances.\n\n\n==== 2023 World Championships ====\n\nAt the 2023 World Aquatics Championships in Fukuoka, Japan, Ledecky won two gold medals and two silver medals. Her 16th career individual gold medal surpassed Michael Phelps for most individual gold medals at the world championships. On the first day of competition, Ledecky placed second in the 400-meter freestyle to Ariarne Titmus, who set a new world record in the event (3:55.38). Ledecky's time of 3:58.73 topped New Zealand's Erika Fairweather (3:59.59) and Canada's Summer McIntosh (3:59.94) in the first women's 400-meter race that saw four swimmers break the 4-minute barrier. Two days later, Ledecky won the 1500-meter freestyle by over 17 seconds. Her time of 15:26.27 was the third-fastest time in history, trailing only her world and world championship records.\nLedecky joined Erin Gemmell, Bella Sims, and Alex Shackell to earn the silver medal in the 4 × 200 m freestyle relay. Ledecky swam the second leg and posted a team-best split of 1:54.39 as Australia lowered the world record by 1.79 seconds. Ledecky concluded her meet on Day 7 with the final of the 800-meter freestyle. Ledecky posted the sixth-fastest time in history (8:08.87) to top China's Li Bingjie by 4.44 seconds. Li and Ariarne Titmus became the second- and third-fastest performers ever in the event, while Ledecky retained the 29 fastest times in history. With the victory, Ledecky passed Michael Phelps as the swimmer with the most career individual world championship gold medals and became the first swimmer to win six-straight world titles in an event.\n\n\n=== 2024 ===\n\n\n==== Memoir ====\nLedecky's memoir, Just Add Water, was published on June 11. In the book, she discloses that she has postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS).\n\n\n==== 2024 US Olympic trials ====\nAt the 2024 US Olympic trials, Ledecky qualified for her fourth Olympics. She finished in first place in four events: 200-meter freestyle (1:55.22), 400-meter freestyle (3:58.35), 800-meter freestyle (8:14.12), and 1500-meter freestyle (15:37.35).\n\n\n==== 2024 Summer Olympic Games ====\n\nOn the first night of the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, Ledecky finished third in the 400-metre freestyle behind Ariarne Titmus and Summer McIntosh. Ledecky later defended her title in the 1500 metre freestyle event, setting the new Olympic record with a time of 15:30:02. She won her fourth consecutive gold medal and eighth individual gold (an all-time record for women at the Olympics, a new all-time record for women at the Olympics, the previous one set by gymnast Věra Čáslavská had stood for 56 years) in the 800 metre freestyle and also competed in the 4x200m freestyle relay, joined by Claire Weinstein, Paige Madden, and Erin Gemmell. With a collective time of 7:40.86, the team won the silver medal.\n\n\n=== 2025 ===\nLedecky started 2025 with the TYR Swim Pro Series; and, on May 3, 2025, in Fort Lauderdale, she broke her own world record in the women's 800-metre freestyle, setting a new world record of 8:04.12.\n\n\n==== 2025 USA Swimming Championships ====\nAt the 2025 USA Swimming Championships, she qualified for four events: the 400-m., the 800-m., and the 1500-m., as well as the 4×200 m freestyle relay.\n\n\n==== 2025 World Championships ====\n\nAt the 2025 World Aquatics Championships,  held in Singapore, she won a bronze medal on July 27, at the 400 meter freestyle. Two nights later, on July 29, she earned gold in the 1500 meter freestyle. On July 31, she earned a silver medal as part of the 4 × 200 metre freestyle relay. Lastly, on the penultimate evening, August 2, she won gold in the 800 meter freestyle, beating out both Summer McIntosh and Lani Pallister and setting a new championship record, as well.\n\n\n==== Katie Ledecky Invitational ====\nIn October 2025, the Nation's Capital Invitational, held annually in December, was renamed the Katie Ledecky Invitational in her honor. The meet is hosted by her former club team, the Nation's Capital Swim Club, on the campus of the University of Maryland, College Park at the Eppley Recreation Center Natatorium. As part of the renaming, Ledecky returned to swim in the meet where in 2015 she set an American record in the 1000-yard freestyle with a time of 8:59.65, becoming the first woman to swim a time under nine minutes in the event. In 2025, she entered the 1650-yard freestyle, where the American record previously stood at 15:01.43, set by Ledecky in March 2023. On December 14, she became the first woman to swim a time under fifteen minutes at 14:59.62, setting a new American and U.S. Open record.\n\n\n=== 2026 ===\n\n\n==== 2026 Pan Pacific Championships ====\n\nLedecky earned her first gold of the 2026 Pan Pacific Swimming Championships in the 1500m with a time of 15:36.06. She also earned three silver medals for individual events, and another silver as part of the freestyle relay. Australian swimmer Lani Pallister defeated Ledecky in the 800-meter freestyle final. Pallister led wire-to-wire to finish in a championship record time of 8:06.10, holding off Ledecky (8:07.26). The victory marked the first time Ledecky was defeated in the 800m freestyle at a major international meet since her Olympic debut in 2012, ending a streak of 13 consecutive major international gold medals in the event.\n\n\n== Honors and awards ==\n\nLedecky was a USA Olympic team member in 2012, 2016, 2020, and 2024. She also holds the women's record for most individual gold medals (18) and overall gold medals (23) at the World Aquatics Championships. Her combined 26 individual titles at the Olympics (8) and World Aquatics Championships (18) is also a record for female swimmers. Ledecky has also received the following awards:\n\nSwimming World World Swimmer of the Year Award: 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2018\nSwimming World American Swimmer of the Year Award: 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2021, 2022\nSwimSwam Top 100 (Women's): 2021 (#1), 2022 (#1)\nFINA World Championships Best Female Swimmer: 2013, 2015, 2022\nFINA Swimmer of the Year: 2013, 2022\nFINA Best Swimming Performance of the Year: 2015, 2016\nAssociated Press Female Athlete of the Year: 2017, 2022\nL'Équipe Champion of Champions: 2014, 2017\nTime 100: 2016 (youngest person on the list)\nUSOC SportsWoman of the Year: 2012–13, 2016, 2017\nUSA Swimming Athlete of the Year: 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2018\nUSA Swimming Performance of the Year Award: 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016\nGolden Goggle Female Athlete of the Year: 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2025\nGolden Goggle Female Race of the Year: 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2022\nGolden Goggle Breakout Performer of the Year: 2012\nHonda Sports Award Winner for NCAA Division I Swimming and Diving: 2016–17\nHonda Cup Winner: 2016–17\nWomen's Sports Foundation Athlete of the Year (Individual Sport): 2017\nAcademic All-America Team Member of the Year, Division I: 2017–2018\nBest Female Athlete ESPY Award at the 2022 ESPY Awards\nBest Female Olympian ESPY Award at the 2022 ESPY Awards\nLedecky has also received the following honors:\n\nPresidential Medal of Freedom: 2024\nGolden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement: 2024 – presented by Cal Ripken Jr.\nIn October 2024, Montgomery County executive Marc Elrich presented Ledecky with a proclamation declaring October 17 as \"Katie Ledecky Day\".\nIn May 2026, she was awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters by Yale University.\n\n\n== Personal bests ==\nAs of May 3, 2025\n\n\n=== Long course meters (50 m pool) ===\n\n\n=== Short course meters (25 m pool) ===\n\n\n=== Short course yards (25 y pool) ===\n\n\n== World records ==\n\n\n=== Long course (50 m pool) ===\n\n\n=== Short course (25 m pool) ===\n\n\n== Publications ==\n\n\n=== Books ===\nAuthor, Just Add Water: My Swimming Life. 2024. Simon & Schuster\n\n\n== See also ==\n\nList of Olympic medalists in swimming (women)\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of select Jewish swimmers\nList of top Olympic gold medalists in swimming\nList of World Aquatics Championships medalists in swimming (women)\nList of individual gold medalists in swimming at the Olympics and World Aquatics Championships (women)\nList of world records in swimming\nWorld record progression 400 metres freestyle\nWorld record progression 800 metres freestyle\nWorld record progression 1500 metres freestyle\nList of USOC Athlete of the Year award winners\nList of Associated Press Athletes of the Year\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nKatie Ledecky at World Aquatics\nKatie Ledecky at SwimRankings.net\nKatie Ledecky at Olympics.com\nKatie Ledecky at Olympedia\nKatie Ledecky at InterSportStats\nKatie Ledecky at Team USA (archive April 14, 2023)\nKatie Ledecky – Stone Ridge School student-athlete profile at the Wayback Machine (archived July 16, 2012)\nOfficial website \n\n."}
{"title": "Katinka Hosszú", "requested": "Katinka Hosszú", "extract": "Katinka Hosszú (Hungarian: [ˈkɑtiŋkɑ ˈhossuː]; born 3 May 1989) is a Hungarian former competitive swimmer specialized in individual medley events. She is a three-time Olympic champion and a nine-time long-course world champion. She is the owner of a Budapest-based swim school and swim club called Iron Swim Budapest, and a co-owner and was captain of Team Iron, founding member of the International Swimming League.\nHosszú held seven world records in the course of her career, and was the first swimmer (male or female) to hold world records in all five individual medley events at the same time. She holds two-thirds of the Hungarian national records. Hosszú was named FINA Swimmer of the Year in 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2018, and won SwimSwam's Swammy Award for Female Swimmer of the Year in 2013.\nHosszú competed at five Summer Olympics: 2004, 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2020. After a long tenure under head coach Shane Tusup, who was her husband, following their divorce Hosszú was coached by Dave Salo before moving onto Árpád Petrov. At the end of 2019 she parted ways with Petrov, and by the following year had hired József Nagy  to be her coach.\nShe was one of the most versatile swimmers in the world, and was nicknamed the \"Iron Lady\", which she has since turned into a fast growing international brand. In 2014 she became the first race-prize dollar millionaire (man or woman) in swimming history.\nIn 2019, Forbes magazine considered her to be the most valuable Hungarian athlete, having ranked in the first position for the previous five years.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nKatinka Hosszú was born in Pécs, Hungary, the daughter of Barbara Bakos and István Hosszú. She is the youngest of three (Gergely and Ádám). Katinka grew up in Baja and was coached in swimming by her grandfather, László Bakos until the age of 13. Hosszú met her future husband Shane Tusup in 2009, when they were both freshmen at the University of Southern California. After being crushed under the pressure of expectations at the 2012 London Olympics and not medalling, she asked her then boyfriend Tusup to become her coach, replacing her coach since her U.S.C. swim team days, Dave Salo. After the Olympics, at the Beijing World Cup swim meet, she competed in 8 events, medalling in 5 of them, leading to Chinese newspapers says she was made out of iron, leading to her nickname, The Iron Lady. Hosszú married Tusup in 2013. She graduated from USC with a degree in psychology.\nIn August 2016, Hosszú lost a defamation lawsuit against writer Casey Barrett, magazine Swimming World, and publisher Sports Publications International, Incorporated. She had filed the lawsuit in November 2015 after the magazine published an article on its website in May 2015 questioning whether Hosszú was using performance-enhancing substances, despite Hosszú never having been found to use such substances. The lawsuit was dismissed because the judge ruled the article to clearly be an opinion piece. Hosszú and husband Tusup opened their own swim club in Hungary, Iron Aquatics in September 2016.\nOn 16 February 2018 Hosszú filed for divorce from Tusup. On 25 May 2018 Hosszú's Facebook page was deleted by Tusup, who was the sole administrator of the page. However, on 6 June 2018 she regained access to her Facebook page with the assistance of activist and women's rights defender Matan Uziel.\nIn January 2022, Hosszú announced her engagement to her boyfriend since 2019, Máté Layber-Gelencsér. The two got married in August 2022. Later in the year, a biographical film entitled \"Katinka\", which portrays her life, was released in theaters. Together they have two daughters, born in 2023 and 2025.\n\n\n== Swimming career ==\nHosszú was renowned throughout the swimming world for swimming many events well in a short space of time. During the third leg of the 2014 FINA/MASTBANK Swimming World Cup, organised in the Victoria Park Swimming Pool of Hong Kong, she got an unprecedented achievement winning 12 medals out of the 17 individual events for the two-day meet. 10 gold (200 m, 400 m and 800 m free, 50 m, 100 m and 200 m backstroke, 200 m butterfly, 100 m, 200 m and 400 m individual medley) and 2 silver (50 m free and 50 m butterfly).\nHosszú is an active part of the swimming community as well. She is one of 30 swimmers who have founded the Global Association of Professional Swimmers in 2017. She is also working on reforming swimming as an entertainment by being the ambassador for the International Swimming League, a new initiative with the aim of organizing and reorganizing swimming competitions.\n\n\n=== 2004 ===\n\n\n== 2004 Summer Olympics ==\n\nHosszú made her international debut at the age of 15 representing Hungary at the 2004 Summer Olympics where she competed in the 200-meter freestyle finishing 31st with a time of 2:04.22.\n\n\n=== 2004 European Short Course Swimming Championships ===\nShe won her first medal at the 2004 European Short Course Swimming Championships, a bronze in the 400-meter individual medley (4:35,41).\n\n\n=== 2005 European Junior Swimming Championships ===\nAt the 2005 European Junior Swimming Championships held in Budapest she won three gold medals in 200-meter freestyle, 400-meter individual medley and the 4×100-meter freestyle relay. Two silver medals in 400-meter freestyle and the 4×200-meter freestyle relay. And a bronze medal in the 800-meter freestyle.\n\n\n=== 2008 European Championships ===\nShe won her first long course medal at the 2008 European Championships, a silver in 400-meter individual medley (4:37.43).\n\n\n=== 2009 World Championships ===\n\nAt the 2009 World Championships she won two bronze medals in the 200-meter individual medley and 200-meter butterfly before becoming World Champion in the 400-meter individual medley. She was elected Hungarian Sportswoman of the Year for her achievements.\n\n\n=== 2010 European Championships ===\nAt the 2010 European Championships held in her home country, she won a silver medal in 400-meter medley and became European Champion in 200-meter butterfly, 200-meter medley and as a member of the 4 × 200-meter freestyle relay team.\n\n\n=== 2011 NCAA Championships ===\nIn 2011 Hosszú had one of the finest seasons in college history winning 3 individual National Championships: 200y IM (1:53.39), 400y IM (3:59.75) and 200y fly (1:51.69). She was named Pac-10 Swimmer of the Year, CSCAA Swimmer of the Year and got the Honda Sports Award in swimming and diving, designating her as the nation's top collegiate female athlete for this year in this sport.\n\n\n== 2012 Summer Olympics ==\n\nCompeting in the 2012 Summer Olympics, she finished fourth in the 400-meter individual medley with a time of 4:33.49, just outside of the medals. She also finished eighth in the 200-meter individual medley and missed the finals for the 200-meter butterfly.\nDespite that after the disappointment at the 2012 London Olympics, Tamás Gyárfás, the then president of the Hungarian Swimming Association even advised her to retire, she decided not to give up her swimming career and since then she has been coached by her husband Shane Tusup, a former American professional swimmer himself.\n\n\n=== 2013 ===\nIn 2013, Hosszú set out to redeem herself after her medal-less performance at the 2012 Olympics. She attended numerous competitions and swam highly rigorous programs at each one, earning herself the nickname of the \"Iron Lady\". She earned three medals (two gold, one bronze) at the World Championships and a gold and two silvers at the European Championships. She also amassed a total of 24 golds and broke 6 world records during the World Cup series.\n\n\n==== 2013 World Championships ====\n\nAt the 2013 World Championships, she pulled out of the 100-meter backstroke after qualifying second in the heats (preliminary races), to concentrate on the final of the 200-meter individual medley which she subsequently won with a time of 2:07.92. She then touched third in the 200-meter butterfly behind Liu Zige and Mireia Belmonte. She capped off her competition with a final gold in the 400-meter individual medley, finishing in 4:30.41.\n\n\n==== 2013 World Cup Series ====\n\nThroughout the 2013 World Cup series, she set world records in 100-meter IM, 200-meter IM, and 400-meter IM, breaking the 200-meter record twice and 100-meter record three times.\n\n\n=== 2014 ===\nIn 2014, Hosszú broke the short course world records in the 100-meter and 200-meter individual backstroke events and in 100-, 200-, and 400-meter individual medleys.\n\n\n=== 2015 ===\n\n\n==== 2015 World Championships ====\n\nAt the 2015 World Championships in Kazan, Hosszú again dealt with a monster programme, competing in the 200- and 400-meter individual medley, 100- and 200-meter backstroke, 100- and 200-meter freestyle, and 200-meter butterfly. She posted the top time in the prelims of the 100-meter backstroke, but elected to pull out of the semifinal to concentrate on the 200-meter individual medley final, a decision which ultimately paid off. She broke the previous world record set by Ariana Kukors back in 2009 in a stunning time of 2:06.12. Hosszú's time of 58.78 in the prelims of the 100-meter backstroke would have earned her a bronze medal in the final; however the 200-meter individual medley final was 30 minutes after the backstroke semifinal and swimming it might have cost her the gold medal and the world record in the 200-meter individual medley. In addition, Hosszú won bronze in the 200-meter backstroke, placed fifth in the 200-meter freestyle, and capped it off with a victory in the 400-meter individual medley on the last day.\n\n\n==== 2015 European Short Course Championships ====\nHosszú won six gold medals at the 2015 European Short Course Championships, sweeping all three backstroke and three individual medley events. She broke world records in the 100- and 400-meter individual medleys.\n\n\n=== 2016 ===\n\n\n== 2016 Summer Olympics ==\n\nAt the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Hosszú won the gold medal and broke the world record in the 400-meter individual medley, won the gold medal and broke the Olympic record in the 200-meter individual medley, and won a third gold medal in the 100-meter backstroke. She also won a silver in the 200-meter backstroke behind American Maya DiRado. With 3 gold medals and 1 silver, Hosszú won more medals in individual events than any other swimmer in the 2016 Summer Olympics.\n\n\n=== 2016 World Short Course Championships ===\nIn the World Short Course Championships in Windsor, Hosszú won a record 9 individual medals (7 gold and 2 silver) and reached 11 individual finals. She won the 100-, 200-, and 400-meter individual medley, 100- and 200-meter butterfly, and 100- and 200-meter backstroke. Additionally, she took silver in the 200-meter freestyle and 50-meter backstroke.\n\n\n=== 2017 ===\n\n\n==== 2017 Swim Open Stockholm ====\nIn April, Hosszú competed in Swim Open Stockholm and won the 1500-meter freestyle event with a time of 16:22.30. She came second in the 200-meter freestyle with a time of 1:57.01, finishing behind Michelle Coleman. She also came second in the 50-meter backstroke event with a time of 28.54.\n\n\n==== 2017 World Championships ====\n\nAt the 2017 World Championships in her home country Hungary, Hosszú swam another rigorous schedule. She won her first gold medal in the 200-meter individual medley with a time of 2:07.00. She also won the gold medal and broke the Championships record in the 400-meter individual medley with a time of 4:29.33.\n\n\n=== 2018 ===\n\n\n==== 2018 European Championships ====\nAt the 2018 European Championship in Glasgow Hosszú won the gold medal in the 200-meter individual medley becoming the first female swimmer to win the same event in five consecutive editions (2010–2018). She joined her compatriot László Cseh who achieved the same twice, in the 400m IM (2004–2012) and in the 200m IM (2006–2014).\n\n\n=== 2019 ===\n\n\n==== 2019 World Championships ====\n\nAt the 2019 World Championships held in Gwangju, South Korea, Hosszú became the first female swimmer ever to win four straight world titles (2013–2019) in a single event (200m IM). Six days later she also won the gold medal in the 400-meter individual medley to become the first woman to win five world titles in the same event and only the second swimmer after Michael Phelps who achieved the same feat in the 200m fly.\n\n\n==== FINA World Cup ====\nOn November the 1st Hosszú claimed her 300th overall gold medal at the FINA Swimming World Cup.\n\n\n==== International Swimming League ====\nThe Hosszú-owned professional swim team, Team Iron was founding member of the International Swimming League. She was co-captain of the team alongside Peter John Stevens. During the 2019 International Swimming League season, Hosszú won the 200IM, 400IM and 200 fly events all 3 times the team competed. She also earned MVP title in the ISL Budapest match in Duna Arena.\n\n\n=== 2020 ===\n\n\n==== 2020 European Championships ====\nAt the 2020 European Championships Hosszú became the female swimmer with the most medals in the history of the European Championships. After winning one gold (400 IM) one silver (200 fly) and one bronze (200 IM) in Budapest, she now has 24 medals dating back to 2008 (15 gold, 6 silver, 3 bronze). Overall, she is ranked only behind Alexander Popov who won 26 medals (21 gold) in his European Champs career.\n\n\n==== 2020 Summer Olympics ====\n\nHosszú did not perform well in the 2020 Summer Olympics, failing to reach the 200m backstroke final and finishing only fifth in the 400m medley and seventh in the 200m one. She would attribute this to the standstill in the one-year delay caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, cancelling the tournaments she entered to keep herself in competition rhythm, while analysts added that Hosszú was not helped by being among the oldest swimmers and constantly changing coaches starting with her 2018 split with Tusup.\n\n\n=== 2022–24 ===\nIn the 2022 World Aquatics Championships, Hosszú failed to medal by finishing 7th in the 200m individual medley and  5th in the 400m individual medley. In the 2022 European Championships that followed, Hosszú only medaled once, as part of Hungary's 4 × 200 m freestyle relay, while only reaching the 200 individual medley final and finishing 8th. Afterwards she claimed that she would probably not be swimming by the 2024 Summer Olympics, instead settling down with coach Máté Gelencsér, whom she married a few weeks after the European Championship.\nHosszú gave birth to daughter in August 2023, and a few months later started training hoping to enter her sixth Olympics. but she wound up not reaching the necessary qualifying times. In January 2025, Hosszú announced her retirement.\n\n\n== Personal best times ==\n\n\n=== Long course ===\n\n\n=== Short course metres ===\n\n\n=== Short course yards ===\n\n\n=== Notes ===\na  Former World record.\nb  Former Hungarian record.\nc  Former U.S. Open record.\n\n\n== International championships (50 m) ==\n\na  Hosszú qualified from the heats, but scratched the semi-finals\nb  Hosszú qualified from the semi-finals, but scratched the final\n\n\n== See also ==\nWorld record progression 100 metres backstroke\nWorld record progression 200 metres backstroke\nWorld record progression 100 metres individual medley\nWorld record progression 200 metres individual medley\nWorld record progression 400 metres individual medley\nList of European Aquatics Championships medalists in swimming (women)\nList of European Short Course Swimming Championships medalists (women)\nList of World Aquatics Championships medalists in swimming (women)\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nKatinka Hosszú at World Aquatics\nKatinka Hosszú at SwimRankings.net\nKatinka Hosszú at the International Swimming League (archived)\nKatinka Hosszú at Olympics.com\nKatinka Hosszú at the Hungarian Olympic Committee (in Hungarian)\nKatinka Hosszú at Olympedia\nKatinka Hosszú at InterSportStats"}
{"title": "Katja Seizinger", "requested": "Katja Seizinger", "extract": "Katja Seizinger (German pronunciation: [ˈkatja ˈzaɪtsɪŋɐ] ; born 10 May 1972) is a German former World Cup alpine ski racing champion. She is her country's most successful alpine skier.\n\n\n== Biography ==\nBorn in Datteln, North Rhine-Westphalia, Seizinger won three Olympic gold and two bronze medals, and won eleven World Cup season titles: two overall, four downhill, and five Super-G.  She was a three-time winner of Germany's sportswoman of the year award.\nWith Olympic downhill victories in 1994 and 1998, she was the first to win consecutive Olympic gold medals in the same alpine speed event, and also the first woman to successfully defend an Olympic alpine title.\nSeizinger injured both knees while training in June 1998, missed the entire 1999 season, then retired in April.\n\n\n== World Cup results ==\n\n\n=== Season standings ===\n\n\n=== Season titles ===\n11 titles – (2 overall, 4 DH, 5 SG)\n\n\n=== Race victories ===\n36 wins – (16 DH, 16 SG, 4 GS)\n\n\n== World Championship results ==\n\n\n== Olympic results ==\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of FIS Alpine Ski World Cup women's race winners\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nKatja Seizinger at FIS (alpine)\nKatja Seizinger at FIS (ski jumping)\nKatja Seizinger at Olympics.com\nKatja Seizinger at Olympedia\nKatja Seizinger at InterSportStats\nKatja Seizinger at Ski-DB Alpine Ski Database"}
{"title": "Katrin Wagner-Augustin", "requested": "Katrin Wagner-Augustin", "extract": "Katrin Wagner-Augustin (born 13 October 1977) is a German canoe sprinter who has competed since the late 1990s. She is 5 feet 11 inches (1.80 m) tall, and weighs 161 pounds (73 kg).\nCompeting in four Summer Olympics, Wagner has six medals with four golds (K-2 500 m: 2000, K-4 500 m: 2000, 2004, and 2008), one silver (K-4 500 m: 2012) and one bronze (K-1 500 m: 2008).\nWagner-Augustin also won 26 medals at the ICF Canoe Sprint World Championships with ten golds (K-1 1000 m: 2005, K-1 4 × 200 m: 2009, 2010; K-4 200 m: 1997, 2005, 2007, 2009; K-4 500 m: 1997, 2005, 2007), fourteen silvers (K-1 500 m: 2009, K-1 1000 m: 2001, 2002, 2003, 2006; K-2 200 m: 2006, K-2 500 m: 2002, K-2 1000 m: 1999, K-4 500 m: 1999, 2001, 2002, 2006, 2009, 2010), and two bronzes (K-1 500 m: 2007, K-4 200 m: 2002).\n\n\n== References ==\n\nCanoe09.ca profile at the Wayback Machine (archived 18 August 2009)\nKamber, Raymond, ed. (2008). Medal Winners – Olympic Games and World Championships (1936–2007) – Part 1: flatwater (now sprint). CanoeICF.com. International Canoe Federation. pp. 1–41 at the Wayback Machine (archived 5 January 2010). Additional archives: 13 January 2016.\nKamber, Raymond, ed. (2008). Medal Winners – Olympic Games and World Championships (1936–2007) – Part 2: rest of flatwater (now sprint) and remaining canoeing disciplines. CanoeICF.com. International Canoe Federation. pp. 42–83 at WebCite (archived 9 November 2009). Additional archives: 11 March 2016.\n\n\n== External links ==\nKatrin Wagner at Olympics.comKatrin Wagner-Augustin at Olympic.org (archived)\nKatrin Wagner-Augustin at Olympedia\nKatrin Wagner-Augustin at Team Deutschland (in German)\nOfficial website (in German)"}
{"title": "Kaylee McKeown", "requested": "Kaylee McKeown", "extract": "Kaylee Rochelle McKeown  ( mə-KEW-ən; born 12 July 2001) is an Australian swimmer and multiple Olympic gold medalist. She is widely considered the greatest backstroker of all time, holding a record 10 individual backstroke titles across the Olympic Games and World Aquatics Championships. She is the reigning Olympic champion in the 100 and 200 metres backstroke. She is the world record holder in the long course and short course 200 metre backstroke, and is the former world record holder in the long course 50 metre backstroke and both the long course and short course 100 metre backstroke. She won gold in both the 100 metre and 200 metre backstroke at both the 2020 and 2024 Olympics. In 2023, she was named as the \"Best Female Swimmer of the Year\" by World Aquatics, after sweeping gold in all three events of backstroke (50m, 100m, and 200m) at all three World Cup legs, held in Berlin, Athens and Budapest in October, 2023.\n\n\n== Background ==\nKaylee McKeown was 15 years old when she joined her older sister Taylor on the Australian Dolphins swim team. She was one of the youngest members. She currently trains with the Griffith University swim group with Michael Bohl as her coach.\n\n\n== Career ==\nWhen she was 15 years old, McKeown competed at the 2016 Junior Pan Pacific Swimming Championships, held in August in Maui, Hawaii, United States, winning the gold medal in the 200 metre backstroke with a time of 2:10.01 and the bronze medal in the 100 metre backstroke with a time of 1:01.01.\nThe following year, McKeown competed in the women's 200 metre backstroke event at the 2017 World Aquatics Championships, placing fourth in a World Junior Record time of 2:06.76. McKeown earned her first senior international medal for swimming the heats of the mixed medley relay, in which Australia placed second in the final.\nAs a 16-year-old the next year, she was the youngest woman on the Swimming Australia roster for the 2018 Pan Pacific Swimming Championships. McKeown placed fifth in both the 100 metre and 200 metre backstroke events.\nMcKeown earned her first senior individual medal at the 2019 World Aquatics Championships with a silver medal in the 200 metre backstroke event.\nIn 2020, McKeown broke her first World Record in the short course 200 metre backstroke event, swimming a time of 1:58.94 at the Australian Championships.\n\n\n=== 2020 Summer Olympic Games ===\nLeading up to the 2020 Summer Olympics, McKeown was the fastest swimmer in the 200 metre individual medley but withdrew from the event to concentrate on the backstroke. McKeown broke the world record in the 100 metre backstroke event at the 2021 Australian Swimming Trials swimming a time of 57.45.\nMcKeown won the 100 metre backstroke at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics setting a new Olympic record of 57.47 seconds and becoming the first Australian woman to win a backstroke event at an Olympic Games. She also won the 200 metre backstroke event in a time of 2:04.68, and swam the backstroke leg on the gold medal winning women's medley relay.\n\n\n=== 2022 World Short Course Championships ===\nFollowing her performances at the 2022 Australian Short Course Swimming Championships, held in Sydney in August, McKeown was named to the roster for the 2022 World Short Course Championships. On the first day of competition, she ranked twelfth in the preliminaries of the 100 metre backstroke, qualifying for the semifinals with her time of 57.11 seconds. Later in the morning, she qualified for the final of the 200 metre individual medley with an overall rank of fourth in the preliminaries with a time of 2:06.07. In the evening session, she started off with a bronze medal-win in the 200 metre individual medley in an Oceanian, Commonwealth, and Australian record time of 2:03.57 before qualifying for the final of the 100 metre backstroke approximately 20 minutes later with a time of 56.35 seconds that ranked her sixth across both semifinal heats.\nOn day two, McKeown won the gold medal in the 100 metre backstroke with a personal best time of 55.49 seconds. The morning of day three, she ranked tenth in the preliminaries of the 50 metre backstroke with a time of 26.24 seconds and advanced to the semifinals. In the evening semifinals, she placed ninth with a time of 26.09 seconds. Two days later, she swam the backstroke portion of the 4×50 metre medley relay in the preliminaries in a time of 26.42 seconds, helping qualify the relay to the final ranking first in an Oceanian and Australian record time of 1:44.78. When the finals relay placed first in a time of 1:42.35, she won a gold medal for her efforts in the preliminaries.\nDay six of six, McKeown started in the morning in the preliminaries of the 200 metre backstroke, where she ranked second in 2:02.32 and advanced to the final. In the final, she was the only one to finish in a time faster than 2:00.00, winning the gold medal with a 1:59.26 that was 0.32 seconds slower than her world record mark from 2020. She concluded the session with a silver medal in the 4×100 metre medley relay, leading-off with a 55.74 for the backstroke portion to help finish in an Oceanian, Commonwealth, and Australian record time of 3:44.92.\n\n\n=== 2023 World Aquatics Championships ===\nAt the beginning of the 2023 season, McKeown broke the long course 200 metre backstroke world record at the 2023 NSW State Open Championships. With this record, McKeown became the second swimmer to hold the Olympic title, Commonwealth title, Long Course World Championship title, Short Course World Championship title, Long Course world record and Short Course world record in the same event concurrently, following compatriot Grant Hackett in the 1500 metre freestyle.\nAt the 2023 World Aquatics Championships McKeown swept the 50, 100 and 200 metre backstroke events, breaking the Oceanian record in the 50 metre backstroke and the championship record in the 100 metre backstroke. McKeown became only the second swimmer to ever win the 50, 100 and 200 metre events of the same stroke during the same championships, after China's Qin Haiyang completed the breaststroke sweep the day prior.\n\n\n=== 2023 World Aquatics Swimming World Cup ===\nMcKeown was the overall winner of the 2023 World Aquatics Swimming World Cup after sweeping the backstroke events at all three stops. At the final stop in Budapest, McKeown broke both the 50 metre and 100 metre backstroke world records (breaking her own world record in the latter) and became the first woman to break the long course 50, 100 and 200 metre backstroke world records during their career, and the first woman to hold all three concurrently.\n\n\n=== 2024 Summer Olympic Games ===\n\nMcKeown won gold in the 100m backstroke in a time of 57.33, setting a new Olympic record, matching her Oceanian record and becoming the second woman to repeat gold in this event after American Natalie Coughlin. Days later, Mckeown won gold in the 200m backstroke, charging home to out split her nearest rival, American Regan Smith by over seven tenths of a second, setting a new Olympic record of 2.03.73, beating the previous record set by American Missy Franklin at the 2012 London Olympics. Mckeown won the 100m and 200m backstroke events at the Paris Olympics, becoming the first woman in history to win both titles in two consecutive Olympic games and only the second person to ever achieve this, after East Germany's Roland Matthes. McKeown also won silver in the 4 × 100 metre medley relay and bronze in the 200 metre individual medley and mixed 4 × 100 metre medley relay.\n\n\n=== 2025 World Aquatics Championships ===\nMcKeown qualified for the 2025 World Aquatics Championships in the 50, 100 and 200 metre backstroke events, but subsequently withdrew from the 50 metre backstroke. She won both the 100 and 200 metre backstroke events in Championship Record times. In doing so, McKeown became the first woman to win 6 individual world titles in backstroke events, and the first woman to win the 200 metre backstroke 3 times.\n\n\n== Results in major championships ==\n\na  McKeown swam only in the preliminary heats.\n\n\n== Career best times ==\n\n\n=== Long course metres (50 m pool) ===\nAs of 4 October 2025\n\n\n=== Short course metres (25 m pool) ===\nAs of 19 October 2025\n\n\n== World records ==\n\n\n=== Long course metres ===\n\n\n=== Short course metres ===\n\n\n== Olympic records ==\n\n\n=== Long course metres ===\n\na  split 58.01 for backstroke leg; with Chelsea Hodges (breaststroke), Emma McKeon (butterfly), Cate Campbell (freestyle)\n\n\n== Awards and honours ==\nMedal of the Order of Australia: 2022\nAustralian Institute of Sport Performance Awards Female Able-Athlete of the Year: 2023\nWorld Aquatics Female Athlete of the Year: 2023\nSwimming World Female Swimmer of the Year 2023\nSwimSwam Female Swimmer of the Year: 2020 & 2023\nSwimming Australia Olympic Program Swimmer of the Year: 2024 & 2025\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nIn August 2020, McKeown's father, Sholto, died after a two-year battle with brain cancer. She has a tattoo on her foot in his memory that says, \"I'll always be with you\".\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of Youth Olympic Games gold medalists who won Olympic gold medals\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nKaylee McKeown at Swimming Australia (2018-06-12)\nKaylee McKeown at World Aquatics\nKaylee McKeown at SwimRankings.net\nKaylee McKeown at Olympics.com\nKaylee McKeown at the Australian Olympic Committee\nKaylee McKeown at Olympedia\nKaylee McKeown at Commonwealth Games Australia\nKaylee McKeown at InterSportStats"}
{"title": "Kenenisa Bekele", "requested": "Kenenisa Bekele", "extract": "Kenenisa Bekele Beyecha (Oromo: Qananiisaa baqqalaa; Amharic: ቀነኒሳ በቀለ; born 13 June 1982) is an Ethiopian long-distance runner. He was the world record holder in both the 5,000-metre and 10,000-metre from 2004 until 2020. He won the gold medal in both the 5,000 m and 10,000 m events at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. At the 2004 Olympics, he won the gold medal in the 10,000 m and the silver medal in the 5,000 m.\nHe is the most successful runner in the history of the IAAF World Cross Country Championships, with six long (12 km) course and five short (4 km) course titles. He won the 10,000 m title at the World Championships in Athletics in 2003, 2005, 2007 and 2009 (matching Haile Gebrselassie's four in a row win streak). Kenenisa was unbeaten over 10,000 m from his debut in 2003 until 2011, when he failed to finish at the World Championships final.\nAt the 2009 World Championships in Athletics he became the first man to win both 5000 m and 10,000 m title at the same championships. Over 5000 m he has also won an Olympic silver (2004), World Championship bronze (2003), two African Championship titles and one All-Africa Games gold medal. He also won the 3000 metres title at the 2006 World Indoor Championships.\nOn 6 April 2014, he produced the sixth fastest marathon debut ever on a record-eligible course with his victory at the Paris Marathon, in a course record time of 2:05:04. On 25 September 2016, Kenenisa won the Berlin Marathon in a time of 2:03:03, a new personal best, then the third-fastest marathon of all time. On 29 September 2019, he again won the Berlin Marathon in a time of 2:01:41, two seconds slower than the then world record of 2:01:39 set by Eliud Kipchoge in the 2018 Berlin Marathon. Considering his accomplishments in cross country, track, and road racing, many consider him to be the greatest distance runner of all time.\n\n\n== Early life ==\nKenenisa Bekele was born in 1982 in Bekoji in the Arsi Zone of Oromia Region, the same town as several other prominent long-distance runners, including the Dibaba's Daughters (Ejegayehu, Tirunesh and Genzebe) and their cousin Derartu Tulu. Kenenisa was born the second child to parents who made a living as barley farmers, along with three brothers and two sisters. The family practiced Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity.\nKenenisa initially aspired to a career in medicine, education, or the civil service. He began to train seriously in running with the encouragement of a physical education teacher, while drawing inspiration from the success of Derartu Tulu and Haile Gebrselassie. Kenenisa achieved his first medals at an international competition with second-place finishes in both the 3000 metres of the 1999 World Youth Championships and the 5000 metres of the 2000 World Junior Championships. He won his first gold medal in the junior race of the 2001 World Cross Country Championships. His success in running enabled him to purchase a house and to help fund his siblings' educations.\n\n\n== Running career ==\n\n\n=== 2001 – 2003: Early career ===\nIn August 2001, Kenenisa set a 3000 metres world junior record by running 7:30.67 minutes in Brussels. The record lasted for three and a half years, being broken by Augustine Choge with a run of 7:28.78 minutes. In December 2000 and 2001 Kenenisa won the 15k roadrace Montferland Run in the Netherlands. For five years in a row, from 2002 (at the age of 19) through 2006, he took both short (4 km) and long (12 km) races at the IAAF World Cross Country Championships, a feat no other runner has accomplished even once. After the IAAF eliminated the short course race in 2007, Kenenisa won a final long course race in 2008, bringing his World Cross Country medal totals to 11 senior individual gold medals (6 long course, 5 short course), 1 senior silver medal (2001), 1 junior gold medal (2001), 2 team gold medals (2004, 2005), 3 team silver medals (2002, 2003, & 2008), and 1 team bronze medal (2006) for a grand total of 19 medals.\nKenenisa became known for his ability to accelerate very quickly at the end of a long-distance race; in Oslo in June 2003, he chased after Kenyan Abraham Chebii and won the race in 12:52.26. He has faced fellow Ethiopian, Haile Gebrselassie, twice in road competition, once in cross country, and six times on the track. Haile defeated Kenenisa on the track in the 2000 Nurnberg 5000 metres, the 2001 Great Ethiopian Run 10 km, and the Cross de l'Acier in December 2001, but lost to Kenenisa in Hengelo 2003 over 10,000 m (26:53 to 26:54), Rome 2003 over 5000 m (12:57 to 13:00), Paris 2003 World Championships over 10,000 m (26:49 to 26:50), Athens 2004 Olympic Games (27:05 to 27:27), in the 10,000 m in the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games (27:01 to 27:06), and in the Great North Run half marathon in September 2013 (60:09 to 60:41).\n\n\n=== 2004 season ===\nIn 2004, Kenenisa broke the world records for the indoor 5000 m, outdoor 5000 m and outdoor 10,000 m (both in a timeframe of 9 days). He won the short and long course world cross country titles, leading Ethiopia to the senior men's team title. He also won a gold medal in the men's 10,000 metres and a silver medal in the men's 5000 metres in the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens.\n\n\n=== 2005 season ===\nOn 4 January 2005, Kenenisa's fiancée, 18-year-old Alem Techale, died of an apparent heart attack while on a training run with him. Although it was initially stated that no autopsy was performed, Alem's and Kenenisa's manager Jos Hermens later said that an autopsy had revealed nothing conclusive about Techale's death. She was the 2003 World Youth Champion in the 1500 metres and in excellent physical condition.\n\nHe resumed racing on 29 January, and lost indoors over 3000 m to Ireland's Alistair Cragg after sprinting towards the line with one and a half laps to go, while thinking that there was only half a lap left. A few weeks later he lost to fellow Ethiopian Markos Geneti over two miles.\nIn March, Kenenisa lined up to defend his long and short course titles at the 2005 IAAF World Cross Country Championships. He won on the short course despite a fast pace set by Qatari Saif Saaeed Shaheen, and followed that win with a long course victory the next day over Eritrean Zersenay Tadese and Kenyan rival Eliud Kipchoge.\nOn 8 August 2005, Kenenisa Bekele won the gold medal in the 10,000 m at the 2005 World Championships in Helsinki with a last 200 m spurt. On 26 August 2005, Kenenisa set the 10,000 m world record 26:17.53 at the 29th Memorial Van Damme meeting in Brussels, slicing nearly three seconds off his previous world record 26:20.31, and running with 5000 m splits of 13:09 and 13:08 minutes. The race saw 6 runners finishing in less than 27 minutes, with Sammy Wanjiru dipping in 26:41.75, a new world junior record. At the end of 2005 Kenenisa was voted the Track & Field News magazine athlete of the year for the second year in a row.\n\n\n=== 2006–2007 ===\n\nWhen Kenenisa won the 3000 m at the 2006 IAAF World Indoor Championships in Moscow, he became the first athlete in history to be Olympic champion, world outdoor track champion, world indoor track champion, and world cross country champion. In 2006 he won five out of six IAAF Golden League events (5000 m) in the same season, which earned him a total of US$83,333.\nOn 17 February 2007, he broke the indoor world record over 2000 m in Birmingham, with a time of 4:49.99. His spectacular final 300 m aided this time which would be considered excellent even outdoors. On 24 March 2007, however, his streak of 27 consecutive victories in cross country races (dating back to his last previous loss in December 2001) came to an end when after leading the race in the penultimate lap of the 2007 IAAF World Cross Country Championships in Mombasa he succumbed to the very hot, humid conditions (which caused more than 1/6 of all competitors to drop out) and was passed by eventual winner Zersenay Tadese on the last lap before Kenenisa dropped out. This was greeted with cheers by the Kenyan crowds, an occurrence which has been frowned upon by the wider athletics community.\nHe recovered from that rare failure to take the 10,000-metre title at the 2007 IAAF World Championships in Osaka, once again besting his compatriot Sileshi Sihine. During that race, he looked like he was going to be dropped several times over the last 800 metres, but recovered to overtake Sileshi with 150 metres to go and take his third straight world title.\n\n\n=== 2008: Beijing Olympics ===\n\nIn Edinburgh on 30 March 2008, he won his sixth World Cross Country title (long course – 12k), breaking the three-way tie of 5 wins he had previously shared with Paul Tergat and John Ngugi. With this win, Kenenisa laid sole claim to most decorated athlete in IAAF World Cross Country Championships history. He has won 6 long course (12k) individual gold medals, 5 short course (4k) gold medals, 1 junior championship (8k), and 4 team gold medals for a sum total of 16 gold medals. His overall medal count (both individual and team results) stands at 27 medals: 16 gold, 9 silver and 2 bronze.\nOn 17 August 2008 Kenenisa won gold in the 10,000m finals with a time of 27:01.17, setting a new Olympic Record in the process. In a race in which 20 men broke the 28-minute barrier and four finished under his 2004 Olympic record of 27:05.10, he needed his renowned finishing kick to pull out the victory, running a 53.42-second final 400 metres (similar to the 53.02-second final 400-metre sprint he used to win the gold medal in Athens in 2004 over the same distance).\nOn 23 August 2008 Kenenisa bested his competitors and won the 5000-metre finals, shattering Saïd Aouita's Olympic Record by almost eight seconds with a time of 12:57.82. The race was remarkable for his manner of doing most of the pacing himself before accelerating to a scintillating finish: his last 3000 metres only took 7:35.53, his final 2000 metres 4:56.97, last 1600 metres 3:57.01 (=3:58.4 final mile) and his final lap a punishing 53.87 seconds. By winning the 10,000/5000m double in the Beijing Olympics, Kenenisa joined another elite group of athletes: Hannes Kolehmainen (1912), Emil Zátopek (1952), Vladimir Kuts (1956), Lasse Virén (twice, in 1972 and 1976) and Miruts Yifter (1980).\n\n\n=== 2009: Berlin World Championships ===\nKenenisa Bekele won two gold medals at the 2009 World Championships in Athletics, held in Berlin. His double victories in 5000m (13:17.09) and 10,000m (26:46.31 – a World Championships Record) were unprecedented and by doing this became the first man to take both the long-distance track gold medals at the same World Championships. His talent combination of endurance and speed has made it nearly impossible to defeat Kenenisa when he is at full strength. During the 10,000m race in which he was running behind Eritrea's Zersenay Tadesse, the broadcaster declared \"it is over, in fact it was over from the start\" as the final lap began and Kenenisa turned an ostensibly close race into a blowout. The IAAF announcer concluded, \"this man is probably the greatest distance runner we will ever see.\"\nIn spite of his unrivalled success in athletics, Kenenisa did not experience the mainstream appeal that others such as Haile Gebrselassie did. His quiet demeanour and aversion to interviews did not make him a highly marketable athlete in the Western world. Fellow world record holder Usain Bolt stated that Kenenisa Bekele's achievements had not received the recognition that they deserved.\n\n\n=== 2010: Injuries ===\n\nKenenisa made a disappointing start to 2010, finishing fourth in the Edinburgh Cross Country in a race he was favored to win – a trio of Kenyan athletes ran him out of the contest over the final lap. He spent the entirety of the indoor and outdoor seasons out with a ruptured calf muscle.\n\n\n=== 2011 World Championships and 2012 Olympics ===\nKenenisa Bekele finally returned to training after a knee injury in March 2011. Having not raced on the track since 2009, Kenenisa returned for the World Championships. He dropped out of the 10,000m with 10 laps remaining. Kenenisa decided not to run the 5000 m and returned to the Diamond League at the Ivo Van Damme Memorial in Brussels where he set the fastest time in the world for the 10,000 metres in 2011.\nKenenisa's 2012 season did not start well, as he was a lowly eleventh place at the Edinburgh Cross Country. In April, he appeared to have returned to form by winning the Great Ireland Run in a new personal best time for a 10 km road race of 27:49, improving the course record by 46 seconds.\nIn the 2012 London Olympics 10,000m race he ran within the leading group for the whole race, but could not keep up with the Mo Farah's sprint in the last 150 metres and eventually finished fourth, with a time of 27:32.44, just 1.01 second outside the bronze medalist, his brother Tariku.\nIn his first race of 2013 he won the Great Ireland Run for a second time.\nKenenisa then won the Great North Run half marathon in a time of 60:09, beating Mo Farah by just one second after making a move that Farah couldn't match with just less than 12 miles gone.\n\n\n=== Marathon career ===\n\n2014 - 2015\nKenenisa Bekele started his marathon career in the 2014 Paris Marathon on 6 April 2014. His marathon debut was very successful as he bettered both the Paris course record and the debut marathon times of past legends Haile Gebrselassie, Paul Tergat and Samuel Wanjiru by running 2:05:04 to win. Kenenisa then went on to compete in the 2014 Chicago Marathon on 12 October 2014. He finished fourth in 2:05:51, 1min 40s behind Kenya's Eliud Kipchoge. On 23 January 2015, Kenenisa took on the Dubai Marathon, where he had to retire from the race after 30 km. He was planned to compete in the 2015 London Marathon but had to withdraw due to a persistent injury to his right Achilles tendon.\nFollowing 11 months of injury, Kenenisa returned to racing at the 2016 London Marathon. Prior to the race he indicated he was only currently at 90% fitness. Kenenisa finished in 3rd place behind winner Eliud Kipchoge and runner-up Stanley Biwott in a time of 2:06:36. This performance was despite the fact he only returned to jogging in early 2016 following injury and had only completed 6 weeks of specific marathon training. He was also hampered in the race by missing his drinks at 5 separate stations, due to them being used by the designated pacemakers.\n\n2016 - 2017\nOn 24 April, he placed third at the 2016 London Marathon with a time of two hours six minutes and 38 seconds. In September he won the 2016 Berlin Marathon in a time of 2:03:03 which set a new personal best time for him at the Marathon distance and the second fastest marathon of all time. On 19 January 2017, attempting to break the world record, Kenenisa dropped out of the Dubai Marathon after the half way mark due to a fall at the beginning of the race. On 23 April 2017, Kenenisa finished second in the London Marathon, finishing in 2:05:57, 9 seconds behind winner Daniel Wanjiru.\nKenenisa's outstanding track career led to his involvement in a project to break the two-hour barrier for the marathon, though a number of factors undermined this effort.\n\n2018 - 2019\nKenenisa ran the 2018 London Marathon in April and came in sixth place with a time of 2:08:53. He also ran the Amsterdam marathon in October 2018 but dropped out due to injury with about 2 km to go. Kenenisa won the 2019 Berlin Marathon in September in 2:01:41, the second fastest time ever at the time and just two seconds off of the world record set by Eliud Kipchoge on the same course the previous year. After the run he stated that he still believes that he can break the world record.\n\n2020 - 2021\nKenenisa won the London half marathon on 1 March 2020 in 60:22. He improved on the course record set by Mo Farah in 2019 by 1:18. Chris Thompson came in second with 61:07, also within the former course record. Kenenisa returned to the Berlin Marathon in September, where he placed third in 2:06:47. The race was won by his compatriot Guye Adola in 2:05:45, while Kenya's Bethwel Yegon finished second. In November, he finished six at the 2021 New York City Marathon with a time of 2:12:52.\n\n2022 - 2023\nIn September, he placed third at the Great North Run half marathon in a time of 1:01:01. The next month, Kenenisa competed in the 2022 London Marathon, finishing fifth in 2:05:53 to set a masters world record in age 40 group. In April, he took part in the London Marathon but withdrew from the race after 25k mark. Then, in October, he announced on Instagram that he had departed from the NN running team and transitioned his sponsorship from Nike to Anta, a Chinese sports brand. In December, Kenenisa took part in the Valencia Marathon. Although he fell behind the leading group before reaching the 15 km mark, he managed to finish fourth in a M40 Master World Record with a time of 2:04:19. This achievement solidifies him as the first athlete aged over 40 to complete a marathon in sub 2:05 clocking.\n\n\n==== 2024 ====\nThe 41-year-old Kenenisa competed in the London Marathon on 21 April 2024, where he finished second behind Alexander Munyao breaking his own Masters record by 4 seconds running 2:04:15.\nKenenisa was selected to represent Ethiopia in the marathon at the 2024 Summer Olympics. At 41 years of age, it was his fourth Olympic appearance and first time competing at the event since the 2012 London Olympics. Kenenisa ended up finishing in 39th place with a time of 2:12:24\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nOn 18 November 2007, Kenenisa married Ethiopian film actress Danawit Gebregziabher in Addis Ababa. Kenenisa has one younger brother, Tariku Bekele, who is also an accomplished world-class distance runner.\n\n\n== Statistics ==\n\n\n=== Personal bests ===\n\n\n=== Yearly progression ===\n\n\n== Competition record ==\n\n\n=== International competitions ===\nNote: XC stands for cross country\n\n\n=== Marathons ===\n\n\n=== World Grand Prix Finals (World Athletics Finals) ===\n\n\n=== World Marathon Majors results timeline ===\n\n\n=== Circuit honours ===\nIAAF Golden League jackpot winner: 2006, 2009\nMontferland Run 15K: 2000, 2001\nGiro al Sas 11K: 2001\nMemorial Peppe Greco 10K: 2003\nCross country wins\nTilburg Warandeloop: 2000\nCinque Mulini: 2002\nLotto Cross Cup Brussels: 2002\nOeiras International Cross Country: 2002, 2003\nCampaccio: 2002, 2004\nCross Internacional Juan Muguerza: 2003\nTrofeo Alasport: 2003\nCross Internacional de Itálica: 2003, 2004, 2007\nCross Internacional de Venta de Baños: 2004\nGreat Edinburgh International Cross Country: 2006, 2007, 2008 fing 2001\nMe zedi.gmainet\n\n\n== Awards ==\nIAAF World Athlete of the Year: 2004, 2005\nTrack & Field News Athlete of the Year: 2004, 2005\nEthiopian Person of the Year: 2007/2008\nESPN Africa's best athlete of the 21st century\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nKenenisa Bekele at World Athletics \nKenenisa Bekele at Olympics.com\nKenenisa Bekele at the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics (archived)\nKenenisa Bekele at Olympedia\nKenenisa Bekele | Unofficial website"}
{"title": "Kevin Durant", "requested": "Kevin Durant", "extract": "Kevin Wayne Durant (born September 29, 1988), also known by his initials KD, is an American professional basketball player for the Houston Rockets of the National Basketball Association (NBA). Nicknamed \"the Slim Reaper\", he is widely regarded as one of the greatest basketball players and one of the greatest scorers of all time. Durant has won two NBA championships, an NBA Most Valuable Player Award, two NBA Finals Most Valuable Player Awards, two NBA All-Star Game Most Valuable Player Awards, four NBA scoring titles, the NBA Rookie of the Year Award, and is the only male basketball player to win four Olympic gold medals. He has been named to 12 All-NBA teams (including six First Teams) and selected 16 times as an NBA All-Star. In 2021, Durant was named to the NBA 75th Anniversary Team. He ranks fifth among NBA career scoring leaders.\nDurant was heavily recruited in high school. He played one season of college basketball for the Texas Longhorns, during which he won numerous year-end awards and became the first freshman to be named Naismith College Player of the Year. Durant was selected as the second overall pick by the Seattle SuperSonics in the 2007 NBA draft. He played nine seasons with the franchise (which became the Oklahoma City Thunder in 2008), leading them to a Finals appearance in 2012 and winning the MVP award for the 2013–2014 season. In a controversial move, he later signed with the Golden State Warriors in 2016, who had won a record 73 regular season games the previous year. Durant won consecutive NBA championships and Finals MVPs in 2017 and 2018. After sustaining an Achilles injury in the 2019 NBA Finals, he joined the Brooklyn Nets as a free agent that summer. Following disagreements with the Nets' front office, he requested a trade during the 2022 offseason and was traded to the Phoenix Suns the following year. After two full seasons with Phoenix, Durant was traded to the Houston Rockets in July 2025.\nAs a member of the U.S. national team, Durant has won four gold medals in the Olympics (2012, 2016, 2020 and 2024), and is the leading scorer in Team USA's Olympic basketball history. In 2024, he became the first male athlete to win four Olympics gold medals in a team sport. He also won gold at the 2010 FIBA World Championship.\nOff the court, Durant is one of the highest-earning basketball players in the world, due in part to an endorsement deal with Nike which he signed in 2007; the partnership has continued for 19 years. He was named one of Time's 100 most influential people in the world in 2018 and has been listed by Forbes as one of the world's ten highest-paid athletes ten times.\n\n\n== Early life ==\nDurant was born on September 29, 1988, in Washington, D.C., to Wanda (née Durant) and Wayne Pratt. When Durant was an infant, his father deserted the family; Wanda and Wayne eventually divorced, and Durant's grandmother, Barbara Davis, helped raise him. By age 13, Durant's father reentered his life and traveled the country with him to basketball tournaments. Durant has a sister, Brianna, and two brothers, Tony and Rayvonne.\nDurant and his siblings grew up in Prince George's County, Maryland, on the eastern outskirts of Washington, D.C. He was unusually tall from a young age, and reached 6 ft 0 in (1.83 m) in height while still in middle school (age 10–12). Growing up, Durant wanted to play for his favorite team, the Toronto Raptors, which included his favorite player, Vince Carter. Durant played Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) basketball for several teams in the Maryland area and was teammates with future NBA players Michael Beasley, Greivis Vásquez, and Ty Lawson, the first of whom Durant remains friends with to this day. During this time, he began wearing #35 as his jersey number in honor of his AAU coach, Charles Craig, who was murdered at the age of 35.\nAfter playing two years of high school basketball at National Christian Academy and one year at Oak Hill Academy, Durant transferred to Montrose Christian School for his senior year, growing 5 inches (13 cm) before the start of the season and beginning the year at 6 ft 7 in (2.01 m).\nPrior to the start of the season, Durant committed to the University of Texas at Austin. He had visited University of Connecticut and University of North Carolina, and said that he considered Duke University, University of Kentucky and University of Louisville. When Durant was asked why he chose a college with a lesser-known program, Durant said, \"Wanted to set my own path.\"\nAt the end of the year, Durant was named the Washington Post All-Met Basketball Player of the Year, as well as the Most Valuable Player of the 2006 McDonald's All-American Game. He was widely regarded as the second-best high school prospect of 2006, behind Greg Oden.\nDurant had stated that he would have declared for the 2006 NBA draft if the NBA had not introduced the one-and-done rule, where his favorite team growing up, the Toronto Raptors, had the first overall pick.\n\n\n== College career ==\n\nFor the 2006–07 college season, Durant—who had grown to 6 ft 9 in (2.06 m)—averaged 25.8 points, 11.1 rebounds, and 1.3 assists per game for the Texas Longhorns. Texas finished the season with a 25–10 record overall and a 12–4 record in conference. Awarded a #4 seed in the NCAA Tournament, Texas won its first round match-up against New Mexico State but was upset in the second round by USC despite a 30-point and 9-rebound performance from Durant. For his outstanding play, Durant was recognized as the unanimous national player of the year, winning the John R. Wooden Award, the Naismith College Player of the Year Award, and all eight other widely recognized honors and awards. This made Durant the first freshman to win any of the national player of the year awards. Following the season, he declared for the NBA draft. Durant's No. 35 jersey was later retired by the Longhorns.\n\n\n== Professional career ==\n\n\n=== Seattle SuperSonics / Oklahoma City Thunder (2007–2016) ===\n\n\n==== Rookie of the Year (2007–2008) ====\n\nDurant was selected as the second overall pick in the 2007 NBA draft by the Seattle SuperSonics, after Greg Oden was selected by the Portland Trail Blazers with the first pick of the draft. In his first regular season game, the 19-year-old Durant registered 18 points, five rebounds, and three steals against the Denver Nuggets. On November 16, he made the first game-winning shot of his career in a game against the Atlanta Hawks.\nAt the end of the 2007–08 NBA season, Durant was named the NBA Rookie of the Year following averages of 20.3 points, 4.4 rebounds and 2.4 assists per game. He joined Carmelo Anthony and LeBron James as the only teenagers in league history to average at least 20 points per game over an entire season.\n\n\n==== Breakthrough (2008–2010) ====\nFollowing Durant's rookie season, the Supersonics relocated to Oklahoma City, becoming the Thunder and switching to new colors – blue, orange, and yellow. The team also drafted UCLA guard Russell Westbrook, who would form an All-Star combination with Durant in later years. At the 2009 NBA All-Star Weekend, he set a Rookie Challenge record with 46 points. By the end of the 2008–09 NBA season, Durant had raised his scoring average by five points from the prior season to 25.3 points per game, and was considered a strong candidate for the Most Improved Player Award, eventually finishing third in the voting. Durant continued to grow during his first few years in the NBA, finally reaching a height of 6 ft 11 in (2.11 m).\nDuring the 2009–10 season, Durant was selected to his first NBA All-Star Game. Behind his play, the Thunder improved their record by 27 wins from the previous year and defied expectations to make the playoffs. With a scoring average of 30.1 points per game, Durant became the youngest NBA scoring champion and was selected to his first All-NBA team. In his playoff debut, Durant scored 24 points in a Game 1 loss to the Los Angeles Lakers. Oklahoma City would go on to lose the series in six games, but the team's performance led many analysts to label them as an upcoming title contender.\n\n\n==== First NBA finals (2010–2012) ====\n\nPrior to the start of the 2010–11 season, Durant announced via Twitter that he had signed a five-year contract extension with the Thunder worth approximately $86 million. For the second consecutive year, Durant led the NBA in scoring, averaging 27.7 points a game. Behind his leadership, the Thunder won 55 games and earned the fourth seed in the Western Conference. In the 2011 NBA playoffs, Oklahoma City defeated the Denver Nuggets and Memphis Grizzlies en route to a Conference Finals match-up against the Dallas Mavericks, losing in five games.\nOn February 19 of the lockout-shortened 2011–12 season, Durant recorded his first career 50-point game, scoring 51 points against the Denver Nuggets. At the All-Star Game, he scored 36 points and was awarded the NBA All-Star Game Most Valuable Player Award. Durant finished the year with a scoring average of 28 points per game, representing his third straight scoring title. Behind his play, the Thunder won 47 games and entered the 2012 NBA playoffs as the Western Conference's second seed. In Game 1 of the first round against the Dallas Mavericks, Durant hit a game-winner with 1.5 seconds remaining. Oklahoma City would go on to defeat Dallas 4–0, the Lakers 4–1, and the San Antonio Spurs 4–2 before losing to the Miami Heat 1–4 in the 2012 NBA Finals. For the NBA Finals, Durant led all players with 30.6 points per game, doing so on a 54.8 shooting rate.\n\n\n==== 50–40–90 season (2012–2013) ====\nWith a scoring average of 28.1 points per game to finish the 2012–13 season, Durant failed to defend his scoring title; however, with a 51 percent shooting rate, a 41.6 percent three point shooting rate, and a 90.5 free throw shooting rate, Durant became the youngest player in NBA history to join the 50–40–90 club. Finishing the year with a 60–22 record, the Thunder earned the first seed in the Western Conference. In the first round of the 2013 NBA playoffs against the Houston Rockets, Westbrook tore his meniscus, forcing him to miss the remainder of the postseason. Without Westbrook, Durant was given more responsibility, averaging a career-high 30.8 points per game throughout the playoffs, the Thunder defeated Houston 4–2 but were eliminated in the second round 1–4 by the Memphis Grizzlies.\n\n\n==== MVP season (2013–2014) ====\nIn January of the 2013–14 season, Durant averaged 35.9 points per game while scoring 30 or more points in 12 straight games, including a career-high 54 points against the Golden State Warriors. In April, he surpassed Michael Jordan's record for consecutive games scoring 25 points or more at 41. The Thunder finished the year with 59 wins and Durant was voted the NBA Most Valuable Player behind averages of 32.0 points, 7.4 rebounds, and 5.5 assists per game. \nTo begin the first round of the 2014 NBA playoffs, he struggled against the physical play of the Grizzlies, converting on only 24 percent of his field goals in game 4. Through five games, the Thunder trailed the series 3–2, prompting The Oklahoman to dub Durant \"Mr. Unreliable\". He responded by scoring 36 points in a Game 6 victory. Oklahoma City eventually eliminated Memphis and the Los Angeles Clippers before losing to the San Antonio Spurs in the Western Conference Finals in six games.\n\n\n==== Final seasons with the Thunder (2014–2016) ====\n\nPrior to the start of the 2014–15 season, Durant was diagnosed with a Jones fracture in his right foot and was ruled out for six to eight weeks. Durant subsequently missed the first 17 games of the year, making his season debut for the Thunder on December 2 against the New Orleans Pelicans. On December 18, Durant injured his ankle against the Golden State Warriors, returning to action on December 31 against the Phoenix Suns to score a season-high 44 points. Durant then sprained his left big toe in late January. On February 22, he was sidelined again after undergoing a minor procedure to help reduce pain and discomfort in his surgically repaired right foot, and on March 27, Durant was officially ruled out for the rest of the season after deciding to undergo foot surgery. In just 27 games, he averaged 25.4 points, 6.6 rebounds, and 4.1 assists per game.\nTo begin the 2015–16 season, Durant and Westbrook reached several historical milestones together, including becoming the first pair of teammates to each score at least 40 points in a single game since 1996, doing so in a win over the Orlando Magic on October 30. For the year, Durant averaged 28.2 points, 8.2 rebounds, 5.0 assists, and 1.2 blocks per game, leading the Thunder to 55 wins and the third seed in the West. In Game 2 of the first round of the 2016 NBA playoffs against the Mavericks, Durant scored 21 points but converted only seven out of 33 shots in the worst postseason shooting performance of his career, both by shooting percentage and by number of shots missed. After defeating Dallas, Oklahoma City moved on to face the San Antonio Spurs in the second round, falling behind 2–1 to start the series. In Game 4, Durant tied his playoff career high with 41 points in a Thunder win. Oklahoma City eventually defeated the Spurs in six games, drawing a matchup with the record-setting 73-win Golden State Warriors in the Conference Finals. Despite going up 3–1, the Thunder were ousted in seven games, with Durant providing 27 points in Game 7.\n\n\n=== Golden State Warriors (2016–2019) ===\n\n\n==== First championship and finals MVP (2016–2017) ====\nOn July 4, Durant announced his intention to sign with the Golden State Warriors in The Players' Tribune. The move was received negatively by fans and pundits, who felt Durant took the easy route by forming a superteam with a Warriors squad coming off a record-setting 73-win season in 2016 and a championship in 2015, further compounded by the Thunder's blown 3–1 series lead against those same Warriors. On July 7, Durant officially signed with Golden State on a two-year, $54.3 million contract with a player option after the first year. Reflecting on the move for Sports Illustrated, Ben Golliver wrote, \"He chose an ideal roster fit and a shot at playing for the highest-scoring offense the NBA has seen in decades. He chose life alongside Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson, the greatest shooting backcourt in history, and he chose to go against Andre Iguodala and Draymond Green, two elite defenders, in practices rather than in Western Conference finals games.\"\nDurant made his debut for the Warriors on October 25 against the San Antonio Spurs, scoring a team-high 27 points in a blowout loss. On November 26, he recorded 28 points, 10 rebounds, five assists, and a career-high six blocked shots in a win over the Minnesota Timberwolves, becoming the first player in team history to finish with at least 25 points, 10 rebounds, five assists, and five blocks in a single game. On February 11, in his first game back in Oklahoma City since leaving for Golden State, Durant scored 34 points while being booed throughout the night as he helped the Warriors defeat the Thunder for the third time that year. In March, Durant suffered a Grade 2 MCL sprain and a tibial bone bruise in his left knee, which forced him to miss the final 19 games of the season. The Warriors finished the 2016–17 season with a 67–15 record and entered the playoffs as the first seed.\nDurant returned from injury in time for the 2017 NBA playoffs and helped the Warriors advance to their third consecutive Finals, while also becoming the first team in league history to start the postseason 12–0. In Game 1 of the series, Durant had 38 points, eight rebounds, and eight assists to lead the Warriors past LeBron James and the defending champion Cleveland Cavaliers. Durant then helped the Warriors go up 3–0 in the series with a 31-point effort in Game 3, including the go-ahead 3-pointer with 45.3 seconds left in regulation. In Game 5, he scored 39 points to go with seven rebounds and five assists in a series-clinching win. For the Finals, Durant was the Golden State's top scorer in every game, averaging 35.2 points, 8.4 rebounds, and 5.4 assists while shooting 55.5 percent from the field, 47.4 percent from three-point range, and 92.7 percent from the free throw line. He was subsequently named the NBA Finals MVP. The Warriors finished the playoffs with a 16–1 record, the best postseason winning percentage in NBA history.\n\n\n==== Second championship and finals MVP (2017–2018) ====\nAfter the 2017 NBA Finals, Durant declined his $27.7 million player option and became an unrestricted free agent. On July 25, he re-signed with the Warriors on a two-year, $51.25 million contract, taking less money than the maximum, which helped the franchise create enough salary cap space to keep their core roster intact and add free agents.\nOn January 10, Durant scored 40 points in a loss to the Los Angeles Clippers, becoming the second-youngest player in league history to reach the 20,000-point milestone. On January 23, he registered a career-high 14 assists in a win over the New York Knicks. On February 14, Durant scored a season-high 50 points in a loss to the Trail Blazers. In March, he missed games with a fractured rib, joining teammates Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson on the sidelines for the back-end of the season. The Warriors eventually finished the year with 58 wins and Durant set a career high for blocks in season with 119.\nIn Game 1 of the Western Conference Finals, Durant scored 37 points during a 119–106 victory over the higher-seeded Houston Rockets. Through six games, the Warriors found themselves trailing 3–2, and Durant was criticized for contributing to Golden State's struggles by playing too much in isolation. The Warriors staved off elimination with a 29-point 115-86 blowout victory in Game 6, and a 101-92 victory in Game 7, one that saw the Houston Rockets take an early 15-point 48-33 lead in the second quarter, and an 11-point 54-43 lead by halftime, after a series of missed foul calls, the Rockets would end up missing 27 consecutive shots for roughly 19 minutes and 18 three-pointers. Durant scored 34 points, helping Golden State return to the Finals with a series-clinching victory.\nIn Game 3 of the 2018 NBA Finals, Durant recorded a playoff career-high 43 points, 13 rebounds, and seven assists in a win over the Cleveland Cavaliers, leading the Warriors to a 3–0 advantage. Golden State ultimately swept Cleveland and clinched a second straight championship; with averages of 28.8 points, 10.8 rebounds, and 7.5 assists. Durant won a second back-to-back Finals MVP Award.\n\n\n==== Three-peat chase and injury (2018–2019) ====\n\nOn July 7, 2018, Durant re-signed with the Warriors, on a reported two-year, $61.5 million contract, which included a player option for the second year.\nDuring an overtime loss to the Clippers on November 12, Draymond Green cursed out Durant over his upcoming free agency status after the season, and he was suspended for the much-publicized blowup. On November 29, Durant scored a season-high 51 points in a 131–128 overtime loss to the Toronto Raptors, thus scoring 40 or more in his third straight game. With Curry and Green sidelined for most of November, the Warriors finished the month with a 15–8 record and five straight road losses after starting the season at 10–1.\nIn Game 5 of the first round of the playoffs, he scored a playoff career-high 45 points in a 129–121 loss to the Los Angeles Clippers. In Game 6, he set a new playoff career high with 50 points in a 129–110 win to close out the series. During Game 5 of the Western Conference semifinals against the Houston Rockets, Durant suffered a right calf strain, subsequently missing Game 6, in which the Warriors won the series, as well as the entire Western Conference Finals against the Portland Trail Blazers, which the Warriors won in a four-game sweep.\n\nAfter missing nine games with the strained right calf, Durant returned to action in Game 5 of the 2019 NBA Finals against Toronto, and scored 11 points in the first quarter. However, he was lost for the game two minutes into the second quarter when trying to drive by former teammate Serge Ibaka and suffered an Achilles tendon injury, falling and grabbing his lower right calf. Durant limped off the court and was helped to the locker room. The Warriors won the game 106–105 to cut the Raptors' series lead to 3–2. However, the Warriors went on to lose Game 6 by a score of 114–110, ending their quest for a three-peat.\n\n\n=== Brooklyn Nets (2019–2023) ===\n\n\n==== Year absence (2019–2020) ====\nOn June 30, 2019, Durant announced that he planned to sign with the Brooklyn Nets after the July moratorium ended on July 6. On July 1, Golden State CEO Joe Lacob announced that Durant's No. 35 would no longer be issued by the Warriors. Durant signed with Brooklyn on July 7 on a four-year, $164.3 million contract, in a sign-and-trade deal. Durant did not appear at all in the 2019–20 season and later revealed that he had decided shortly after his June 2019 injury that he would be sitting out the entire 2019–20 season. On March 17, 2020, Durant and three other Nets players tested positive for COVID-19. On April 1, it was announced that Durant was cleared and had recovered.\n\n\n==== Return to the court (2020–2021) ====\nOn December 22, 2020, Durant made his Nets debut, putting up 22 points, five rebounds, three assists, and three steals, in a 125–99 win over his former team, the Golden State Warriors. On January 14, 2021, James Harden was traded to the Nets in a blockbuster four-team deal, reuniting Durant with his former Thunder teammate. On January 16, 2021, Durant scored a season-high 42 points in a 122–115 win over the Orlando Magic. On February 5, due to health and safety protocols, Durant came off the bench for the first time in his career in a 117–123 loss to the Toronto Raptors. In February, Durant suffered a hamstring injury, which forced him to miss 23 games. On April 2, the NBA fined Durant $50,000 for private messages he sent through social media to actor Michael Rapaport in a feud. Durant made his return on April 7, 2021, scoring 17 points off the bench in a 139–119 win over the New Orleans Pelicans. The Nets finished the season with a 48–24 record, and the second seed in the East.\nIn Game 4 of the first round of the playoffs, Durant scored 42 points in a 141–126 win over the Boston Celtics to take a 3–1 lead in the series. In Game 5, he scored 24 points in a 123–109 win to close out the series.\nIn Game 1 against the Milwaukee Bucks in the Eastern Conference semifinals, Durant had 29 points and 10 rebounds in a 115–107 victory. In Game 5, he put up 49 points, 17 rebounds, and 10 assists, leading the Nets to a 114–108 comeback victory. In Game 7, Durant dropped 48 points, nine rebounds, and six assists, including a two-pointer to send the game into overtime, in the 115–111 loss. Durant's game-tying two-pointer in regulation time was set to be a game-winning three-pointer to send the Nets to the conference finals, but his toe being on the three-point line ruled it a two-pointer. His 48 points were the most in a Game 7 in NBA playoff history at the time.\n\n\n==== Playoff disappointment (2021–2022) ====\nOn August 8, 2021, Durant signed a four-year, $198 million extension with the Nets.\nOn October 22, Durant recorded his thirteenth career triple-double, and first as a Net with 29 points, 15 rebounds, and 12 assists in a 114–109 comeback win over the Philadelphia 76ers. On November 10, Durant scored 30 points on 11-for-12 shooting in a 123–90 win over the Orlando Magic. On December 12, Durant scored a then season-high 51 points in a 116–104 win over the Detroit Pistons. On December 14, Durant recorded his fourteenth career triple-double with 34 points, 13 rebounds, and 11 assists in a 131–129 overtime win over the Toronto Raptors. On December 16, Durant scored 34 points, grabbed 11 rebounds, and dished out eight assists in a 114–105 win against the 76ers. On January 15, 2022, during a 120–105 victory over the New Orleans Pelicans, Durant exited in the second quarter after suffering a left knee injury, later revealed to be a sprained MCL, and was subsequently ruled out for four to six weeks.\n\nOn March 3, his first game back from injury Durant scored 31 points in a 113–107 loss to the Miami Heat. Two days later, he became the 23rd player in NBA history to reach 25,000 points. On March 13, Durant scored a then season-high 53 points and set a career-high for field goal attempts with 37, grabbed six rebounds, delivered nine assists along with two steals in a 110–107 win over the New York Knicks. It was his 60th career 40-point performance and his eighth career 50-point performance. On March 21, Durant put up 37 points, nine rebounds, and eight assists in a 114–106 win over the Utah Jazz and moved past Jerry West into 22nd place on the NBA all-time career scoring list. On March 29, Durant scored 41 points, grabbed 11 rebounds, delivered five assists along with three blocks in a 130–123 win over the Detroit Pistons. On April 2, he scored a career-high 55 points on 19-of-28 shooting from the field and also had made a career high 8-of-10 3-pointers in a 122–115 loss to the Atlanta Hawks. On April 10, in the final game of the regular season, Durant recorded his sixteenth career triple-double with a career-high 16 assists and added 20 points, 10 rebounds in a 134–126 win over the Indiana Pacers to lock up 7th spot for the play-in tournament.\nOn April 12, Durant in his first play-in appearance scored 25 points, grabbed 5 rebounds, dished out 11 assists along with 2 steals, and 3 blocks in a 115–108 win over the Cleveland Cavaliers to secure the #7-seed spot for the playoffs. In Game 1 of the first round of the playoffs against the Boston Celtics, Durant passed Jerry West for eighth place on the NBA all-time playoff career scoring list. Brooklyn would go on to lose to Boston in four games despite Durant's 39-point, 7-rebound and 9-assist outing in the 116–112 close-out loss in Game 4. Over the first three contests, he would be held to just under 37% shooting from the field, including a 4-of-17 shooting performance in Game 2, in a series dominated by the Celtics' top-ranked defense as Durant was swept for the first time in his 14-year NBA career.\n\n\n==== Offseason trade request (2022–2023) ====\n\nOn June 30, 2022, it was reported that Durant had requested a trade from the Nets. Durant's preferred trade destinations were the Phoenix Suns and the Miami Heat. The favorites to land Durant were the Toronto Raptors and Boston Celtics, two teams which he had also been interested in. On August 24, 2022, Durant rescinded his trade request after meeting with Nets management.\nOn October 24, Durant scored 37 points on 14-for-20 shooting from the field in a 134–124 loss against the Memphis Grizzlies and moved past Alex English into 20th place on the NBA all-time career scoring list. On October 31, Durant recorded 36 points, nine rebounds, and seven assists in a 116–109 win over the Indiana Pacers. He passed Vince Carter for 19th on the NBA all-time career scoring list. Durant scored at least 25 points in each of the first seven games of the season, the most in franchise history. On November 9, Durant posted a triple-double with 29 points, 12 rebounds and 12 assists in an 112–85 win over New York Knicks. His rebounds and assists were both season highs. On November 17, Durant scored 35 points in a 109–107 win over the Portland Trail Blazers. He became just the 19th player all-time to reach 26,000 career points. Durant also tied Michael Jordan for the sixth most consecutive 25-point games to start a season with 16. On November 23, Durant passed Kevin Garnett for 18th place on the NBA all-time career scoring list in an 112–98 win over the Toronto Raptors. On November 29, Durant scored a season-high 45 points on 19-of-24 shooting from the field and added seven rebounds and five assists in 109–102 win over the Orlando Magic.\nOn December 18, Durant scored a career-high 26 of his 43 points in the third quarter, helping the Nets overcome a 17-point halftime deficit in a 124–121 victory over the Detroit Pistons. He was 8-of-10 from the floor, going 3 of 3 on 3-pointers and 7 of 7 from the free-throw line as he outscored the Pistons 26–25 in the third quarter. Durant has scored at least 40 points in his last three games against Detroit – the first player to do that since Rick Barry in the 1966–67 season. Durant also passed John Havlicek and Paul Pierce for 16th place on the NBA all-time career scoring list. On December 26, Durant put up 32 points, nine rebounds, and five assists in a 125–117 win over the Cleveland Cavaliers and moved past Tim Duncan for 15th on the NBA all-time career scoring list. In the next game, Durant had 26 points, a season-high 16 rebounds and 8 assists, and the Brooklyn Nets won their 10th straight game, 108–107 over the Atlanta Hawks. On January 3, despite Durant's 44-point outing on 15-of-22 shooting, 5-of-10 from three and 9-of-9 from the free throw line, the Chicago Bulls ended Brooklyn's 12-game winning streak. On January 8, Durant passed Dominique Wilkins for No. 14 on the NBA all-time career scoring list, though he ultimately exited the game against Miami with a right knee injury. The Nets closed out a 102–101 victory for their 18th win in 20 games. On January 26, Durant was named an Eastern Conference starter for the 2023 NBA All-Star Game, marking his thirteenth overall selection and eleventh as a starter.\n\n\n=== Phoenix Suns (2023–2025) ===\n\n\n==== 55–40–90 season (2023) ====\nOn February 9, 2023, the Nets traded Durant, along with T. J. Warren, to the Phoenix Suns in exchange for Mikal Bridges, Cameron Johnson, Jae Crowder, four unprotected first-round picks, and a 2028 first-round pick swap. Although Durant wanted to continue wearing No. 7 as he did in Brooklyn, the number was retired by the Suns in honor of Kevin Johnson. As a result, Durant announced that he would return to wearing the No. 35 jersey, which he had worn throughout his college and professional career prior to joining the Nets.\nAfter being listed out since January 8 with a right knee injury, Durant made his Suns debut on March 1 against the Charlotte Hornets. He put up 23 points on 10-of-15 shooting in 27 minutes, contributing to the Suns' 105–91 win. On March 3 against the Chicago Bulls, Durant had another efficient night, scoring 20 points on 7-of-10 shooting. In addition, he moved up to 13th on the all-time scoring list, surpassing Oscar Robertson. Against the Dallas Mavericks on March 5, Durant led all scorers with 37 points, going 12-of-17 from the field and hitting the game-winning jump shot with 11.7 seconds left, guiding the Suns to a narrow 130–126 victory. Prior to his expected home debut against the Oklahoma City Thunder on March 8, Durant slipped on the court during pregame warmups and injured his left ankle. He was ruled out roughly 15 minutes before the opening tip-off. A day later, the Suns announced that Durant had suffered a left ankle sprain and would be re-evaluated in three weeks. After missing the last 10 games, he made his return on March 29 against the Minnesota Timberwolves. In his home debut, Durant put up 16 points and eight rebounds in 29 minutes, contributing to a 107–100 win. In his eight games with Phoenix, Durant finished with an 8–0 record, averaging 26.0 points in 33.6 minutes per game and helping the Suns finish fourth in the Western Conference. He also finished the regular season shooting over 55% from the field, over 40% from three-point range, and over 90% from the free throw line, becoming the first player in NBA history to achieve those shooting splits in a season.\nOn April 16, Durant in his Suns playoff debut posted a near triple-double with 27 points, 9 rebounds and a playoff career-high 11 assists in a 115–110 loss against the Los Angeles Clippers. In Game 4 of the Suns' first-round playoff series against the Clippers, Durant logged 31 points, 11 rebounds and six assists in a 129–124 win, to lead the Suns to a 3–1 series lead. Four days later in Game 5 against the Clippers, Durant scored 31 points in a 136–130 win to close out the series. In Game 2 of the Western Conference semifinals against the Denver Nuggets, Durant passed Karl Malone to climb into seventh place for NBA postseason scoring. Four days later, Durant recorded 39 points, nine rebounds and eight assists in a 121–114 Game 3 win. The Suns eventually lost the series to the eventual NBA champion Nuggets in six games. However, throughout Denver's entire championship run, Phoenix was the only team to win more than one game against the Nuggets in a single playoff series.\n\n\n==== Top 10 in all-time scoring (2023–2024) ====\nOn October 31, 2023, Durant put up 26 points in a 115–114 loss to the San Antonio Spurs. He passed Hakeem Olajuwon for 12th on the all-time career scoring list and became the 12th player all-time to reach 27,000 career points. On November 17, Durant recorded 38 points, nine rebounds and nine assists on 15-of-22 shooting from the field in a 131–128 win over the Utah Jazz. On November 21, Durant put up 31 points in a 120–107 win over the Portland Trail Blazers. He also passed Elvin Hayes for 11th place on the all-time career scoring list. On December 1, Durant put up 30 points and 11 assists in a 119–111 loss to the reigning NBA champion Denver Nuggets in a rematch of the previous season's Western Conference Semi-Finals. He also passed Moses Malone for 10th place on the all-time career scoring list. On December 27, Durant put up his 18th career triple-double, dropping 27 points, 10 rebounds and tying his career-high with 16 assists in a 129–113 victory over the Houston Rockets.\nOn January 21, 2024, Durant scored 40 points and grabbed nine rebounds on 18-of-25 shooting from the field in a 117–110 win over the Indiana Pacers. He became the first Sun and the 14th player in NBA history to score 40 points with zero free throw attempts. On January 22, Durant put up 43 points, six rebounds, and eight assists alongside a game-winning mid-range jumpshot in a 115–113 win over the Chicago Bulls. On January 25, Durant was named a Western Conference starter for the 2024 NBA All-Star Game, marking his fourteenth overall selection and twelfth as a starter. On January 28, in a game against the Orlando Magic, Durant became the 10th player in NBA history to reach 28,000 career points. On January 31, Durant made his return to Brooklyn for the first time since getting traded. In the game, Durant finished with 33 points, eight assists, and five rebounds in a 136–120 victory over the Brooklyn Nets. On February 23, Durant put up 28 points, 11 rebounds, and eight assists in a 114–110 loss to the Rockets. He also passed Carmelo Anthony for 9th place on the all-time career scoring list. On March 9, Durant scored a season-high 45 points along with 10 rebounds and 6 assists in a 117–107 loss against the Boston Celtics. On March 20, Durant passed Shaquille O'Neal for eighth place on the all-time scoring list, finishing with 22 points in the Suns' 115–102 victory over the Philadelphia 76ers.\nDurant finished the season averaging 27.1 points (fifth-highest in the league) and shot 52.3% from the field, 41.3% from three-point range, and 85.6% from the free throw line, one of just three qualified players to shoot at least 50/40/85 in those respective categories. Alongside Devin Booker, they became the third pair of teammates in NBA history to each average 27-plus points in the same season. In the playoffs, Durant averaged 26.8 points on 55.2% shooting from the field as he and the Suns were swept by the Minnesota Timberwolves in the first round, marking Durant's second time getting swept in the last three seasons.\n\n\n==== 30,000 points and missing playoffs (2024–2025) ====\nOn October 26, 2024, in a game against the Dallas Mavericks, Durant reached 29,000 career points, becoming the eighth player to accomplish the feat. He led the Suns to a franchise-record 8–1 start, including a seven-game win streak before suffering a left calf strain on November 8 in a 114–113 victory over the Dallas Mavericks. Durant missed seven games, during which Phoenix went 1–6, and returned on November 27, posting 23 points and six rebounds in a 127–100 win over the Los Angeles Lakers. His return was short-lived, however, as he sprained his left ankle on December 3 in a 104–93 victory against the San Antonio Spurs. Durant missed three games, during which Phoenix went 0–3, and returned on December 13, scoring 30 points and dishing out 8 assists in a 134–126 win over the Utah Jazz. On December 21, Durant scored a season-high 43 points in a 133–125 loss against the Detroit Pistons.\nOn January 25, 2025, Durant was named a Western Conference starter for the 2025 NBA All-Star Game, marking his fifteenth overall selection and thirteenth as a starter. On February 11, in a game against the Memphis Grizzlies, Durant achieved 30,000 career points. On March 21, Durant had 42 points, six rebounds and eight assists in a 123–112 win over the Cleveland Cavaliers. With this performance, Durant joined LeBron James as the only players in NBA history to score 40 points against all 30 active teams. On March 30 against the Houston Rockets, Durant left the game in the third quarter with an ankle injury and did not return as the Suns lost 148–109. The injury sidelined him for the remainder of the season, as the Suns went 1–6 in their final seven games and finished 11th in the Western Conference, missing the postseason entirely. Durant finished the season leading the team in scoring with 26.6 points, 6.0 rebounds, and 4.2 assists in 62 games this season, but the season-ending injury caused him to fall short of the 65-game minimum required for end-of-season accolades. The Suns posted a 33–29 record with Durant in the lineup and went 3–17 in games he missed.\n\n\n=== Houston Rockets (2025–present) ===\n\nOn July 6, 2025, Durant was traded to the Houston Rockets in a seven-team trade, the largest in NBA history. On October 19, Durant signed a two-year, $90 million contract extension with a player option for 2027–2028.\nPlaying against his former team, the Oklahoma City Thunder, Durant made his regular season debut with the Rockets on October 21, scoring 23 points in a 125–124 double overtime loss to the defending champions. With 2.2 seconds left in the first overtime, he signaled for a timeout even though Houston had no timeouts remaining. This would have ordinarily resulted in a technical foul, but no call was made as the officials failed to see his signal. Durant later fouled out with 2.3 seconds left in the second overtime, at which point Shai Gilgeous-Alexander made a pair of game-winning free throws to win the game. On December 5, Durant became the eighth player in NBA history to reach 31,000 career points, finishing the game with 28 points in a 117–98 win over his former team, the Phoenix Suns. \nOn January 5, 2026, Durant scored 26 points, grabbed 10 rebounds, and hit a game-winning three-pointer in a 100–97 victory over the Phoenix Suns. After the game, Durant admitted that hitting the game-winner felt even better against the Suns, saying he felt he was scapegoated during his time in Phoenix. On January 9, Durant recorded 30 points, 12 rebounds, four assists, and two blocks in a 111–105 loss to the Portland Trail Blazers. During the game, he surpassed Wilt Chamberlain to move into seventh place on the all-time scoring list and also surpassed 8,000 career rebounds. On January 18, Durant passed Dirk Nowitzki for sixth place on the all-time scoring list, finishing with 18 points in the Rockets' 119–110 win over the New Orleans Pelicans. On February 26, Durant scored a season-high 40 points (26 points in the second half) and grabbed eight rebounds to lead the Rockets to a 113–108 victory over the Orlando Magic. During the game, he became the sixth player in NBA history to reach 32,000 career points and tied Kobe Bryant for the fifth-most 30-point games in league history. He also became the first player in NBA history to score at least 40 points in a regular-season game for five different teams. The very next game, on February 28, Durant recorded 32 points, five rebounds, and eight assists in a 115–105 loss against the Miami Heat. With this performance, he passed Kobe Bryant to claim sole possession of fifth place on the NBA’s all-time list for 30-point games. On March 21, Durant passed Michael Jordan for fifth place on the all-time scoring list, finishing with 27 points in the Rockets' 123–122 win over the Miami Heat.\nThe Rockets finished the 2025–26 season with a 52–30 record, clinching the fifth seed in the playoffs. During their first-round series, they faced the Los Angeles Lakers. After missing Game 1 with an injury, Durant made his Rockets playoff debut on April 21, recording 23 points, six rebounds, and four assists in a 101–94 Game 2 loss. The Rockets ultimately lost the series in six games, with Durant missing games 3 through 6 with a right ankle sprain. On May 24, Durant was named to the All-NBA Second Team, marking his 12th career All-NBA selection. He also became the first player in NBA history to earn All-NBA honors with five different franchises.\n\n\n== National team career ==\n\nIn February 2007, Durant received an invitation to the United States national team training camp. Despite a strong performance, he was cut from the team when its roster was trimmed to its twelve-player limit. Coach Mike Krzyzewski cited the experience of the remaining players as the deciding factor in making the cut. Durant was finally selected to the national team at the 2010 FIBA World Championship and became their leader as other All-Stars were unavailable, a role he downplayed. At the tournament, he led Team USA to its first FIBA World Championship since 1994, earning tournament MVP honors in the process. Durant's final averages for the competition were 22.8 points, 6.1 rebounds, 1.8 assists, and 1.4 steals per game in nine games. In December, Durant was named 2010 USA Basketball Male Athlete of the Year for the first time in his career.\nAt the 2012 Olympics, Durant set the record for total points scored in an Olympic basketball tournament. With averages of 19.5 points, 5.8 rebounds, 2.6 assists, and 1.6 steals per game, he helped the national team go undefeated en route to a gold medal. In the tournament's final game, Durant led all scorers with 30 points. Less than a month before the start of the 2014 FIBA Basketball World Cup, Durant announced that he would be dropping out of the competition, citing mental and physical exhaustion as reasons for his departure. He rejoined Team USA on the 2016 Olympic team, where he led them to a gold medal. Durant's final averages for the competition were 19.4 points, 5.0 rebounds and 3.5 assists per game in eight games. In recognition of his performances, Durant was named the 2016 co-USA Basketball Male Athlete of the Year, along with Carmelo Anthony, for the second time in his career.\nDurant committed to playing on the 2020 Olympic team, delayed until 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. He entered the Games ranked second in U.S. men's Olympic basketball history with 311 career points, needing 25 to match Anthony's record of 336. He broke Anthony's record on July 31 against the Czech Republic, and led the unheralded U.S. squad to a gold medal, with FIBA naming him the tournament's MVP. Durant's 20.7 points per game set a U.S. Olympic men's single-competition record for points averaged, and he tied Carmelo Anthony for most Olympic gold medals (three). Durant is also one of just four U.S. male basketball athletes to play in three or more Olympics. In recognition of his accomplishments in the tournament, Durant was named 2021 USA Basketball Male Athlete of the Year for the third time in his career.\n\nIn 2024, aged 35, Durant made his fourth Olympic appearance on the 2024 Olympic team. He missed all of the exhibition games due to a calf injury he suffered, making his first appearance with the new-look squad against Serbia. On August 4, Durant became the United States' all-time rebounding leader at the Olympics, surpassing Carmelo Anthony, in a win against Puerto Rico. On August 7, he became the United States' all-time Olympic scoring leader, surpassing Lisa Leslie of the women's team, in a quarterfinal win against Brazil. Team USA won the gold medal in a rematch against France, making Durant the first and only four-time gold medalist in men's basketball.\nFrom 2010 to 2024, Durant played with the senior men's United States national team in 37 official games, in major FIBA tournaments, averaging 18.8 points, 4.9 rebounds and 2.9 assists. Overall, he brought home five gold medals as member of the national team: four from Olympic tournaments and one from the 2010 FIBA World Championship. Durant, who has led the US in scoring in three of his four Olympic appearances and at the 2010 FIBA World Championship, owns nine U.S. Olympic men's career records, including the top spot for points (518), points averaged (18.5), rebounds (137), field goals made (173) and attempted (326), 3-point field goals made (88) and attempted (175), free throws made (84) and attempted (96).\n\n\n== Player profile ==\n\nDurant's height is officially listed as 6 ft 11 in (2.11 m) and his primary position is small forward. In December 2016, when his height was still listed as 6 ft 9 in, Durant stated that his height in shoes was actually 7 ft 0 in (2.13 m) and that he understated his height in order to be listed as a small forward, rather than a power forward. Durant's career averages are 27.1 points, 6.9 rebounds, and 4.4 assists per game. Widely regarded as one of the greatest players of all time, Durant has earned All-NBA honors 12 times (2010–2014, 2016–2019, 2022, 2024, 2026) and was voted rookie of the year in his debut season. He has also won an MVP Award and finished second in the voting thrice, a trend that he has expressed frustration over.\nDurant is best known for his prodigious scoring ability. His shooting and scoring abilities have given him the nickname \"Easy Money Sniper\". From 2010 to 2014, he won four scoring titles, becoming one of only two players to win four scoring titles in a five-year span. Early in his career, his playing style was isolation-driven, but Durant quickly developed into an excellent off-ball player who was capable of scoring from the outside as well. By 2013, he was shooting at a historically great clip, which helped him become one of only nine members of the 50–40–90 club. This ability to impact the offense in a variety of ways helped Durant remain effective and improve an already elite offense upon joining the Warriors in 2016. Throughout his career, Durant's height and 7 ft 4 in (2.24 m) wingspan have created matchup problems for defenses as he is able to get off a clean shot regardless of the situation. Upon beating his man or gaining momentum, Durant also becomes a strong finisher at the rim; for example, he converted 72.2% of shots in the paint in 2012.\nEarly in Durant's career, he was criticized for his slim build, defense, and passing. Over time, Durant grew as a playmaker, increasing his assist numbers every year from 2010 to 2014, though his overall vision still lagged behind the league's best passers'. Durant also showed defensive improvement, with opponents averaging just .62 points per isolation play against him in 2014, the best success rate for defensive players who faced at least 100 isolations that season. Upon going to Golden State, Durant developed into a more reliable off-ball defender and rim protector, and in 2018 was considered for the NBA Defensive Player of the Year Award.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nDurant is very close with his mother, Wanda, a relationship that was detailed in the Lifetime movie The Real MVP: The Wanda Durant Story. During his time with the Thunder, Durant described himself as a \"high school kid\" who enjoys playing video games in his spare time. \n\nDurant is a Christian who attended Baptist schools. He has religious tattoos on his stomach, wrist, and back.Durant owns several properties in the Oklahoma City area and listed his primary residence, located in the affluent Club Villa neighborhood, for sale for $1.95 million in 2013. That same year, Durant opened a restaurant, KD's Southern Cuisine, in the Bricktown neighborhood and briefly became engaged to Monica Wright, a WNBA player. In 2016, Durant was a credentialed photographer for The Players' Tribune at Super Bowl 50.\nIn an interview with Sports Illustrated, Durant claimed that, despite his high earnings potential, \"global marketing and all that stuff\" does not interest him.\n\n\n=== Representation ===\nDurant was formerly represented by agents Aaron Goodwin and Rob Pelinka. He left Pelinka in 2013 and signed with the Roc Nation group, headed by Jay-Z. Durant has endorsement deals with Nike, Sprint, Gatorade, Panini, General Electric, and 2K Sports. In 2012, he tried his hand at acting, appearing in the children's film Thunderstruck. In 2013, Durant earned $35 million, making him the fourth-highest-earning basketball player that year.\n\n\n=== Reputation ===\nOne of the most popular players in the NBA, Durant's jersey regularly ranks as one of the league's best-selling and he is consistently one of the top All-Star vote-getters. Early in his career, Durant developed a reputation for his kind demeanor; in 2013, Foot Locker released a series of commercials calling him the \"nicest guy in the NBA\", and become a beloved figure in Oklahoma City, known for his \"nice escapades\" toward the Thunder's staff. In 2014, Durant partnered with KIND snacks and launched StrongAndKind.com to show \"being kind is not a sign of weakness.\" Since leaving the Thunder, Durant became more outspoken and controversial; for example, he was involved in a Twitter back-and-forth with CJ McCollum in July 2018. Durant has admitted to feeling more genuine in Golden State as opposed to Oklahoma City, where he was \"just trying to please everybody.\"\n\n\n=== Philanthropy ===\n\nThroughout his career, Durant has participated in philanthropic causes. In 2013, he pledged $1 million to the American Red Cross for the victims of the 2013 Moore tornado. Durant's generosity inspired the Thunder and Nike to match his donation. Durant is also a spokesperson for the Washington, D. C. branch of P'Tones Records, a nationwide non-profit after-school music program.\nDurant's hometown Seat Pleasant in Prince George's County, Maryland announced Kevin Durant Day as August 17, 2017 in honor of his contributions to the community, as well as for his back-to-back NBA Championship wins and NBA Finals MVP awards.\nDurant was included in Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People of 2018.\n\n\n=== Social media use ===\nDurant is active on Twitter, where he frequently interacts with fans and members of the media.  \nIn 2017, Durant expanded his online presence to YouTube. In February of that year, he visited YouTube's headquarters for a speaking engagement. On April 7, 2017, he created a YouTube channel and began uploading livestream vlogs. In his first vlog, Durant explained that he had stepped away from other social media platforms, stating, \"I got off the Instagram, Twitter, all that stuff, just to distance myself a bit. But somebody talked me into getting on the YouTube.\" As of June 2020, his channel had more than 790,000 subscribers and 38 million video views.\nDurant was involved in a public dispute with actor Michael Rapaport in 2021 after private messages between the two were made public. The leaked exchanges showed Durant using homophobic, misogynistic, and profane language, including insults directed at Rapaport and comments about his wife. Following the release of the messages, Durant issued an apology on social media, stating on Twitter that he and Rapaport \"talk CRAZIER than this on the regular\" and adding \"my bad I apologize\" in a comment on Rapaport's Instagram account. The NBA later fined Durant for the incident.\nDurant's alleged use of \"burner\" accounts, anonymous social media profiles used to respond to posts without being publicly identified, has drawn media attention and public scrutiny. In 2017, Durant used the third-person voice from his personal Twitter account to explain his decision to leave the Oklahoma City Thunder. He later apologized, describing his behavior as \"acting so childish\". Philadelphia 76ers center Joel Embiid subsequently joked about the incident, mockingly calling himself \"better than Michael Jordan\" and referencing @QuireSultan, an Instagram account some observers alleged was linked to Durant. In 2019, Durant said he had used a burner account on Twitter to interact privately with friends. In 2020, on the All The Smoke podcast with Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson, he stated, \"I'm still gonna do the burner thing. I'm still gonna do that.\" Conspiracies of him owning other burner accounts spiked again in 2026 when a Twitter account that was very critical of many of Durant's teammates on the Houston Rockets at the time seemed to point to his anonymous operating, though no definite proof ever surfaced.\n\n\n=== Investments ===\nOn February 13, 2018, Deadline reported that Durant, in partnership with producer Brian Grazer's Imagine Television, will create a basketball-themed scripted drama for Apple. Swagger, a TV show inspired by Durant's life story, premiered on Apple TV+ on October 29, 2021. Durant served as an executive producer.\nIn 2020, Durant became a passive investor of Skydio, an autonomous drone company. In 2026, Durant's investment was criticized by fans over Skydio's sale of drones to Israel during the Gaza war and ICE in the US.\nOn June 15, 2020, Durant became a minority owner of MLS side Philadelphia Union, acquiring a 5% stake with the possibility to add another 5% in the near future.\nOn December 22, 2021, Durant had signed a deal with Coinbase to serve as a brand ambassador.\n\n\n==== Thirty Five Ventures ====\nIn 2017, Durant and business partner Rich Kleiman founded Thirty Five Ventures (35V). In 2020, Thirty Five Ventures produced Basketball County, a documentary about youth basketball in Durant's home county of Prince George's County, Maryland. Durant served as an executive producer and appeared in interviews. Thirty Five Ventures' work Two Distant Strangers won the 2021 Academy Award for Short Film (Live Action).\nIn May 2021, Durant (through Thirty Five Ventures) was announced as an investor in Just Women's Sports, an American media platform dedicated to women's sports. Durant credited the platform with showing \"fans exactly how good these players are and why they're worth watching.\"\nIn October 2022, Durant joined fellow professional athletes LeBron James, Tom Brady, and Drew Brees as an investor in a professional pickleball team with his business partner, Rich Kleiman, via their Thirty Five Ventures firm.\nIn April 2026, Thirty Five Ventures acquired the Six Flags America amusement park property from Six Flags Entertainment Corporation. The 515-acre (208 ha) property is slated for mixed-use redevelopment.\n\n\n==== Boardroom ====\n\nIn August 2021, Durant announced a partnership between his multimedia company Boardroom and the cannabis technology company Weedmaps through which an original content series would be developed and Weedmaps would become an official sponsor of Boardroom. Durant said of the partnership: \"I think it's far past time to address the stigmas around cannabis that still exist in the sports world as well as globally. This partnership is going to help us continue to normalize those conversations, as well as create content, events, and a lot more through our Boardroom media network.\"\nDurant and Rich Kleiman dismissed the full-time editorial team at Boardroom on February 21, 2026, a move that some observers speculated was connected to the scrutiny surrounding Durant's alleged burner accounts, although no official explanation was provided.\n\n\n== Career statistics ==\n\nSource:\n\n\n=== NBA ===\n\n\n==== Regular season ====\n\n\n==== Playoffs ====\n\n\n=== College ===\n\n\n== Awards and honors ==\n\nNBA\n\nCited from Basketball Reference's Kevin Durant page unless noted otherwise.\n2× NBA champion: 2017, 2018\n2× NBA Finals Most Valuable Player: 2017, 2018\nNBA Most Valuable Player: 2014\n16× NBA All-Star: 2010–2019, 2021–2026\n12x All-NBA Team selections:\n6× First Team: 2010–2014, 2018\n6× Second Team: 2016, 2017, 2019, 2022, 2024, 2026\n4× NBA scoring champion: 2010–2012, 2014\n3× NBA free throw scoring leaders: 2010, 2011, 2014\n2× NBA All-Star Game MVP: 2012, 2019\n2× 50–40–90 club: 2013, 2023\n2× NBA H–O–R–S–E Competition: 2009, 2010\nNBA Rookie of the Year: 2008\nNBA All-Rookie First Team: 2008\nRising Stars Challenge MVP: 2009\nMagic Johnson Award: 2011, 2025\nUSA Basketball\n\nCited from USA Basketball's Kevin Durant page unless noted otherwise.\n4× Olympic gold medalist: 2012, 2016, 2020, 2024\nOlympics Most Valuable Player: 2020\nOlympic All-Star Five: 2020\nFIBA Summer Olympics 1992–2020 Dream Team\nFIBA World Cup gold medalist: 2010\nFIBA World Cup Most Valuable Player: 2010\nFIBA Basketball World Cup All-Tournament Team: 2010\n3× USA Basketball Male Athlete of the Year: 2010, 2016, 2021\nNCAA\n\nNaismith College Player of the Year: 2007\nNABC Division I Player of the Year: 2007\nOscar Robertson Trophy: 2007\nAdolph Rupp Trophy: 2007\nJohn R. Wooden Award: 2007\nBig 12 Player of the Year: 2007\nUSBWA National Freshman of the Year: 2007\nJersey number (35) retired at Texas\nMedia\n\nBest Male Athlete ESPY Award: 2014\nBest NBA Player ESPY Award: 2014\nAP Player of the Year: 2007\nAP All-America 1st Team: 2007\n\n\n== Filmography ==\n\n\n=== Film ===\n\n\n=== Television ===\n\n\n== See also ==\n\nList of NBA career scoring leaders\nList of NBA career 3-point scoring leaders\nList of NBA career free throw percentage leaders\nList of NBA career free throw scoring leaders\nList of NBA career minutes played leaders\nList of NBA career playoff scoring leaders\nList of NBA career playoff blocks leaders\nList of NBA career playoff turnovers leaders\nList of NBA career playoff 3-point scoring leaders\nList of NBA career playoff free throw scoring leaders\nList of NBA career playoff games played leaders\nList of NBA career playoff minutes leaders\nList of NBA single-game playoff scoring leaders\nList of NBA annual scoring leaders\nList of NBA annual free throw percentage leaders\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nOfficial website \n\nCareer statistics from NBA.com · Basketball Reference\nKevin Durant at FIBA (archive)\nKevin Durant at USA Basketball\nKevin Durant at Team USA (archive July 12, 2023)\nKevin Durant at Olympics.com \nKevin Durant at Olympedia"}
{"title": "Kevin Kuske", "requested": "Kevin Kuske", "extract": "Kevin Kuske (born 4 January 1979) is a former German bobsledder who competed from 1999 to 2018. Competing in five Winter Olympics, he is the most successful Olympic athlete in bobsledding, winning four gold medals and two silver medals.\n\n\n== Career ==\nPrior to his bobsleigh career, Kuske was a sprinter athlete, and won a bronze medal in 4 x 100 m at the 1998 World Junior Championships in Athletics.\nAt the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Kuske, along with teammates André Lange, Carsten Embach, Enrico Kühn, won the gold medal in the four-man event. Four years later in Turin, Kuske paired with Lange to win the gold medal in the two-man event, while those two, along with teammates René Hoppe and Martin Putze, won gold in the four-man event. Kuske won gold in the two-man and silver in the four-man event at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.\nKuske also has fifteen medals at the IBSF World Championships, including seven golds (two-man: 2003, 2007, 2008; four-man: 2003, 2004, 2005, 2008), four silvers (two-man: 2005, 2011; four-man: 2009, 2012), and four bronzes (two-man: 2004, 2012; four-man: 2007, 2017).\nAfter pilot André Lange's retirement in 2010, Kevin Kuske started with pilots Thomas Florschütz and Maximilian Arndt. With Florschütz, he competed at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi in both the two-man and four-man event, but failed to win any medals. After Florschütz and Arndt retired, Kuske joined the team of Nico Walther. In Walther's bobsleigh, Kuske won a silver medal in the four-man event at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, therefore becoming the most successful bobsledder in Olympic history. Immediately after the Games, he announced his retirement.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nKevin Kuske at the International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation\nKevin Kuske at Olympics.com\nKevin Kuske at Team Deutschland (in German)\nKevin Kuske at Olympedia \nKevin Kuske at InterSportStats\nBundswehr profile of Kuske (in German)\nBobsleigh four-man Olympic medalists for 1924, 1932–56, and since 1964 Archived 23 March 2019 at the Wayback Machine at sports123.com\nBobsleigh two-man world championship medalists since 1931 at sports123.com at the Wayback Machine (archived 29 September 2007)\nBobsleigh four-man world championship medalists since 1930 at sports123.com at the Wayback Machine (archived 11 December 2007)"}
{"title": "Kim Rhode", "requested": "Kim Rhode", "extract": "Kimberly Susan Rhode (born July 16, 1979) is an American double trap and skeet shooter. A California native, she is a six-time Olympic medal winner, including three gold medals, and six-time national champion in double trap. She is the most successful female shooter at the Olympics as the only triple Olympic Champion and the only woman to have won two Olympic gold medals for Double Trap. She won a gold medal in skeet shooting at the 2012 Summer Olympics, equaling the world record of 99 out of 100 clays. Most recently, she won the bronze medal at the Rio 2016 Olympics, making her the first Olympian to win a medal on five continents, the first Summer Olympian to win an individual medal at six consecutive summer games, and the first woman to medal in six consecutive Olympics.\n\n\n== Early life ==\nKimberly Rhode was born in Whittier, California, in 1979. Rhode began sport hunting at an early age, traveling on African safaris by the age of 12. Rhode began competing in skeet at age 10.\n\n\n== International competition ==\nRhode, at 13, won her first world championship title in women's double trap shooting. After double trap shooting was eliminated from the 2008 Summer Olympics, she has concentrated on skeet. Rhode became a Distinguished International Shooter in 1995 (Badge #388). In ISSF World Cup competition, she has won 19 Gold, 7 Silver, and 8 Bronze medals.  At the 2007 World Cup competition in Santo Domingo, she set a new world record in this event with 98 hits (73 in the qualification round and a perfect 25 in the final).\n\n\n=== 1996 Olympics ===\nRhode won a gold medal at the 1996 Summer Olympics, making her the youngest female gold medalist in the history of Olympic shooting.\n\n\n=== 2000 Olympics ===\nRhode won a bronze medal at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia.\n\n\n=== 2004 Olympics ===\nRhode won a gold medal at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens in Women's Double trap.\n\n\n=== 2008 Olympics ===\nRhode won the silver medal at the 2008 Summer Olympics in women's skeet.\n\n\n=== 2012 Olympics ===\nOn July 29 at the 2012 Summer Olympics, Rhode won the gold medal in skeet shooting with an Olympic record score of 99, tying the world record in this event. With this medal, Rhode is the only American competitor to win medals for an individual event in five consecutive Olympics. She also became one of the three competitors (and the only woman) to win three Olympic individual gold medals for shooting, along with Ralf Schumann of Germany and Jin Jong-oh of Korea.\n\n\n=== 2016 Olympics ===\nQualifying for the 2016 Summer Olympics made Rhode the first U.S. Olympian to qualify for an Olympic team on five different continents. Kim Rhode won the bronze medal at the Rio 2016 Olympics, making her the first Olympian to win a medal on five different continents,  the first Summer Olympian to win an individual medal at six consecutive summer games, and the first woman to medal in six consecutive Olympics.\n\n\n== TV Host ==\nRhode is co-host of the Outdoor Channel's TV program Step Outside. Rhode studied Pre-veterinary medicine at Cal Poly Pomona.\n\n\n== Stolen competition shotgun ==\nOn September 11, 2008, Rhode's competition shotgun was stolen from her pickup; she had been using it in competition for eighteen years. The gun was returned to her in January 2009 after it was discovered during an unrelated search of a parolee's home; the parolee was charged with possession of stolen property. In the meantime fans had donated to buy her a new $13,000 Perazzi shotgun. Having become used to training with the new gun, she elected to retire \"Old Faithful\" after four Summer Games.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nRhode spoke at the 2012 Republican National Convention, introducing several other Olympians on the stage.\nRhode married Mike Harryman in 2009. Their son was born in 2013.\nIn addition to being a member of USA Shooting's National Team, Rhode is an honorary lifetime member of the National Rifle Association and a member of Safari Club International.\nIn July 2025, the US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Rhode's lawsuit against the State of California. Rhode asserted that the California law requiring a background check violated her rights. Quoting Townhall Magazine, \"The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Thursday that California’s law requiring background checks for people purchasing ammunition is unconstitutional.\" The decision upholds a San Diego federal judge’s previous ruling that struck the law down.\n\n\n== Awards ==\nANOC Gala Awards 2015：Best Female Athlete of the Pan American Games 2015\n\n\n== Career results ==\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nKimberly Rhode at the International Shooting Sport Federation \nKim Rhode at USA Shooting\nKim Rhode at Team USA (archive March 18, 2023)\nKim Rhode at Olympedia \nKimberly Rhode at Olympics.com"}
{"title": "Kim Soo-nyung", "requested": "Kim Soo-nyung", "extract": "Kim Soo-nyung (born April 5, 1971, in Chungcheongbuk-do) is a former member of the South Korean Olympic archery team in 1988, 1992, and 2000.\n\n\n== Career ==\nShe has earned a total of four gold medals at the Olympics, one for the individual event in 1988 and three for the team event in 1988, 1992 and 2000.  She won a further silver medal in 1992 and a bronze in 2000, both for the individual events. She retired after the 1992 Olympics to marry and raise two children, resuming her training in 1999, in the lead up to the 2000 Summer Olympics.\nShe competed at the 1990 Asian Games winning a gold medal in the team event and a bronze in the individual. She also won two consecutive individual and team world championships in 1989 and 1991.\nIn 2011, Kim was declared the Female Archer of the 20th Century by the International Archery Federation (FITA).\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of South Korean archers\n\n\n== References =="}
{"title": "Kim Woo-jin (archer)", "requested": "Kim Woo-jin (archer)", "extract": "Kim Woo-jin (Korean: 김우진; Korean pronunciation: [ki.mu.dʑin] or [kim] [u.dʑin]; born June 20, 1992) is a South Korean archer specializing in recurve archery. He first held the world number one ranking in 2011. At the 2016 Summer Olympics, he set a world record in men's individual recurve archery as well as won the gold medal as a member of the South Korean men's archery team. During the 2024 Summer Olympics, he earned an Olympic gold medal in the men's individual event after a tiebreaker with American archer Brady Ellison. This victory marked Kim's fifth gold medal overall and his third consecutive Olympics in which he won a gold medal. He is also a three-time world champion in the men's individual recurve event at the World Archery Championships.\nHis record of five Olympic gold medals is the most won by any archer in the world, surpassing the four won by Kim Soo-nyung. It also makes him the most awarded Korean Olympian of all time in any sport.\nHe is right-handed, and uses 30-inch (76 cm) arrows and a draw weight of 46 pounds (21 kg).\n\n\n== Career ==\nKim was part of the 2011 World Archery Championships gold medal-winning men's team and won the individual gold medal at the 2011 World Archery Championships and the 2012 FITA Archery World Cup. Despite this, he was not selected for the 2012 Korean Olympic team.\nIn 2015, he was again selected for the Korean national team and became the first man since 1985 to win the World Archery Championships twice.\nDuring the Rio 2016 Summer Olympics, Kim set a world record during the individual men's qualifying round with a score of 700 out of a possible 720 (held under World Archery Federation rules at a distance of 70 meters). The previous record of 699 was set by Im Dong-hyun (also of South Korea) at the 2012 Olympics, and the record would stand until surpassed by Brady Ellison with a score of 702 at the 2019 World Archery Championships. However, in a major upset, Kim lost 2–6 in the second round in the individual category to Indonesia's Riau Ega Agatha. He was one of the three members of the South Korean men's team who won the Olympic gold medal in the team competition.\nAt the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics, he earned a gold medal in the men's team event and finished fifth in the men's individual event.\nDuring the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics, Kim earned an Olympic gold medal in the men's individual event after a tiebreaker with American archer Brady Ellison. This victory marked Kim's fifth gold medal overall and his third consecutive Olympics in which he won a gold medal. In addition, Kim secured a gold medal in the men's team archery event, making him one of only two athletes, along with Kim Soo-nyung, to achieve three consecutive team gold medals in archery at the Olympics. This made him South Korea's most successful Olympic athlete. His gold completed South Korea's clean sweep of archery at that Olympics.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nAs of August 2021, Kim was planning to marry his girlfriend in December 2021.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of South Korean archers\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nKim Woojin at World Archery \nKim Wu-Jin at InterSportStats\nKim Wu-Jin at Olympedia \nWoojin Kim at Olympics.com \nWoojin Kim on Instagram"}
{"title": "Kjeld Nuis", "requested": "Kjeld Nuis", "extract": "Kjeld Nuis (Dutch pronunciation: [kjɛlt ˈnœys]; born 10 November 1989) is a Dutch speed skater and three-time Olympic gold medalist.\nNuis is a specialist in the middle distances of 1000 and 1500 meters. At the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, he won the gold medal at the 1500 m and 1000 m events. At the 2022 Winter Olympics, he successfully defended his title on the 1500 m. He is the current holder of the world record over 1500 meters.\n\n\n== Career ==\nNuis is a three-time Olympic champion, having won Olympic gold in both the 1000 and 1500 meters at the 2018 Winter Olympics. He won another gold in the 1500 meters four years later, improving Derek Parra's twenty-year-old Olympic record to 1:43.21 in the process. He is also a two-time world single-distance champion over 1000 and 1500 meters. \nHe is a multi-time world single distance medalist over 1000 and 1500 meters, a four-time season overall World Cup winner of the 1000 meters distance, and a two-time winner over 1500 meters.\nOn 10 March 2019, he set the world record for the 1500-meter event to 1:40.17 in the Utah Olympic Oval during the finals of the 2018–19 World Cup tour. A day earlier, in the same event, he also improved the 1000 meters world record to 1:06.18, which stood until it was broken by Pavel Kulizhnikov on 15 February 2020.\nIn Savalen, Norway on 17 March 2022, he set a new world speed skating record of 103 kilometers per hour, beating his previous 4-year-old record by 10 km/h.\nAt the 2026 Winter Olympics, Nuis won bronze in the 1500 m, becoming the first male speed skater to medal in the 1500 meters at three different Winter Olympics.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nFrom 2014 until the end of 2018, Nuis was in a relationship with Miss Nederland World 2011 Jill Lauren de Robles. They have a son.\nOn 19 December 2018, Nuis was named Dutch Sportsman of the Year 2018 at the NOC NSF Sport Gala.\nNuis has been in a relationship with fellow speed skater and Olympic silver medalist Joy Beune since 2019. The pair live together in Heerenveen.\n\n\n== Records ==\n\n\n=== Personal records ===\n\n\n=== World records established ===\n\n\n== Tournament overview ==\n\nSource:\n\n\n== World Cup overview ==\n\nSource:\n\n– = Did not participate\n(b) = Division B\nDQ = Disqualified\nNC = No classification\n\n\n== Medals won ==\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nKjeld Nuis at the International Skating Union (archived former page)\nKjeld Nuis at Milano Cortina 2026\nKjeld Nuis at Olympedia \nKjeld Nuis at InterSportStats \nKjeld Nuis at TeamNL  (in Dutch)\nKjeld Nuis at NOC*NSF (in Dutch) (English translation) \nKjeld Nuis on Instagram"}
{"title": "Kjetil André Aamodt", "requested": "Kjetil André Aamodt", "extract": "Kjetil André Aamodt (born 2 September 1971) is a former World Cup alpine ski racer from Norway, a champion in the Olympics, World Championships, and World Cup. He is one of the most successful alpine ski racers from Norway.\n\n\n== Biography ==\nBorn in Oslo to Finn Aamodt (former head coach of Norway's alpine skiing team), Aamodt is the only alpine skier to win 8 Olympic medals, and has won 5 World Championship gold medals as well as 21 individual World Cup events. Described as an all-round alpine skier, Aamodt participated in all alpine skiing disciplines in the World Cup and World Championships, and is one of only five male alpine skiers to have won a World Cup race in all five disciplines.\nAamodt's combined career total of twenty World Championship and Olympic medals is an all-time best. He is the second-youngest male alpine skier to win an Olympic gold medal (age 20 in 1992; Toni Sailer was two months younger in 1956). Until 2014, he was also the oldest alpine skier to win an Olympic gold medal. For almost six years, Aamodt led the all-time Marathon World Cup ranking, with a total of 13,252 points earned from 1989 to 2006 – until 14 March 2012, when Austrian Benjamin Raich overtook him with a fifth place in the downhill at the 2012 World Cup final in Schladming to total 13,281 points, earned from 1998.\nAnother all-time best is his 231 World Cup top-ten results, 9 ahead of Benjamin Raich.\nBy winning the super-G race at the 2006 Olympics, Aamodt became the first male alpine skier to win four gold medals in the Olympics. (Toni Sailer and Jean-Claude Killy both swept the three alpine events at a single Olympics, and Alberto Tomba won three gold medals over two Olympics.)\nAamodt had 19 Olympic and World Championship medals stolen from him. The medals were taken in August 2003 by burglars who broke into a safe in his father's home. The five-time world champion and winner of four Olympic gold medals later revealed they were recovered by an anonymous helper over the internet.\nAamodt announced the conclusion of his career on live television on 6 January 2007, with hundreds of fellow athletes in attendance, at the Norwegian Sports Gala (Idrettsgallaen) where he had been selected as awardee of the year for 2006.\nAamodt now runs a ski race camp in Gaustablikk, Norway, and does public speaking.\n\n\n== Legacy ==\nIn February 2015, Aamodt and Lasse Kjus were selected as recipients of the Legends of Honor by the Vail Valley Foundation, and inducted into the International Ski Racing Hall of Fame.\n\n\n== World Cup results ==\n\n\n=== Season standings ===\n\n\n=== Season titles ===\n1 overall, 1 super-G, 1 giant slalom, 1 slalom\n\n^official season title in the combined disciplinewas not awarded until the 2007 season\n\n\n=== Race victories ===\n21 wins (1 downhill, 5 super-G, 6 giant slalom, 1 slalom, 8 combined)\n64 podiums, 231 top tens (first skier of all time in this ranking).\n\n\n== World Championships results ==\n\n\n== Olympic results ==\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nKjetil André Aamodt at FIS (alpine)\nKjetil André Aamodt at FIS (ski jumping)\nKjetil André Aamodt at Olympics.com\nKjetil André Aamodt at the Chinese Olympic Committee (archived)\nKjetil André Aamodt at Olympedia\nKjetil André Aamodt at InterSportStats\nKjetil André Aamodt at Ski-DB Alpine Ski Database \nOfficial website (in Norwegian)"}
{"title": "Klaus Dibiasi", "requested": "Klaus Dibiasi", "extract": "Klaus Dibiasi (born 6 October 1947) is a former sports diver from Italy, who competed in four consecutive Summer Olympics for his country, starting in 1964. He dominated the platform event from the late 1960s to the mid-1970s, winning three Olympic gold medals.\n\n\n== Biography ==\nDibiasi won a silver medal in platform diving at the 1964 Summer Olympics, and went on to win gold in the same event at the next three Games (1968, 1972, and 1976). Dibiasi is the only Olympic diver to have won three successive gold medals, and he is the only diver to have won medals at four Summer Olympics. A silver in the springboard in 1968 gave him a total of five Olympic medals. He also performed well at the first two FINA World Aquatic Championships (1973 and 1975), winning four medals. Dibiasi won 11 national platform and 7 springboard titles.\nDibiasi was born in Solbad Hall, Austria, to Italian parents, who returned to Italy when he was a child. He was the first Italian to become an Olympic diving champion. He was coached by his father, Carlo, a former Italian champion (1933–1936) and a competitor at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, who finished in tenth place. Klaus Dibiasi also later coached the Italian diving team.\n\n\n== Awards ==\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of members of the International Swimming Hall of Fame\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists in one event\nList of multiple Olympic medalists in one event\nList of flag bearers for Italy at the Olympics\nItalian men gold medalist at the Olympics and World Championships\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nKlaus Dibiasi at World Aquatics\nKlaus Dibiasi at the International Swimming Hall of Fame\nKlaus Dibiasi at Olympics.com\nKlaus Dibiasi at the Italian National Olympic Committee (in Italian)\nKlaus Dibiasi at the CONI honored athlete website (in Italian)\nKlaus Dibiasi at Olympedia\nKlaus Dibiasi at InterSportStats"}
{"title": "Knut Holmann", "requested": "Knut Holmann", "extract": "Knut Holmann (born 31 July 1968, in Oslo) is a Norwegian sprint kayaker competed from the early 1990s to the early 2000s (decade). Competing in four Summer Olympics, he won six medals. This included three golds (K-1 500 m: 2000, K-1 1000 m: 1996, 2000), two silvers (K-1 500 m: 1996, K-1 1000 m: 1992), and one bronze (K-1 500 m: 1992).\nHe is widely regarded to have some of the best kayaking technique ever.\nHolmann also won thirteen ICF Canoe Sprint World Championships with four golds (K-1 1000 m: 1990, 1991, 1993, 1995), five silvers (K-1 500 m: 1991, 1995; K-1 1000 m: 1998, 1999; K-1 10000 m: 1993), and four bronzes (K-1 500 m: 1994, K-1 1000 m: 1994, 1997; K-4 200 m: 1998).\n\n\n== References ==\nICF medalists for Olympic and World Championships – Part 1: flatwater (now sprint): 1936–2007 at the Wayback Machine (archived 2010-01-05)\nICF medalists for Olympic and World Championships – Part 2: rest of flatwater (now sprint) and remaining canoeing disciplines: 1936–2007 at WebCite (archived 2009-11-09)\nEvans, Hilary; Gjerde, Arild; Heijmans, Jeroen; Mallon, Bill; et al. \"Knut Holmann\". Olympics at Sports-Reference.com. Sports Reference LLC. Archived from the original on 2020-04-17."}
{"title": "Kornelia Ender", "requested": "Kornelia Ender", "extract": "Kornelia Ender (later Matthes now Grummt, born 25 October 1958) is a former East German swimmer who at the 1976 Summer Olympics became the first female swimmer to win four gold medals at a single Olympic Games, all in world record times. It was later proven that the East German team doctors had systematically administered steroids to their athletes (albeit without the athletes' knowledge). As she had exhibited symptoms of steroid use in 1976 (deep voice, overdeveloped body), strong suspicion was cast on the validity of Ender's accomplishments.\nEnder trained from a young age and won her first Olympic medals as a 13-year-old at the 1972 Olympics in Munich: three silver medals, including one in the 200 m individual medley, finishing behind Australia's Shane Gould.  Over the following years she broke 32 world records in individual events, including the four at the Montreal Games.  In 1991, she addressed the long-held suspicions about her physical condition at the 1976 Games, acknowledging that team doctors and coaches had given her numerous injections of drugs over the preceding months (cf.\ndoping in East Germany).  Ender said that she did not know at the time, nor had she ever subsequently found out, exactly what the drugs were.  She said she was told only that the drugs would help her \"regenerate and recuperate\" and therefore, although she was surprised by the muscle mass she added, she nonetheless attributed it simply to her rigorous training.\nWhen she became suspicious and refused to take chlorodehydromethyltestosterone in 1977 she was banned from the team by Manfred Ewald.\nEnder was married for four years to East German backstroke swimmer and multiple Olympic champion Roland Matthes. She is now married to former East German track and field athlete and bobsledder Steffen Grummt.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of members of the International Swimming Hall of Fame\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Summer Olympic medalists\n\n\n== References ==\n\nLord, Craig (26 March 2004). Olympic heroes[link removed]. Times Online"}
{"title": "Kosuke Kitajima", "requested": "Kosuke Kitajima", "extract": "Kosuke Kitajima (北島 康介, Kitajima Kōsuke; born September 22, 1982) is a Japanese retired breaststroke swimmer. He won gold medals at the men's 100 m and 200 m breaststroke events at the 2004 Summer Olympics, and the 2008 Summer Olympics – becoming the first and only swimmer to sweep the breaststroke events at consecutive Olympic games.\n\n\n== Major achievements ==\nKitajima, who was born in Tokyo, was the world record holder in the 100 m breaststroke that he set at the 2008 Beijing Olympics – this mark was broken by Brenton Rickard. He was also bronze medal winner in the same Olympics in the 4×100 m medley relay. He edged out his main rival Brendan Hansen who finished fourth while Kitajima won the gold medal and set the new world record.\nHe received four gold medals, one silver and two bronze medals in total at the 2004, 2008 and 2012 Olympics.\nHis most significant rival in the breaststroke was the American swimmer Brendan Hansen. They dueled at events such as the 2005 World Championships, 2004 Summer Olympics and 2003 World Championships. Kitajima set both world records for 100 m and 200 m breaststroke in the latter occasion. Later his best in 200 m was overcome by Dimitri Komornikov and then by Hansen, who also broke Kitajima's record in the 100 m.  Kitajima regained the world record (58.91) in the 100 m at the 2008 Summer Olympics. Kitajima regained the 200 m breaststroke world record in June 2008 at the Japan Open.  His time of 2:07.51 shaved nearly a second off the previous record of 2:08.50 set by Hansen in 2006.\nDuring the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Kitajima generated buzz for his primal screams of exuberance after edging out Hansen in the 100 m and 200 m breaststroke for the gold. At a pool side interview (3'24\") following his victory in the 100 m, Kosuke Kitajima also popularised the phrase 'cho-kimochi-ii,' meaning \"I feel really good.\" The word went on to win the 2004 U-Can Neologisms and Vogue Words contest.\nDuring his gold medal-winning 100 m breaststroke race at the 2004 Olympics, he used an illegal dolphin kick on a pull-out, although he was not disqualified, and the rules were changed less than one year later to allow a single dolphin kick after the start and after each turn.\nKitajima retired in April 2016 after missing qualification for the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. He was attempting to qualify for his fifth Olympics.\n\n\n=== Professional roles & legacy ===\nAfter retiring from competition, Kitajima moved into leadership roles within swimming. In 2020, he became General Manager of the Tokyo Frog Kings, Japan’s first Asian franchise in the International Swimming League (ISL).\nUnder Kitajima’s management, the Frog Kings debuted in Budapest, finishing second in their opening match with 506.5 points, behind the LA Current (535.5). The team featured a largely domestic roster, with 22 of 31 athletes representing Japan, and several swimmers making their ISL debut.\nNotable early performances included Suzuka Hasegawa’s ISL record in the women’s 200 m butterfly (2:03.12). Kitajima described the ISL as an opportunity for Japanese swimmers to gain experience in an international professional team format.\nIn January 2025, the Kosuke Kitajima Cup was held at the Tokyo Aquatics Centre, serving as a qualifying meet for the World Championships in Japan.\n\n\n== Personal bests ==\nIn long course swimming pools Kitajima's bests are:\n\n50 m breaststroke: 27.30 (13 April 2010)\n100 m breaststroke: 58.90 (3 April 2012)\n200 m breaststroke: 2:07.51 (8 June 2008)\n\n\n== See also ==\nWorld record progression 100 metres breaststroke\nWorld record progression 200 metres breaststroke\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists at a single Games\nList of multiple Olympic medalists\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nKITAJIMA, Kosuke International Who's Who. accessed September 4, 2006.\nOfficial website (in Japanese)\nProfile London 2012 Official Website\n[1]"}
{"title": "Kristin Armstrong", "requested": "Kristin Armstrong", "extract": "Kristin Armstrong Savola (née Armstrong; born August 11, 1973) is a former professional road bicycle racer and three-time Olympic gold medalist, the winner of the women's individual time trial in 2008, 2012, and 2016. Before temporarily retiring to start a family in 2009, she rode for Cervélo TestTeam in women's elite professional events on the National Racing Calendar (NRC) and UCI Women's World Cup. She announced a return to competitive cycling beginning in the 2011 season, competing for Peanut Butter & Co. TWENTY12 at the Redlands Classic.\n\n\n== Background ==\nPrior to her professional cycling career, Armstrong had been a junior Olympian in swimming, a distance runner in college, and then a triathlete. She spent many hours perfecting her strokes in the pool at the Boise Family YMCA, where she also served as Director of Aquatics, managing more than 50 lifeguards, swim instructors, and others.  She was diagnosed with osteoarthritis in both hips in 2001 at age 27, and told that she could no longer run at an elite level, thus ending her triathlon career and leading her to focus exclusively on cycling.\nThe three-time national champion finished 8th (top U.S. finisher) in the women's road race at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens.\nAt the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, Armstrong completed the biggest achievement of her career by winning the gold medal in the women's road time trial competition on August 13.  Finishing in under 35 minutes, Armstrong was 25 seconds ahead of silver medalist Emma Pooley from Great Britain, with Karin Thürig from Switzerland taking the bronze.\nOf Armstrong, Velonews wrote: \"Kristin Armstrong is famous for both her success in bicycle racing, and the 'type-A' attention to detail that keeps her climbing the podium at critical races every season.\"\nArmstrong announced at the end of 2010 that she would return to competitive cycling, with the goal of competing at the London 2012 Summer Olympics. In a written statement, she stated that her retirement was merely temporary in order to start a family:\n\nI love cycling and I love competing.  I stopped racing after the 2009 World Championships not because I was burned out, but because my husband and I wanted to start a family...I told myself from the beginning if everything went smoothly with the birth of our son, Lucas William, I would consider racing again.\nIn 2011, Armstrong returned to compete with the Peanut Butter & Co. Team TWENTY12, of which she was a part owner. She won three of the four stages (criterium, road race, and time trial) and the overall title during the Sea Otter Classic in April.  However, during the first stage of the Tour of the Gila, which she had won twice previously, Armstrong came down with food poisoning. She ended up withdrawing from the race and returning home to recover.\nArmstrong successfully defended her Olympic title in the individual time trial at the 2012 Olympics in London and became the oldest rider to win an Olympic time trial, and finished 35th in the Women's road race.  She announced her retirement after the 2012 Olympics.\nIn September 2012, Armstrong's Olympic gold medal-winning time trial bike was stolen while in transit between Germany and the USA.\nIn April 2015, Armstrong announced that she would be coming out of retirement to race at the 2015 Pan American Road Championships in Leon, Mexico, having been selected by USA Cycling for the individual time trial. Two days after announcing Armstrong's selection, however, the USA Cycling Selection Committee reconvened, deciding that the new selection process under which Armstrong had been chosen had not been published in a timely manner, and that as a result the federation's older Principles of Athlete Selection, which had been issued in 2008, should be used instead for selection to the Pan American Championships. The upshot was that Armstrong's place was taken by Tayler Wiles. The following month, Armstrong won the United States National Time Trial Championships in Chattanooga, Tennessee, beating Carmen Small by 13 seconds.\nIn August 2016, Armstrong made history at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro after coming out of retirement to win the gold medal in the women's individual time trial and becoming the first rider ever to win three gold medals in the same discipline. She also became the oldest female cyclist to win an Olympic medal.\nIn September 2017 Armstrong joined USA Cycling as Endurance Performance Director.\nIn December 2019 Armstrong created and launched her bike computer mount line of products called KX3 Sports.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\n\nArmstrong's father was an officer in the US Marines. Born in Memphis, Tennessee, she lived in Tennessee and California and attended high school in Havelock, North Carolina, and abroad in Okinawa, Japan, where she graduated from Kubasaki High School in 1991. She enrolled at the University of Idaho in Moscow, where she ran track for the Vandals for a season as a walk-on and was a member of the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority. Armstrong earned a bachelor's degree from U of I in sports physiology in 1995, and currently lives in Boise, Idaho.\nShe is often confused with the ex-wife of fellow cyclist Lance Armstrong, whose name is also Kristin. Kristin Armstrong the cyclist and Lance Armstrong are not related.\nArmstrong is married to Joe Savola; their son Lucas William Savola was born on September 15, 2010. Four months before his birth, she gave the commencement address at her alma mater in May 2010.\n\n\n== Major results ==\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nOfficial website\nKristin Armstrong at UCI\nKristin Armstrong at ProCyclingStats\nKristin Armstrong at Cycling Quotient\nKristin Armstrong at CycleBase\nKristin Armstrong at TeamUSA.com\nKristin Armstrong at TeamUSA.org (archived)\nKristin Armstrong at Olympedia\nKristin Armstrong at InterSportStats\nCycling News.com – The other Armstrong: more than a water-carrier – October 29, 2003\nCascade Cycling Classic – 2008"}
{"title": "Kristin Otto", "requested": "Kristin Otto", "extract": "Kristin Otto (German pronunciation: [ˈkʁɪstɪn ˈʔɔtoː] ; born 7 February 1966) is a former East German swimmer, becoming Olympic, World and European champion, multiple times. She is most famous for being the first woman to win six gold medals at a single Olympic Games, doing so at the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games. In long course, she held the world records in the 100 meter and 200 meter freestyle events. Otto was also the first woman to swim the short course 100 meter backstroke in under a minute, doing so at an international short course meet at Indiana University in 1983.\n\n\n== Career ==\nOtto was born in Leipzig, Bezirk Leipzig (present-day Sachsen), East Germany, and began swimming at the age of 11, training in an East German sports academy. At sixteen, she participated in her first world championships, the 1982 World Aquatics Championships, winning the gold medal in the 100 meter backstroke as well as two additional gold medals in the 4×100 m relays with the East German team.\nAfter 1982, Otto changed coaches and began concentrating on other speed strokes. At the following European Championships in 1983, Otto finished second in the 100 meter freestyle, following her fellow East German, Birgit Meineke.\nIn 1984, Otto set a world record in the 200 meter freestyle. She was expected to win gold medals at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games, but was unable to compete due to the boycott by 14 Eastern Bloc countries, including East Germany. In 1985 she fractured a vertebra, keeping her from  competing for most of the year or to go to the European Championships.\nOtto returned to competitive swimming at the 1986 World Championships in Madrid, where she won 4 gold medals (100 m freestyle, 200 m individual medley, 4×100 m medley relay and 4×100 m freestyle relay) and 2 silver medals (50 m freestyle, 100 m butterfly). Her success continued the following year at the 1987 European Championships where she won 5 gold medals.\nAt the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games she once again was expected to win Olympic gold. She won six gold medals, as well as setting Olympic records in the 50 m freestyle and 100 m butterfly.\nOtto retired from swimming in 1989. She studied journalism at Leipzig University and subsequently worked as a sports reporter for German television.\nShe was named the Female World Swimmer of the Year in 1984, 1986 and 1988 by Swimming World. In October 1986, she was awarded a Star of People's Friendship in gold (second class) for her sporting success.\nOtto's career was marred by the revelations of widespread performance-enhancing drugs used by East German athletes: former teammate Petra Schneider openly admitted that she had used banned substances. However, Otto stated that she was not aware that she was being doped and she passed all the doping tests during competition, saying: \"The medals are the only reminder of how hard I worked. It was not all drugs.\"\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of members of the International Swimming Hall of Fame\nList of Olympic medalists in swimming (women)\nList of World Aquatics Championships medalists in swimming (women)\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists at a single Games\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links =="}
{"title": "Krisztina Egerszegi", "requested": "Krisztina Egerszegi", "extract": "Krisztina Egerszegi (Hungarian pronunciation: [ˈkristinɒ ˈɛɡɛrsɛɡi]; born 16 August 1974) is a Hungarian former world record holding swimmer and one of the greatest Hungarian Olympic champions of the modern era. She is a three-time Olympian (1988, 1992 and 1996) and five-time Olympic champion; and one of four individuals (Dawn Fraser, Michael Phelps and Katie Ledecky being the other three) to have ever won the same swimming event at three consecutive Summer Olympics. She is the first female swimmer to win five individual Olympic gold medals.\nEgerszegi held the world record in the long-course 200 m backstroke for almost 17 years. In 2013, she was awarded the Hungarian Order of Saint Stephen.\n\n\n== Biography ==\nEgerszegi made her international debut at the 1987 European Aquatics Championships at the age of 13, coming fourth in the 200 m backstroke and fifth in the 100 m backstroke. At the 1988 Summer Olympics, she won silver medal in the 100 m backstroke and became Olympic champion in the 200 m backstroke. At the age of 14 years and 41 days, she became the youngest-ever female Olympic champion in swimming. This youth record was broken in 1992 by Kyoko Iwasaki of Japan, who won a gold medal in the 200 m breaststroke at the 1992 Summer Olympics at the age of 14 years and six days. At the end of 1988, she was the top-ranked swimmer in 200 m backstroke in the world ranking as well as she became the Swimmer of the Year and the Best Female Athlete of the Year in Hungary.\nAt the 1989 European Aquatics Championships, she competed in three events adding the 400 m medley to the 100 m and 200 m backstroke, winning silver medal in all three events despite she struggled with a strong cold during the entire Championships. At the end of that year, she topped again the world ranking in 200 m backstroke and she was selected again the Best Female Athlete of the Year in Hungary.\nAt the 1990 Goodwill Games in Seattle, she won the Hungarian team's only gold and silver medal (first in 200 m backstroke, second in 100 m backstroke), with which Hungary finished 16th in the overall standings. At the Hungarian Championships, which was held in December due to the World Championships in Australia she won 12 gold medals. Egerszegi finished the year of 1990 again as the Best Swimmer and as the Best Female Athlete of Hungary.\nIn 1991, she competed at the World Championships in Perth, Australia, winning both backstroke events (100 and 200 metres) and becoming the first Hungarian female swimmer of all time who won gold medals at the World Championships.\nA few months later at the European Championships in Athens, Greece, she won three gold medals and set world records in the 100 m (1:00.31 min) and 200 m (2:06.62 min) backstroke events. Eleven years after Rica Reinisch, Egerszegi was the first female swimmer since 1980, who set world records on both 100 m and 200 m at the same event. Since 1983 (when Rick Carey completed this feat in Clovis, USA), Egerszegi was the first swimmer who broke both world records of the backstroke at the same event. At the Hungarian Swimming Championships, she added 10 gold medals to her unique collection. In December, she won her 4 consecutive awards as the Best Swimmer and the Best Athlete of the Year in Hungary. The Italian newspaper La Gazzetta dello Sport has been voted her as the world's second best athlete.\nIn April 1992, along with the two-time Olympic champion sprint canoer Zsolt Gyulay has administered the official Olympic oath on behalf of the Hungarian Olympic Team and athletes. At the Hungarian Championships, she collected 8 more gold medals. At the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain, she won three individual gold medals, becoming the only female athlete at the Games to do so. End of 1992, she got the most votes again at the Best Swimmer and Best Athlete of the Year selection. La Gazzetta dello Sport has been top-ranked her as the Best Female Athlete of the Year.\nIn 1993, she claimed 10 first places at the Hungarian Championships then at the European Championships in Sheffield, England, she competed in the 200 m butterfly for the first time and went on to win four gold medals also winning the 400 m medley and the 100 m and 200 m backstroke. In December, she was selected the Best Swimmer and Best Athlete of the Year in Hungary, while La Gazzetta dello Sport and L'Équipe voted her as the best female athlete of the year.\nIn 1994, she won 9 gold medals at the Hungarian Championships and then she announced that she would retire after the World Championships in Rome which was overshadowed by the suspicious Chinese swimmers' performances. China won 12 of the 16 women's titles, but these achievements were sullied less than a month later when seven Chinese swimmers tested positive for banned drugs at the Asian Games in Hiroshima. In Rome, Egerszegi lost the 100 m and 200 m backstroke, both events were won by He Cihong, who was only 13th (1:03.50) on 100 m backstroke two years earlier in Barcelona, where Egerszegi won in an Olympic record time of 1:00.68. At the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, He Cihong was 25th on the 100 m backstroke. On the 200 m backstroke, He Cihong qualified neither for Barcelona, nor Atlanta; both Olympic golds were won by Egerszegi. After getting fifth place in the 100 m backstroke and coming second in the 200 m backstroke, Egerszegi decided to compete for two more years, citing the two defeats as the main reason.\nAt the Hungarian Championship in 1995, she claimed 9 gold medals. She competed at the 1995 European Aquatics Championships where she won the last two of her nine European titles in the 400 m medley and the 200 m backstroke event. For the first time, she competed in the 4×100 m medley relay where one of her teammates was Ágnes Kovács, a future Olympic champion. They came second and Egerszegi has named this silver medal as \"the one that made her the happiest\". She decided not to compete in the 100 m backstroke even though her time of 1:00.93 clocked during the 4×100 m relay final was better than Mette Jacobsen's winning time of 1:02.46 by almost two seconds.\nIn 1996, she closed her final appearance at the Hungarian Championships with collecting 9 gold medals. In Atlanta, at the Centennial Olympic Games, although Egerszegi advanced into the final with the best time on 400 individual medley, she finished in third. This was her first and only bronze medal during her Olympic career. She competed in the 4×100 m medley relay as member of the Hungarian team, who finished in 11th. Her time in this event at the qualification round, would have won the 100 m backstroke event. Her final career appearance was one of the finest farewell of all time in swimming sport: she won her beloved 200 m backstroke event with the greatest margin in any short distance events of the swimming sport, collecting her fifth individual gold medal and defending her titles for three consecutive Olympic Games.\n\n\n== The greatest margin ==\nAt the 1996 Summer Olympics, she won her first and only Olympic bronze medal in the 400 m medley and went on to win the 200 m backstroke becoming the second of only four swimmers in Olympic history (Dawn Fraser, Michael Phelps & Katie Ledecky being the other three) to win gold for the same event at three successive Olympics (200 m backstroke: 1988, 1992, 1996). \nBetween the winning time of Egerszegi (2:07.83) and time of the runner-up Whitney Hedgepeth (2:11.98), the margin of victory was 4.15 seconds, which is the greatest in any women's 200 m event in the swimming history. In 1996, Egerszegi did not enter the 100 m backstroke, yet her leadoff backstroke time in the medley relay, 1:01.15, was faster than the winning time in the 100 m backstroke final.\nBetween 1988 and 1996 she won 5 individual Olympic gold medals, which was a record for a swimmer for individual gold medal wins. This record has since been broken by Michael Phelps, who won 13 individual gold medals. Egerszegi's record for female swimmers was broken by Katie Ledecky in 2021.\nEgerszegi announced her retirement from swimming soon after the Olympic Games, at the age of only 22. In the same year, she became the board member of the Hungarian Swimming Association and in 2007 the member of the Hungarian Olympic Committee as well as she was named for 9th times as the Best Swimmer of the Year and for 7th times as the Best Female Athlete of the Year.\n\n\n== Records ==\nEgerszegi won the 100 m backstroke at 1991 European Championships in Athens setting her first world record with 1:00:31. She broke Ina Kleber's time (1:00:59) from 1984. Three days later, Egerszegi broke Betsy Mitchell's five-years-old record (2:08.60) in the 200 m backstroke, setting her second world record at 2:06.62 min. She held this world record in the long course 200 m backstroke for 16 and half years (25 August 1991 – 16 February 2008). Her record in 200 m backstroke remained the oldest European record until 1 August 2009, when Anastasia Zuyeva (RUS) broke it at the 2009 World Aquatics Championships in Rome. \nEgerszegi set her first Olympic record on 200 m backstroke with 2:09.29 in 1988, which she improved in 1992 (2:07.06). This record was broken in 2008 at the Beijing Olympics by Kirsty Coventry. Egerszegi set the Olympic record on 100 backstroke with 1:00.68 in 1992, which was broken by Diana Mocanu (1:00.21) in 2000 in Sydney.\nEgerszegi's Hungarian (and world) record times on 100 m (1:00.31) and on 200 m backstroke (2:06.62) were the oldest ones on the list of the Hungarian records. The Hungarian record on 100 m backstroke was broken in 22 years later (April 2013) and the record on 200 m backstroke was broken at the 2015 World Aquatics Championships in Kazan, Russia. Both Hungarian records were set by Katinka Hosszú.\n\n\n== Impact on Hungarian culture ==\nHer 1988 winning in Seoul became one of the biggest TV moments in Hungary. The famous phrase \"Come on Little Mouse! Come on little girl!\" (\"Gyere Egérke! Gyere kicsi lány!\") by Tamás Vitray, who was the speaker on the air, is part of the popular culture. Egerszegi is still regarded as the role model of the \"champion\" in the country.\nHer nickname was \"Egérke\" (\"Little Mouse\") or \"Egér\" (\"Mouse\"), a play on her surname, because of her youthfulness and size. After the 1992 Summer Olympics, where she became the most successful swimmer with three individual gold medals, she was called Krisztina Királynő (\"Queen Kristina\") both in the Hungarian and in some international media.\nHer career was described in a 1993 book, Egerszegi, by László Ládonyi and György Volly and in a 2000 documentary film of the same title.\n\n\n== Honours and awards ==\nShe was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame in 2001. She was named Hungarian Sportswoman of the Year on a record-breaking seven occasions (1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993 and 1996) and Female World Swimmer of the Year three times.\nEgerszegi, one of the most prominent FINA athletes of all time, was awarded the Olympic Order on 23 June 2001, during the celebration of the Olympic Day by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in Lausanne (SUI). On 20 August 2013, she was awarded with the highest state order of Hungary, the Order of Saint Stephen of Hungary Medal by the Hungarian President János Áder.\nFurther awards:\n\nBest Female Athlete of Europe (1992)\nCommander's Cross of the Hungarian Order of Merit (1992)\nOlympic Golden Ring (1995)\nOrder of Merit of the Republic of Hungary (1996)\nGolden Deer Award (1996)\nHungarian Heritage Award (1996)\nMOB (Hungarian Olympic Committee) Medal (1997)\nIOC Ethical Special Award (1999)\n3rd in the Election for the Hungarian of the Century (2000)\nInduction of International Swimming Hall of Fame (2001)\nThe Hungarian Female Athlete of the Century (2001)\nFair Play Award for Lifetime Achievement (2001)\nFerenc Csík Award (2001)\nIOC Olympic Order of Merit grade silver (2001)\nHonorary Citizen of Budavar\nIOC President's Trophy (2005)\nPrima Primissima Award (2007)\nSt. Stephen Award (2010)\nHonorary Citizen of Budapest (2011)\nHungarian Order of Saint Stephen (2013)\nHall of Fame of the Hungarian Swimming Sports (2013)\n\n\n== Results at the Hungarian Swimming Championships ==\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of members of the International Swimming Hall of Fame\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists at a single Games\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists in one event\nList of top Olympic gold medalists in swimming\nWorld record progression 100 metres backstroke\nWorld record progression 200 metres backstroke\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nKrisztina Egerszegi at the International Swimming Hall of Fame \nKrisztina Egerszegi  at World Aquatics\nKrisztina Egerszegi at Swimrankings.net \nKrisztina Egerszegi at Olympics.com Krisztina Egerszegi at Olympic.org (archived) \nKrisztina Egerszegi at Olympedia"}
{"title": "Larisa Latynina", "requested": "Larisa Latynina", "extract": "Larisa Semyonovna Latynina (Russian: Лариса Семёновна Латынина, née Diriy, Дирий; born 27 December 1934) is a Soviet former artistic gymnast. Between 1956 and 1964 she won 14 individual Olympic medals and four team medals for the Soviet Union. She holds the record for the most Olympic gold medals by a female gymnast, with nine. Her total of 18 Olympic medals was a record for 48 years. She held the record for individual event medals for over 52 years, winning 14. She is credited with helping to establish the Soviet Union as a dominant force in gymnastics.\n\n\n== Early life ==\nShe was born as Larisa Semyonovna Diriy in Kherson, Ukrainian SSR. Her father, Semyon Andreyevich Diriy, left the family when she was 11 months old, and she was raised by her illiterate mother, who worked as a cleaner during the day, and as a watchman during the night. Her father was killed at the Battle of Stalingrad, where he served as a machine gun operator. Young Diriy-Latynina survived the occupation of Ukraine by Nazi Germany in 1940s.\nShe first practiced ballet, but turned to gymnastics after her choreographer moved out of Kherson. Her first gymnastics coach was Mykhailo Sotnychenko. In 1950 young Diriy-Latynina received her first sports degree (rozriad) and became a member of the Ukrainian students team at the All-Union gymnastics' competitions in Kazan. She graduated from high school in 1953 with a gold medal, and moved to Kyiv. She attended the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute (KPI), and continued her training at the Burevestnik VSS under coaching of Oleksandr Mishakov. Her first notable success came at the 4th World Festival of Youth and Students in Bucharest where she won gold medals. At the age of 19, she debuted internationally at the 1954 Rome World Championships, winning the gold medal in the team competition. Following the second semester, Latynina switched to the Institute of Physical culture from KPI.\n\n\n== Gymnastics career ==\n\nIn 1956, at the age of 21, Latynina made her Olympic debut at the Melbourne Olympic Games. In the all-around event, she fought off stiff competition to win gold. She finished first in the vault, second in the uneven bars and in the exercise on the floor and fourth in the balancing beam. She also led the Soviet Union to victory in the Team Event. Her first Olympic gold medal Latynina gifted to her first coach Sotnychenko who kept it until his death. Later the wife of Sotnychenko returned the medal to Latynina. Also, following her success in Australia, she was awarded with the high sports title of the Merited Master of Sports of the USSR. Latynina won all gold medals at the 1957 European championship in gymnastics. For all her sports achievements in 1957 she was honored with the Order of Lenin. Around that time, she with her first husband Ivan Latynin from Leningrad who also studied in Kyiv. She graduated from the Institute with honors.\nAfter a very successful World Championships in 1958 (winning five out of six titles despite competing whilst four months pregnant and medaling in every event), Latynina was the favorite for the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome. In the all-around event, she led the Soviet Union to take the first four places, thereby also securing a win in the team competition by a margin of nine points. Latynina defended her floor title, took silver medals in the balance beam and uneven bars events, and bronze in the vault competition.\nLatynina won all-around titles at the 1962 World Championships, beating Věra Čáslavská of Czechoslovakia. Still the defending World Champion at the 1964 Summer Olympics, she was beaten by Čáslavská in the all-around competition. Latynina added two more gold medals to her tally, winning the team event and the floor event both for the third time in a row. A silver medal and two bronzes in the other apparatus events brought her total of Olympic medals to eighteen—nine gold medals, five silver, and four bronze. She won a medal in every event in which she competed, except for the 1956 balance beam where she came in fourth.\nLatynina's nine gold medals make her tied for third on the list of most Olympic gold medalists. She held the distinction of having more Olympic medals (either individually or with a team) than anybody, from 1964 until 2012. She and American swimmer Katie Ledecky are the only women to have won nine gold medals. She is also the only female athlete who at some point has held the record for most Olympic gold medals. Additionally, within the sport of gymnastics, she is the only woman who has won an all-around medal in more than two Olympiads, the only woman who has won an individual event (floor exercise) in more than two Olympiads, and one of only three women who have won every individual event at either the World Championship or Olympic level. She is the first female gymnast to have twice won team gold, all-around gold, and an event final gold at the same Olympics, having done so in 1956 and four years later, in 1960.\n\n\n== Family ==\nShe was born to Pelageya Anisimovna Barabamyuk (1902–1975) and Semyon Andreevich Diriy (1906–1943), who died in the Battle of Stalingrad. Larisa was married three times. Her current husband is Yuri Izrailovich Feldman (b. 1938), a member of the Russian Academy of Electrotechnical Sciences and a former competitive cyclist. Her daughter from a former marriage, Tatyana Ivanovna Latynina (b. 1958), is a folk dancer. She was born only five months after her mother won a world all-around title, and seven months after her birth Latynina competed at the national championships. Latynina kept her pregnancy a secret, even from her coach. She also had a son.\n\n\n== Retirement ==\nLatynina announced her retirement after the 1966 World Championships and became a coach for the Soviet national gymnastics team, a position she held until 1977. Under her coaching the Soviet women team won gold in the 1968, 1972 and 1976 Olympics. She organized the gymnastics competition at the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow.\nShe holds Russian citizenship and lives in Moscow. Latynina has received numerous Soviet and Russian state accolades.\nIn 2023, she spoke out against Russian athletes competing under a neutral flag at the Olympics due to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, calling it \"unpatriotic\".\n\n\n== Awards and honors ==\n1989: Olympic Order (silver), International Olympic Committee\n1998: Inducted into the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame\n\n\n== Competitive history ==\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists at a single Games\nList of multiple Olympic medalists at a single Games\nList of multiple Summer Olympic medalists\nList of top Olympic gymnastics medalists\nList of top medalists at the World Artistic Gymnastics Championships\nList of Olympic female gymnasts for the Soviet Union\nList of women who won medals in every event at the World Artistic Gymnastics Championships\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== Bibliography ==\nLarisa Latynina (1975). The Balance (in Russian). Moscow: Molodaya gvardiya. Archived from the original on 27 September 2007.\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nLarisa Latynina at World Gymnastics\nLarisa Latynina at the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame \nLarisa Latynina at Olympics.com Larisa Latynina at Olympic.org (archived) \nLarisa Latynina at the International Olympic Committee at the Wayback Machine (archived 12 December 2010)\nLarisa Latynina at Olympedia \nLarisa Latynina at databaseOlympics.com (archived)\nInternational Gymnast's profile on Latynina at the Wayback Machine (archived 27 October 2006)\nGymn Forum: Complete list of Latynina's competitive results\nLife Magazine images\nLarisa Latynina's profile in the Modern Museum of Sports includes photos of her and some of her decorations (in Russian)"}
{"title": "Larisa Lazutina", "requested": "Larisa Lazutina", "extract": "Larisa Yevgenyevna Lazutina (Russian: Лариса Евгеньевна Лазутина; née Ptitsyna; born 1 June 1965) is a Russian former professional cross-country skier.\n\n\n== Career ==\nLazutina was awarded the Holmenkollen medal in 1998 (shared with Fred Børre Lundberg, Alexey Prokurorov and Harri Kirvesniemi). She made her Olympic debut in 1988. Lazutina won her first Olympic medal in 1992, winning a team gold that year. At the 1994 Winter Olympics, Lazutina won a further relay gold. At the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, she won five medals: three gold, one silver and one bronze. She was the most successful athlete at the 1998 Winter Games. After the Olympics, Boris Yeltsin awarded her the title Hero of the Russian Federation.\nLazutina earned numerous medals at the FIS Nordic World Ski Championships. She won a total of sixteen medals, including eleven gold, three silver and two bronze medals. She was also the first three-time winner of the women's 30 km event at the Holmenkollen ski festival (1995, 1998 and 2001).\nIn 2002, at her fifth Olympics, she again participated in the cross-country skiing events at the 2002 Winter Olympics. Lazutina won two medals with a gold in the 5 km + 5 km combined pursuit and a silver in the 10 km classical. However, she was one of three cross-country skiers (together with Johann Mühlegg and Olga Danilova) who were disqualified after blood tests indicated the use of darbepoetin, a drug intended to boost red blood cell production.\nIn February 2004, the International Olympic Committee stripped Lazutina's 2002 Olympic medals following a Court of Arbitration for Sport ruling in December 2003. The results were amended accordingly. As a result of the use of the banned substance, Larisa Lazutina received a two-year ban by the International Ski Federation in 2002.\nIn 2015, a sports park named after Lazutina opened in Odintsovo, Moscow region. Its full name is Sports and recreational park of Hero of Russia Larisa Lazutina.\n\n\n== Cross-country skiing results ==\nAll results are sourced from the International Ski Federation (FIS).\n\n\n=== Olympic Games ===\n7 medals – (5 gold, 1 silver, 1 bronze)\n\n\n=== World Championships ===\n16 medals – (11 gold, 3 silver, 2 bronze)\n\n\n=== World Cup ===\n\n\n==== Season titles ====\n4 titles – (2 overall, 2 long distance)\n\n\n==== Season standings ====\n\n\n==== Individual podiums ====\n21 victories\n62 podiums\n\n\n==== Team podiums ====\n33 victories\n41 podiums\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nShe is married to cross-country skier Gennady Lazutin.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of female Heroes of the Russian Federation\nList of sportspeople sanctioned for doping offences\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists in one event\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nLarisa Lazutina at the International Ski and Snowboard Federation\nHolmenkollen medalists – click Holmenkollmedaljen for downloadable pdf file (in Norwegian)\nHolmenkollen winners since 1892 – click Vinnere for downloadable pdf file (in Norwegian)\nPravda On-line\nIOC Announces Annulment of the Results of Larissa Lazutina from the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympic Winter Games and Amends Results Accordingly"}
{"title": "Lasha Talakhadze", "requested": "Lasha Talakhadze", "extract": "Lasha Talakhadze (Georgian: ლაშა ტალახაძე; Georgian pronunciation: [laʃa tʼalaχadze]; born 2 October 1993) is a Georgian weightlifter, holding the all-time world records independent of weight category in the snatch (225 kg, 496 lb), the clean and jerk (267 kg, 589 lb), and the total (492 kg, 1,085 lb) since 2021.\nTalakhadze is a three-time Olympic champion, seven-time world champion, and seven-time European champion competing in the super-heavyweight category (105 kg + until 2018 and 109 kg + starting in 2018 after the International Weightlifting Federation reorganized the categories).\nHe is a three-time winner of the IWF Male Lifter of the Year.\nSince 2024, Talakhadze is a parliamentarian for the Georgian Dream party in Georgia.\n\n\n== Career ==\n\n\n=== Early career and +105 kg division ===\nTalakhadze represented Georgia at the 2015 World Weightlifting Championships, and originally finished second with a total of 454 kg. In December 2015, Aleksey Lovchev (the original gold medalist and world record holder in the clean & jerk and total) failed a drug test for Ipamorelin. The IWF stripped his gold medal and rescinded his world records, and as a result Talakhadze became world champion.\nAt the 2016 Olympics he completed a snatch of 215 kg to break the world record of 214 kg set by Behdad Salimi (who took the record back with 216 kg, equaling the all-time highest set by Antonio Krastev of Bulgaria in 1987). In the clean & jerk portion of the competition, Behdad Salimi initially completed a 245 kg lift on his second attempt, but it was overruled by the 5 member jury, and was unable to complete his third attempt of 245 kg. Lasha then completed his next lift of 247 kg, giving him the lead after Salimi did not make a lift. He then completed a clean & jerk of 258 kg to set a new world record total of 473 kg and won the gold medal by a 22 kg margin over silver medallist Gor Minasyan.\n\nIn his first competition after winning the gold medal at the 2016 Summer Olympics, he set a new world record in the snatch at the 2017 European Weightlifting Championships with 217 kg, and in the process broke the all-time highest snatch of 216 kg set by Antonio Krastev in 1987, and matched by Behdad Salimi at the 2016 Olympics.\nAt the 2017 World Weightlifting Championships, Talakhadze broke his own snatch record with 220 kg, giving him a 9 kg lead over former world record holder Behdad Salimi. In the clean & jerk portion of the competition he lifted 257 kg which set a new world record for the total with 477 kg, also breaking the all-time highest total of Leonid Taranenko from 1988. In the competition he won all three gold medals, set 2 world records and had a 23 kg lead over the silver medalist Saeid Alihosseini.\n\n\n=== +109 kg division ===\nIn 2018, the IWF restructured the weight classes and nullified the existing world records. The 2018 World Weightlifting Championships were the first international competition with new weight classes and Talakhadze competed in the +109 kg category. In the snatch portion of the competition he opened with 207 kg which placed him in the gold medal position with Gor Minasyan being the only competitor with another attempt. After Minasyan missed his third attempt, Talakhadze had the gold medal in the snatch secured. For his last two lifts, after securing the gold medal, he completed two world record lifts of 212 kg and 217 kg to put him 12 kg ahead of Minasyan after the snatch portion. In the clean & jerk portion of the competition he completed his first lift of 245 kg which set a new world record in the total, and would have won the gold medal in the total if he did not complete any more lifts. After Mart Seim failed to make a 251 kg clean & jerk, Talakhadze completed a world record lift of 252 kg for his second lift. He finished the competition with another world record lift of 257 kg, and finished with a 474 kg total, a full 24 kg over silver medalist Minasyan.\nIn 2019, he competed in the 2019 European Weightlifting Championships which was held in Batumi in his home country of Georgia. Apart from being the heavy favorite to win the +109 kg category, there were expectations that Talakhadze would increase upon his current world records. In the snatch portion of the competition he lifted 208 kg in his first attempt (which would have been good for a gold medal), and then set a new world record with a 218 kg lift. Coming into the clean & jerk portion he led fellow Georgian weightlifter Irakli Turmanidze by 12 kg, and his first lift of 245 kg secured him the gold medal in the total. His second lift of 260 kg set a new world record in the clean & jerk and in the total. His total world record of 478 kg set during the competition was the highest total ever achieved in weightlifting, the previous highest of 477 kg was set by himself in 2017.\nFresh off of his victory at the 2019 European Weightlifting Championships, he again looked like the heavy favorite to win his fourth World Championships. During the snatch portion of the 2019 World Weightlifting Championships he completed a 215 kg lift which secured him a gold medal, his third lift of 220 kg tied his performance at the 2017 World Weightlifting Championships, where he lifted 220 kg in the old 105 kg category, as the heaviest snatch of all time. During the clean & jerk portion he secured gold medals in the total and clean & jerk with his second lift of 255 kg. His third lift of 264 kg in the clean & jerk set a new world record in the clean & jerk and total, his total of 484 kg was the highest total recorded in international competition in history.\nIn 2021, he won the gold medal in the men's +109 kg event at the 2021 World Weightlifting Championships held in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, breaking his own records in the snatch —225 kg—, the clean and jerk —267 kg— and in the total —492 kg.\nIn June 2022, at the European Weightlifting Championships, recovering from an injury in his left leg, he again took first place, becoming a six-time European champion with a score of 217–245–462.\nAt the 2022 World Championships in Bogotá, Colombia, in the category over 109 kg, he won the champion title in the sum of two exercises with a result of 466 kg and also had both small gold medals (in the snatch with a result of 215 kg and the clean and jerk with 251 kg).\nIn Yerevan, at the 2023 European Championships, in the over 109 kg category, Lasha won a gold medal by lifting a total of 474 kg. He also won gold medals in both the snatch and the clean and jerk.\nIn Saudi Arabia, where the 2023 World Weightlifting Championships took place, Lasha again won the world champion title — the seventh in his career with a result of 473 kg in the total. He also won gold medals in the snatch and the clean and jerk.\nIn February 2024, he withdrew from the European Championships in Sofia after an injury in one of his knees.\nIn August 2024, Talakhadze won third Olympic gold medal in weightlifting. He defended his third title in men's +102kg weightlifting at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris. He took the win lifting 215 kg in the Snatch and 255 kg in the Clean & Jerk for a total of 470 kg. He defeated his opponent Armenia's Varazdat Lalayan, who took silver on 467 kg.\n\n\n== Member of Parliament ==\nOn 26 June 2026, Talakhadze was involved in a physical altercation during a brawl that erupted in the Georgian Parliament. The incident occurred during the final plenary sitting of the spring session, which was dedicated to Irakli Kobakhidze's annual government report. Footage published by media outlets clearly identified Talakhadze striking an opponent from behind, along with Archil Gorduladze, chair of the legal issues committee, also physically striking opponents during the confrontation.\n\n\n== Awards and recognition ==\n\n\n=== World records ===\nThroughout his career he has set 26 official senior world records.\n\n\n=== Other awards ===\nIn 2016, due to his world record setting performance at the 2016 Summer Olympics Talakhadze was awarded the President's Order of Excellence by Giorgi Margvelashvili. In 2017 and in 2018, the Georgian National Olympic Committee awarded him the title of Georgia's Sportsperson of the Year. In 2018 he was named the IWF Male Lifter of the Year for 2017. In 2019 he was named IWF Male Lifter of the Year for 2018.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\n\n\n=== 2013 doping ban ===\nIn 2013, Talakhadze was banned from competition for 2 years after testing positive for the performance enhancing drug stanozolol.\n\n\n== Major results ==\n\n\n== Table of world records ==\n\n\n== Notes ==\na  His 220 kg snatch was a world record until 2018 when the IWF restructured the weight classes. He has since surpassed that lift for a current personal best and world record in the +109 kg category of 225 kg set at the 2021 World Championships. His personal bests (on video in training) are 225 kg snatch and a 270 kg clean and jerk.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nLasha Talakhadze at IWF (archived former page)\nLasha Talakhadze at IWRP (archived former page)\nLasha Talakhadze at Lift Up \nLasha Talakhadze at Olympics.com \nLasha Talakhadze at Olympedia \nLasha Talakhadze at InterSportStats \nLasha Talakhadze on Instagram"}
{"title": "Lasse Virén", "requested": "Lasse Virén", "extract": "Lasse Artturi Virén (born 22 July 1949) is a Finnish former long-distance runner, winner of four gold medals at the 1972 and 1976 Summer Olympics. Virén recaptured the image of the \"Flying Finns\" promoted by runners like Hannes Kolehmainen, Paavo Nurmi and Ville Ritola in the 1920s. He was elected Finnish Sportsman of the Year in 1972 and 1976 and later became a politician and a member of Finland's parliament in 1999–2007 and 2010–2011.\n\n\n== Biography ==\n\n\n=== Early career ===\nVirén began his running career in the United States at Brigham Young University, in Provo, Utah. Virén ran on the Varsity Cross-Country team for BYU for one season, before returning home to his native Finland. A police officer from Myrskylä, Virén debuted on the international scene in 1971. His performances at the 1971 European Championships in Helsinki were overshadowed by fellow Finn Juha Väätäinen, who captured gold medals in both the 5,000 and 10,000 metres events with Virén settling for modest seventh and 17th placings, respectively. According to Virén himself and his coach, Rolf Haikkola, Virén could have placed better in the 1971 European Athletics Championships, if he had done the \"emptying exercise\" of his system earlier – according to Haikkola, he followed the Finnish Athletics Federation's leaders' bad advice – and if he hadn't been pushed almost to the point of falling at the start of the last lap in the 5,000 metres final. The \"emptying exercise\" of top runners means that they push their bodies to a total exhaustion or lack of energy so that their bodies can again receive much energy, and so that they can repeat their top race performances. Shortly after those European Championships, he broke Väätäinen's fresh Finnish record at 5,000 metres.\nBuoyed by a brutal training regimen in Thomson's Falls, Kenya, and very impressive results, which included the smashing of the 2-mile world record and wins against Great Britain and Spain in a meet held in Helsinki in the summer of 1972, Lasse Virén entered the Munich Games as a dark horse.\n\n\n=== 1972 Olympics ===\nAt the 1972 Summer Olympics at Munich, Virén won both the 5,000 and the 10,000 metres events. At the 10,000 metres final held on 3 September, Virén broke Ron Clarke's seven-year-old world record despite falling in the twelfth lap after getting tangled with Emiel Puttemans. Mohamed Gammoudi also fell after being tripped by Virén's legs. In less than 150 metres, Virén caught up with the leading pack after having lost about 20 metres. With 600 metres to go, Virén started an unprecedented lap-and-a-half kick to which only Puttemans was able to respond. The Finn won the race in 27:38.35.\nVirén became the fourth athlete to win both events in the same Olympics, joining fellow Finn Hannes Kolehmainen (1912), Czechoslovakia's Emil Zátopek (1952) and Russian Vladimir Kuts (1956).  At subsequent Olympics, Miruts Yifter (1980) and Kenenisa Bekele (2008), both from Ethiopia, and Mo Farah from Great Britain (2012 and 2016) accomplished the coveted \"double\".  However, only Kolehmainen, Virén and Miruts Yifter had to endure 10,000 metres heats to qualify for the 10,000 metres final. In the 5,000-metres final one week later, Virén could keep up with Steve Prefontaine, Gammoudi, Puttemans and Ian Stewart, in the race's quick final four laps. He sprinted past Gammoudi with around 110 to 120 metres to go, and won in 13:26.4, one second before Gammoudi. Four days later, despite the wet, chilly and windy weather in the Helsinki Olympic Stadium, he set a new world record at 5,000 metres by running 13:16.4. Six days later, Puttemans broke the record by 3.4 seconds.\nOne factor in Virén's Olympic victories, especially at the 1972 Olympics 5,000 and 10,000 metres, has received little attention: his careful running of almost all the bends (curves) near the inner edge of the first lane, which spared him tens of metres compared to his chief rivals. More specifically, Steve Prefontaine gave Virén an advantage of more than forty metres over 5,000 m in 1972, while Emiel Puttemans gave about fifty metres over 10,000 m, by running many bends wide on the outer edge of the first lane or sometimes even on the second lane. This metre-saving practice is called \"bend (curve) mathematics\".\n\n\n=== 1976 Olympics ===\nVirén ran at lower levels between the Olympics. At the 1976 Summer Olympics, Virén again won both events, coined later as the \"double double\", and became the first repeat winner of the 5,000 metres race in Olympic history (since joined by Mo Farah). He won the 10,000-metre final comparatively easily, because even Great Britain's Brendan Foster dropped from the steadily accelerating pace of Portugal's Carlos Lopes at 8,000 metres, and because Lopes back then was unable to radically increase his pace in the last lap or so of track races. Virén passed Lopes at around 9,550 metres and defeated him by 4.79 seconds.\nFollowing his 10,000 metres final win at the Montreal games, he took off his Onitsuka Tiger (ASICS) Runspark shoes and waved them to the crowd on his victory lap. The International Olympic Committee accused Virén of malicious intent, such as showing the tiger stripe logo on the shoes, but he claimed that he had a blister. Thus, the IOC suspended Virén from taking place in the 5,000-metres final after qualifying in his heat. An appeal followed and he was allowed to enter the race, two hours before gun time.\nIn the 5,000 metres final, he held off all-time greats Dick Quax, Rod Dixon and Brendan Foster (all world-class at 1,500 m) with a devastating display of front-running over the last few laps. To those who watched him, the display was awesomely inspiring to the point that his last 1,500 metres in that final would have placed him 8th in the 1,500-metres final held at those Games.  The top four runners sprinted to the finish line inside six metres, a rare occurrence in major international championships. He competed in the men's marathon, his first marathon and finished fifth in 2:13:11.\n\n\n=== 1980 Olympics ===\n\nVirén ended his career after the 1980 Summer Olympics, where he placed fifth in the 10,000 metres. Virén qualified for that final, placing fourth and having clocked a disappointing 28:45 in his heat. Only after Ireland's John Treacy collapsed during his heat, due to heat stroke, was Virén given an automatic place in the final. Otherwise, he would have qualified for the final as a fastest loser. He pushed that final's leading pack until the last 300 metres, before succumbing to the spurt of Miruts Yifter, the eventual gold medalist. Some people claimed that Virén could have run better in the 1980 Olympics if he had not done so much marathon-like training. Virén himself believes that if he had not injured his leg shortly before the Olympics, he would have run clearly better. Another account suggests that the main issues arose from the fact that Virén had neglected to bring a masseur to his months long endurance training camps in Colombia and on the Canary Islands during the preparation phase for the Moscow Olympics, resulting in stiffened leg muscles during the following speed training phase of the preparation, which made the speed training inefficient, caused the above-mentioned injuries, and left him with an insufficient top speed. Virén skipped the 5,000-metres race and chose to compete in the Olympic marathon, where he started quite well, running over 20 kilometres in the lead group. Stomach problems, however, caused him to drop out before 30 kilometres. In the autumn of 1980, he announced his retirement from active competitive running.\n\n\n=== Outside the Olympics ===\nAfter a complex leg surgery early in 1974, and between his Olympic double victories, he won a bronze medal in the 5,000 m at the European championships behind the British athlete Brendan Foster with a time of 13:24.57. Two days later, in Helsinki, Virén won a 5,000 m race in 13:26.0, defeating Anders Gärderud (Sweden). Three days after this Helsinki race, Virén again encountered Foster in a 2-mile (3.2-km) race at the Coca-Cola international meet in London at the Crystal Palace. Foster was again victorious, with Virén finishing fourth, only 0.06 seconds behind the second place runner. Virén recorded his fastest 10,000 m for the 1974 season with a winning time of 28:22.6 at a Finland vs. Soviet Union international meet on 21 September.\nVirén had broken the world records for both the 2-mile and the 5,000 m outside the Olympics.  Both were done in close proximity to the 1972 Olympics: his 8:14.0 for two miles was on 14 August 1972 and his 13:16.4 for a 5,000 m race on 14 September 1972.\nVirén's success outside the Olympics in running near his best Olympic-year times was better in 5,000m events than in 10,000m ones. Virén broke 13:36 in the 5000m consistently outside Olympic years and sometimes even broke 13:30. At 10,000m he only broke 28 minutes in the Olympic years.\nIn 1979, Virén competed in New Zealand, running the summer international series there while in the midst of his endurance training for the Moscow Olympics of 1980.\nEstablished in 1977 by the Finnish sculptor Eino Romppanen, the Lasse Virén Finnish Invitational, later the \"Lasse Virén 20K\", was an annual off-road running race in Sycamore Canyon, part of Point Mugu State Park near Malibu, California, held through 2012.\nSince his career ended he has become a well-known figure in Finland, eventually holding a seat in the Finnish Parliament with the National Coalition Party from 1999 until 2007 and from 2010 to 2011. Virén did not seek re-election in 2011.\nIn 2014 Virén was inducted into the International Association of Athletics Federations' Hall of Fame.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nLasse Viren at World Athletics"}
{"title": "Laura Kenny", "requested": "Laura Kenny", "extract": "Dame Laura Rebecca Kenny, Lady Kenny, (née Trott; born 24 April 1992) is an English former professional track and road cyclist who specialised in track endurance events. These included the team pursuit, omnium, scratch race, and madison disciplines. She won six Olympic medals during her career—five golds and one silver. Her five Olympic gold medals are an all-time record for a British female Olympian, and her overall tally of six medals is a joint-record alongside Charlotte Dujardin.\nKenny became a European champion for the first time in 2010, and world champion for the first time in 2011. At the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, she won gold medals in both the team pursuit and the omnium. Kenny won further world titles in 2013, 2014 and 2016 before successfully defending her Olympic titles in both the team pursuit and the omnium at the 2016 Summer Olympics. Kenny became a mother in 2017, but returned in 2018, securing two gold medals in the European Championships later that year. Further European titles followed and she won her fifth Olympic gold (an all-time record for a female cyclist) in the madison at the delayed 2020 games in Tokyo, as well as securing a silver in the team pursuit. Kenny gave birth again in 2023, and she retired from cycling four months before the 2024 Summer Olympics.\nDuring her track cycling career, she won five Olympic, seven World Championship, fourteen European Championship and two Commonwealth Games titles. Kenny predominantly focused on track cycling during her career. Her best result in road racing was victory in the British National Road Race Championships in 2014. In 2016, she married fellow cyclist Jason Kenny, and between them they have won fifteen Olympic medals, including twelve golds, a record for married Olympic gold medallists. She was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2022 New Year Honours and is a member of the British Cycling Hall of Fame.\n\n\n== Early life ==\nKenny was born a month prematurely, and with a collapsed lung in Harlow, Essex. She was later diagnosed with asthma, and was advised by doctors to take up sport in order to help control her breathing. She took part in trampolining but had to give up as she kept passing out while jumping. She grew up in Cheshunt, where she attended Turnford School, and her older sister Emma Trott also became a road racing cyclist. The sisters began cycling when they rode with their mother who had taken up cycling to help lose weight. At around the age of nine, she joined a local cycling club called the Welwyn Wheelers.\n\n\n== Career ==\n\n\n=== 2008–2012 ===\nKenny won the British girls under-16 scratch race title at the 2008 National Junior and Youth Track Championships as well as finishing second in the under-16 sprint. She also secured a sprint bronze in the junior category. The following year, she claimed the junior women's pursuit title at the 2009 British National Track Championships, as well as finishing second in the scratch race. On the road that year, she was victorious in the Essex Giro and thus secured the title of British women's Junior Road Race champion. \nIn 2010 she finished fourth in the 2010 World Junior Road Race Championships and then competed at the World Junior Track Championships, where she won gold in the omnium and silver medals in the individual pursuit and points race. At national-level, Kenny won the individual pursuit, points race and the 500 m time trial at the 2010 British National Junior Track Championships. She was then selected to compete for England at senior-level in the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi, where she finished seventh in the individual pursuit. She was then selected for the British Olympic Academy Programme. At the 2010 European Championships in Pruszków, she won her first senior-level gold medal. Racing with teammates Katie Colclough and Wendy Houvenaghel, the trio finished first in the team pursuit, overcoming Lithuania in the final.\nKenny won her first world title at the 2011 World Track Cycling Championships in Apeldoorn, as part of the team pursuit line-up with Dani Rowe and Houvenaghel. Great Britain secured victory over the United States in the gold medal race. She then secured three gold medals at the under-23 European Track Championships in Anadia, triumphing in the scratch race, individual pursuit and team pursuit. In October, returning to senior competition at the European Track Championships, she finished in first place in both the team pursuit and the omnium. Later in the year, at the 2011–12 Track Cycling World Cup event in Cali, Kenny finished  with a gold medal in the team pursuit and a bronze medal in the omnium.\nFor the 2012 road season, Kenny joined Team Ibis Cycles, with whom she competed in five races, but recorded no podium finishes. Back on the track, she enjoyed success in the run up to the 2012 Summer Olympics, winning two world titles at the World Track Cycling Championships in Melbourne. In the team pursuit, Great Britain (Kenny, Joanna Rowsell and Rowe) twice broke the world record, setting a fastest time of 3:15.720 in the final. She followed this up with victory in the omnium.\nAt the Summer Olympics in London, Kenny won a gold medal in the team pursuit with Rowe and Rowsell. In their victory against the United States in the gold-medal race, Great Britain set a new world and Olympic record time of 3:14.051 for the event. Including pre-Olympics races and the Olympics final itself, in the six times they had ridden together the trio had broken the world record in every race. She also won gold in the omnium, two days after winning gold in the team pursuit.\n\n\n=== 2013–2016 ===\nKenny joined the Wiggle Honda team in 2013 and in her first start for the team, she finished fourth at the GP Dottignies in Belgium. She also recorded a second-place finish at the British National Road Race Championships, which secured her the British under-23 title.\nIn 2013, Kenny won a world title in the team pursuit at the Track Cycling World Championships in Minsk, as well as finishing in second place in the omnium. In July, she was crowned the champion in both the individual pursuit and the points race at the 2013 Junior/U23 European Track Championships, beating her British teammate Elinor Barker to gold in both disciplines. In September, Kenny won four national titles, triumphing in the team pursuit, pursuit, points race and the madison. She then won gold medals in both the team pursuit and the omnium at the European Track Championships in Apeldoorn. Great Britain, featuring Kenny, King, Rowsell and Barker also set a new world record time of 4:26.556 during their victory in the team pursuit. In the 2013–14 Track Cycling World Cup, Kenny was part of the same British quartet who again broke the team pursuit world record, this time in Manchester, setting a time of 4:19.604. She also went on to claim the omnium title in Manchester, before claiming silver in the omnium at the next leg of the series in Aguascalientes.\nKenny won gold in the team pursuit at the 2014 Track Cycling World Championships, and she later collected a silver in the omnium. She then competed for England at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. At the start of the competition, she was still suffering from a kidney infection and she finished out of the medal places in both the scratch race and the individual pursuit. Kenny recovered as the Games progressed, and she claimed a gold medal after triumphing in the points race. She was victorious at the national road championships, finishing ahead of King and Lizzie Armitstead, and she stated afterwards that her win was \"up there with winning a world championships.\" Returning to the track, Kenny won gold in both the team pursuit and the omnium at the European Track Championships in Guadeloupe. In the 2014–15 Track Cycling World Cup, Kenny was part of the British quartet that triumphed in the team pursuit at the events in Guadalajara and London. Additionally, she claimed gold in the omnium in London.\nIn February 2015, Kenny failed to win a title at the World Championships for the first time in her career, finishing second in both the team pursuit and the omnium. The result was part of a disappointing Championships for Great Britain, with the team finishing without a gold for the first time since 2001. She signed as a lead rider for the Matrix Fitness Vulpine team for her road racing that year, moving to the team in order to better combine her road and track cycling aspirations. After a road season in which her best result was third in the National Championships, Kenny returned to track cycling and won three gold medals at the European Track Championships, in the team pursuit, scratch race and the omnium. Kenny also claimed gold in the omnium at the 2015–16 Track Cycling World Cup event in Cali, winning the event by fifty-three points.\nAt the beginning of 2016, Kenny won gold in the omnium and a silver in the scratch race at the Track Cycling World Cup event in Hong Kong. She followed this with gold medals in the scratch race and the omnium at the 2016 World Championships in London, as well as a bronze in the team pursuit.\n\nAt the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Kenny competed for medals in both the team pursuit and the omnium. In the team pursuit, Great Britain, featuring Kenny, Barker, Rowsell and Katie Archibald took gold, defeating the American world champions in the final with a world record time of 4:10.236. This made Kenny the first British woman to win three golds, though this achievement was matched by Charlotte Dujardin the next day. In the Omnium, Kenny finished in the top two in five of the six events, to secure her second gold medal of the games and again become Britain's leading female Olympian in terms of gold medals won.  Following the end of the track cycling competition at the games, she and her fiancé Jason Kenny were described in the British press as the 'golden couple', having won five gold medals between them at the 2016 games. At the end of the year, she was a nominee for the 2016 BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award, and she was also awarded Sunday Times Sportswoman of the Year.\n\n\n=== 2017–2024 ===\nAfter giving birth in August 2017, Kenny returned to training in January 2018. In March she was part of the team pursuit line-up that finished in silver position at the World Track Cycling Championships in Apeldoorn. The following August, at the European Track Championships in Glasgow, Kenny won gold medals in both the team pursuit and the elimination race. She then won six gold medals later in the year in the 2018‍–‍19 Track Cycling World Cup series. In Milton, she triumphed in both the team pursuit and omnium, before winning the team pursuit and madison (with Emily Nelson) in Berlin. Kenny took part in the madison as a replacement after Archibald had crashed in an earlier event. Kenny then added two further golds in London, one as part of the team pursuit, and another in the madison alongside Archibald.\nKenny won a bronze medal in the team pursuit at the 2019 Track Cycling World Championships in Pruszków. She was scheduled to compete in the omnium later on, but was forced to withdraw due to an illness. At the European Track Championships, she claimed her 13th career European gold medal with victory in the team pursuit, as well as securing silver medals in both the omnium and the madison. In November, Kenny took part in the Track Cycling World Cup meeting in Minsk. She finished runner-up in the madison (with Nelson) and she also finished third in the omnium.\nIn January 2020, Kenny broke her shoulder during a crash in the omnium at the Track Cycling World Cup event in Milton. Earlier in the event, she and Neah Evans won gold in the madison. She decided not to have surgery in order to compete at the following month's World Track Cycling Championships. A surgeon had told her that surgery would probably prevent her from competing in the scheduled Olympics that summer. At the World Championships in Berlin, she won a silver medal as a member of the British squad that finished second in the team pursuit. Kenny competed in a heat but didn't take part in the final. She then finished twelfth in the omnium. The Olympics were then postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In November, Kenny won three medals at the European Track Championships in Plovdiv. She claimed a gold medal in the team pursuit, a silver in the omnium and a bronze in the madison (with Barker).\nAt the delayed 2020 Tokyo Olympics, Kenny won a silver medal in the team pursuit. Great Britain had briefly held the world record (4:06.748) after their ride in the first round, before Germany set a faster time in their heat. Germany broke the world record again in the final, finishing six seconds ahead of the British team, featuring Kenny, Archibald, Evans and Josie Knight. Kenny and Archibald then became the first ever Olympic champions in the women's madison, winning 10 of the race's 12 sprints and gaining a lap on the field to secure a total of 78 points, more than twice the score of the second-placed Danish team. After their success, Kenny said: \"I have never wanted to win a race so badly in my life.\"\nVictory made Kenny the first British woman to win gold medals at three consecutive Olympics, the female cyclist with the most gold medals in Olympic history (ahead of Leontien van Moorsel), and tied with Dujardin for the most Olympic medals won by a British woman (with six). She also became the first British woman to win five Olympic gold medals during her career. Kenny then competed in the omnium, chasing a third medal of the games, but her hopes suffered a setback in the opening scratch race when she was involved in a multi-rider crash on the penultimate lap. She went on to win the tempo race but could only finish 13th in the elimination race, finishing sixth in the overall standings. Kenny was chosen to be the flag bearer for Great Britain at the closing ceremony.\nIn April 2022, Kenny teamed up with Evans to win the British National Madison Championships. Later that month, she was part of the British team that finished second in the team pursuit at the Track Nations Cup in Glasgow. At the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, she secured her first gold medal in the competition since 2014 with success in the scratch race. It was her second medal of the games, after also winning a bronze medal in the team pursuit. She also finished 13th in the points race and said that prior to her gold medal earlier in the Games she had told her husband that it might be her final race. The year had seen her suffer personal loss in her private life with Kenny stating that she had \"lost her spark\" and motivation to train.\nIn July 2023, Kenny became a mother for the second time and indicated in November that it was still her ambition to compete at the 2024 Summer Olympics. However, in early March 2024, she had not returned to training, and the performance director of British Cycling, Stephen Park, cast doubt on her participation. On 18 March 2024 (four months before the Olympics), she announced her retirement from cycling. She ended her career with five Olympic gold medals and one silver, her five gold medals being an all-time record for a female British Olympian.\n\n\n== Post-retirement ==\nKenny joined the BBC's coverage of the 2024 Summer Olympics. Later in the year, she was the ambassador for the Unsung Hero Award at the BBC Sports Personality of the year Awards.\nKenny was named Commonwealth Games England president in March 2025, becoming the youngest person to hold the role.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nShe married fellow track cyclist Jason Kenny on 24 September 2016 at a private ceremony in Macclesfield. Fellow Olympic gold medallist and teammate Dani Rowe (née King) was one of the bridesmaids. In 2016, the couple lived near Knutsford in Cheshire, and their first son was born in August 2017. In November 2021, she suffered a miscarriage at nine weeks, and in January 2022, she underwent surgery due to an ectopic pregnancy. Their second son was born in July 2023. In December 2024, another pregnancy was announced, and she gave birth to a daughter in May 2025. As a married couple, they share a record 15 Olympic medals, where both spouses are Olympic gold medalists. She is a supporter of Premier League football club Tottenham Hotspur, and ran the London Marathon in April 2026.\n\n\n== Honours and awards ==\nKenny was appointed an OBE in the 2013 New Year Honours, and was later made a CBE in the 2017 New Year Honours, for services to cycling. Both she, and her husband received their CBE insignia on 25 April 2017 at an investiture in Buckingham Palace. She was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2022 New Year Honours, again for services to cycling. Her husband was knighted in the same list, also for services to cycling. They were both invested at Windsor Castle on 17 May 2022.\nThe Royal Mail promised to paint a postbox gold in the hometown of every British gold medallist at the 2012 Summer Olympics, but they wrongly painted a postbox in Harlow, where she was born, instead of Cheshunt which she considers her home town. A second postbox was then painted gold to rectify the mistake. Kenny also featured on a commemorative stamp released by the Royal Mail in 2012, which featured her with her Olympic team pursuit winning teammates.\nIn 2012, she was given the freedom of the borough of Broxbourne, and in 2013, she was awarded an Honorary Degree from the University of Essex. In 2014, the Grundy Park Leisure Centre in Cheshunt was renamed The Laura Trott Leisure Centre in recognition of her achievements.\nIn 2024, Kenny was inducted into the British Cycling Hall of Fame. In 2025, she was named UK Sportswoman of the 21st Century in a poll held by BBC 5 Live Breakfast.\n\n\n== Career achievements ==\n\n\n=== Major results ===\nSources:\n\n\n==== Track ====\n2008\nBritish National Junior and Youth Track Championships\n1st Under-16 Girls Scratch\n2nd Under-16 Girls Sprint\n3rd Junior Sprint\n2009\nBritish National Junior and Youth Track Championships\n1st  Junior Individual pursuit\n2nd Junior Points race\n2nd Junior 500 m time trial\n2nd Junior Scratch\nBritish National Track Championships\n3rd Madison (with Hannah Mayho)\n2010\n1st  Team pursuit, UEC European Track Championships\nBritish National Junior and Youth Track Championships\n1st  Junior Individual pursuit\n1st  Junior 500 m time trial\n1st  Junior Points race\n1st  British National Derny Championships\nBritish National Track Championships\n3rd Madison (with Harriet Owen)\n3rd Individual pursuit\n2011\n1st  Team pursuit, UCI Track World Championships\nUEC European Track Championships\n1st  Team pursuit\n1st  Omnium\nUEC European Under-23 Track Championships\n1st  Individual pursuit\n1st  Scratch\n1st  Team pursuit\n2011–12 UCI Track Cycling World Cup, Cali\n1st  Team pursuit\n3rd  Omnium\nBritish National Track Championships\n2nd Individual pursuit\n2nd Points race\n2nd Scratch\n3rd 500 m time trial\n2012\nOlympic Games\n1st  Team pursuit\n1st  Omnium\nUCI Track World Championships\n1st  Team pursuit\n1st  Omnium\nUEC European Track Championships\n1st  Team Pursuit\n1st  Omnium\n2011–12 UCI Track Cycling World Cup, London\n1st  Team pursuit\n3rd  Omnium\n2012–13 UCI Track Cycling World Cup, Glasgow\n1st  Omnium\n1st  Team pursuit\n2013\nUCI Track World Championships\n1st  Team pursuit\n2nd  Omnium\nUEC European Track Championships\n1st  Team pursuit\n1st  Omnium\nUEC European Under-23 Track Championships\n1st  Individual pursuit\n1st  Points race\nBritish National Track Championships\n1st  Team pursuit\n1st  Points race\n1st  Individual pursuit\n1st  Madison (with Dani King)\n2013–14 UCI Track Cycling World Cup\n1st  Team pursuit, Manchester\n1st  Omnium, Manchester\n2nd  Omnium, Aguascalientes\n2014\nUCI Track World Championships\n1st  Team pursuit\n2nd  Omnium\nUEC European Track Championships\n1st  Team pursuit\n1st  Omnium\n1st  Points race, Commonwealth Games\nBritish National Track Championships\n1st  Team pursuit\n1st  Scratch\n2nd Individual pursuit\n3rd Points race\n2014–15 UCI Track Cycling World Cup\n1st  Team pursuit, Guadalajara\n1st  Team pursuit, London\n1st  Omnium, London\n2015\n1st  Omnium, 2015–16 UCI Track Cycling World Cup, Cali\nUEC European Track Championships\n1st  Team pursuit\n1st  Scratch\n1st  Omnium\nBritish National Track Championships\n1st  Individual pursuit\n1st  Scratch\n1st  Points race\nGrand Prix of Poland\n1st Omnium\n1st Scratch\nUCI Track World Championships\n2nd  Team pursuit\n2nd  Omnium\n2016\nOlympic Games\n1st  Team pursuit\n1st  Omnium\nUCI Track World Championships\n1st  Omnium\n1st  Scratch\n3rd  Team pursuit\n2015–16 UCI Track Cycling World Cup, Hong Kong\n1st  Omnium\n2nd  Scratch\n1st  British National Madison Championships (with Elinor Barker)\n2018\n2nd Team pursuit, UCI World Championships\nUEC European Track Championships\n1st  Team pursuit\n1st  Elimination race\n2018–19 UCI Track Cycling World Cup\n1st  Omnium, Milton\n1st  Team pursuit, Milton\n1st  Madison, Berlin (with Emily Nelson)\n1st  Team pursuit, Berlin\n1st  Madison, London (with Katie Archibald)\n1st  Team pursuit, London\nBritish National Track Championships\n1st  Omnium\n2nd Madison (with Ellie Dickinson)\n2019\n2nd Team pursuit, UCI World Championships\n2019–20 UCI Track Cycling World Cup, Minsk\n2nd  Madison (with Emily Nelson)\n3rd  Omnium\nUEC European Track Championships\n1st  Team pursuit\n2nd Omnium\n2nd Madison (with Katie Archibald)\n2020\n2nd Team pursuit, UCI World Championships\n1st  Madison, 2019–20 UCI Track Cycling World Cup, Milton (with Neah Evans)\nUEC European Track Championships\n1st  Team pursuit\n2nd Omnium\n3rd Madison (with Elinor Barker)\n2021\nOlympic Games\n1st  Madison (with Katie Archibald)\n2nd  Team pursuit\n2022\n1st  Madison, British National Track Championships (with Neah Evans)\n2nd  Team pursuit, UCI Track Cycling Nations Cup, Glasgow\nCommonwealth Games\n1st  Scratch\n3rd  Team pursuit\n\n\n==== Road ====\n\n\n== See also ==\n\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of Olympic medalists in cycling (women)\n2012 Olympics gold post boxes in the United Kingdom\nList of British cyclists\nJason Kenny\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nOfficial website \nLaura Kenny at UCI \nLaura Kenny at British Cycling (archive)\nLaura Kenny at Team GB \nLaura Trott at Team Ibis Cycles (archived)\nLaura Trott at ProCyclingStats \nLaura Trott-Kenny at Olympedia \nLaura Trott-Kenny at Olympics.com"}
{"title": "Lenny Krayzelburg", "requested": "Lenny Krayzelburg", "extract": "Lenny Krayzelburg (born Leonid Olehovych Krayzelburg, September 28, 1975) is an American former backstroke swimmer, Olympic gold medalist, and former world record holder. He swam in the 2000 and 2004 Olympics, winning a total of four Olympic gold medals.\n\n\n== Early years ==\nKrayzelburg is Jewish, and was born to Jewish parents in Odesa, Ukrainian SSR (now Ukraine). Krayzelburg and his family left the Soviet Union in 1989 for the United States. They settled in Los Angeles.\nAfter their immigration, Krayzelburg's family suffered from financial difficulties. He had to commute by bus and on foot 45 minutes each way to swimming practice, and did not get home before 9:30 in the evening. In addition, Lenny had to cope with language problems, and learn English rapidly in order to understand his coaches' instructions. Thankfully he was aided by the extensive Russian community in Los Angeles, and managed to adapt quickly.\n\n\n== College ==\nLenny first attended Fairfax High School, and then attended Santa Monica College where he won both the 100 and 200-yard (180 m) backstroke junior college titles.  His coach at Santa Monica recognized his talent and recommended him to Mark Schubert at the University of Southern California.  In 1995, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States.  Three years later, he became the first swimmer since 1986 to sweep the backstroke events, 100 m & 200 m, in the World Championships.\nIn 1999, Krayzelburg broke the 50, 100 and the 200 m world records respectively, setting the clock on 24.99, 53.60 and 1:55.87. He was then recognized as the top backstroke swimmer in the world and one of the best in the history of this swimming style.\nHe continued to dominate at the 2000 Summer Olympics backstroke, shattering the Olympic record and nearing his own 1999 world record with 53.72 in the 100, while making another Olympic record in the 200 with a 1:56.76. He also played an important role in helping the American team win a gold medal in the 4 × 100 m relay with a new world record of 3:33.73.\n\n\n== Maccabiah Games ==\nAfter the Olympics Krayzelburg decided to skip the 2001 World Championships that took place in Fukuoka, Japan, in order to focus on the 2001 Maccabiah Games in Israel. Being Jewish, Krayzelburg wanted to take advantage of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to compete with other top Jewish athletes. In addition, he wanted to fulfill a childhood dream by visiting the holy land, and lifting the American delegate flag during the games' opening ceremony. He was selected to carry the flag for the United States at the opening ceremonies. He earned gold and set a new Maccabiah record in the 100-meter backstroke, and won a second gold medal in the 4×100-meter medley relay.\nAt the 2017 Maccabiah Games, in the special 4×50m relay race between Israeli and American all-star teams, American Olympic champions Krayzelburg, Jason Lezak (four Olympic golds), and Anthony Ervin (three Olympic golds), with masters swimmer Alex Blavatnik, swam a time of 1:48.23 and defeated Israeli Olympians Guy Barnea, Yoav Bruck, Eran Groumi, and Tal Stricker, who had a time of 1:51.25.\n\n\n== Difficulties, perseverance ==\nAfter the Maccabiah games, he underwent surgery on his left shoulder, following a fall while running on a treadmill, which required him to take a year off of training.\nIn September 2003, Krazelburg split from his coach Mark Schubert, to start training under Dave Salo, who also coached Aaron Peirsol. Peirsol was considered by many to be Krayzelburg's successor. Working with Salo, Krayzelburg changed the style of his stroke to account for his shoulder injuries.\n\n\n== International Swimming League involvement ==\nFollowing his retirement from elite competition, Krayzelburg entered team management in the professional swimming arena. In 2020 he served as General Manager of the LA Current, a franchise of the International Swimming League.\nIn March 2021 the ISL announced that Krayzelburg would be among returning General Managers for its Season 3 line-up.\nKrayzelburg has spoken publicly on the ISL’s model of team-based competition and athlete development, emphasising the benefits of a professional league format for swimmers beyond traditional international meets.\n\n\n== See also ==\n\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists at a single Games\nList of Olympic medalists in swimming (men)\nList of select Jewish swimmers\nList of University of Southern California people\nList of World Aquatics Championships medalists in swimming (men)\nWorld record progression 50 metres backstroke\nWorld record progression 100 metres backstroke\nWorld record progression 200 metres backstroke\nWorld record progression 4 × 100 metres medley relay\n\n\n== Notes ==\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nLenny Krayzelburg  at World Aquatics \nLenny Krayzelburg at the U.S. Olympic Team at the Wayback Machine (archived 2008-05-12)\nLenny Krayzelburg at Olympics.com\nLenny Krayzelburg at Olympedia \nLenny Krayzelburg (USA) – Honor Swimmer profile at International Swimming Hall of Fame at the Wayback Machine (archived 2012-03-13)\nLenny Krayzelburg Swim Camp – Official webpage of Krayzelberg's swim camp at the Wayback Machine (archived 2010-04-29)\nLenny Krayzelburg Swim School – Official webpage of Krayzelberg's swimming school - SwimRight Academy Los Angeles\nLenny Krayzelburg Swim School Miami – Official webpage of Krayzelberg's swimming school - SwimRight Academy Miami"}
{"title": "Leon Štukelj", "requested": "Leon Štukelj", "extract": "Leon Štukelj (; 12 November 1898 – 8 November 1999) was a Slovene professional gymnast. He was an Olympic gold medalist and athlete who represented Yugoslavia at the Olympics.\nHe is a noted figure in Slovenian sporting history. Štukelj is one of the first Slovene athletes to have risen to the very top of his sport, where he remained right from the World Championships in Ljubljana in 1922 all the way to the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, at which point he finished his competitive gymnastics career.\nŠtukelj competed at seven major international competitions and won a total of twenty medals: eight gold, six silver, and six bronze. At the Olympic Games alone he won six medals: two gold medals (counted for Yugoslavia) in Paris in 1924, one gold medal and two bronze in Amsterdam in 1928 and a silver medal in Berlin in 1936.\n\n\n== Biography ==\nŠtukelj was born in Kandija (part of Novo Mesto since 1923), Austria-Hungary (now in Slovenia). His baptismal record bears the name Leopold, crossed out and replaced with Leo. A 1999 addendum to the volume corrects the name Leo to Leon; his name appears as both Leo Štukelj and Leon Štukelj in newspapers of the 1920s and 1930s.\nIn 1927, Štukelj graduated with a degree in law. Since his youth, he was an active member of the Slovenian Sokol athletic movement. After finishing his sports career, he became a judge, first in his hometown of Novo Mesto. Later, he moved to Lenart, and then to Maribor, where he lived until his death. After World War II, Štukelj was not a supporter of the newly formed Communist regime of Yugoslavia. He took part in the Yugoslav royalist (Chetnik) movement, hostile to Tito's partisans, and maintained contacts with the British Special Operations Executive. For these reasons, he was suspicious to the new Communist regime. After the war, he was first imprisoned, then released; but permanently barred from being a judge. He worked as a legal assistant for the rest of his career.\nŠtukelj was presented at the opening ceremony of the Games of the XXVI Olympiad in Atlanta in 1996 as the oldest living Olympic gold medalist at the time, where he shook hands with the current President of the United States at the time, Bill Clinton. He also presented the medals to winners in the men's team competition.\nŠtukelj died aged 100, in 1999.\nA sports hall in Novo Mesto, mainly used by a local basketball team, was named after Štukelj, in addition to the University Sports Hall situated on the campus of the University of Maribor.\n\n\n== Hall of Fame ==\n(1997) – was inducted into the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame\n(2011) – was inducted into the Slovenian Athletes Hall of Fame\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nLeon Štukelj at World Gymnastics \nLeon Štukelj at the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame \nLeon Štukelj at Olympics.com \nLeon Štukelj at Olympedia \nLeon Štukelj, Ave Triumphator at the Wayback Machine (archived 4 December 2003)\nLeon Štukelj, the 100-year-old Olympic legend at the Wayback Machine (archived 1 December 2007)\nLeon Štukelj at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics on YouTube"}
{"title": "Leontien van Moorsel", "requested": "Leontien van Moorsel", "extract": "Leontien Martha Henrica Petronella Zijlaard-van Moorsel (born 22 March 1970) is a Dutch retired racing cyclist. She was a dominant cyclist in the 1990s and early 2000s, winning four gold medals at the Olympic Games and holding the hour record for women from 2003 until 2015.\n\n\n== Career ==\n\nAt the age of eight, she competed in her first cycling race. She made her Tour Féminin debut in 1989 at the age of 19, finishing 31st overall. She went on to win the Tour Féminin twice in the first half of the 1990s, establishing a notable rivalry with Jeannie Longo.\nVan Moorsel dropped out of cycling in 1994 with anorexia nervosa but recovered to compete at the World Championships in 1998, winning the time trial and coming second in the road race.\nAt the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, van Moorsel won gold medals on the road (road race and time trial), and on the track (3 km pursuit). She became the first female Olympian in history to win gold medals in two separate disciplines at the same Olympic games.\nAt the 2004 Summer Olympics, she fell in the penultimate lap of the road race and was stretchered off and taken to the hospital by ambulance, but nevertheless successfully defended her time trial title two days later.\nShe set a new world hour record for women of 46.065 km, in 2003 in Mexico City, which was not improved upon for almost 12 years, when UCI rule changes prompted a new succession of attempts.\nVan Moorsel retired from professional cycling after the 2004 Olympics.\nIn 2017 Van Moorsel became director of the Women's Amstel Gold Race.\nIn September 2017, Van Moorsel was accused by sports physician Peter Janssen of using EPO in 2000 and 2001.\n\n\n== Major results ==\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nVan Moorsel married former track cyclist Michael Zijlaard in October 1995. They have a daughter, born in 2007.\n\n\n== See also ==\n\nList of Dutch Olympic cyclists\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists at a single Games\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nOfficial website at the Wayback Machine (archived 19 December 2005) (in Dutch)\nLeontien Zijlaard-van Moorsel at Cycling Archives (archive)\nLeontien Zijlaard-van Moorsel at Olympedia\nLeontien Zijlaard-van Moorsel at Olympics.comLeontien van Moorsel at Olympic.org (archived)\nLeontien van Moorsel at NOC*NSF (in Dutch) (English translation)\nLeontien van Moorsel at IMDb"}
{"title": "Li Ning", "requested": "Li Ning", "extract": "Li Ning (Chinese: 李宁; Zhuang: Lij Ningz; born March 10, 1963, in Liuzhou, Guangxi) is a Chinese billionaire entrepreneur, the founder of the eponymous sportswear company Li-Ning, and a retired Olympic gold medal-winning gymnast of Zhuang ethnicity. He lives in Hong Kong.\n\n\n== Gymnastics career ==\nLi started training when he was eight and was selected for the national team in 1980. In 1982, he won six of the seven medals awarded at the Sixth World Cup Gymnastic Competition, earning him the title \"Prince of Gymnastics\" (simplified Chinese: 体操王子; traditional Chinese: 體操王子).\nLi is most famous for winning six medals at the 1984 Summer Olympics, the first Olympics in which the People's Republic of China participated. He won three gold medals (in floor exercise, pommel horse, and rings), two silver medals, and one bronze medal. Li became the most decorated Chinese athlete at the first Olympics that China participated in after the founding of the People's Republic in October 1949.\nLi won 11 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships medals, including gold medals in the rings (1985) and team all-around (1983).\nLi took part in his second Olympics at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, despite carrying injuries. It ended an illustrious gymnastic career, as he was off-form.\n\n\n== Post-gymnastics career ==\n\nLi retired from sporting competition in 1988, and in 1990 he founded Li-Ning Company Limited, which sells footwear and sporting apparel in China. Li remains chairman of the company's board of directors. According to Hurun Report's China Rich List 2014, he has an estimated fortune of RMB 5 billion, making him the 407th wealthiest person in China.\n\n\n== Awards and honors ==\nLi was inducted into the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame in 2000, becoming the first Chinese inductee.\nIn 2017, a statue was erected in his honor on the shores of Lake Geneva in Montreux.\nAt the 2008 Summer Olympics, Li ignited the cauldron at the opening ceremony after being hoisted high into the air with cables and miming running around the stadium's rim.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nLi is married to Chen Yongyan, a fellow gymnast who won an Olympic bronze in 1984.\n\n\n== Filmography ==\nTo Cross the Dadu River (1980)\nUprising of Nam Cheong City (1981) as Wang Jing-Wei\nLiberation of Nanjing (1982)\nSuspended Sentence (1985)\nThe Thief Master (1988)\nFire on the Great Wall (1990) as Big Brother\nWonder Seven (1994) as Yip Fei\nIn the Blue (2006)\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic medalists at a single Games\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nLi Ning at World Gymnastics\nLi Ning at the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame\nLi Ning at Olympics.com\nLi Ning at the Chinese Olympic Committee (archived)\nLi Ning at Olympedia\nLi Ning at InterSportStats"}
{"title": "Li Xiaopeng (gymnast)", "requested": "Li Xiaopeng (gymnast)", "extract": "Li Xiaopeng (Chinese: 李小鹏; pinyin: Lǐ Xiǎopéng; July 27, 1981) is a Chinese gymnast who specializes in parallel bars and vault. He currently holds 16 world titles, more than any other gymnast in China. On August 29, 2009, he was the torchbearer for the torch relay of the East Asian Games in Hong Kong. He retired from the sport in late 2009.\n\n\n== Early life and education ==\nLi Xiaopeng was born Li Peng. He changed his name in 1997 to avoid sharing the same with the then Premier Li Peng.\nHe began gymnastics training at Changsha Spare-time Sports School in Hunan Province at the age of 6 and was a member of the Hunan provincial team at 12. Li's diligence and skill soon set him apart from his peers, which could be proved by his several provincial titles. At the age of 15, he was selected into the national team.\n\n\n== Gymnastics career ==\nAt 16, Li Xiaopeng became China's youngest world (team) gymnastics champion ever when he and his teammates won the men's team final at the 1997 Lausanne World Championships. At the same event, Li also received a silver medal for parallel bars, just second to his teammate Zhang Jingjin, and a bronze for floor exercise.\nAt the 1999 Tianjin World Championships, Li was part of the Chinese team to become men's team champion. Individually, he won his first gold medal in vault. However, his failure in parallel bars left something to be desired, which pushed him to train harder for the 2000 Summer Olympics. At the Sydney Olympics, Li and his teammates gave an outstanding performance, earning them the gold medal at the prestigious men's team event, a first for Chinese gymnasts. Li also won an individual gold medal in parallel bars.\nAt the 2003 Anaheim World Championships, Li was the only person to win three gold medals, namely for the men's team final, vault, and parallel bars. Thus, he was voted as the 2003 World Gymnast of the Year.\nHowever, due to a severe foot injury, Li's performance at the 2004 Athens Olympic Games was unsatisfactory. China finished 5th at the men's team final, and Li could only get a bronze in parallel bars, after being undefeated in major competitions since 2000. He was the fourth athlete to compete in the vault event finals, but unfortunately, he shuffled during the initial sprint and fell on the first jump.\nLi had been suffering from a chronic ankle injury and had an operation in 2005. He rested for that whole year, refraining from participating in any competitions.\nIn 2006, he made a successful comeback by winning gold in parallel bars at the São Paulo World Cup Series Final. By then, he had tied with his idol, China's gymnastic legend Li Ning, by winning a record of 14 world titles.\nIn 2008, after suffering from a toe injury, he came back and won titles for parallel bars at the two gymnastics World Cups, Cottbus and Tianjin.\nAfter winning two gold medals for men's team and parallel bars at the Beijing Olympics, he surpassed Li Ning by holding 16 world titles, more than any other gymnast in China. He retired in late 2009.\n\n\n== Post-gymnastics career ==\nLi Xiaopeng and his daughter have been regular cast members on the show Dad is Back (a version of Korean reality-variety show The Return of Superman) on which fathers have to take care of their children without the help of anyone (including their wives) for 48 hours. After the first season aired, his daughter gained a lot of love from the public and fans. He also appeared on other television shows such as the first season of The Amazing Race China and the 2016 Race the World (非凡搭檔), which he had to quit before the finale due to the expected birth of his second child.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nHe first met his wife, Li \"Angel\" Anqi, at the 2003 World Championship in Anaheim, California. Her father, Li Xiaoping, served as a host and interpreter for the Chinese team. They became engaged in 2008, and married in Los Angeles on June 5, 2010. The couple held a second marriage ceremony in Beijing on July 11, 2010. On January 12, 2012, they had their first child, Olivia (Li Xinqi). His second child, a son named Max, was born in June 2016.\n\n\n== Eponymous skills ==\nLi has two named elements in the code of points. A vault, first performed in 2001, was given a 5.4 difficulty. A parallel bars skill, first added to the code of points in 2003, was named for Li in 2013. The parallel bars skill was originally given an SE difficulty, but was moved to an F difficulty in 2006 and most recently was moved to a G difficulty in 2025.\n\n\n== Competitive highlights ==\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nLi Xiaopeng at World Gymnastics\nLi Xiaopeng at the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame\nLi Xiaopeng at Olympics.com\nLi Xiaopeng at the Chinese Olympic Committee (archived)\nLi Xiaopeng at Olympedia\nLi Xiaopeng at InterSportStats"}
{"title": "Libby Trickett", "requested": "Libby Trickett", "extract": "Lisbeth Constance Trickett,  (née Lenton; born 28 January 1985) is an Australian retired competitive swimmer. She was a gold medallist at the 2004, 2008, and the 2012 Summer Olympics. She was the world record holder in the short-course (25m) 100-metre freestyle.\n\n\n== Early life ==\nTrickett was born in Townsville, Australia as the youngest of four children. She joined her first team at the age of 4. In 1995, her family relocated to Brisbane, and she started swimming under John Carew, who was then the coach of Kieren Perkins. In 2002, Trickett changed coaches again, moving to Stephan Widmar.\n\n\n== Career ==\n\n\n=== 2003 ===\nIn April 2003, Trickett competed at the Duel in the Pool in Indianapolis. She swam the second leg of the 4 × 100 m freestyle relay and split 54.07. Australia finished second in a time of 3:39.13, breaking the national record of 3:39.78 from 2002. Trickett swam the freestyle leg of the 4 × 100 m medley relay, splitting 54.56 to help Australia finish second in a time of 4:05.25; the team was later promoted to first place after the US were disqualified. Trickett then won the 100 m freestyle in a time of 54.71. She touched first in the 50 m freestyle in an Australian record time of 24.92, but was disqualified for a false start. Australia protested on the grounds that the video replay showed no movement before the starting signal, but the decision was upheld, as FINA's rules did not allow for video replay to be used as evidence. However, the official who made the ruling personally agreed with the protest, and subsequently petitioned Swimming Australia to ratify Trickett's time as a national record.\nIn July 2003, Trickett competed at the World Championships in Barcelona. She swam the first leg of the 4 × 100 m freestyle relay, recording a personal best time of 54.64. Australia won the bronze medal in a time of 3:38.83. She then won the bronze medal in the 50 m freestyle in a time of 25.08.\n\n\n=== 2004 ===\nTrickett competed at the 2004 Australian Championships in Sydney. In the 100 m freestyle, she swam 53.66 in the semifinals to break the world record of 53.77 set by the Netherlands' Inge de Bruijn in 2000. The following day, Trickett finished second behind Jodie Henry in a time of 54.17, qualifying for the 2004 Olympics in Athens. In the 50 m freestyle, Trickett's Australian record was broken by Michelle Engelsman, who went 24.83 in the heats. The following day, Trickett won the final and reclaimed the record in a time of 24.70.\nAt the 2004 Olympics, Trickett swam in the 4 × 100 m freestyle relay. In the heats, Australia set a new national record of 3:38.26 and qualified fastest for the final. In the final, Trickett split 53.57 on the second leg. Australia won the gold medal in a world record time of 3:35.94, lowering the mark set by Germany in 2002 by 0.06 seconds. Despite going into the Olympics as world record holder in the event, Trickett missed the final of the 100 m freestyle, recording a time of 55.17 to finish ninth. Additionally, her world record was broken by Henry. Trickett's final event was the 50 m freestyle, where she won the bronze medal in a time of 24.91.\n\n\n=== 2005 ===\nAt the 2005 Australian Championships in Sydney, Trickett finished third in the 100 m freestyle in a time of 54.26, missing individual qualification in the event. She placed second in the 50 m freestyle, losing both the race and her national record to Alice Mills.\nAt the World Championships in Montreal, Trickett competed in the 4 × 100 m freestyle relay, splitting 53.54 on the anchor leg. Australia won the gold medal in a time of 3:37.32, breaking the championship record of 3:37.91 set by China in 1994. The following day, Trickett won the silver medal in the 100 m butterfly in a time of 57.37. On day 5, she swam the first leg of the 4 × 200 m freestyle relay, splitting a time of 1:57.06 to break the Australian record of 1:57.47 set by Susie O'Neill in 2000. Australia led for the first 700 m, but eventually won the silver medal, setting a new national record of 7:54.06. Trickett was selected to swim the freestyle leg in the final of the 4 × 100 m medley relay, over 100 m freestyle world champion Henry. Trickett split 53.13, anchoring Australia to the gold medal in a time of 3:57.47, breaking the championship record of 3:59.89 set by China in 2003. Trickett's final event was the 50 m freestyle, where she won the gold medal in a time of 24.59.\nIn August 2005, Trickett competed at the Australian Short Course Championships in Melbourne. In the semifinals of the 100 m freestyle, she swam 51.91, breaking the world record of 52.17 set by Therese Alshammar of Sweden in 2000. She broke the world record again in the final, improving the mark to 51.70.\nIn November 2005, Trickett competed at the FINA World Cup. At the Sydney stop, she set a new world record in the short course 200 m freestyle in a time of 1:53.29, lowering the mark of 1:54.04 set by the US' Lindsay Benko in 2002.\n\n\n=== 2006 ===\nAt the 2006 Australian Championships in Melbourne, Trickett went 53.42 to reclaim the world record in the 100 m freestyle. This was later broken by Britta Steffen of Germany in August 2006.\nTrickett competed at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne. She won the gold medal in the 100 m butterfly with a games record time of 53.54. She won the silver medal in the 100 m butterfly in a time of 57.80. The following day, she won the gold medal in the 50 m freestyle in a games record time of 24.61. She then swam the first leg of the 4 × 100 m freestyle relay, splitting 53.74. Australia won gold in a games record time of 3:36.49, then the fourth-fastest time in history. On the final day, she swam the 4 × 100 m medley relay, splitting 52.87 on the freestyle leg. Australia set a new world record of 3:56.30, lowering the nation's own mark of 3:57.32 from 2004.\nIn August 2006, Trickett competed at the Australian Short Course Championships in Hobart. She swam 55.95 in the 100 m butterfly, breaking the world record of 56.34 set by the US' Natalie Coughlin in 2002.\n\n\n=== 2007 ===\nTrickett competed at the World Championships in Melbourne. She swam the first leg of the 4 × 100 m freestyle relay, splitting 53.42. This was tied for the second-fastest 100 m freestyle time in history, and was only slower than Steffen's world record of 53.30. Australia won the gold medal in a championship record time of 3:35.48. This was the second-fastest time in the relay's history, 0.26 seconds slower than Germany's world record from 2006. Trickett's next event was the 100 m butterfly, where she won the gold medal in 57.15, breaking the championship record of 57.23 set by compatriot Jessicah Schipper in 2005. In the 100 m freestyle, Trickett's championship record was broken by Coughlin in the semifinals. In the final, Trickett recorded 53.40 to win the gold medal, breaking her own national record and equalling Coughlin's championship record, again equalling the second-fastest time in history. Trickett's next event was the 4 × 100 m medley relay, where she split 52.83 on the freestyle leg. Australia won the gold medal in a world record time of 3:55.74. Trickett's final event was the 50 m freestyle, where she successfully defended her world title with a time of 24.53.\nIn April 2007, Trickett competed at the Duel in the Pool in Sydney. She swam the first leg of the mixed 4 × 100 m freestyle relay against the US' Michael Phelps. She split 52.99, which although was faster than Steffen's world record, was not ratified because the relay was not recognised as official event by FINA.\n\n\n=== 2008 ===\nIn March 2008, Trickett competed at the Australian Championships in Sydney. She won the 100 m butterfly in 56.81, becoming the second woman to break 57 seconds in the event; her time was 0.20 seconds slower than de Bruijn's world record from 2000. In the 100 m freestyle, Trickett went 52.88, breaking Steffen's world record and becoming the first woman to officially break 53 seconds in the event. Her final event was the 50 m freestyle, which she won in 23.97, breaking the world record of 24.09 set by the Netherlands' Marleen Veldhuis.\nIn April 2008, Trickett competed at the Swimming Australia Grand Prix in Canberra. She went 55.74 in the short-course 100 m butterfly, breaking the world record of 55.89 set by compatriot Felicity Galvez earlier in the month.\nIn August 2008, Trickett competed at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. She swam the anchor leg of the 4 × 100 m freestyle relay. She recorded a split of 52.34, then the fastest split in history. Australia won the bronze medal in a national record time of 3:35.05. Trickett's next event was the 100 m butterfly, which she won in an Australian record time of 56.73. She later swam the 100 m freestyle final, in which she was overtaken in the closing stages by Steffen; Trickett finished with the silver medal in a time of 53.16. In the 50 m freestyle, Trickett finished fourth in a time of 24.25. She concluded the competition with the 4 × 100 m medley relay. She split 52.53 on the freestyle leg, holding off the US' Dara Torres to win the gold medal in a world record time of 3:52.69.\nIn October 2008, Trickett moved to Sydney to train with Grant Stoelwinder, the coach of Eamon Sullivan.\n\n\n=== 2009 ===\n\nTrickett competed at the World Championships in Rome. Her first event was the 4 × 100 m freestyle relay. Although she was sponsored by Speedo, Trickett wore an Arena X-Glide for the race. She led off in an Australian record time of 52.62. Australia eventually won the bronze medal in 3:33.01, the third-fastest time in history. Trickett wore a Speedo LZR Racer for the remainder of the competition. She won the bronze medal in the 100 m freestyle in a time of 52.93. She swam the freestyle leg of the 4 × 100 m medley relay, losing to China who broke Australia's world record. Australia recorded a time of 3:52.58, the second-fastest time in history. Trickett later swam the 50 m freestyle, finishing sixth in a time of 24.19.\nIn August 2009, Trickett competed at the Australian Short Course Championships in Hobart. She broke the world record in the 100 m freestyle with a time of 51.01.\nIn December 2009, Trickett retired from swimming.\n\n\n=== 2010–2013: Comeback ===\nIn September 2010, Trickett announced her return to swimming.\nAt the 2012 Australian Championships in Adelaide, Trickett finished fifth in the 100 m freestyle, qualifying for the Olympic team in the 4 × 100 m freestyle relay.\nAt the 2012 Olympics in London, Trickett swam the heats of the 4 × 100 m freestyle relay and was replaced in the final. Australia went on to win the gold medal, giving Trickett the fourth Olympic gold medal of her career.\nIn July 2013, Trickett retired for the second time, at the age of 28, due to a wrist injury.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nIn April 2007, Trickett was married at Taronga Zoo in Sydney. The couple had an exclusive photo deal with women's magazine New Idea, and later they had split the profits between three charities. She started competing under her married name at the 2008 Australian Championships.\nIn March 2015, Trickett and her husband announced that they were expecting their first child, due in September, after suffering a miscarriage in August 2014. She gave birth to a girl on 31 August 2015. Their second daughter was born on 23 February 2018.\nIn 2025, Trickett had a spontaneous coronary artery dissection.\n\n\n== Awards and honours ==\nOrder of Australia Medal (2005)\nSwimming Australia Swimmer of the Year (2007)\nSwimming World – Female Pacific Rim Swimmer of the Year (2007)\nSport Australia Hall of Fame inductee (2016)\nInternational Swimming Hall of Fame inductee (2018)\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of Olympic medalists in swimming (women)\nList of World Aquatics Championships medalists in swimming (women)\nList of Commonwealth Games medallists in swimming (women)\nWorld record progression 50 metres freestyle\nWorld record progression 100 metres butterfly\nWorld record progression 100 metres freestyle\nWorld record progression 200 metres freestyle\nWorld record progression 4 × 100 metres freestyle relay\nWorld record progression 4 × 100 metres medley relay\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nLibby Trickett  at World Aquatics \nLibby Trickett at the International Swimming Hall of Fame \nLibby Trickett at the Sport Australia Hall of Fame \nLibby Trickett at Commonwealth Games Australia\nLibby Trickett at the Australian Olympic Committee \nLibby Trickett at Olympics.com \nLibby Trickett at Olympedia"}
{"title": "Lidiya Skoblikova", "requested": "Lidiya Skoblikova", "extract": "Lidiya Pavlovna Skoblikova (Russian: Лидия Павловна Скобликова; born 8 March 1939) is a retired Russian speed skater and coach. She represented the USSR Olympic team during the Winter Olympic Games in 1960, 1964 and 1968, and won a total of six gold medals, a record she shares with Dutch speed skater Ireen Wüst. She also won 25 gold medals at the world championships and 15 gold medals at the USSR National Championships in several distances. She was also the first athlete to earn six gold medals in the Winter Olympics and the first to earn four gold medals at a single Olympic Winter Games. She was the most successful athlete at the 1960 and 1964 Winter Olympics, sharing the honour for 1960 Games with her compatriot Yevgeny Grishin.\n\n\n== Career ==\nSkoblikova was born in Zlatoust, Soviet Union, some 160 km west of Chelyabinsk, Ural. She trained at Burevestnik and later at Lokomotiv sports societies. At age 19 in 1959, Skoblikova qualified for the Soviet team and placed third in the national championships. She repeated that performance at the world championships, winning two distance medals as well. The next season, she seemed headed for the world title after winning the 500 m and placing 2nd in the 1500 m, but she fell in the 1000 m. By winning the 3000 m, she managed to land on the podium anyway, placing third again. A favourite for the Olympics now, she entered three events. In the first race, the 1500 m, she broke the world record, and won the gold medal. After just missing a second medal in the 1000 m (fourth), Skoblikova approached the world record in the 3000 m (missing it by just half a second), but that was enough for her second gold medal. \nDuring the following years, Skoblikova fought with her teammates to become world champion. In 1961, she won the bronze for the third consecutive time, followed by the silver medal in 1962. In 1963, she finally won the title. In Karuizawa, conditions were excellent, and Skoblikova won all four races, setting a new 1000 m world record in the process. \nFor the 1964 Olympics, Skoblikova qualified for all four distances, and she won all of them, thereby becoming the first Winter Olympian to win four individual gold medals. This record was only beaten by Eric Heiden who won all five speed skating events in 1980. Two weeks after the Olympics, she repeated her performance from Karuizawa and won all four distances at the world championships. \nSkoblikova withdrew from speed skating for two seasons, but returned in 1967, setting a new 3000 m world record in January. She failed to reach the podium at the world championships however, and placed fourth. In 1968, she skated her third and last Olympics, with the best achievement of 6th place in the 3000 m. During her career she won 15 national titles in various distances, but never the all-around championships.\nAfter her retirement in 1969, Skoblikova moved to Moscow to work as a speed skating coach at Lokomotiv. In 1973, she began her studies at The Academy of Labor and Social Relations and received a degree in pedagogy in 1979. She later earned a PhD in history and became a professor. By 1983, she was a member of the Soviet National Olympic Committee, and received a silver Olympic Order from the hands of Juan Antonio Samaranch. For 12 years she was president of the Russian Skating Federation, and in the 1990s was the head coach of the Russian team. In 1996, she was inducted into the International Women's Sports Hall of Fame, and three years later received the Order \"For Merit to the Fatherland\" from the hands of Boris Yeltsin. On February 7, 2014, she was one of the six people who held the Olympic flag during the opening ceremony of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.\n\n\n== Family ==\nSkoblikova was born in a working-class family and had three sisters and one brother. She married Aleksandr Polozkov, who was a competitive racewalker and a member of the national team. Aleksandr was a talented coach and trained his wife during some periods of her career. Their son Georgy (b. 14 March 1965) assisted Skoblikova as a coach of the national speed skating team in the 1990s. His first wife, Natalya Polozkova, was also a speed skater and competed at the 1992, 1994 and 1998 Winter Olympics, whereas his second wife, Tanya, won four national titles.\n\n\n== Records ==\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists at a single Games\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nLidiya Skoblikova at Olympics at Sports-Reference.com (archived)\nLegends of Soviet Sport: Lidia Skoblikova\nLidia Skoblikova at Olympic.org\nInternational Women's Sports Hall of Fame. Women's Sports Foundation. Retrieved on 2007-08-27."}
{"title": "Lisa Carrington", "requested": "Lisa Carrington", "extract": "Dame Lisa Marie Carrington  (born 23 June 1989) is a flatwater canoeist and New Zealand's most successful Olympian, having won a total of eight gold medals and one bronze medal. She won three consecutive gold medals in the Women's K‑1 200 metres at the 2012 Summer Olympics, 2016 Summer Olympics and 2020 Summer Olympics, as well as gold in the same event at the 2011 Canoe Sprint World Championships. At the 2020 Summer Olympics she also won a gold medal in the K‑2 500 metres, with Caitlin Regal, and as an individual in the K‑1 500 metres. At the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, Carrington defended her titles in the K‑1 500 metres and K‑2 500 metres event (with Alicia Hoskin) and also won the K‑4 500 metres event. Carrington equalled Danuta Kozák's record of winning all three K-1, K-2, K-4 events, over 500 metres, at one Olympics.\n\n\n== Early and personal life ==\nBorn in Tauranga, Carrington was raised in Ōhope, a satellite town of Whakatāne in the eastern Bay of Plenty, and is of Te Aitanga-a-Māhaki, Te Whakatōhea and Rongomaiwahine as well as European descent. She attended Whakatane High School, and Massey University in Albany. As a child she played netball and aspired to be a Silver Fern. She married her long-time partner Michael Buck in 2022.. Carrington announced her pregnancy in April 2026 stating she was due in September 2026, and that while her pregnancy was her main priority, she still hoped to compete in the Los Angeles 2028 Summer Olympics.\n\n\n== Canoeing ==\nIn June 2009, she won a bronze medal at the World Cup regatta held in Szeged, Hungary, competing alongside Teneale Hatton in the women's K‑2 1000 metres event. In May 2010, the pair won the gold medal in the same event at a World Cup regatta in Vichy, France. In late 2010, she started working with coach Gordon Walker.\nCarrington and Hatton won three gold medals at the 2010 Oceania Canoe Championships; they won the 500 and 1000 metres K‑2 events and were joined by Rachael Dodwell and Erin Taylor to win the K‑4 500 metres. The pair became the first New Zealanders ever to reach a World Championship A final at the ICF Canoe Sprint World Championships in Poznań, Poland. Their time of one minute 42.365 seconds in the semi-finals meant they qualified third fastest for the final of the K‑2 500 metres, however they finished the final in ninth position.\nAt the 2011 ICF Canoe Sprint World Championships in Szeged, Carrington won the gold medal in the women's K‑1 200 metres event; and became the first New Zealand woman to win a canoeing World Championship title. The result secured an Olympic qualification berth for New Zealand. She was also honoured with the Māori Senior Sports Woman of the Year Award.\nCarrington represented New Zealand at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. In the K‑2 500 metres, Carrington and Erin Taylor finished 7th, and in the K‑1 200 metres Carrington won the gold medal. At the 2012 Oceania Championships, Carrington won gold medals in the K‑1 200 metres and in the K‑2 200 metres with Taylor.\nAt the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, she defended her gold medal in the K‑1 200 metres event and won a bronze medal in the K‑1 500 metres event. In doing so, she became the first New Zealand woman to win multiple medals at the same Olympic games. Carrington was the flag bearer at the 2016 closing ceremony.\nAt the 2019 Canoe Sprint World Championships in Szeged, Carrington won gold medals in the K‑1 500 metres and K‑1 200 metres events.\nOn 3 August 2021, at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Carrington won her third consecutive gold medal in the K‑1 200 metres event. On the same day, she and her crewmate Caitlin Regal won a gold medal in the K‑2 500 metres event. On 5 August 2021, she won a further gold medal in the K‑1 500 metres event. With her third gold medal, she became New Zealand's most successful Olympian of all time, with a total of six medals (one more than fellow canoeists Ian Ferguson and Paul MacDonald and equestrian Mark Todd), five of which are gold (one more than Ferguson's previous record). She is also the first New Zealand woman to win three gold medals at a single Olympics, and was referred to by the New Zealand Herald as the \"Greatest of All Time (GOAT) in the boat\".\nIn August 2024, Carrington again won three Olympic gold medals at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, in the K4 500m, K2 500m and K1 500m events, the latter event being her eighth career Olympic gold medal and her ninth medal in total.\nCarrington stepped away from canoeing for the 2025 season but announced she still had plans to compete in 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.\n\n\n== Awards and honours ==\n\nCarrington was named as New Zealand's senior Māori sportswoman and overall Māori sportsperson of the year in November 2012. In the 2013 New Year Honours, she was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to kayaking. In 2014, Carrington was named the NEXT Woman of the Year in the Sport category. At the 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2021 Halberg Awards, she won the Sportswoman of the Year, and in 2016 and 2021 she also won the Supreme Award.\nOn 11 February 2021, Carrington was named the most influential Māori sports personality of the past 30 years in the Māori Sports Awards 30 in 30 show, aired on Māori Television.\nIn the 2022 New Year Honours, Carrington was promoted to Dame Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to canoe racing.\n\n\n== Sponsorship and advertising work ==\nCarrington is an athlete ambassador for Beef and Lamb New Zealand, alongside Eliza McCartney, Sophie Pascoe and Sarah Walker. She is also an ambassador for Southern Cross Health Society. Carrington, together with her dog Colin, have been ambassadors for Nexgard Spectra for Dogs in New Zealand since June 2021.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nLisa Carrington at Paddle Worldwide\nLisa Carrington at Olympics.com\nLisa Carrington at the New Zealand Olympic Committee\nLisa Carrington at Olympedia\nLisa Carrington at InterSportStats"}
{"title": "Lisa Leslie", "requested": "Lisa Leslie", "extract": "Lisa Deshaun Leslie (born July 7, 1972) is an American former professional basketball player. She is formerly the head coach for Triplets in the BIG3 professional basketball league, as well as a studio analyst for Orlando Magic broadcasts on FanDuel Sports Network Florida. In 2002, Leslie made history as the first player to dunk during a Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) game. Leslie was ranked 5th on ESPN.com's 2021 list of the WNBA's greatest players of all time.\nLeslie played in the WNBA for the Los Angeles Sparks from 1997 to 2009. She is a three-time WNBA MVP and a four-time Olympic gold medal winner. The number-seven pick in the 1997 inaugural WNBA draft, she followed her career at the University of Southern California with eight WNBA All-Star selections and two WNBA championships over the course of 11 seasons with the Los Angeles Sparks, before retiring in 2009. In 2011, she was voted in by fans as one of the Top 15 players in WNBA history. All throughout her WNBA career, Leslie also played for USA Basketball in international competition, winning four Olympic gold medals (1996, 2000, 2004, 2008) and two FIBA World Championships (1998, 2002).\nIn 2015, Leslie was inducted into the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame. She has been inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame twice: in 2015 for her individual career, and in 2026 as a member of the 1996 United States women's Olympic basketball team.\nUpon becoming coach of the Triplets in 2019, she led the team to the BIG3 Championship that year.\nIn 2022, Leslie got inducted into the FIBA Hall of Fame.\n\n\n== Early life ==\nLeslie was born in Compton, California, the daughter of Christine Lauren Leslie, who stood 6 feet 3 inches (1.91 m), and Walter Leslie, a former professional basketball player. Christine started her own truck driving business to support her three children. Walter left the family when her mother was four months pregnant with her. Leslie has two sisters: Dionne, who is five years older, and Tiffany, who is eight years younger. She also has a brother, Elgin (named after Elgin Baylor of the Los Angeles Lakers). She is African American. She played on an all-girls team with the record 33–1.\n\n\n=== Middle school ===\nDuring the first few weeks of middle school, a classmate asked Leslie to help out the basketball team. On her first day of basketball tryouts, team members were told to split into two groups for layup drills: lefties and righties. Leslie was the only lefty in the group, so from then on, she decided to become right-hand dominant so she would not have to stand in a line by herself. That decision worked to her advantage, as she became ambidextrous.\nIn eighth grade, she transferred to a junior high school without a girls' basketball team, and joined a boys' basketball team. Her success there contributed to her confidence in her playing abilities.\n\n\n=== High school ===\nAt the age of 14, before Leslie had started high school at Morningside, she received more than a hundred college recruiting letters, including some from top Division I programs at the University of Tennessee and Stanford University.\nLeslie continued her education in 1986 by enrolling at Morningside High School in Inglewood, California. She made an immediate impact on the basketball program, starting every game for the girl's varsity team. She also joined the volleyball team and competed in track and field. She ended up being a state qualifier in the 400-meter run and the high jump.\nBy the time she was a sophomore in high school, she was able to dunk the ball in the open court, even though she was not able to palm the ball. She was her team's leading scorer and rebounder and led them to the 1989 California state championship.  Leslie was invited to participate in the USA's Junior World Championship team.  Entering her senior year, she developed into the top player in the country. She led her team to a state championship averaging 27 points and 15 rebounds per game. She tied the national record for points scored by a high school basketball player with Cheryl Miller in 1990 with 101 points scored, all in the first half. She had scored 105 points but four of the points were due to a technical foul charged on the opposing team for a delay of game after halftime, which were later voided as the game was deemed to end after the first half when the opposing team from South Torrance refused to play.\n\n\n== College career ==\nLeslie attended the University of Southern California from 1990 to 1994. She graduated from USC with a bachelor's degree in communications and later completed her master's degree in business administration from the University of Phoenix.\nLeslie played in a total of 120 college games, averaging 20.1 points, hitting 53.4% of her shots, and knocking down 69.8% of her free throws. She set the Pac-10 Conference records for scoring, rebounding, and blocked shots accumulating 2,414 points, 1,214 rebounds, and 321 blocked shots. She also held the USC single season record for blocked shots (95), until being surpassed by Rayah Marshall (98) in 2023.\nDuring her college career, USC compiled a 89–31 record. They won one Pac-10 conference championship and earned four NCAA tournament appearances. Leslie was honored with All-Pac-10 recognition all four years, as well as becoming the first player in Pac-10 history to obtain first team all four years and earn the Pac-10 Rookie of the Year award in 1991. Leslie was also honored on the national platform by earning the national freshman of the year award in 1991. In 1994, she won multiple national player of the year awards—the Naismith College Player of the Year award, the USBWA Women's National Player of the Year award, the Honda Sports Award for basketball, and the WBCA Player of the Year award. In 1992, 1993, and 1994, she earned All-American Honors as well.\n\n\n=== USC statistics ===\n\n\n== WNBA career ==\nThe WNBA was incorporated in 1996 and began playing in 1997. Leslie was drafted on January 22 by the Los Angeles Sparks as part of the Initial Allocation phase of the draft. Her debut game was played on June 21, 1997, in a 67 - 57 loss to the New York Liberty. In her first game, Leslie recorded 16 points, 14 rebounds, 2 assists and 2  blocks. Due to her performance, Leslie has the distinction of recording the first double-double in WNBA history. Ruthie Bolton of the Sacramento Monarchs also recorded a double-double of 16 points and 11 rebounds on June 21, 1997, against the Utah Starzz. But chronologically, the Sparks vs. Liberty game was played before the Monarchs vs. Starzz game.\nLeslie helped the Sparks make the playoffs five consecutive times, but the team did not win a WNBA title until 2001. That year, Leslie was named the 2001 Sportswoman of the Year (in the team category) by the Women's Sports Foundation.\nOn July 30, 2002, Leslie became the first woman to dunk the ball in a WNBA game. That same year she became the first WNBA player to score over 3,000 total career points and contributed to the Sparks winning their second straight WNBA championship that season. Two seasons later, she became the first player to reach the 4,000-career point milestone. Leslie remains the Sparks' career scoring and rebounding leader.  She is the 4th highest all-time rebound leader, after Rebekkah Brunson, Sylvia Fowles, and Tamika Catchings. Within that same season, she also became the third player in WNBA history to record a triple double, when she had 29 points, 15 rebounds and 10 blocks. In the 2005 WNBA All-Star Game, Leslie had also become the first WNBA player to dunk in an all-star game. On August 11, 2009, Leslie became the first player to score 6,000 points in a career.  Earlier that month she was the first player to reach 10,000 career PRA (points + rebounds + assists), a statistic fundamental to the WNBA \"Pick One Challenge\" fantasy game.\nLeslie announced her retirement effective at the end of the 2009 season on February 4, 2009.  The Sparks held a farewell ceremony for Leslie during their final home game of the season in September.  She finished holding the league records for points (6,263), rebounds (3,307) and PRA (10,444).\nLeslie's final WNBA game ever was Game 3 of the 2009 Western Conference Finals between the Sparks and the Phoenix Mercury. Although Leslie recorded 22 points and 9 rebounds, the Sparks lost the game 74 - 85 and were eliminated from the playoffs.\nIn 2011, she was voted in by fans as one of the Top 15 players in the fifteen-year history of the WNBA. In 2016, she was voted into the WNBA Top 20@20, in celebration of the league's 20th anniversary.\nOn September 20, 2026, Leslie will be honored with a statue of herself outside of Crypto.com Arena.\n\n\n== National team career ==\n\nLeslie was named to the USA Basketball Women's Junior National Team (now called the U19 team). She was 17 at the time, the youngest player on the USA team. The team participated in the second Junior World Championship, held in Bilbao, Spain in July 1989. The USA team lost their opening game to South Korea in overtime, then lost a two-point game to Australia. After winning their next game against Bulgaria, behind 22 points and nine rebounds from Leslie, the USA team again fell in a close game, losing by three points to Czechoslovakia. After beating Zaire in their next game, the USA team played Spain, and fell three points short. Leslie led the team in scoring, rebounds, and blocks, averaging 13.3 points and 7.0 rebounds per game and recording 21 blocks over the course of the event. The USA team finished in seventh place.\nLeslie was a member of the USA team competing at the 1991 World University Games held in Sheffield, England. Leslie was the second leading scorer on the USA squad, averaging 13.0 points per game, and helped the Tara VanDerveer-coached team to a 7–0 record and the gold medal.\nShe competed with USA Basketball as a member of the 1992 Jones Cup Team that won the Gold in Taipei for the first time since 1987.\nLeslie has made four consecutive Olympic appearances, and has earned four gold medals. She was the second female basketball player ever to earn that many gold medals, after Teresa Edwards. Leslie has also made appearances with the United States national women's basketball team where she won gold medals in 1996 and 2000, and has also earned a world championship. Leslie scored 35 points against Japan in the semifinals of the 1996 Olympics to set an American Olympic women's scoring record.\nLeslie is one of seven USA Basketball's three-time Olympians, and one of two players with four gold medals. She led the U.S. team in scoring during the 2004 Olympic Games. During her third Olympic completion, she became the USA's all-time leading scorer, rebounder, and shot blocker in Olympic competition. Every time she has competed in a major international event, she has compiled double-digit scoring averages. Leslie, at age 20, was also the youngest player to participate at the USA Olympic Trials in 1992.\nLeslie has had a rivalry with Lauren Jackson ever since the 2000 Olympics, when the Australian star ripped out Leslie's hair extensions during a game.\n\n\n== WNBA career statistics ==\n\n\n=== Regular season ===\n\n\n=== Playoffs ===\n\n\n== Other professional endeavors ==\nApart from basketball, Leslie is also a fashion model and an aspiring actress. She has been featured in Vogue and Newsweek, as well as many sports publications. She has been on ESPN numerous times and has been a guest star on several television shows such as Sister Sister, The Game, and One on One. She is a guest commentator for \"Sports Zone\" on KABC-TV/Los Angeles and wears the Circle 7 logo from the channel when on the show. She has also acted in a variety of commercials. Early in her career she signed a modeling contract with the Wilhelmina modeling agency. Leslie appeared on the show, Superstars, and she and her partner, David Charvet, took third place after David injured his wrist. Leslie also played herself in an episode of the TV-show The Jersey called \"Nick's a Chick\", where she switched bodies with a boy named Nick Lighter (played by Michael Galeota). In addition, she played herself in one episode of The Simpsons. She also appeared in the movie Think Like a Man, and played as herself. Leslie is also a playable character in the original Backyard Basketball, alongside Kevin Garnett. She was only the fourth female professional athlete in the Backyard Sports series, after soccer players Brianna Scurry, Brandi Chastain, and Tiffeny Milbrett. She also appeared in the second episode of All in with Cam with host Cam Newton. In 2013, Leslie switched places with Downtown Julie Brown on the show Celebrity Wife Swap. On January 28, 2016, it was announced that she would be a contestant in The New Celebrity Apprentice (also known as Celebrity Apprentice 8). Recently, she played septuagenarian Betty Lou in Uncle Drew which hit the theaters in June 2018.\nSince her retirement from professional basketball, Leslie has worked as a sports commentator and analyst for several sports networks, such as NBC, ABC and Fox Sports Net. She had also released an autobiography called Don't Let the Lipstick Fool You. In 2011, she had become a co-owner of the Los Angeles Sparks. In 2018, Leslie joined Fox Sports Florida as a studio analyst on Orlando Magic broadcasts.\nLeslie was named coach of the Triplets - an expansion team of the BIG3 three-on-three league founded by Ice Cube -  on January 10, 2019, and that year led the team to a 7–1 record, and winning the BIG3 Championship.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\n\nOn November 5, 2005, Leslie married Michael Lockwood, who played basketball for the United States Air Force Academy and is a pilot for UPS. In 2007, she took a year's leave from professional basketball for a pregnancy, and her daughter was born that same year. Leslie returned to the WNBA for the 2008 season. Leslie had a son, Michael II, in 2010.\nLeslie is a Christian. In an interview, she spoke about her faith, \"As a prayerful kid, I was always putting my faith and goals in the Lord's name. That was always one of the things that helped me the most. I always wanted to fulfill His purpose. I think that's really been the saving grace for me. When you have faith, you have to step out on it [and trust God].\"\nOn February 4, 2020, Leslie was interviewed by Gayle King to talk about her friendship with Kobe Bryant. During the interview, Leslie was asked about Bryant's sexual assault case in 2003. Leslie responded that those accusations did not align with the person she knew.\nLeslie is a realtor and co-founder of a sports and entertainment real-estate firm named Aston Rose.\nLeslie was initiated as an honorary member of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority on July 15, 2021.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of basketball players who have scored 100 points in a single game\nList of WNBA career rebounding leaders\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists in one event\nWBCBL Professional Basketball Trailblazer Award\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== Further reading ==\nGrundy, Pamela (2005). Shattering the glass. New Press. ISBN 978-1-56584-822-1.\nDavid L. Porter, ed. (2005). Basketball: A Biographical Dictionary. Greenwood Press. ISBN 978-0-313-30952-6.\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nLisa Leslie at WNBA.com at the Wayback Machine (archived October 2, 2009)\nLisa Leslie at Basketball-Reference.com\nWNBA chat transcript\nLisa Leslie at Team USA (archived March 18, 2023)\nLisa Leslie at the Team USA Hall of Fame (archive July 20, 2023)\nLisa Leslie at Olympics.com Lisa Leslie at Olympic.org (archived) \nLisa Leslie at Olympedia \n101-point half at USA Today\nLisa Leslie at IMDb"}
{"title": "Lloyd Spooner", "requested": "Lloyd Spooner", "extract": "Lloyd Spencer Spooner (October 6, 1884 – December 20, 1966) was an American sports shooter and Olympic champion.\nHe won four gold medals, one silver medal and two bronze medals at the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp. Six of his seven medals were in team competitions, and the one individual bronze medal was obtained in the Military Rifle, Prone, 600m.\nHe was born in Tacoma, Washington and died in Zephyrhills, Florida.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists at a single Games\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nLloyd Spooner at Olympics.com\nLloyd Spooner at InterSportStats \nLloyd Spooner at the International Shooting Sport Federation"}
{"title": "Lucien Gaudin", "requested": "Lucien Gaudin", "extract": "Lucien Alphonse Paul Gaudin  (27 September 1886 – 23 September 1934) was a French fencer. He competed in foil and in épée events at the 1920, 1924 and 1928 Olympics and won a gold or silver medal in every event he entered, accumulating four gold and two silver medals total. This record is tied for the best French Olympics performance, matching fencers Christian d'Oriola (four gold and two silver) then followed by both Philippe Cattiau and Roger Ducret (three gold, four silver and one bronze).\nGaudin also won two international champion's titles in épée (1905 and 1918), the European title in épée (1921, first edition) and nine consecutive French titles in foil (1906–1914).\nSome sources claim that Gaudin was on the silver-medal sabre team in 1920, crediting him with an Olympic medal in each weapon. However, the IOC medalist database does not award Gaudin a medal in that event, the full results of the event show that he did not fence, and numerous lists of competitors do not include him on the team.\nAfter retiring from competitions Gaudin became a journalist and co-owner of the company Les Films Sportifs, which produced the 1924 Olympic film. Gaudin committed suicide in 1934 when his company went bankrupt.\nLucien Gaudin Cocktail\nThere is a cocktail named after Lucien Gaudin. It has the bitterness of Campari with gin, a nod to the Negroni, but with dry vermouth rather than sweet vermouth. Then there is the addition of Cointreau. And unlike the Negroni, the Lucien Gaudin at 2:1 gin to Campari is more gin dominant.\n\n2 ounces gin\n1 ounce dry vermouth\n1 ounce Campari\n1 ounce Cointreau\nA sibling to the Lucien Gaudin is the Gloria, also gin and dry vermouth with Campari and Cointreau.\n\n2 ounces gin\n2 ounce dry vermouth\n½ ounce Campari\n½ ounce Cointreau\nWith equal amounts of gin and dry vermouth, the vermouth in the Gloria becomes the dominant counterpoint to the gin. With the Lucien Gaudin you notice the Campari and Cointreau influence much more, so more of a Negroni riff. The Gloria, with the dry vermouth more dominant is more of a Martini riff.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n Media related to Lucien Gaudin at Wikimedia Commons"}
{"title": "Ludger Beerbaum", "requested": "Ludger Beerbaum", "extract": "Ludger Beerbaum (German pronunciation: [ˈluːtɡɛʁ ˈbeːɐˌbaʊ̯m], . Born 26 August 1963) is a German equestrian who competes in show jumping. He has been ranked the No. 1 Show Jumper in the world by the FEI on multiple occasions. He is also a four-time Olympic Gold medalist team and individual.\n\n\n== Early life and competitive career ==\nBeerbaum was born in Detmold, West Germany. In school, he took Business Studies, but eventually gave it up for a career in show jumping.\nBeerbaum began riding on a Highland Pony at the age of 8. He had a very successful career as a young rider which continued into his adulthood. His most notable accomplishments include winning 4 Olympic Golds (his first at age 25) and numerous European and World Championship medals.\nOn Sunday 21 September 2008, at the Samsung Super League Final in Barcelona, Beerbaum was a member of the winning German Nations Cup team. He was awarded Leading Rider of the 2008 Super League, along with 50,000 CHF ($46,000). In the Final, he rode the nine-year-old Westphalian gelding, All Inclusive NRW to a double clear round, and was one of only two riders to do so, his teammate Marco Kutscher being the other.\n\n\n== Family ==\nLudger Beerbaum is the oldest of 4 children, his siblings being Ruth, Monika, and show jumper Markus Beerbaum.\nHe is married to Arundell Davison, with whom he has two daughters (Cecilia Sophie and Mathilde). From his previous marriage, he has a son (Alexander).\nHe is also brother-in-law to Meredith Michaels-Beerbaum.\n\n\n== Top horses ==\n\nGoldfever: 1991 chestnut Hanoverian stallion (by Grosso Z)\nClassic Touch 1984 Bay (Holstein) Mare by  Caletto II (GOLD Barcelona olympics 1992)\nRatina Z: 1982 bay Hanoverian mare (Ramiro Z x Almé Z)\nGladdys S: 1992 chestnut Westphalian mare (Grandeur x Apart)\nPS Priamos: 1982 chestnut Westphalian gelding (Pilot x Direx)\nEnorm: 1997 bay Hanoverian gelding (Escudo I x Calypso II)\nCouleur Rubin: 1996 chestnut Oldenburg stallion (by Cordalme Z)\nL'Espoir: 1996 chestnut Zangersheide gelding (by Landwind II)\nAll Inclusive: 1999 bay Westphalian gelding (Arpeggio x Phantom)\n\n\n== Doping offense ==\nAt the 2004 Olympic Games, Beerbaum and his mount, Goldfever, managed to finish with only 4 penalty points, helping Germany earn the team gold medal. However, following the competition, Goldfever tested positive for the prohibited substance betamethasone. The International Equestrian Federation found Beerbaum guilty of breaking the rules, stripping both him and his German team of their gold medals, dropping Germany down to bronze. Beerbaum believed the substance to have been present in an ointment administered to the horse due to a skin irritation, and the FEI agreed that the substance provided no competitive advantage. However, in accordance with the rule, Beerbaum was disqualified. He then appealed the decision to the CAS. After the hearing took place, they ruled that Germany's stripped gold medal was then given to the Americans and the silver to the Swedish show jumping team. The Germans, however, were still able to take the bronze medal, even without Goldfever's results.\n\n\n== Major achievements ==\n\n\n=== Olympic Games ===\nTeam gold medal - 1988 Olympic Games Seoul: 17.25 penalties (The Freak)\nIndividual gold medal - 1992 Olympic Games Barcelona: 0 penalties (Classic Touch)\nTeam gold medal - 1996 Olympic Games Atlanta: 1.75 penalties (Ratina Z)\nTeam gold medal - 2000 Olympic Games Sydney: 15 penalties (Goldfever 3)\nDisqualified, losing team gold medal at the 2004 Olympic Games Athens —See \"Doping Offense\" above (Goldfever 3)\nTeam bronze medal - 2016 Summer Olympics Rio de Janeiro: Casello\n\n\n=== World Championships ===\nTeam silver medal & 73rd Individually - 1990 World Equestrian Games, Stockholm, Sweden (Gazelle)\nTeam gold medal & 4th Individually - 1994 World Equestrian Games in The Hague, Netherlands (Ratina Z)\nTeam gold medal & 5th Individually - 1998 World Equestrian Games in Rome, Italy (P.S. Priamos)\n4th place & 22nd Individually - 2002 World Equestrian Games in Jerez de la Frontera, Spain (Gladdys S)\nTeam bronze medal & 5th Individually - 2006 World Equestrian Games in Aachen, Germany (L'Espoir)\n\n\n=== European Championships ===\nTeam bronze & Individual bronze - 1984 CH-EU-Y in Cervia, Italy (Wittersfernde)\nTeam 5th & Individually 23rd - 1987 CH-EU in St. Gallen, Switzerland (Wiener Domspatz)\nTeam 5th & Individually 21st - 1991 CH-EU in La Baule-Escoublac, France (Grand Plaisir)\nTeam 4th & Individually 29th - 1993 CH-EU in Gijón, Spain (Rush On)\nTeam gold & Individual gold - 1997 CH-EU in Mannheim, Germany (Ratina Z)\nTeam gold & Individually 26th - 1999 CH-EU in Hickstead, Great Britain (Champion du Lys)\nTeam bronze & Individual gold - 2001 CH-EU in Arnhem, Netherlands (Gladdys S)\nTeam gold & Individual silver - 2003 CH-EU in Donaueschingen, Germany (Goldfever 3)\nTeam silver & Individual bronze - 2007 CH-EU in Mannheim, Germany (Goldfever 3)\nTeam gold & Individually 8th - 2011 CH-EU in Madrid, Spain (Gotha FRH)\nTeam silver & Individually 6th - 2013 CH-EU in Herning, Denmark (Chiara 222)\nTeam silver & Individually 12th - 2015 CH-EU in Aachen, Germany (Chiara 222)\n\n\n=== World Cup Final ===\n1st - 1993 World Cup Final in Gothenburg, Sweden (Ratina Z)\n4th - 1995 World Cup Final in Gothenburg, Sweden (Gaylord & Ratina Z)\n6th - 1996 World Cup Final in Geneva, Switzerland (Gaylord & Rush On)\n3rd - 1998 World Cup Final in Helsinki, Finland (P.S. Priamos)\n6th - 1999 World Cup Final in Gothenburg, Sweden (Ratina Z & P.S. Priamos)\n4th - 2000 World Cup Final in Las Vegas, United States (Goldfever 3)\n2nd - 2002 World Cup Final in Leipzig, Germany (Gladdys S)\n8th - 2003 World Cup Final in Las Vegas, United States (Goldfever 3)\n12th - 2005 World Cup Final in Las Vegas, United States (Couleur Rubin)\n4th - 2008 World Cup Final in Gothenburg, Sweden (All Inclusive NRW)\n6th - 2009 World Cup Final in Las Vegas, United States (Coupe de Coeur)\nJoint 2nd - 2010 World Cup Final in Le Grand-Saconnex near Geneve, Switzerland (Gotha FRH)\n2nd - 2014 World Cup Final in Lyon, France (Chaman & Chiara 222)\n\n\n=== Other major achievements ===\nMultiple World No. 1 Show Jumper ranking by the FEI\n8-time winner of the German masters (1988, 1992, 1993, 1997, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2004)\n3-time Rider of the Year (2001, 2002, 2003)\n3-time winner of the Grand Prix of Aachen (1996 Ratina Z; 2002 and 2003 Goldfever 3)\nWinner of the Bambi prize in 1992\nWinner of the 2002 CN International at the Spruce Meadows Masters on the stallion, Goldfever 3.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nLudger Beerbaum at Olympics.com\nLudger Beerbaum at Team Deutschland (in German)\nLudger Beerbaum at Olympics at Sports-Reference.com (archived)\nHorse doping scandal puts Germany's equestrian team in tatters at the Wayback Machine (archived May 31, 2009)\nOfficial website (in German)"}
{"title": "Ludmilla Tourischeva", "requested": "Ludmilla Tourischeva", "extract": "Ludmilla Ivanovna Tourischeva (Russian: Людми́ла Ива́новна Тури́щева; also transliterated as Ludmilla Turischeva, Ludmilla Tourischcheva, and Ljudmila Turichtchieva, born 7 October 1952) is a former Russian gymnast, Ukrainian gymnast coach, all around Olympic champion and a nine-time Olympic medalist for the Soviet Union.\n\n\n== Career ==\nTourischeva began gymnastics in 1965, at age 13, and began competing for the Soviet team in 1967. Coached by Vladislav Rastorotsky (who later trained Natalia Shaposhnikova and Natalia Yurchenko), she represented the Soviet Union at the 1968 Summer Olympics, just after her 16th birthday. She won the gold medal with the team and placed 24th in the all-around.\nTwo years later, Tourischeva became the leader of the Soviet team. From 1970 to 1974, she dominated almost every major international competition, winning the World Championships all-around gold in 1970 and 1974, the European Championships in 1971 and 1973, and the World Cup in 1975.\nAt the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Tourischeva won the all-around gold medal but was overshadowed by the sudden popularity of her younger compatriot Olga Korbut. She qualified for all four event finals, and won a silver and a bronze. Tourischeva was one of the first female gymnasts to use two separate pieces of music for her floor routines at an international competition. For the team competition, she used \"March\" from the film Circus by Isaak Dunaevsky, while for the all around, she used the music to the film Die Frau meiner Träume by Franz Grothe.\nAt the 1975 European Championships, Tourischeva placed fourth in the all-around behind 13-year-old Nadia Comăneci of Romania (who also won the vault, uneven bars, and balance beam apparatus finals), her own teammate Nellie Kim (who placed second and won the floor exercise final) and Annelore Zinke. This marked the first time in 5 years that Ludmilla lost an all-around competition.\nAfter struggling with a back injury, Tourischeva competed in her third Olympics, the 1976 Summer Games in Montreal, where she won her third team gold with the Soviet squad. In the all-around, she finished third behind Comăneci and Kim. She won silver medals on vault and floor exercise in the event finals, losing to Kim but overcoming Comăneci, bringing her total Olympic medal count to four gold, three silver, and two bronze.\nTourischeva was known for her calm demeanor in competition. In 1980, British journalist David Hunn wrote that she \"never had the cheek of some of her rivals, but for serenity she was supreme\". This was famously illustrated during the 1975 World Cup at Wembley Stadium in London, when a broken hook holding support cables of the uneven bars caused the apparatus to fall apart and crash to the ground just as Tourischeva landed her dismount. Saluting the judges, she walked off the podium without even turning around to look at the remains of the apparatus. She went on to win the all-around and all four event finals. Years later, she said of the incident that, at that moment, she had thought only one thing: she must complete her routine and \"stick it\". Rastorotsky, her coach, said, \"Ljudmila would fight to death in any situation.\"\nShe was also known for her gracious manner. At the 1976 Olympics, she walked around the podium to personally congratulate champion Comăneci and shake her hand before accepting her own medal.\nTourischeva is one of only two women, the other being Yelena Shushunova, who have won the \"grand slam\" of all-around titles: Olympics, World Championships, World Cup, and European Championships. She is also one of only two women to win four gold medals at a single World Championships (in 1974). The other is Simone Biles of the United States, who won four in 2014, 2015, and 2018; Biles broke the record and won five gold medals in 2019.\n\n\n== Post-gymnastics life ==\nIn 1977, Tourischeva married the sprinter Valeriy Borzov, a two-time Olympic champion, in 1972. She was elected to the Women's Artistic Gymnastics Technical Committee of the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) in 1981, and has remained involved in gymnastics as a coach, an international judge, and an official with the Ukrainian gymnastics federation. One of her protégés was Lilia Podkopayeva of Ukraine, the all-around gold medalist at the 1996 Olympics.\nTourischeva has received various honors for her gymnastics career, including the Women in Sport trophy from the International Olympic Committee. In 1998, she was inducted into the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame.\n\n\n== Eponymous skill ==\nTourischeva has one eponymous skill listed in the Code of Points.\n\n\n== Medals (non-Olympic) ==\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic medalists\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Summer Olympic medalists\nList of top Olympic gymnastics medalists\nList of top medalists at the World Artistic Gymnastics Championships\nList of Olympic female gymnasts for the Soviet Union\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nLudmila Turicheva at World Gymnastics\nLudmilla Tourischeva at the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame\nLyudmila Tourischeva at Olympics.com\nLyudmila Turishcheva at Olympedia \nArticle from \"Soviet Life\"\nFull list of competitive results"}
{"title": "Lyubov Yegorova (cross-country skier)", "requested": "Lyubov Yegorova (cross-country skier)", "extract": "Lyubov Ivanovna Yegorova (Russian: Любо́вь Ива́новна Его́рова; born 5 May 1966), name also spelled Ljubov Jegorova, is a Russian former cross-country Olympic ski champion, multiple world champion (first time in 1991), winner of the World Cup (1993) and Hero of Russia. Lyubov Yegorova is an honorary citizen of Seversk (1992), Saint Petersburg (1994), and Tomsk Oblast (2005).\n\n\n== Career ==\nYegorova won several medals at the FIS Nordic World Ski Championships with three golds (4 × 5 km relay: 1991, 1993; 30 km: 1991), one silver (5 km: 1993), and two bronzes (5 km + 10 km combined pursuit, 30 km: 1993).\nShe also won the women's 15 km event at the Holmenkollen ski festival in 1994.\nAdditionally, Yegorova won a total of nine medals at the Winter Olympics, earning six golds and three silver.\nShe was the most successful athlete at both the 1992 and 1994 Winter Olympics. She won the Holmenkollen medal in 1994 (shared with Vladimir Smirnov and Espen Bredesen).\n\n\n=== Doping case ===\nYegorova decided to retire after the 1997 FIS Nordic World Ski Championships in Trondheim when she was disqualified for doping on bromantan, a stimulant drug. She was disqualified on 26 February 1997, three days after winning gold in the women's 5 km event, and stripped of that medal.\n\n\n=== Return ===\nShe returned after the suspension to compete at the 2002 Winter Olympics but did not win a medal there.\n\n\n== Cross-country skiing results ==\nAll results are sourced from the International Ski Federation (FIS).\n\n\n=== Olympic Games ===\n9 medals – (6 gold, 3 silver)\n\n\n=== World Championships ===\n6 medals – (3 gold, 1 silver, 2 bronze)\n\n\n=== World Cup ===\n\n\n==== Season titles ====\n1 titles – (1 overall)\n\n\n==== Season standings ====\n\n\n==== Individual podiums ====\n13 victories\n41 podiums\n\n\n==== Team podiums ====\n12 victories\n21 podiums\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nShe is the mother of Viktor Sysoyev.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of female Heroes of the Russian Federation\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Winter Olympic medalists\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nLyubov Yegorova at the International Ski and Snowboard Federation\nHolmenkollen medalists – click Holmenkollmedaljen for downloadable pdf file (in Norwegian)\nHolmenkollen winners since 1892 – click Vinnere for downloadable pdf file (in Norwegian)\nInformation on Yegorova's doping disqualification (in Italian)\nLyubov Yegorova (in Russian)"}
{"title": "László Papp", "requested": "László Papp", "extract": "László Papp (25 March 1926 – 16 October 2003) was a Hungarian professional boxer from Budapest. He was left-handed and won gold medals in the 1948 Summer Olympics in London, the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki, and the 1956 Summer Olympics held in Melbourne, Australia. In his final Olympic competition he became the first boxer in Olympic history to win three successive gold medals. He won 12 of his 13 Olympic fights without losing a round, dropping only one, in his last Olympic final, to American boxer José Torres. \nThere was not another triple gold medalist for 20 years, when Cuba's Teófilo Stevenson won three, followed by another Cuban Félix Savón as the third of the three men to accomplish the feat.\n\n\n== Amateur career ==\nPapp was an Olympic gold medalist three times, at middleweight in London in 1948, then as a light middleweight in Helsinki in 1952 and in Melbourne in 1956. Papp also was the European amateur middleweight champion as a middleweight in 1949 at Oslo and at light middleweight at Milan in 1951.  He scored 55 first-round knockouts as an amateur, his record was 301-12-6.\n\n\n=== Olympic results ===\n1948 London (England)\n\nDefeated Valfrid Resko (Finland) KO 2\nDefeated Jean Welter (Luxembourg) KO 1\nDefeated Auguste Cavignac (Belgium) KO 1\nDefeated Ivano Fontana (Italy) 3-0\nDefeated John Wright (England) 3-0\n1952 Helsinki (Finland)\n\nDefeated Ellsworth Webb (United States) KO 2\nDefeated Charlie Chase (Canada) KO 2\nDefeated Petar Stankoff Spassoff (Bulgaria) 3-0\nDefeated Eladio Oscar Herrera (Argentina) 3-0\nDefeated Theunis Jacobus van Schalkwyk (South Africa) 3-0\n1956 Melbourne (Australia)\n\nDefeated Alberto Saenz (Argentina) KO 3\nDefeated Zbigniew Pietrzykowski (Poland) 3-0\nDefeated José Torres (USA) 2-1\n\n\n== Professional career ==\nPapp, despite having hand trouble, turned professional in 1957 and immediately began rising in the Middleweight ranks. However, Hungary was a Communist country at the time and professional boxing was not permitted. Papp had to travel to Vienna, in Austria, for training and for his fights. In spite of this disadvantage, he beat several top-ranking contenders for the European Middleweight title, including veteran Tiger Jones, French champion Hippolyte Annex and Chris Christensen. After Christensen, Papp defeated Randy Sandy of the United States. In 1964, after Papp had already signed up for the world championship title bout against Joey Giardello, Hungary's Communist leadership brought his professional career to an end by denying him an exit visa.\nPapp is one of the few boxers in history to ever retire undefeated in the ring. His fighting record was 27 wins, 2 draws, and no losses. 15 of his wins were by way of knockout.\n\n\n== Death ==\nLászló Papp died in Budapest in 2003.\n\n\n== Honours ==\nPapp was inducted into the International Boxing Hall Of Fame in 2001.\nIn 1989 WBC President José Sulaimán gave Papp an award for 'Best amateur and professional boxer of all time' and granted him honorary champion status of the World Boxing Council.\n\n\n== Professional boxing record ==\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of Hungarians\n\n\n== References ==\n\nHis biography at Hungary.hu\nBoxing record for László Papp from BoxRec (registration required)\nInternational Boxing Hall of Fame Bio\nAmateur Record at the Wayback Machine (archived October 27, 2009)\n\n\n== External links ==\nOfficial homepage"}
{"title": "Léon Marchand", "requested": "Léon Marchand", "extract": "Léon Marchand (French pronunciation: [leɔ̃ maʁʃɑ̃] ; born 17 May 2002) is a French professional swimmer. He is the World record holder in the long course 200 and 400 metres individual medley, and in the short course 200 metres individual medley; the Olympic record holder in the 200 and 400 metres individual medley, 200 metres butterfly and the 200 metres breaststroke; the European record holder in the long course 200 and 400 metres individual medley and the 200 meters breaststroke, in the short course 100 and 200 metres individual medley and the French record holder in the long course 200 and 400 metres individual medley, 400 metres freestyle, 200 metres butterfly and the 200 metres breaststroke, and in the short course 100, 200, 400 metres individual medley and the 200 metres breaststroke. At the 2024 Summer Olympics, he won gold medals in the 200 m medley, 200 metre breaststroke, 200 metre butterfly, and 400 metre medley. He became the fourth swimmer and third male swimmer in Olympic history to win four individual gold medals at a single Games.\nAs a member of the Arizona State University swim team, at the 2022 NCAA Division I Men's Swimming and Diving Championships, Marchand won NCAA titles in the 200 yard breaststroke and 200 yard individual medley. At the 2023 NCAA Division I Men's Swimming and Diving Championships, he won NCAA titles in the 200 yard breaststroke, 200 yard individual medley, and 400 yard individual medley. At the 2024 NCAA Division I Men's Swimming and Diving Championships in his last year before going pro, he won NCAA titles in the 200 yard breaststroke, 500 yard freestyle and 400 yard individual medley. He won with his college swim team the NCAA championship title for the first time ever.\n\n\n== Early life ==\nMarchand was born on 17 May 2002 in Toulouse, France. He is the son of former medley swimmers Xavier Marchand and Céline Bonnet. His uncle, Christophe Marchand, is also a former freestyle swimmer. As a child, Marchand first took up judo and then rugby, and although he was not pushed into swimming by his parents, he quickly felt at ease in the water with the Dauphins du TOEC club at the age of six.\n\nThe club is an extension of my family. At seven years old, I really started swimming. But I was skinny, I was too cold in the water and I stopped for a year or two. It was only during vacations that I enjoyed being in the water.\nTrained and coached by Nicolas Castel in the Toulouse club until 2021, Marchand began training with an adjusted schedule around the age of 12 or 13. Although he was versatile in freestyle, butterfly, and breaststroke and a good swimmer over various distances, he was not the best national swimmer of his generation in the youth categories, being shorter and less powerful than some of his young competitors. In 2017, as a teenager, he tried the 400m individual medley on his parents' advice and developed a passion for the event.\nAlongside his sports career, Marchand earned a scientific baccalaureate with highest honors and pursued computer science studies at Toulouse III - Paul Sabatier University. Encouraged by his parents, Marchand moved to the United States in August 2021, settling in Arizona. He wanted to be coached by Bob Bowman, Michael Phelps' mentor. He was a junior during 2023–24 at Arizona State University, majoring in computer science. He then followed Bowman to Texas.\n\n\n== Career ==\n\n\n=== Pre-2022 ===\n\n\n==== 2019 World Junior Championships ====\n\nIn August 2019, at the World Junior Swimming Championships in Budapest, Hungary, Marchand won the bronze medal in the 400 metre individual medley with a French record time of 4:16.37. He also placed seventh with a time of 2:01.53 in the 200 metre individual medley, seventh swimming a 1:58.73 in the final of the 200 metre butterfly, tenth in the 200 metre breaststroke with a 2:15.13, and 15th in the 100 metre breaststroke in a time of 1:03.03.\n\n\n==== 2020 Summer Olympics ====\n\nMarchand qualified in his first event for the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo at the 2021 French Elite Swimming Championships in Chartres, making the French Olympic Team in the 400 metre individual medley with a personal best and French record time of 4:09.65. At the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Japan, Marchand placed sixth in the 400 metre individual medley with a 4:11.16, tenth in the 100 metre medley relay, 14th in the 200 metre butterfly with a 1:55.68, and 18th in the 200 metre individual medley with a 1:58.30.\n\n\n=== 2022 ===\n\n\n==== 2022 NCAA Championships ====\n\nAt the 2022 NCAA Division I Championships in March in Atlanta, United States, Marchand won his first individual NCAA title of his freshman year for the Arizona State Sun Devils in the 200 yard individual medley, winning the event and setting new NCAA, NCAA Championships, and US Open records with his time of 1:37.69, which was over four-tenths of a second faster than the old marks of 1:38.13 set by Caeleb Dressel in 2018 (NCAA and US Open records) and 1:38.14 set by Andrew Seliskar in 2019 (NCAA Championships record). It was the first time since 2000 that a man from the Arizona State University swim program won an individual title in swimming at an NCAA Division I men's swimming and diving championships. He won a second NCAA title in the 200 yard breaststroke, finishing 0.56 seconds ahead of second-place finisher Max McHugh with a time of 1:48.20. He placed second in the 400 yard individual medley, with a 3:34.08 to finish behind Hugo González, as well as in the 4×100 yard freestyle relay, where he split a 41.31 for the second leg of the relay to help finish in a final time of 2:46.40.\nSeven days after the end of the 2022 NCAA Championships, Marchand set a new French record in the 200 metre individual medley at the 2022 TYR Pro Swim Series at Northside Swim Center in San Antonio, United States, with a time of 1:56.95 and won the silver medal behind Shaine Casas who finished in 1:56.70. One day earlier, he won the 200 metre breaststroke with a time of 2:09.24.\n\n\n==== 2022 World Aquatics Championships ====\n\nOn 18 June, the first day of 2022 World Aquatics Championships at Danube Arena in Budapest, Hungary, Marchand set a new French record in the 400 metre individual medley in the preliminary heats with a time of 4:09.09, qualifying for the evening final ranking first. He lowered his French record and set a new European record and Championships record in the final with a time of 4:04.28 to win the gold medal. With this time, he became the second fastest performer of all time in this event. Two days later, he qualified for the semifinals of the 200 metre butterfly with a time of 1:56.38 and tied rank of eleventh in the prelims. For the semifinals, he ranked 0.18 seconds ahead of the next-fastest swimmer, fifth-ranked Luca Urlando of the United States, and qualified for the final the following day with his new French record time of 1:54.32.\nThe following morning, Marchand qualified for the semifinals of the 200 metre individual medley, swimming a 1:58.70 to tie for eighth-rank heading into the semifinals. For his first race of the evening, he set a new French record in the final of the 200 metre butterfly at 1:53.37 and won the silver medal, finishing behind Kristóf Milák of Hungary and ahead of Tomoru Honda of Japan. In his final race of the day, the semifinals of the 200 metre individual medley, he set a new French record with a time of 1:55.75 and qualified for the final ranking first. In the final of the 200 metre individual medley the following day, he won the gold medal with a French record time of 1:55.22.\nWith his two gold medals, Marchand became the third French swimmer to achieve two gold medals in individual events at a single FINA World Aquatics Championships, after Laure Manaudou and Florent Manaudou. He also became the first male swimmer representing France to win any medal in the 400 metre individual medley at a World Aquatics Championships, the first since 1998 to win a medal in the\n200 m individual medley and the 200 meter butterfly and the first to win a gold medal in the 200 metre individual medley.\nOn 23 June, Marchand splits a 1:47.59 for the second leg of the 4×200 metre freestyle relay in the final to help achieve a seventh-place finish in 7:08.78. In the preliminaries of the 4×100 metre medley relay on the eighth day, Marchand helped advance the relay to the final ranking second with a time of 52.09 seconds for the butterfly leg of the relay. He lowered his split to a 51.50 in the final, contributing to a time of 3:32.37 and fifth-place finish At the end of the competition, Marchand is awarded best male swimmer of the championships (with Katie Ledecky on women's side). The month after the Championships, Marchand set a new French record in the 200 metre breaststroke with a time of 2:08.76 at the 2022 Spanish Summer Championships in Sabadell, Spain.\n\n\n=== 2023 ===\nLeading up to NCAA and conference championships season in 2023, Marchand set new NCAA and US Open records in the 400 yard individual medley with a time of 3:31.84 in a dual meet against the California Golden Bears on 21 January.\n\n\n==== 2023 Pac-12 Conference Championships ====\nOn 1 March, the first day of the 2023 Pac-12 Conference Championships at King County Aquatic Center in Federal Way, United States, Marchand helped win the conference title in the 4×50 yard medley relay in a Pac-12 Conference and Championships record time of 1:21.69, splitting a 22.98 for the breaststroke leg of the relay. He repeated the trio of conference title, conference record, and Championships record later in the session in the 4×200 yard freestyle relay, where he contributed a lead-off time of 1:30.77 to the final mark of 6:06.30. The times for both relays also set new Arizona State Sun Devils swim program records for the men's events. Following up with a 1:37.81 in the 200 yard individual medley the next day, he won his second-consecutive conference title in the event and lowered his Championships record from the previous year's edition by 1.84 seconds. On day three, he lowered his US Open and NCAA records in the 400 yard individual medley, setting new conference, Championships, and program records with a time of 3:31.57 to win the conference title. He splits a 49.73 for the breaststroke leg of the 4×100 yard medley relay later in the session, helping win the conference title with a program record time of 3:01.39.\nThe fourth of four days, Marchand broke the US Open and NCAA records of 1:47.91 in the 200 yard breaststroke set by Will Licon in 2017, winning the conference title with a personal best time of 1:47.67. For his final event, the 4×100 yard freestyle relay, he led-off with a 41.61 to contribute to a second-place time of 2:46.14. The points allocated for each of his swims contributed to an overall score of 897.5 points for the Arizona State Sun Devils, which earned the men's swim program its first team Pac-12 Conference Championships title.\n\n\n==== 2023 NCAA Championships ====\n\nLater in the month, at the 2023 NCAA Division I Championships, Marchand helped win the silver medal in the 4×50 yard medley relay in a time of 1:21.07 on the first day of competition, splitting a 22.27 for the breaststroke leg of the relay. Later in the session, he anchored with a 1:28.42 in the 4×200 yard freestyle relay to help win the silver medal in a time of 6:05.08. Both relay times set new men's swim program records for the Arizona State Sun Devils. His split time of 22.27 lowered the former fastest 50 yard breaststroke split time in NCAA history of 22.39 seconds set by Max McHugh two heats earlier. His split time of 1:28.42 for his 200-yard portion of the 4×200 yard freestyle relay ranked as the fastest in NCAA history as well. On the second day, he won the NCAA title in the 200 yard individual medley for the second consecutive year, lowering his NCAA, Championships, and US Open records in the event to a 1:36.34.\nIn the final of the 400 yard individual medley on the third evening, Marchand won the gold medal with a new NCAA, Championships, and US Open record time of 3:28.82, which was over two full seconds faster than his previous mark of 3:31.57. For his second final of the evening, he contributed the fastest 100 yard breaststroke split time in NCAA history (49.23 seconds) to a bronze medal-win in the 4×100 yard medley relay in an Arizona State Sun Devils men's swim program record time of 2:59.18. Starting the fourth finals session with the 200 yard breaststroke, he won his second repeat title and third title overall of the Championships, lowering his NCAA and US Open records as well as setting a new Championships record with a personal best time of 1:46.91. Finishing the Championships in the 4×100 yard freestyle relay later in the session, he splits a 40.55 for the second leg of the relay to contribute to placing third overall with a program record time of 2:45.12. His performances contributed to the first-ever top-five finish for the Arizona State Sun Devils men's swim program at an men's NCAA Division I Swimming and Diving Championships, with the team placing second overall with 430 points, just 52 points behind the first-place team (California Golden Bears) and 46 points ahead of the third-place team (Texas Longhorns).\n\n\n==== 2023 French Championships ====\nFollowing the conclusion of the collegiate championships, Marchand competed at the 2023 TYR Pro Swim Series in April, winning the 400 metre individual medley with a 4:07.80, the 200 metre butterfly with a 1:55.58, the 200 metre breaststroke with a 2:10.52, and the 200 metre individual medley with a 1:55.69. In June, he won the gold medal in the 200 metre breaststroke at the 2023 French Elite Swimming Championships on day one in Rennes, finishing in a French record and 2023 World Aquatics Championships qualifying time of 2:06.59 that marked a time drop of 2.17 seconds from his previous personal best and French record time. On the second day, he swam a personal best time of 1:48.70 in the preliminaries of the 200 metre freestyle and qualified ranking seventh for the final, where he won the gold medal with a personal best time of 1:46.44. For the 200 metre butterfly on day three, Marchand won the gold medal with a time of 1:55.79. He won his fourth national title on the fourth day in the 200 metre individual medley, where he finished first with a time of 1:56.25 in the final. In the 400 metre individual medley on day five, he achieved a World Championships qualifying time of 4:10.57 in the final and won the gold medal and national title.\n\n\n==== 2023 World Aquatics Championships ====\n\nOn 23 July, the first day of 2023 World Aquatics Championships at Fukuoka in Japan, Marchand ranked second behind Carson Foster in the preliminary heats of the 400 metre individual medley with a time of 4:10.88. He set a new World record in the final with a time of 4:02.50 to win the gold medal. Two days later, he qualified for the semifinals of the 200 metre butterfly with a time of 1:55.46 and tied rank of seventh in the prelims. For the semifinals, he ranked second behind Carson Foster with a time of 1:54.21 and qualified for the final the following day.\nThe following morning, Marchand qualified for the semifinals of the 200 metre individual medley, swimming a 1:58.38 to tie for ninth-rank heading into the semifinals. For his first race of the evening, he set a new French record in the final of the 200 metre butterfly at 1:52.43 and won the gold medal. With this time, he became the third fastest performer of all time in this event. In his final race of the day, the semifinals of the 200 metre individual medley, he ranked first with a time of 1:56.34. In the final of the 200 metre individual medley the following day, he won the gold medal with a European record time of 1:54.82. With this time, he became the third fastest performer of all time in this event. With his three gold medals, he became the first French swimmer to achieve three gold medals in individual events at a single World Aquatics Championships and the first French swimmer to win five individual gold medals in all at World Aquatics Championships ahead of Camille Lacourt and his four individual gold medals. He also became the first male swimmer representing France to win a gold medal in the 200 metre butterfly at a World Aquatics Championships.\nOn 28 July, Marchand splits a 1:44.89 for the fourth leg of the 4×200 metre freestyle relay in the final to help achieve a fourth-place finish in 7:03.86. On 30 July, in the preliminaries of the 4×100 metre medley relay, Marchand helped advance the relay to the final ranking second with a time of 59.57 seconds for the breaststroke leg of the relay. In the evening final of the same day, he splits a 59 seconds for the breaststroke leg of the relay and helped to achieve a fourth-place finish in 3:29.88. At the end of the competition, he is awarded best male swimmer of the championships (with Kaylee McKeown on women's side).\n\n\n=== 2024 ===\n\n\n==== 2024 Summer Olympics ====\n\nAt the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, Marchand finished with the most gold medals among individuals participants, with four, and was tied for the second-most total medals, with five (four gold, one bronze), breaking four Olympic records. On 28 July in the morning, Marchand ranked first in the preliminary heats of the 400 metre individual medley with a time of 4:08.30. He won the final in the evening in an Olympic record time of 4:02.95 for his first career Olympic medal, making him the tenth French swimmer to become Olympic Champion, the seventh French swimming individual Olympic Champion and the first to do so since the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.\nOn 30 July in the morning, he ranked sixth in the preliminary heats of the 200 metre butterfly with a time of 1:55.26. The same day in the evening, he ranked second in the semifinals with a time of 1:53.50 to advance to the final. On 30 July in the afternoon, he ranked third in the preliminary heats of the 200 metre breaststroke with a time of 2:09.55. The same day in the evening, he ranked first in the semifinals with a time of 2:08.11 to advance to the final. On 31 July in the evening, he won first the 200 metre butterfly and then the 200 metre breaststroke setting a new Olympic record and French record in a time of 1:51.21 for the 200 metre butterfly and a new Olympic record, European record and French record in a time of 2:05.85 for the 200 metre breaststroke. He has become the second swimmer to win two individual gold medals the same day since Kornelia Ender at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal in the events of the 200 metre freestyle and the 100 metre butterfly.\n\nOn 1 August in the morning, Marchand ranked third in the preliminary heats of the 200 metre individual medley with a time of 1:57.86. The same day in the evening, he ranked first in the semifinals with a time of 1:56.31 to advance to the final. On 2 August, he won his fourth gold medal in the final of the 200 metre individual medley in an Olympic record time of 1:54.06, becoming the first French Olympian to win four gold medals at the same Olympics and the fourth swimmer (with Mark Spitz in 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Kristin Otto in 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul and Michael Phelps in 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens and 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing) to win four individual gold medals at the same Olympics.\nOn 3 August, in the evening final of the 100 metre mixed medley relay, Marchand splits a 58.66 seconds for the breaststroke leg of the relay and helped to achieve a fourth-place finish in a new French record of 3:40.96. Also on 3 August, in the preliminaries of the 100 metre medley relay, Marchand helped advance the relay to the final ranking first with a time of 59.03 seconds for the breaststroke leg of the relay. On 4 August in the evening, he splits a 58.62 seconds for the breaststroke leg of the relay and helped to achieve a bronze medal in a new French record of 3:28.38. Marchand has been mentioned frequently as the next Phelps, including by Phelps himself. Marchand was chosen to carry the Olympic flame during the closing ceremony.\n\n\n==== 2024 Swimming World Cup ====\nFollowing the Olympic Games, Marchand competed in the Swimming World Cup, winning gold in all three medley events (100 IM, 200 IM and 400 IM) at all three World Cup legs, held in Shanghai in China, Incheon in South Korea, and in Singapore. On 31 october in Singapore, he broke the 100 IM short course European record (49.92) becoming the second swimmer ever behind world record holder, American Caeleb Dressel. The day after, he also broke the 200 IM short course World record (1:48.88) and is named the overall male winner of the world cup. On 30 November, he decided to pull out of World Aquatics Swimming Championships (25 m) in Budapest due to exhaustion and injury. He is named World Aquatics' male swimmer of the year on 15 December.\n\n\n=== 2025 ===\nFollowing the Olympic year and going pro, Marchand decided to train with Dean Boxall in Brisbane, Australia.\nHe got back into competition at the 2025 TYR Pro Swim Series in Fort Lauderdale in April, finishing second in the 400 metre individual medley with a time of 4:13.86, in the 200 metre individual medley with a 1:57.27 time, third in the 400 metre freestyle with a 3:48.97, and eighth in the 200 metre freestyle with a 1:49.66 time.\nIn May, he competed in the ST TXLA Longhorns Aquatics and achieved the qualification times for the 2025 World Aquatics Championships in placing first in the 400 metre individual medley with a time of 4:07.11 and in the 200 meter breastroke in a 2:08.25 time. He also raced in the 400 metre freestyle with a 3:48.62 time by finishing third but not reached the qualification time needed.\nIn June, Marchand decided to withdraw from the French Championships in Montpellier, France and got an exemption from the French Swimming Federation.\nFinally, he took part in a meet in Indianapolis, United States and swam four events. He finished first in the 100 meter breastroke in 59.95 and in the 200 metre individual medley with a 1:57.23 time. He placed second in the 200 meter backstroke in 1:57.14 and seventh in the 100 meter freestyle in 49.70.\n\n\n==== 2025 World Aquatics Championships ====\n\nOn 30 July, the fourth day of 2025 World Aquatics Championships at Singapore , Marchand ranked first in the preliminary heats of the 200 metre individual medley with a time of 1:57.63. He set a new World record in the second semifinal in the evening with a time of 1:52.69. One day later, he wins the gold medal in the final of the 200 metre individual medley with a time of 1:53.68. On 1 August, he splits a 1:44.34 for the fourth leg of the 4×200 metre freestyle relay in the final to help achieve a sixth-place finish in 7:03.69.\nThe last day of the competition, Marchand ranked seventh in the preliminary heats of the 400 metre individual medley with a time of 4:13.19. In the evening, he wins the gold medal in the final of the 400 metre individual medley with a time of 4:04.73. Thirty minutes later, he splits a 58.44 for the breaststroke leg of the final of the 4×100 metre medley relay and helped to achieve a silver medal in a new French record of 3:27.96. At the end of the competition, he is awarded best male swimmer of the championships (with Summer McIntosh on women's side).\n\n\n==== 2025 Swimming World Cup ====\nLéon Marchand takes part in the first stop of the Swimming World Cup in Carmel (10 October-12 October) in the United States.\nHe races four events (200 meter individual medley, 400 meter freestyle, 200 meter backstroke and 200 meter breaststroke).\nIn the 200 meter individual medley, he finishes second behind Shaine Casas in a time of 1.49.73. In the 400 meter freestyle, he takes the third place in a time of 3.38.25. In the 200 meter backstroke, he finishes second behind Hubert Kós in a French record time of 1.47.68. Finally, in the 200 meter breaststroke, he takes also the second place behind Caspar Corbeau in a new French record time of 2.02.00.\nIn December, Marchand closes the year by taking part in 2025 Toyota U.S. Open in home at Austin. He races five events. He wins the 400 meter freestyle in a time of 3.44.70. In 100 meter butterfly, he finishes third in 51.20. In 100 meter backstroke, he finishes 26th in series (56.87) and doesn't qualify for finals. In 100 meter breaststroke, he finishes first in the final B in 1.00.56. To conclude the meet, he wins the 200 meter butterfly in a time of 1.52.57.\n\n\n=== 2026 ===\nLéon Marchand started the year in competing at the 2026 USA swimming Pro Swim Series in Austin. On 15 January, he won the 200 meter individual medley in 1.57.65 and placed second in the 200 meter backstroke in 1.57.90 behind his French compatriot Yohann Ndoye-Brouard. The following day, he won the 400 meter individual medley in a time of 4.13.21. He concluded the meet on 17th by winning the 200 meter breaststroke in 2.09.72.\nMarchand took part in a new Pro Swim Series in Westmont from 4 to 7 March. The first day he won a double 200 meter backstroke/200 meter breaststroke, in 1.57.56 for the first and 2.10.06 for the second. The third day he placed sixth in 200 meter freestyle in a time of 1.47.12. Finally, the last day he finished fourth in 400 meter freestyle in 3.48.79. He took part in another competition (Speedo Fort Lauderdale open) from 29 April to 2 May. On 30 April, he won the 200 meter butterfly in 1.53.08. The next day, he won the 400 meter individual medley in a time of 4.09.33. Finally, the last day he won a double 200 meter breaststroke/200 meter individual medley, in 2.09.04 for the first and 1.57.28 for the second. He participated in French championships from 27 June to 2 July. The first day, he won the 400 meter individual medley in 4.04.56, the world best performance of the year and fifth-fastest swim in world history.\n\n\n== International championships (50 m) ==\n\n\n== International championships (25 m) ==\n\n\n== Swimming World Cup circuits ==\nMarchand has won the following medals at World Aquatics Swimming World Cup circuits.\n\n\n== Personal best times ==\n\n\n=== Long course metres (50 m pool) ===\n\n\n=== Short course metres (25 m pool) ===\n\n\n=== Short course yards (25 yd pool) ===\n\n\n== Records ==\n\n\n=== Continental, olympic and national records ===\n\n\n==== Long course metres (50 m pool) ====\n\n\n==== Short course metres (25 m pool) ====\n\n\n=== US Open records ===\n\n\n==== Short course yards (25 yd pool) ====\n\n\n== Awards and honours ==\nPac-12 Conference, Swimmer of the Year (Men's): 2021–2022\nPac-12 Conference, Freshman of the Year (Men's): 2021–2022\nCollege Swimming and Diving Coaches Association of America (CSCAA), Swimmer of the Year (Men's): 2022\nSwimSwam, Swammy Award, NCAA Swimmer of the Meet (Men's): 2022\nSwimSwam, Swammy Award, NCAA Freshman of the Year (Men's): 2022\nWorld Aquatics Championships, Best Male Swimmer: 2022, 2023 & 2025\nPac-12 Conference, Swimmer of the Meet (Men's): 2023\nSwimSwam, Swammy Award European Male Swimmer of the Year: 2023, 2024 & 2025\nSwimming World, Swimmer of the Year (male): 2023, 2024 & 2025\nSwimSwam, Swammy Award Male Swimmer of the Year: 2024 & 2025\nWorld Aquatics, Athlete of the Year (Men's) : 2024 & 2025\nEuropean Aquatics, Athlete of the Year (Men's) : 2024\nTime 100 by Time magazine: 2025\nOrders\nKnight of the Legion of Honour: 2024\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nLéon Marchand at World Aquatics\nLéon Marchand at SwimRankings.net\nLéon Marchand at Olympics.com\nLéon Marchand at Team France (in French)\nLéon Marchand at Olympedia\nLéon Marchand at InterSportStats"}
{"title": "Ma Long", "requested": "Ma Long", "extract": "Ma Long (Chinese: 马龙; pinyin: Mǎ Lóng; born 20 October 1988) is a Chinese professional table tennis player. He is a two-time Olympic champion, three-time World Champion, and three-time World Cup champion in men's singles. Widely regarded as the greatest table tennis player of all time, he is the only male player to complete a career double Grand Slam as the Olympic gold medalist in men's singles in 2016 and 2020. He is also the only table tennis athlete to win 6 gold medals in the Summer Olympics — no other player has more than 4. He holds the record for most Olympic gold medals won by a Chinese athlete.\nMa held the world number 1 ranking for a total of 64 months (and 34 consecutive months from March 2015), the most by any man in the history of table tennis. He won the World Championship in men's singles consecutively in 2015, 2017 and 2019. His records led the International Table Tennis Federation to nickname him \"The Dictator\" and \"The Dragon\" (derived from his name, Lóng, which represents the zodiac year of his birth).\n\n\n== Career ==\n\n\n=== Early career ===\nAfter winning both the Asian and World Junior Championships, Long became the youngest world champion at the age of 17 after he participated in the 2006 Bremen World Team Championship. He developed his foundations under the tutelage of Wang Hao and former Chinese National Team coach Ma Kai Xuan before studying under Qin Zhijian. Before turning 22, he had great success in singles, reaching the finals of 11 ITTF World Tour tournaments (winning 8). He won the Asian Cup and World Tour Grand Finals twice, and also made it to the final round of the Asian Championships two times (losing to former coach Wang Hao in 2007 and winning in 2009). In addition, he played in the finals of the China National Games and All China Championships, losing both matches to Wang.\nDespite being the No. 1 player in the world for much of 2010–2014 stretch, he was not chosen to represent China at the 2012 Olympics due to his temporary dip in ratings that happened after a 560-day win streak on the ITTF World Tour. He suffered career setback by Japan's Koki Niwa in six games at the Asian Olympic Qualification Tournament, then lost to Lee Sang-su at the 2012 Korea Open, 4–1. As players were selected based on the ITTF World Rankings, he was not given an opportunity to win an Olympic medal in singles at the time when he was widely accepted as the best table tennis player in the world.\nChinese National Team coach Liu Guoliang remarked that Ma had all the tools necessary to be the best, yet at major tournaments, he had so far lacked sufficient mental toughness to play to his full ability under pressure. This was evident in his losses to Timo Boll and Vladimir Samsonov in the 2008 and 2009 World Cup semifinals, and to Wang Hao (4–1, 4–2, 4–2) in the semifinals of three consecutive World Championships (2009, 2011, and 2013). Although he performed well on the ITTF World Tour and in domestic competitions, he didn't make it to the final of the World Championships in his first four attempts. This led to many believing he was inferior to compatriot Zhang Jike, who completed his Grand Slam in just over a year.\n\n\n=== 2013–2015: Increasing consistency ===\nAfter his third defeat to Wang Hao at the WTTC in 2013, Ma had a successful year. He won the China Open at two different locations (beating Wang and then Xu Xin in the final), the Asian Championships (for the third time), and the China National Games in a full-stretch match against Fan Zhendong. However, Xu defeated him 4–3 at the end of the year at the ITTF World Tour Grand Finals.\nIn March 2014, he won the Asian Cup for the fourth time, again defeating Fan in seven games. At the 2014 WTTC, he did not lose a single game. In the final against Germany, he played a pivotal role, beating Timo Boll in the opening match and defeating Dimitrij Ovtcharov for the win. For his efforts, he was awarded the Victor Barna Award as the tournament's best player. He then won the China Open for the fifth time, which tied him with Wang Liqin for the most ever. Ma's first encounter with Zhang Jike at a Grand Slam competition came in October 2014, at the World Cup in Düsseldorf. Although he was leading 3–2 in sets, Ma lost the match, saving two match points in the deciding game but still losing 10–12. This led to further criticism of his inability to come through on the biggest stages at the toughest moments. In November, he reached the final of the Chinese National Championships, but was defeated by Fan, 4–2, again ending the year on a sour note.\nHowever, 2015 would prove to be Ma's year. He won the Kuwait Open, beating Xu Xin 4–1 in the final, and then the German Open, getting revenge on Zhang Jike in an intense final after being down 3–1. But his biggest win came at the 2015 WTTC, where he did not drop more than one set until the final where he defeated tournament sensation Fang Bo in six games. This was a huge breakthrough for him, as his only other major singles title was the 2012 World Cup. After a surprising 4–1 loss to Shang Kun at the Japan Open, Ma won the China Open for a record sixth time, winning 4–1 against Xu Xin. In September, he led Ningbo over Fan Zhendong and Bayi to win the Chinese Super League championship. Injuries prevented him from competing at the Asian Championships, but he participated in the World Cup in Halmstad in October. Following a dropped set to Omar Assar in the round of 16, he did not lose another game in the competition, allowing his opponents to score an average of 6 points per set the rest of the tournament. He did not participate in the last two World Tour tournaments of the year, again due to injuries, but still was seeded first at the World Tour Grand Finals because he had won 3 other World Tour tournaments. In the final, he faced Fan again, winning 11–9 in the last game of a full-stretch match, coming back from being down 3–2 in sets (after being up 2–0), including down 8–6 in the sixth and 6–2 in the decider (when he won 8 points in a row). In 2015, Ma only lost once in international competition and just five times overall.\n\n\n=== 2016: Grand Slam, Record-extending Fifth End-of-year Finale title ===\nMa Long won the German Open in January 2016, going undefeated until the final, where he beat Vladimir Samsonov 4–1. While helping China win the 2016 WTTC over Japan in Kuala Lumpur, he didn't lose a game, which extended his unbeaten streak to three straight World Team Championships. In March, he reached the final of the Kuwait Open, but was defeated 4–1 by Zhang Jike, who had recently defeated him 5–4 in China's Trials for the 2016 WTTC. However, a week later, he won the Qatar Open by defeating Fan in five games, breaking Wang Liqin's record for most ITTF World Tour singles titles by a Chinese player. In April, he directly qualified for the Olympic Singles in Rio by winning his section of the Asian Olympic Qualification Tournament, taking down Zhang and then Fan in six and five games respectively. After this, Ma remained world No. 1, despite not participating in another international competition until the middle of June. Within a span of two weeks, Xu Xin beat him twice, first in the semi-finals of the Japan Open (his second consecutive loss at that station dating back to last year) in six games, and then in the full-stretch final of the Korea Open (Xu had also beaten him the last time he participated at Korea, in the final in 2013). This was the shortest time between international losses for Ma since 2012 (when he lost to Niwa and Lee).\nAt the Olympics in Rio, he automatically qualified to third round in the singles due to his No. 1 ranking. He swept Denmark's Jonathan Groth, but experienced a scare in the next round when he went down 2–0 to Korea's Jeoung Young-sik. However, he recovered and won the next four games to advance to the quarterfinals. His next opponent was Quadri Aruna from Nigeria, who had upset Timo Boll and Chuang Chih-yuan to become the first African player to make it to the singles quarterfinals at the Olympics. Ma beat him in four straight games to face Jun Mizutani, Japan's top player, in the semi-finals. The first three games were all 11–5 wins by Ma, but Mizutani took the next game 11–7 and the fifth 12–10. Ma won the sixth, again 11–5, to set up a historic final match against reigning Olympic champion Zhang Jike. Their second meeting at a Grand Slam final was very unexpected: Ma took the gold by overpowering Zhang in a 4–0 rout (14–12, 11–5, 11–4, 11–4), the first four-game sweep in an Olympic singles final.\nBy winning the gold medal in Rio, Ma etched himself a place as an immortal figure in table tennis history. He became the fifth male player to complete the Grand Slam, and the second male to be the defending champion of all three Grand Slam competitions simultaneously (Zhang being the first). He was the second male (after Kong Linghui) to win the ITTF World Tour Grand Finals and the three Grand Slam titles (dubbed a \"Full House\" in an ITTF article), being the first to win them all consecutively (therefore being the first male to be the reigning champion of all four at the same time) and the fastest to complete it (in just 467 days). In addition, he became the first male to have won every important singles competition possible, from majors to the ITTF World Tour to domestic competitions. The only other player who has done so is Deng Yaping.\nAs the current World Champion, he was slated to participate in the 2016 World Cup in Saarbrücken, Germany, but withdrew a month before the competition, citing exhaustion in addition to waist and knee pain. He did, however, play in the China Open in Chengdu, where his reasons for withdrawing from the World Cup were brought to light: he barely survived a seven-game semifinal with Zhang Jike and was crushed in a sweep by Fan Zhendong in the finals. This marked the first time since the 2008 China Open that Ma lost in four games on the ITTF World Tour, excluding a withdraw from the 2014 Qatar Open due to injury. In December, Ma participated in the ITTF World Tour Grand Finals in Doha, Qatar, his last international event of the year. Although he entered as the first seed, he received a scare in the round of 16 from host nation's Li Ping, a former Chinese National Team member, going down 1–2. However, he won the next three games to take the match in six games, and beat both Wong Chun Ting and Jeoung Young-sik 4–0 to face Fan in the final for the second straight year. Just like the previous year, Ma clearly started better, winning the first three, before Fan won the next two, including three championship points, to stay in the match. But despite displaying wonderful resilience and brilliance under pressure, the 19-year-old could not extend the match to seven games. The Dragon closed the year by winning the 2016 ITTF World Tour Grand Finals, his record 5th title in the event, more than any other player. This accomplishment also marked his fifth consecutive major title won. However, that success did not carry over to domestic competitions. Despite his team, Shandong Weiqiao, being ranked No. 1 for much of the 2016 Chinese Super League, they were defeated 3–1 in the semi-finals by Bazhou and rising star Liang Jingkun, who beat Ma 3–1 to decide the match. For his accomplishments in 2016, Ma was named male athlete of the year at the China Central Television (CCTV) Sports Awards Gala in Beijing.\n\n\n=== 2017: Second World Championships title and Second National Games title ===\nMa began 2017 by winning the Qatar Open in February for the second year in a row, defeating Fan Zhendong 4–1 in the final. However, Fan would get his revenge at China's trials for the 2017 WTTC, dubbed \"the Marvellous 12.\" Ma and Fan, No. 1 and No. 2 in the world respectively, each had 9 wins after the first 11-round stage, but Fan beat Ma in their head-to-head in an exciting three-game match that went down to the wire (6–11, 11–5, 12–14). Unfortunately, Ma injured his waist during his final match against Lin Gaoyuan and had to withdraw from the trials, missing out on one of the three guaranteed spots in the 2017 WTTC. The Dragon looked to bounce back at the Asian Championships held in Wuxi in April and, while he did contribute to a Chinese victory in the team competition, he lost to Korea's Jeong Sang-eun 3–1 in the men's singles round of 32, which was the biggest upset of the tournament.\nDespite his up-and-down start to 2017, Ma was given the chance to participate at the world championships held in Düsseldorf from late May to early June. Entering as the No. 1 seed, Ma progressed through the first four rounds without too much trouble, except for a tough six-game match against Sweden's Anton Källberg, who he had never played before. In the quarterfinals, he faced the host nation's Timo Boll, who had played an excellent tournament in front of his home crowd. He then quickly booked his place in the final by sweeping teammate Xu Xin, who was making his second appearance in a WTTC singles semi-final (he was also swept by Zhang Jike in 2013). The 2017 WTTC men's singles final did not disappoint. Ma and Fan faced off once again in a major competition, having played each other at least once in every major within the last two years except the Olympics. Fan raced to a 7-1 lead in the first set and took it 11-7. However, Ma quickly came back to win the next three games (11-3, 11-6, 11-8) and it looked like another five or six game win for the World Champion. But as he had done in their past encounters, the fearless 20-year old rose to the occasion. He won the fifth and sixth games (11-5, 11-7) to push the match to a seventh game, the first seven game WTTC men's singles final since Ma Lin's and Wang Liqin's legendary clash in 2007. Fan won the first two points of the set, but Ma raced to a 6-3 lead. Unwilling to give in, Fan leveled it at 7-7, then won the next two points on Ma's serve. Down 7-9 with Fan serving, things did not look good for the Dragon, but he reeled off three in a row to have match point. Afterwards, China's head coach Liu Guoliang remarked that if Fan had chosen a different serve at that crucial juncture at 9-7, he would have had a better chance. But unlike the 2015 Grand Finals, Ma was not able to capitalize with his serve at 10-9 in the seventh. After two loops, Fan hit a big smash to Ma's wide forehand, which tied it at 10-10. Unfortunately for Fan, he was not able to capitalize with his serve either; his third ball banana flick hit the net and went long. Leading 11-10, Ma served short to Fan's wide backhand, then smashed it wide down the line to his forehand, securing the point and the title. The win put him on par with Zhang Jike and Ma Lin for the most Grand Slam titles (5) and he became the first male with 10 major titles. This also marked his sixth consecutive major title won. Since 2015, he had won every major competition he had participated in.\nIn June, Ma won the Japan Open in Tokyo, beating Xu (who had defeated him there last year) in 6 games and Fan in 5 on his way to the title. This was the first time he won in Japan, meaning he has won at every major station on the ITTF World Tour (Kuwait, Germany, China, Qatar, Japan, and Korea).\nFrom late August to early September, Ma represented Beijing at the 2017 China National Games in three events: singles, doubles, and team. In the team event group stage, Ma and Beijing were put in the same division as defending champions PLA, led by Fan Zhendong. When Beijing and PLA went head to head, Ma beat Zhou Yu 3–1, but was brutally swept by Fan as PLA took the match 3–1 and finished first in the division. However, Beijing still qualified for the knockout stage by winning their other two matches and finishing second in the group. In the team quarterfinals, they faced Lin Gaoyuan and Guangdong. Ma beat Zhou Qihao 3–0, but Beijing still found themselves on the brink of elimination going into the fourth match. Ma lost to Lin in five games (9–11, 12–10, 11–5, 12–14, 4–11) and Beijing bowed out of the team tournament, a disappointing result considering they had finished 3rd in the team event in the last two National Games. The 2011 World Champion men's doubles partnership was reunited as Ma and Xu Xin were paired together in the doubles event. They cruised to the final, sweeping all of their opponents along the way, to face defending champions Fan and Zhou Yu from PLA. The match was epic and went the full seven games. Ma and Xu narrowly lost the final game by the smallest margin (9–11), settling for silver as Fan and Zhou defended their title. After the match, both pairs acknowledged that Xu had been affected by injuries sustained from playing deep into the team event, which he won with Shanghai.\nThe injuries eventually caused Xu to withdraw from the singles event the next day. Similarly to the doubles, Ma navigated the singles pretty easily, never dropping more than a game until the final. There, he met Fan yet again, who had received a walk over in the semi-finals due to Xu's injuries. After winning the first game, Ma found himself down 2–1, as Fan controlled the rallies with his backhand receive and backhand punch. However, Ma adjusted his tactics and Fan was unable to respond appropriately, leading to a 4–2 win and a successful defense of the men's singles title for the Dragon. With the win, he became the second male to win two singles titles at the China National Games (Wang Tao in 1987 and 1997) and is the first to win two in a row. He has played in the last three singles finals at the National Games, the first player to do so.\nThe next major competition that Ma participated in was 2017 World Cup, held in Liège in October. As the first seed, Ma automatically advanced to the knockout stage, where he recorded consecutive five-game wins over Omar Assar and Koki Niwa. In the semi-finals, he faced Timo Boll, who had defeated Lin Gaoyuan in an epic seven-game thriller where the German had won despite being down 10–4 in the final game. The match between Boll and Ma was significant because the two had played each other in the 2008 World Cup semi-finals, also in Liège. Even more coincidentally, the match mirrored their encounter nine years before, with Ma taking a 3–1 lead, then Boll taking the next two games to force a seventh. Just like his match with Zhang Jike in 2014 World Cup final, Ma found himself down 10–8 in the deciding game, but managed to tie it up at 10–10. Multiple histories repeated themselves, as Boll took the next two points to add to his legendary track record in Liège (where he had consecutively defeated the Chinese trio of Ma Lin, Wang Liqin, and Wang Hao to win the 2005 World Cup and reached the final in 2008 by beating Ma). The loss was a devastating blow to Ma, and that was visible during the third-place match against France's Simon Gauzy. Ma lost two of the first three games before recovering to win the match in six games. This was his last international competition in 2017, because his wife was expecting a baby. He still played in the Chinese Super League, but did not travel outside of China to play any tournaments. His son was born on 9 December 2017.\n\n\n=== 2018: Fifth German Open and Seventh China Open titles ===\nAt the beginning of 2018, Ma's world ranking dropped to 9th as a result of being inactive. The ITTF had previously announced that they were implementing a new ranking system at the start of the new year, and the new system gave more weight to activity than to a player's playing strength. Because of this, the Dragon not only lost his number 1 ranking, which he had held for the last 34 months, but he also dropped out of the top five in the ITTF world ranking for the first time since 2011. Despite being lower ranked, Ma made his presence felt at the 2018 World Team Cup held in London in late February. He went undefeated in both singles and doubles throughout the entire tournament and helped China sweep Japan in the final. In March, Ma won the German Open for the fifth time over a very strong field. He defeated Maharu Yoshimura, Jun Mizutani, Timo Boll, Wong Chun Ting, and compatriot Xu Xin en route to his 25th ITTF World Tour singles title, which brought his world ranking up to 6th.\nDue to the new ITTF ranking system, Team China was not seeded first at the 2018 WTTC held in Halmstad from late April to early May. Nevertheless, Ma and his Chinese teammates did not experience any difficulties in the group stage, collectively going 15–0 to finish first in Group B. However, he survived a scare in the quarterfinals when Austria's Robert Gardos took the Dragon to a full five games in their first ever encounter. Ma reasserted his dominance throughout the rest of the tournament, defeating Sweden's Mattias Karlsson in straight sets in front of the latter's home crowd and then sweeping Timo Boll in the final as China swept top-seeded Germany to claim their 21st title in the event.\nAfter China's victory in Halmstad, Ma won the China Open, defeating Lin Yun-Ju, Wang Chuqin, Liang Jingkun, Lim Jong-hoon, and Fan Zhendong to win his 26th ITTF World Tour singles title. However, this would be his last successful singles event for nine months. At the Japan Open, he was defeated in six games by rising Japanese star Tomokazu Harimoto and although he won the doubles title with Xu Xin at the Bulgaria Open in August, he lost to Liam Pitchford in the men's singles round of 32. It was discovered that Ma had a knee injury, something that would keep him out of all tournaments for the rest of 2018. These included the Austrian Open, the World Cup, the Swedish Open, and the World Tour Grand Finals.\n\n\n=== 2019: Third Consecutive World Championship title, Fourth Qatar Open and Eighth China Open titles ===\nMa's injuries persisted into 2019, preventing him from participating in the Marvellous 12, the Chinese qualifier for the 2019 WTTC in Budapest in April. Despite this, he was still included in the Chinese lineup for the championships in both singles and doubles. His long-awaited return to international competition came at the Qatar Open in late March. It wasn't clear how well he would play due to his seven-month absence from the game, and it showed when he needed six games to defeat Tristan Flore in his opening match. But after that, he appeared to be in good form. He swept Timo Boll and Jun Mizutani consecutively, then won a hard-fought six-game match against Xu Xin in the semi-finals. In the final against compatriot Lin Gaoyuan, he overcame a 0–2 deficit, including 2–7 in the fifth game, to win in six games. Immediately after winning the match, he posed in front of the camera, appearing to wipe the dust off his racket to indicate he was fine even after being inactive for so long. The victory tied him with Vladimir Samsonov for the most ITTF World Tour singles titles by a male player with 27.\nHowever, not all was going perfectly for Ma Long, as he suffered his first loss to Fan Zhendong in international competition in years in the final of the 2019 Asian Cup, which led many to believe the Dragon's reign would soon come to an end. Though it was possible that they could soon play each other again at the World Championships, this proved not to be the case as Fan was defeated 4–2 by lower-ranked compatriot Liang Jingkun in one of the many upsets of the tournament, who was then subsequently defeated by Ma Long 4–1 in the semifinals; the second Chinese player he'd eliminated in the tournament in addition to Lin Gaoyuan. In the final, the Dragon overpowered Sweden's Mattias Falck 4–1 to win his third consecutive World Championship, becoming the first player since Wang Liqin to win three such titles and the first since Zhuang Zedong (in 1961, 1963, and 1965) to win them consecutively.\n\n\n=== 2020: Record-extending Sixth End-of-year Finale title ===\nMa won runner-up in the 2020 World Cup, losing to Fan Zhendong in the finals. In the semi-finals, Ma was trailing 3–1 against Harimoto before he called a time-out in game 5 and switched to a high-toss serve that Harimoto had trouble reading. As a result, Ma was able to come back for a 4–3 victory. However, Ma closed this year by winning to Fan Zhendong 4–1 in the finals of ITTF World Tour finals extending his record to the 6th title in the event.\n\n\n=== 2021: Double Grand Slam ===\nIn May, Ma played in the China Olympic scrimmages. He lost 4–3 to Zhou Qihao in the semi-finals of the first leg of scrimmage. In mid-May, Ma was selected alongside Fan Zhendong to represent China in the men's singles event of the Tokyo Olympics. Shortly after, Ma was upset 4–2 by Xu Chenhao in the quarter-finals of the second leg of the scrimmage.\nIn June, Ma sat down with WTT to conduct an interview on his Olympic preparations. He stated that the most important preparation for him going into Tokyo was mental preparation and that he had to be even better mentally prepared than he was in London 2012 and Rio 2016.\nAt the 2020 Summer Olympics, Ma beat compatriot Fan Zhendong 4–2 in the final, making him the first player in history to win consecutive gold medals in the men's singles event. After the match, Fan called Ma the greatest player of this generation. During the 2020 Summer Olympics, he also became the first male table tennis player to have won five Olympic gold medals after beating Timo Boll 3-1, maintaining China's 100% win rate for the men's teams event.\nIn September, Ma withdrew from the men's singles event at the China National Games, citing the tight schedule due to the Tokyo Olympics and mandatory 21-day quarantine. Ma led Beijing to the silver medal in the team event, losing deuce in the fifth game to Fan Zhendong in the finals. Ma held six match points against Fan, but Fan came back with the help of four net balls in the last eight points.\n\n\n=== 2023: Record-extending Fourth Asian Championships Title ===\n\nAt the Lanzhou Station of the 2023 WTT Star Challenge, the men's singles event ushered in the 1/16 finals on October 5. Nine players from the Chinese table tennis team participated in this stage. Fan Zhendong, the world's number one, withdrew due to injury. Wang Chuqin and Ma Long, Liang Jingkun, Lin Gaoyuan, Zhou Qihao and other famous players will play.\nMa Long 3-1 Nanasekaran [11-6, 6-11, 11-7, 11-6]\nMa Long's opponent Nanasekaran is also from India. He is currently 30 years old and 4 years younger than Ma Long. He is currently ranked 107th in the world. Ma Long is ranked third in the world. He lost the second game of this game, but the overall situation of the game was under control. He successfully qualified for the top 16 and then competed with South Korean player Zhao Shengmin for the top eight spots.\n\"Ten years ago, I won the championship in South Korea. I also won the singles championship and the men's doubles. The history is always surprisingly similar. Ten years ago, I could win several singles titles a year, but for me now, I don't only look for championship. Sometimes it is very difficult to win a game. Although it is difficult, I will still try my best to win every victory.\" In the men's singles final of the PyeongChang Asian Table Tennis Championships on September 10, 34-year-old Ma Long defeated Fan Zhendong, the current world number one in men's singles and this year's World Championship champion, ending the singles \"champion drought\" that lasted for more than two years after the Tokyo Olympics, and won the Asian Championship men's singles championship for the fourth time.\n\n\n=== 2024: Third World Cup Title ===\nIn the second half of February 2024, Ma participated in the 2024 World Team Table Tennis Championships in Busan, South Korea, along with his compatriots, Wang Chuqin, Fan Zhendong, Liang Jingkun, and Lin Gaoyuan as representatives for Team China. They won the championships in a 3-0 victory against Team France, ending in a 3-1 match between Ma Long and Simon Gauzy.\nOn 15 April 2024, The ITTF Men’s and Women’s World Cup Macao 2024 commenced, with a brand new qualification system that shocked and confused table tennis players and enthusiasts alike around the world. Despite this, Ma Long emerged as the winner in his group, winning all 8 games he played against Edward Ly (4-0) and Aditya Sareen (4-0). With this victory in the group stage, Ma qualified for the round of 16, where he faced Felix Lebrun and ultimately won 4-2 (11-7, 11-8, 7-11, 11-8, 8-11, 11-8), thereby proceeding to the next stage where he fought against Shunsuke Togami, winning 4 sets to 2 (5-11, 11-5, 7-11, 11-7, 11-3, 11-3).\nHis next opponent for the semifinals after winning against Togami was Wang Chuqin, the world rank no. 1 at the time, a younger, fellow Chinese player of Ma. Wang Chuqin had a winning head-to-head record against Ma Long, winning 8 matches to 2 for Ma. Due to Wang Chuqin winning his 6 most recent encounters with Ma Long, as well as the former’s recent dominance in the men’s side of table tennis, Wang Chuqin was initially expected to win the match. The first game of the match saw the unexpected, early timeout of Ma after Wang challenged the 9-7 lead of Ma by winning the next point, but Ma eventually won the first game. The next three games saw Ma using his unusual reverse pendulum serve, a wise decision as it led him to finally break the streak of Wang and win the match with a 4-0 landslide victory against his younger teammate.\nHis victory led him to face another compatriot of his, Lin Gaoyuan, who won against Tomokazu Harimoto with a similar 4-0 win in the semifinals. Like Wang Chuqin, Lin was the winner of his most recent encounter with Ma, with the former having both his first 2 wins against Ma in 2024. With this, Ma was also expected to having the finals lost to Lin, with Anders Linda commenting in the official video released by ITTFWorld saying that he predicted a 4-1 win for Lin. The expectations were reasonable as Lin Gaoyuan led 3 games to none against Ma 26 minutes into the match. However, things turned for the better for Ma, who—after seeing his reverse pendulum serve posing no threat to Lin—employed yet another unusual serve (as far as Ma Long’s service game goes), a backhand serve, which ultimately made the match more difficult for Lin and thus challenged his mental strength. Ultimately, Ma Long won the match, and thus the World Cup title for the third time, defying limitations set by his relatively senior age, as well as predictions favoring the compatriot he battled against in the semifinals.\nOn July 24, the Chinese sports delegation announced that Ma Long and Feng Yu were the flag bearers of the Chinese sports delegation at the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics. On August 9, the 2024 Paris Olympics men's team gold medal match in table tennis, Wang Chuqin/Ma Long beat Anton Källberg/Kristian Karlsson 3-2, and ultimately helped China beat Sweden 3-0 to win the title. At the same time, Ma Long, who has participated in four Olympic Games, also collected his sixth Olympic gold medal, becoming the first “six gold king” in China's Olympic history.\nMa withdrew from ITTF world rankings on 31 December 2024.\n\n\n=== 2025 ===\nOn April 23, 2025, Ma was appointed as the Vice President of the Chinese Table Tennis Association.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nIn January 2017, Ma Long married his longtime girlfriend Xia Lu, who is from Nanjing, Jiangsu. On 10 December 2017, he announced the birth of their son on Sina Weibo.\nMa has a close friendship with teammate Liu Shiwen and cried when she won the 2019 World Championships.\n\n\n== Career records ==\nSingles (as of October 2024)\nOlympic Games: winner (2016, 2020)\nWorld Championships: winner (2015, 2017, 2019); SF (2009, 2011, 2013, 2023).\nWorld Cup: winner (2012, 2015, 2024); runner-up (2014, 2020); third place (2008, 2009, 2017).\nITTF World Tour Grand Finals: winner (2008, 2009, 2011, 2015, 2016, 2020); runner-up (2013, 2019); SF (2007).\nITTF World Tour winner (28): Kuwait, German Open 2007; Korea, Singapore Open 2008; Danish, Kuwait, Harmony China (Suzhou), English Open 2009; German Open 2010; Harmony China (Suzhou), Austrian, Swedish Open 2011; Hungarian Open 2012; Qatar, China (Changchun), Harmony Open (Suzhou) 2013; China (Chengdu) Open 2014; Kuwait, German, China (Chengdu) Open 2015; German, Qatar Open 2016; Qatar, Japan Open 2017; German, China (Shenzhen) Open 2018; Qatar, China (Shenzhen) Open 2019. Runner-up (21): German Open 2005; Japan, Swedish Open 2007; UAE, China (Shenzhen) Open 2011; Slovenian, China (Shanghai) Open 2012; Kuwait, Korea, UAE Open 2013; Kuwait, Korea, China (Chengdu) Open 2016; Korea Open 2019; German Open 2020; Singapore Smash 2022; Singapore Smash, Macao Champions, Lanzhou Star Contender, Frankfurt Champions 2023; China Smash 2024. \nAsian Games: winner (2010).\nAsian Championships: winner (2009, 2011, 2013, 2023); runner-up (2007).\nAsian Cup: winner (2008, 2009, 2011, 2014), runner-up (2019).\nChina National Games: winner (2013, 2017), runner-up (2009), SF (2005).\nChinese National Championships: winner (2011); runner-up (2004, 2007, 2014, 2020); SF (2006, 2008).\nWorld Junior Championships: winner (2004); QF (2003).\nAsian Junior Championships: winner (2004)\nDoubles\nWorld Championships: winner (2011, 2019); runner-up (2009).\nITTF World Tour Grand Finals: winner (2006); runner-up (2011); SF (2007).\nITTF World Tour winner (26): China (Harbin) Open 2005; Slovenian Open 2006; Swedish Open 2007; Danish, Qatar, English Open 2009; Kuwait, German Open 2010; China (Shenzhen), Austrian Open 2011; Slovenian, Korea, China (Shanghai) Open 2012; China (Suzhou), China (Changchun) Open 2013; China (Chengdu) Open 2014; Japan Open 2015; Japan Open, China (Chengdu) Open 2016; Japan Open 2017; German, Bulgaria Open 2018; Qatar Open 2020; Singapore, Saudi Smash, Taiyuan Contender 2024.Runner-up (12): China (Shenzhen) Open 2005; Singapore Open 2006; China (Shenzhen) Open 2007; Qatar, Korea Open 2008; Kuwait Open 2009; China (Suzhou) Open 2011; Kuwait, Qatar, Korea Open 2013; German Open 2020; Ljubljana Star Contender 2023.\nAsian Games: winner (2014); SF (2006).\nAsian Championships: winner (2007, 2009); runner-up (2013); SF (2011).\nChina National Games: winner (2021); runner-up (2017); SF (2005).\nChinese National Championships: winner (2010, 2015, 2020); runner-up (2006, 2007, 2014); SF (2008).\nWorld Junior Championships: runner-up (2004).\nAsian Junior Championships: runner-up (2003, 2004).\nMixed doubles\nAsian Games: QF (2006).\nAsian Championships: winner (2009); SF (2005).\nChina National Games: winner (2013).\nChinese National Championships: winner (2012); runner-up (2008, 2016).\nWorld Junior Championships: runner-up (2003, 2004).\nAsian Junior Championships: winner (2004).\nTeam\nOlympic Games: 1st (2012, 2016, 2020, 2024)\nWorld Championships: 1st (2006, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014, 2016, 2018, 2022, 2024).\nWorld Cup: 1st (2009, 2010, 2011, 2013, 2015, 2018, 2019, 2023).\nAsian Games: 1st (2006, 2010, 2014, 2022).\nAsian Championships: 1st (2005, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2013, 2015, 2017, 2023).\nChina National Games: 1st(2025); 2nd (2021); 3rd (2009, 2013)\nChinese National Championships: 1st (2011, 2012, 2018); 3rd (2007, 2008, 2010).\nChinese Super League: 1st (2009, 2012, 2013, 2015, 2020, 2022, 2023); 2nd (2021); 3rd (2014, 2016).\nWorld Junior Championships: 1st (2003, 2004).\nAsian Junior Championships: 1st (2004).\nSummary of Accomplishments\n\n6x Olympic Champion (2 Singles, 4 Team)\n14x World Champion (3 Singles, 2 Doubles, 9 Team)\n11x World Cup winner (3 Singles, 8 Team)\n7x ITTF World Tour Grand Finals Champion (6 Singles, 1 Doubles)\n54x ITTF World Tour winner (28 Singles, 26 Doubles)\n6x Asian Games winner (1 Singles, 1 Doubles, 4 Team)\n15x Asian Champion (4 Singles, 2 Doubles, 1 Mixed Doubles, 8 Team)\n4x Asian Cup winner (4 Singles)\n4x China National Games Champion (2 Singles, 1 Doubles, 1 Mixed Doubles)\n7x Chinese National Champion (1 Singles, 2 Doubles, 1 Mixed Doubles, 3 Team)\n5x Chinese Super League Champion (4 Team)\n3x World Junior Champion (1 Singles, 2 Team)\n3x Asian Junior Champion (1 Singles, 1 Mixed Doubles, 1 Team)\n2015, 2016 ITTF Male Star of the Year\n2016 CCTV Sports Personality of the Year\nHead to head vs. other notable players (December 2004 – present)\n(bold indicates a Chinese teammate)\n\nTimo Boll: 17–4\nChen Chien-An: 3–0\nChen Qi: 19–2\nChuang Chih-Yuan: 17–2\nMattias Falck: 4–0\nFan Zhendong: 25–15\nFang Bo: 10–2\nMarcos Freitas: 4–0\nTomokazu Harimoto: 5–2\nGao Ning: 10–0\nHao Shuai: 20–9\nJeoung Young-sik: 6–0\nJoo Se-Hyuk: 20–3\nPetr Korbel: 4–1\nKalinikos Kreanga: 3–0\nFelix Lebrun: 6–0\nLiang Jingkun: 8–1\nLin Gaoyuan: 9–2\nLin Yun-ju: 9–4\nMa Lin: 30–14\nMichael Maze: 7–0\nJun Mizutani: 16–0\nOh Sang-eun: 9–2\nDimitrij Ovtcharov: 20–0\nRyu Seungmin: 7–3\nVladimir Samsonov: 9–5\nWerner Schlager: 9–0\nTang Peng: 14–0\nWang Chuqin: 5–8\nWang Hao: 30–27\nWang Liqin: 32–12\nWong Chun Ting: 21–1\nXu Xin: 32–14\nYan An: 8–3\nKaii Yoshida: 6–1\nZhang Jike: 31–10\nZhou Yu: 10–2\n\nOther Records\nWent unbeaten for 40 singles matches in December 2011.\nDid not drop a single set in six tournaments: Swedish Open 2011, 2012 WTTC, World Team Classic 2013, 2014 and 2016 WTTC.\nIn singles, he has won the World Tour Grand Finals six times, the China Open eight times, the German Open five times, the Qatar Open four times, the Asian Championships four times, and the Asian Cup four times, the most ever.\nOne of two players to sweep all four medals in an Asian Championship (Fan Zhendong).\nMost ITTF World Tour singles titles (28) by a male player.\nMost major titles (14) by a male player.\nFirst player to sweep his opponent in an Olympic Singles final since the Olympics extended matches to seven games in 2004.\nSecond male player to win the World Championships, World Cup, Olympics, and World Tour Grand Finals. He is the first male player to be the defending champion of all four at the same time.\nFastest player ever to win all possible singles titles (2,092 days, from 20 November 2010 to 11 August 2016).\nFastest player ever to complete a \"Full House\" (467 days, from 3 May 2015 to 11 August 2016).\nFirst player, male or female, to win the ITTF Star Player of the Year award in consecutive years.\nWon at least one tournament at every major station on the ITTF World Tour.\nFirst and only male player to have won two consecutive singles titles at the China National Games.\nFirst player to win 3 men's singles titles in the World Championships since Wang Liqin. First player to win them consecutively since Zhuang Zedong.\nFirst and only male player to defend his Olympic Gold Medal in singles.\nFirst and only male player to become a double Grand Slam winner.\nFirst and only Chinese athlete to win 6 Olympic gold medals.\nFirst and only player, male or female, to win 6 Olympic gold medals.\n\n\n== International competitions (Results from the ITTF database) ==\n\n\n== See also ==\nTable tennis at the 2012 Summer Olympics – Men's team\nTable tennis at the 2016 Summer Olympics\nTable tennis at the 2020 Summer Olympics\nTable tennis at the 2024 Summer Olympics – Men's team\n2015 World Table Tennis Championships - Men's Singles\n2017 World Table Tennis Championships - Men's Singles\n2019 World Table Tennis Championships\nTable Tennis World Cup#Winners\nChina national table tennis team\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nMa Long at World Table Tennis\nMa Long at Olympics.com\nMa Long at Olympedia\nMa Long at InterSportStats\nMa Long profile at Table Tennis Master at the Wayback Machine (archived 1 March 2012)\nMa Long profile at Table Tennis Guide\nMa Long at Table Tennis Media\nMa Long Game records\nMa Long Technique and training videos"}
{"title": "Marcus Hurley", "requested": "Marcus Hurley", "extract": "Marcus Latimer Hurley (December 22, 1883 – March 28, 1941) was an American cyclist who competed in the early twentieth century. He specialized in sprint cycling and won 4 gold medals in Cycling at the 1904 Summer Olympics and a bronze medal in the 2 mile race.\n\n\n== Biography ==\nHe was born on December 22, 1883. He was on the first national collegiate basketball championship team in 1908, serving as Columbia University's basketball team's captain.  Hurley served in World War I and was decorated. He died on March 28, 1941.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists at a single Games\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nMarcus Hurley at Olympedia"}
{"title": "Maria Höfl-Riesch", "requested": "Maria Höfl-Riesch", "extract": "Maria Höfl-Riesch (German pronunciation: [maˈʁiːa ˌhøːfl̩ ˈʁiːʃ] ; née Riesch; born 24 November 1984) is a German former alpine ski racer. She is a three-time Olympic champion, two-time World champion, an overall World Cup champion and five-time World junior champion.\nHöfl-Riesch made her World Cup debut in February 2001 and won gold medals in slalom and super combined at the 2010 Winter Olympics. She won the World Cup overall title in 2011. At the 2014 Winter Olympics, she defended her super combined title to win her third Olympic gold medal, and also won a silver medal in the super-G.\n\n\n== Career ==\nBorn in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Höfl-Riesch competed in racing as a junior and won seven medals in all of the disciplines at four Junior World Championships, including three gold medals in combined and super-G.\nAs the racing careers of Martina Ertl-Renz and Hilde Gerg concluded, Höfl-Riesch rose as the leading female racer on the German national team. Injuries cut short her seasons in 2005 and 2006, causing her to miss the 2005 World Championships and the 2006 Winter Olympics.\nDuring the 2009 season, Höfl-Riesch won four slalom events on the World Cup tour and won the gold medal in the slalom at the World Championships. Prior to 2009, her most successful season was in 2004, when she finished third in the overall World Cup standings, with three race victories. She also finished third in the overall standings in 2008. In the 2007 season she won her second downhill race, at Lake Louise, Canada.\nRiesch won two gold medals at the 2010 Winter Olympics, in the super combined and slalom. After finishing second in the overall World Cup standings in 2009 and 2010, Riesch built a big lead early in the 2011 season which was enough to win the overall title, besting three-time defending champion Lindsey Vonn of the U.S. by just three points. At the World Cup finals in Lenzerheide, Vonn took the overall lead after the downhill, then Riesch reclaimed it after the slalom; the super-G and giant slalom races were cancelled due to poor conditions. She retired after the 2014 season after crashing in the downhill World Cup Final.\n\n\n== Personal ==\nHöfl-Riesch is also a nationally ranked tennis player and a cyclist. Her younger sister, Susanne Riesch, is also a former World Cup ski racer, specializing in the slalom. Her uncle, Wolfgang Zimmerer was a bobsledder during the 1960s and 1970s and competed for West Germany in the Winter Olympics, winning gold with Peter Utzschneider at the Two-man bobsleigh during the 1972 Winter Olympics. She has been a chief constable in the Bundeszollverwaltung (German Federal Customs Service) during her sports career.\nOne of her closest friends (and major rival) on the World Cup tour was Lindsey Vonn of the United States.\nHöfl-Riesch married her manager Marcus Höfl on 14 April 2011.\nAt a height of 1.82 m (5 ft 11+1⁄2 in), she was one of the tallest women on the World Cup circuit.\n\n\n== World Cup results ==\n\n\n=== Season titles ===\n6 titles – (1 overall, 1 downhill, 1 super-G, 2 slalom, 1 combined)\n\n\n=== Season standings ===\n\nSource:\n\n\n=== Race victories ===\n27 wins – (11 DH, 3 SG, 9 SL, 4 SC) + 1 NTE\n\n\n== World Championship results ==\n\n\n== Olympic results ==\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of FIS Alpine Ski World Cup women's race winners\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nMaria Höfl-Riesch at FIS (alpine)\nMaria Höfl-Riesch at FIS (ski jumping)\nMaria Höfl-Riesch at Olympics.com\nMaria Höfl-Riesch at the German Olympic Sports Confederation (in German)\nMaria Höfl-Riesch at Olympedia\nMaria Höfl-Riesch at InterSportStats\nMaria Höfl-Riesch at Ski-DB Alpine Ski Database \nPhoto report: Celebrating Maria Riesch\nOfficial website"}
{"title": "Marianne Timmer", "requested": "Marianne Timmer", "extract": "Maria Aaltje \"Marianne\" Timmer (born 3 October 1974) is a Dutch former speed skater specializing in the middle distances (1000 and 1500 m). At the 1998 Winter Olympics she won a gold medal in both these events.\n\n\n== Speed skating career ==\nIn 1999 she won the 1000 m in the World Single Distance Championships and in 2004 became world champion in the sprint. In 2006, she won the 1000 m at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin. This made her the first skater from the Netherlands to win a gold medal at two different Winter Games.\nTimmer broke through at the Junior World Championship in 1994, winning bronze. She began to specialize in the shorter distances.\n\n\n=== Nagano 1998 ===\nTimmer won gold in the 1000 and 1500 meter races during the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, beating Chris Witty in the 1000m and Gunda Niemann in the 1500m.\n\n\n=== Salt Lake City 2002 ===\nAt the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Timmer finished 8th in the 500m, fourth in the 1000m, and 21st in the 1500m.\n\n\n=== World Sprint Speed Skating Championships, Nagano 2004 ===\nOn 18 January 2004, Timmer became the first Dutch woman to win a World Sprint Speed Skating Championship. Though she did not win any individual distances (she got three third and one fourth place), she was the most consistent athlete and won the overall championship.\n\n\n=== Turin 2006 ===\nAt the Dutch championships, Timmer qualified for the 500m and 1000m events at the 2006 Winter Olympics. She was disqualified after a false start in the 500m race, but a week later she surprisingly won gold in the 1000m, beating out favorites Cindy Klassen and Anni Friesinger by a very slim margin. This result qualified her for the 1500m, where she finished 14th.\n\n\n=== 2008–09 season ===\nIn January 2008, Timmer announced she wished to extend her contract with sponsor DSB Bank, until the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, and at the end of February 2008 the contract was signed.\n\n\n=== 2009–10 season ===\nOn 13 November 2009, Timmer broke her heel on the 500m, during a World Cup event in Thialf. She failed to qualify for the Winter Games in Vancouver.\n\n\n=== 2010–11 season ===\nAt the 2011 Dutch Single Distance Championships in Thialf, Timmer got the third-fastest time on the first 500m, but ran into Marrit Leenstra on the second 500m, and fell. The next day, on the 1000m, she did not get farther than tenth place. Because of her first 500m result, she did qualify for the 2010–11 ISU Speed Skating World Cup.\nShe published a biography in 2010, written by De Telegraaf journalist Frank Woestenburg.\nShe withdrew from the Dutch Sprint Championship on 27 December 2010 after a disappointing 500m on the first day. In May 2010 Timmer, Annette Gerritsen, and Margot Boer left the Control team to start their own team, sponsored by Liga, a company manufacturing biscuits and crackers. She stopped skating on 28 December 2010, though she said she would remain involved with Team Liga. Her official goodbye took place during the Tijdens het 2011 World Sprint Speed Skating Championships in Heerenveen, on 22 January 2011. On that occasion she was named an honorary member of the KNSB.\n\n\n== Records ==\n\n\n=== Personal records ===\n\n\n=== World records ===\n\n\n== Tournament summary ==\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nTimmer was born in Sappemeer. She was previously married to her former coach Peter Mueller. They were married in Las Vegas in 2001, after which he added her to Spaar Select, his skating team, against the wishes of the other skaters, in what a reviewer of his autobiography called a \"dominating and intimidating\" way. Timmer and Mueller broke up in 2003, and Mueller avenged himself on Timmer in his autobiography. She was married to ex-goalkeeper Henk Timmer. After a fifteen-year relationship and seven years of marriage, the couple split up in 2019.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nMarianne Timmer at SkateResults.com\nPhotos of Marianne Timmer\nOlympic Medal Winners\nProfile page of Marianne Timmer on Teamliga.nl Archived 2014-01-03 at the Wayback Machine\nMarianne Timmer at Olympics.com Marianne Timmer at Olympic.org (archived) \nMarianne Timmer at NOC*NSF (in Dutch) (English translation)"}
{"title": "Marie-José Pérec", "requested": "Marie-José Pérec", "extract": "Marie-José Pérec (French: [maʁi ʒoze peʁɛk] ; born 9 May 1968) is a retired French track and field sprinter who specialised in the 200 and 400 metres and is a three-time Olympic gold medalist. She was born in the French overseas department of Guadeloupe and moved to Paris when she was 16 years old.\n\n\n== Athletics career ==\nPérec first represented France in the 200 metres event at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, reaching the quarter-finals. She won the 400 metres world title at the 1991 World Championships in Tokyo and repeated the feat at the 1995 World Championships in Gothenburg. She won her first Olympic gold medal in the 400 metres event at the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona.\nShe entered the 200 metres and 400 metres events at the 1996 Atlanta Games and won both, achieving the second-ever Olympic 200 metres/400 metres gold medal double, after Valerie Brisco-Hooks in Los Angeles 1984. Pérec won the 400 metres title in an Olympic record time of 48.25 seconds, which ranked her as the third-fastest woman of all time. It took another 23 years before Salwa Eid Naser, in October 2019, surpassed her mark to demote Pérec to fourth in the list of world's fastest-ever female 400-metre sprinters.\nIn addition to her Olympic and World titles, Pérec won the 400 metres title and was part of the gold medal-winning 4 × 400 metres relay team at the 1994 European Championships in Helsinki. The two 1996 Olympic golds were Pérec's last international titles. In 1997, she shifted to the 200 metres but withdrew at the semi-finals stage in the World Championships that year after sustaining a thigh muscle injury while warming up. She was diagnosed with glandular fever in March 1998, and the long recovery forced her to take time out from competitions until the following year.\nOn 8 July 2000, having not run a 400 metres race since 1996, Pérec began her Olympic title defence by finishing third in Nice (at the Nikaia meeting of the 2000 IAAF Grand Prix), behind eventual Olympic silver and bronze medalists Lorraine Graham and Katharine Merry. This was the last significant race Pérec took part in. On 22 September 2000, she pulled out of the 200 metres and 400 metres events of the 2000 Sydney Games, several days before they were due to start. Pérec claimed that she had been threatened and insulted several times since arriving in Australia and that the local press, who were supporting Australian athlete Cathy Freeman, had been trying to sabotage her chances of winning 400 metres gold.\nPérec trained in Los Angeles with the HSI track team and is listed as a legend on the team's page. She officially retired from competitive athletics in June 2004 at the age of 36.\n\n\n== Life after retirement from athletics ==\nPérec enrolled in the top French business school ESSEC and graduated in 2007 with a Master's in Sports Management.\nShe is a member of the 'Champions for Peace' club, a group of more than 70 famous elite athletes committed to promoting peace in the world through sports, created by Peace and Sport, a Monaco-based international organisation.\nOn 21 October 2012, Pérec was elected president of the Ligue Régionale d'Athlétisme de la Guadeloupe, the governing body for athletics in Guadeloupe.\nPérec participated in the French reality music competition Mask Singer as the Red Panther, performing Stromae's \"Papaoutai\" and Angèle's \"Balance ton quoi\" before being eliminated in the first episode.\nOn 26 July 2024, Pérec and judoka Teddy Riner lit the Olympic cauldron at the 2024 Summer Olympics opening ceremony in Paris.\n\n\n== Family ==\nPérec's partner is French freestyle skier Sébastien Foucras. They have one child, a son named Nolan, born on 30 March 2010.\n\n\n== Awards ==\nPérec was chosen as the French Champion of Champions in 1992 and 1996 by the French sports daily L'Équipe.\nOn 9 October 2013, she was awarded the Officier de la Légion d'honneur by French President François Hollande in the Élysée Palace. Just before presenting the insignia to Pérec during the award ceremony, Hollande described her as \"one of the most brilliant athletes in the history of French athletics\". She had received the Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur in 1996.\nPérec was inducted into the IAAF Hall of Fame in November 2013.\n\n\n== Personal bests ==\n\nRankings outside the brackets are world rankings\nRankings inside the brackets are European\nFR = French record\nOR = Olympic record\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nMarie-José Pérec at World Athletics \nEvans, Hilary; Gjerde, Arild; Heijmans, Jeroen; Mallon, Bill; et al. \"Marie-José Pérec\". Olympics at Sports-Reference.com. Sports Reference LLC. Archived from the original on 9 August 2011. Retrieved 29 March 2018."}
{"title": "Marit Bjørgen", "requested": "Marit Bjørgen", "extract": "Marit Bjørgen (born 21 March 1980) is a former Norwegian cross-country skier. She is ranked first in the all-time Cross-Country World Cup rankings with 114 individual victories. Bjørgen is also the most successful sprinter in Cross-Country World Cup history, with 29 victories. She headed the medal table at the 2010 Winter Olympics by winning five medals, including three gold. A five-time Olympian, her five Olympic medals at the 2018 Pyeongchang Games brought her total number of medals up to a record 15, making her the most decorated Winter Olympian of all time and the third-most decorated Olympian of all time.\nOn 6 April 2018, Bjørgen announced her retirement from cross-country skiing following the 2017–18 season. In May 2020, she announced that she would return to competition with long-distance cross-country ski squad Team Ragde Eiendom, with a focus on competing in Vasaloppet in March 2021.\nOn 28 April 2022, she announced the end of her career by also finishing her long-distance career.\n\n\n== World Cup ==\nMarit Bjørgen initially excelled at the sprint events, and seven victories in that event was enough to give her second place overall in the 2003–04 FIS Cross-Country World Cup season. However, in the 2004–05 season, Bjørgen became an accomplished distance skier.\nOn 19 March 2006 in Sapporo, Japan, Bjørgen claimed her second FIS World Cup title. Bjørgen led the overall World Cup by 66 points, ahead of Canada's Beckie Scott going into the final race of the season, the 2 x 7.5 km double pursuit. Scott needed to win the race and for Bjørgen to finish no higher than eighth to claim the title. Scott did win the race but Bjørgen came fourth, winning the crystal globe with 1036 points to Scott's 1020. Bjørgen also won the sprint title for the season, 6 points ahead of Norway's Ella Gjømle, making the 2005–06 season the fourth season in a row that Bjørgen won the sprint title. Bjørgen finished the distance standings in fourth place, 108 points behind Russia's Julija Tchepalova.\n\nBjørgen made the podium eight times during the 2005–06 season, six of them in first place, one second and one third place. Bjørgen now has 70 podium finishes, 46 of them in first place, 13 in second and 11 in third. 22 of her victories have been in the sprint, which is by far her most successful event. Seven of these victories were in the 2003–04 season and they had decreased in the previous few seasons whilst her results in the other disciplines improved. She has nine victories in the 10 km and seven in the pursuit. Her four other victories have been in longer races (30 km. and Vasaloppet).\nBjørgen has competed in the World Cup since 2000, when she finished the season in 53rd place overall and 48th in the sprints. The season after, she finished the overall season in 32nd and the sprint in 36th. The following season (2002–03), she won the sprint title and finished in 6th place overall. The 2003–04 season was Bjørgen's best season up until that time when she again won the sprint title, and came 11th in the distance standings, finishing the season in 2nd place behind Gabriella Paruzzi. In the 2004–05 season she won all the titles, and again won the overall and sprint title in 2005–06.\nIn 2011–12 she claimed the overall title for the third time, ahead of Poland's Justyna Kowalczyk.\nIn 2015 Bjørgen won her first Tour de Ski after nine attempts, defeating reigning champion and compatriot Therese Johaug by over one and a half minutes.\n\n\n== World Championships ==\nBjørgen has eighteen World Championship gold medals, twelve of them individual. Her first gold medal in the World Championships came in the individual sprint in Val di Fiemme in 2003, where she also picked up a silver in the 4 × 5 km. She took three medals in Oberstdorf in 2005 in the 30 km classical, team sprint, and 4 × 5 km. She also won a silver in the 7.5 km + 7.5 km double pursuit and a bronze in the 10 km free in the same games. At the 2007 championships in Sapporo, Bjørgen won two bronze medals in team sprint (with Astrid Jacobsen) and in the 4 × 5 km. In Holmenkollen 2011 she won the individual sprint, the pursuit, the 10 km classical, the 4 × 5 km, and a silver in the 30km.  In the 2013 Val di Fiemme World Championships she won the individual sprint, the double pursuit, the 4 x 5 km, the 30 km, and a silver in the 10 km freestyle.\nIn the World Championships 2011, held at Holmenkollen, Oslo, during February and March 2011, Bjørgen won gold medals in the Sprint, the 10-kilometre classic, the 15-kilometre pursuit and the 4 × 5-kilometre relay.  She also finished second to Therese Johaug in the 30-kilometre freestyle.\n\n\n== Olympics ==\n\nBjørgen had a disappointing Winter Olympics in Turin. She suffered from bronchitis a week before the games started and was prescribed antibiotics, then in the first race of the games, the 7.5 km + 7.5 km double pursuit, Bjørgen withdrew during the classic phase complaining of an upset stomach. In the next event, the team sprint, Bjørgen and Hilde G. Pedersen came fourth, and despite winning a silver in the 10 km, the remainder of the games went poorly for her. The next event was the 4 × 5 km relay, where Bjørgen took the anchor leg and finished in fifth place, the first time since 1988 that Norway had failed to reach the podium in the women's relay. In the individual sprint, Bjørgen failed to make the semi-finals, and both Bjørgen and Pedersen decided not to compete in the 30 km and returned home to Norway. Afterwards she was quoted as saying she was \"sick and tired of Pragelato and OL (Olympic games)\".\nHowever Bjørgen recovered to win the 45 km Vasaloppet from Oxberg to Mora on 4 March, eight days after the end of the Winter Olympics. Bjørgen broke away with Hilde Pedersen and Vibeke Skofterud after only 10 km, but Skofterud could not keep up with the pace and fell back, and Bjørgen powered away from Pedersen with a few kilometres left, winning in a time of 2:17:53, 1:22 ahead of Pedersen and 3:23 ahead of Petra Majdič of Slovenia. Winning a purse of 88,000 SEK and also winning two of the three sprints during the race to add another 10,000 SEK. Then three days later on 7 March, Bjørgen finished second in the individual sprint event in Borlänge, Sweden.\nIn the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Bjørgen finished third in the 10 km freestyle event, before winning her first Olympic gold medal in the sprint. In the sprint she was up against a very strong field, consisting of Petra Majdič of Slovenia who had taken a serious fall earlier in the day during warm-up, and Justyna Kowalczyk of Poland who was leading the overall World Cup standings coming into the race. Bjørgen won her second gold in the 2 × 7.5-kilometre on 19 February 2010. Bjørgen was also part of the 4 × 5 km relay team that won gold on 25 February 2010, finishing with enough time to cross the line with a large Norwegian flag given to her by a spectator near the finish, and jumping over the finish line. She closed out her trip in Vancouver by taking silver 0.3 seconds behind Poland's Justyna Kowalczyk in the women's 30 km event.\nBjørgen won gold at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi in the 15 km skiathlon, the Team sprint and the 30km freestyle race. These three Olympic medals brought her total up to ten, equaling the record for most Winter Olympic medals held by a woman, already achieved by Stefania Belmondo and Raisa Smetanina; but of the three record holders at the time, Bjørgen had the most golds.\nBjørgen is a five-time Olympian, having competed in every Winter Olympics since Salt Lake City in 2002 where she won her first silver medal. At the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang she won her 11th–15th Olympic medals, the highest number of medals won by any athlete in Winter Olympics history.\n\n\n== Holmenkollen ==\nBjørgen won the women's 30 km event at the Holmenkollen ski festival in 2005. She won the same event five years later in 2010. This was the first World Cup event to be held at Holmenkollen since the completion of the new ski jumping hill. For her win in both the 30 km and the sprint event, along with her successes at the 2010 Games in Vancouver, Bjørgen was awarded the Holmenkollen medal. On 11 March 2018, Bjørgen won a record seventh 30 km in Holmenkollen.\n\n\n== International Fair Play Mecenate Award ==\nBjørgen was awarded the International Fair Play Mecenate award for 2014. The jury of the Fair Play Mecenate consists of members from all continents and represents the international sports media and various international sports organisations. The jury states that the Fair Play Mecenate is awarded Marit Bjørgen \"for the particular ethical and fair play behaviour that you have always had both in your agonistic career and in your demonstrations of great sportsmanship and solidarity\".\n\n\n== Asthma medications ==\nIn the 2009–2010 season Bjørgen had a Therapeutic Use Exemption (TUE) issued by the International Ski Federation (FIS) for the asthma medication Symbicort which contained substances on the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) prohibited list. Bjørgen continued to use the medication over the 2010 Olympics and was strongly criticized by Justyna Kowalczyk who accused her of doping. As of September 2011 athletes no longer need a TUE for Symbicort, and the drug can be used by any athlete but only in a restricted dose.\n\n\n== Cross-country skiing results ==\nAll results are sourced from the International Ski Federation (FIS).\n\n\n=== Olympic Games ===\n15 medals – (8 gold, 4 silver, 3 bronze)\n\n\n=== World Championships ===\n26 medals – (18 gold, 5 silver, 3 bronze)\n\n\n=== World Cup ===\n\n\n==== Season titles ====\n12 titles – (4 Overall, 3 Distance, 5 Sprint)\n\n\n==== Season standings ====\n\n\n==== Individual podiums ====\n114 victories – (84 WC, 30 SWC)\n184 podiums – (126 WC, 58 SWC)\n\n\n==== Team podiums ====\n30 victories – (20 RL, 10 TS)\n37 podiums – (27 RL, 10 TS)\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nBjørgen lives with her partner Fred Børre Lundberg, a former Olympic champion in Nordic combined, in Holmenkollen, Oslo. In 2015, Bjørgen announced that she was pregnant and would not compete in the coming season, aiming for a return in the 2017 season. Her first son was born on 26 December 2015. After having retired at the end of the 2018 season she gave birth to a second son in March 2019.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nMarit Bjoergen at the International Ski and Snowboard Federation\nMarit Bjoergen at Olympics.com\nMarit Bjørgen at Olympedia\nESPN\nfasterskier"}
{"title": "Marja-Liisa Kirvesniemi", "requested": "Marja-Liisa Kirvesniemi", "extract": "Marja-Liisa Kirvesniemi (née Hämäläinen; born 10 September 1955) is a Finnish former cross-country skier.\n\n\n== Career ==\nShe was the big figure at the 1984 Olympics in Sarajevo, winning all three individual cross-country skiing events (5, 10 and 20 km), and a bronze medal for Finland in the relay. In the process, she became the most successful athlete at the 1984 Winter Olympics. At the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, she won another relay bronze medal, and at the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, she won two more bronze medals in the 5 and 30 km.\nAt the FIS Nordic World Ski Championships, Kirvesniemi won three golds in the 10 km (1989) and 4 × 5 km relay (1978, 1989), and five silvers in the 5 km (1985, 1991), 10 km (1985) and 15 km (1989, 1993). She also won the 20 km double pursuit at the 1989 Holmenkollen ski festival.\nKirvesniemi won the Holmenkollen medal in 1989. Her husband, Harri, would be awarded the Holmenkollen medal in 1998. They were the third husband-and-wife pair that won this prestigious honor. They are the only married couple to have both competed at six Olympics, and are among the only eight Finns to have done so - the others being Janne Ahonen (ski jumping), Raimo Helminen (ice hockey), Teemu Selänne (ice hockey), Kyra Kyrklund (dressage), Juha Hirvi (shooting), and Hannu Manninen (Nordic combined).\n\n\n== Cross-country skiing results ==\nAll results are sourced from the International Ski Federation (FIS).\n\n\n=== Olympic Games ===\n7 medals – (3 gold, 4 bronze)\n\n\n=== World Championships ===\n8 medals – (3 gold, 5 silver)\n\n\n=== World Cup ===\n\n\n==== Season titles ====\n2 titles – (2 overall)\n\n\n==== Season standings ====\n\n\n==== Individual podiums ====\n11 victories\n27 podiums\n\n\n==== Team podiums ====\n1 victory\n8 podiums\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of athletes with the most appearances at Olympic Games\n\n\n== References ==\n\nHolmenkollen medalists - click Holmenkollmedaljen for downloadable pdf file (in Norwegian)\nHolmenkollen winners since 1892 - click Vinnere for downloadable pdf file (in Norwegian)\n\n\n== External links ==\nMarja-Liisa Kirvesniemi Haemaelaeinen at the International Ski and Snowboard Federation\nMarja-Liisa Kirvesniemi Haemaelaeinen at Olympics.com \nMarja-Liisa Hämäläinen-Kirvesniemi at Olympedia \nMarja-Liisa Kirvesniemi at Olympiakomitea.fi (in Finnish)"}
{"title": "Mark Spitz", "requested": "Mark Spitz", "extract": "Mark Andrew Spitz (born February 10, 1950) is an American former competitive swimmer and nine-time Olympic champion. He was the most successful athlete at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, winning seven gold medals, each in world-record time. This achievement set a record that lasted for 36 years, until it was surpassed by fellow American Michael Phelps, who won eight golds at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. Phelps, like Spitz, set seven world records.\nBetween 1968 and 1972, Spitz won nine Olympic golds, a silver, and a bronze, in addition to five Pan American golds, 31 Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) titles, and eight National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) titles. During those years he set 35 world records, two of which were in trials and unofficial. Swimming World Magazine named him World Swimmer of the Year in 1969, 1971, and 1972. He was the third athlete to win nine Olympic gold medals.\n\n\n== Early life ==\nSpitz was born on February 10, 1950, in Modesto, California, the eldest of three children of Lenore Sylvia (née Smith) and Arnold Spitz. His family is Jewish; his mother's family, originally surnamed Sklotkovick, was from Russia. When he was two years old, his family moved to Honolulu, Hawaii, where he swam at Waikiki beach every day. \"You should have seen that little boy dash into the ocean. He'd run like he was trying to commit suicide,\" Lenore Spitz told a reporter for Time in 1968. When he was six, the family returned to Sacramento, California, and he began to compete at his local swim club. At age nine, he was training at Arden Hills Swim Club in Sacramento with swimming coach Sherm Chavoor, who mentored six other Olympic medal winners.\nAt 10, Spitz held one world age-group record and 17 national records. When Spitz was 14, his family moved to Santa Clara, where he joined the Santa Clara Swim Club and was trained by coach George F. Haines. From 1964 to 1968, Spitz trained with Haines at SCSC and Santa Clara High School. During his four years there, Spitz held national high school records in every stroke and in every distance. In 1966 at age 16, he won the 100-meter butterfly at the AAU national championships, the first of his 24 total AAU titles. The following year, Spitz emerged on the world swimming stage when he set his first world record at a small California meet with a time of 4:10.60 in the 400-meter freestyle.\n\n\n== Swimming career ==\n\n\n=== Maccabiah Games ===\nSpitz swam in his first international competition at the 1965 Maccabiah Games in Israel. At age 15 and weighing 130 pounds, he won four gold medals in Tel Aviv—the 400 m freestyle, the 1500 m freestyle, the 400 m individual medley, and the 800 m freestyle relay—and was named the most outstanding athlete of the Games.\nHe returned to Israel in 1969 following the Mexico Olympics to again compete, at the 1969 Maccabiah Games, where he won six gold medals and was again named outstanding athlete of the Games.\nIn 1985, Spitz lit the torch to open the 1985 Maccabiah Games.\nIn 2005, he was a member of the U.S. delegation at the 2005 Maccabiah Games. He spoke at the JCC Maccabiah Games Opening Ceremonies, which was held in Richmond, Virginia. The Weinstein JCC in Richmond was one of the Host JCC's for the 2005 games, with over 1,000 teenagers participating in various sports, including swimming.\n\n\n=== Pan American Games ===\nHe won five gold medals at the 1967 Pan American Games, setting a record that lasted until 2007 when Brazilian swimmer Thiago Pereira won six golds at the XV Pan American Games in Rio de Janeiro.\n\n\n=== 1968 Olympics ===\n\nSpitz was already the holder of ten world records, and he brashly predicted that he would win six gold medals at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City. However, he won only two team golds: the 4×100-meter freestyle relay in 3:31.70, and the 4×200-meter freestyle relay in 7:52.33.  In addition, Spitz finished second to fellow American Doug Russell in the 100-meter butterfly. He lost to Russell by a half second, despite holding the world record and having beaten Russell the previous ten times they had swum against each other that year. Russell did briefly match Spitz's world record in late August 1967, holding the record equally with Spitz for five days before Spitz regained it solely on October 2, 1967. As a result of being beaten by Russell, Spitz did not get to swim in the 4×100-meter medley relay, which gave Russell his second gold medal and the USA team another world record performance.\n\n\n=== College training ===\nSpitz was disappointed in his 1968 Olympic performance. In January 1969, he decided to attend Indiana University to train with Indiana Hoosiers swimming coach Doc Counsilman, who was also his Olympic coach in Mexico City. He called choosing Indiana and Counsilman \"the biggest decision of my life (and) the best.\" While at Indiana, Spitz won eight individual NCAA titles. In 1971, he won the James E. Sullivan Award as the top amateur athlete in the United States. Spitz also set a number of world records during the U.S. Olympic Swim Trials held in Chicago's Portage Park in 1972.\nHe was nicknamed \"Mark the Shark\" by his teammates.\n\n\n=== 1972 Olympics ===\n\nAt the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Spitz was back to repeat his quest for the six gold medals. He did even better, winning seven Olympic gold medals. Furthermore, Spitz set a new world record in each of the seven events – 100-meter freestyle (51.22), 200-meter freestyle (1:52.78), 100-meter butterfly (54.27), 200-meter butterfly (2:00.70), 4×100-meter freestyle relay (3:26.42), 4×200-meter freestyle relay (7:35.78), and 4×100-meter medley relay (3:48.16). Spitz was originally reluctant to swim the 100-meter freestyle, fearing that he would not win the gold medal. Minutes before the race, he confessed on the pool deck to ABC's Donna de Varona, \"I know I say I don't want to swim before every event, but this time I'm serious. If I swim six and win six, I'll be a hero. If I swim seven and win six, I'll be a failure.\" Spitz won by half a stroke in a world-record time of 51.22 seconds.\n\nSpitz is one of eight Olympians (four of them swimmers) to win nine or more career gold medals: Larisa Latynina, Paavo Nurmi, Carl Lewis, Katie Ledecky, and Caeleb Dressel also have nine; only Michael Phelps and Johannes Høsflot Klæbo have won more, with 23 and 11 respectively. Spitz's record of seven gold medals in a single Olympics was not surpassed until Phelps broke the record at the 2008 Summer Olympics.\nAfter he had completed his events, Spitz left Munich early as a result of the Munich Massacre, where eleven Israeli athletes were taken hostage and later murdered by Palestinian terrorists. Being Jewish himself, there was concern among the Olympic authorities that Spitz would become a likely target for the Palestinians and he was escorted to London for his own safety, briefly with an escort of U.S. Marines.\n\n\n=== Retirement ===\nFollowing the Munich Olympics, Spitz retired from competition even though he was only 22 years old.\nAt age 41, Spitz attempted a comeback for the 1992 Summer Olympics after filmmaker Bud Greenspan offered him a million dollars if he succeeded in qualifying. Spitz's comeback attempt made the cover of Parade and was also reported on in Sports Illustrated and Esquire. Filmed by Greenspan's cameras, Spitz was two seconds slower than the Olympic standard and failed to qualify.\nIn 1999, Spitz ranked No. 33 on ESPN SportsCentury 50 Greatest Athletes, the only aquatic athlete to make the list.\n\n\n== Hall of Fame ==\nInternational Swimming Hall of Fame, Inducted 1977.\nInternational Jewish Sports Hall of Fame, Inducted 1979.\nUnited States Olympic Hall of Fame, Inducted 1983.\nSouthern California Jewish Sports Hall of Fame Inducted 1990.\nSan Jose Sports Hall of Fame, inducted Wednesday, November 14, 2007.\nNational Jewish Museum Sports Hall of Fame, Inducted 2007.\nLong Beach City College Hall of Fame, Inducted 2007\nIndiana University Athletics Hall of Fame\n\n\n== Film and television career ==\nAfter Spitz retired from competitive swimming at age 22, he was managed by the William Morris Agency, which tried to get him into show business while he was still a household name due to his athletic success.\nA poster featuring Spitz wearing his swimsuit and gold medals led ESPN to retroactively label him \"the hottest pin-up since Betty Grable\".\nIn Spitz's TV debut, he appeared as himself in a skit as a dentist on a Bob Hope special that aired October 5, 1972.  In 1973–74, Spitz appeared on TV's The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour. On the TV drama Emergency!, he portrayed Pete Barlow, whose wife (played by Spitz's wife, Suzy) is accidentally shot by a handgun in an overfull drawer. He also appeared briefly on The Dean Martin Celebrity Roast of California Governor Ronald Reagan in September 1973.\nSpitz went to work for ABC Sports in 1976 and worked on many sports presentations, including coverage of the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal and the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. In 1985 he appeared as a TV announcer in Challenge of a Lifetime. He continued as a broadcaster for some time, but within a few years, he was hardly seen as a public figure except perhaps as a commentator for swimming events like the 2004 Summer Olympics. Instead Spitz focused on his real estate company in Beverly Hills and hobbies such as sailing.\nSpitz licensed his image for use in the 2001 film, Scotland, PA, which is a spoof of Macbeth set in the 1970s. The character Donald is a huge fan of Mark Spitz and has a poster of him in his bedroom over his television where he watches recordings of Spitz in competition. Director Billy Morrissette's audio commentary notes that they were told when obtaining the license that the poster did not exist when the footage aired. He explained to Spitz's people that the film was a comedy and not going for strict historical accuracy.\n\n\n=== Narration ===\nSpitz narrated Freedom's Fury, a 2006 Hungarian documentary about the Olympic water polo team's Blood in the Water match against the Soviet Union during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 which was repressed by the Soviet Union—considered among the most famous water polo matches. The film was executive produced by Quentin Tarantino and Lucy Liu, and made its debut at the Tribeca Film Festival.\n\n\n=== Commercials ===\nHe appeared in an advertisement for the California Milk Advisory Board. One of his print advertisements featured the caption \"I always drink it--is something I like to do. I want to be loved by the mothers.\"\nIn 1974, he was in a number of Schick razors commercials. In 1998 he appeared with Evel Knievel in a TV commercial for PlayStation.\nIn 1982, bestselling author Clive Cussler, mentioned Mark Spitz in the novel \"Pacific Vortex!\", the origin-story of Dirk Pitt.\nIn 2004, he appeared in a TV commercial for Sprint PCS. Then in November 2007, Spitz made a cameo appearance on Amanda Beard's first television commercial (for GoDaddy) featuring her own seven Olympic medals (won between 1996 and 2004). The ad was entitled \"Shock\". Also, in 2007 he appeared in the infomercial for the \"Orbitrek Elite\" fitness workout.\nIn 2012, Spitz appeared in a commercial for Ageless Male, a testosterone supplement.\nIn a 2019 commercial, Spitz pitched a personal EKG device by KardiaMobile.\nIn 2022, Spitz endorsed the health supplement Relief Factor.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\n\n\n=== Family life ===\n\nWhen Spitz returned from the Olympics, he began dating Suzy Weiner, a UCLA theater student and part-time model, who also was the daughter of one of his father's business acquaintances. Less than a year after the Munich Olympics, they were married on May 6, 1973, in a traditional Jewish service at the Beverly Hills Hotel. They have two sons, Matthew (born October 1981) and Justin (born September 1991). Justin was a member of the Stanford swim team. Spitz and his wife reside in Los Angeles, California.\n\n\n=== Education ===\nAt Indiana University from 1968 to 1972, Spitz was a pre-dental student and member of Phi Kappa Psi fraternity. Time magazine asked him if he wanted to return to dental school after the Olympics. \"I always wanted to be a dentist from the time I was in high school, and I was accepted to dental school in the spring of 1972. I was planning to go, but after the Olympics there were other opportunities. I did some television and speaking engagements, and things just went from there.\" Spitz graduated from Indiana University in 1972.\n\n\n=== Post-swimming career ===\nAfter Spitz's return to the United States following the 1972 Olympics, he landed several lucrative corporate endorsement contracts.  He earned about $7 million in a two-year period.  \"A million dollars in 1972 would be equivalent to more than $10 million today,\" Spitz said in 2007.  \"I did very well, thank you very much.\" Spitz added, \"I would say I was a pioneer. There wasn't anyone who'd gone to the Olympics before me who capitalized the same way on opportunity. It depends on timing, it depends on hype, it depends on the economy, and most importantly, it depends on looks. I mean, I've never seen a magazine of uglies. That's our society. I'm not saying it's right. That's just the facts.\" Spitz went on to start a real estate company.\nPer his official website, Spitz is self-employed as a corporate spokesperson and motivational speaker. However, Yahoo! Sports reported his occupation as  stock broker and motivational speaker.  According to a 2008 Sports Illustrated interview, \"Spitz became a stockbroker in 2002 and has since moved into private equity.  He is now also dabbling in the 'water business', as he calls it, and is in negotiations to build a water-bottling facility on aquifer-rich land that he and a business partner own.\"\nSpitz has pursued various entrepreneurial projects with former NBA player Rick Barry.  He traveled the world, delivering about 25 lectures a year. His biography, The Extraordinary Life of An Olympic Champion by Richard J. Foster, was released in July 2008.\nIn July 2012, he endorsed Istanbul's bid to host the 2020 Summer Olympics, but the award went to Tokyo.\n\n\n=== Hobbies ===\nHis hobbies include sailing, skiing and collecting art.\n\n\n=== Famous moustache during Olympics ===\nIn an era when other swimmers, male and female, were shaving body hair, he swam with a moustache. When asked why he initially grew one, he stated: \"I grew the moustache because a coach in college said I couldn't grow one.\" Spitz said he originally grew the moustache as a form of rebellion against the clean-cut look imposed on him in college. \"It took a long time to grow,\" he said.  It took four months to grow, but Spitz was proud of it, and decided the moustache was a \"good-luck piece\". \nSpitz is quoted as saying, \"When I went to the Olympics, I had every intention of shaving the moustache off, but I realized I was getting so many comments about it—and everybody was talking about it—that I decided to keep it. I had some fun with a Russian coach who asked me if my moustache slowed me down. I said, 'No, as a matter of fact, it deflects water away from my mouth, allows my rear end to rise and make me bullet-shaped in the water, and that's what had allowed me to swim so great.'\nAccording to a Sports Illustrated article, on February 14, 1988, after talking about shaving off his moustache for a year, he finally did. \"He looked great with it, don't get me wrong,\" explained his wife Suzy, \"but he looks so handsome without it.\"\nWhen he was asked why he shaved it off, he responded: \"Well, one, I'm not swimming anymore; two, it started to turn gray; and three, my wife had never seen me, nor my family, without the moustache ...  I'm happy [without it].\"  He also commented on his moustache in a live, in-studio interview with KCRA host Mike TeSelle on June 14, 2008, with Spitz stating that he no longer maintains his iconic moustache because it had become \"too gray\".\n\n\n=== Health issues ===\nAfter retirement, Spitz was diagnosed with acid reflux disease, a condition from which his physician thinks he suffered throughout his career. \"During my Olympic training, I attributed the symptoms [of acid reflux] to an overexposure to chlorine and eating too soon before and after swimming,\" says Spitz.  \"It wasn't until the symptoms began to get in the way of my 1976 Olympic broadcasting career in Montreal, which was four years after retirement that I suspected something more serious must be happening.\"\nHe has also reported having high cholesterol and other chronic health issues.  \"People don't believe that I have high cholesterol, but it's a fact,\" said Spitz.  \"I take medication every day because my doctor told me that diet and exercise are not enough to keep my cholesterol down.\"  He is a paid spokesperson for Medco, a pharmacy benefit management company.\n\n\n== Olympic controversies ==\n\n\n=== 1972 medal podium incident ===\nIn 1972, Spitz was accused of product placement during the medal ceremony. Following his victory in the 200-meter freestyle, Spitz carried his shoes and arrived barefoot to obtain his gold medal. He put them down as the American national anthem, \"The Star-Spangled Banner\" was played. After the anthem, he picked up his shoes and waved them to the crowd. The Soviet officials complained to the IOC,  claiming the shoes were \"clearly identifiable as the product of a West German sporting goods firm.\" When questioned by the IOC, Spitz explained that the gesture was innocent, the shoes were old, and he was not paid. The IOC cleared him of any wrongdoing.\n\n\n=== Issues with 2008 Summer Olympics ===\nSpitz has said that he felt snubbed by not being asked to attend the 2008 Summer Olympics to watch Michael Phelps attempt to break his seven-gold-medal record: \"I never got invited. You don't go to the Olympics just to say, I am going to go. Especially because of who I am. ...  I am going to sit there and watch Michael Phelps break my record anonymously? That's almost demeaning to me. It is not almost—it is.\" Spitz added, \"They voted me one of the top five Olympians of all time. Some of them are dead. But they invited the other ones to go to the Olympics, but not me,\" he said. \"Yes, I am a bit upset about it.\" Spitz has stated that he has no hard feelings towards Phelps.\n\nHowever, on August 14, 2008, Spitz appeared on NBC's Today Show where he clarified his statement and his pride in Michael Phelps:\n\nIt's about time that somebody else takes the throne. And I'm very happy for him. I really, truly am ... I was working with a corporate sponsor who elected not to bring their US contingent over to China, and they piled on more work for me here in the United States, which was great. So I wasn't able to get to the Olympics and watch Michael in the first couple of days. And they thought, some of these reporters, that I was supposed to be invited by some entity, and I told them that that wasn't really the case, that doesn't happen that way. And so, I'm sort of disappointed that I wasn't there, but, you know, that interview somehow took a different turn, and I've done hundreds and hundreds of them and I've been true to form about the way I feel about Michael, and he's doing a great job for the United States and inspiring a lot of great performances by the other team members.\nAlso on August 14, 2008, in an interview aired on Los Angeles KNBC-4's morning news show, Today in L.A., Spitz was quoted saying he does believe that \"Michael Phelps is the greatest Olympic athlete ever.\"\nOn August 15, 2008, as part of an interview on NBC, Spitz said that he felt Phelps's performance in the 100 fly in Beijing was \"epic\". Spitz paid this compliment to Phelps just two hours after his record-tying seventh gold medal during a live joint interview with Bob Costas:\n\nYou know, Bob and Michael, I wondered what I was going to say at this monumental time, when it would happen and who I would say it to, and of course I thought I was going to say it to you for some time now. But, it's the word that comes to mind, \"epic\". What you did tonight was epic, and it was epic for the whole world to see how great you really are. I never thought for one moment that you were out of that race and contention, because I watched you at Athens win the race by similar margins, and 18 months ago at the World's by similar margins. And, you know, that is a tribute to your greatness. And now the whole world knows. We are so proud of you Michael here in America, and we are so proud of you and the way that you handle yourself, and you represent such an inspiration to all the youngsters around the world. You know, you weren't born when I did what I did, and I'm sure that I was a part of your inspiration, and I take that as a full compliment. And they say that you judge one's character by the company you keep, and I'm happy to keep company with you. And you have a tremendous responsibility for all those people that you are going to inspire over the next number of years, and I know that you will wear the crown well. Congratulations, Mike.\nIn 2015, Spitz allegedly claimed that he had seen an email from Omega, the official timekeeper, that Phelps had lost the closely contested 100m butterfly final in 2008. He later claimed that his quote had been \"misconstrued\".\n\n\n=== Views on drug testing ===\nSpitz has been consistent in his criticism of the two swimming world bodies, FINA (now named World Aquatics) and the IOC, in their incomplete attempts to keep drugs out of the sport. He has felt that not enough has been done to monitor and encourage drug-free participation. In 1998 he criticized FINA for its \"embarrassing\" attempts to stamp out drug abuse, urging them to test for all known drugs. In September 1999 Spitz said the IOC had the technology to test for a plethora of drugs but was refusing to do so because of some IOC member protests.\nDuring a radio interview in Australia, Spitz was quoted as saying \"They don't want to test for everything because there's tremendous pressure from the television networks because they want the television to have athletic competitions with the world record holders there for the finals. They want the medals not to be tainted in their value of accomplishment by winning them, and it's all about ratings and commercial selling of time and about money. And an International Olympic Committee has got their hand in the pockets of the network television people, so there's a tremendous conflict of interest in what they should do and what they're doing.\"\nIn August 2008, the Los Angeles Times reported that Spitz continued to discuss drug testing and was saying \"the IOC has sponsors who demand a good show. Television pays the IOC for the rights to that good show, and its sponsors want that too. Drug news and drug distractions are not a good show. People are not going to tune in to see athletes have their medals taken away from them.\"\n\n\n== See also ==\n\nList of Indiana University (Bloomington) people\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists at a single Games\nList of multiple Summer Olympic medalists\nList of select Jewish swimmers\nList of top Olympic gold medalists in swimming\nWorld record progression 100 metres butterfly\nWorld record progression 100 metres freestyle\nWorld record progression 200 metres butterfly\nWorld record progression 200 metres freestyle\nWorld record progression 400 metres freestyle\nWorld record progression 4 × 100 metres medley relay\nWorld record progression 4 × 200 metres freestyle relay\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nMarkSpitzUSA.com – Official website of Mark Spitz\nMark Spitz Official Bio\nMark Spitz ESPN Classic biography\nMark Spitz at the Team USA Hall of Fame (archive July 20, 2023)\nMark Spitz at Olympics.com \nMark Spitz at Olympedia \nMark Spitz at IMDb"}
{"title": "Martin Fourcade", "requested": "Martin Fourcade", "extract": "Martin Fourcade (French pronunciation: [maʁtɛ̃ fuʁkad]; born 14 September 1988) is a French retired biathlete and military officer. He is a six-time Olympic champion, a thirteen-time World Champion and a seven-time winner of the Overall World Cup. As of February 2026, he is the second most successful French Winter Olympian of all time after Quentin Fillon Maillet. Fourcade is the all-time biathlon record holder of overall World Cup titles with seven big crystal globes and he's also the all-time record holder of the most consecutive Major Championships titles with at least one non-team gold medal in every major championship from 2011 to 2018.\nOn 13 March 2020, he announced his retirement following the 2019–2020 season. Since April 2018, he serves as president of the Athletes' Commission of the organising committee for the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Paris, France. In February 2022 Fourcade was elected to serve eight-year terms as a member of both the International Olympic Committee and the IOC Athletes' Commission.\nFourcade is an officer of the French Army. He graduated from the High Mountain Military School in Chamonix in 2014. In 2017 he was made a sous-lieutenant.\n\n\n== Career ==\nThis article uses the phrase \"non-team\" when referring to individual competitions to avoid mixing up one of the biathlon disciplines, the individual discipline and individual competitions in general.\n\n\n=== Early career ===\nFourcade took up biathlon in 2002 and started competing internationally in 2006, following in the footsteps of his older brother Simon Fourcade. The younger Fourcade competed for France in the 2007 and 2008 Junior World Championships, winning a bronze medal in the relay in 2007.\nFourcade first competed in the Biathlon World Cup at Oslo in March 2008, finishing 61st in what would be his only World Cup appearance that season. The next season was already much more successful for him, as he grabbed his first World Cup points at Hochfilzen, placing 36th in the individual race and 10th in the sprint. His best results that year came at the 2009 World Championships, where he finished in the top 20 in every competition, including an 8th place in the pursuit and a 4th place in the relay. Fourcade finished 24th in the overall World Cup that year.\n\n\n=== 2009–10 season: First wins and first discipline World Cup title, First Olympic gold ===\n\nFourcade again improved in the 2009–10 season, consistently finishing in the top 10 and making the French team for the 2010 Winter Olympics, together with his brother. Fourcade grabbed a gold medal in the mass start, marking his first Olympic medal and the first time he made the podium in a World Cup event. Fourcade then claimed his first victory in a pursuit at Kontiolahti, and followed up with two more first places at Oslo, in a sprint and another pursuit. The two pursuit victories meant Fourcade won the 2009–10 Pursuit World Cup, edging out Austria's Simon Eder by just one point. In the overall World Cup he finished 5th, 64 points ahead of his brother Simon, who finished a career-best 7th.\n\n\n=== 2010–11 season: First World Championship title, first overall World Cup podium ===\n\nThe 2010–11 season was also highly successful for Fourcade. He opened the season at Östersund with three top 5 finishes, including two 3rd places. After somewhat weaker showings at Pokljuka and Oberhof, Fourcade placed runner-up in all three races at Ruhpolding. Fourcade won mass starts at both Antholz and Fort Kent, and entered the 2011 World Championships in Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia as one of the favourites.\nThe first event at the World Championships was the mixed relay, where the French placed 3rd after Fourcade as anchor showed the best male performance in the race to lift his team up from 5th. Fourcade then claimed the silver medal behind Arnd Peiffer in the sprint, despite missing two shots at the prone stage; Fourcade was the fastest skier in the competition. The next day in the pursuit Fourcade won the gold despite three penalties, thanks to turning in another fastest skiing performance.\nFourcade finished 3rd in the Overall World Cup, 4th in the Sprint, 2nd in the Pursuit, 3rd in the Individual and 2nd in the Mass Start.\n\n\n=== 2011–12 season: First overall World Cup title, three World Championships golds ===\n\nFourcade had the best possible start in 2011–12 season with 2 wins in the individual and the pursuit in Östersund, Sweden, leading the Overall ranking for the first time.\nIn Nové Město, Czech Republic, he finished 3rd in the sprint, alongside his older brother Simon who took the 2nd place, behind Norway's Emil Hegle Svendsen. It was the first time in biathlon's history that 2 brothers stood on a podium together. In the following pursuit (although finishing respectively 2nd and 3rd) Simon was downgraded to 4th place after IBU decided to upgrade Germany's Arnd Peiffer following a target's malfunction (Peiffer did an extra lap). But the French team claimed Martin had purposely slowed down before crossing the line, seeing that Simon was far behind. IBU finally decided to tie Peiffer and Martin.\nAntholz was a fantastic weekend for the French team, both men and women relays taking 1st place and Fourcade finishing 3rd of the sprint and the mass Start.\nOn home soil in Oslo, Emil Hegle Svendsen grabbed the yellow bib from Fourcade.\nThe first to start, Fourcade managed to win the sprint despite extreme temperatures in Kontiolahti, Finland (−18 °C).\nAt the World Championships in Ruhpolding, Fourcade won three gold medals in sprint, pursuit and mass start. He became only the third male biathlete to win three non-team gold medals at a single World Championships after Raphaël Poirée (Oberhof 2004) and Ole Einar Bjørndalen (Hochfilzen 2005 and Pyeongchang 2009).\nFourcade won the overall World Cup for the first time, as well as the discipline titles in the sprint and the pursuit.\n\n\n=== 2012–13 season: Overwhelming overall World Cup title, a World Championship gold and five medals ===\n\nFourcade started the 2012–13 season with a win in the individual in Östersund. At the time he had improved his shooting to 89%.\nIn Hochfilzen, Fourcade finished 2nd and 3rd in the sprint and in the pursuit, respectively.\nHaving had mediocre weekends in Pokljuka and Oberhof, Fourcade went on to win both the sprint and the mass start in Ruhpolding.\nAt the World Championships in Nové Město, Fourcade had to settle for silver both in sprint and in pursuit as Emil Hegle Svendsen won both events. In the latter, Fourcade lost the gold by one tenth of a second to Svendsen, leaving the Frenchman disappointed, citing that he would \"think of that 2,4 cm everyday when training next summer\". Fourcade was, however, able to take a gold in the individual, his fifth World Championships gold medal.\nThe end of the season was a successful one for Fourcade, as he picked up wins in the pursuit in Oslo, in the individual and in the sprint in Sochi and in the sprint and in the mass start in Khanty-Mansiysk.\nFourcade finished the season with over 400 overall world cup points more than Svendsen who finished second, thus winning his second overall World Cup title. In addition, he won all of discipline titles, becoming only the second male biathlete after Raphaël Poirée to win all of the crystal globes in one season.\n\n\n=== 2013–14 season: Olympic golds and a silver, third overall World Cup title in a row ===\nJust like in the previous season, Fourcade started the 2013–14 season by winning the Östersund individual. In addition, he won the sprint two days later. He then went on to take a third win of the season in Hochfilzen pursuit. Fourcade couldn't, however, add to his win count in Annecy, France, his best result being third in the sprint.\n\nAt the start of the year 2014 Fourcade won the mass start in Oberhof, his first World Cup victory there. He then decided to skip the Ruhpolding weekend to train for the olympics. His final tune-up for the olympics, the Antholz World Cup weekend wasn't all that successful, although the French team, anchored by Martin Fourcade, did win the men's relay.\nAhead of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi Fourcade admitted that he will be under pressure, but that he will be able to handle it. He also said that he is capable of winning every race he enters but that there will be others, mainly Emil Hegle Svendsen, with a great level of self-confidence. The first non-team race, the sprint, ended in disappointing sixth place for Fourcade. However, he was able to turn the tables in the following pursuit, climbing from sixth to first, winning his first olympic gold medal. After the last shot at the last standing shooting Fourcade famously stretched his arm in the air and pumped his fist, explaining that it was all happiness, knowing the weight of that shooting. In the individual, Fourcade carried on his good form, hitting 19 out of 20 targets in winning his second olympic gold medal. The mass-start ended in a slight disappointment for Fourcade, for even though claiming his third medal of the games, a silver, he lost the gold by some centimeters, Svendsen claiming the victory in photo-finish. Regardless of that, Fourcade was by far the most successful male biathlete of the 2014 Winter Olympics. In addition, he became only the second male biathlete after Ole Einar Bjørndalen to have won a non-team Olympic gold medal, a non-team World Championships gold medal, the Overall World Cup title and all of the discipline World Cup titles in his career.\nAfter the olympics there were three weekends left in the world cup, with Fourcade claiming the second place in the Pokljuka mass start, and second places in the Kontiolahti sprint and pursuit (Johannes Thingnes Bø winning both of the Kontiolahti races). With the pursuit second place, Fourcade secured his third overall World Cup title.\nFourcade won the final event of the season, the Oslo mass start, which ensured that he won the mass start crystal globe. He finished the season with the Overall crystal globe as well as sprint, pursuit and mass start crystal globes.\n\n\n=== 2014–15 season: Historic fourth overall World Cup title in a row, a World Championship gold and medals ===\nBefore the 2014–15 season Fourcade suffered from mononucleosis and was forced to heavily cut back his training hours in the summer.\nUnlike the two previous years, Fourcade couldn't win the Östersund individual, in fact with six shooting errors he slumped to 81st place, his second worst World Cup result ever. This appeared to be only temporary, however, as he won both of the following races, the sprint and the pursuit.\nHis next victory came in the Hochfilzen pursuit where he climbed from seventh place to first, thanks to a clean shooting. Pokljuka was not as successful, as Fourcade didn't add to his win tally. Even so, he collected second most points of the weekend behind Anton Shipulin of Russia.\nDuring the Oberhof weekend at the start of the year 2015, the French star won both the sprint and the mass start. Some say the final shooting of the mass start was one of the most memorable moments of the season as a strong wind forced the leading Fourcade to wait patiently for it to calm down while many athletes, including eventual runner-up Anton Shipulin, left the shooting range. None of them shot clean, however, and it was the clean shooting Fourcade who again took the lead and the victory.\nAfter two below par -weekends, when Shipulin and most notably Simon Schempp of Germany were able to reduce the gap to Fourcade in the Overall World Cup, the Frenchman was able to regroup to score fourth and third places in Nové Město sprint and pursuit, respectively.\nThe last weekend before the world championships, the Oslo weekend, saw Fourcade complete the return to form, as the Frenchman won the individual race. He started first, shot 20 out of 20 and stayed on top until the end. Fourcade then went on to take the second place behind Arnd Peiffer in the sprint.\nAt the World Championships in Kontiolahti, Fourcade didn't medal in the three other non-team events, but won his sixth world championships gold medal in the individual. Having made one shooting error on the second prone stage he had to play catch up, as his rival Emil Hegle Svendsen had cleared all the targets earlier. Fourcade didn't make any more shooting mistakes and overtook Svendsen at the finish to take the gold. If it hadn't been for the late success of eventual bronze medalist Ondrej Moravec, the elder of the Fourcade brothers, Simon, would have been on the podium as well. By claiming his sixth non-team gold, Martin Fourcade became the third most successful non-team gold medal-winning male biathlete at the World Championships after Ole Einar Bjørndalen and Raphaël Poirée, and moved ahead of his rival Svendsen, Alexander Tikhonov and Frank Ullrich who all stand at five non-team gold medals.\nAt the season finale in Khanty-Mansiysk, Fourcade claimed a victory in the sprint, his 8th win of the season. He then finished 4th in the pursuit, which was enough to secure the big crystal globe, as well as the pursuit discipline title.\nDespite the off season mononucleosis, Fourcade finished the season winning the Overall World Cup title and the sprint and pursuit discipline titles. He became the first male biathlete to win the Overall title four times in succession.\n\n\n=== 2015–16 season: Overall World Cup title and all of the discipline titles, World Championship success ===\nBefore starting his biathlon campaign for 2015–16, Fourcade had a brief foray into cross-country skiing, finishing 12th in a 15 km freestyle FIS race at Beitostølen before competing in the opening meeting of the 2015–16 FIS Cross-Country World Cup at Ruka, where he finished 22nd in the 10 km freestyle, posting the third best French performance of the day, and beating his previous personal best result on the Cross-Country World Cup of a 47th place in 2012.\nLike the year before, Fourcade started the biathlon season with an indifferent showing in the Östersund individual. And like the previous year, he was able to regroup to win both of the two other solo Östersund races, the sprint and the pursuit. He missed five times in the two competitions altogether, but was still able to win both races quite comfortably with his outstanding ski speed.\nIn Hochfilzen, Fourcade and Simon Schempp dominated the field, with Schempp winning the sprint and Fourcade finishing second and the two swapping places in the following pursuit. The Pokljuka weekend was a good but not a great one for Fourcade, as he collected third most world cup points there. Schempp was, however, able to gain on the lead of Fourcade quite considerably.\nWith world number two Bjørndalen and world number three Schempp absent from the first two and all three Oberhof-replacing Ruhpolding races, respectively, Fourcade was able to take a sizeable lead in the overall rankings. After the first of the two Ruhpolding weekends, a familiar threat in Emil Hegle Svendsen took over as the nearest challenger to Fourcade in the overall rankings. However, Fourcade was able to take a big lead in the final race of the weekend, the mass start. The two great rivals arrived toe to toe at the final standing shoot, only for Fourcade to hit all five targets and win the race and Svendsen to miss three times and fall to the 13th place.\nFourcade then carried on the good form by winning the Ruhpolding individual race and placing second in the mass start. The next weekend, the Antholz weekend was a poor one for Fourcade, although he did rise from 28th place to fourth in the pursuit.\nThe trip to North America started very well for Fourcade, as he won the Canmore sprint. He also took the Canmore single mixed relay with Marie Dorin Habert. In the Presque Isle sprint, Fourcade finished third behind Johannes Thingnes Bø and Anton Shipulin. In the following pursuit, Bø seemed to be on his way to winning a double before missing twice on the last shooting. Fourcade, some 40 seconds back, cleared all five targets and left the range before his Norwegian rival. By claiming the pursuit, Fourcade equalled the number of world cup race wins of Raphaël Poirée, with 44 victories. The race also marked the 100th time Fourcade wore the prestigious yellow bib.\nTo prepare for the 2016 World Championships in Oslo, Fourcade bought an apartment in Oslo with the help of his friend Tarjei Bø in June 2015. Judging by his success in the championships, this seemed to be a good move. Fourcade started by anchoring the French mixed relay team to a gold medal before winning both the sprint and the pursuit in convincing fashion. With these gold medals, Fourcade secured his fifth straight Overall World Cup title and brought his number of World Championship gold medals to nine. He then went on to keep the golden streak going by winning the individual race. Fourcade had a one-minute penalty at the first standing stage but, as in the three previous major individual races, this proved to be his only mistake of the race. That turned out to be just enough to beat clean-shooting Dominik Landertinger of Austria. By claiming his tenth World Championship gold medal and ninth non-team gold medal, Fourcade became the first biathlete ever to win the longest event in biathlon three times in succession at the World Championships. In addition, Fourcade claimed the individual discipline crystal globe with a margin of two points over bronze medallist Simon Eder of Austria, leaving the great Frenchman all but certain to win all of the crystal globes that season. The final race of the championships, the mass start, saw Fourcade narrowly miss the chance to win all four non-team gold medals as Johannes Thingnes Bø edged the Frenchman on the last loop. With his non-team medals, Fourcade became only the second male biathlete to win three golds and one silver in non-team competitions in a single World Championships, after Raphaël Poirée (Oberhof 2004). And by claiming three non-team gold medals to take his career tally to 9, Fourcade became the second most successful non-team gold medal-winning male biathlete at the World Championships after Ole Einar Bjørndalen.\nFourcade finished the season winning the overall World Cup title as well as all of the discipline titles, becoming the first male biathlete to win all five crystal globes of a season multiple times. The overall title was his fifth in succession.\n\n\n=== 2016–17 season: Sixth overall World Cup title in a row, a World Championship gold and medals ===\n\nYet again the first competition weekend of the season in Östersund proved to be a successful one for Fourcade. He started the campaign with a convincing victory in the mixed relay with Marie Dorin Habert. Fourcade then won the individual race, the first non-team race of the season, despite two missed shots at the first standing stage. He hit all the remaining targets while Johannes Thingnes Bø, who had a comfortable lead coming to the last shooting, fell victim to nerves and a strong wind and missed two targets. This allowed fast-skiing Fourcade to take the victory. The sprint was a dominant race for Fourcade, who missed no targets and outskied everyone else. Fourcade couldn't, however, complete the Östersund clean sweep, as he surprisingly let go a 42-second lead in the pursuit. He suffered from a combination of nerves and wind to miss four targets altogether as he was beaten by the surprise pair of the season, Anton Babikov and Maxim Tsvetkov of Russia. The third place ensured, however, that Fourcade would take a sizeable lead in the world cup total points from the first weekend.\nFourcade continued his domination in Pokljuka, winning all three competitions of the weekend. He overtook a fellow clean-shooter Johannes Thingnes Bø in the sprint with a strong last loop. This ensured that Fourcade now had at least one victory at every World Cup venue in the current calendar. In the pursuit, Fourcade shot clean all stages and left Anton Shipulin, who had arrived at the last standing just after Fourcade, third behind Emil Hegle Svendsen. Fourcade then anchored the French team to victory in the relay, having had a 20-second head start thanks to three good legs from Jean Guillaume Beatrix, Quentin Fillon Maillet and Simon Desthieux.\nFor the second weekend in a row, Fourcade won all three competitions of the weekend, this time in Nové Město. He won the sprint with a margin of 1,6 seconds with one penalty, outskiing the clean-shooting Anton Shipulin. Fourcade then shot a single penalty in a convincing pursuit victory and wrapped up the weekend with another 19 out of 20 targets -mass start competition, claiming his 7th non-team victory of the season. By winning 7 of the 8 non-team competitions, placing third in the remaining one and winning both relay competitions, Fourcade had the most successful December in biathlon history.\nThe first race after the Christmas break was the Oberhof sprint, where Fourcade had the lead coming to the second shooting, but couldn't manage the tough winds and missed three targets. He finished eighth, his worst result of the season, thus ending the streak of 10 podium finishes and 8 non-team podium finishes. However, Fourcade was able to turn the tables in the following pursuit. He hit 19 out of 20 targets in difficult conditions and climbed from 51 seconds back of Julian Eberhard to win with a margin of over a minute to Arnd Peiffer. With this win, Fourcade secured having at least one victory from every competition weekend of the season. In the mass start, Fourcade missed twice and finished third behind Germans Simon Schempp and Erik Lesser, despite leading after the last shooting. This was the 10th podium out of 11 races of the season for Fourcade.\nFourcade continued to amass victories and World Cup lead in Ruhpolding. He outskied Julian Eberhard and Emil Hegle Svendsen in the sprint, all three of them shooting clean. In the following pursuit, Eberhard dropped out of the fight for victory earlier on, but Svendsen got close to Fourcade. This was because the Frenchman missed three times in the second and third shooting combined. Before the last shooting, Svendsen had the lead for a moment and a number of other athletes caught them as well. But from there on, Fourcade opened up a lead, held his nerve and technique to shoot clean, and easily held his lead in the final lap.\nCompetition weekend number 6 in Antholtz in the typically challenging venue for Fourcade again proved to be just that. He finished second in the individual, behind Anton Shipulin, shooting two mistakes as the Russian only shot one. This was podium number 13 out of 14 non-team competitions for Fourcade. He then skipped the relay to prepare for the mass start. He couldn't, however, reach the podium this time as three missed shots left him fifth, thus ending his five-weekend streak of at least one victory and at least one non-team victory.\nBefore and during the first part of the World Championships in Hochfilzen, Fourcade had a brief argument with the Russian biathlon team regarding a tweet by Fourcade about the length of the doping ban of Alexandr Loginov. Fourcade didn't appear to let that harm his concentration however, as he started by shooting clean in the mixed relay and anchoring the French team to silver. He then failed to add to his non-team gold medal tally in the sprint, but was still positively surprised to grab the bronze medal after missing one shot at both shootings. Later starters Benedikt Doll of Germany and Johannes Thingnes Bø shot clean and beat the Frenchman. Fourcade didn't have to wait for the World Championships gold number 11 and non-team gold number 10 for long though, as the following pursuit ended in convincing fashion, with the Frenchman overtaking Doll and Bø already after the first shooting. He never gave the lead away after that, only missed his very last shot and won with a healthy margin. This ensured that Fourcade now stood alone as the record holder for consecutive Major Championships and consecutive World Championships with at least one non-team gold medal. Fourcade had a four Major Championships gold streak in the individual race, but found it hard to defend his title this time. He started early and missed his first shot at both prone shootings. This opened the door for many late starters but a while it seemed that the most successful individual racer of all time had after all done enough. However, Ondrej Moravec of the Czech Republic and Lowell Bailey of the USA shot 20 out of 20 and finished ahead of Fourcade, with Bailey taking the surprise gold. But just like in the sprint, Fourcade was satisfied having yet again medalled and added to his impressive tally of World Cup podiums despite the two missed shots. Fourcade then anchored the French relay team to silver, having also started second. The final race of the championships, the mass start, was a slight disappointment for Fourcade. He arrived to the last shooting with a group of leaders but uncharacteristically slightly lost his rhythm, having tried to be the first to start shooting. Two missed shots meant that Fourcade finished fifth, his only race without a medal in the championships. Fourcade finished, however, as the medal table winner for the men's non-team races.\nThe biathlon World Cup then moved to Pyeongchang, South Korea where the next Olympics would be held. The first competition, the sprint, saw Fourcade miss once on both shootings. With his incredible ski-speed, he was again able to score a podium finish, a third place behind Julian Eberhard and Lowell Bailey. The third place was enough for Fourcade to yet again rewrite the history books, winning a record sixth overall title in a row. Like many times before, Fourcade was able to turn the tables in the following pursuit. He shot 20 out of 20 and when both Eberhard and Bailey in front of him had multiple misses, Fourcade was able to win with a large margin over Anton Shipulin. The victory meant that Fourcade now had 12 non-team victories in one season, tying the record of Ole Einar Bjørndalen. Fourcade then capped off the successful weekend by anchoring the French relay team to victory.\nIn Kontiolahti, Fourcade won the sprint with one miss, outskiing the clean-shooting Ondrej Moravec by just 0.6 seconds. This was the 13th non-team race victory of the season for Fourcade, an all-time record for one season. Fourcade was then unable to score a podium finish in the following pursuit, finishing fifth with four penalties. However, with the two races, he secured both the sprint discipline title as well as the pursuit discipline title.\nThe final competition weekend of the season in Oslo saw Fourcade finish the campaign in style. In the sprint, he missed one standing shot and finished second behind the clean-shooting Johannes Thingnes Bø. In the following pursuit, Fourcade missed twice and was again second, this time behind Anton Shipulin who had one penalty. Fourcade was able to beat Bø in the last loop to get a small revenge from the World Championship mass start from the year before. In the last competition of the season, the mass start, Fourcade needed considerably more points than Simon Schempp to win the discipline crystal globe. And he got just them, although not without drama. Fourcade did crush the field with a dominating performance, shooting 20 out of 20, but he also looked in danger of being disqualified, as he forgot to reload his magazines before the competition. However, the jury saw no rule violation in the way Fourcade received replacing magazines from his team and so the Frenchman was ruled the winner. With the record 14th non-team victory of the season, Fourcade won the mass start discipline World Cup, ahead of Simon Schempp who finished 20th. Fourcade later thanked Schempp and the German team for not wanting to protest the decision of the jury.\nFourcade won all five crystal globes of the season for a record third time and a record second time in a row. His overall title was a record-equalling sixth and a record sixth consecutive. He also equalled the record number of discipline titles won by Ole Einar Bjørndalen, both now had 20 small crystal globes. Fourcade also set the record for the most non-team races won in one season with 14 victories (and equalled the ladies' record of 14 set by Magdalena Forsberg of Sweden), as well as setting the record for consecutive Major Championships and World Championships with at least one non-team gold medal. Moreover, the season's total point tally of 1322 by Fourcade was also a record, Fourcade beating the next athlete (Anton Shipulin) by more than 400 points for the second time.\n\n\n=== 2017–18 season: Olympic glory, all-time overall World Cup record ===\nLike so many years before, the opening weekend of the biathlon season in Östersund was a success for Fourcade. He didn't make the podium in the single mixed relay with Marie Dorin Habert as they finished fourth. But that was to be the only non-podium finish for Fourcade that weekend. He missed twice on the last shooting in the individual race and finished third behind Johannes Thingnes Bø and compatriot Quentin Fillon Maillet. In the next race, the sprint, Fourcade seemed to be on his way to victory after just one missed shot. However, the late starting Tarjei Bø finished just 0.7 seconds quicker than the Frenchman with Bø missing once as well. Fourcade didn't seem to let this get him down, as he won the following pursuit in a convincing fashion. Heavy winds meant that the overall shooting performance of the race was poor. But Fourcade was able to clear 19 out of 20 targets and finished almost 50 seconds ahead of Jakov Fak and Fillon Maillet. This meant that Fourcade won at least one non-team race in the opening weekend for the seventh consecutive time and that he would once again leave Östersund wearing the yellow bib.\nThe second competition weekend in Hochfilzen saw Fourcade score two more podiums. He finished second behind Johannes Thingnes Bø in the sprint, shooting clean but losing 12 seconds of time to Bø on the tracks and on the range. Fourcade then finished third behind Bø and Jakov Fak in the pursuit, having missed a surprising five bullets.\nThe world cup then returned to France after more than three years, to Annecy Le Grand-Bornand. The sprint was another success for Fourcade as he once again scored a podium, a second place, but was again forced to step on the podium after Johannes Thingnes Bø. Bø won his fourth consecutive race in the following pursuit, with Fourcade second, a minute behind the Norwegian. Fourcade was able to stop the streak in the last competition before Christmas, the first mass start of the season. He shot 20 out of 20 and comfortably won ahead of Bø and Erik Lesser.\nThe first competitions after the Christmas break had previously been hard for Fourcade in many occasions. This wasn't the case at the start of year 2018, however, as he had a fantastic weekend in the foggy Oberhof. Fourcade shot clean in the sprint and withheld the late challenge of old rival Emil Hegle Svendsen. Johannes Thingnes Bø, the closest rival to Fourcade in the world cup standings, missed twice but still finished third. Fourcade then carried the momentum to the following pursuit and won it with one missed shot. It was the very first shot he fired and it meant that he went to the penalty ring alongside Johannes Bø. But Fourcade missed no more, and when Johannes and the leading Svendsen did, it was the Frenchman who got his third victory in a row. He even had time to stare the shooting Norwegians (Svendsen, Johannes and eventual third of the race, Tarjei Bø) after the last shooting, as an answer to Svendsen who had implied after the sprint, that Fourcade would be afraid on the Norwegian team.\nThe world cup then moved to Ruhpolding and like many times before, the fog and rain of Oberhof changed to clear weather. This didn't seem to change the momentum of men's biathlon, however, as Fourcade stormed to his fourth consecutive and fifth victory of the season in the Ruhpolding individual. The 20 km olympic and world champion looked to be flying home when he hit the nineteenth target in the last standing. But he surprisingly missed the last shot, which seemed to open the door for Johannes Thingnes Bø not only to win the race, but also take the small crystal globe. However, Bø too missed in the last standing and while Fourcade won comfortably, clean-shooting Ondrej Moravec beat Bø and left him third. This meant that the individual discipline title would be shared by Fourcade and Bø. The race was also the 14th consecutive non team race podium for Fourcade, who thus bettered his own record. Fourcade then had a second place in the mass start behind Johannes. The Frenchman came back from two missed shots in the first standing and 15th place to score a 15th consecutive non-team race podium after a clean last shooting and a fast last loop.\nThe final competition weekend before the Olympics saw Johannes Thingnes Bø start brilliantly in Antholz. He won both the sprint and the pursuit and left Fourcade second in both of the races. However, Fourcade was able to turn the tables in the mass start, which he won quite comfortably with two missed shots. And with Bø in the sixth place, Fourcade opened up a notable lead in the overall standings.\nFor the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeonchang, Fourcade was chosen to carry the French flag at the opening ceremonies. He said that it was a great honor and regarding the competitions added that he wanted to win one title and only after that would dream for more. His wish didn't happen in the sprint where Johannes Thingnes Bø missed three targets in the prone and seemingly left the door open for Fourcade. But the French great also missed three times and while he shot clean in the standings, it was only good enough for eighth place, some half a minute behind the surprise gold medalist Arnd Peiffer.\nWhile Fourcade didn't medal in the sprint, he had, like in Sochi four years ago, a tolerable starting position in the pursuit. And like in Sochi, it proved to be decisive. Fourcade missed only one shot and produced some ski speed to once again have a lead to show the fist after the last shooting. With the gold, his third Olympic gold overall, Fourcade equaled the most number of gold medals won by a French athlete in Winter Olympics. Moreover, he extended his record of consecutive major championships with at least one non-team gold medal, now standing at eight. Fourcade then had the gold within his grasp in the individual race having cleaned the first 18 targets. But he narrowly missed the last two, missing out on the podium and allowing his biggest rival at the time, Johannes Thingnes Bø to finally claim his first Olympic gold and first medal altogether in the non team races.\nFourcade wasn't rattled by this, however, and while he didn't have the best memories from recent major championship mass starts, this time it was to be his turn. Johannes Thingnes Bø crumbled in the second prone, missing three times, while Fourcade climbed back from missing one in the first prone. Fourcade, Simon Schempp and Erik Lesser cleared the first standing and arrived at the last shooting with a healthy margin. Lesser missed twice, Schempp missed once and Fourcade seemed to clear for gold before missing the last shot. It meant that Fourcade and Schempp arrived together at the final sprint, this time the Frenchman narrowly taking the gold with 14 centimeters. The gold made Fourcade the most successful French Winter Olympian of all time. It also made him the most successful male biathlete of the Games in non-team races, equalling the achievement from Sochi. Next up in Pyeongchang was the mixed relay, where the French team had a good, but not a great start before the anchoring Fourcade. Marie Dorin Habert, Anais Bescond and Simon Desthieux carried France to medal contention, some 30 seconds behind the leading Germany. But it was Fourcade, who stormed the last leg with fast skiing and no missed shots, taking the gold for the French team with a wide margin to Norway and Italy.\nAfter the Olympics the World Cup moved to Eastern Finland. Fourcade had been suffering from illness before the Kontiolahti weekend, but was still expected to start in the sprint. Surprisingly, he did not, announcing so just before the race. He also skipped the relays but was ready to compete in the mass start. The first shooting seemed ominous, Fourcade missing twice. But he got his game together and missed no more. He left the final shooting in the lead but Julian Eberhard sprinted past the exhausted Frenchman in the last few hundred meters. But still the second place made Fourcade quite satisfied after the two prone mistakes. And when Johannes Thingnes Bø missed five times to finish 19th, Fourcade was able to widen the gap in the overall ranking.\nAt the penultimate World Cup weekend in Oslo Holmenkollen, Fourcade shot clean in the sprint but fell on the opening lap and broke a ski pole. He finished third behind Henrik L’Abée-Lund and Johannes Thingnes Bø, who beat Fourcade by a fraction of a second.[188] Fourcade won the subsequent pursuit ahead of Lukas Hofer and Bø. The victory made Fourcade the most successful biathlete at Holmenkollen and extended his overall World Cup lead before the final weekend.[189]\nThe last weekend of the season in Tyumen, Russia started perfectly for Fourcade. He shot clean in the sprint and stormed through the snowfall to leave Simon Desthieux and Fredrik Lindström of Sweden behind with a margin of over half a minute. And when Johannes Thingnes Bø succumbed to 14th place, Fourcade secured the seventh consecutive overall World Cup title as well as the seventh consecutive sprint discipline title. Having clinched the overall title and a big lead in the pursuit discipline, Fourcade could have been excused for not concentrating on the pursuit competition. However, he did and easily won the race with his head start and only missing one shot, winning his 70th World Cup race. He did lose his concentration in the mass start, however. By missing four times in the last race of the season, Fourcade finished 19th, his worst result of the season. Regardless, he won the mass start discipline title, holding all five crystal globes of the season for the record fourth time.\n\n\n== Achievements ==\nAll statistics are sourced from the International Biathlon Union.\nThis article uses the phrase \"non-team\" when referring to individual competitions to avoid mixing up one of the biathlon disciplines, the individual discipline and individual competitions in general.\n\n\n=== World Cup ===\n7 overall World Cup titles (all-time record)\n7 overall World Cup titles in a row (all-time record)\n26 discipline World Cup titles (all-time record)\n8 Sprint World Cup titles (all-time record shared with Bjørndalen)\n8 Pursuit World Cup titles (all-time record)\n5 Individual World Cup titles (all-time record)\n5 Mass Start World Cup titles (all-time record shared with Bjørndalen)\n4 times the clean sweep of all five crystal globes won in one season (all-time record)\n79 non-team World Cup victories (2nd to Bjørndalen, 95 victories)\n14 non-team World Cup victories in one season (2nd to J.T. Bø, 16 victories)\n144 non-team World Cup podiums (2nd to Bjørndalen, 170 podiums)\n20 non-team World Cup podiums in one season + 2 non-team Olympic Games podiums (all-time record)\n79 non-team World Cup victories out of 268 non-team starts, 29.5% win rate, personal highest 31% win rate (all-time record)\n144 non-team World Cup podiums out of 268 non-team starts, 53.7% podium rate, personal highest 56.7% podium rate (all-time record)\n\n\n=== Olympic Games ===\n6 gold medals and 1 silver medals (2nd to Bjørndalen, 8 gold medals, 4 silver medals and 1 bronze medal)\n4 non-team gold medals and 2 non-team silver medals (2nd to Bjørndalen, 5 gold medals, 3 silver medals and 1 bronze medal)\n2 non-team gold medals and 1 non-team silver medal in a single Olympic Games (2nd to Bjørndalen, 3 gold medals)\n\n\n=== World Championships ===\n13 gold medals (3rd to Bjørndalen, 20 gold medals and J.T. Bø 22 gold medals)\n28 medals : 13 gold medals, 10 silver medals and 5 bronze medals (3rd to Bjørndalen, 45 medals : 20 gold medals, 14 silver medals and 11 bronze medals and J.T. Bø, 31 medals : 22 Gold, 10 Silver, 4 Bronze)\n11 non-team gold medals (tied for second with Bjørndalen and behind J.T. Bø 12 non-team gold)\n18 non-team medals : 11 gold medals, 4 silver medals and 3 bronze medals (3rd to Bjørndalen, 26 medals : 11 gold medals, 6 silver medals and 9 bronze medals and J.T. Bø, 19 medals: 10 gold, 7 silver, 2 bronze))\n3 non-team gold medals and 1 non-team silver medal in a single World Championships (all-time record shared with Raphael Poirée and J.T. Bø)\n6 World Championships in a row with at least 1 non-team gold medal (all-time record)\n\n\n=== Career ===\n8 Major Championships (Olympic Games and World Championships) in a row with at least 1 non-team gold medal (all-time record)\n4 times the \"career Grand Slam\" of a non-team olympic gold medal, a non-team World Championships gold medal, the overall World Cup title and all of the discipline World Cup titles (all-time record)\n7 years in row with at least 7 non-team race victories (all-time record)\n83 World Cup and Olympic Games non-team victories (3rd to J.T. Bø (90) and to Bjørndalen (95)\n98 World Cup and Olympic Games victories altogether (3rd to Bjørndalen, 132 victories and J.T. Bø, 101 victories and counting)\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nMartin Fourcade was born on 14 September 1988, in Céret (in Northern Catalonia), France, to Gisèle and Marcel Fourcade.\nHe has an elder brother Simon, who is also a biathlete and a younger brother Brice.\nHe has two daughters, Manon (born on 10 September 2015) and Inès (born on 23 March 2017), with his partner Hélène. They reside in La Llagonne, France.\n\n\n== Biathlon results ==\nAll results are sourced from the International Biathlon Union.\n\n\n=== Olympic Games ===\n7 medals (6 gold, 1 silver)\n\n*The mixed relay was added as an event in 2014.\n\n\n=== World Championships ===\n28 medals (13 gold, 10 silver, 5 bronze)\n\n*During Olympic seasons competitions are only held for those events not included in the Olympic program.\n**The single mixed relay was added as an event in 2019.\n\n\n=== Junior/Youth World Championships ===\n1 medal (1 bronze)\n\n\n=== World Cup ===\n33 titles (7 Overall, 5 Individual, 8 Sprint, 8 Pursuit, 5 Mass Start)\n\n\n=== Individual victories ===\n84 victories (15 In, 23 Sp, 30 Pu, 16 MS); victories at Winter Olympics are not counted as World Cup victories, but are listed here. \n\n\n=== Relay victories ===\n15 victories (9 RL, 4 MR, 2 SR);\n\n\n=== Podiums ===\n\n\n== Honours ==\nOfficer of the Legion of Honour (2018)\nKnight of the Ordre national du Mérite (2010)\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n Media related to Martin Fourcade at Wikimedia Commons\n\nMartin Fourcade at IBU BiathlonWorld.com Martin Fourcade at IBU BiathlonResults.com \nMartin Fourcade at the International Ski and Snowboard Federation \nMartin Fourcade at Olympedia \nMartin Fourcade at Olympics.com \nMartin Fourcade at Équipe de France (in French)\nMartin Fourcade at Équipe de France Olympique (archived) (in French)\nOfficial website  (in French)"}
{"title": "Martin Sheridan", "requested": "Martin Sheridan", "extract": "Martin John Sheridan (March 28, 1881 – March 27, 1918) was an Irish-American athlete and three time Olympic Games gold medallist in discus throw.\nBorn in Bohola, County Mayo, Ireland, he was a participant of both the 1904 and the 1908 Olympic Games, and was part of a group of Irish-American athletes known as the \"Irish Whales\".\nHe died on 27 March 1918, at St. Vincent's Hospital in Manhattan, New York, the day before his 37th birthday, from the Spanish flu pandemic. He is buried in Calvary Cemetery, Queens, New York.\n\n\n== Career ==\nAt 6 ft 3 in (191 cm) and 194 lbs (88 kg), Sheridan was the best all-around athlete of the Irish American Athletic Club, and like many of his teammates, served with the New York City Police Department (from 1906 until his death in 1918).  Sheridan was so well respected in the NYPD, that he served as the Governor's personal bodyguard when the governor was in New York City.\nA five-time Olympic gold medalist, with a total of nine Olympic medals, Sheridan was called \"one of the greatest figures that ever represented this country in international sport, as well as being one of the most popular who ever attained the championship honor.\" He won the discus throw event at the 1904, 1906, and 1908 Summer Olympics as well as the shot put at the 1906 Olympics and the Greek discus in 1908. At the 1906 Intercalated Games in Athens he also won silver medals in the standing high jump, standing long jump and the stone throw.\nIn 1907, Sheridan won the National Amateur Athletic Union discus championship and the Canadian championship, and in 1908 he won the Metropolitan, National and Canadian championships as well as two gold medals in the discus throw and bronze in the standing long jump at the 1908 Olympic Games.\nTwo of Martin Sheridan's gold medals from the 1904 Olympic Games in St. Louis, Missouri and one of his medals from the 1906 Olympic Games in Athens, Greece, are currently located in the USA Track & Field's Hall of Fame History Gallery, in Washington Heights, Manhattan.\n\n\n== Legacy ==\nIt is often claimed that Sheridan fueled a controversy in London in 1908, when flagbearer Ralph Rose refused to dip the flag to King Edward VII.  Sheridan is supposed to have supported Rose by explaining \"This flag dips to no earthly king,\" and it is claimed that his statement exemplified both Irish and American defiance of the British monarchy. However, careful research has shown that this was first reported in 1952. Sheridan himself made no mention of it in his published reports on the Games and neither did his obituary.\nThe inscription on the granite Celtic Cross monument marking Martin Sheridan's grave in Calvary Cemetery, Queens, New York says in part: \"Devoted to the Institutions of his Country, and the Ideals and Aspirations of his Race. Athlete. Patriot.\"\nAccording to his obituary in the New York Times, Sheridan was \"one of the greatest athletes the United States has ever known\".\n\n\n== Notes ==\n\n\n== References ==\nCook, Theodore Andrea (May 1909). The Fourth Olympiad London 1908 Official Report (PDF). London: British Olympic Association. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2007-09-27. Retrieved 2008-12-29.\nGreenberg, Stan (1987). Olympic Games: The Records. London: Guinness Books. ISBN 0-85112-896-3.\nKieran, John (1977). The Story of the Olympic Games; 776 B.C. to 1976. Philadelphia and New York: J.B. Lippincott Company. ISBN 0-397-01168-7.\nhttp://www.wingedfist.com/assets/Sheridan_from_Sprin_3100.pdf Police Athletes of the Past: Martin Sheridan - Spring 3100\n\n\n== External links ==\nMartin Sheridan at Find a Grave\nNew York Times obituary\nMartin Sheridan at World Athletics\nMartin Sheridan at Tilastopaja (registration required)\nMartin Sheridan at the USATF Hall of Fame (archived)\nMartin Sheridan at Athletics Podium\nMartin Sheridan at Olympics.com\nMartin Sheridan at Olympedia"}
{"title": "Martina Sáblíková", "requested": "Martina Sáblíková", "extract": "Martina Sáblíková (Czech pronunciation: [ˈmarcɪna ˈsaːbliːkovaː] ) (born 27 May 1987) is a Czech former speed skater, specializing in long track speed skating. She is a three-time Olympic gold medal winner and a multiple European and World allround champion. She became the first Czech to win two Olympic gold medals at one Winter Games in 2010. Sáblíková also competes in inline speed skating and road cycling races as a part of her summer preparation for the skating season. In cycling, she focuses on individual time trial discipline in which Sáblíková holds multiple Czech Republic National Championships titles and belongs to the world's top 15 female time-trialists. Sáblíková is the elder sister of fellow speedskater Milan Sáblík.\n\n\n== Career ==\nAs a junior, Sáblíková already achieved some notable results during international tournaments. In 2005, she came seventh in the 5000 m during the World Single Distance Championships. On 18 November 2005, she skated the 3000 m junior world record 4:00.69 in Salt Lake City. She was the Czech youth champion in 1999, 2001, and 2004.\nIn the 2006 European allround championships in Hamar, she finished fourth overall, placing third at the 3000 m and winning the 5000 m. In the 5000 m, she surprisingly beat favorite Claudia Pechstein. At the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, she finished fourth in the 5000 m behind Clara Hughes, Pechstein, and Cindy Klassen. During her race against Klassen, she was more than three seconds faster in the last round but eventually missed the bronze medal by a second.\nBecause of Sáblíková's results, her position on the all-time world ranking, the Adelskalender, increased from 94th to 15th place within a year. In March 2006, she skated a world record at the 10,000 m, beating Hughes's best time by more than 11 seconds.\n\n\n=== European champion ===\nThe following year she won her first major tournament, the 2007 European Speed Skating Championships in Collalbo, with an outdoor world record samalog score of 162.954 points. She won both the 3000 m and the 5000 m in outdoor world record times. She did not perform as well at the World allround championships in Heerenveen, where she finished fifth, but she managed to win the 3000 and 5000 m events at the 2006–07 Speed Skating World Cup. At the end of the season, she won two gold medals at the 2007 World Single Distance Speed Skating Championships in Salt Lake City in the 3000 m and 5000 m events. At those Championships, she set a new world record of 6:45.61 in the 5000 m event, 1.3 seconds faster than the previous record of Claudia Pechstein.\n\nOn 15 March 2007, Sáblíková became the first female speed skater to skate a 10,000 m below 14 minutes when she went 13:48.33 in Calgary. She improved her one-year-old world record by almost 20 seconds, which would have belonged to the top 100 men of all time. In December 2007, she took 18th place in the poll European Sportsperson of the Year of the Polish Press Agency.\nShe also won the title of the Sportsperson of the Year of the Czech Republic twice – in 2007 and 2009.\nOne week before the start of the 2007–08 World Cup season, Sáblíková fell during her training, and fractured her humerus and stretched ligaments. Although the injury limited her training in the beginning, she had an excellent season, and finally got the title with 6 out of 7 world cup wins (including the final) at the 3000 m and 5000 m distances. She also finished 9th at the 1500 m.\nOn 13 January, she took bronze at the 2008 European allround championships in Kolomna, Russia. On 12 January, the first day of the event, she improved her personal best at the 500 m distance, her weakest distance, with a time of 40.58 seconds. However, it was still too slow to compete with the best skaters. She finished 3rd despite winning the 3000 m and 5000 m distances. On 10 February she finished 5th at the World Allround Championships in Heerenveen, again winning the 5000 m, but with a poor 500 m result.\nOn 9 March 2008, she won gold at the 5000 m at the World Single Distance Championships in Nagano, Japan. However, she was very disappointed with her 3000 m performance two days before, when she finished 4th.\nOn 11 January 2009 she repeated her previous bronze performance at the European allround championships despite her traditionally weak performance at the 500 m and surprising 4th place at the 3000 m. However, on 8 February she took gold at the World allround championships in Hamar after setting a new Czech national record in the 500 m at 40.28 seconds and winning the 3000 m and 5000 m distances. It was the first world allround medal in her career.\nOn 1 February 2009, Sáblíková and her fellow Czech competitors Andrea Jirků and Karolína Erbanová won the team pursuit competition at the World Cup Final in Erfurt, setting new Czech national record of 3:05.32. After the leading Dutch team did not finish the race, they also won the whole 2008/2009 World Cup.\n\n\n=== Olympic champion ===\nAt the Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver in 2010, Sáblíková won three medals, two golds (3000 and 5000 metres), and one bronze (1500 metres). She thus became the first Czech to win two gold medals in the same Winter Olympic Games.\nAt the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Sáblíková successfully defended her title in the 5000 meter, while also winning a silver medal in the 3000 meter. At the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang County, she won silver in the 5000 m behind Esmee Visser. Sáblíková also won a bronze medal in the 5000m at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. Her last Olympic appearance at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan had Sáblíková skipping the 3000 meters due to illness, and still not in the best shape in the 5000 meters, finished a whole lap behind champion Francesca Lollobrigida and 11th overall, but followed completion with a lap of honor and bowing to the audience. Sáblíková retired after the World Allround Speed Skating Championships at the Thialf in Heerenveen, held in March 2026.\nMartina Sáblíková and Milan Sáblík are a rare example of sister and brother both holding world records in the same sport at the same time; Martina holds the (senior) world records in the 5000 m and 10,000 m events (both from March 2007) and in the 3000 m event (from March 2019), while Milan shared the junior world record for the team pursuit with fellow Czech junior skaters Pavel Kulma and Zdeněk Haselberger (from November 2007 till March 2010). Sáblíková has been successful despite there being no speed skating rinks in the Czech Republic. Because of this, Sáblíková's coach Petr Novák had to devise several unorthodox but successful training methods.\n\n\n== Rio 2016 qualification controversy ==\nAs an international caliber cyclist, Sáblíková had long harboured the dream of competing in the Olympic time trial event at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. After finishing 12th in 2015 in the women's time trial at the UCI World Road Championships in Richmond, U.S. (9th in the reduced rankings), Sáblíková was thought to have secured a place at Rio 2016. However, when the UCI published the list of nations that qualified for this event at Rio 2016, the Czech Republic was not among them. The UCI used an interpretation of the qualification rules where an athlete also has to qualify for the road race. She traveled to Rio, hoping the decision might be overturned but did not compete.\n\n\n== 2025 World Speed Skating Single Distances Championships ==\nSáblíková took part In the 2025 World Single Distances Speed Skating Championships, in Hamar, Norway. Even though battling illness, Sáblíková finished fifth in the women's 5000m at the World Single Distances Speed Skating Championships. This marked the first time in her career that she did not secure a medal in this event. Despite a fever making her participation uncertain until two hours before the race, Sáblíková chose to compete, stating her desire to \"leave with honour.\" She plans to retire after the next season.\n\n\n== Records ==\n\n\n=== Personal records ===\n\n*=not an official distance for women, so no official World record.\nSource: SpeedskatingResults.com\nShe is currently in 5th position in the adelskalender.\n\n\n=== World records ===\n\nSource: SpeedSkatingStats.com\n\n\n== In-line skating and cycling ==\nSáblíková also competed in several inline speed skating and cycling races as a part of her summer preparation for the skating season. In 2004, she finished 16th at the Junior Inline Speed Skating World Championships on the 20 km distance in Sulmona. In 2006, she won the marathon (42.2 km) at the Czech Inline Speed Skating Championships in Plzeň and in 2007 the half marathon (21.6 km) in Ostrava.\nIn 2007, she also took bronze in individual time trial on the 24 km distance at the European U23-Junior Road Cycling Championships in Sofia and another bronze on the 18 km distance at the Czech Road Cycling Championships in Žďár nad Sázavou. In 2010, she took gold at the Czech Road and Time Trial National Championship.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nOn 27 April 2025, Sáblíková in her post on Instagram came out as lesbian. She revealed her twelve year long relationship with another Czech speed skater Nikola Zdráhalová. They married in 2026.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nMartina Sáblíková at the International Skating Union (archived former page)\nMartina Sáblíková at Olympics.com \nMartina Sáblíková at Olympedia \nMartina Sáblíková at InterSportStats \nMartina Sáblíková at Olympijskytym.cz (in Czech) \nOfficial website"}
{"title": "Matt Biondi", "requested": "Matt Biondi", "extract": "Matthew Nicholas Biondi (born October 8, 1965) is an American former competitive swimmer and water polo player. As a swimmer, he is an eleven-time Olympic medalist, and former world record-holder in five events. Biondi competed in the Summer Olympic Games in 1984, 1988 and 1992, winning a total of eleven medals (eight gold, two silver and one bronze). During his career, he set three individual world records in the 50-meter freestyle and four in the 100-meter freestyle.\nAt the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul, Biondi won five gold medals, setting world records in the 50-meter freestyle and three relay events.\nBiondi is a member of the International Swimming Hall of Fame and the United States Olympic Hall of Fame.\n\n\n== Early life and athletics ==\nBiondi started his aquatics career as a swimmer and water polo player in his hometown of Moraga, California. As he moved into his teens, his incredible abilities as a sprint swimmer began to emerge. Though he did not start swimming year-round until he started at Campolindo High School, by his senior year in 1983 Biondi was the top prep sprinter in America with a national high school record of 20.40 seconds in the 50-yard freestyle.\n\n\n== College and international career ==\n\n\n=== 1983–84 freshman year ===\nBiondi accepted a scholarship to attend the University of California, Berkeley, to swim under Head Coach Nort Thornton and play water polo for coach Pete Cutino, and enrolled in fall of 1983. In his first year, he played on Berkeley's NCAA championship water polo team, and made the consolation finals at the 1984 NCAA Swimming Championships, finishing in ninth place in the 50-yard freestyle and 7th place in both the 100 and 200-yard freestyle events (until 1985 only the top six swimmers advanced to the championship finals) along with a fourth-place finish as part of the 400-yard freestyle relay and a second place in the 800 free relay.\n\n\n=== 1984 Olympics ===\nIn the summer of 1984, Biondi surprised the swimming community by qualifying for a spot on the United States 4×100-meter freestyle relay at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics with his fourth-place finish in the 100-meter freestyle at the Olympic Trials held in Indianapolis. He also finished 18th in the preliminaries of the 200-meter freestyle, failing to advance to the finals. At the Los Angeles Olympics, Biondi swam the third leg of the relay, entering the water in second place just barely behind the team from Australia. Thanks to his 49.67 second split time, the U.S. had taken a four-tenths of a second lead by the time that Biondi turned over the race to anchor swimmer Rowdy Gaines. The U.S. won the gold medal in Olympic and World Record time.\n\n\n=== Post-Olympics NCAA swimming and water polo ===\nIn 1985, fresh off of his 1984 Olympics success, Biondi won the 100 and 200-yard freestyle events at the NCAA Championships, setting NCAA and American Records in each event, and contributed relay legs on Cal's victorious 400 and 800-yard freestyle relays, with the 400 free relay team also setting NCAA and American records. He finished second to Tom Jager of UCLA in the 50-yard freestyle and was part of Cal's second place 400-yard medley relay team. Thanks in large part to Biondi's efforts, the Cal team finished fourth overall in the team standings.\nThe next season, 1986, Biondi swept the sprint freestyles, repeating his 1985 victories in the 100 and 200, and adding a win in the 50 with new NCAA and American records in the event. Cal once again finished first in the 400 and 800 free relays with Biondi anchoring both, but once again fell short in the 400 medley relay finishing third. By virtue of his three individual victories, Biondi tied with Stanford's Pablo Morales for high-point scorer in the meet in which Cal finished runner-up to Stanford for the team title.\nIn his final collegiate season, 1987, Biondi repeated as winner in the 50, 100, and 200-yard freestyle events, breaking his own NCAA and American records in all three. Having broken the 50 free record in both his preliminary heat and again in the final, he became the first swimmer to break four individual NCAA and American records in the same meet. Once again Cal repeated as champions in the 400 and 800 freestyle relays, yet again they finished third in the 400 medley relay, and for the second straight year Biondi shared the high-point individual title with Morales. The Bears finished fifth in the team standings. For his career, Biondi won eight individual NCAA titles and swam on six winning relays. He broke individual NCAA and American records seven times, and was named the NCAA Swimmer of the Year in 1985, 1986, and 1987.\nIn his other sport, Biondi was named to an All-American College Water Polo team four times: a third-team selection in 1983, 1985, and 1987, and a second-team selection in 1984. Biondi's Cal Water Polo teams won NCAA Championships in 1983, 1984, and 1987, and Biondi was voted the team's most valuable player in 1985.\n\n\n=== International swimming, 1985–88 ===\nBiondi set the first of his twelve individual swimming world records in 1985. He was the first man to swim the 100-meter freestyle faster than 49 seconds, and by 1988 he owned the ten fastest times swum in that event and held the world record for nearly nine years. He won a total 24 U.S. Championships in the 50, 100, and 200-meter freestyle events, as well as the 100 butterfly. In two World Championships (1986 and 1991), Biondi won 11 medals including six gold. During his career, he was a finalist for the James E. Sullivan Award, the UPI Sportsman of the Year, the U.S. Olympic Committee Sportsman of the Year, and selected twice as the Swimming World magazine Male Swimmer of the World, in 1986 and 1988.\nAt the National Championships on August 6, 1985, Biondi set the world record in the 100-meter freestyle twice in a single day, swimming a 49.24 in the prelims and a 48.95 in the finals. On the following day, he won the 200-meter freestyle with an American record time of 1:47.89.\nLater that month at the 1985 Pan Pacific Swimming Championships in Tokyo, Biondi won the 50-meter and 100-meter freestyle, and finished second to teammates Mike Heath and Pablo Morales, respectively, in the 200-meter freestyle and 100-meter butterfly. He won three additional gold medals as a member of all three winning American relay teams. The 4×100-meter free relay team of Scott McCadam, Mike Heath, Paul Wallace, and Biondi set a world record of 3:17.08, and the 4×100-meter medley relay team of Rick Carey, John Moffet, Pablo Morales, and Biondi set a world record of 3:38.28.\nBiondi improved his world record in the 100-meter freestyle to 48.74 in June 1986 at the World Championship Trials.\nAt the 1986 World Aquatics Championships in Madrid, Biondi won seven medals: three gold, one silver, and three bronze. He won gold in the 100-meter freestyle with a time of 48.94, breaking the 49-second barrier for the third time. Individually, he also won a silver medal in the 100-meter butterfly, and bronze medals in the 50-meter and 200-meter freestyle. He won two additional gold medals as a member of the 4×100-meter freestyle and 4×100-meter medley relays, and a third bronze medal as a member of the 4×200-meter freestyle relay.\nReturning to the US National Team for the fourth consecutive year, Biondi won four gold medals at the 1987 Pan Pacific Swimming Championships in Brisbane, Australia, in the 100-meter freestyle and as a member of all three winning American relay teams. In addition, he won silver in the 50-meter freestyle and bronze in the 100-meter butterfly.\nAt the 1988 Olympic Trials, Biondi qualified to compete in seven events: the three relays, and individually in the 50-, 100-, and 200-meter freestyle and the 100-meter butterfly. He set the world record in the 100-meter freestyle for the fourth time (48.42), and broke his own American record in the 200-meter freestyle (1:47.72).\n\n\n=== 1988 Olympics ===\nBiondi won five gold, one silver, and one bronze medal at the 1988 Seoul Olympics, setting four world records and an Olympic record.\nIn his first event, the 200-meter freestyle, Biondi faced reigning Olympic Champion, World Champion, and world record-holder Michael Gross. Biondi swam a good race, with a time of 1:47.99, but finished with a bronze medal behind Australian Duncan Armstrong, who won gold with a new world record, and Anders Holmertz of Sweden, who earned the silver.\nBiondi's finished second in his next event, the 100-meter butterfly, by the narrowest possible margin. In the finals, he was caught between strokes as he approached the finishing wall. He chose to glide rather than take another stroke, and was edged out by Anthony Nesty of Suriname by just one one-hundredth (0.01) of a second. Biondi's silver medal time of 53.01 was a personal best.\nLater that day, Biondi anchored the 4×200-meter freestyle relay, joined by teammates Troy Dalbey, Matt Cetlinski, and Doug Gjertsen. The American team won gold, setting a world record of 7:12.51. Biondi entered the water with the U.S. team in second place .82 seconds behind the East German team, but passed them by swimming the fastest split time of the race with a 1:46.44, which at the time was also the fastest ever 200 freestyle relay split. This started Biondi's remarkable streak of five gold medals in five days of Olympic swimming, each a world or Olympic record.\nIn the 100-meter freestyle, Biondi won his first individual Olympic gold, setting a new Olympic record of 48.63. This was the second-fastest 100-meter freestyle of all time, eclipsed only by Biondi's effort at the Olympic trials the prior month. Teammate Chris Jacobs won silver, delivering the first one-two finish for the American swim team at the 1988 Olympics.\nNext up was the 4×100-meter freestyle relay, in which Biondi was joined by teammates Jacobs, Troy Dalbey, and Tom Jager. The American team won gold with another world record, 3:16.53, anchored by Biondi's blistering split of 47.81.\nIn his fourth individual event, Biondi faced Jager in the 50-meter freestyle. It was the Olympic debut of the event, in which both Biondi and Jager had previously set world records. It was another one-two finish for the Americans, with Biondi winning gold in a world-record time of 22.14, and Jager winning silver.\nThe Olympic swimming competition concluded with the 4×100-meter medley relay. Biondi swam the butterfly leg, joined by teammates David Berkoff (backstroke), Richard Schroeder (breaststroke), and Chris Jacobs (freestyle). The American men set another world record of 3:36.93 to complete their gold-medal sweep in the relays.\nFor his accomplishments in 1988, Biondi was named the United Press International Athlete of the Year, the US Olympic Committee Athlete of the Year, and the Swimming World Swimmer of the Year.\n\n\n=== 1992 Olympics ===\nAt the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, Biondi won two more gold medals in relays and a silver in the 50-meter freestyle. Following the 1992 Olympics, Biondi retired, which he attributed to multiple factors including lack of financial assistance.\n\n\n=== World Championships ===\nBiondi competed at the World Championships in 1986 and 1991, winning six gold medals.\nIn 1986, he won three gold medals, one silver and three bronzes to set a record of seven medals at one World Championship meet. This record has since been matched by Michael Phelps, and passed by Caeleb Dressel with eight medals.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nBiondi graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1988 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Economy of Industrialized Societies (PEIS).\nBiondi married Kirsten Metzger in her home state of Hawaii in 1995. They have three children: Nathaniel (Nate), born in 1998, who swam for the UC Berkeley men's swimming program from 2018–2021; Lucas, born in 2002; and Makena, born in 2007. They divorced in 2014. Kirsten still resides in Hawaii.\nKirsten Biondi persuaded her husband to continue his education, and he earned his master's degree in education in 2000 at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon.\nIn recent years, Biondi has worked as a school teacher and swimming coach in Hawaii. As of 2012, he teaches math and coaches at Sierra Canyon School in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Chatsworth.\nBiondi has become active within the masters swimming community, launching an annual masters competition that bears his name. The Matt Biondi Masters Classic was held for the first time on March 23, 2014, in Simi Valley, California. The competition is a one-day, short course yards meet held in conjunction with Biondi's masters club, the Conejo Valley Multisport Masters.\nMatt Biondi is NOT related to famous Italian jazz, disco, funk and soul singer Mario Biondi.\n\n\n== See also ==\n\nBay Area Sports Hall of Fame\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists at a single Games\nList of multiple Olympic medalists at a single Games\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists in one event\nList of multiple Summer Olympic medalists\nList of Olympic medalists in swimming (men)\nList of University of California, Berkeley alumni\nList of World Aquatics Championships medalists in swimming (men)\nWorld record progression 50 metres freestyle\nWorld record progression 100 metres freestyle\nWorld record progression 4 × 100 metres freestyle relay\nWorld record progression 4 × 100 metres medley relay\nWorld record progression 4 × 200 metres freestyle relay\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nMatt Biondi  at World Aquatics \nMatt Biondi (USA) – Honor Swimmer profile at International Swimming Hall of Fame website at the Wayback Machine (archived February 24, 2017)\nMatt Biondi at the Team USA Hall of Fame (archive July 20, 2023)\nMatt Biondi at Olympedia\nMatthew Biondi at Olympics.comMatthew Biondi at Olympic.org (archived)"}
{"title": "Matt Grevers", "requested": "Matt Grevers", "extract": "Matthew Grevers (born March 26, 1985) is a former American competition swimmer who competed in the backstroke and freestyle events, and is a six-time Olympic medalist.  He has won a total of thirty-three medals in major international competition, fourteen gold, twelve silver, and seven bronze spanning the Olympics, World Championships, and the Universiade.  At the 2008 Summer Olympics, Grevers won gold medals as a member of the U.S. teams in the 4×100-meter freestyle and 4×100-meter medley relays, and a silver medal in the 100-meter backstroke.  Four years later, at the 2012 Summer Olympics, he won gold medals in the 100-meter backstroke and the 4×100-meter medley relay, and a silver medal in the 4×100-meter freestyle relay.\n\n\n== Early life and swimming ==\nBorn on March 26, 1985, in Lake Forest, Illinois, to Ed and Anja Grevers, a swim coach, he attended Lake Forest High School.  One of the younger competitive swimmers in the family, older sister Carolyn swam for the University of Kansas, while older brother Andrew swam for Northern Illinois. Recognized early for his potential at High School meets, he set a national backstroke record at ten.  At Lake Forest, he set three Illinois state records and in his Senior year in 2003 made significant contributions to Lake Forest's first Illinois State Team Championship. During his High School years, he competed and trained with Patriot Aquatics Swim Club at Illinois's Stevenson High School under accomplished coach Lea Maurer, a 1992 Olympic gold medalist who served as an Assistant Coach at Northwestern, and would later coach at Stanford.  Completed in 1996, the club featured one of the first and most modern natatoriums in the state.\n\n\n== Northwestern University ==\nBeginning as a Freshman swimmer with Northwestern University in the fall of 2003, Grevers was a Big 10 Freshman of the Year, and became the first Northwestern Wildcat swimmer since 1958 to capture a national championship when he finished ahead of Ryan Lochte of Florida in the 100 backstroke at the 2005 NCAA championships. At Northwestern, he was a 27-time All American, and was trained and managed by Coach Bob Groseth. He won three individual NCAA titles during his time at Northwestern, and captured a fourth NCAA national championship with Northwestern's 400 medley relay team in 2007.\nHe repeated as the winner of the NCAA 100 backstroke title in 2006, then captured a first in the 200 backstroke, becoming only the third swimmer in the history of the NCAA history to swim under a time of 1:40 in the event.\nA 2006 Big Ten Swimmer of the Year, he graduated Northwestern with three Big Ten Conference records, 11 Northwestern University records and 10 Norris Aquatics Center pool records.\n\n\n== 2008 Olympics ==\nAt the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China, Grevers won two gold medals by swimming in the preliminary heats of the 4×100-meter freestyle relay and 4×100-meter medley relay (swimming the backstroke leg) as the Americans went on to win the finals in those events and medals are awarded to participants at any step along the way.  Grevers also won an individual silver medal in the 100-meter backstroke in a time of 53.11-second, 0.57 of a second behind the winner, world record holder Aaron Peirsol.\n\n\n=== 2009 World Aquatics ===\nAt the 2009 World Aquatics Championships, Grevers was part of the U.S. men's 4×100-meter freestyle relay team who took the gold ahead of Russia and France. Grevers also earned a gold in the 4×100-meter medley relay for his contributions in the heats.\n\n\n== 2012 Olympics ==\n\nAt the 2012 United States Olympic Trials, the qualifying meet for the 2012 Olympics, Grevers qualified for the U.S. Olympic team by finishing first in the 100-meter backstroke and third in the 100-meter freestyle.  In the final of the 100-meter backstroke, Grevers recorded the fastest time in a textile suit and won in a time of 52.08 seconds, then the second-best effort of all time and just behind Aaron Peirsol's world record of 51.94. In the 100-meter freestyle, Grevers placed third with a time of 48.55, which ensured him a spot on the 4×100-meter freestyle relay. Grevers also competed in the 50-meter freestyle, and placed sixth in the final with a time of 22.09.\nAt the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, Grevers won a total of three medals: two golds and one silver.  Grevers earned his first medal, a silver, by swimming for the second-place U.S. team in the preliminary heats of the 4×100-meter freestyle relay.  In the final, the American team finished second behind France.  Teaming with Jimmy Feigen, Ricky Berens, and Jason Lezak in the heats, Grevers swam the second leg and recorded a time of 47.59.  After leading the heats (52.92) and semi-finals (52.66) of the 100-meter backstroke, Grevers won gold in the final of the 100-meter backstroke with a time of 52.16, bettering Aaron Peirsol's Olympic record of 52.54 set in 2008 and 0.76 seconds ahead of Nick Thoman.  For Grevers, it was his first individual gold medal. In his final event, the 4×100-meter medley relay, Grevers won gold with Brendan Hansen, Michael Phelps and Nathan Adrian.  Swimming the backstroke leg, Grevers recorded a time of 52.58 seconds, and the U.S. team went on to win with a time of 3:29.35.\n\n\n=== 2013 World Championships ===\n\nAt the 2013 FINA World Championships in Barcelona, Grevers achieved a total of two medals: a gold and a silver. On the first night of swimming, Grevers missed the top-eight championship finals roster in the 50-meter butterfly, as he finished his semi-final run with a twelfth-place time in 23.35. The following day, Grevers threw down the event's fastest time of 52.93 to claim the gold medal in the 100 m backstroke, finishing ahead of his teammate David Plummer by nearly two-tenths of a second. On the final night of the meet, Grevers swam his last two finals with only 45 minutes in between. First, he posted a matching time of 24.54 to share the silver medal with France's Jérémy Stravius in the 50 m backstroke. Nearly an hour later, Grevers teamed up with Kevin Cordes, Ryan Lochte, and Nathan Adrian for the final in the 4 × 100 m medley relay. During the race, Grevers swam the backstroke leg and touched the wall with a split of 53.02 until his teammate Cordes left the block 0.04 seconds early on the breaststroke leg, smashing the medal chances entirely for the Americans with a disastrous disqualification.\nHe did not make the 2016 Olympics Team as he finished third in the 100m backstroke.\n\n\n=== 2017 World Championships ===\n\nAt the 2017 US National Championships, the qualifying meet for the 2017 World Championships in swimming, Grevers won the 100-meter backstroke, ahead of the 2016 Olympic champion and 100-meter backstroke world record holder, Ryan Murphy, to qualify the World Championships later that year in Budapest.\nAt the 2017 World Aquatics Championships in Budapest, Grevers placed second behind Xu Jiayu of China but ahead of Murphy in the 100-meter backstroke. He also earned gold medals by swimming in the heats and finals of the US 4x100-meter medley and mixed medley relays, as well as a bronze medal in the non-Olympic 50-meter backstroke. The mixed medley relay had also set a World and Championship record time of 3:38.56 in the finals.\n\n\n=== Honors ===\nWhile at Northwestern, Grevers was a Big 10 Freshman of the Year, and a Big Ten Swimmer of the Year in 2006.  He was inducted into the Northwestern University Athletic Hall of Fame in 2012, and became a member of the Chicagoland Sports Hall of Fame in October, 2022.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nGrevers was born in Lake Forest, Illinois. As noted previously, he graduated from Lake Forest High School in 2003, and subsequently attended Northwestern University while swimming for the Wildcats.\nBoth of Grevers's parents are from the Netherlands.  Grevers considered representing the Netherlands and even spoke about it with Dutch swimming legend Pieter van den Hoogenband.  Ultimately, he decided to represent the United States.\nGrevers proposed to his wife, Annie Chandler, at the Missouri Grand Prix on Saturday, February 11, 2012.  The couple were married on April 6, 2013, in San Antonio, Texas.\nAnnie gave birth to the couple's first child, a daughter, Skylar Lea Grevers, on November 9, 2016.\nGrevers announcing the birth of his second child with Annie, made Swimming World Biweekly as one of two family lifestyle articles printed, the other being the engagement of Caeleb Dressel to Meghan Dressel. In December 2019, they had their second daughter together, Barbara Grace. \n  His youngest child is son Gideon.\n\n\n=== Coaching ===\nAs of 2024, Annie Chandler Grevers and husband Matt were still living in Tucson, Arizona with their three young children.  Matt, who continued to train and attended the Olympic trials that year, was an Assistant volunteer coach at the University of Arizona, and worked for the DeMont Family Swim School, where he became a partner and co-owner in 2022 with Rick DeMont.  DeMont, who had coached Grevers at Tucson Ford Aquatics for a decade, had operated the school with his wife Carrie since 2009, and had coached at the University of Arizona from 1987 to 2017. Staying active in the sport, Grevers attended the U.S. Olympic trials for all seven Olympics from 2000 to 2024.\n\n\n== See also ==\n\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of Northwestern University alumni\nList of Olympic medalists in swimming (men)\nList of United States records in swimming\nList of World Aquatics Championships medalists in swimming (men)\nWorld record progression 4 × 100 metres freestyle relay\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nMatt Grevers  at World Aquatics \nMatt Grevers at the International Swimming League (archived)\nMatt Grevers at USA Swimming (archived June 2, 2021)\nMatt Grevers at Team USA (archive July 11, 2022)\nMatt Grevers at Olympics.com Matt Grevers at Olympic.org (archived) \nMatt Grevers at Olympedia \nMatt Grevers – Northwestern University athlete profile at the Wayback Machine (archived October 10, 2012)"}
{"title": "Matthew Pinsent", "requested": "Matthew Pinsent", "extract": "Sir Matthew Clive Pinsent,  (; born 10 October 1970) is an English rower and broadcaster. During his rowing career, he won 10 world championship gold medals and four consecutive Olympic gold medals.\nSince retiring, he has worked as a sports broadcaster for the BBC.\n\n\n== Early life and family ==\nPinsent was born on 10 October 1970 in Holt, Norfolk. His father was the Rev. Ewen Macpherson Pinsent (1930–2020), curate of St Andrew's parish church, Kelso, Scottish Borders, and his mother, Jean Grizel, came from a distinguished military family.\nThrough his own aristocratic and military family, Pinsent is directly descended from King Edward I and William the Conqueror.\n\n\n== Rowing ==\n\n\n=== Student rower ===\nMatthew Pinsent attended Aysgarth School in North Yorkshire before he began rowing at Eton College. He began his international career at the World Rowing Junior Championships in 1987. He raced again in 1988, winning the junior coxless pairs with Tim Foster.\nAfter finishing school, Pinsent read geography at St Catherine's College, Oxford. While a student, he competed in three Boat Races, winning in 1990 and 1991 but was unsuccessful in 1993 (when he was Boat Club President), having taken a year out in 1992 in order to concentrate on preparing for the Barcelona Olympics.\n\n\n=== International career ===\nIn 1990, while still at Oxford, he joined Steve Redgrave in the coxless pair at the World Rowing Championships, winning bronze. This was the beginning of a long partnership, and the pair won at the World Championships in 1991, and at the Olympic Games in 1992 and 1996.\nIn 2000 he won Olympic gold again as part of a coxless four with Redgrave, James Cracknell and Tim Foster. He also carried the flag for Team GB at the opening ceremony. In August 2000, the month prior to winning gold in Sydney, he took part in a three-part BBC documentary entitled Gold Fever. This followed the coxless four team in the years leading up to the Olympics, including video diaries recording the highs and lows in the quest for what would be Pinsent's third consecutive gold.\nHe was the subject of This Is Your Life in November 2000 when he was surprised by Michael Aspel during a party celebrating the achievements of the British Olympic Association at the London Aquarium.\nPinsent and Cracknell then formed a men's coxless pair and won the coxless and coxed pairs (with Neil Chugani coxing) in the 2001 World Championships, and the coxless pair in 2002. However, after a disappointing 2003 season that saw Pinsent's first World Championships defeat since 1990, he and Cracknell moved to the men's coxless four for 2004.\nAt the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Pinsent's fourth Olympic Games, Pinsent stroked the boat, with Cracknell, Ed Coode and Steve Williams. In a close race with world champions Canada, they again won gold.\nPinsent was elected to the International Olympic Committee's Athletes' Commission in 2001, replacing Jan Železný. In 2004, at the Athens Olympics, Pinsent failed to secure re-election to the post, being replaced by Železný.\nThe 6 feet 5 inches (1.96 m), 17 stone (110 kg) Pinsent had at one time the largest lung capacity recorded for a sportsman at 8.5 litres. This has since been surpassed by fellow rower Pete Reed who has been measured at 11.68 litres.\n\n\n=== Achievements ===\n\n\n==== Olympic Games ====\n2004 – Gold, Coxless Four (with James Cracknell, Steve Williams, Ed Coode)\n2000 – Gold, Coxless Four (with James Cracknell, Tim Foster, Steve Redgrave)\n1996 – Gold, Coxless Pair (with Steve Redgrave)\n1992 – Gold, Coxless Pair (with Steve Redgrave)\n\n\n==== World Championships ====\n2003 – 4th, Coxless Pair (with James Cracknell)\n2002 – Gold, Coxless Pair (with James Cracknell)\n2001 – Gold, Coxless Pair (with James Cracknell)\n2001 – Gold, Coxed Pair (with James Cracknell, Neil Chugani)\n1999 – Gold, Coxless Four (with James Cracknell, Ed Coode, Steve Redgrave)\n1998 – Gold, Coxless Four (with James Cracknell, Tim Foster, Steve Redgrave)\n1997 – Gold, Coxless Four (with James Cracknell, Tim Foster, Steve Redgrave)\n1995 – Gold, Coxless Pair (with Steve Redgrave)\n1994 – Gold, Coxless Pair (with Steve Redgrave)\n1993 – Gold, Coxless Pair (with Steve Redgrave)\n1991 – Gold, Coxless Pair (with Steve Redgrave)\n1990 – Bronze, Coxless Pair (with Steve Redgrave)\n1989 – Bronze, Coxed Four (with Terry Dillon, Steve Turner, Gavin Stewart, Vaughan Thomas)\n\n\n==== Junior World Championships ====\n1988 – Gold, Coxless Pair (with Tim Foster)\n1987 – 4th, Eight\n\n\n== Career after rowing ==\nPinsent announced his retirement from rowing on 30 November 2004, and was made a Knight Bachelor in the New Year's Honours list announced on 31 December 2004.\nHe had already been appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire in 1993, raised to Commander in 2001. He was awarded the Thomas Keller Medal by the International Rowing Federation in 2005.\nSince retiring from rowing, Pinsent has worked for the BBC as a sports bulletin presenter and reporter. His assignments have included interviewing Dwain Chambers for Inside Sport, where Chambers confessed to taking drugs, and visiting gymnastics training centre in China where he found evidence of children being beaten, leading to IOC President Jacques Rogge to order an inquiry. He has also worked on a number of Olympic Games for the corporation. At Beijing 2008, Vancouver 2010, London 2012, Sochi 2014, Rio 2016 and Beijing 2022, Pinsent worked as a general reporter, compiling reports from sports and events across the games. At the Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024 Olympics, Pinsent was also the water-side reporter for the rowing and canoeing events. Pinsent also reported from the Delhi 2010 and Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games.\nPinsent has maintained his ties to rowing as an umpire or commentator of key events on the rowing calendar such as the Olympics, Henley Royal Regatta and The Boat Races. He umpired his first \"Blue Boat\" race in 2013.\nIn June 2012, Pinsent rowed on the Gloriana as part of the royal pageant for the Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II. He appeared again on the Gloriana the following month, bearing the olympic torch as it crossed the river Thames.\nPinsent directed \"Unbelievable – The Chad Le Clos Story\", a documentary following Chad Le Clos and his family for 18 months in the run up to the 2016 Summer Olympics, which was first broadcast in July 2016.\nIn 2020 Pinsent appeared as a contestant on Series 15 of BBC Television's Celebrity Masterchef, finishing in joint-second place.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nPinsent is married to Demetra Koutsoukos, a businesswoman, former partner at McKinsey & Co, and former CEO of the makeup brand Charlotte Tilbury Ltd. The couple met at Oxford, where Koutsoukos was a Rhodes Scholar from Harvard.\nThey have three children: twin boys, Jonah and Lucas (born 2006) and a daughter, Eve (born 2008).\n\n\n== Styles and honours ==\nMr Matthew Pinsent (1970–1992)\nMr Matthew Pinsent, MBE (1993–2000)\nMr Matthew Pinsent, CBE (2001–2004)\nSir Matthew Pinsent, CBE (2005—)\n\n\n== Bibliography ==\nPinsent, Matthew (2 September 2004). A Lifetime in a Race. Ebury Press. ISBN 978-0-09-190149-3.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nOfficial website\nMatthew Pinsent at World Rowing (archive)\nMatthew Pinsent at Team GB \nMatthew Pinsent at Olympics.comMatthew Pinsent at Olympic.org (archived)\nMatthew Pinsent at Olympedia"}
{"title": "Matthias Mayer", "requested": "Matthias Mayer", "extract": "Matthias Mayer (German pronunciation: [maˈtiːas ˈmaɪɐ]; born 9 June 1990) is an Austrian retired World Cup alpine ski racer and Olympic champion.\n\n\n== Career ==\nBorn in Afritz am See in Carinthia, Mayer made his World Cup debut in Sestriere in February 2009. His best discipline is super-G. After several top ten finishes, his first World Cup podium came at Kitzbühel in a super-G in January 2013.\nAt the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, Mayer won the downhill to become the seventh Austrian gold medalist in the 18th edition of the event. Joining him on the podium at Rosa Khutor were Christof Innerhofer of Italy and Kjetil Jansrud of Norway. Immediately after the Olympics, he had two podium finishes in Norway, and a victory at the World Cup finals. He won his second Olympic gold medal in 2018 in the super G.\nAt the 2022 Winter Olympics, Mayer won the bronze medal in the downhill and successfully defended his title in the super G. With three Olympic titles in addition to a bronze, he is Austria's most decorated Olympic alpine medalist.\nOn 29 December 2022, Mayer shocked the ski racing community when he announced his immediate retirement at 32 years old, just hours before a super-G race in Bormio he was scheduled to start. He finished his World Cup career with 11 wins and 45 podium finishes in 13 seasons.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nMayer's father is Helmut Mayer (b.1966), the silver medalist in the first Olympic super-G in 1988; he also won a silver medal at the World Championships in 1989, in the giant slalom at Vail.\n\n\n== World cup results ==\n\n\n=== Season standings ===\n\nStandings through 31 January 2023\n\n\n=== Race victories ===\n11 wins – (7 DH, 3 SG, 1 AC)\n45 podiums – (22 DH, 22 SG, 1 AC)\n\n\n== World Championship results ==\n\n\n== Olympic results ==\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nMatthias Mayer at the International Ski and Snowboard Federation \nMatthias Mayer at Ski-DB Alpine Ski Database \nAustrian Ski team – official site – Matthias Mayer (in German)\nHead Skis – Matthias Mayer\nMatthias Mayer at Olympedia \nMatthias Mayer at Olympics.com \nMatthias Mayer at Team Austria (in Austrian German)\nOfficial website (in German)"}
{"title": "Matti Nykänen", "requested": "Matti Nykänen", "extract": "Matti Ensio Nykänen (pronounced [ˈmɑtːi ˈnykænen] ; 17 July 1963 – 4 February 2019) was a Finnish ski jumper who competed from 1981 to 1991. Known as \"The Flying Finn\", he is one of the most successful ski jumpers of all time, having won five Winter Olympic medals (four gold), nine World Championship medals (five gold), and 22 Finnish Championship medals (14 gold). Most notably, he won three gold medals at the 1988 Winter Olympics, becoming, along with Yvonne van Gennip of the Netherlands, the most medaled athlete that winter.\nNykänen is one of only two ski jumpers in history – the other being Domen Prevc – to have won all five of the sport's major individual titles: a gold medal at the Winter Olympics (three times), the Ski Jumping World Championships (once), the Ski Flying World Championships (once), four World Cup overall titles, and the Four Hills Tournament (twice). His four World Cup titles is an all-time male record shared with Adam Małysz. Nykänen remains the only male five-time ski flying world record holder in history.\nFrom the 1990s onwards, Nykänen's status as a celebrity was mainly fueled by his personal relationships, his career as a pop singer, and various incidents often related to heavy use of alcohol and violent behaviour. He was sentenced to 26 months in prison following a stabbing incident in 2004, and again for 16 months following an aggravated assault on his wife in 2009. He died in 2019 at the age of 55, suffering from chronic pancreatitis.\n\n\n== Ski jumping career ==\n\nFor most of the 1980s, Nykänen and Jens Weißflog of East Germany dominated the sport. Nykänen won gold and silver at the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo. His 17.5-point gold medal victory was the largest margin of victory in Olympic ski jumping history at the time. He was also the first ever to win gold medals on both hills at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary. \nIn 1985 he flew 191 metres in Planica, a world record that stood briefly until Piotr Fijas (Poland) flew 194 metres, again in Planica, in 1987. His other achievements include a total of nine medals (five golds) at the World Championship level. He also won a total of 46 World Cup competitions (later surpassed by the current record-holder Gregor Schlierenzauer, Austria) and won the overall title four times (also a record, currently shared with Adam Małysz of Poland). \nHe won the prestigious Four Hills Tournament twice. He competed in the FIS Ski Flying World Championships five times and won a medal every time. Nykänen also won the ski jumping competition at the Holmenkollen Ski Festival twice (1982, 1985). In 1987, Nykänen was awarded the Holmenkollen Medal (shared with Hermann Weinbuch).\nOn 28 February 2008, he won the International Masters Championship for veteran ski jumpers.\n\n\n=== The only one with five world records ===\nOn 16 March 1984, he set ski jumping world distance record on official training twice at 182 metres (597 ft). And on the next day at 185 metres (607 ft), all three in Oberstdorf, West Germany.\nOn 15 March 1985, he set two ski jumping world distance records on official training at 187 metres (614 ft) and at 191 metres (627 ft), both of them on Velikanka bratov Gorišek in Planica, Yugoslavia.\n\n\n== Olympic Games ==\n\n\n=== Standings ===\n\n\n== World Cup ==\n\n\n=== Standings ===\n\n\n=== Wins ===\n\n\n== Ski jumping world records ==\nHe set five world records in total, the most of any ski jumper in history.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\n\nNykänen was married six times:\n\nTiina Hassinen (1986–1988), one son\nPia Hynninen (1989–1991), one daughter\nSari Paanala (1996–1998) (Nykänen changed his surname to Paanala during this marriage)\nMervi Tapola (2001–2003, remarried 2004–2010)\nPia Talonpoika (2014– his death)\n\n\n=== Relationship with Mervi Tapola ===\n\nNykänen met millionaire “sausage heiress” Mervi Tapola (1954–2019) in 1999, and they were married from 2001 to 2003.\nThey got divorced in 2003 and remarried again in 2004. The marriage was tempestuous and gave rise to many well-publicised incidents: The first reported assault against Tapola occurred in June 2000, following a restraining order that was imposed upon Nykänen. In 2004, Nykänen was handed a suspended sentence for assaulting Tapola again. Nykänen had already been accused of assaulting Tapola in 2001, but the charges were withdrawn because Tapola exercised her right to remain silent.\nIn September 2005, while on probation for another assault, Nykänen was re-arrested four days after his release for abusing his partner again. Nykänen was convicted and imprisoned for four months on 16 March 2006. Soon after his release, he stabbed a man in a pizza restaurant in Korpilahti. In the summer of 2009, Tapola (then Tapola-Nykänen) petitioned for divorce a 14th time, but cancelled it.\nOn Christmas Day 2009, Nykänen allegedly injured his wife with a knife and tried to throttle her with a bathrobe belt. He was charged with attempted manslaughter and held in custody by Tampere police, but was released on 28 December after charges were dropped for insufficient evidence. On 24 August 2010, Nykänen was convicted of grievous bodily harm and sentenced to 16 months in prison and ordered to pay €5,000 in compensation to his wife for pain and emotional suffering and €3,000 for legal expenses. In August 2010, Tapola made a 15th request for divorce.\n\n\n=== Assault incident ===\nOn 24 August 2004, Nykänen was arrested on suspicion of attempted manslaughter of a family friend after losing a finger pulling competition in Tottijärvi, Nokia. In October 2004, he was found guilty of aggravated assault, and sentenced to 26 months in prison. As it was a first offence, he was released in September 2005.\n\n\n=== As an entertainer ===\n\nWhen Nykänen's ski jumping career was drawing to a close, a group of businessmen proposed to make him a singer. His debut studio album Yllätysten yö was released in 1992 and sold over 25,000 copies. Nykänen became the second Olympic gold medalist after Tapio Rautavaara to be awarded a golden record in Finland. His next album Samurai (1993), was not as successful.\nAt the end of the 1990s, due to serious financial problems, Nykänen worked as a stripper in a Järvenpää restaurant. The restaurateur was reproached for the exploitation of Nykänen.\nIn 2002, Nykänen made a comeback as a singer and released the single \"Ehkä otin, ehkä en\" (\"Maybe I took [it], maybe I didn't\"). He also gave his name to a cider brand with the same advertisement slogan. In 2006 Nykänen released his third studio album Ehkä otin, ehkä en (Maybe I took it, maybe I didn't).  During most of his musical career, Nykänen worked with professional musician Jussi Niemi. Nykänen toured Finland performing two to three times a week with the Samurai ensemble led by Niemi.\n\nMany of Nykänen's singles were named after some (in)famous quotes by Nykänen, such as Elämä on laiffii (\"Life is life\"), Jokainen tsäänssi on mahdollisuus (\"Every chance is a possibility\"), and Ehkä otin, ehkä en.\nIn November 2009, Nykänen began to present his own cooking web series Mattihan se sopan keitti (Matti cooked the soup).\n\n\n=== ADHD diagnosis ===\nIn the early 2000s, Nykänen was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.\n\n\n== Death ==\nMatti Nykänen died at his home in Lappeenranta, shortly after midnight on 4 February 2019, from a sudden illness, at the age of 55. He had complained of dizziness and nausea earlier that night. He had been diagnosed with diabetes less than three months earlier. The news of his death was widely reported by the media both in Finland and abroad, with many tributes also paid to him by fellow ski jumpers of his time. He was survived by his fifth wife and three children, two from previous relationships and one outside of marriage. In May 2019 Nykänen's sisters confirmed that the cause of death was pancreatitis and pneumonia.\n\n\n== In popular culture ==\nIn 1988, DPR Korea issued a postage stamp depicting Nykänen in flight during competition.\nIn 2016, Swedish actor Edvin Endre portrayed Nykänen, in the British biographical sports film Eddie the Eagle.\n\n\n== Discography ==\nYllätysten yö (1992)\nSamurai (1993)\nEhkä otin, ehkä en (2006)\n\n\n== Biographies ==\n\nA film about the life of Nykänen, simply entitled Matti, was released in 2006 with Finnish actor Jasper Pääkkönen cast as Nykänen. The movie focused on Nykänen's exploits beyond ski jumping.\n\n\n== Books ==\nMatti Nykänen, Päivi Ainasoja and Manu Syrjänen: Mattihan se sopan keitti (2007)\nJuha-Veli Jokinen: Missä me ollaan ja oonko mäkin siellä (2007)\nJuha-Veli Jokinen: Elämä on laiffii (2006)\nKai Merilä: Matin ja minun rankka reissu (2005)\nEgon Theiner: Grüsse aus der Hölle (2004) (the English version of the book Greetings from Hell was published in January 2006)\nAntero Kujala: Voittohyppy (1999)\nAntti Arve: Matti Nykänen Maailman paras (1988)\nKari Kyheröinen and Hannu Miettinen: Takalaudasta täysillä: Matti Nykäsen tie maailmanhuipulle (1984)\nJuha-Veli Jokinen: Myötä- ja vastamäessä (2010)\n\n\n== See also ==\nMatti Pulli\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nMatti Nykaenen at the International Ski and Snowboard Federation"}
{"title": "Max Rendschmidt", "requested": "Max Rendschmidt", "extract": "Max Rendschmidt (born 12 December 1993) is a German Olympic canoeist. He represented his country at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro and won two gold medals, in K-2 1000 metres and K-4 1000 m events. He also won gold in the K-4 500 metres at the 2020 and 2024 Summer Olympics.\n\n\n== Career ==\nHe is a five-time world champion and seven-time European champion. On 1 November 2016, Rendschmidt received the Silver Laurel Leaf, the highest award for an athlete in Germany, from the German Federal President Joachim Gauck in Berlin. He works for the German Federal Police.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n Media related to Max Rendschmidt at Wikimedia Commons\nMax Rendschmidt at Paddle Worldwide\nMax Rendschmidt at the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics (archived)\nMax Rendschmidt at Olympics.com \nMax Rendschmidt at Olympedia \nMax Rendschmidt at InterSportStats \nMax Rendschmidt at Team Deutschland (in German) \nMax Rendschmidt on Instagram"}
{"title": "Mel Sheppard", "requested": "Mel Sheppard", "extract": "Melvin Whinfield \"Peerless Mel\" Sheppard (September 5, 1883 – January 4, 1942) was an American athlete, member of the Irish American Athletic Club, and winner of four gold medals and one silver medal at the 1908 Summer Olympics and 1912 Summer Olympics. Along with Henry Taylor of the United Kingdom, he was the most successful athlete at the 1908 Olympics.\n\n\n== Early life ==\nBorn in the Almonesson section of Deptford Township, New Jersey, Sheppard moved from Almonesson to Clayton, New Jersey at age nine, where he worked in a glass factory before moving to Haddonfield, New Jersey and then the Grays Ferry neighborhood of Philadelphia in his mid-teens.\n\n\n=== Track career ===\nSheppard, or \"Peerless Mel\" as he was nicknamed, was rejected by the New York Police because he had a slightly enlarged heart. Cardiopulmonary problems notwithstanding, Sheppard won three consecutive AAU titles in the 880 yards (805 m) from 1906 to 1908 and became a main favorite for the middle distance events at the 1908 Summer Olympics in London. By late 1907, Sheppard held world indoor records for 600 yards, 880 yards, 1000 yards, and the mile.\nDuring the indoor season of 1907–08, Sheppard raced Guy Haskins In the first, he was beaten. In the second, about to be beaten again, he threw Haskins to the floor with a flying mare, which he also did to another runner, Adam O'Shea, in the Millrose Games in which he was disqualified. In the third, he walked off the track as he was about to be beaten again. By May the New York Times reported that Haskins, \"unquestionably the best half-mile and mile performer in the country\", had been refused selection for the United States team to the 1908 Olympics for which he had been trying. He was not selected for the Australasian team either, largely for financial reasons.\n\n\n== 1908 Olympic Games ==\n\nThe 1908 Olympics were the first true championships for the 1500 metres. In the finals, only the winner of each of the eight heats would qualify for the final, and there was no seeding to ensure that top runners were separated in their heats. Top runners like 1904, 1906 Olympic champion James Lightbody, John Halstead, second-fastest in history in the event, and three-time AAA champion George Butterfield all failed to advance.\nSheppard won the 1500 metres, setting an Olympic record at 4:05.0 in the first round that fell in the very next heat, when Norman Hallows ran a 4:03.6. Sheppard matched Hallows' time in the final the next day to win the first running gold medal awarded at the 1908 Games.\nIn the 800 metres, Sheppard won his first round with a time of 1:58.0; James Lintott remained close throughout the race and threatened to eliminate Sheppard from the competition. Sheppard ran the first 400 metres of the 800 metres final in 53 seconds and went on to win in the world record time of 1.52.8.\nHe earned his third gold medal on the medley relay race. He was the final runner on the American team, running half of the 1600 metre race. He was passed the baton by fellow Irish American Athletic Club member John Baxter Taylor, Jr., who would become the first African American to win an Olympic gold medal. Even without being in as good of form as he had been in the individual races, Sheppard had little trouble retaining the leads giving to him teammates William Hamilton, Nate Cartmell, and John Taylor. The team won both the first round and final in times of 3:27.2 and 3:29.4. Sheppard's 800 metre split for the final was 1:55.4.\n\n\n== One-Mile Relay world record ==\nAt the Amateur Athletic Union metropolitan championships held at Travers Island in 1909, Sheppard was part of the Irish American Athletic Club's four-man relay team that broke the world's record for the one mile relay with a time of 3 minutes 20 2/5 seconds. The other three men on the record breaking team were: C.S. Cassara, William Robbins, and James Rosenberger. His 1910 trading card called him \"undoubtedly the greatest mid-distance runner the world has ever seen.\"\n\n\n== 1912 Olympic Games ==\n\nAfter winning Amateur Athletic Union titles at 880 yards (800 m) in 1911 and 1912, Sheppard was a favorite to defend his Olympic 800 metres title at the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm. At Stockholm, he tried the same tactics as in London, but after an opening lap of 52.4 he was overtaken by teammate Ted Meredith, who set a new world record of 1.51.9. Sheppard won his fourth gold medal as lead-off runner on the 4 × 400 metre relay team that set a world record of 3:16.6.\n\n\n== Post-competition career ==\nSheppard was a member of the New Jersey National Guard and the 69th Regiment. During World War I, he served as an athletic director at a number of military training camps. After the war, he coached for a number of amateur athletic clubs. Sheppard worked for John Wanamaker and was the recreational director for the Millrose Athletic Association, which was formed by Wanamaker's employees. Sheppard coached the U.S. women's track and field team at the 1928 Summer Olympics in Amsterdam.\n\n\n== Death ==\nSheppard died at his home in Bayside, Queens in New York City. He was interred in New Camden Cemetery in Camden, New Jersey. His New York Times obituary cites \"acute indigestion\" as the cause of death. He was survived by his wife Estelle (née) Symon, his daughter Adelaide Kohler of Wildwood, New Jersey and his son Melvin Sheppard Jr., who was on Princeton University's track and cross country teams in 1932.\n\n\n== Legacy ==\nWhile it is claimed that \"after retiring from sports Sheppard became a lawyer (he was one of the defenders of the Lindbergh child kidnapper Bruno Hauptmann),\" this is an Internet myth. The lead attorney for Bruno Hauptmann was a Edward J. Reilly. \"The Trial of Bruno Richard Hauptmann,\" by Sidney B. Whipple, originally published by Doubleday, Doran & Co., NY, 1937, makes no mention of Sheppard. Whipple lists the defense team present for the first day of trial as \"Mr. Reilly, Mr. Fisher, Mr. Pope, Mr. Rosecrans.\" There is no evidence that Sheppard ever practiced law, or had anything to do with the Lindbergh child kidnapper.\n\n\n== Further reading ==\nCook, Theodore Andrea (May 1909). The Fourth Olympiad London 1908 Official Report (PDF). London: British Olympic Association. Archived from the original (PDF) on September 27, 2007. Retrieved December 29, 2008.\nDe Wael, Herman (2001). \"Athletics 1908\". Herman's Full Olympians. Retrieved July 27, 2006.\nGreenberg, Stan (1987). Olympic Games: The Records. London: Guinness Books. ISBN 0-85112-896-3.\nKieran, John (1977). The Story of the Olympic Games; 776 B.C. to 1976. Philadelphia and New York: J.B. Lippincott Company. ISBN 0-397-01168-7.\nNelson, Cordner and Quercetani, Roberto (1985) The Milers, Tafnews Press, ISBN 0-911521-15-1\nWudarski, Pawel (1999). \"Wyniki Igrzysk Olimpijskich\" (in Polish). Archived from the original on February 16, 2009. Retrieved July 27, 2006.\nMel Sheppard, Spiked Shoes and Cinder Paths (11-part serial), Sport Story Magazine, May 8–Oct 8, 1924 (two issues/month); advertised in the magazine as \"Mel Sheppard's Own Story by himself\", but actually ghostwritten by Jackson Scholz\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nMel Sheppard at World Athletics \nMel Sheppard at the Team USA Hall of Fame\nMel Sheppard at Find a Grave\nArchives of Irish America - NYU\nWinged Fist Organization"}
{"title": "Michael Gross (swimmer)", "requested": "Michael Gross (swimmer)", "extract": "Michael Groß (German pronunciation: [ˈmɪçaʔeːl ˈɡʁoːs] ; born 17 June 1964), usually spelled Michael Gross in English, is a former competitive swimmer from Germany. He is 201 centimetres (6 ft 7 in) tall, and received the nickname \"The Albatross\" for his especially long arms that gave him a total span of 2.13 metres. Gross, competing for West Germany, won three Olympic gold medals, two in 1984 and one in 1988 in the freestyle and butterfly events, in addition to two World Championship titles in 1982, two in 1986 and one in 1991.\n\n\n== Career ==\nGross was born in Frankfurt am Main, West Germany, and trained as a member of the swimming club EOSC Offenbach. He was probably the finest swimmer in the world in the 200-meter butterfly race from 1981 to 1988. In this period he set four world records, won two world titles, four European titles and two Olympic gold medals.\nAt the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, Gross was one of the great athletes of the games. Gross easily won gold in the 200-meter freestyle, dominating the field. In the 100-meter butterfly, however, Gross pulled off a bit of an upset, winning over the favorite in the event, American Pablo Morales. However, in the 200-meter butterfly, Gross himself was upset by a relative unknown, Australian Jon Sieben. The men's 4×200-meter freestyle relay race became one of the marquee events of the games, with Gross leading the German relay against the underdog American squad. Despite the fact that Gross swam the fastest relay leg in the event's history, the American team pulled off the upset, earning the title of the \"Grossbusters.\"\nGross won a total of thirteen medals at the World Championships (including five gold), thirteen gold medals at the European Championships and was elected German \"Athlete of the Year\" four times (1982, 1983, 1984 and 1988). He retired from professional swimming in 1991.\nHe is featured in Bud Greenspan's 16 Days of Glory, the documentary film of the 1984 Summer Olympics.\nAmerican gold medalist swimmer John Naber remarked to Sports Illustrated in 1984 that if Michael Gross were an American, he would have won six or seven medals and that Gross was better than Mark Spitz.\nGross was named Male World Swimmer of the Year by Swimming World Magazine in 1985 and inducted to the International Swimming Hall of Fame in 1995.\nGross studied German and media studies as well as political science at the Goethe University Frankfurt and holds a PhD in philology. He married in 1995 and has a daughter (born 1996) and a son (born 1998).\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of members of the International Swimming Hall of Fame\nGerman records in swimming\nList of multiple Olympic medalists at a single Games\nWorld record progression 100 metres butterfly\nWorld record progression 100 metres freestyle\nWorld record progression 200 metres butterfly\nWorld record progression 200 metres freestyle\nWorld record progression 400 metres freestyle\nWorld record progression 800 metres freestyle\nWorld record progression 4 × 200 metres freestyle relay\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nMichael Gross at World Aquatics\nMichael Gross at SwimRankings.net\nMichael Gross at the International Swimming Hall of Fame\nMichael Gross at Olympics.com\nMichael Gross at Olympedia\nMichael Gross at InterSportStats"}
{"title": "Michael Johnson (sprinter)", "requested": "Michael Johnson (sprinter)", "extract": "Michael Duane Johnson (born September 13, 1967) is an American sprinter who became Olympic Champion four times, and World Champion eight times in the span of his career. His 400 m time of 43.18 seconds is the American record and is the second fastest time ever. He held the world and Olympic records in the 200 m and 400 m, as well as the world record in the indoor 400 m. He also once held the world's best time in the 300 m. Johnson is generally considered one of the greatest and most consistent sprinters in the history of track and field.\nJohnson is the only male athlete to win both the 200 meters and 400 meters events at the same Olympics, a feat he accomplished at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. Johnson is also the only man to successfully defend his Olympic title in the 400 m, having done so at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney. Aside from his Olympic success, Johnson accumulated eight gold medals at the World Championships and is tied with Carl Lewis for the fourth most gold medals won by a runner.\nJohnson's distinctive stiff upright running position and very short steps defied the conventional wisdom that a high knee lift was necessary for maximum speed. As of July 2024, Johnson holds three of the top 100 times for the 200 meters (having broken 20 seconds 23 times) and 22 of the top 100 times for the 400 meters. Of those, he holds nine of the top 25 times for the 400 meters. He broke 44 seconds for the 400 meters 22 times, more than twice as many times as any other athlete.\nJohnson held the US national records for the 200, 300, and 400 meters. The 4 × 400 meters relay world record was anchored by Johnson.\nSince 2001, Johnson has worked for the BBC, appearing as a pundit at multiple events. He has been a part of the BBC's Olympics athletics coverage since Athens 2004.\n\n\n== Career ==\n\n\n=== 1991–1995 ===\nIn 1991 at the World Championships in Tokyo, Johnson earned his first world title by winning the 200 m race by the unusual margin of victory of 0.33 seconds over Frankie Fredericks.\nTwo weeks before the 1992 Summer Olympics began, Johnson and his agent both contracted food poisoning at a restaurant in Spain. Johnson lost both weight and strength. He was the favorite to win the 200 m going into the Olympics, but he could do no better than sixth in his semifinal heat, and failed to reach the 200 m final by 0.16 seconds. Nevertheless, he was able to race as a member of the 4 × 400 m relay team, which won a gold medal and set a new world-record time of 2:55.74. Johnson ran his leg in a time of 44.73.\nHe won the 1993 U.S. title in the 400 m, and followed it with world titles in both the 400 m and 4 × 400 m relay. His 42.94 second split time in the 4 × 400 m relay remains the fastest 400 meters in history. At the 1995 World Championships in Gothenburg, Johnson won his first 200 m and 400 m \"double\". No elite-level male track athlete had accomplished this in a major meet in the 20th century. At the end he made it a \"triple\" by adding another title in the 4 × 400 m relay.\n\n\n=== 1996 Atlanta Olympics ===\nIn June 1996, Johnson was 28 when he ran the 200-m in 19.66 seconds at the U.S. Olympic Trials, breaking Pietro Mennea's record of 19.72 seconds that had stood for nearly 17 years. With that performance he qualified to run at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta and prepared to attempt to win both the 200 meters and 400 meters events, a feat never before achieved by a male athlete. (Two women have won Olympic gold medals in both races in the same year: Valerie Brisco-Hooks in the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, and Marie-José Pérec, in the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.)\nJohnson entered the Olympic finals donning a custom-designed pair of golden-colored Nike racing spikes made with Zytel, causing him to be nicknamed \"The Man With the Golden Shoes\". Sources differ on the exact weight of these shoes; the manufacturer of the spikes claims they weighed 3 ounces (85 g) each, while other sources state each shoe weighed about 94 grams (3.3 oz). The left shoe was a US size 10.5 while the right shoe was a US size 11, to account for Johnson's longer right foot.\nOn July 29, Johnson easily captured the 400 m Olympic title with an Olympic record time of 43.49 seconds, 0.92 seconds ahead of silver medalist Roger Black of Great Britain. At the 200 m final on August 1, Johnson ran the opening 100 meters in 10.12 seconds and finished the race in a world-record time of 19.32 seconds, breaking by more than three tenths of a second the previous record he had set in the U.S. Olympic Trials, on the same track one month earlier—the largest improvement ever on a 200 m world record. Some commentators compared the performance to Bob Beamon's record-shattering long jump at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City. During the race, Johnson strained a muscle in his leg, which prevented him from winning his third gold medal of the Olympics in the 4 × 400 m relay as Team USA went on to win the gold even without him.\nAfter the 1996 season ended, Johnson received the James E. Sullivan Award as the top amateur athlete in any sport in the United States, and was named ABC's Wide World of Sports Athlete of the Year. In August, HarperCollins published his biographical/motivational book, Slaying the Dragon: How to Turn Your Small Steps to Great Feats.\n\n\n=== Rivalry with Donovan Bailey ===\n\nAfter the end of the 1996 Summer Olympics, American Sportscaster Bob Costas claimed that Johnson was faster than 100 m gold medalist Donovan Bailey because Johnson's 200 m time (19.32 Seconds) divided by 2 (9.66 Seconds) was shorter than Bailey's 100 m time (9.84). This started a debate on whether Johnson or Bailey was the real \"World's Fastest Man\", which in turn resulted in a 150 m race between the two, in which Bailey won after Johnson, already behind in the race, alleged to have injured his hamstring.\n\n\n=== 1997–1999 ===\nAfter recovering from the injury, Johnson was able to compete for his third 400 m world title. The IAAF invented a new policy of giving a \"bye\" to the defending champions essentially to allow Johnson to compete in the IAAF World Championships that year, because Johnson was unable to qualify the conventional method (by competing in the USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships) due to his injury from the race with Bailey. More than a month after the U.S. Championships, Johnson had recovered from his injury and won the 400 meters at the 1997 World Championships in Athens.\nAt the 1998 Goodwill Games in New York City, Johnson anchored the U.S. 4 × 400 m relay team with Jerome Young, Antonio Pettigrew, and Tyree Washington to a win and set a world record of 2:54.20. Pettigrew has since admitted doping from 1997, while Young was caught doping in 1999. The world record was annulled by the IAAF in August 2008, and reverted to the time of 2:54:29 Johnson helped set in the 1993 World Championships.\nJohnson was plagued by injury in 1999, and his following season was troubled with two injury scares that limited him to just four 400 m races before the 1999 World Championships in Seville. Were it not for the IAAF policy established two years earlier for Johnson, that allowed automatic entry to defending champions, he could not have raced in Seville since he failed to compete in the U.S. trials due to his injury. He recovered and won his fourth 400 meter world title with a new world-record time of 43.18 seconds at the relatively late age of 31 years and 11 months, which stood for 12 days short of 17 years before being beaten at the 2016 Olympics by the South African Wayde van Niekerk. Johnson's splits for this world record were 21.22 seconds for the opening 200 meters and 21.96 seconds for the closing 200 meters, giving a differential of 0.74 seconds.\n\n\n=== 2000 Sydney Olympics ===\nAfter qualifying for the 2000 Summer Olympics in the 400 m, Johnson sustained an injury in the 2000 U.S. Olympic Trials for the 200 meters while racing in a highly anticipated matchup against the 100 m and 200 m world champion, Maurice Greene. The injury prevented a defense of his 200 m Olympic title. Johnson ended his career at the Sydney Olympics by winning the gold medal in the 400 m, which brought his total number of Olympic gold medals to four. By winning the 400 m at the age of 33 years 12 days, he earned the distinction of being the oldest Olympic gold medalist at any track event shorter than 5000 m. Johnson was also the anchor of the United States 4 × 400 relay team along with Alvin Harrison, Antonio Pettigrew, and Calvin Harrison, which originally won the gold medal, but was later stripped of the title after Pettigrew and Jerome Young (who ran in the heats) were found guilty of having used performance-enhancing drugs.\nOn July 18, 2004, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) ruled that Jerome Young was ineligible to compete in Sydney and annulled all his past results, including those achieved as part of relay teams. Young had competed for the USA team in the heats and semi-final of this event. Therefore, the United States team was stripped of the gold medal and Nigeria, Jamaica, and the Bahamas were moved up one position each. On July 22, 2005, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) overturned this decision and restored the original finish order of the race based on a ruling that a team should not be disqualified because of a doping offense by an athlete who did not compete in the finals. Then in June 2008, Antonio Pettigrew admitted to having used banned performance-enhancing substances, and agreed to return his gold medal. Johnson announced that he would return his own gold medal, won as part of the relay team with Pettigrew. Johnson stated that he felt \"cheated, betrayed and let down\" by what Pettigrew had done at the Games. Pettigrew died by suicide in 2010.\n\n\n== Achievements ==\n\nJohnson has run 200 m in under 19.80 seconds six times, and he has run the distance in less than 20 seconds twenty-three times. He holds nine of the top 50 200 m performances of all time. Johnson has run twenty-two 400 m races in under 44 seconds; he holds twenty-two of the top 50 and four of the top ten 400 m performances of all time. Over the course of his career, he twice set the world record in the 200 m, three times set the world record as part of the 4 × 400 m relay team, twice set the indoor 400 m world record, set the outdoor 400 m world record once, and set the 300 m mark once.\n\n\n=== Season's bests ===\n\n\n== After retirement ==\nJohnson was elected to the United States Track and Field Hall of Fame in 2004, where his 200 m performance at the 1996 Olympics was named the greatest track and field moment of the last 25 years.\nIn 2007 Johnson opened Michael Johnson Performance, at McKinney, Texas, a training facility for youth athletes aged 9 to 18 and professional athletes in all sports. The company works with Olympic teams and football clubs and has operations around the world. Michael Johnson Performance currently works with Arsenal, assisting in the development of young players in their academy.\nIn June 2008, Johnson voluntarily returned the 4 × 400 m relay gold medal he earned in the 2000 Olympics after Antonio Pettigrew, who ran the second leg, admitted he took performance-enhancing drugs between 1997 and 2001. Pettigrew made his admission while giving testimony in the trial of coach Trevor Graham for his role in the BALCO scandal. On August 2, 2008, the International Olympic Committee stripped the gold medal from the U.S. men's 4 × 400-meter relay team. Three of the four runners in the event final, including Pettigrew and twins Alvin and Calvin Harrison, and preliminary round runner Jerome Young, all have admitted or tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs. Only Johnson and Angelo Taylor, who also ran in preliminary rounds, were not implicated. Johnson had already returned his medal because, as he said, he felt the medal was not won fairly.\nJohnson was one of the Olympic torch bearers in the relay in the run up to the London 2012 Olympics, carrying it to Stonehenge and Salisbury Cathedral in Wiltshire.\nIn the summer of 2018, Johnson was co-captain and a coach for Godspeed, a flag football team made of former professional American football players that participated in the American Flag Football League (AFFL). The team were crowned the champions of participating pro teams but lost in the final match to the amateur champion team.\nIn September 2018, Johnson suffered a stroke that affected his left side. By November, he stated he was almost \"back to normal\", and attributed his successful recovery to the \"Olympic mindset\". In connection with his 54th birthday in 2021, he states that he has fully recovered.\nIn 2024, he launched a new Track and Field League, Grand Slam Track, ahead of the 2025 season start. In December 2025, Grand Slam Track confirmed they had filed for bankruptcy. Grand Slam Track has expressed its intention to return for a 2026 season once its financial obligations are resolved.\n\n\n=== Broadcasting ===\nSince retiring from competitive track in 2001, Johnson has worked as a television pundit, often for the BBC in the United Kingdom, where he has also written columns for the Daily Telegraph and The Times newspapers. \nJohnson first worked for the BBC at the World Championships in 2001. He subsequently was part of the BBC's presenting team at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, 2012 Olympic Games in London, 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo, and 2024 Olympic Games in Paris. In addition, he has worked on the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester, 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi, 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, 2018 Commonwealth Games in Gold Coast and 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham. Johnson has also worked for the BBC at the World Championships, but did not take part in the 2025 World Athletics Championships after deciding to focus on Grand Slam Track.\nHe was in the BBC commentary booth for the men's 400 meters final in Rio de Janeiro to see his world record broken by Wayde van Niekerk, saying about van Niekerk's performance, \"Oh my God! From lane eight, a world record. He took it out so quick. I have never seen anything from 200 to 400 like that. That was a massacre from Wayde van Niekerk. He just put those guys away.\"\n\n\n=== Appearances in media ===\nJohnson guest-starred in the 2002 film, The Master of Disguise, as one of the disguises Fabbrizio (James Brolin) takes on to borrow the U.S. Constitution, as part of a scheme by Devlin Bowman (Brent Spiner) to steal the world's greatest treasures. I\nJohnson appeared as a contestant on NBC's 9th season of The Celebrity Apprentice (2010), placing 10th after exiting the show due to a personal issue on the fifth episode of the season first airing April 11, 2010.\nAs part of the build-up to the 2012 Summer Olympics, Johnson made a documentary, Survival of the Fastest, for Channel 4 which investigated the dominance of African-American and African-Caribbean sprinters. The program made the suggestion that a side effect of the slave trade may have been to accelerate natural selection as only the very fittest could survive the brutal process, resulting in a population predisposed to superior athletic performance.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nAs of 2008 Johnson lived in Marin County, California, with his second wife Armine Shamiryan (a chef), and his daughter Selendis Sebastian, born in 2000 during his first marriage to entertainment reporter Kerry D'Oyen.\n\n\n== Awards ==\nAssociated Press Athlete of the Year: 1996\n3× USOC SportsMan of the Year: 1993, 1995, 1996\nJames E. Sullivan Award: 1996\nL'Équipe Champion of Champions: 1996\nWorld Athletics Awards\n2× World Athlete of the Year (Men): 1996, 1999\nTrack & Field News\n2× World Athlete of the Year: 1990, 1996\n6× U.S. Athlete of the Year: 1990, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nMichael Johnson at World Athletics\nMichael Johnson at Tilastopaja (registration required)\nMichael Johnson at www.USATF.org\nMichael Johnson at the USATF Hall of Fame (archived)\nMichael Johnson at Athletics Podium\nMichael Johnson at Olympics.com\nMichael Johnson at the Team USA Hall of Fame\nMichael Johnson at Olympedia\nMichael Johnson at InterSportStats"}
{"title": "Michael Jung (equestrian)", "requested": "Michael Jung (equestrian)", "extract": "Michael Jung (born 31 July 1982) is a German equestrian who competes in eventing and show jumping. A four-time Olympic gold medallist, he won individual and team gold at the 2012 London Olympics, followed by individual gold and team silver at the 2016 Rio Olympics, and the individual gold for the third time at the 2024 Paris Olympics. He was inducted into the Eventing Rider Association Hall of Fame in 2013, and in 2016 he became only the second rider in history to win the Grand Slam of Eventing.\n\n\n== Career ==\nHe was born to Joachim Jung, a former dressage and show jumping competitor and took up horse riding aged 6. He won individual bronze at the 2009 European Championships. At the 2012 Olympic Games, he won gold medals in the individual and team events. In winning the individual event (on his 30th birthday), he made eventing history by becoming the first rider to ever hold the Olympic, World and European championship titles at the same time, having previously won the 2010 World title and 2011 European title. He won all three titles on the horse La Biosthetique Sam.\nSince then, Jung has won individual and team gold medals at the 2013 Europeans, individual silver and team gold at the 2014 World Equestrian Games and individual and team gold at the 2015 European Championships. His individual victory at the 2015 Europeans made him only the second rider in history, after Virginia Leng, to win three consecutive European individual titles on three different horses. His wins were on La Biosthetique Sam (2011), Halunke FBW (2013) and FischerTakinou (2015). He won individual and team silver at the 2017 European Championships on Fischerrocanna. Michael Jung's individual silver at the 2014 World Equestrian Games & his individual silver at the 2017 Europeans were won on Fischerocona FST.\nJung's win at Badminton in 2016 sealed the Rolex Grand Slam, becoming only the second person in history to win it. His top horse La Biothesque Sam has also finished second at the Badminton horse trials in 2013 and 2017, and third at both Rolex Kentucky (2015) and Luhmuhlen (2015).\n\n\n== CCI 5* results ==\n\n\n== International Championship results ==\n\n\n== Notable horses ==\nMarco 522 - 1995 Bay Holsteiner Gelding (Mytens XX x Montanus)\n2003 European Young Rider Championships - team silver medal, individual gold medal\nLa Biosthetique Sam FBW - 2000 Bay Baden-Wurttemberger Gelding (Stan The Man XX x Heraldik XX)\n2007 FEI Eventing Young Horse World Championships - second place\n2008 FEI Eventing World Cup Final - fourth place\n2009 FEI Eventing World Cup Final - gold medal\n2009 Luhmühlen CCI**** winner\n2009 European Championships - individual bronze medal\n2010 World Equestrian Games - team fifth place, individual gold medal\n2011 European Championships - team gold medal, individual gold medal\n2012 London Olympic Games - team gold medal, individual gold medal\n2015 Burghley CCI**** winner\n2016 Badminton CCI**** winner\n2016 Rio Olympic Games - team silver medal, individual gold medal\nDesperado S - 2001 Bay Wurttemberger Gelding (Divino de L x Grand Ferdinand II)\n2007 FEI Eventing Young Horse World Championships - 13th place\nRiver of Joy 4 - 2001 Dark Bay Wurttemberger Gelding (Rubicell x Pageno xx)\n2008 FEI Eventing Young Horse World Championships - seventh place\nLeopin FST - 1999 Bay German Riding Horse Gelding (Legal Legend XX x Pius)\n2012 Luhmühlen CCI**** winner\nFischerRocana FST - 2005 Dark Bay German Sport Horse Mare (Ituango XX x Carismo)\n2014 World Equestrian Games - team gold medal, individual silver medal\n2015 Kentucky CCI**** winner\n2016 Kentucky CCI**** winner\n2017 Kentucky CCI**** winner\n2017 European Championships - individual silver medal\nFischerTakinou - 2007 Red Roan Anglo Arabian Gelding (Jaguar Mail x Sardana Pierre)\n2015 European Championships - team gold medal, individual gold medal\nFischerChipmunk FRH - 2008 Bay Hanoverian Gelding (Contendro I x Heraldik XX)\n2019 European Championships - team gold medal, individual silver medal\n2022 Kentucky CCI5* winner\n2024 Paris Olympic Games - individual gold medal\n2025 Kentucky CCI5* winner\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nMichael Jung at FEI (alternate link) \nMichael Jung at Olympics.com \nMichael Jung at the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics (archived)\nMichael Jung at Olympedia \nMichael Jung at InterSportStats \nMichael Jung at Team Deutschland (in German) \nMichael Jung on Instagram"}
{"title": "Michael Phelps", "requested": "Michael Phelps", "extract": "Michael Fred Phelps II (born June 30, 1985) is an American former competitive swimmer. He won more Olympic medals than any other athlete, a total of 28 medals across four Olympic Games. Phelps also holds the all-time records for Olympic gold medals (23), Olympic gold medals in individual events (13), and Olympic medals in individual events (16). At the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Phelps tied the record of eight medals of any color at a single Games, held by gymnast Alexander Dityatin, by winning six gold and two bronze medals. Four years later, when he won eight gold medals at the 2008 Beijing Games, he broke fellow American swimmer Mark Spitz's 1972 record of seven first-place finishes at any single Olympic Games. At the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, Phelps won four gold and two silver medals, and at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, he won five gold medals and one silver. This made him the most successful athlete of the Games for the fourth Olympics in a row.\nPhelps is a former long course world record holder in the 200-meter freestyle, 100-meter butterfly, 200-meter butterfly, 200-meter individual medley, and 400-meter individual medley. He has won 82 medals in major international long course competitions, of which 65 were gold, 14 silver, and three bronze, spanning the Olympics, the World Championships, and the Pan Pacific Championships. Phelps's international titles and record-breaking performances have earned him the World Swimmer of the Year Award eight times and American Swimmer of the Year Award eleven times, as well as the FINA Swimmer of the Year Award in 2012 and 2016. Phelps earned Sports Illustrated magazine's Sportsman of the Year award due to his unprecedented Olympic success in the 2008 Games.\nAfter the 2008 Summer Olympics, Phelps started the Michael Phelps Foundation, which focuses on growing the sport of swimming and promoting healthier lifestyles. Phelps retired following the 2012 Olympics, but he made a comeback in April 2014. At the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, his fifth Olympics, he was selected by his team to be the flag bearer of the United States at the 2016 Summer Olympics Parade of Nations. He announced his second retirement on August 12, 2016, having won more medals than 161 countries. He won the Laureus World Comeback of the Year Award in 2017. He is widely regarded as the greatest swimmer of all time and is often considered to be one of the greatest athletes of all time.\n\n\n== Early life and education ==\nPhelps was born in Baltimore, Maryland, and raised in the Rodgers Forge neighborhood of nearby Towson. Phelps is the youngest of three children. His mother, Deborah Sue \"Debbie\" Phelps (née Davisson), is a middle school principal. His father, Michael Fred Phelps, was a retired Maryland State Trooper who played football in high school and college and tried out for the Washington Redskins in the 1970s. His parents divorced in 1994 when he was nine years old, and his father remarried in 2000. Phelps later revealed that the divorce had a severe negative impact on him and his siblings, and his relationship with his father was distant for a few years after the divorce. He attended Rodgers Forge Elementary, Dumbarton Middle School, and graduated from Towson High School in 2003.  During his school years, he was a target of school bullying due to his ADHD and protruding ears.  It reached a point where he retaliated during a situation and received a suspension.  The frustration from this experience fueled his drive into swimming.\n\nPhelps began swimming at the age of seven, partly because of the influence of his sisters and partly to provide him with an outlet for his energy. After retirement in 2016, he stated \"The only reason I ever got in the water was my mom wanted me to just learn how to swim. My sisters and myself fell in love with the sport, and we decided to swim.\" When Phelps was in the sixth grade, he was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). By the age of 10, he held a national record for his age group (in the 100-meter butterfly) and began to train at the North Baltimore Aquatic Club under coach Bob Bowman. More age group records followed, and as of August 21, 2018, Phelps still held 11 age group records, eight in long course, and three in short course.\n\n\n== Swimming career ==\n\n\n=== Training ===\nPhelps has trained under Bob Bowman since he was 11 years old. Bowman swam for Florida State University from 1983 to 1985. Phelps has said Bowman reminded him of a drill sergeant because of his disciplined and regimented ways. Phelps has said, \"Training with Bob is the smartest thing I've ever done ... I'm not going to swim for anyone else.\" After the 2004 Summer Olympics, Bowman was hired as the head coach for the University of Michigan after Jon Urbanchek retired. Phelps joined Bowman at Michigan to train and attended classes over a span of four years, but did not pursue a degree. Phelps served as a volunteer assistant coach at Michigan. After the 2008 Summer Olympics, Bowman returned to Baltimore as CEO at the North Baltimore Aquatic Club. Phelps also returned to Baltimore with Bowman. When Bowman was hired as the men's and women's swimming coach at Arizona State University in 2015, Phelps moved to Arizona to continue training under Bowman. There is a popular myth that Phelps ate 12,000 calories every day, but Phelps has stated it has been exaggerated and that he did not eat so much even in his growing days.\n\n\n=== 2000 Summer Olympics ===\nPhelps's rapid improvement culminated when he qualified for the 2000 Summer Olympics at the age of 15, as he became the youngest male (since Ralph Flanagan in 1932) to make a U.S. Olympic swim team in 68 years. While he did not win a medal, he did make the finals and finished fifth in the 200-meter butterfly.\n\n\n=== 2001 World Championships ===\n\nAt the World Championship Trials for the 2001 World Aquatics Championships, on March 30, Phelps broke the world record in the 200-meter butterfly to become, at 15 years and 9 months, the youngest male ever to set a world record in swimming. Previously the youngest male had been Ian Thorpe, who captured the 400-meter freestyle world record at 16 years, 10 months. At the World Championships in Fukuoka, Japan, Phelps broke his own world record in the 200-meter butterfly while en route to become a world champion for the first time.\n\n\n=== 2002 Pan Pacific Championships ===\n\nAt Nationals, the selection meet for the 2002 Pan Pacific Swimming Championships, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Phelps set an American record in the 200-meter individual medley and was just off the world record in the 200-meter butterfly. In the 400-meter individual medley, Phelps bettered the world record held by Tom Dolan with a time of 4:11.09, just ahead of Erik Vendt, who finished second with a time of 4:11.27, also below the old world record. In the 200-meter freestyle, Phelps was barely beaten by Klete Keller and in the 100-meter butterfly, Phelps beat Ian Crocker.\nAt the 2002 Pan Pacific Swimming Championships in Yokohama, Japan, Phelps won three gold medals and two silvers. In his first event, the 400-meter individual medley, Phelps won gold ahead of Erik Vendt with a time of 4:12.48. In the 200-meter butterfly, Phelps lost to Tom Malchow, finishing behind him 1:55.41 to 1:55.21. Phelps said he lost because he did not take butterfly training seriously after he broke the world record. In the 200-meter individual medley, Phelps won with a time of 1:59.70. In the 4×200-meter freestyle relay, Phelps, along with Nate Dusing, Klete Keller, and Chad Carvin, won the silver medal with a time 7:11.81 finishing behind Australia. The U.S. 4×100-meter medley relay team consisted of Aaron Peirsol, Brendan Hansen, Phelps, and Ian Crocker. In the final for the medley relay, Phelps swam a 51.1 split, at the time the fastest split in history. The final time of 3:33.48 was a world record.\n\n\n=== 2003 World Championships ===\n\nAt Nationals, Phelps won the 200-meter freestyle, 200-meter backstroke, and the 100-meter butterfly. He became the first American swimmer to win three different races in three different strokes at a national championship. At the 2003 Duel in the Pool, a meet that pits swimming stars from Australia and the United States, Phelps broke the world record in the 400-meter individual medley with a time of 4:10.73 and almost broke the world record in the 100-meter butterfly, just missing the record by 0.03 seconds. At a meet in Santa Clara County, California, Phelps broke the world record in the 200-meter individual medley with a time of 1:57.94. Phelps said he broke the 200-meter individual medley world record after Don Talbot said Phelps was unproven, using his words as motivation.\nAt the 2003 World Aquatics Championships, Phelps won four gold medals, two silver medals, and broke five world records. Phelps broke his first world record on July 22 in the semi-finals for the 200-meter butterfly. Phelps swam a 1:53.93 to break his own world record of 1:54.58 set in 2001 and became the first man to swim under 1:54.00. In the final of the 200-meter butterfly, on July 23, Phelps easily won the gold medal, but did not come close to his world record with a time of 1:54.35. Less than an hour later, Phelps swam the lead-off leg for the 4×200-meter freestyle relay. Phelps put up a solid time of 1:46.60 (an American record) but the Americans could not match the depth of the Australians and ultimately finished second 7:10.26 to 7:08.58.\nIn the 200-meter individual medley, Phelps dominated. On July 24, in the semi-finals of the 200-meter individual medley, he broke his own world record with a time of 1:57.52. On July 25, in the final of the 200-meter individual medley, Phelps smashed his own record with a time of 1:56.04 to win the gold medal and finished almost 3 seconds ahead of Ian Thorpe. About an hour before the final of the 200-meter individual medley, Phelps swam in the semi-finals of the 100-meter butterfly. Phelps dominated again, finishing in the top seed position with a world record time of 51.47. However, in the final of the 100-meter butterfly, on July 26, Ian Crocker erased Phelps's world record with a time of 50.98, to become the first man under 51 seconds. Phelps swam a 51.10 (also under his former world record), but had to settle for silver. In the final of the 400-meter individual medley, on July 27, Phelps broke his own world record with a time of 4:09.09 to easily claim the gold medal. About half an hour later, Phelps earned his final gold medal when the United States team won the 4×100-meter medley relay. Phelps did not swim in the finals, but still earned a medal because he swam in the heats.\n\n\n=== 2004 Summer Olympics ===\n\n\n==== Trials ====\nAt the 2004 U.S. Olympic Team Trials, Phelps competed in six events; the 200- and 400-meter individual medley, the 100- and 200-meter butterfly, the 200-meter freestyle, and the 200-meter backstroke. In his first event, the 400-meter individual medley, Phelps easily won with a world record time of 4:08.41. Two days later, in the 200-meter freestyle, Phelps won with a time of 1:46.27, finishing sixth-tenths of a second ahead of Klete Keller. Phelps, however, was not pleased with the result and wanted to be in the 1:45s and was uncertain if he would swim the event in Athens. The following day, Phelps won in the 200-meter butterfly with a time of 1:54.31, three seconds ahead of second-place finisher Tom Malchow. After two days off, Phelps was back in the pool and finished second to Aaron Peirsol (who broke the world record) in the 200-meter backstroke. Less than half an hour later, Phelps won the 200-meter individual medley title ahead of Ryan Lochte by 2.70 seconds. The following day, Phelps finished second to Ian Crocker in the 100-meter butterfly. Crocker won in a time of 50.76, a world record and 0.39 seconds ahead of Phelps. When the Trials were over, Phelps became the first person to qualify in six individual events for a U.S. Olympic team. However, Phelps dropped the 200-meter backstroke to focus on the 200-meter freestyle because he wanted to race Ian Thorpe. Even though Phelps did not compete in the 100-meter freestyle at the Trials, he was still selected for the 4×100-meter freestyle relay. Gary Hall, Jr. thought this was unfair and said Phelps did not deserve a spot on the relay. Phelps argued his program was too crowded to compete in 100-meter freestyle and was at least among the top four swimmers because he had beaten the top-seeded Jason Lezak the last time he had swum against him.\n\n\n==== Athens ====\nIn his first event, the 400-meter individual medley, Phelps won his first Olympic gold medal in the world record time of 4:08.26. The following day, Phelps, along with Ian Crocker, Neil Walker, and Jason Lezak, finished in third place in the 4×100-meter freestyle relay with a time of 3:14.62. Crocker's lead-off time of 50.05 was the worst among the field and was blamed on sickness. In the event many were calling The Race of the Century, the 200-meter freestyle that was held the following day, Phelps finished in third place behind Ian Thorpe and Pieter van den Hoogenband. Although this race ended the chance to match Spitz's record, Phelps had savored the challenge even though it was not his strongest event, saying \"How can I be disappointed? I swam in a field with the two fastest freestylers of all time\". In his fourth event, the 200-meter butterfly, held the following day, Phelps won a gold medal with a time of 1:54.04, breaking Tom Malchow's Olympic record. About an hour later, in the 4×200-meter freestyle relay, Phelps, along with Ryan Lochte, Peter Vanderkaay, and Klete Keller, finished in first place with a time of 7:07.33.\nTwo days later, in the 200-meter individual medley, Phelps finished first with a time of 1:57.14, an Olympic record. In the 100-meter butterfly final, held the following day, Phelps defeated American teammate Ian Crocker (who held the world record in the event at the time) by just 0.04 seconds with a time of 51.25. Traditionally, the American who places highest in an individual event will be automatically given the corresponding leg in the 4×100-meter medley relay final. This gave Phelps an automatic entry into the medley relay, but he deferred and Crocker swam instead. Phelps's gesture gave Crocker a chance to make amends (for a mistake at the start of the freestyle relay) as well, getting his final shot at a gold medal. The American medley team went on to win the event in world-record time, and, since Phelps had raced in a preliminary heat of the medley relay, he was also awarded a gold medal along with the team members who competed in the final. In winning six gold and two bronze medals, Phelps, still a teenager, had the second-best performance ever at a single Olympics, behind Mark Spitz's seven gold medals at the 1972 Summer Olympics. Also, he became the second male swimmer ever to win more than two individual titles at a single Games with four, tying Spitz's four from 1972.\n\n\n=== 2005 World Championships ===\n\nAt the 2005 World Championship Trials, Phelps decided to drop his specialty events, the 400-meter individual medley and the 200-meter butterfly, and experiment with the 400-meter freestyle and the 100-meter freestyle. Phelps went on to win the 400-meter freestyle, the 200-meter freestyle, the 100-meter butterfly, the 100-meter freestyle, and the 200-meter individual medley at the Trials.\nAt the 2005 World Aquatics Championships, Phelps won a total of six medals, five golds and one silver. In the 400-meter freestyle, Phelps did not make it past the preliminary heats and finished 18th overall with a time of 3:50.53. Later that day, in the 4×100-meter freestyle relay, Phelps won his first gold in the Championships. Two days later, on July 26, Phelps won his second gold in the 200-meter freestyle with a new Americas record (AM) time of 1:45.20, finishing ahead of Grant Hackett. Two days later, on July 28, Phelps finished seventh in the 100-meter freestyle final. Later that day, Phelps won his third gold in the 200-meter individual medley. On July 29, Phelps, along with Ryan Lochte, Peter Vanderkaay and Klete Keller, won the gold in the 4×200-meter freestyle relay with a time of 7:06.58. This was the fourth gold medal for Phelps. On July 30, Phelps swam in his last individual event, the 100-meter butterfly. In the final, Phelps could not match the speed of Ian Crocker and had to settle for silver, finishing 51.65 to 50.40, a new world record for Crocker. On July 31, Phelps earned his final gold medal when the United States team won the 4×100-meter medley relay. Phelps did not swim in the finals but still earned a medal because he swam in the heats.\n\n\n=== 2006 Pan Pacific Championships ===\n\nAt the 2006 National Championships, Phelps won three events. In his first event, the 200-meter butterfly, Phelps won with a championship record of 1:54.32. In his second event, the 100-meter butterfly, Phelps just edged out Ian Crocker 51.51 (another championship record) to 51.73. In his third event, the 200-meter individual medley, Phelps won with a time of 1:56.50, just ahead of Ryan Lochte's time of 1:56.78.\nAt the 2006 Pan Pacific Swimming Championships in Victoria, British Columbia, Phelps won five gold medals and one silver. In his first event, the 200-meter butterfly, Phelps won in a world record time of 1:53.80, his first world record in two years. In his second event, the 400-meter individual medley, Phelps easily won with a time of 4:10.47, 3.38 seconds ahead of second-place finisher Robert Margalis. In his third event, the 4×200-meter freestyle relay, Phelps, along with Ryan Lochte, Peter Vanderkaay, and Klete Keller, won the gold medal with a time of 7:05.28. In his fourth event, the 200-meter backstroke, Phelps won the silver medal, finishing behind Aaron Peirsol 1:56.81 to 1:54.44 (a new world record). In his fifth event, the 4×100-meter freestyle relay, Phelps, along with Neil Walker, Cullen Jones, and Jason Lezak, won the gold medal with a world-record time 3:12.46. In his sixth event, the 200-meter individual medley, Phelps won with a world record time of 1:55.84, breaking his record of 1:55.94 set in 2003.\n\n\n=== 2007 World Championships ===\n\nAt the 2007 World Aquatics Championships, Phelps won seven gold medals, tying the record for a global long-course championship held by Mark Spitz since the 1972 Summer Olympics, and broke five world records. Phelps first gold medal came in the 4×100-meter freestyle. Phelps swam the lead-off leg in 48.42 seconds and Neil Walker, Cullen Jones and Jason Lezak each expanded the lead to win in a Championship record of 3:12.72, just missing the world record of 3:12.46 set the previous year. His lead-off time was faster than the winning time in the individual 100-meter freestyle final later in the meet. Phelps set his first world record in the Championships in the 200-meter freestyle, his second race. Phelps won the gold ahead of Pieter van den Hoogenband and broke Ian Thorpe's six-year-old world record with a time of 1:43.86. For his third race, the 200-meter butterfly, Phelps won the gold and bettered his own world record of 1:53.71 with a time of 1:52.09. For his fourth race, the 200-meter individual medley, Phelps set his third world record with a time of 1:54.98, bettering his own world-record time of 1:55.84 For his fifth race, the 4×200-meter freestyle relay, Phelps swam the lead-off leg in 1:45.36 as the American team of Ryan Lochte, Klete Keller, and Peter Vanderkaay went on to win the gold medal and beat the previous world record set by Australia in 2001 with a time 7:03.24. For his sixth race, the 100-meter butterfly, Phelps edged out Ian Crocker 50.77 to 50.82 to win his sixth gold medal. For his seventh event, the 400-meter individual medley, Phelps won the gold medal in a world-record time of 4:06.22, more than 3.5 seconds ahead of Ryan Lochte. By winning seven gold medals, Phelps broke the record of six set by Ian Thorpe at the 2001 World Championships. The 4×100-meter medley relay team received a disqualification for a false start during a changeover in the heats, ending Phelps's chance of eight gold medals.\nEven though Phelps competed in the backstroke in international competition only once (at the 2006 Pan Pacific Championships), he was among the best backstroke swimmers in the world. This is illustrated by his personal best times set in 2007, four months after the World Championships. At the U.S. Nationals in Indianapolis on August 1, 2007, Phelps swam a 1:54.65 in the 200-meter backstroke, which was the third fastest of all time in the event, 0.33 of a second off the world record of 1:54.32 held by Ryan Lochte. Two days later Phelps swam a time of 53.01 sec in the 100-meter backstroke, 0.03 of a second short of the world record of 52.98 held by Aaron Peirsol and the second-fastest performance of all time.\nIn 2007 Phelps swam into the all-time top three performances in seven individual events, four of these being world records.\n\n\n=== 2008 Summer Olympics ===\n\n\n==== Trials ====\nAt the 2008 U.S. Olympic Team Trials, Phelps competed in six individual events. In his first event, the 400-meter individual medley, Phelps broke his own world record of 4:06.22 with a time of 4:05.25. In his second event, the 200-meter freestyle, Phelps won with a time of 1:44.10, ahead of Peter Vanderkaay's time 1:45.85. In his third event, the 100-meter freestyle, Phelps placed second in his heat with a time of 47.92, ensuring him a spot on the relay. In his fourth event, the 200-meter butterfly, Phelps won with a time of 1:52.20. In his fifth event, the 200-meter individual medley, Phelps broke his own world record of 1:54.98 with a time of 1:54.80. In his sixth and final event, the 100-meter butterfly, Phelps won with a time of 50.89. When asked about his chances of winning eight gold medals in Beijing, Phelps said, \"I am going to prepare for that meet just like I do every other meet ... There is only so much I can do in a month and then I am going to prepare myself the best that I can.\"\n\n\n==== Beijing ====\nPhelps set an Olympic record in the preliminary heats of the 400-meter individual medley. He followed that up in the final by winning the gold medal, as well as breaking his previous world record by nearly two seconds. This swim went on to become the longest men's world record to stand in long course meters, beating Germany's Otto Farr who held the 100 backstroke world record from 1912 until 1926.\nPhelps swam the first leg of the 4×100-meter freestyle relay in a time of 47.51 seconds (an American record for the 100-meter freestyle), and won his second gold medal of the 2008 Olympics, as well as setting his second world record of the Olympics (3:08.24). Teammate Jason Lezak, after beginning the anchor leg more than half a body length behind Alain Bernard, managed to finish ahead of the favored French swimmer by eight hundredths of a second. The top five teams in the final finished ahead of the world record of 3:12.23 set the previous day by the American B team in a preliminary heat. Phelps remarked that Bernard's pre-race comments of \"smashing the Americans\" had \"fired me up more than anything else\". Le Nouvel Observateur noted \"Phelps taking the time to applaud and console Bernard\" and wrote that this sportsmanship was \"proof that the person who swims in the wake of Mark Spitz is also a great gentleman.\"\nFor his third race, Phelps broke his previous world record in the 200-meter freestyle by nearly a second and won his third gold medal. He also set his third world record at the Olympics, 1:42.96, winning by nearly two seconds over silver medalist Park Tae-hwan. In this race, Phelps became the fifth Olympic athlete in modern history to win nine gold medals, joining Mark Spitz, Larisa Latynina, Paavo Nurmi, and Carl Lewis.\n\nThe next day, Phelps participated in two finals. In his first event, the 200-meter butterfly, Phelps made it four gold medals and world records in four events by swimming the final in 1:52.03, defeating silver medalist László Cseh by almost seven-tenths of a second despite his goggles' having filled up with water and being unable to \"see anything for the last 100 meters\". This fourth gold medal was his tenth, and made him the all-time leader for most Olympic gold medals won by an individual in the modern Olympic era. Moreover, Phelps became the first swimmer, male or female, to win three Olympic butterfly titles, after his two titles in the Athens 2004 Olympics. He also became the first swimmer to successfully defend an Olympic butterfly title.\nLess than one hour after his gold medal victory in the 200-meter butterfly, Phelps swam the lead-off leg of the 4×200-meter freestyle relay. With Lochte, Ricky Berens, and Peter Vanderkaay, he won his fifth gold and set his fifth world record as the American team finished first with a time of 6:58.56. The Americans were the first team to break the seven-minute mark in the relay, and broke the previous record, set in Melbourne, Australia, by more than four and a half seconds.\nAfter taking a day off from finals (Phelps did swim in qualifying heats), Phelps won his sixth gold of the Beijing Games on August 15 by winning the 200-meter individual medley with a world record time of 1:54.23, finishing ahead of Cseh by over two seconds.\n\n\n===== Seventh gold medal =====\n\nBefore the final of the 100-meter butterfly, U.S. born Serbian swimmer Milorad Čavić caused a minor stir when he said it would be \"good\" if Phelps lost. \"It'd be good for him if he loses. It would be nice if historians talk about Michael Phelps winning seven gold medals and losing the eighth to 'some guy.' I'd like to be that guy\", Čavić said. Phelps responded, \"When people say things like that, it fires me up more than anything.\" On August 16, Phelps won his seventh gold medal of the Games in the men's 100-meter butterfly, setting an Olympic record for the event with a time of 50.58 seconds and edging out his nearest competitor Čavić, by one hundredth (0.01) of a second.\nUnlike all six of his previous events in the 2008 Games, Phelps did not set a new world record, leaving intact Ian Crocker's world-record time of 50.40 seconds, set in 2005.\nPhelps's finish 0.01 seconds ahead of Čavić prompted the Serbian delegation to file a protest. Subsequent analysis of the video by the FINA panel, which required analyzing frames shot 1/10,000th of a second apart, was used to officially confirm Phelps's victory, but the images were not immediately released to the press. The initial refusal by official timekeeper Omega to release underwater photos of the finish also raised questions due to Phelps's sponsorship relationship with Omega. Čavić later wrote in his blog, \"People, this is the greatest moment of my life. If you ask me, it should be accepted and we should move on. I've accepted defeat, and there's nothing wrong with losing to the greatest swimmer there has ever been.\"\n\nPhelps's seventh gold medal of the Games tied Mark Spitz's record for gold medals won in a single Olympic Games, set in the 1972 Olympics. It was also his fifth individual gold medal in Beijing, tying the record for individual gold medals at a single Games originally set by Eric Heiden in the 1980 Winter Olympics and equaled by Vitaly Scherbo at the 1992 Summer Games. Said Phelps upon setting his seventh-straight Olympic record of the Games in as many events, \"Dream as big as you can dream, and anything is possible ... I am sort of in a dream world. Sometimes I have to pinch myself to make sure it is real.\"\n\n\n===== All-time record =====\nOn August 17, Phelps won his eighth gold medal in the 4×100-meter medley relay, breaking Mark Spitz's record of seven gold medals won in a single Olympic Games, which had stood since 1972. Phelps, along with teammates Brendan Hansen, Aaron Peirsol, and Jason Lezak, set a new world record in the event with a time of 3 minutes and 29.34 seconds, 0.7 seconds ahead of second-place Australia and 1.34 seconds faster than the previous record set by the United States at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens. When Phelps dived in to swim the 100-meter butterfly leg, the third leg of the 400-meter medley, the United States had been trailing Australia and Japan. Phelps completed his split in 50.1 seconds, the fastest butterfly split ever for the event, giving teammate Jason Lezak a more than half-second lead for the final leg, which he held onto to clinch the event in world record time. Said Phelps, upon completing the event that awarded him his eighth gold medal and eighth Olympic record in as many events, \"Records are always made to be broken no matter what they are ... Anybody can do anything that they set their mind to.\"\n\n\n==== Performance-enhancing drugs testing ====\nDuring the 2008 Olympics, Phelps was questioned by the press as to whether perhaps his feats were \"too good to be true\", a reference to unsupported rumors that Phelps might be taking performance-enhancing substances. In response, Phelps noted that he had signed up for Project Believe, a project by the United States Anti-Doping Agency in which U.S. Olympians can volunteer to be tested in excess of the World Anti-Doping Agency guidelines. During the Games, Phelps passed all nine tests that were administered to him.\n\n\n=== 2009 World Championships ===\n\nAt the 2009 National Championships, Phelps drastically shortened his program, swimming in only three individual events. In his first event, the 200-meter freestyle, Phelps won with a time of 1:44.23. In his second event, the 200-meter butterfly, Phelps easily won with a time of 1:52.76, 0.88 seconds ahead of the second-place finisher. In his third event, the 100-meter butterfly, Phelps won with a world-record time of 50.22.\n\nAt the 2009 World Aquatics Championships, Phelps won a total of 6 medals, 5 golds and 1 silver. In his first event, the 4×100-meter freestyle relay, Phelps swam the lead-off leg in 47.78, well off his 47.51 performance in Beijing, but the American team was able to edge out Russia and France for the gold. For his second race, the 200-meter freestyle, Phelps lost his first race in four years to Germany's Paul Biedermann. Phelps touched second in 1:43.22, but Biedermann smashed Phelps's record of 1:42.96 set in Beijing a year ago with a time of 1:42.00. Phelps took the silver graciously, but coach Bob Bowman threatened to withdraw Phelps from international competition because Bowman claimed Biedermann had an unfair advantage because he was wearing a full polyurethane swimsuit, specifically an Arena X-Glide.\nBowman said, \"It took me five years to get Michael from 1:46 to 1:42 and this guy has done it in 11 months. That's an amazing training performance. I'd like to know how to do that.\" Phelps rebounded from this loss and for his third race, the 200-meter butterfly, Phelps won the gold and broke his own world record of 1:52.03 with a time of 1:51.51. For his fourth race, the 4×200-meter freestyle relay, Phelps swam the lead-off leg in 1:44.49 as the team went on to win the gold medal and break the world record set the previous year. After his loss in the 200-meter freestyle, many thought Phelps was vulnerable coming into the final for the 100-meter butterfly. His closest competitor, Milorad Čavić, who wore an Arena X-Glide (the same suit Biedermann beat Phelps with), thought people were making excuses for Phelps because he was wearing an LZR Racer. Čavić even offered to buy Phelps a new suit. For his fifth race, the 100-meter butterfly, Phelps won the gold and became the first man to complete it in under 50 seconds, beating Čavić 49.82 to 49.95. The victory prompted a fierce celebration from Phelps. For his final event, the 4×100-meter medley relay, Phelps won his fifth gold medal. Phelps, along with teammates Aaron Peirsol, Eric Shanteau, and David Walters, set a new world record in the event with a time of 3 minutes, 27.28 seconds.\nSeveral months prior to the championships, a photograph of Phelps using a bong went viral; this resulted in the loss of Kellogg's as a sponsor, as well as a three-month suspension by USA Swimming. Phelps admitted that the photo, which was taken at a party at the University of South Carolina, was authentic. He publicly apologized, calling his behavior \"inappropriate\".\n\n\n=== 2010 Pan Pacific Championships ===\n\nAt the 2010 National Championships, Phelps competed in five individual events. In the 200-meter freestyle, Phelps won ahead of Ryan Lochte in a time of 1:45.61. About an hour later, Phelps returned to the pool to win the 200-meter butterfly. But Phelps was not happy with his performance and called it the \"worst\" 200-meter butterfly of his life. In the 100-meter butterfly, Phelps won his 50th national title in 50.65. After the race, Phelps said he was \"fairly pleased\" with the result. In the 200-meter individual medley, Phelps finished second to Lochte 1:55.94 to 1:54.84. It was the first time Lochte had beat Phelps in a major national meet. In the 200-meter backstroke, Phelps finished in 4th place in 1:56.98.\nOn the first day of competition at the 2010 Pan Pacific Swimming Championships, Phelps opted out swimming in the final of the 200-meter freestyle to focus on the 200-meter butterfly. In the 200-meter butterfly, Phelps led from start to finish, coming in first with a time of 1:54.11. Although it was much slower than his 1:51.51 time from the previous year, Phelps had not lost a 200-meter butterfly final since 2002. On day two of the competition, Phelps swam in the heats of the 400-meter individual medley and contributed in the 4×200-meter freestyle relay. In the heats of the 400-meter individual medley, Phelps failed to make the A final, with Lochte and Tyler Clary taking the top two American positions. Phelps did not swim in the B final of the 400-meter individual medley. In the 4×200-meter freestyle relay, Phelps, with Peter Vanderkaay, Ricky Berens, and Lochte, finished first ahead of Japan and Australia. On day three of the competition, Phelps competed in the 100-meter butterfly and contributed in the 4×100-meter freestyle relay. In the 100-meter butterfly, Phelps finished first in a time of 50.86, a championship record. In the 4×100-meter freestyle relay, Phelps, with Lochte, Jason Lezak, and Nathan Adrian, finished first ahead of Australia and South Africa. As the lead-off leg in the 4×100-meter freestyle relay, Phelps set the championship record in the 100-meter freestyle with a time of 48.13. In his final event, Phelps swam in the 4×100-meter medley relay with Aaron Peirsol, Mark Gangloff, and Adrian and finished first ahead of Japan and Australia.\n\n\n=== 2011 World Championships ===\n\nIn his first event at the 2011 World Aquatics Championships in Shanghai, Phelps won bronze in the 4×100-meter freestyle relay with Garrett Weber-Gale, Jason Lezak, and Nathan Adrian. This was Phelps's first bronze in a World Aquatics Championships. Phelps swam the lead-off leg in 48.08, the second-best lead-off in the field behind James Magnussen's 47.49. In his second event, the 200-meter freestyle, Phelps won silver for the second consecutive time at a World Aquatics Championships. This time he finished second to Ryan Lochte in the event with a time of 1:44.79, compared to Lochte's time of 1:44.44. In his third final, the 200-meter butterfly, he won his first gold medal with a time of 1:53.34 to become the first swimmer to win five gold medals in one discipline at the World Aquatics Championships.\nIn his fourth event, the 200-meter individual medley, Phelps again finished second to Lochte in a personal best of 1:54.16, which was 0.16 behind Lochte who swam a new world record. It was Phelps's 30th medal in the World Aquatics Championships. Shortly after completing the semi-finals of the 100-meter butterfly, Phelps competed in the 4×200-meter freestyle relay with Peter Vanderkaay, Ricky Berens, and Ryan Lochte. Phelps's team won the gold medal in a time of 7:02.67. Phelps swam the lead-off leg in 1:45.53, the third-best leg in the field. In the 100-meter butterfly, Phelps won his third consecutive title (also winning in 2007 and 2009) and second individual title of the meet with a time of 50.71. In his last event, the 4×100-meter medley relay, Phelps teamed with Nick Thoman, Mark Gangloff, and Nathan Adrian to win gold in a time of 3:32.06. Phelps's butterfly leg of 50.57 was by far the fastest butterfly leg in the field.\n\n\n=== 2012 Summer Olympics ===\n\n\n==== Trials ====\nFor the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, Phelps originally stated he would never do eight events again, and would instead try new events. Phelps said, \"I keep saying I want to go down and start sprinting, but Bob [Bowman, Phelps's coach] really isn't so keen on that ... I don't think that's going to happen ... Over the next four years, I'd like to try some different events, maybe not do some of the events I did here.\" However, at the 2012 United States Olympic Trials, the qualifying meet for the 2012 Summer Olympics, Phelps qualified in the same eight events that he swam in Beijing in 2008. He later dropped the 200-meter freestyle from his program, as he stated he wanted to focus on the 4×100-meter freestyle relay. During the trials, Phelps finished first in the 200-meter freestyle, 100-meter butterfly, 200-meter butterfly, 200-meter individual medley, and second in the 400-meter individual medley. In making his fourth Olympic team, Phelps holds the record for men for the most Olympic appearances in swimming representing the United States.\n\n\n==== London ====\n\nOn July 28, 2012, Phelps placed eighth in the morning prelims for the 400-meter individual medley. Phelps, the two-time defending Olympic champion, won his heat in 4 minutes, 13.33 seconds with a time that was well off his world record of 4:03.84 set four years earlier in Beijing, when Phelps won a record eight gold medals. He out-touched László Cseh by 0.07 seconds in his heat to qualify last for the final, locking out Cseh. In his first finals of the Summer Olympics, Phelps placed fourth behind fellow American Ryan Lochte, Thiago Pereira of Brazil, and Kosuke Hagino of Japan in the 400-meter individual medley. It was the first time Phelps failed to medal in an Olympic event since 2000. The next night, in his second event of the Games, he got a silver as a member of the 4×100-meter free relay. Phelps swam the fastest leg of the U.S. relay team and the second-fastest of anyone in the race.\nOn July 31, 2012, Phelps won a silver medal in the 200-meter butterfly behind South African Chad le Clos by 5/100ths of a second, and a gold medal in the 4×200-meter freestyle relay, thereby equaling and then surpassing Larisa Latynina to become the all-time record holder for most Olympic medals won. Latynina was present at the race and asked the International Olympic Committee to be the presenter of Phelps's medal, but was told that Olympic rules would not allow it. She called Phelps deserving of the record.\nOn August 2, 2012, Phelps won his 16th Olympic gold medal when he edged out Ryan Lochte to win the 200-meter individual medley with a time of 1:54.27, and by that victory also became the first male swimmer to win the same event in three consecutive Olympics. Rebecca Soni and Phelps (twice) are the only swimmers to successfully defend an individual title from the 2008 Games. This win also marked Phelps's fifth Olympic title in the individual medley, breaking the record of four shared by Hungarian Tamás Darnyi and Ukrainian Yana Klochkova.\nHe repeated the achievement of winning the same event at three Olympics the following evening, winning the Olympic gold medal in the 100 m butterfly, his last individual event. After two very close victories in the 100 m butterfly at the 2004 and 2008 Olympics (by 0.04 and 0.01 sec, respectively), in this race Phelps beat Le Clos and Yevgeny Korotyshkin, who tied for silver, by 0.23 sec.\nPhelps's final event was the 4×100-meter medley relay in which he went on to win his 18th career gold medal and his 22nd overall. By winning 4 gold and 2 silver medals, Phelps concluded the 2012 Olympics as the most successful swimmer of the meet for the third Olympics in a row.\nAfter his last event, the international swimming federation FINA honored Phelps with an award commemorating his standing as the most decorated Olympian ever.\nAfter the 2012 Olympics, Phelps retired from swimming, stating: \"I'm done. I'm finished. I'm retired. I'm done. No more,\" and that \"I just wanted to be done with swimming and didn't want anything to do with the sport anymore.\"\n\n\n=== 2014 comeback from retirement ===\n\nIn April 2014, Phelps announced he would come out of retirement, and would enter an event later that month. In May 2014, he won the 100-meter butterfly event at the Arena Grand Prix in Charlotte, North Carolina. Phelps was reportedly motivated by the national team's failure to win the men's 4 × 100 m freestyle relay since their Beijing 2008 and Rome 2009 titles. The relationship between Phelps and coach Bob Bowman had deteriorated in the preparations for London 2012, so Phelps convinced a skeptical Bowman that he \"wasn't training for history. He wasn't training for the medals. He wasn't even training for all the fans. This time Phelps wanted to swim for himself...and enjoy the journey\". Since his returning from retirement in 2014, Phelps \"scaled back his calorie intake\" and \"increased his postswim ice baths\". By the 2016 Olympic Trials, despite his age Phelps \"felt physically stronger in the water, perhaps because of drills Bowman added to his pool workouts, like multiple repeats of 40 seconds of dolphin kicking while hugging a 10-pound weight to his chest\".\n\n\n=== 2015 U.S. Nationals ===\nAfter having been dropped from the team for the 2015 World Aquatics Championships for a DUI, Phelps instead competed in the U.S. National Championships in San Antonio as his target meet of the summer. He won gold medals in the 100-meter butterfly (50.45 s), 200-meter butterfly (1:52.94), and the 200-meter individual medley (1:54.75). In each of these events he swam the fastest time in the world for 2015.\nIn December 2015 at the Winter Nationals in Federal Way, Phelps won titles in the same three events, again in long course, bringing his career total to 62 national titles.\n\n\n=== 2016 Summer Olympics ===\n\n\n==== Trials ====\nAt the U.S. trials in Omaha for the 2016 Summer Olympics, Phelps won the 200 m butterfly (1:54.84), the 200 m individual medley (1:55.91), and the 100 m butterfly (51.00 s) events. This made him the first American male swimmer, and the second American swimmer overall after Dara Torres, to qualify for a fifth Olympics. Phelps's 100 m freestyle times at the Trials were not impressive. However at a final training camp in Atlanta a week before heading to Rio, Phelps put out \"the fourth-fastest flat-start time of the year\" in a 100 free time trial, automatically securing one of the seven spots on the Men's 4 × 100 metre freestyle relay for the Olympics.\n\n\n==== Rio de Janeiro ====\nPhelps was chosen to be the American flag bearer at the opening ceremony, which was the first Olympic opening ceremony that he would attend. Phelps was also voted by the U.S. Olympic swim team as one of six team captains for the U.S. delegation to the Olympics. He displayed a relaxed, sociable demeanor in the athletes' village and in press conferences; this pleasant behavior was in stark contrast to his isolation in previous Olympics. He was accompanied by fiancée Nicole Johnson and son Boomer.\nIn his first event on August 7, the 4 × 100 m freestyle relay, he won his first gold medal of the 2016 Games and his 19th Olympic gold medal overall. Phelps swam the second leg with what his coach Bob Bowman described as \"maybe the best turn that's ever been done\", overtaking France's Fabien Gilot to give his American teammates a lead which they would not relinquish. Phelps's leg proved to be the decisive factor in the race, and Gilot later remarked \"As fast as my teammates were, the extraterrestrial that is Phelps was faster\". Phelps achieved a split time of 47.12, the fourth-fastest of the field (the three fastest times were posted by the team anchors), which was also faster than any of his relay splits at the last three Olympics.\n\nIn his second event on August 9, the 200-meter butterfly, he became the first swimmer in history to make five finals in the same event, after finishing 5th in 2000, 1st in 2004 and 2008, and 2nd in 2012. (Federica Pellegrini would be the second swimmer to do so at the 2020 Olympics.) At Rio, he won the title that he had lost to Chad le Clos four years earlier in London, edging Masato Sakai by 0.04 s. Phelps stated that winning back this title had been the main goal during his comeback. The preliminary and final of that event was heavily hyped as a rematch between Phelps and Le Clos. The relationship between Le Clos and Phelps had been cordial in 2012–13 but it deteriorated in 2014 when Phelps came back from retirement and suggested that the current butterfly times were slow. In the ready room prior to the preliminary race, Le Clos's shadow boxing while Phelps \"glowered in a corner\" spawned the Internet meme with the hashtag #PhelpsFace. At age 31, the victory made Phelps not only the oldest male champion, but also the oldest individual champion in Olympic swimming history, beating the records set by Duke Kahanamoku in 1920, and Inge de Bruijn in 2004 respectively. Phelps also became the first swimmer to win individual gold medals 12 years apart. Both these records were broken by Anthony Ervin three days later.\nAlso on August 9, Phelps won his 21st gold medal in the 4 × 200 m freestyle relay together with Conor Dwyer, Townley Haas, and Ryan Lochte. For Phelps and Lochte, this was their 4th consecutive gold medal in this event, an all-time record in swimming for any event.\n\nOn August 11, Phelps won his 22nd gold medal in the 200 m individual medley. He beat Kosuke Hagino, the 400 m individual medley champion, by 1.95 seconds. This was Phelps's 4th consecutive gold medal in the event as well as his 4th in the Games. He became the first swimmer to win the same individual event four times, surpassing the previous record of three held by Dawn Fraser and Krisztina Egerszegi. He also became the third Olympian to win the same individual event four times, after athletes Al Oerter and Carl Lewis. With that 13th individual gold medal, Phelps broke an ancient Olympic record, set by Leonidas of Rhodes, who had held the most Olympic individual titles of all time, with twelve.\nIn the 100 m butterfly, Phelps was defeated in his last individual event of the Rio Olympics by Singaporean Joseph Schooling, when he earned joint silver along with Chad le Clos and László Cseh.\nOn August 13, in the 4 × 100-meter medley relay, Phelps ended his career with another gold medal, his 23rd at the Olympics and his 28th Olympic medal overall. Together with Ryan Murphy, Cody Miller, and Nathan Adrian, swimming as the butterfly leg of the medley, they broke the Olympic record, and won the United States' 1001st all-time Summer Olympics gold medal, in accordance with the IOC and USOC. Phelps retired from competitive swimming for good following the Rio Olympics.\nPhelps's performance in the Rio Olympics was unique in \"winning multiple gold medals at 31 years old, well beyond the typical peak for male swimmers\". Phelps is considered one of the greatest Olympians of all time.\n\n\n=== International long-course competition results ===\n\na  Phelps swam only in the heats. Swimmers who only participated in the heats received medals as well.\nb  Phelps finished fourth in the heats, but he was the third American, hence he did not qualify for the final.\n\n\n=== Personal bests ===\n\n\n==== Long course (50 m pool) ====\n\n\n==== Short course (25 m pool) ====\n\n\n== Video game ==\nIn 2011, Michael Phelps: Push the Limit, an Xbox 360/Kinect game, was released, which promised to bring \"the fun, fitness and excitement of head-to-head swimming to your living room.\" The game received a lukewarm review from ABC News, which observed that \"the title would have been better as cheap downloadable content or packaged in a larger Olympic sports world.\"\n\n\n== Personal life ==\n\nBob Bowman described Phelps as \"a solitary man\" with a \"rigid focus\" at the pool prior to a race, but afterward \"a man incredibly invested in the success of the people he cares about\". He states that \"he's unbelievably kind-hearted\", recounting Phelps' interaction with young children after practices.\nPhelps is married to former Miss California USA Nicole Johnson. They secretly married on June 13, 2016, and the marriage was not publicly reported until four months later. They met in 2007 at the ESPYs, broke up in 2008, later got back together but broke up again in 2010. In 2012 they started to reconcile and ultimately got engaged in February 2015. They have four sons together. The family lives in Paradise Valley, Arizona, where Phelps volunteered alongside Bowman as an assistant coach for the Arizona State Sun Devils swim team.\nAs a teenager, Phelps idolized Australian swimmer Ian Thorpe and modeled his public image after Thorpe. Thorpe initially said that it would be highly unlikely for Phelps to win eight gold medals at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. Phelps used the remarks as motivation and taped the words to his locker during the Games. Thorpe was in the stands for the 4×100-meter medley relay, where Phelps was swimming for his eighth Olympic gold medal. When Phelps and his teammates captured the gold, Thorpe gave a congratulatory kiss to Phelps's mother, then gave a handshake and a hug to congratulate Phelps. Afterwards, Thorpe said \"I'm really proud of him not just because he won eight golds. Rather, it's how much he has grown up and matured into a great human being. Never in my life have I been so happy to have been proved wrong.\"\nPhelps is an avid golfer, and has competed in numerous amateur and pro-am golf tournaments; he considered becoming a professional golfer after retiring from swimming. At the 2012 Alfred Dunhill Links Championship, a pro-am tournament in which he was paired with golfer Paul Casey, Phelps set the world record for the longest televised putt in history, sinking a putt from 159 feet away.\nPhelps has also cited Michael Jordan as a sporting idol of his, and stated that \"he changed the sport of basketball\". Phelps is also a fan of the Baltimore Ravens and stated that he found his life purpose and desire to compete in the 2016 Summer Olympics after seeking Ray Lewis's advice.\nIn January 2018, Phelps revealed that he has struggled both with ADHD and depression, having contemplated suicide after the 2012 Olympics.\nHis father Fred died in 2022. Phelps made a tributary post on Instagram for his father on October 24.\nPhelps is a minority shareholder in the Premier League club Leeds United.\n\n\n=== Legal issues ===\nAt age 19 in November 2004, Phelps was arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol in Salisbury, Maryland. He pleaded guilty to driving while impaired and was sentenced to serve 18 months of probation, fined $250, ordered to speak to high school students about drinking and driving, and to attend a Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) meeting. When Phelps was later asked about the incident by Matt Lauer on the Today Show, he said that he had \"let a lot of people in the country down\".\nIn September 2014, Phelps was arrested again, this time on charges of driving under the influence of alcohol and speeding in Baltimore. As a result, USA Swimming suspended him from all competitions for six months, and stated he would not be chosen to represent the United States at the 2015 World Aquatics Championships in August. With Phelps off the team, the United States failed to qualify for the finals of the 4 × 100 m freestyle relay.\n\n\n== Philanthropy ==\n\nAfter the 2008 Olympics, Phelps used his $1 million Speedo bonus to set up the Michael Phelps Foundation. His foundation focuses on growing the sport of swimming and promoting healthier lifestyles.\nIn 2010, the Michael Phelps Foundation, the Michael Phelps Swim School and KidsHealth.org developed and nationally piloted the \"im\" program for Boys & Girls Club members. The im program teaches children the importance of being active and healthy, with a focus on the sport of swimming. It also promotes the value of planning and goal-setting. im is offered through the Boys & Girls Clubs of America and through Special Olympics International. The Foundation has since developed two other programs, Level Field Fund-Swimming and Caps-for-a-Cause.\nThe Foundation's largest event is its annual fundraiser, the Michael Phelps Foundation Golf Classic. Phelps stated he hoped to work with his Foundation more after retirement from competition following the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.\nIn 2017, Phelps joined the board of Medibio, a company focused on diagnosis of mental health disorders.\n\n\n== World records ==\nPhelps has set 39 world records (29 individual, 10 relay), which is more records than any other swimmer that is recognized by FINA; this achievement surpassed Mark Spitz's previous record of 33 world records (26 individual, 7 relay). However, Johnny Weissmuller is reported to have broken 67 official world records.\nAll but two of the records were set in a long-course (50-meter) pool. As of July 23, 2023, he holds world records in two events (indicated with \"Current\"), after his last standing individual world record in the 400 m individual medley was broken.\n\n\n=== Long course (50 m pool) ===\n\n\n=== Short course (25 m pool) ===\n\n\n=== Guinness World Records ===\nPhelps holds 18 Guinness World Records which predominantly consist of accumulative Guinness World Records (\"Guinness mosts\", records formulated starting with \"most\") for total number of accomplishments and victories in swimming such as: most medals, consecutive number of medals, most medals within one tournament, most records in swimming etc.\n\nMost world records set for swimming (male)\nMost gold medals won at the Olympics (male)\nMost Olympic medals won (male)\nMost gold medals won at the Olympics in individual events (male)\nMost individual Olympic medals (male)\nMost medals won at the Olympics for swimming (male)\nMost individual swimming Olympic gold medals\nMost Olympic gold medals in team swimming\nMost Olympic golds at one Games (male)\nMost Olympic medals won (single games), men\nMost swimming Olympic medals won, men (single games)\nMost consecutive Olympic swimming gold medals in the same event (male)\nMost silver medals awarded in a single Olympic swimming race\nMost gold medals won at the FINA Swimming World Championships (male)\nMost medals won at the FINA Swimming World Championships\nMost Men's World Swimmer of the Year Awards\nFastest swim long course relay 4 × 100 metres freestyle (male)\nFastest swim long course relay 4 × 200 metres freestyle (male)\n\n\n== Honors and awards ==\n\nPhelps was a USA Olympic team member in 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012 and 2016, and holds the records for most Olympic gold medals (23), most such medals in individual events (13), and most such medals at a single games (8, in Beijing 2008). A street in his hometown of Baltimore was renamed The Michael Phelps Way in 2004. On April 9, 2009, Phelps was invited to appear before the Maryland House of Delegates and the Maryland Senate, to be honored for his Olympic accomplishments.\nPhelps has also received the following awards:\n\nSwimming World World Swimmer of the Year Award: 2003, 2004, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2012, 2016\nSwimming World American Swimmer of the Year Award: 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2012, 2015, 2016\nFédération internationale de natation swimmer of the year (since 2010): 2012, 2016\nGolden Goggle Male Performance of the Year (since 2004): 2004, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2016\nGolden Goggle Relay Performance of the Year (since 2004): 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2016\nGolden Goggle Male Athlete of the Year (since 2004): 2004, 2007, 2008, 2012, 2014, 2015, 2016\nGolden Goggle Impact award: 2016\nSwimSwam Swammy Award for Male Swimmer of the Year: 2016\nUSOC SportsMan of the Year Award: 2004, 2008, 2011–12, 2016\nJames E. Sullivan Award: 2003\nGazzetta dello Sport Sportsman of the Year: 2003, 2004\nLaureus World Sportsman of the Year Award (nominated): 2004, 2005, 2008, 2009, 2013\nLaureus World Comeback of the Year Award: 2017\nUnited States Sports Academy Male Athlete of the Year: 2003, 2008\nSports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year: 2008\nAssociated Press Athlete of the Year: 2008, 2012\nMarca Leyenda award: 2008\nMorton E. Ruderman Award in Inclusion, 2019, to recognize his advocacy for people with disabilities and his own journey with mental health.\n\n\n== See also ==\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== Further reading ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nMichael Phelps at World Aquatics\nMichael Phelps at SwimRankings.net\nMichael Phelps at Olympics.com\nMichael Phelps at Olympedia\nMichael Phelps at InterSportStats\nMichael Phelps at USA Swimming (archived June 2, 2021)\nMichael Phelps at Team USA (archive June 25, 2023)\nOfficial website of the Michael Phelps Foundation at the Wayback Machine (archived March 10, 2010)"}
{"title": "Michelle Smith", "requested": "Michelle Smith", "extract": "Michelle Smith de Bruin (born 16 December 1969) is an Irish lawyer and retired Olympic swimmer. She won three gold medals at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, for the 400 m individual medley, 400 m freestyle and 200 m individual medley, and also won the bronze medal for the 200 m butterfly event.\nSmith's rise to dominance in the 1995 European Championships, followed by her wins in Atlanta, all at a relatively advanced age for swimmers, were marked by allegations of doping that were never proven. Smith was later banned for four years by FINA, the international swimming federation, for manipulation of an anti-doping sample by deliberate contamination with alcohol, a decision upheld by the Court of Arbitration for Sport when Smith appealed. Already superannuated in swimming terms, Smith never returned to competitive swimming and later worked as a barrister, practising under her married name of Michelle Smith de Bruin.\nDespite the ban for manipulating samples, authorities were unable to prove that Smith's swimming achievements were the result of using performance enhancers and, therefore, not annulled, so she remains Ireland's most successful Olympian.\n\n\n== Swimming career ==\n\nMichelle Smith's father taught his daughters how to swim, and Smith was first spotted by a lifeguard in Tallaght swimming pool at age nine. He suggested that Smith's father enroll his daughter in a swimming club. Smith joined Terenure Swimming Club and trained under the tutelage of Larry Williamson. Smith won the Dublin and All-Ireland Community Games at aged 9. She won ten gold medals at a novice competition. She enrolled in the King's Hospital Swimming Club in 1980. At aged 14, Smith won ten medals at the Irish National Swimming Championships. At 14, she became National Junior and Senior Champion and dominated Irish women's swimming until her retirement in 1998. She later swam collegiately at the University of Houston.\nSmith first appeared on the world scene as an 18-year-old at the Seoul Olympics and narrowly missed the B-final in the 200 m backstroke (top 16). Smith's second major championship was at the 1991 World Championships in Perth, Australia, where she finished 13th in the 400 m individual medley. She competed at the 1991 European Championships and qualified for the 1992 Olympic Games. She competed in the 200 m medley and backstroke and 400 m medley in the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, Spain, despite suffering an injury in the months leading up to the Games. She finished fifth in the 200 m butterfly at the 1994 World Championships. In that same year, she suffered from glandular fever, which affected her training prior to the World Championships.\nIn 1995, Smith set Irish records in 50 m, 100 m, 400 m and 800 m freestyle, 100 m backstroke, 100 m and 200 m butterfly, and 200 m and 400 m medley events. She was ranked number 1 in 200 m butterfly, sixth in 100 m butterfly and seventh in 200 m medley; she made sporting history by becoming the first Irishwoman to win a European title in 200 m butterfly and the individual 400 m medley in the same year.\n\n\n=== 1996 Olympics ===\nSmith won three gold medals and a bronze medal in Atlanta. There was controversy at the Games due to Smith qualifying for the 400m freestyle event at the expense of the then-world record holder Janet Evans, who had finished ninth in the preliminary swims with only the top eight advancing. Smith did not submit her qualifying time for the 400m freestyle event before the 5 July deadline but did so two days later with the Irish Olympic officials insisting they had been given permission to submit the qualifying time after the deadline. Smith applied for the event after she had arrived in Atlanta. After Smith qualified at the expense of Evans, the US Swimming Federation, supported by the German and Netherlands swimming teams, challenged a decision to allow Smith to compete but were unsuccessful. At a later conference, Evans highlighted that accusations of Smith doping had been heard by her poolside. Smith later received an apology from Evans.\n\n\n== Sample tampering ban ==\nIn April 1998, an exclusive by Craig Lord in The Times newspaper broke the news that Smith faced an anti-doping challenge. Two years after the 1996 Summer Olympics, FINA banned Smith for four years for tampering with her urine sample using alcohol. She appealed the decision to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). Her case was heard by a panel of three sport lawyers, including Michael Beloff QC. Unusually for a CAS hearing, Smith's case was heard in public at her own lawyer's request. FINA submitted evidence from Jordi Segura, head of the IOC-accredited laboratory in Barcelona, that Smith took androstenedione, a metabolic precursor of testosterone, in the previous 10-to-12 hours before being tested. Smith denied this and androstenedione was not a banned substance. The International Olympic Committee banned androstenedione and placed it under the category of androgenic-anabolic steroids in 1997. The CAS upheld the ban.\nShe was 28 at the time and the ban effectively ended her competitive swimming career. Smith was not stripped of her Olympic medals as she had never tested positive for any banned substances.\nHer coach and husband, Erik De Bruin, previously served a four-year ban for using illegal drugs during his career as a discus thrower, and her late rise to dominance in the pool largely coincided with the beginning of her coaching relationship with him, despite his lack of history in coaching swimmers. Smith has always maintained her denial around using illegal performance-enhancing drugs, and has withdrawn from events where the issue might be raised publicly.\n\n\n== Legal career ==\nDuring Smith's experience at CAS, she developed an interest in the law. After announcing her retirement from swimming in 1999, she returned to university, graduating from University College Dublin with a degree in law. In July 2005 she was conferred with the degree of barrister-at-law of King's Inns, Dublin. While a student at the King's Inns she won the internal Brian Walsh Moot Court competition. Her book, Transnational Litigation: Jurisdiction and Procedure was published in 2008 by Thomson Round Hall.\nSmith is a specialist in private international law, the recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments, EU law, and the law applicable to disputes following Brexit.\n\n\n== Other activities ==\nIn 1996, she released her autobiography, Gold, co-written with Cathal Dervan.\nIn 2007, Smith appeared on Celebrities Go Wild, an RTÉ reality television show in which eight celebrities had to fend for themselves in the wilds of rural Connemara.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nIn 1993 Smith began training with Dutch discus thrower Erik de Bruin, whom she had met in Barcelona. They married in 1996. Smith lives in Kells, County Kilkenny with de Bruin and their two children.\n\n\n== Legacy ==\nWhile Smith technically remains Ireland's most successful Olympian, male or female and also still technically holds Irish records for 400 LCM freestyle and 200 SCM butterfly, the legitimacy of her achievements is strongly debated in Irish sporting circles.\nThe controversy of her legacy was publicly highlighted when an Irish swimmer finally won another Olympic gold medal in 2024; the winner of the men's 800 metre freestyle in Paris, Daniel Wiffen, described himself in interviews as the first Irish swimmer to win two medals in the pool. When Smith de Bruin's four medals at a single Games were raised he pointedly restated \"So, nobody has ever won two medals, then.\" making his own views clear on the legitimacy of de Bruin's successes. In a public poll run by the national broadcaster prior to the 2024 Summer Olympics to find Ireland's Greatest Olympian, de Bruin collected only 7% of the vote despite being the clear leader in medals won - the award, with over 30% of the vote, going to rower Paul O'Donovan, followed by Katie Taylor and Sonia O'Sullivan.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists at a single Games\nList of sportspeople sanctioned for doping offences\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nLaw Library profile\nTransnational Litigation: Jurisdiction and Procedure (Smith deBruin's book)"}
{"title": "Mijaín López", "requested": "Mijaín López", "extract": "Mijaín López Núñez (born 20 August 1982) is a Cuban retired Greco-Roman wrestler. Widely considered one of the greatest wrestlers of all time, López is a five-time Olympic gold medalist, five-time World Champion, for a total of 10 world gold medals (second highest, behind Aleksandr Karelin's twelve), and a five-time Pan American Games champion. He is the younger brother of Michel López Núñez, a Cuban amateur boxer. López was Cuba's flag bearer at the opening ceremony of the 2008, 2012, 2016 and 2020 Summer Olympics, and one of the country's flag bearers at the closing ceremony of the 2024 Summer Olympics.\nUpon winning the gold medal in the Greco-Roman 130 kg event at the 2024 Paris Olympics, López became the first and only athlete in modern Olympics history to win five consecutive gold medals in the same individual event.\n\n\n== Career ==\nLópez has represented Cuba at the 2004, 2008, and 2012 Summer Olympics in Athens, Beijing, and London, and was his country's flag bearer during the opening ceremonies in 2008 and 2012. In 2004, he placed fifth, whereas in 2008 and 2012, he won the gold medal in the men's Greco-Roman 120 kg category. At the 2016 Rio Games, López won Gold in the 130 kg category. He again won gold at the 2020 Tokyo Games without losing a single point in the tournament, becoming the first male wrestler to win four Olympic gold medals, as well as only the fifth athlete to win four gold medals in the same individual event. During the opening ceremony of the same Olympics, he also became the first Cuban representative to become the country's flag bearer four times, breaking the tie between Teófilo Stevenson and himself.\nIn 2016, López won his tenth gold medal at the national wrestling championships of Cuba.\nAt the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, López won his fifth gold medal, becoming the first Olympic athlete in any sport to win five gold medals in the same individual event. He subsequently left his wrestling shoes in the center of the mat after his victory, signifying his retirement from the sport.\n\n\n== International competition record ==\n\n\n=== World Championships ===\nIn the 2005 World Championships he won the gold medal in the 120 kg weight class, outscoring his opponents 52–0 up to the final, before winning the final 7-1 vs Mihaly deak-bardos (HUN), in Budapest (Hungary).\nIn the 2006 World Wrestling Championships he won the silver medal in the 120 kg weight class, outscoring his opponents 40–0 up to the final, before losing the final 0-12 vs Khasan Baroev (RUS), in Guangzhou (China).\nIn the 2007 World Wrestling Championships he won the gold medal in the 120 kg weight class, outscoring his opponents 49–9 up to the final, before winning the final 2-2 vs Khasan Baroev (RUS), in Baku (Azerbaijan).\nIn the 2009 World Wrestling Championships he won the gold medal in the 120 kg weight class, outscoring his opponents 25–0 up to the final, before winning the final 6-1 vs Dremiel Byers (USA), in Herning (Denmark).\nIn the 2010 World Wrestling Championships he won the gold medal in the 120 kg weight class, outscoring his opponents 21–0 up to the final, before winning the final 4-0 vs Yury Patrikeyev (ARM), in Moscow (Russia).\nIn the 2011 World Wrestling Championships he won the silver medal in the 120 kg weight class, outscoring his opponents 16–0 up to the final, before losing the final 0-4 vs Rıza Kayaalp (TUR), in Istanbul (Turkey).\nIn the 2014 World Wrestling Championships he won the gold medal in the 130 kg weight class, outscoring his opponents 25–2 up to the final, before winning the final 2-0 vs  Rıza Kayaalp (TUR), in Tashkent (Uzbekistan).\nIn the 2015 World Wrestling Championships he won the silver medal in the 130 kg weight class, outscoring his opponents 15–1 up to the final, before losing the final 0-4 vs Rıza Kayaalp (TUR), in Las Vegas (United States).\n\n\n=== Olympic Games ===\nIn the 2004 Olympics he placed fifth in the 120 kg weight class in Athens.\nIn the 2008 Olympics he won the gold medal, outscoring his opponents 24–3 in the 120 kg weight class in Beijing.\nIn the 2012 Olympics he won the gold medal, outscoring his opponents 14–0 in the 120 kg weight class in London.\nIn the 2016 Olympics he won the gold medal, outscoring his opponents 16–0 in the 130 kg weight class in Rio de Janeiro.\nIn the 2020 Olympics he won the gold medal, outscoring his opponents 24–0 in the 130 kg weight class in Tokyo.\nIn the 2024 Olympics he won the gold medal, outscoring his opponents 20–2 in the 130 kg weight class in Paris.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists in one event\n\n\n== Notes ==\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nMijain Lopez Nunez at United World Wrestling\nMijain Lopez Nunez at the International Wrestling Database \nMijain Lopez Nunez at Olympics.com \nMijaín López at Olympedia \nMijaín López at InterSportStats\nMijaín López at the Lima 2019 Pan American Games (archived, alternate link)\nMijaín López on Instagram"}
{"title": "Mikaela Shiffrin", "requested": "Mikaela Shiffrin", "extract": "Mikaela Pauline Shiffrin (born March 13, 1995) is an American alpine skier. Shiffrin is the most decorated American alpine skier in World Championships history. She has the most World Cup wins of any alpine skier in history (men or women) and is the only one to have reached the milestone of 100 victories. She is a three-time Olympic gold medalist, four-time Olympic medalist, an eight-time World Championships gold medalist (including four titles in slalom), a six-time overall World Cup champion, and a nine-time winner of the World Cup slalom discipline title. Shiffrin, at 18 years and 345 days, became the youngest slalom gold medalist in Olympic history in 2014.\nShiffrin won her eighth career Alpine world championships gold medal on February 11, 2025, taking her overall tally to 15 medals from 18 career world championship races, and making Shiffrin the most successful skier in the modern era. She was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine in 2023.\n\n\n== Early life ==\nBorn in Vail, Colorado, Shiffrin is the second child of Eileen (née Condron) and Jeff Shiffrin, both originally from the Northeastern United States and former ski racers; her mother became a nationally prominent masters racer. Her paternal grandfather was Jewish. Shiffrin's father Jeff grew up in New Jersey and was an avid skier on weekends in Vermont with his family. As an undergraduate, he raced for Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. Her mother Eileen raced in high school in northwestern Massachusetts in the Berkshires, and her brother Taylor (born 1992) raced for the University of Denver.\nWhen Mikaela was eight in 2003, the family moved to rural New Hampshire near Lyme, where her father, an anesthesiologist, worked at Dartmouth–Hitchcock Medical Center. After five years, he took a new job in Denver; Shiffrin's older brother Taylor was in high school at Burke Mountain Academy, a ski academy in northeastern Vermont, and stayed in the east. Shiffrin also attended middle school at Burke but went with her parents to Colorado before returning to Burke.\nFrom a young age, Mikaela had strong results in major competitions.  In March 2010, at age 14, she won both the slalom and giant slalom (GS) at the Topolino Games in Italy, against skiers from 40 nations.  The following winter, now meeting the FIS minimum age requirement of 15 years, she won a Nor-Am Cup super combined race in December 2010 at Panorama, British Columbia, only the eighth FIS-level race in which she had competed. Shiffrin followed it up with three podiums in her next three Nor-Am races: runner-up in a super-G, third in a GS, and victory in a slalom. Weeks later, she won a pair of Nor-Am slalom races held at Sunday River, Maine. A month later, Shiffrin took the slalom bronze medal at the FIS Junior World Ski Championships held at Crans-Montana, Switzerland (after having been down with a stomach virus the day before).\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nIn February 2020, her father unexpectedly died in an accident. Since 2021, Shiffrin has been in a relationship with the Norwegian World Cup alpine ski racer Aleksander Aamodt Kilde. On April 4, 2024, the couple announced their engagement.\nIn May 2025, Shiffrin joined the ownership group for National Women's Soccer League expansion club Denver Summit FC.  In June 2025, she received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Dartmouth College.\n\n\n== Ski racing career ==\nShiffrin made her World Cup debut on March 11, 2011, in giant slalom at Špindlerův Mlýn in the Czech Republic. In early April, just a few weeks after her 16th birthday, she won the slalom title at the US National Championships at Winter Park, Colorado, and became the youngest American ski racer to claim a national alpine crown.\n\n\n=== 2012 season ===\n\nDuring the 2012 Alpine Skiing World Cup, Shiffrin, age 16, took her first World Cup podium on December 29, 2011, at a slalom in Lienz, Austria. She started 40th, lost her left shin guard halfway down, but finished in 12th place in the first run. Shiffrin then posted the fastest time in the second run to secure third place.\n\n\n=== 2013 season ===\nShiffrin won her first World Cup race in December 2012 at age 17, in a night slalom in Åre, Sweden. She became the second-youngest American to win an alpine World Cup event, behind Judy Nagel (17 yr, 5 mo.). Shiffrin's second win came two weeks later at a night slalom at Zagreb, Croatia, and her third win 11 days later at another night slalom in Flachau, Austria. After winning the slalom at the World Cup finals in Lenzerheide, she secured the 2013 season title in the slalom discipline. Though she spent most of her last two years of high school in Europe on the World Cup circuit, she graduated on time from Burke Mountain Academy in June.\n\n\n=== 2014 season ===\n\nShiffrin opened the 2014 season in October 2013 in Sölden, Austria, with a career-best sixth in giant slalom, within a half-second of the podium. She won the next event, a slalom at Levi, Finland, improving on her podium finish the previous year for her fifth World Cup victory. At Beaver Creek, she was runner-up in the giant slalom, her first World Cup podium in that discipline. On January 5, Shiffrin secured first place in a two-run slalom race in Bormio, Italy (the race took place there instead of in Zagreb, as scheduled, due to bad snow/weather conditions). She also won the world cup slalom races in Flachau, Åre, and Lenzerheide to secure a second consecutive World Cup slalom title. On February 21, she won slalom at the Sochi Olympics, becoming the youngest winner of that Olympic event. Shiffrin ended the season as the reigning Olympic, World Cup, and world champion in slalom. That year, she was named one of ESPNW's Impact 25.\n\n\n=== 2015 season ===\nShiffrin opened the 2015 season in October 2014 in Sölden with her first World Cup win in giant slalom. She had some trouble with slalom at first and ended up outside the podium in the first three World Cup slalom races, but emerged victorious in the races at Kühtai, Zagreb, Maribor, Åre and Méribel. She ended up winning the slalom world cup title once again. Shiffrin also won the World Championship in slalom held in Beaver Creek next to her home city of Vail, Colorado, U.S.\n\n\n=== 2016 season ===\nIn the first two slalom races of the 2016 season, both in Aspen, Shiffrin won by large margins, and in her first race, she achieved a new record margin for women's slalom, 3.07 seconds over the runner-up. On December 12, 2015, during the warm-up for the giant slalom in Åre, she fell and injured her knee. After two months away from racing, Shiffrin made a successful return in her first race back on February 15, 2016, where she took her 18th victory in Crans-Montana. In the 2016 season, she won all five slaloms she started. She missed the other five slaloms due to injuries and chose not to compete in parallel slalom in Stockholm.\n\n\n=== 2017 season ===\nShiffrin opened the 2017 season with a second-place finish in giant slalom at Sölden in October 2016. This was followed by a victory in slalom at Levi on November 12.  On November 26, 2016, she finished fifth in giant slalom at Killington in her first World Cup race in Vermont, but she returned the following day to a first-place finish in the slalom. On December 11, 2016, Shiffrin won her 11th straight World Cup in the slalom in Sestriere, Italy. On December 27, Shiffrin won the giant slalom in Semmering, Austria, her second career giant slalom win and her first solo giant slalom win. The next day, she repeated and won her third career giant slalom and 25th World cup career victory. Shiffrin subsequently won the final race held at Semmering, a slalom, on December 29, 2016, achieving her 26th World cup victory and completing her sweep of races at the resort. This made her the first woman to take three wins in three consecutive days in technical disciplines since Vreni Schneider won two giant slaloms in Schwarzenberg and a slalom in Mellau in January 1989. However she missed out on equalling the record of eight consecutive slalom wins, jointly held by Schneider and Janica Kostelić when she failed to finish the first run of the Snow Queen Trophy race in Zagreb on January 3 – her first DNF in slalom since a race in Semmering in 2012. On January 29 in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy, Shiffrin posted her best result in a speed event, finishing fourth in the super-G, only 0.03 seconds off the podium. She won her first parallel slalom on January 31 in Stockholm, Sweden.\nAt the World Championships in St. Moritz in February, she won the gold medal in slalom and took the silver in giant slalom. The gold was her third consecutive in slalom at the World Championships; she became the first woman to do this in the World Cup era and the first since Germany's Christl Cranz in 1939 when the Worlds were held annually.\nOn February 26, Shiffrin won her first super combined race at Crans-Montana.   In Squaw Valley, the first World Cup races there since 1969, she won the giant slalom on March 10 and the slalom the following day, taking her to 31 World Cup victories and 11 for the season. This secured her fourth slalom world cup. In Aspen, Colorado, the World Cup finals of the season took place. Shiffrin secured her first overall World Cup but did not win the giant slalom World Cup that year.  She finished the season with more World Cup victories before the age of 22 than Ingemar Stenmark, the record holder for number of World Cup victories.  After the season, she received the \"Skieur d'Or\" (golden skier) award, given by the international ski journalist association to the best alpine skier of the year (one award for both genders).\n\n\n=== 2018 season ===\n\nIn January, with wins in both the giant slalom and slalom at Kranjska Gora, Slovenia, Shiffrin clocked up her 39th, and 40th World Cup wins at age 22. She then tied the record of 41 World Cup wins before a 23rd birthday. She also became the first woman in history to win the first 5 World Cup races of a calendar year.\nAt the 2018 Winter Olympics, in Pyeongchang, South Korea, Shiffrin won gold in giant slalom as well as silver in combined.\nShiffrin secured her second consecutive World Cup overall title on March 9, 2018, with 5 races left in the season.\n\n\n=== 2019 season ===\nOn December 2, 2018, she won a super-G race in Lake Louise, becoming the only alpine skier ever — male or female — to win all six currently contested alpine skiing disciplines. These include slalom, giant slalom, downhill, super-G, combined, and parallel slalom.\nOn December 8, 2018, she won her second Super-G at St. Moritz, Switzerland, for her first back-to-back speed wins. The next day, December 9, she won her 4th parallel slalom with a dramatic win over her main slalom rival, the Slovak Petra Vlhová. This marked her 5th win out of 9 season races to start the 2018–2019 season. On December 22, 2018, she won the slalom in Courchevel, France, and became the youngest skier, female or male, to win 50 World Cup ski races at 23 years and nine months. With that race, she also equaled the record of the Austrian Marlies Schild for the most wins in women's slalom – 35.\nOne week later, she took another World Cup slalom win in Semmering, Austria, becoming the first alpine skier to take 15 World Cup wins in a single calendar year, moving ahead of Marcel Hirscher, who had taken 14 wins in 2018: both had broken the old record of 13 wins which had been set by Ingemar Stenmark in 1979. The race was also her 36th World Cup slalom win, breaking Schild's record: Shiffrin subsequently described Schild as \"my biggest idol beside Bode Miller\".\nAt the start of February 2019, shortly before the 2019 Alpine World Ski Championships, Shiffrin moved into third place on the list of female skiers with the most World Cup race wins at a meeting in Maribor, tying with Vlhová for the win in giant slalom to put her equal with Vreni Schneider on 55 wins before winning a slalom the following day to overtake the Swiss skier.\n\nAt the World Championships, Shiffrin won the gold medal in the super-G before taking a bronze in the giant slalom in windy, changeable conditions, finishing behind Vlhová and Viktoria Rebensburg. She went on to secure a second gold in the slalom, becoming the first alpine skier to win four consecutive World Championships in the same discipline, despite suffering from a lung infection on the day of the race.\nFollowing the Worlds, in March 2019, Shiffrin became the first alpine skier to take 15 World Cup wins in a season when she took victory in slalom in Špindlerův Mlýn, breaking the record she had previously held jointly with Vreni Schneider. At the World Cup finals in Soldeu, Shiffrin started her campaign by clinching the super-G crystal globe, finishing fourth in the final race to take her tenth World Cup title and her first in a speed discipline, having already built an unassailable lead to secure the overall and slalom titles earlier in the season. She became the first skier to win World Cups in a technical and a speed event in the same season since Tina Maze six years earlier. She went on to win the slalom, her 16th win of the season and the 40th slalom win of her career, tying with Stenmark for the most World Cup slalom race wins. The following day she took her 17th win of the season and the 60th win of her career in the giant slalom to secure the GS crystal globe, becoming the first skier to win the overall, super-G, giant slalom and slalom World Cup titles in a single season. She also later won her 41st slalom race, making her the skier who has won the most World Cup slalom races.\n\n\n=== 2020 season ===\nShiffrin had inconsistent performances in the technical races in the first half of the 2020 season, winning three slalom races to start but placing runner-up to Petra Vlhova later in the season. She also experienced similar fluctuations in ranking in giant slalom. She competed more frequently in speed races and, following the Bansko World Cup in January 2020, had recorded 6 victories for the season, 3 slaloms and one each in giant slalom, super-G, and downhill, off pace with her performance in previous seasons, but still the most on the World Cup tour and with a considerable lead in the Overall Standings.\nOn February 2, 2020, her father unexpectedly died in an accident, causing her to take a break from competition until late in the year.\n\n\n=== 2021 season ===\nShiffrin missed the first race weekend of the season in Sölden due to a back issue, but returned to racing in the first of the two slalom races at Levi, where she placed second.\nAt the 2021 World Championships in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Shiffrin emerged on top form, performing perhaps even better than expected and winning four medals, the most she has won in a single World Championship event. Her bronze medal run in the super-G was her first time competing in a speed event in over a year, as she had opted not to return to speed events this season due to her wanting to ensure that the return to racing would not be too heavy as well as the COVID-19 pandemic keeping her apart from the speed team and training. This feat was made more impressive by the fact that she had only trained Super-G for four days going into the competition. Her gold medal in the Alpine Combined made her the most decorated American alpine skier in the World Championships history – with her sixth gold and ninth medal she surpassed the record five WCH gold medals won by Ted Ligety, as well as the record of eight WCH medals in total held by Lindsey Vonn.\n\n\n=== 2022 season ===\nAt the 2022 Winter Olympics, Shiffrin was favored to win gold in at least three of the six events she was planning to compete in (especially her signature slalom and giant slalom). However, she uncharacteristically had a Did Not Finish (DNF) in the giant slalom and slalom, skiing out after the fifth gate in the first run of each race. She finished ninth in the super-G. In the remaining individual events (downhill and combined), Shiffrin did not win a medal. She competed in the mixed team event for the first time on the last day of competition, finishing fourth as part of the U.S. team.\n\n\n=== 2023 season ===\n\nIn the World Championships she won a gold medal in giant slalom, and medals in super-G and slalom.\nIn March 2023, Shiffrin won her 87th World Cup race, overtaking Ingemar Stenmark (86) for the most World Cup wins by any alpine skier.  In an interview on 27 February 2023, Stenmark hailed Shiffrin: \"She's much better than I was. You cannot compare...  I could never have been so good in all disciplines\".\nShe won an 88th World Cup race, the overall, the giant slalom and slalom season titles.\nHer performances during the 2023 season earned her a nomination for the Laureus World Sports Award for Sportswoman of the Year. Shiffrin is the recipient of the 2023 Best Female Athlete ESPY Award.\n\n\n=== 2024 season ===\nShiffrin injured her left leg and ligaments in a crash in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy in late January. She was out of racing for six weeks to rehabilitate, winning two World Cup slalom races after her return, making it 97.\n\n\n=== 2025 season ===\nOn November 30, 2024, at the FIS World Cup race in Killington, Vermont, Shiffrin sustained a puncture wound to her right abdomen following a crash in the giant slalom, where she tumbled into two gates and hit the catch-fencing. She was cleared of major injuries afterwards. On January 30, 2025, in her comeback race after her injuries had healed, she finished tenth in the slalom event at Courchevel.\nAlongside Breezy Johnson, she won gold in the inaugural team combined at the World Championships in Saalbach-Hinterglemm. It was her 15th world championship medal, which equalled the record of Christl Cranz.\nIn a slalom at Sestriere on February 23, Shiffrin achieved a first for her sport, earning her 100th World Cup victory. She added another victory at the season finals in Sun Valley, Idaho, winning the slalom on 27 March 2025. Despite missing four of the ten events, she was fourth in the slalom standings, with four victories and an additional podium.\n\n\n=== 2026 season ===\nOn November 15, 2025 Shiffrin won the first slalom race of the season in Levi, Finland. Her winning margin over second place Lara Colturi was 1.66 seconds. It was her 65th WC-slalom win and her 102nd overall WC-win.\nOn November 23, 2025 she won the second slalom race in Gurgl, Austria. Her winning margin over second place Lara Colturi was 1.23 seconds. It was her 66th slalom win and her 103rd overall WC-win.\nOn November 30, 2025 she won the third slalom race in Copper Mountain, U.S.. Her winning margin over second place Lena Dürr was 1.57 seconds. It was her 67th slalom win and her 104th overall WC-win.\nOn December 16, 2025 Shiffrin won the fourth slalom race in Courchevel, France, her first win there since 2018. Her winning margin over second place Camille Rast was 1.55 seconds. It was her 68th slalom win and her 105th overall WC-win.\nAs of December 16, 2025, Mikaela Shiffrin has won five World Cup slalom races in a row overall – that includes the four slalom victories she’s had so far this 2025–26 season (Levi, Gurgl, Copper Mountain, Courchevel) plus the final slalom race from last season on 27 March 2025 in Sun Valley, Idaho.\nAfter failing to win a medal in the other disciplines at the Milan-Cortina Olympics, she triumphed in the slalom event, finishing 1.50 seconds ahead of second-place Camille Rast. This victory marked her second gold medal in an Olympic slalom and her third overall at the Olympic Games. She thus became the first person to repeat her first Olympic victory twelve years later, as well as the first American skier to win two Olympic slalom gold medals, and both the oldest and the youngest American woman to win Olympic alpine gold, having done so at age 18 and age 30. She is tied with Julia Mancuso for winning the most Olympic medals as an American woman in alpine skiing, with four.\n\n\n== Statistics ==\nBy winning her second Olympic gold medal in the 2018 giant slalom, Shiffrin tied Ted Ligety and Andrea Mead Lawrence for the most Olympic gold medals ever won by an American Olympian in alpine skiing. She is one of only five Americans to win the World Cup overall title. In World Championships, she is the most decorated American alpine skier in history, having won the most medals (14) overall, a record seven of them gold.\nShiffrin is the first and only athlete with wins in all seven FIS Alpine Ski World Cup disciplines: slalom, parallel slalom, giant slalom, super-G, downhill, alpine combined and city event. She is the youngest skier to win 50 World Cup races, doing so at the age of 23 years and 9 months. She is also the only skier, male or female, to reach 100 World Cup victories.\nAs of March 25, 2026, Shiffrin has won 110 World Cup races. She overtook Ingemar Stenmark for the most World Cup wins by any alpine skier in 2023 with her 87th win.\nShiffrin holds the record of most World Cup podiums, with 168. In the 2019 season, she set the record and became the first athlete to win 17 World Cup races during a season. By winning the gold medal in the slalom at the 2019 World Championships, she became the first athlete to win the world championship in the same discipline at four consecutive championships. Shiffrin holds the overall record of winning gold medals at seven world championships (all consecutively). Shiffrin is the first skier to win 100 World Cups.\n\n\n== World Cup results ==\n\n\n=== Season titles ===\n\n18 titles – (6 Overall, 9 Slalom, 2 Giant slalom, 1 Super-G)\n\n\n=== Season standings ===\n\n\n=== Race victories ===\n\nUpdated through March 25, 2026\n\n\n=== Victories (110) ===\n\n1 Including both parallel slalom and parallel giant slalom.\n\n\n== World Championship results ==\nShiffrin competed in her first World Championships in 2013 at Schladming, Austria, and finished sixth in the giant slalom at Planai. Two days later, in the slalom, she won the world title at age 17.\n\n\n== Olympic results ==\nFavored to win the gold medal in slalom at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, Shiffrin led after the first run and nearly fell in the second, but held on for victory at Rosa Khutor. Three weeks shy of her 19th birthday, she became the youngest slalom champion in Olympic history. Three days earlier, she finished fifth in the giant slalom, held in the rain.\nShe competed in the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, where she won the gold medal in the giant slalom and silver medal in the Combined. She placed 4th in the slalom despite being favored to win the gold medal in the event.\n\n\n== Media appearances and documentaries ==\nDays after her first World Cup finals in 2013, Shiffrin was interviewed by David Letterman on the Late Show on March 19.\nIn 2014, Shiffrin was featured in a one-hour special on NBC television, How to Raise an Olympian, on February 5. Hosted by Meredith Vieira, it chronicled the journeys of seven American Olympians and featured interviews from parents and coaches along with home videos and photos from each athlete's childhood. The event was broadcast on television with live social-media components to enhance each segment. After Shiffrin's first gold medal win, she played \"Catch Phrase\" with Reese Witherspoon and Usher on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. On July 12, 2014, Shiffrin was a guest on the NPR radio show Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!, where she won the show's Not My Job game at the Red Rocks Amphitheatre.\nOn October 27, 2016, Shiffrin, speaking in German, presented the award for the best Austrian sportsman to Marcel Hirscher at a sports gala in Austria. In 2017, Shiffrin discussed her skiing roots and aptitude for napping on NBC's Late Night with Seth Meyers. In 2018, Shiffrin was profiled on CBS News' 60 Minutes.\nIn the weeks after the February 2019 World Ski Championship, Amanda Ruggeri twice profiled Shiffrin in Deadspin, and she was featured in The Wall Street Journal. In March 2019, after the conclusion of her record-setting World Cup season, she discussed handling anxiety on NBC's Today, addressed dealing with social media trolls on CNN, discussed pay equity on ABC's Good Morning America and the entertainment news show Access, and taught host Jimmy Fallon how to do the shuffle dance on NBC's Tonight Show. The New York Times profiled Shiffrin as \"the face of American skiing\", a theme echoed in a Sports Illustrated profile and video where Shiffrin talked in detail about her history with Lindsey Vonn.\nShiffrin has been the subject of long-form documentary videos. She is often featured in Outside's In Search of Speed, including in 2015, 2017 and 2018. After covering Shiffrin's training regimen in 2017, Red Bull in 2018 produced the 48-minutes long documentary Peak Season: The Determination of Mikaela Shiffrin. In April 2019, NBC's Olympic channel devoted 25 hours of prime-time to feature 20 of Shiffrin's races in the 2018–2019 season; her fanclub also released a compilation of highlights from her 2018–2019 season.\nIn October 2022, she was interviewed on Boomer Esiason's podcast.  During the interview, reference was made to a piece written by Shiffrin about her father's passing in \"The Players' Tribune\".\nIn December 2022, Shiffrin began releasing documentary videos on her own YouTube channel, with themes and content of her choosing.\nIn July 2023 Shiffrin did an hour-long interview on Lewis Howes' \"School of Greatness\" podcast.  A particular message she wanted to convey to young athletes was that she doesn't think self-confidence in results is necessary, that she has plenty of doubts herself—the important thing is having the courage to try, even knowing things may not turn out the way you want.\nIn Jan 2025 a short biography of her was published as part of the Little People Big Dreams book series for kids.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nMikaela Shiffrin at the International Ski and Snowboard Federation \nMikaela Shiffrin at Ski-DB Alpine Ski Database \nMikaela Shiffrin at U.S. Ski & Snowboard\nMikaela Shiffrin at Team USA (archive)\nMikaela Shiffrin at Milano Cortina 2026\nMikaela Shiffrin at Olympedia \nMikaela Shiffrin at InterSportStats \nMikaela Shiffrin on Instagram"}
{"title": "Mike Burton (swimmer)", "requested": "Mike Burton (swimmer)", "extract": "Michael Jay Burton (July 3, 1947 – September 18, 2026) was an American swimmer who competed for the University of California at Los Angeles, a three-time Olympic champion, and a onetime world record-holder in two freestyle distance events.  He would later have a career as a swimming coach.\n\n\n== Early life ==\nIn eighth grade, Burton was hit by a furniture truck while riding a bicycle with a friend. He had formerly loved to play football and basketball, but the injuries he sustained from his accident made him abandon contact sports, and left swimming as one of his few fitness options.\nBurton graduated from El Camino High School. Benefitting from his highly competitive club coaching at Arden Hills, Burton won 10 AAU titles while at El Camino.  \n\n\n=== University of California at Los Angeles ===\nBurton attended the University of California at Los Angeles where he swam for Hall of Fame Coach Bob Horn.  He won individual NCAA titles five times during his swimming years at UCLA from 1967-1970.\nDuring his collegiate years, his AAU titles included the 500 Free (1970), 1650 Free (1967, 1968, 1970), and 200 Fly (1970), and he was named an All-American for winning these events.\nIn conference play, he was a four-time Pac-10 champion at UCLA, and helped lead the Bruins to the Pac-10 Championship Team Title in 1970. He entered the UCLA Athletics Hall of Fame as a Charter Member.   At the 1967 University Games in Tokyo, Japan, he won a gold medal in the 1,500-meter freestyle, ahead of Russian Semyon Belits-Geiman.\n\n\n== Olympics ==\n\nBurton won two gold medals in individual events at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City: the 400-meter freestyle where he swam a 4:09.0 and the 1,500-meter freestyle where he swam a 16:38.9.  Despite having been sick in Mexico City, Burton won the 400-meter in a close race against Ralph Hutton of Canada.  He won the 1,500-meter, finishing 18 seconds ahead of second-place American John Kinsella.\nFour years later at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany, he became the only American ever to repeat as the 1,500-meter freestyle gold medalist, and recaptured the world record. Burton's repeat proved a stunning win: in the spring of 1972, he had been diagnosed with a vitamin deficiency, and at the U.S. Olympic Trials had barely made the Olympic Team. At the 1972 trials in Chicago, Burton failed to make the Olympic team in the 400 freestyle event and the 200 butterfly, finishing eighth. On the next to the last day of the Trials, he entered the finals of the 1500 where he finished third, qualifying for the U.S. team.\nAt the 1500-meter event at the Munich Games, Burton started fast and was the early leader over Australian star Graham Windeatt, though Windeatt recovered and regained the lead. Burton overtook Windeatt in the closing lengths, touched first, broke Rick DeMont's standing world record and won the gold medal for the U.S. team.\nThe celebration in Munich of his historic repeat, however, was overshadowed by Mark Spitz's performance at those Games and by the terrorist attack on the Olympic Village, which occurred the day after Burton's race.\n\n\n== Coaching ==\nIn one of his earlier positions, he coached the Des Moines Aquatics Club in his hometown around 1979-81, where one of his swimmers was 1988 Seoul 4x200 gold medalist Craig Oppel.  He coached at The Evergreen Swim Team in Olympia, Washington through 1997, and then at the Seahawks in Billings, Montana, at the local YMCA until 2007.\nHis daughter Loni embarked on her own successful swimming career.  She is one of two swimmers in NCAA history to win twelve individual titles.  She performed the feat in three years as Division II swimmers are eligible to participate in four individual events versus three in Division I and III.\n\n\n== Death ==\nBurton died on September 18, 2026, at the age of 79.\n\n\n== Honors ==\nBurton was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame as an \"Honor Swimmer\" in 1977.  In 1984, as a five-time NCAA individual champion, he was inducted into the UCLA Hall of Fame.  He is a member of the Sacramento Sports Hall of Fame.\n\n\n== See also ==\n\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists in one event\nList of Olympic medalists in swimming (men)\nList of University of California, Los Angeles people\nWorld record progression 800 metres freestyle\nWorld record progression 1500 metres freestyle\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nMike Burton at IMDb"}
{"title": "Missy Franklin", "requested": "Missy Franklin", "extract": "Melissa Franklin Johnson (née Franklin; born May 10, 1995) is an American former competitive swimmer and five-time Olympic gold medalist. She held the world record in the 200-meter backstroke (long course) from 2012 to 2019. As a member of the U.S. national swim team, she also held the world records in the 4×100-meter medley relay (short course and long course).\nIn her Olympic debut at the 2012 Summer Olympics at age 17, Franklin won a total of five medals, four of which were gold. She swept the women's backstroke events, winning gold in both the 100-meter and 200-meter backstroke. Franklin's successes earned her Swimming World's World Swimmer of the Year and the American Swimmer of the Year award in 2012 as well as the FINA Swimmer of the Year Award in 2011 and 2012. In total, she won twenty-eight medals in international competition: seventeen gold, six silver, and five bronze, spanning the Olympics, the World Championships, the short course World Championships, and the Pan Pacific Championships. Franklin's eleven gold medals at the World Aquatics Championships was a record in women's swimming before Katie Ledecky broke it in 2017.\nFranklin won the Laureus World Sportswoman of the Year award in 2014. In December 2018, she announced her retirement from the sport.\n\n\n== Early life ==\nFranklin was born in Pasadena, California, the only child of Dick and D. A. Franklin. When she was a baby, her mother was very worried about water safety, so Franklin started swimming purely because her parents wanted her to get comfortable with the water. She grew up in Aurora, Colorado, and began taking swimming classes there at the age of five, at the urging of her mother. She attended Regis Jesuit High School in Aurora, Colorado, and graduated in 2013.\nBoth of Franklin's parents are Canadian and Franklin holds American and Canadian dual citizenship. Her father, Dick, was born in St. Catharines, Ontario. A former All-Canadian football player for Saint Mary's University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, he played briefly for the Toronto Argonauts of the Canadian Football League as an offensive lineman. After an injury ended his football career, he returned to Halifax to pursue an MBA degree at Dalhousie University, where he met his future wife, a medical student. While working for 7-Up in Ontario, Dick was transferred to the United States. Ultimately the family settled in Denver, Colorado, where Dick had a senior position with Coors Brewing Company. Franklin's mother suggested that her daughter consider competing for Canada to ease the pressure of qualifying for the U.S. National Team due to the competitive depth of American swimmers. Franklin, however, chose to represent the United States, citing her patriotism for her homeland.\nFranklin is 6 ft 2 in (188 cm) tall and has women's size 13 inch feet. \"We call them built-in flippers,\" says her father. She has been coached by Todd Schmitz from the Colorado Stars club team since she was 7 years old.\nDuring her rise to stardom surrounding the 2012 Olympics, Franklin continued to refuse prize money and endorsements so that she could maintain her amateur status to compete in college.\n\n\n=== University of California Berkeley ===\nIn 2012, she accepted an athletic scholarship to attend the University of California, Berkeley, where she began swimming for coach Teri McKeever's California Golden Bears women's swimming team during the 2013–14 academic year. At Cal, Franklin was a four-time individual NCAA champion: winning the 200-yard freestyle in 2014 and 2015, and the 200-yard backstroke and individual medley in 2015. She won the Honda Sports Award as the nation's top female swimmer in 2015, as well as the Honda Cup awarded to  the nation's top female athlete.\nAfter the 2015 NCAA Swimming and Diving Championships, in which Franklin won three individual NCAA titles, Franklin turned professional, thus ending her NCAA career. \nAfter leaving Berkeley to train for the 2016 Olympics with her Colorado team, in January 2018 Franklin elected to begin training at the University of Georgia. She graduated with a degree in religion from the University of Georgia in December 2019.\n\n\n== Swimming career ==\n\n\n=== Early career ===\nAt the age of seven, Franklin joined the Colorado Stars travel swim team. It was not obvious to Franklin's parents that Missy possessed such a natural talent until other members’ parents brought it to her parents’ attention. At the age of twelve, Franklin began competing against girls who were much older than her. At the age of 13, Franklin competed at the 2008 U.S. Olympic Team Trials in Omaha, Nebraska, but did not qualify to swim in any events at the 2008 Summer Olympics.  Her best result was 37th place in the 100-meter freestyle. By the time Missy graduated from high school, she possessed half of the Colorado High School Activities Association time records for girls high school swim.\n\n\n=== 2010 ===\nAt the 2010 National Championships, Franklin competed in six individual events, and qualified to swim at the 2010 Pan Pacific Swimming Championships by finishing second in the 100- and 200-meter backstroke. At the 2010 Pan Pacific Swimming Championships, Franklin finished fourth in the 100-meter backstroke and did not make the A final for the 50- and 200-meter backstroke. Franklin earned the first international medals of her career at the 2010 FINA Short Course World Championships in Dubai. In the 200-meter backstroke, Franklin finished in second place, behind French swimmer Alexianne Castel. Franklin also earned a silver medal in the 4×100-meter medley relay for her contribution in the heats. For her performance in 2010, Franklin won the Breakout Performer of the Year Award at the seventh annual Golden Goggle Awards.\n\n\n=== 2011 ===\n\n\n==== 2011 World Championships ====\n\nIn her first long course world championship meet at the 2011 World Aquatics Championships in Shanghai, Franklin won a total of five medals, three gold, one silver, and one bronze.  In her first event, the 4×100-meter freestyle relay, Franklin won a silver medal with Natalie Coughlin, Jessica Hardy and Dana Vollmer in a time of 3:34.47.  Swimming the second leg, Franklin had a split of 52.99, the second-best among all participants. Franklin won her first individual medal, a bronze, in the 50-meter backstroke, finishing behind Russian Anastasia Zuyeva and Japanese Aya Terakawa. Shortly after the 50-meter backstroke final, Franklin competed in the 4×200-meter freestyle relay with Dagny Knutson, Katie Hoff and Allison Schmitt and won gold ahead of Australia and China in a time of 7:46.14.  Franklin's lead-off time of 1:55.06 was faster than the winning time of Italian Federica Pellegrini in the individual 200-meter freestyle final (1:55.58). After setting the national record in the semi-finals of the 200-meter backstroke (2:05.90), Franklin dominated the field in the final with a time of 2:05.10, breaking her own national record and winning gold.  This was Franklin's first individual world title, and her time in the final was the third-fastest effort of all time. Shortly after the 200-meter backstroke final, Franklin competed in the 4×100-meter medley relay with Natalie Coughlin, Rebecca Soni, and Dana Vollmer and won gold with a time of 3:52.36, over three seconds ahead of second-place finisher China.  Swimming the freestyle leg, Franklin had a split of 52.79, the fastest in the field.  The final time of 3:52.36 for the medley relay was the second-fastest effort of all time, just behind the Chinese-owned world record of 3:52.19. For her performance at these championships, she won the Female Athlete of the Year, Female Race of the Year (200-meter backstroke), and the Relay Performance of the Year (4×100-meter medley relay) Award at the eighth annual Golden Goggle Awards. She was also named the best female swimmer for 2011 by FINA Aquatics World Magazine.\n\n\n==== 2011 National Championships ====\nThree days after the 2011 World Aquatics Championships ended in Shanghai on July 30, Franklin traveled to Palo Alto, California to compete at the 2011 National Championships, which began on August 2.  At these championships, Franklin competed in four individual events, and the 4×100er career in the 100-meter backstroke and freestyle. She also placed fourth in the 200-meter individual medley and twelfth in the 50-meter freestyle.\n\n\n==== First world records ====\nTowards the end of 2011 in October, at the 2011 FINA Swimming World Cup, Franklin set the first world record of her career in the 200-meter backstroke, bettering the previous record of 2:00.13 held by Shiho Sakai with a time of 2:00.03.  In breaking the record, Franklin became the first female to break an individual world record since the high-tech bodysuits were banned in January 2010. Franklin's second world record came at the 2011 Duel in the Pool in December.  In the 4×100-meter medley relay, Franklin combined with Natalie Coughlin, Rebecca Soni, and Dana Vollmer to break the previous American-owned world record in a time of 3:45.56, bettering the previous record of 3:47.97.  Swimming the freestyle leg, Franklin had a split of 51.32.\n\n\n=== 2012 London Summer Olympics ===\n\nDuring the preparation for the London Summer Olympic trials, Franklin could be drug tested from six in the morning until eleven at night, and had to report where she was at all times. She would be given one hour a day and within that hour she had  to be at that exact location, in case they would come to drug test her.  Franklin started training for the London Olympics with Kara Lynn Joyce on the Colorado stars swim team. Within the London Olympic trials, Franklin became the first female to qualify for seven Olympic events.\n\n\n==== Trials ====\nAt the 2012 United States Olympic Trials, Franklin qualified to swim in four individual events at the 2012 Summer Olympics.  In her first event, the 100-meter backstroke, Franklin won the final with a time of 58.85, breaking Natalie Coughlin's American record of 58.94 seconds. In her second event, the 200-meter freestyle, Franklin placed second behind Allison Schmitt by over two seconds with a time of 1:56.79. In her third individual event, Franklin finished second in the 100-meter freestyle behind Jessica Hardy with a time of 54.15. Her second-place finish came less than half an hour after swimming in the 200-meter backstroke semi-finals, where she finished first overall with a time of 2:07.91.  In the 200-meter backstroke final, her fourth individual event, Franklin finished first with a time of 2:06.12.\n\n\n==== Olympics ====\n\nOn the first day of the swimming competition at the 2012 Olympics in London, Franklin won a bronze medal in the 4×100-meter freestyle relay with Jessica Hardy, Lia Neal, and Allison Schmitt, with the U.S. team finishing behind Australia and the Netherlands. Swimming the lead-off leg, Franklin had a personal best of 53.52 seconds and the team finished with a total time of 3:34.24, an American record.  Franklin's first leg in the relay was also the fastest lead-off of the field.  In her first individual event on the third day of the swimming competition, the 100-meter backstroke, Franklin won the gold medal with a time of 58.33 seconds, beating her own national record. Her win in the backstroke came less than fifteen minutes after completing the 200-meter freestyle semi-finals, where she qualified for the final.  The following day, Franklin competed in the 200-meter freestyle and placed fourth in the final with a time of 1:55.82, one one-hundredth of a second behind third-place finisher Bronte Barratt. A day after the 200-meter freestyle, Franklin won her third medal of the meet, a gold, in the 4×200-meter freestyle relay with Dana Vollmer, Shannon Vreeland and Allison Schmitt.  Swimming the lead-off leg, Franklin posted a time of 1:55.96 and the U.S. team finished with a time of 7:42.92, a new American record. A day after completing the relay, Franklin competed in her third individual event, 100-meter freestyle.  In the final, Franklin placed fifth with a time of 53.64 seconds. Franklin was able to bounce back from that performance, and in her fourth and last individual event held the following day, the 200-meter backstroke, Franklin won her second individual gold of the Olympics with a world record time of 2:04.06, bettering Kirsty Coventry's record of 2:04.81.  In winning the 200-meter backstroke, Franklin also became the first American female to win the event at the Olympics since Melissa Belote did in 1972, forty years earlier. In her final event, the 4×100-meter medley relay, Franklin won gold with Rebecca Soni, Dana Vollmer and Allison Schmitt.  Swimming the backstroke leg, Franklin recorded a time of 58.50 seconds, and the U.S. team went on to set the world record with a time of 3:52.05, besting the Chinese-owned record of 3:52.19 set in 2009.\nAt the end of the year, Franklin was named the World Swimmer of the Year and American Swimmer of the Year by Swimming World Magazine.  She was also named the best female swimmer for 2012 by FINA Aquatics World Magazine.\n\n\n=== 2013 World Championships ===\n\nAt the 2013 US National Championships, Franklin qualified to swim in five individual events at the 2013 World Aquatics Championships. At the National Championships, she finished first in the 100- and 200-meter freestyle and backstroke, and second in the 50-meter backstroke.\n\nAt the 2013 World Aquatics Championships in Barcelona, Franklin swam seven total events – four individual and three relays, though she later withdrew from the 50-meter backstroke after the heats. At the meet, Franklin won six gold medals, setting a new record for the most golds won by a female swimmer at a single edition of the World Championships. Despite being the first woman in history to win six gold medals at a single World Championships, she lost out the award of Swimmer of the Meet to teammate Katie Ledecky for her two world record-breaking performances and four gold medals.\nOn the first day of the pool competition and her first event the 4×100-meter freestyle relay, Franklin lead-off the relay with a time of 53.51.  She was over a second behind Australia's lead-off Cate Campbell, but teammates Natalie Coughlin and Shannon Vreeland made up some ground and anchor Megan Romano overtook the Australian team in the last 20 meters to give the Americans the gold medal.  The final time of 3:32.31 was an American record, breaking the previous record of 3:34.24.  In her first individual event held on the third day of the pool competition, the 100-meter backstroke, Franklin won gold in a time of 58.42, six-tenths of a second ahead of Emily Seebohm of Australia.  On the fourth day, Franklin decided to scratch the 50-meter backstroke since it was right before the 200-meter freestyle.  In the 200-meter freestyle, Franklin won her third gold in a personal best time of 1:54.81, touching 0.33 seconds ahead of second-place finisher Federica Pellegrini.  On the fifth day, Franklin won gold in the 4×200-meter freestyle relay along with teammates Katie Ledecky, Shannon Vreeland, and Karlee Bispo.  Swimming the anchor leg and diving in with a deficit of over a second, Franklin was able to track down Australian Alicia Coutts, recording a split of 1:54.27 and the team finishing with a time of 7:45.14.  On the sixth day, Franklin competed in the 100-meter freestyle and placed fourth in the final with a time of 53.47, just missing the medal podium.  A day after her 100-meter freestyle swim, Franklin successfully defended her title in the 200-meter backstroke, winning with a time of 2:04.76 and setting a new championship record.  In her last event, the 4×100-meter medley relay, Franklin combined with Jessica Hardy, Dana Vollmer, and Megan Romano to win gold in a time of 3:53.23. Swimming the backstroke leg, Franklin recorded a time of 58.39.\n\n\n=== 2014 ===\n\n\n==== 2014 U.S. National Championships ====\nAt the 2014 U.S. National Championships, Franklin won the 100-meter backstroke with the third fastest American time ever, leading a sweep of the event by Cal Berkeley swimmers. She also won the 200-meter backstroke and the 100-meter freestyle, and finished second in the 200-meter freestyle behind Katie Ledecky.\n\n\n==== 2014 Pan-Pacific Championships ====\nDespite being hampered by a back injury, Franklin swam in four individual events and three team relays at the 2014 Pan Pacific Swimming Championships. In total, she won one gold, two silvers, and one bronze medal.\nFranklin won her only individual medal in the 100-meter backstroke by finishing third with a time of 1:00.30. In the 100-meter freestyle and the 200-meter backstroke, she placed fourth. In the 200-meter freestyle, Franklin failed to qualify for the A final, but won the B final with the second-fastest time among all finalists, securing her place on the U.S. team for the 2015 World Championships in this event.\nFranklin teamed with Shannon Vreeland, Leah Smith, and Katie Ledecky to win the 4×200-meter freestyle relay.  Swimming with Simone Manuel, Abbey Weitzeil, and Vreeland, Franklin placed second in the 4×100-meter freestyle relay, and with teammates Jessica Hardy, Kendyl Stewart, and Manuel, she finished second in the 4×100-meter medley relay.\n\n\n=== 2015 World Championships ===\n\nAt the 2015 World Aquatics Championships in Kazan, Russia, Franklin competed in the 100- and 200-meter backstroke, the 100- and 200-meter freestyle, and four relay events.  She won a bronze medal as a member of the U.S. team in the 4×100-meter freestyle relay, and another bronze in the 200-meter freestyle.  She finished fifth in the final of the 100-meter backstroke.  Franklin won her first gold medal of the 2015 championships as a member of the first-place U.S. team in the women's 4×200-meter freestyle relay.  She also won a silver in the 200-meter backstroke event and gold in the mixed 4×100-meter freestyle relay.\n\n\n=== 2015 FINA World Cup ===\nOn August 15 and 16, Franklin swam in the second stop of the 2015 FINA World Cup.  She competed in four events: 100- and 200-meter backstroke; 100- and 200-meter freestyle.  In the first day of the races she qualified for the final in the 200-meter backstroke and 200-meter freestyle events where she won bronze and silver, respectively. During the next day of the event, Franklin won silver in 100-meter freestyle and bronze in 100-meter backstroke.\n\n\n=== 2016 Rio Summer Olympics ===\n\n\n==== Trials ====\nIn 2016, Franklin placed second in the 200 m freestyle, 200 m backstroke, and also qualified for the 4 × 200 m freestyle team at the US Olympic Swimming Trials.\n\n\n==== Olympics ====\nAt the 2016 Summer Olympics Franklin tied for 13th place in the 200m freestyle semifinals, with a time of 1:57.56, and did not make the cut for the finals.\nShe placed 7th in the 200 meter backstroke for her heat in the semifinals and did not make the finals.\nAlso at the 2016 Summer Olympics, Franklin won a gold medal in the 4 × 200 m freestyle relay for swimming in the heats.\n\n\n=== Retirement ===\nFranklin announced her retirement from the sport of swimming on December 19, 2018. She is an ambassador for the USA Swimming Foundation and is a principal spokesperson for the Saving Lives Is Always in Season national campaign.\n\n\n== Personal bests ==\nAs of April 7, 2017\n\n\n== World records ==\n\na  Short course record with Natalie Coughlin, Rebecca Soni, and Dana Vollmer.  Franklin swam the freestyle leg (anchor leg) in a time of 51.32.\nb  Record set with Rebecca Soni, Dana Vollmer, and Allison Schmitt.  Franklin swam the backstroke leg (lead-off leg) in a time of 58.50.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nFranklin says her favorite athlete is Natalie Coughlin.\nFranklin was raised Christian but did not attend church or identify as religious until reading the Bible and taking theology classes in high school. As a Religion major at the University of Georgia, she took courses in several religions, including Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism. She had already practiced yoga recreationally for three years, but learning about its Hindu roots in college made it a more spiritual experience for her. At the time of her retirement, her academic interest in Hinduism was misreported as her being an adherent; in an interview about her Christian faith, Franklin said her Hindu interests were \"blown a little bit out of proportion.\"\nFranklin got engaged to Hayes Johnson, who swam at the University of Texas, on September 22, 2018. The couple married on September 14, 2019.\nIn March 2021 she and her husband announced they were expecting a child. On August 11, 2021, their daughter Sarah Caitlin Johnson was born. On October 31, 2024, Franklin announced that she was pregnant with their second daughter. She gave birth to Chase Campbell Johnson on March 19, 2025.\n\n\n== In popular culture ==\nFranklin appeared in a March 2013 episode of Pretty Little Liars as herself.  She is the subject of the 2014 documentary Touch the Wall along with Kara Lynn Joyce.  The film is directed by Christo Brock and Grant Barbeito, and documents Franklin's and Joyce's journey to the 2012 London Olympics. The film was noted for its celebration of female physical and emotional strength. Franklin had a cameo in the big-budget comedy The Internship, starring Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of Olympic medalists in swimming (women)\nList of United States records in swimming\nList of World Aquatics Championships medalists in swimming (women)\nList of world records in swimming\nWorld record progression 200 metres backstroke\nWorld record progression 4 × 100 metres medley relay\n\n\n== Bibliography ==\nFranklin, Missy; Franklin, D.A.; Franklin, Dick; with Daniel Paisner. Relentless Spirit: The Unconventional Raising of a Champion. New York, Dutton, December 6, 2016. ISBN 978-1-101-98492-5.\n\n\n== Notes ==\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n=== Further reading ===\nSanchez, Robert (June 2012). \"Golden Girl\". 5280.\n\n\n== External links ==\nMissy Franklin  at World Aquatics \nMissy Franklin at Swimrankings.net \nMissy Franklin at Olympics.com \nMissy Franklin at Olympedia \nMissy Franklin at USA Swimming (archived September 18, 2021)\nMissy Franklin at Team USA (archive April 30, 2023)\nMissy Franklin – Partnership with SafeSplash Swim Schools\nMissy Franklin – Partnership with Swimtastic Swim Schools"}
{"title": "Mitsuo Tsukahara", "requested": "Mitsuo Tsukahara", "extract": "Mitsuo Tsukahara (塚原 光男 Tsukahara Mitsuo, born December 22, 1947) is a Japanese artistic gymnast. He was five times an Olympic Gold Medalist. He remained active in the sport after his retirement from competition. He served as vice president of the Japan Gymnastic Association.\nTsukahara competed throughout the late 1960s and 1970s, retiring from gymnastics competition in 1978 after the World Championships. Winning five gold, one silver and three bronze medals, Tsukahara was an important contributor in Japan's win at the team competition in three consecutive Olympic Games: in 1968, 1972 and 1976. He married fellow gymnast Chieko Oda. He has remained connected to the gymnastics world, partly through his son Naoya Tsukahara, who was also a multi-medalist at the World Championships and Olympic Games throughout the late 1990s and who still competed as of 2014.\n\n\n== Skills ==\nTsukahara's name is one of the most famous in gymnastics due to its association with two widely performed skills. The first is the full-twisting double salto in the tuck position (with the full twist in the first salto). The Men's Gymnastics Code of Points credits Tsukahara for premiering this skill on floor exercise and horizontal bar, and he regularly performed it on these events throughout his career. In fact, in many nations, it is customary to call a full-twisting double salto tumble or dismount a \"Tsukahara\" on all apparatus, both for men and women. This skill is sometimes called a \"Moon Somersault\" or \"Moon Salto\".\nTsukahara is also credited with having invented a vaulting technique called the \"Tsukahara vault\". This vault is generally described as a roundoff over the horse/table into a backward salto, with or without twist. However, until 2005, when the horse was replaced with a table, women usually performed Tsukahara-type vaults on the side horse with a half-twist entry onto the horse rather than a quarter twist entry. Tsukahara himself did this vault in a stretched position, generally without twist.\nThe name \"Tsukahara\" is so strongly associated with the 1/4-on entry, that it is routinely misapplied to the more commonly used Kasamatsu-style vault, in which the 1/4 turn off the horse \"untwists\" so that the salto is initiated forwards or sideways. In fact, Tsukahara himself, who entered the horse on his left side but also twisted to the left, would have done a Kasamatsu vault if he had tried to twist. However, the Tsukahara style is certainly still very popular among gymnasts who:\n\ndo the basic vault in tucked, piked, or stretched position\ntwist the opposite direction of their entry side, e.g. Gervasio Deferr, who repeated as Olympic Vault Champion in 2004 by premiering the Tsukahara with 2.5 twists\ndo two saltos instead of just one, e.g. Leszek Blanik, the 2008 Olympic Vault Champion, who is one of many gymnasts to perform a Tsukahara double pike.\n\n\n== Honors ==\nIn November 2009, Tsukahara was awarded with a Medal of Honour with purple ribbon by the Government of Japan.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Summer Olympic medalists\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nTsukahara (Horizontal bar)\nTsukahara (Vault)"}
{"title": "Mo Farah", "requested": "Mo Farah", "extract": "Sir Mohamed \"Mo\" Muktar Jama Farah (born Hussein Abdi Kahin, 23 March 1983) is a British former long-distance runner. He holds the record for the most global championship gold medals (four Olympic and six World titles), making him the most successful male track distance runner in the history of the sport, and he is the most successful British track athlete in Olympic Games history.\nFarah is the 2012 and 2016 Olympic gold medallist in both the 5,000 m and 10,000 m. He is the second athlete, after Lasse Virén, to win both the 5,000 m and 10,000 m titles at successive Olympic Games. He also completed the 'distance double' at the 2013 and 2015 World Championships in Athletics. He was the first man to defend both distance titles in both major global competitions; a feat described as the 'quadruple-double'. After finishing second in the 10,000 metres at the 2011 World Championships, Farah had an unbroken streak of ten global final wins (the 5,000 m in 2011, the double in 2012, 2013, 2015 and 2016, and the 10,000 m in 2017). The streak ended in Farah's final championship track race, when he finished second to Ethiopia's Muktar Edris in the 2017 5,000 metres final.\nOn the track, Farah mostly competed over 5,000 metres and 10,000 metres, but has run competitively from 1,500 metres to the marathon. In 2017, he indicated his intention to switch wholly to road racing following victory at his final track race, the 2017 IAAF Diamond League 5,000-meter final. He won the 2018 Chicago Marathon in a time of 2:05:11, a European record.  His running style has been described as bouncy and tactical, which he has attempted to alter for a more efficient and energy-saving stride pattern, especially in the longer distances. Farah runs distance races tactically, a style which is aided by his especially quick sprint finish. His tactics were described in Athletics Weekly: \"(Farah) could run 24 strong laps of the track, which most of his East African rivals could match, before a blistering 400 metre sprint to the line, which none of them could.\"\nBorn Hussein Abdi Kahin in the Somali Democratic Republic, he was trafficked from Djibouti to London under the name of another child, Mohamed Farah, at the age of nine and was forced into child labour. He adopted the name as his own thereafter and became a British citizen. He ran for the Newham and Essex Beagles athletics club, training at St Mary's University College, Twickenham from 2001 to 2011. He did not reveal that he was a victim of trafficking until 2022.\nFarah is the current world record holder for the one-hour run (21,330 m) and the current European record holder for the outdoor 10,000 m (26:46.57). He is also the current British record holder for the 3,000 m (7:32.62) and 5,000 m (12:53.11). He formerly held the world best for the short track two miles at 8:03.40 (broken by Josh Kerr in 2024 with an 8:00.67 clocking), and also formerly held the European best in the outdoor two mile (8:07.85) and 3000 m (7:32.62), until Jakob Ingebrigtsen broke the 2 mile in 2023 with a new world best of 7:54.10 and the 3,000 m in 2024 with a world record time of 7:17.55. Farah was also the former British short track record holder for the 3,000 m, at 7:33.1+ (broken by Sam Atkin in 2023 with 7:31.97). Farah also held the 1500 m British Record (3:28.81), which was broken by Josh Kerr in 2024 with a time of 3:27.79.\nFarah was the first British athlete to win two gold medals at the same world championships. His five gold medals at the European Athletics Championships made him the most successful male athlete in the championships' history in individual events. He has won the European Athlete of the Year award and the British Athletics Writers Association British Athlete of the Year award more than any other athlete, three times and six times respectively. In 2017, Farah won the BBC Sports Personality of the Year. Farah was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2013 and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to athletics.\n\n\n== Early life and education ==\nHussein Abdi Kahin (Somali: Xuseen Cabdi Kaahin) was born on 23 March 1983 in the Somali Democratic Republic. He belongs to the Jibril Abokor sub-division of the Habr Awal clan, itself part of the Isaaq clan-family. His father died in the Somali Rebellion when Kahin was aged four, and he then became separated from his mother. He subsequently spent a few years in Mogadishu before, at the age of nine, he was illegally trafficked to the United Kingdom via Djibouti, where he was given the name Mohammed Farah and was forced to work as a domestic servant. Farah was flown from Somalia by a woman he had never met and was made to look after her family's children, as \"it was common in their culture\". He obtained British citizenship in July 2000 under the name Mohamed Farah. These aspects of his background were not made public until July 2022, and a barrister told him that there was a risk that he might lose his British nationality as it was obtained by misrepresentations; the Home Office, however, assured him that he would not face any repercussions.\nFor the first years he was in Britain, he was not allowed to go to school, but when he was 11 or 12, he began to attend Year 7 at Feltham Community College, where staff were told he was a refugee from Somalia. His athletic talent was first identified by physical education teacher Alan Watkinson. Farah's ambition at the time was to play as a right winger for Arsenal football club, or become a car mechanic.\nFarah was a student at Isleworth and Syon school. In 2022, he gave an interview to current students.\n\n\n== Sporting career ==\n\n\n=== Early years ===\nFarah joined the Borough of Hounslow Athletics Club in west London. He represented Hounslow at cross-country in the 1994 London Youth Games as an under-13. In 1996, at the age of 13, he entered the English schools cross-country championships and finished ninth. The following year he won the first of five English school titles. Recognising his talent, athletics philanthropist Eddie Kulukundis paid the legal fees to complete Farah's naturalisation as a British citizen, allowing him to travel to competitions without visa issues.\nFarah's first major title was in the 5000 metres at the 2001 European Athletics Junior Championships, the same year that he began training at St Mary's University, Twickenham. That year, Farah became one of the first two athletes in the newly formed Endurance Performance Centre at St Mary's. He lived and trained at the college and took some modules in an access course before becoming a full-time athlete as his career progressed.\n\n\n=== 2005–2008: First titles and personal bests ===\nIn 2005, Farah moved in with Australian Craig Mottram and a group of Kenyan runners that included 10,000 m world number one Micah Kogo. \"They sleep, eat, train and rest, that's all they do but as an athlete you have to do all those things. Running with Craig made me feel more positive,\" Farah said. \"If I ever want to be as good as these athletes I've got to work harder. I don't just want to be British number one, I want to be up there with the best.\"\nIn July 2006, Farah recorded a time of 13 minutes 9.40 seconds for 5000 m to become Britain's second-fastest runner after Dave Moorcroft. A month later, Farah won the silver medal in the 5000 m at the European Championships in Gothenburg. Coaches Alan Storey and Mark Rowland made sure that Farah remained competitive and a few words from Paula Radcliffe before the 5000 m final inspired Farah. He has stated that: \"She said to me, 'Go out and be brave. Just believe in yourself'.\" In December 2006, Farah won the 2006 European Cross Country Championships in San Giorgio su Legnano, Italy.\nDuring the 2007 European Indoor Championship Farah fell and amid confusion started running in the wrong direction. Farah represented the UK at 5000 m in the 2007 World Championships in Osaka, Japan. Farah finished sixth in a time of 13:47.54.\n\nIn May 2008, Farah ran 10,000 m, setting the fastest UK men's time for almost 8 years. However, he was knocked out before the 5000 m final at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.\n\n\n=== 2009–2010: British records and European champion ===\nIn January 2009, Farah set a new British indoor record in the 3000 metres, breaking John Mayock's record with a time of 7 minutes 40.99 seconds in Glasgow. A few weeks later, he broke his own record by more than six seconds with a time of 7 minutes 34.47 at the UK Indoor Grand Prix in Birmingham, a performance which commentator Steve Cram called \"the best performance by a male British distance runner for a generation\". Farah attributed his good form to a spell of winter training at altitude in Ethiopia and Kenya. In March 2009 he took gold in the 3000 m at the European Indoor Championships in Turin, recording a time of 7 minutes 40.17.\nFarah competed at the 2009 World Championships in Athletics: he was in the leading pack early on in the 5000 metres race and eventually finished seventh – the best by a European runner. After the championships, he scored a victory in his first road competition over 10 miles, winning the Great South Run in 46:25 to become the third fastest Briton in spite of strong winds.\nFarah was one of the favourites to upset Serhiy Lebid's dominance at the 2009 European Cross Country Championships. However, Lebid was never in contention as Farah and Alemayehu Bezabeh were some distance ahead throughout the run. Farah was overtaken by Bezabeh in the latter stages of the race, leaving the Briton with a second consecutive silver medal at the competition. He did not manage to attend the medal ceremony, however, as he collapsed immediately after the race and needed medical attention. After a close third place behind Edwin Soi at the BOclassic, Farah competed in the short course race at the Great Edinburgh Cross Country. He was the favourite to win and surged ahead to build a comfortable lead. However, he appeared tired in the latter stages and finished third behind British runners Ricky Stevenson and Steve Vernon. Farah again required post-race medical attention, and subsequent tests revealed he had low levels of iron and magnesium. He was prescribed supplements for the condition, and his high-altitude training plans in Kenya were unaffected.\n\nFarah won the 2010 London 10,000 in late May in a time of 27:44, in the process beating 10K world record holder Micah Kogo. His success continued the following week at the European Cup 10,000 m. There, he improved his track best by nearly 16 seconds, finishing in a time of 27:28.86. Farah won by a margin of over forty seconds ahead of second placed Abdellatif Meftah. After training in Africa, he returned to Europe for the 2010 European Athletics Championships. He took the 10,000 metres gold medal, overtaking Ayad Lamdassem with two laps to go and finishing the race unpressured in a time of 28:24.99. This was Farah's first major title and also the first European gold medal in the event for Great Britain. He then went on to win the 5000 m, beating Jesús España and becoming only the fifth man in the 66-year history of the European Championships to achieve the 5000 m/10,000 m double, and the first for 20 years, following in the footsteps of the Czech Emil Zátopek in 1950, Zdzislaw Krzyszkowiak of Poland in 1958, Finland's Juha Vaatainen in 1971 and Salvatore Antibo, of Italy, in 1990.\nOn 19 August 2010, at a Diamond League meeting in Zürich, Farah ran 5000 m in 12:57.94, breaking David Moorcroft's long-standing British record and becoming the first ever British athlete to run under 13 minutes.\nIn December 2010, Farah was named track-and-field athlete of the year by the British Olympic Association. He closed the year at the BO classic and just missed out on the 10,000 m title, losing to Imane Merga in a sprint finish by 0.2 seconds.\n\n\n=== 2011–12: European and British records, and world medals ===\n2011 was a successful year for Farah, beginning on 8 January at the Edinburgh Cross Country, where he defeated the top four finishers of that year's European Championships to take victory in the long race.\nIn February 2011, Farah announced that he would be relocating to Portland, Oregon to work with new couch Alberto Salazar, train alongside Galen Rupp, and avoid the attention of the British tabloids. On 19 February 2011 in Birmingham, England, Farah broke the European 5000 m indoor record with a time of 13:10.60, at the same time taking ten seconds off the 29-year-old British indoor record of Nick Rose. On 5 March 2011, he won gold in the 3000 metres at the European Indoor Championships. On 20 March, Farah also won the NYC Half Marathon in a time of 1:00:23, a new British record. He and training partner Galen Rupp had originally planned on running a 10,000 m race in New Zealand. However, after the race was cancelled due to the Christchurch earthquake and damage done to the track, they entered the half-marathon in New York.\nOn 3 June 2011, at a Diamond League meeting in Eugene, Oregon, Farah won the Prefontaine Classic's 10,000 m event in 26:46.57, setting a new British and European record. On 22 July 2011, at a Diamond League meeting in Monaco, he set a new British national record in the 5000 m with a time of 12:53.11. Farah edged out American Bernard Lagat to win the race.\nIn the 2011 World Championships in Athletics in Daegu, South Korea, Farah made a major breakthrough on the world stage by taking the silver medal in the 10,000 m and then the gold in the 5000 m. He became the first British man to win a World Championships medal over either distance. Farah had in fact been more strongly favoured to take the 10,000 m title, but was narrowly beaten in a last lap sprint by Ethiopian Ibrahim Jeilan. In the 5000 m, he overcame Lagat, beating him into second place. Following the race, Dave Moorcroft, former 5000-meter world record holder, hailed Farah as \"the greatest male distance runner that Britain has ever seen\".\nAt the European Championships in June 2012, he won the 5000 m. This then made Farah the first athlete to win this European title more than once.\n\n\n=== 2012: Double Olympic champion ===\n\nAt the London 2012 Olympics, on 4 August, Farah won the 10,000 m gold in a time of 27:30.42. This was Great Britain's first Olympic gold medal in the 10,000 m, and came after two other gold medals for the country in the same athletics session. His training partner, Galen Rupp of the United States, took second place. At the time, both runners were a part of the Nike Oregon Project coached by Alberto Salazar. Farah stated that he would observe his Ramadan fast later in the year. On 11 August 2012, Farah made it a long-distance double, winning the 5000 metres in a time of 13:41.66. The noise from the crowd in the 5,000 m race was so loud it made the camera shake and distorted the photo-finish image. He dedicated the two golds to his twin daughters.\nOn 23 August 2012, Farah returned to the track at a Diamond League meet in Birmingham, where he capped off a winning season with another victory over a distance of two miles (3.2 km).\n\n\n==== CBE ====\nFollowing his 2012 successes, Farah was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2013 New Year Honours for services to athletics. The move was met with anger by many in the general public, including erstwhile Minister of Sports Gerry Sutcliffe, who felt that Farah instead deserved a higher accolade. Farah's former physical education teacher Alan Watkinson similarly indicated that he was disappointed that Farah was not knighted and that the decision \"discredits the system although it's still a fantastic achievement for Mo and well deserved.\" However, deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg cited Farah's Olympic double gold win in his 2013 New Year's message and 2012 Autumn conference, and David Cameron in August 2013 expressed support for a knighthood for Mo Farah.\n\n\n=== 2013: 1500 m record and world medals ===\n\nOn 19 July 2013, at the Herculis meeting in Monaco, Farah broke the European 1500 m record with a time of 3:28.81. The feat meant that he was the sixth fastest man ever over the distance, overtaking Steve Cram's 28-year-old British record and Fermín Cacho's 16-year-old European record. It also made Farah the seventh man, behind Saïd Aouita, Daniel Komen, Ali Saïdi-Sief, Hicham El Guerrouj, Augustine Kiprono Choge and Bernard Lagat to break both the 3:30 barrier in the 1500 metres and the 13-minute barrier in the 5000 metres, as well as the only athlete in history to run sub 3:30, sub 13-minute and sub 27-minute for 1500 metres, 5000 metres and 10,000 metres respectively. Additionally, he has a sub-1-hour run in the half-marathon. The following month, Farah won the London Diamond League Anniversary Games' 3000 metres event in a time of seven minutes and 36.85 seconds. He twice broke the national record in the half-marathon, first on 24 February in New Orleans, then broke his own record on 15 September in the Great North Run.\nOn 10 August 2013, Farah stayed in front of Ibrahim Jeilan to win the 10,000 m event at the World Championships in Moscow. The victory was his fourth global title. On 16 August 2013, Farah won the 5,000 m event, in the process becoming double world and Olympic champion. After this victory, BBC commentator Brendan Foster and Sebastian Coe called Farah 'Britain's greatest ever athlete'. Farah became only the second man in history to win long-distance titles at successive editions of the Olympics and World Championships, after Kenenisa Bekele's 2008–09 feat. He was the first British athlete to win two individual gold medals at a World Championships.\nIn December 2013, Farah was the second favourite, behind Wimbledon tennis champion Andy Murray, to become the BBC Sports Personality of the Year. When he was asked what drove him to keep pushing back the boundaries of athletic accomplishment, he noted sprinter Usain Bolt's record-breaking streak as a motivating example of what is possible for all dedicated athletes.\nFarah was a finalist for the 2013 IAAF World Athlete of the Year award. In preparation for his marathon debut, he also extended his training schedule to 120 miles a week.\n\n\n=== 2014: Double European gold in Zürich ===\nFarah began 2014 preparing for the year's London Marathon, his first such run. He described running the event as a longstanding ambition of his, particularly to do so in London. Farah finished in eighth place in a time of 2:08.21. This was outside Steve Jones' GB record, but set a new English national record.\n\nFarah was due to compete at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. However, he withdrew due to illness from a stomach ailment and an infection caused from having a tooth removed. Farah later appeared in Zürich at the 2014 European Athletics Championships. He successfully defended his 5000 m title and won a gold in the 10,000 m, thus completing another major championship double. This made him the most successful individual in the history of the European Athletics Championships, with five titles to his name.\nOn 7 September 2014, Farah competed in the Great North Run, a British half marathon. He won the race with a personal best time of 1:00:00, exactly 1 hour.\n\n\n=== 2015: World and European records ===\nOn 21 February 2015, Farah broke the indoor two-mile world record at the Birmingham Indoor Grand Prix. He ran an 8:03.4 to break Kenenisa Bekele's record. On 22 March, Farah broke the European record for half marathon in Lisbon. He ran a time of 59 minutes, 32 seconds, surpassing the record set 14 years previously by Spain's Fabián Roncero. He repeated his long-distance gold medal double at the 2015 World Championships in Athletics. His win in the 10,000 m made him the oldest World Championship winner in that event, at age 32.\n\n\n=== 2016: Double-Double Olympic Golds at Rio ===\nOn 26 March, Farah received a bronze medal in the 2016 IAAF World Half Marathon Championships in Cardiff, finishing in 59:59, less than one second ahead of Abayneh Ayele. On 20 February, Farah won the Glasgow Indoor Grand Prix 3000m event. On 5 June 2016, Farah broke the 34-year-old British 3000 metre record set by Moorcroft by winning the Diamond League in Birmingham, a win he dedicated to the recently deceased boxer Muhammad Ali. In July 2016 Farah set the concurrent world-leading time in the 5000m in winning the Diamond League in London. He won the 10,000m at the Diamond League in Eugene, in a time of 26:53.71 which remained the second-fastest time in the world of the year.\nOn 13 August, Farah won a gold medal in the 10,000 metres at the Rio Olympics, making it the first time a Briton had won three athletic gold Olympic medals. After being accidentally clipped on the back of the heel by American Galen Rupp on the tenth lap he fell, but went on to win gold with the time of 27:05.17. Rupp slowed after Farah's fall to check his condition and finished in fifth place with a time of 27:08.92. In the final lap Farah battled Paul Tanui, who took the lead with 300 metres remaining. Farah edged him out with 100 metres to go. Tanui finished in second place with a time of 27:05.64.\nOn 20 August, Farah went on to win a second gold medal in the 5,000 metres at the Rio Olympics. Coming into the 31st Olympiad, Farah was trying to win gold medals in the 10,000 metres and 5,000 metres to double his success from the London Olympics. Farah held off the lead he had set and finished with a time of 13:03:30, making it only the second time someone has retained the 5000m and 10,000m Olympic titles, after Lasse Virén of Finland in 1972 and 1976. In September 2016, he won the Great North Run for a record third consecutive year.\nIn 2016, he was the fastest person from the European continent over two middle distance events and three long-distance events; the 1500 metres, 3000 metres, 5000 metres, 10,000 metres and the half-marathon respectively. His ninth global title, the 5000 m in Rio, made him surpass Kenenisa Bekele as the most frequent winner of gold in history for major long-distance events. He remained unbeaten in 2016 in the 3000 m as well as in six races over the 10,000 m and 5,000 m distances.\n\n\n=== 2017: Tenth world title and track retirement ===\n\nFarah announced that he would switch from track events to the marathon after the 2017 World Championships in Athletics. He won the 10,000 m event, and came second in the 5,000m event after Ethiopia's Muktar Edris.\nFarah won his final two track events, in the Diamond league, in Birmingham and Zurich. On 24 August 2017, he won his final 5,000 m in the Diamond league, finishing in 13:06.05, in a final sprint against Paul Chelimo and Muktar Edris just behind in 13:06.09.\nOn 20 August 2017, Farah again reiterated his decision to move to the marathon full-time, and caused headlines when he announced after running his last 10,000 m race on British soil at the Muller Grand Prix in Birmingham that he would never again run in a GB vest.\nOn 10 September 2017, Farah won the Great North Run for a record fourth consecutive time. He finished in 1:00:06, 6 seconds ahead of Jake Robertson.\nOn 31 October, Farah split from Alberto Salazar in order to be coached by Gary Lough, husband and former coach of Paula Radcliffe. Salazar stated that the split was mutual and he would be happy to advise Farah in the future.\n\n\n=== Since 2018: Full-time marathon runner ===\nIn March 2018, in preparation for the London Marathon, Farah won the inaugural London Big Half Marathon, his first race in six months. On 22 April 2018, Farah came third in the London Marathon in a time of 2:06:22, comfortably beating the British record of 2:07:13 set by Steve Jones in 1985. On 9 September 2018 Farah won the Great North Run for a record-extending fifth consecutive time. At the Chicago Marathon Farah claimed his inaugural gold medal in the marathon distance and in the process set a new European record of 2 hours 5 minutes and 11 seconds, an improvement by 37 seconds.\n\n\n=== 2019: Planning a track return ===\nIn February 2019, Farah announced he planned to run again in the London Big Half Marathon in March 2019. In an interview, he also stated that he is considering competing in the Tokyo Olympics in 2020, which, if confirmed, would mark his fourth Olympic games. As well as stating that this would depend on whether his wife and kids \"let him\", he reflected on his track retirement, saying:\n\n\"I was honest and said I was done with the track but part of me missed it. I feel like I can still win medals and do as well as I have over the years.\"\nHe has also confirmed that he may run in the 10,000 metres at the World Championships in Doha in late 2019, although this would depend on the result of the 2019 Big Half Marathon. This possibility was later confirmed by Neil Black, performance director of British Athletics, who has said that Farah had received financial backing from the National Lottery in anticipation for both his participation in the Championships, as well as for the Tokyo Olympics.\n\nOn 10 March 2019, Farah won his second London Big Half Marathon, and again hinted at running the 10,000 m at the World Championships in October 2019. In April, Farah finished in fifth place in the 2019 London Marathon in 2:05:39.\nOn 8 September 2019, Farah won the 2019 Great North Run for a record sixth consecutive time in a new Personal best of 59:07.\nOn 29 November 2019, Farah announced via his YouTube channel, his plan to return to the track to defend his 10,000 m Olympic title at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. Farah stated he would put his marathon career on hold while he returned to track-oriented training.\n\n\n=== 2020 ===\nIn August 2020, Farah won the inaugural Antrim Coast Half Marathon, with a time of 1 hr 00 min 27 sec.\nOn 4 September 2020, Farah set the men's all-time record for the one hour run at the 2020 Diamond League meeting in Brussels, Belgium, covering 21,330 metres (13.25 miles), breaking Haile Gebrselassie's record of 21,285 metres set at Ostrava, Czech Republic, on 27 June 2007.\n\n\n=== 2021 ===\nFarah spent several weeks at altitude training in Ethiopia, before competing at the Djibouti International Half Marathon.  Farah won the race in a time of 1:03:07.  After training in Flagstaff, United States, Farah returned to the United Kingdom where, at the 2021 European 10,000 m Cup in Birmingham, United Kingdom, he raced his first track 10,000 m since the World Championships in 2017.  He finished in eighth place in a time of 27:50.64, this result broke his undefeated streak in the 10,000 m from 2011 to 2021.  Farah later said he was dealing with a foot/ankle injury.\nOn 25 June 2021, Farah failed to qualify for the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games managing to run only a 27:47.04 for the 10,000 m at the Manchester Regional Arena, despite this time being a stadium record. The cut-off time for Olympic Qualification of the 10,000 m stands at 27:28.00, leaving Farah 19 seconds off the pace. When asked whether this would lead to the end of his distinguished career, he said \"It's a tough one.  If I can't compete with the best I'm not just going there to finish in a final. Tonight shows it's not good enough.\"\n\n\n=== 2023: Retirement ===\nFarah began retirement after his last competitive race in the Great North Run on 10 September 2023.\n\n\n== Doping suspicion, Fancy Bears and Salazar ==\n\n\n=== Missed doping tests ===\nFarah missed doping tests in 2010 and 2011. At the time of the second test, Farah claimed that he was in his bedroom and could not hear his doorbell. He was spared from being banned for evading a test because the testers believed his explanation.\n\n\n=== Fancy Bears leak ===\nIn July 2017, the Russian hacking group Fancy Bears leaked a database from International Association of Athletics Federations that purportedly showed that Farah had been suspected of doping in 2016. Previous Fancy Bears leaks are reported to have included false or altered documents. The  leaked report said that an IAAF staff member had regarded Farah's blood values as suspicious, and had written next to his name: \"Likely doping; passport suspicious: further data is required\". However, a later leaked spreadsheet said his records had been \"now flagged as normal with the last sample\".\n\n\n=== Salazar ban ===\nIn October 2019, Mo Farah's former coach Alberto Salazar and Nike Oregon Project doctor Jeffrey Stuart Brown both received four-year bans from athletics for the trafficking of testosterone, the prohibited use of L-carnitine, and tampering with doping controls.\nThe investigation was the subject of an episode of BBC's Panorama in which it was revealed Farah repeatedly denied having L-carnitine injection prior to the 2014 London Marathon to the United States Anti-Doping Agency in 2015,  but changed his account of what happened shortly afterwards.\n\n\n=== Jama Aden ===\nIn 2020 Farah acknowledged that he had lied about knowing Jama Aden, who was arrested by Spanish police on suspicion of doping offences. Farah had been photographed with Aden several times.\n\n\n== \"Mobot\" ==\n\nFarah often celebrated victories with a celebration dance known as the \"Mobot\". He adopted the move following an appearance in May 2012 opposite sports presenter Clare Balding, on the panel game show A League of Their Own. The host James Corden suggested to the panelists that they should think of a new dance to mark Farah's winning celebration, and Balding came up with the \"M\" gesture. She said it was meant to represent the \"M\" in \"Mo\" and was inspired by the dance to \"YMCA\" by the Village People. Corden himself then named it as the \"Mobot\". A robot was named \"Mobot\" at a university research exhibition, in honour of Farah's celebration. Farah has since used the pose as part of a charity to raise funds for his foundation. Virgin Media has promised to donate £2 for every YouTube video that is uploaded with someone doing the mobot. Farah often uses the sign-off Shabba in online postings.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\n\n\n=== Family and interests ===\nFarah lived in London, England until 2026. In July 2022, Farah revealed his birth identity as Hussein Abdi Kahin. When he was four years old, his father was killed by a stray mortar round, during the Isaaq Genocide. Aged 8, Farah and his twin, Hassan, were sent to live with his uncle in Djibouti. Shortly after, Farah says he was brought to the UK by a woman he did not know, and told to use the name Mohamed Farah, taken from another child. Once in London, he was forced to work for her and her family, and prevented from contacting his own. Aged 12, Farah was allowed to start school and he later confided in his PE teacher, who contacted social services who arranged for Farah to be fostered by another family. His teacher later helped him apply for British citizenship. As an adult, Farah has made contact with his birth family, and his mother and two brothers live on a farm in Somaliland. Prior to these revelations, Farah had said that he had been separated from his twin Hassan aged eight when the family moved to join their father, who was working and studying in the UK; Hassan was unwell and unable to travel so stayed in Djibouti, but when his father returned the family Hassan was living with had moved and could not be found for 12 years.\nIn April 2010, Farah married his longtime girlfriend Tania Nell in Richmond, London. Other athletes at the wedding included Paula Radcliffe, Steve Cram, Hayley Yelling, Jo Pavey, Mustafa Mohamed and Scott Overall, who was an usher. Farah has a stepdaughter named Rihanna from this relationship. He and his wife have twin daughters called Aisha and Amani, born in August 2012. In 2015, Farah and Nell had a son called Hussein.\nFrom 2011 to 2017, Farah lived with his family in Portland, Oregon, US so that he could train full-time with the Nike Oregon Project. At the end of 2017, he cut ties with his coach Alberto Salazar and decided to return to London. His statement said \"Tania and I realised how much we have missed spending time with our friends and family and the kids are so happy here, too. We want the kids to grow up in the UK. It's the right thing to do for my family.\nFarah is a Muslim, and is an active supporter of the Muslim Writers Awards. Islam is an important part of his preparation: \"I normally pray before a race, I read dua [Islamic prayers or invocations], think about how hard I've worked and just go for it.\" He notes that \"the Qur'an says that you must work hard in whatever you do, so I work hard in training and that's got a lot to do with being successful. [It] doesn't just come overnight, you've got to train for it and believe in yourself; that's the most important thing.\" An RISSC publication named Farah as among the 500 most influential Muslims in the world in 2013.\nIn 2026, Farah and his family moved to Qatar. Farah stated, \"I’ve always said that when I do retire, I want to... live in a Muslim country, enjoy myself, let my kids grow up knowing about the Deen, teach about the Deen, all that stuff\".\nFarah is also a fan of Arsenal F.C., and has trained with its first team squad. In October 2013, he launched a book titled Mo Farah, Twin Ambitions: My autobiography.\nFarah has a large following on social media. This includes roughly 1.5 million followers on Twitter, 1.1 million on Facebook and 1.1 million on Instagram. In 2013, he was the top-ranked query for a sportsperson on the search engine Microsoft UK Bing who was not a footballer.\n\n\n=== Philanthropy ===\n\nFarah is involved in various philanthropic initiatives, launching the Mo Farah Foundation after a trip to Somalia in 2011. The following year, he participated in ITV's The Cube and won £250,000 for his foundation, becoming the only person to win the top prize on the show. Along with other high-profile athletes, Farah later took part in the 2012 Olympic hunger summit at 10 Downing Street hosted by the Prime Minister, David Cameron, part of a series of international efforts which have sought to respond to the return of hunger as a global issue.\nOlympic memorabilia featuring and signed by Farah has also been auctioned off to raise funds for the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG). In 2013, he joined legislators and activists in a campaign urging Barclays Bank to repeal its decision to withdraw from the UK remittance market. Farah often used money transfer operators to send remittances to family, and some of the world's largest organisations and charities, including the UN and his own foundation, likewise paid staff and channelled funds through these services. In March 2013, Farah, singer Robbie Williams, and a number of other celebrities also urged the Chancellor, George Osborne to clamp down on global corporations that avoid paying taxes in poor countries in which they operate. He has also expressed support for research into brain tumours.\nOn 7 August 2017, Farah became a global ambassador for Marathon Kids.\n\n\n=== Endorsements, advertising and sponsorships ===\nFarah has endorsement deals with companies including PACE Sports Management, Nike, Lucozade, Quorn, Bupa and Virgin Media. His work with Nike Inc. includes marketing of clothing and shoes. In order to preserve his earnings after taxes, Farah also applied in 2013 to have his main place of residence changed to Portland, where he spends most of the year training.\nIn December 2013, Farah signed a marketing deal with Quorn, part of a multimillion-pound campaign aimed at doubling the firm's sales. He led television advertisements for Quorn's vegetarian forms of protein, with the campaign scheduled to last throughout the following year.\n\n\n=== Travel security ===\nIn 2012–2013, Farah intimated that he had been stopped a number of times by U.S. Customs officials under suspicion of being a terrorist, which he attributed to confusion between his full name \"Mohamed\" and a computerised check-in process. On one occasion after the 2012 Olympics, he said that he had attempted to prove his identity by showing his Olympic gold medals to customs officials, but that this was not accepted.\nAfter U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order temporarily suspending the immigration of Somali-born U.S. permanent residents, Farah made a statement on his Facebook account stating that \"I will have to tell my children that Daddy might not be able to come home.\"\nIn March 2018, Farah posted a video on Instagram depicting what he alleges to be racial harassment at Munich Airport.\n\n\n=== Television ===\nIn July 2012, Farah successfully completed the final game of The Cube on an episode of a 2012 celebrity series in which British gold medallist athletes competed for charity.\nIn November 2020, it was announced that Farah would take part in the twentieth series of I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here. He became the eighth celebrity to be eliminated on 2 December 2020 alongside AJ Pritchard.\nIn July 2022, the BBC documentary The Real Mo Farah portrayed a new account of Farah's childhood. It follows Farah with his wife and son Hussein as he investigates his past, reuniting with his Somali family and the woman who raised him after he escaped domestic servitude. It received critical acclaim.\nIn November 2022, it was announced that Farah would take part in the Taskmaster \"New Year Treat III\". Farah won the episode.\nIn 2026, he was one of the 'All Stars' contestants in series 2 of I'm a Celebrity... South Africa, aired on ITV in April 2026. he finished 2nd to Adam Thomas 1st, and Harry Redknapp was 3rd.\n\n\n== Awards and honours ==\n\n\n=== Athletics ===\n2006 British Athletics Writers' Association Award\n2010 British Athletics Writers' Association Award\n2010 Best Senior Athlete of 2010 (UK Aviva Athletics Awards)\n2010 London Youth Games Hall of Fame\n2011 British Athletics Writers' Association Award\n2011 European Athlete of the Year\n2011 BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award, 3rd place\n2011 Athletics Weekly International Male Athlete\n2012 British Athletics Writers' Association Award\n2012 European Athlete of the Year\n2012 Laureus World Sports Award for Breakthrough of the Year, nominee\n2012 Athletics Weekly International Male Athlete\n2013 IAAF World Athlete of the Year, finalist\n2013 British Athletics Writers' Association Award\n2013 Athletics Weekly International Male Athlete\n2013 Laureus World Sports Award for Sportsman of the Year, nominee\n2013 British Olympic Association Olympic athlete of the year\n2013 AIPS Europe Sportsmen of the Year – Frank Taylor Trophy\n2013 Rodale, Inc., Running Times – Runner of the Year\n2014 Jesse Owens International Athlete Trophy, nominee\n2014 Laureus World Sports Award for Sportsman of the Year, nominee\n2014 sack race world record\n2015 World Record, 2-mile run, Birmingham\nRunners World top 50 influential individuals in running\nLetsRun.com number 1 in 2015 year-end world ranking for long-distance runners\n2015 fastest men's 10,000-metre runner\n2016 BAWA Athlete of the Year\n2016 British Athletics Supporters Club athlete of the year\n2016 Athletics Weekly International Male Athlete of the Year, ahead of Usain Bolt\n2016 Athletics Weekly British Male Athlete of the Year\n2017 Sportsman of the Year at the Lycamobile British Ethnic Diversity Sports Awards (BEDSAs)\n2017 BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award, 1st place\n\n\n=== Other ===\n\n2012: Winner of the British game show The Cube. Farah is the only person who won the top prize on the UK version of the show.\n2013: Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE)\n2013: Premier Inn Celebrity Dad of The Year\n2013: Best at Sport award at the British Muslim Awards\n6th place, Freuds Heroes Index\n2014: World's 100 Most Powerful Arabs, Arabian Business\n2015: Clothing firm Rohan's eighth greatest Briton of all time\n2015: Evening Standard's top 25 most influential Londoners\n2016: Sports Relief highest polled sporting London hero with 27% of the vote\n2016: Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Award for Inspirational Athlete.\n2016: Fifth most powerful Black Briton, on tenth anniversary of Powerlist, African and Caribbean heritage listing\n2017: created a Knight Bachelor for services to Athletics.\nAwarded OLY post nominal title from World Olympians Association\n2023: Winner of The Taskmaster 'New Year Treat III'\n2025: Awarded an honorary degree from the University of Oxford.\n\n\n== National titles ==\n\nBritish Athletics Championships\n5000 metres: 2007, 2011\nBritish Indoor Athletics Championships\n3000 metres: 2007\nBritish 10K Championships\n10K run: 2011, 2012\nBritish Marathon Championships\nMarathon: 2014\n\n\n== Race results ==\nAll information from Association of Road Racing Statisticians\n\n\n=== International competitions ===\n\n\n=== Circuit wins ===\nDiamond League\nLondon Grand Prix: 2009 (5000 m), 2011 (3000 m), 2013 (3000 m), 2015 (3000 m)\nHerculis: 2011 (5000 m)\nBirmingham: 2011 (5000 m), 2012 (2 miles), 2013 (5000 m), 2014 (2 miles), 2016 (3000 m), 2017 (3000 m)\nPrefontaine Classic: 2011, 2015, 2016 (10,000 m)\nAthletissima: 2015 (5000 m)\nWeltklasse Zürich: 2017 (5000 m)\nRoad\nGreat South Run: 2009\nNew York City Half Marathon: 2011\nRock 'n' Roll Mardi Gras Half Marathon: 2013\nGreat North Run: 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019\nLisbon Half Marathon: 2015\nChicago Marathon: 2018\nAntrim Coast Half Marathon: 2020\nCross country\nCross de L'Acier: 2006\nGreat Edinburgh International Cross Country: 2011\n\n\n=== Personal bests ===\n\n+ intermediate split in longer racea = aided road course according to IAAF rule 260.28\n\n\n== Biographical works ==\n\n\n=== Autobiography ===\nTwin Ambitions: My Autobiography (2013, Hodder & Stoughton) ISBN 9781444779585\n\n\n=== Children's fiction ===\nReady Steady Mo! (with Kes Gray; illustrated by Marta Kissi) (2016, Hodder Children's Books) ISBN 9781444934076\n\n\n=== Biopic ===\nMo Farah: No Easy Mile; a non-fictional account of Farah's journey to the Olympics\n\n\n=== Other ===\nCardiff native Sonny Double 1 released a biographical grime musical named Mo Farah in 2016.\n\n\n== See also ==\n2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics gold post boxes\n5000 metres at the Olympics\n10,000 metres at the Olympics\n5000 metres at the World Championships in Athletics\n10,000 metres at the World Championships in Athletics\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nOfficial website \nMo Farah at World Athletics \nMo Farah at Power of 10 (archived former page)\nMo Farah at Team GB \nMo Farah at Olympics.com \nMo Farah at Olympedia \nMo Farah at InterSportStats \nMo Farah Foundation at the Wayback Machine (archived 1 June 2012)\nMararike, Shingi (25 September 2016). \"A life in the day: Mo Farah, Olympic legend\". The Sunday Times."}
{"title": "Mollie O'Callaghan", "requested": "Mollie O'Callaghan", "extract": "Mollie Grace O'Callaghan  (born 2 April 2004) is an Australian swimmer and the reigning Olympic champion in the 200 m freestyle. She was the 2023 world champion in the women's 100m and 200m freestyle individual events, and part of the world champion 4 × 100 m and 4 × 200 m Australian women's relay teams together with 4 × 100 m mixed relay team. She former held the world record in the long course 200 m freestyle, and currently holds the world record for the short course 200 m freestyle.\nO'Callaghan also won two gold and one bronze medals at the 2020 Summer Olympics as a heats swimmer in relay events and gold medal in the 200 m freestyle and 4 × 100 metre freestyle relay at the 2024 Summer Olympics.\n\n\n== Career ==\n\n\n=== 2021 ===\nO'Callaghan swam for the Australian team in the preliminaries of all three women's relays at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, receiving two gold medals and one bronze for her contribution. Swimming the 1st leg for Australia in the heats of the 4×100 m freestyle relay, she posted a time of 53.08 and received a gold medal after the Australian team won the final.\nIn the 4×200 m freestyle relay preliminaries, O'Callaghan swam a junior world record of 1:55.11 when swimming the lead off leg. Her time would have placed her fifth in the 200 m freestyle final. However, because the Australian coaches had previously decided to use four fresh swimmers in the final, O'Callaghan was not selected for the final where Australia finished third.\nIn a heat of the 4×100 m medley relay, O'Callaghan again posted a competitive time; her anchor leg split was 52.35, only 0.24 seconds slower than the fastest freestyle split in the final by Cate Campbell.\n\n\n=== 2022 ===\nO'Callaghan competed at the 2022 World Championships in Budapest. Swimming the first leg of the 4×100 m freestyle relay, she split 52.70. Australia won the gold medal in 3:30.95. In the 200 m freestyle, she won the silver medal in a time of 1:55.22. She then competed in the 4×200 m freestyle relay, swimming the anchor leg in a time of 1:55.94. Australia finished with the silver medal, recording 7:43.86. In the 100 m freestyle, O'Callaghan won the gold medal in a time of 52.67. She then swam the anchor leg of the mixed 4×100 m freestyle relay, splitting 52.03. Australia won the gold medal in a world record time of 3:19.38. She concluded the championships with a silver medal in the 4×100 m medley relay.\nWeeks later, O'Callaghan competed at the Swimming at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham. She won the silver medal in the 200 m freestyle in a time of 1:54.01, which placed her as the sixth-fastest swimmer in the event's history. She finished 0.12 seconds behind the gold medalist. Later in the session, she swam the third leg of the mixed 4×100 m freestyle relay, where Australia won the gold medal in a games record of 3:21.18. The following day, she competed in the women's 4×100 m freestyle relay, splitting 52.66 on the third leg. Australia won the gold medal in a time of 3:30.64. On the third day, O'Callaghan swam the third leg of the 4×200 m freestyle relay, splitting 1:54.80. Australia won the gold medal in a time of 7:39.29, which broke the world record of 7:40.33 set by China in 2021. O'Callaghan later competed in the 100 m freestyle, recording 52.63 to win her first individual gold of the competition. On the final day, she competed in two events. The first of which was the 50 m backstroke, where she won the silver in a time of 27.47. She then anchored the women's 4×100 m medley relay to the gold medal.\nO'Callaghan was selected for the 2022 World Championships (25 m) in Melbourne. Her first event was the 4×100 m freestyle relay, where she led off in a time of 52.11, with Australia recording 3:25.43 to win the gold medal. This was a new world record, surpassing the Netherlands' mark of 3:26.53 from 2014.\nO'Callaghan competed in two events on the second day. First was the 100 m backstroke, where she finished in a time of 55.62 to win the silver medal. Later in the night, she swam the second leg of the 4×200 m freestyle relay, recording a split of 1:52.83. Australia won the gold medal in world record time of 7:30.87, surpassing the Netherlands' mark of 7:32.88 from 2014. The following day, O'Callaghan swam in the 4×50 m freestyle relay, recording 24.01 on the third leg. Australia won the silver medal in an overall time of 1:34.23, which was a new Oceanian record. On day four, O'Callaghan won the bronze medal in the 50 m backstroke in an Oceanian record time of 25.61. On day five, O'Callaghan swam the first leg of the 4×50 m medley relay, recording 25.49 to break the Oceanian record in the 50 m backstroke again. Australia won the gold medal in 1:42.35 to break the world record by 0.03 seconds. O'Callaghan's final swim was the 4×100 m medley relay, swimming the backstroke leg in the heats before she was replaced by Kaylee McKeown in the final. Australia went on to win the silver medal.\n\n\n=== 2023 ===\nO'Callaghan was selected for the 2023 World Championships in Fukuoka. Swimming the first leg of the 4×100 m freestyle relay, she split 52.08, becoming the sixth-fastest woman of all time in the 100 m freestyle. Australia won the gold medal in 3:27.96, breaking their previous world record of 3:29.69 from 2021. O'Callaghan competed in the 200 m freestyle, trailing Ariarne Titmus for the first three laps of the final. O'Callaghan took the lead during the final lap, winning the gold medal by 0.16 seconds. She went 1:52.85, breaking Federica Pellegrini's world record of 1:52.98 from 2009. O'Callaghan competed in the 4×200 m freestyle relay, splitting 1:53.66 on the first leg. Australia won the gold medal in a world record time of 7:37.50. O'Callaghan then recorded 52.16 in the 100 m freestyle to defend her world title in the event, becoming the first woman to win both the 100 and 200 m freestyle events at a single world championships. She once again anchored the mixed 4×100 m freestyle relay to a new world record, with the team recording a time of 3:18.83. On the final day of competition, O'Callaghan anchored the 4×100 m medley relay to the silver medal.\n\n\n=== 2024 ===\nO'Callaghan competed at the 2024 Australian Trials in Brisbane. She came second in the 100 m backstroke with a time of 57.88, becoming the fourth-fastest woman in history. Her next event was the 200 m freestyle, which served as a rematch with Titmus. They were under world record pace for the entirely of the race, separated by no more than 0.25 seconds. Titmus finished first to break the world record in 1:52.23. O'Callaghan recorded 1:52.48 for the second-fastest time in history. O'Callaghan later won the 100 m freestyle in a time of 52.33. O'Callaghan later dropped the 100 m backstroke from her Olympic program.\nOn the first night of swimming in Paris, O'Callaghan competed in the 4×100m freestyle relay, splitting 52.24 on the first leg. Australia won the gold medal in 3:28.92, which was an Olympic record and the second-fastest time in history. It was Australia's fourth consecutive Olympic gold medal in the event.\nO'Callaghan once again went head-to-head with Titmus in the 200 m freestyle. O'Callaghan trailed the field in the early stages of the race, but took the lead in the final lap to win the gold medal. She recorded an Olympic record time 1:53.27, surpassing Titmus' mark of 1:53.50 from the Tokyo Olympics. This was Australia's first gold-silver finish in any Olympic event since 2004.\nAlthough O'Callaghan went into the 100 m freestyle as the two-time world champion, she finished fourth in the event. The result was considered one of the biggest surprises of the Olympics.\nO'Callaghan swam the first leg of the 4×200 m freestyle relay, splitting 1:53.52 to give Australia the lead. They won the gold medal in 7:38.08, which was a new Olympic record and the second-fastest time in history. O'Callaghan later swam the anchor leg of the mixed 4×100 m medley relay, contributing a split of 52.01. Australia won the bronze medal in an Oceanian record time of 3:38.76. Her final event was the women's 4×100 m medley, where she swam the anchor leg and won the silver medal.\nAfter the Olympics, O'Callaghan made the decision to take a hiatus for the rest of the year.\n\n\n=== 2025 ===\nDue to her hypermobility, O'Callaghan again sustained a dislocated knee injury in January, affecting her training for several months including water-based training.\nO'Callaghan competed at the 2025 World Championships in Singapore. Her first event was the 4×100m freestyle relay. She led off in 52.79 to give Australia the lead, and the team went on to win the gold medal. Notably their American rivals, who were suffering from gastroenteritis, saw their anchor, Gretchen Walsh, withdraw before the final. In the 200 m freestyle final, O'Callaghan again emphasised the second half of the race, pulling away at the 100 m mark. She \nwon the gold medal in 1:53.48. The following day, O'Callaghan swam the anchor leg of the 4×200 m freestyle relay. She dove in with a lead of 0.39 seconds, and was matched up against Katie Ledecky. O'Callaghan split 1:53.44 to win the gold medal in 7:39.35. This marked O'Callaghan's third gold medal of the championships and 11th gold medal overall, equalling Ian Thorpe's record for the most world championship gold medals won by an Australian swimmer. O'Callaghan won the silver medal in the 100 m freestyle, finishing 0.12 behind defending world champion Marrit Steenbergen. Her final event was the 4×100 m medley relay, where she swam the anchor leg in 52.23. Australia won the silver medal in an overall time of 3:52.67.\nIn October, O'Callaghan competed in the 2025 World Cup. At the Carmel stop, she went 1:50.77 in the short course 200 m freestyle to become the third fastest woman in the event's history. At the Westmont stop, O'Callaghan went 1:49.77 in the same event. This broke Siobhán Haughey's world record of 1:50.31 from 2021. At the Toronto stop, O'Callaghan went 1:49.36 to break the world record again.\n\n\n== Results in major championships ==\n\n\n== Career best times ==\n\n\n=== Long course metres (50 m pool) ===\nAs of 12 June 2024\n\n\n=== Short course metres (25 m pool) ===\nAs of 11 October 2025\n\n\n== World records ==\n\n\n=== Long course metres ===\n\na  split 52.03 (4th leg); with Jack Cartwright (1st leg), Kyle Chalmers (2nd leg), Madison Wilson (3rd leg)\nb  split 1:54.80 (3rd leg); with Madison Wilson (1st leg), Kiah Melverton (2nd leg), Ariarne Titmus (4th leg)\nc  split 52.08 (1st leg); with Shayna Jack (2nd leg), Meg Harris (3rd leg), Emma McKeon (4th leg)\nd  split 1:53.66 (1st leg); with Shayna Jack (2nd leg), Brianna Throssell (3rd leg), Ariarne Titmus (4th leg)\ne  split 51.71 (4th leg); with Jack Cartwright (1st leg), Kyle Chalmers (2nd leg), Shayna Jack (3rd leg)\n\n\n=== Short course metres ===\n\na  split 52.19 (1st leg); with Madison Wilson (2nd leg), Meg Harris (3rd leg), Emma McKeon (4th leg)\nb  split 1:52.83 (2nd leg), with Madison Wilson (1st leg), Leah Neale (3rd leg), Lani Pallister (4th leg)\nc  split 25.49 (backstroke leg); with Chelsea Hodges (breaststroke leg), Emma McKeon (butterfly leg), Madison Wilson (freestyle leg)\n\n\n== Olympic records ==\n\n\n=== Long course metres ===\n\na  split 52.24 (1st leg); with Shayna Jack (2nd leg), Emma McKeon (3rd leg), Meg Harris (4th leg)\nb  split 1:53.52 (1st leg) with Lani Pallister (2nd leg), Brianna Throssell (3rd leg), Ariarne Titmus (4th leg)\n\n\n== Honours ==\nIn the 2022 Australia Day Honours, O'Callaghan was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia.\nSwimming Australia, Olympic Program Swimmer of the Year: 2022 and 2023\nAustralian Institute of Sport Performance Awards Performance of the Year 2023\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of Olympic medalists in swimming (women)\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists at a single Games\n\n\n== Notes ==\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nMollie O'Callaghan at World Aquatics\nMollie O'Callaghan at Swimming Australia\nMollie O'Callaghan at the Australian Olympic Committee\nMollie O'Callaghan at Olympedia\nMollie O'Callaghan at Commonwealth Games Australia\nMollie O'Callaghan at InterSportStats\nMollie O'Callaghan at the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics (archived, alternate link)\nMollie O'Callaghan at the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games"}
{"title": "Morris Fisher", "requested": "Morris Fisher", "extract": "Morris \"Bud\" Fisher (May 4, 1890 – May 23, 1968) was an American sport shooter and United States Marine Corps shooting instructor. He competed at the 1920 and 1924 Summer Olympics and won five gold medals in 300–800 m rifle events. He ended his Olympic career in 1924, as shooting was not part of the 1928 Games, and long-distance rifle events re-appeared only at the 1948 Olympics, when he had long retired both from active competitions and military service.\n\n\n== Biography ==\nFisher was born in Youngstown, Ohio. In 1911, Fisher enlisted in the United States Marine Corps and later competed while on duty. Besides his Olympic medals, Fisher won six world titles and held five world records. In 1916, he was awarded the distinguished marksman badge. He retired from shooting competitions in 1934 and later coached shooters at the U.S. Marine Corps and at the Toledo police department. In 1941, he retired from military service as a gunnery sergeant. He was soon recalled as a shooting instructor during World War II, in which he lost his son William, at Okinawa in 1945. Fisher retired for good in 1946 as a Chief Warrant Officer.\nHe settled first in La Jolla, California, and then in Honolulu, Hawaii, where he died in 1968. He was buried with full military honors at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery in San Diego, California. In 2009, he was inducted into the United States Marine Corps Sports Hall of Fame. He has also been inducted into the USA Shooting Hall of fame.\n\n\n== Books by Fisher ==\nMastering the Pistol and Revolver, New York:  Putnam's, 1940. [Riling 2314]\nMastering the Rifle, New York:  Putnam's, 1940. [Riling 2315]\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nMorris Fisher at Olympics.com\nMorris Fisher at the International Shooting Sport Federation\nMorris Fisher at Find a Grave"}
{"title": "Murray Rose", "requested": "Murray Rose", "extract": "Iain Murray Rose,  (6 January 1939 – 15 April 2012) was an Australian swimmer, who swam for the University of Southern California, and worked as an actor, sports commentator and marketing executive. He was a six-time Olympic medalist (four gold, one silver, one bronze), and at one time held the world records in the 400-metre, 800-metre, and 1500-metre freestyle (long course). He made his Olympic debut at the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne as a 17-year-old and won three Olympic medals, all gold. Four years later, as a 21-year-old, he won three Olympic medals (one gold, one silver, one bronze) at the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome, Italy.\n\n\n== Biography ==\n\n\n=== Early life ===\nIain Murray Rose was born on 6 January 1939 in Birmingham, England, UK to parents Eileen and Ian Rose. As World War II broke out, his family moved to Australia in 1940 when he was a baby. He started swimming as a boy and attended Cranbrook School in Bellevue Hill, Sydney. He swam regularly at Redleaf Pool, an enclosed saltwater swimming pool in the suburb of Double Bay. In 2012, the pool was renamed Murray Rose Pool in his honour.\n\n\n=== Career ===\n\nAt the age of 17, Rose participated in the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne. He won the 400-metre and 1500-metre freestyle races and was a member of the winning team in the 4×200-metre freestyle relay. Winning three gold medals in his home country immediately made him a national hero. He was the youngest Olympian to be awarded three gold medals at one Olympic Games. Afterwards, Rose moved to the United States to accept an athletic scholarship at the University of Southern California (USC) where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Business/Communications. Rose introduced the swim brief made by Speedo at the 1956 Olympics.\nHe continued competing while at USC, and graduated in 1962. At the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome, Italy, Rose again won an Olympic gold medal in the 400m freestyle, as well as a silver in the 1500m freestyle and a bronze in the 4 × 200 m freestyle relay, bringing his total to six Olympic medals. In addition to his Olympic medals, he won four gold medals at the 1962 Commonwealth Games in Perth, Western Australia. He eventually set 15 world records, including the world record in the 800-metre freestyle in 1962, which was not broken until Semyon Belits-Geiman set a new record in 1966. Rose missed the 1964 Tokyo Olympics as he was attending university in the United States at the time of Australia's Olympic trials and so was omitted from their Olympic team; he had set world records for 880 yard and 1,500 metre freestyle event earlier in the months before the Games and would have been a medal favourite.\nDuring the 1960s, he also pursued an acting career, starring in two Hollywood films and making guest appearances on television shows such as Adventure Unlimited.\nIn addition, Rose worked as an Australian sports commentator for the Nine Network, plus each of the major US networks, participating in seven consecutive Olympic Games.\nRose continued to compete as a masters swimmer. In 1981, he won the World Masters title in faster times than he recorded at the 1956 Games.\nFrom 1988-94, Rose was vice-president of California Sports Marketing specialising in marketing, sponsorships and promotions for the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team and special events at the Great Western Forum.\nHe returned to Sydney with his family in 1994 and worked as a Senior Account Director for Sports Marketing and Management – the official marketing agent for the Australian Olympic Committee, the Australian Commonwealth Games Association and a range of other leading Australian sports organisations.\n\nAn avenue at Sydney Olympic Park was named for him in 2000. He was one of the eight flag-bearers of the Olympic Flag at the 2000 Summer Olympics opening ceremony in Sydney.\nIn 2010, Rose led a team on a pilgrimage for Military History Tours to Gallipoli and a 4.5 km swim from Europe to Asia across the Dardanelles.\nIn 2012, Redleaf Pool in Double Bay, Sydney, was officially renamed Murray Rose Pool in his honour. In 2022 Cranbrook School named its new swimming complex on New South Head Road the Murray Rose Aquatic & Fitness Centre.\n\n\n=== Work in film and television ===\nIn 1958, he appeared on You Bet Your Life where he was baffled by the world geography questions. On 6 January 1959, Rose appeared as a guest challenger on the TV panel show To Tell the Truth where he stumped the panel as they all voted for the wrong person.\nHe made his acting debut in the 1962 Australian live drama My Three Angels. He also guest starred in an episode of Adventure Unlimited.\nLater he starred in the 1964 surf movie Ride the Wild Surf and in Ice Station Zebra in 1968. He also made periodic appearances in television and film including guest spots on Dr Kildare, You Bet Your Life, The Patty Duke Show, Dream Rider, Time Capsule 1932 and Time Capsule 1938.\n\n\n=== Charity ===\nRose held a number of cause-related Board positions including the Mary MacKillop Foundation and Patron of Rainbow Club Australia, a non-profit charity providing children with special needs the opportunity to explore their abilities through sporting and recreational activities. In 2012, Rainbow Club Australia renamed their annual event, The Murray Rose's Malabar Magic Ocean Swim. The MRMM offers a two swim program of 1 km and 2.4 km\n\n\n=== Honours ===\nHe was among the first swimmers inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame, in 1965, was voted Australia's greatest male Olympian by his peers in 1983, and inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame in 1985.\nRose was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in 2000 for services to swimming. He also received the Australian Sports Medal that year and, in 2001, he was awarded the Centenary Medal.\nIn 2023, he was inducted into the Swimming Australia Hall of Fame.\n\n\n=== Books ===\nMurray Rose's father, Ian F Rose, published Faith, Love, and Seaweed about his son's childhood and diet.\nIn 2013, Murray Rose's memoir Life is Worth Swimming was posthumously published. Written before his leukaemia diagnosis, Life is Worth Swimming reflects on Rose's life and experiences as an Olympic swimmer.\n\nMurray Rose (2013). Life is Worth Swimming. Arbon Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9872820-6-4.\n\n\n=== Personal life ===\nRose married ballerina Jodi Wintz on 20 October 1988. Their son was born in 1990. He was previously married to Bobbie Whitby and he adopted her daughter.\nRose was a strict vegetarian in his swimming days – this earned him the nickname \"The Seaweed Streak\" – but he later added meat to his diet.\nRose died of leukaemia on 15 April 2012 at the age of 73 in Sydney, New South Wales.\n\n\n== Filmography ==\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of members of the International Swimming Hall of Fame\nList of Commonwealth Games medallists in swimming (men)\nList of Olympic medalists in swimming (men)\nWorld record progression 400 metres freestyle\nWorld record progression 800 metres freestyle\nWorld record progression 1500 metres freestyle\nWorld record progression 4 × 200 metres freestyle relay\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nMurray Rose  at World Aquatics\nMurray Rose at the International Swimming Hall of Fame \nMurray Rose at the Sport Australia Hall of Fame \nMurray Rose at the Australian Olympic Committee\nMurray Rose at Commonwealth Games Australia\nMurray Rose at Olympics.com\nMurray Rose at Olympedia \nMurray Rose at the Commonwealth Games Federation (archived)"}
{"title": "Myer Prinstein", "requested": "Myer Prinstein", "extract": "Myer Prinstein (born Mejer Prinsztejn, December 22, 1878 – March 10, 1925) was a Poland-born American track and field athlete who held the world record for the long jump in 1900 and won four gold medals in three Olympic Games for the long jump and triple jump. He was a member of the Irish American Athletic Club in Queens, New York. A 1902 law graduate and track team captain for Syracuse University, after college he became a New York real estate lawyer and businessman while living in Jamaica Plains, Queens. To date, he is the only Olympic track athlete to win both the triple and long jump in the same Olympics, earning the distinction in St. Louis in 1904.\n\n\n== Early life ==\nPrinstein was Jewish and was born in Szczuczyn, in Russian-ruled Congress Poland.  His parents, Jacob and Julia Prinstein (born Jankiel Prinsztejn and Judes Rubinsztejn), emigrated to New York City. In 1883, when Myer was five, the family moved to Syracuse and resided at 724 Orange Street, currently McBride St., in the predominantly Jewish neighborhood of the 7th Ward, on the East side of downtown. Myer began competing in track and field while he attended the public Syracuse High School, which later became Central High, and he was a member of the local YMCA team. The family had five daughters and four sons; his father Jacob was a grocer and baker. Myer was the third oldest son and the fourth child.\nEnrolling in 1897, Prinstein was captain of the Syracuse University track team, and graduated with a law degree in 1902.  After graduating college, he moved to Jamaica, Queens, New York to practice law, where he was a member and competitor for the highly accomplished Irish American Athletic Club.\nIn 1908 he married Henrietta Northshield, who had been a New York City school teacher, and they had a son, Elsner, known as Eddie, born in June 1916.\n\n\n== World record ==\nIn what was most likely his most significant athletic accomplishment outside of the Olympic games, while competing for Syracuse, Prinstein set a running long jump world record of 7.235 m (23 ft 8+7⁄8 in), increasing the prior record by several feet, in  New York on June 11, 1898.  However, the record was soon broken, first by William Newburn of Ireland on June 18, 1898, and then by future rival Alvin Kraenzlein on May 26, 1899.\nOn April 28, 1900, Prinstein set a new world record of 7.50 m (24 ft 7+1⁄4 in) at Philadelphia's Penn Relays.  Four months later, on August 29, 1900, this record was also broken by Peter O'Connor of Ireland.\nA versatile track and field athlete, besides specializing in the long and triple jumps, he ran sprints and relays, pole-vaulted, hurdled, and high-jumped during collegiate competition at Syracuse. He even played on one of the school's earliest basketball teams. He was lean but not exceedingly tall, and though his height estimates from various sources vary, Syracuse University publications place his height at 5 ft 7+3⁄4 in (172.1 cm).\n\n\n== Olympic games ==\nPrinstein won the silver medal in the long jump at the 1900 Summer Olympics in Paris, France, losing to Alvin Kraenzlein after being denied permission by Syracuse officials to compete in the final because it was contested on a Sunday – despite the fact that Prinstein was a Jew, and Kraenzlein, who was a Christian, did compete. The two had had an informal agreement not to compete on Sunday: when Prinstein learned that Kraenzlein had competed, he became angry and, depending on the account, punched Kraenzlein in the face or was restrained from doing so. Sportsmanship was important to Prinstein, and despite their rivalry, he and Kraenzlein, a four-time gold medalist in 1904, became good friends and remained so throughout Prinstein's life.  The following day, Prinstein won the gold medal in the hop, step and jump (triple jump), beating 1896 champion James Connolly with a leap of 14.47 meters which simultaneously set the Olympic Record.\nCompeting as a member of the Irish American Athletic Club in the St. Louis Olympics in 1904, he won both the long jump (setting an Olympic record) and the hop, step and jump on the same day, the only athlete ever to win both events in the same games. He also came 5th in both the 60 m and 400 m dash.\n\nIn Athens 1906 he again won the long jump competition, beating the world record holder, Peter O'Connor. The only judge for the competition was Matthew Halpin, who was manager of the American team. O'Connor protested, but was overruled. He continued to protest Halpin's decisions through the remainder of the competition. The distances were not announced until the end of the competition. When they were, Prinstein had won with his very first jump.  Malcolm Ford, a sportswriter who had once been a long-jumper, wrote in the New York Mail and Express, \"The great feature of his (Prinstein's) jumping is the rise which he gets after leaving takeoff...He has an unusually pretty style and impresses one that he always knows what he is doing.\"\n\n\n== Later career ==\n\nPrinstein did not compete in the Olympics after 1906. He began the practice of law in Syracuse, and after graduation around 1902 practiced predominantly real estate law in New York City, while living in Jamaica, Queens.  By 1904 he had a stationery business, a real estate company, and a business selling legal forms to lawyers, in addition to his law practice.  In mid-October 1910, he was reported to be guilty of unprofessional conduct to the Appellate division of the Supreme Court. A former Supreme Court Justice Gildersleeve recommended Prinstein be suspended from practice for one year.  On February 10, 1911, Prinstein was officially disbarred for a period by the Appellate division of the Supreme Court as a result of fraud in connection with a $200 payment he was given by a client to close a real estate transaction. Prinstein provided a bank statement verifying he deposited the $200 on September 19, 1907, but it was later found Prinstein had spent the money. A six-month suspension was recommended by ex-Justice Gildersleeve. Several sources claim he was a lawyer in good standing prior to the incident. After his temporary disbarment ended in the summer of 1911, Prinstein may have continued to practice law or as a Syracuse University website claims, he focused more on his businesses.\nHe died on March 10, 1925, at age 46 of a heart ailment at Mount Sinai Hospital, New York, after having been hospitalized for three months. He was survived by his widow, Henrietta, and a young son, Elsner or Eddie who was nine.  Henrietta served as Secretary of the Temple Israel Sisterhood in 1920.\n\n\n== Honors ==\nMyer Prinstein was inducted into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in 1982. In 2000, he was inducted as a member into the National Track and Field Hall of Fame, in New York City, and in 2008 he was inducted into the Greater Syracuse Sports Hall of Fame.  In April 2001, he was enshrined on the Penn Relays Wall of Fame in Philadelphia, where he had set his world long jump record in 1900.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of Jewish American athletes\nList of select Jewish track and field athletes\n\n\n== Notes ==\n\n\n== References ==\n\nGreenberg, Stan (1987). Olympic Games: The Records. London: Guinness Books. ISBN 0-85112-896-3.\nKieran, John (1977). The Story of the Olympic Games; 776 B.C. to 1976. Philadelphia and New York: J.B. Lippincott Company. ISBN 0-397-01168-7.\n\n\n== External links ==\nMyer Prinstein at World Athletics\nMyer Prinstein at Tilastopaja (registration required)\nMyer Prinstein at Tilastopaja (registration required)\nMyer Prinstein at the USATF Hall of Fame (archived)\nMyer Prinstein at Athletics Podium\nMyer Prinstein at Olympics.com\nMyer Prinstein at Olympedia\nJewish community of Szczuczyn\nWinged Fist Organization\nOnadaga Historical Society, Myer Prinstein Biography"}
{"title": "Nadia Comăneci", "requested": "Nadia Comăneci", "extract": "Nadia Elena Comăneci Conner (née Comăneci; born November 12, 1961) is a Romanian retired gymnast. She is a five-time Olympic gold medalist, all in individual events. In 1976, at age 14, Comăneci was the first gymnast to be awarded a perfect score of 10.0 at the Olympic Games. At the same Games (1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal), she earned six more perfect 10s for events en route to winning three gold medals. At the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, Comăneci won two more gold medals and achieved two more perfect 10s. During her career, Comăneci won nine Olympic medals and four World Artistic Gymnastics Championship medals.\nOne of the world's best-known gymnasts, Comăneci was praised for her artistry and grace, which brought unprecedented global popularity to the sport in the mid-1970s. Called \"the most iconic gymnast of the 20th century\" by El País, Comăneci was named one of the Athletes of the 20th century by the Laureus World Sports Academy. In 2024, the International Sports Press Association (AIPS) voted her as the best female gymnast of the past 100 years and the second best female athlete of all sports.\nComăneci has lived in the United States since 1989, when she defected from then-Communist Romania, before its revolution in December that year. Comăneci later worked with and married American Olympic gold-medal gymnast Bart Conner, their wedding held in Bucharest after the fall of the Communist regime and televised live in Romania.\n\n\n== Early life ==\n\nNadia Elena Comăneci was born on November 12, 1961, in Onești, a small town in the Carpathian Mountains, in Bacău County, Romania, in the historical region of Western Moldavia. She was born to Gheorghe (1936–2012) and Ștefania Comăneci, and has a younger brother named Adrian. Her parents separated in the 1970s and her father later moved to Bucharest, the capital. Nadia and Adrian were raised in the Romanian Orthodox Church. In a 2011 interview, her mother said that she enrolled Comăneci into gymnastics classes because she was so full of energy and active as a child that she was difficult to manage. After years of top-level athletic competition, Comăneci graduated from Politehnica University of Bucharest with a degree in sports education, which qualified her to coach gymnastics.\n\n\n== Gymnastics career ==\n\n\n=== Early gymnastics career ===\n\nNadia began gymnastics in kindergarten with a local team called Flacără (\"The Flame\"), with coaches Duncan and Munteanu. At age six, she was chosen to attend Béla Károlyi's experimental gymnastics school, after Károlyi spotted her and a friend turning cartwheels in a schoolyard. Károlyi was looking for gymnasts that he could train from a young age. When recess ended, the girls quickly went inside and Károlyi went around the classrooms trying to find them; he eventually spotted Comăneci. The other girl, Viorica Dumitru, developed in a different direction and became one of Romania's top ballerinas.\nBy 1968, when she was seven, Comăneci started training with Károlyi. She was one of the first students at the gymnastics school established in Onești by Károlyi and his wife, Márta. As a resident of the town, Comăneci was able to live at home for many years; most of the other students boarded at the school.\nIn 1970, Comăneci began competing as a member of her home town team, and at age nine, became the youngest gymnast ever to win the Romanian Nationals. The following year, she participated in her first international competition, a dual junior meet between Romania and Yugoslavia, winning her first all-around title and contributing to the team gold. For the next few years, Comăneci competed as a junior in numerous national contests in Romania and dual meets with countries such as Hungary, Italy, and Poland. At age 11 in 1973, she won the all-around gold, as well as the vault and uneven bars titles, at the Junior Friendship Tournament (Druzhba), an important international meet for junior gymnasts.\nComăneci's first major international success came at age 13, when she nearly swept the board at the 1975 European Women's Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Skien, Norway. Comăneci won the all-around and gold medals in every event but the floor exercise, finishing in second place. She continued to enjoy success that year, winning the all-around at the 'Champions All' competition and coming first in the all-around, vault, beam, and bars at the Romanian National Championships. In the pre-Olympic test event in Montreal, Comăneci won the all-around and the balance beam golds as well as silvers in the vault, floor and bars. Accomplished Soviet gymnast Nellie Kim won the golds in those events and was one of Comăneci's greatest rivals for the next five years.\n\n\n=== 1976 ===\n\n\n==== American Cup ====\nIn March 1976, Comăneci competed in the inaugural edition of the American Cup at Madison Square Garden in Manhattan. She received rare scores of 10, which signified a perfect routine without any deductions, for her vault in the preliminary stage and for her floor exercise routine in the final of the all-around competition, which she won. During this competition, Comăneci met American gymnast Bart Conner for the first time. While he remembered this meeting, Comăneci noted in her memoirs that she had to be reminded of it later in life. She was 14 and Conner was celebrating his 18th birthday. They both won a silver cup and were photographed together. A few months later, they participated in the 1976 Summer Olympics that Comăneci dominated, while Conner was a marginal figure. Conner later said, \"Nobody knew me, and [Comăneci] certainly didn't pay attention to me.\"\n\n\n==== 1976 Summer Olympics ====\n\nOn July 18, 1976, Comăneci made history at the Montreal Olympics. During the team compulsory portion of the competition, she was awarded the first perfect 10 in Olympic gymnastics for her routine on the uneven bars. Omega SA, the official Olympics scoreboard manufacturer, had been led to believe that competitors could not receive a perfect 10, and had not programmed the scoreboard to display this score. Comăneci's perfect 10 thus appeared as \"1.00\", the only means by which the judges could indicate that she had received a 10.\n\nDuring the remainder of the Montreal Games, Comăneci earned six additional \"10s\". She won gold medals for the individual all-around, the balance beam and uneven bars. Comăneci also won a bronze for the floor exercise and a silver as part of the team all-around. Soviet gymnast Nellie Kim was her main rival during the Montreal Olympics; Kim became the second gymnast to receive a perfect 10, in her case for her performance on the vault. Comăneci took over the media spotlight from gymnast Olga Korbut, who had been the darling of the 1972 Munich Games.\nComăneci was the first Romanian gymnast to win the Olympic all-around title. She also holds the record as the youngest ever Olympic gymnastics all-around champion at age 14. The sport has since raised its age-eligibility requirements so that gymnasts must be at least 16 in the same calendar year of the Olympics in order to compete. When Comăneci competed in 1976, gymnasts had only to be 14 by the first day of the competition. Unless the age of eligibility is lowered, her record cannot be broken.\nComăneci was ranked as the BBC Overseas Sports Personality of the Year for 1976 and the Associated Press' 1976 \"Female Athlete of the Year\". Back home in Romania, she was awarded the Sickle and Hammer Gold Medal for her success, and Comăneci was named a Hero of Socialist Labor. She was the youngest Romanian to receive such recognition during the administration of Nicolae Ceaușescu.\n\n\n===== \"Nadia's Theme\" =====\n\"Nadia's Theme\" refers to an instrumental piece that became linked to Comăneci shortly after the 1976 Olympics. It was part of the musical score of the 1971 film Bless the Beasts and Children and originally titled \"Cotton's Dream\". It was also used as the title theme music for the American soap opera The Young and the Restless.\nRobert Riger used it in association with slow-motion montages of Comăneci on the television program ABC's Wide World of Sports. The song became a top-10 single in the fall of 1976, and composers Barry De Vorzon and Perry Botkin Jr. renamed it as \"Nadia's Theme\" in Comăneci's honor. Comăneci never performed to \"Nadia's Theme\", however. Her floor exercise music was a medley of the songs \"Yes Sir, That's My Baby\" and \"Jump in the Line\", arranged for piano.\n\n\n=== 1977–1979 ===\nComăneci successfully defended her European all-around title at the championship competition in 1977. When questions were raised at the competition about the scoring, Ceaușescu ordered the Romanian gymnasts to return home. The team followed orders amid controversy and walked out of the competition during the event finals.\nFollowing the 1977 Europeans, the Romanian Gymnastics Federation removed Comăneci from her longtime coaches, the Károlyis, and sent her to Bucharest on August 23 to train at the sports complex. Comăneci did not find this change positive and was struggling with bodily changes as she grew older. Her gymnastics skills suffered, and Comăneci was unhappy to the point of losing the desire to live. Comăneci competed in the 1978 World Championships in Strasbourg four inches taller and according to Washington Post 22 pounds heavier than she was in the 1976 Olympics. A fall from the uneven bars resulted in a fourth-place finish in the all-around behind Soviets Elena Mukhina, Nellie Kim, and Natalia Shaposhnikova. Comăneci did win the world title on beam, and a silver on vault.\nAfter the 1978 \"Worlds\", Comăneci was permitted to return to Deva and the Károlyis' school. In 1979, Comăneci won her third consecutive European all-around title, becoming the first gymnast, male or female, to achieve this feat. At the World Championships in Fort Worth that December, Comăneci led the field after the compulsory competition. She was hospitalized before the optional portion of the team competition for blood poisoning, which had resulted from a cut in her wrist from her metal grip buckle. Against doctors' orders, she left the hospital and competed on the beam, where she scored a 9.95. Her performance helped give the Romanians their first team gold medal. After her performance, Comăneci spent several days recovering in All Saints Hospital. She had to undergo a minor surgical procedure for the infected hand, which had developed an abscess.\n\n\n=== 1980–1984 ===\n\n\n==== 1980 Summer Olympics ====\n\nComăneci was chosen to participate in the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow. As a result of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, President Jimmy Carter declared that the United States would boycott the Olympics (several other countries also participated in the boycott, though their reasons varied). According to Comăneci, the Romanian government \"touted the 1980 Olympic games as the first all-Communist Games.\" However, she also noted in her memoir, \"in Moscow, we walked into the mouth of a lion's den; it was the Russians' home turf.\" She had a fall to the mat during the uneven bars event of the team competition and was judged with only 9.50, but later, she was twice awarded a perfect 10, first on the balance beam seconded by another one on uneven bars. She won two gold medals, one for the balance beam and one for the floor exercise (in which she tied with Soviet gymnast Nellie Kim, against whom she had also competed in the 1976 Montreal Olympics and other events). She also won two silver medals, one for the team all-around and one for individual all-around. Controversies arose concerning the scoring in the all-around and floor exercise competitions. As of the 2020 Summer Games, she is the only gymnast to defend her Olympic gold medal in the balance beam apparatus.\nHer coach, Bela Károlyi, protested that she was scored unfairly. His protests were captured on television. According to Comăneci's memoir, the Romanian government was upset about Károlyi's public behavior, feeling that he had humiliated them. Life became very difficult for Károlyi from that point on.\n\n\n==== \"Nadia '81\" ====\n\nIn 1981, the Gymnastics Federation contacted Comăneci and informed her that she would be part of an official tour of the United States named \"Nadia '81\" and her coaches Béla and Márta Károlyi would lead the group. During this tour, Comăneci's team shared a bus trip with American gymnasts; it was the third time she had encountered Bart Conner. They had earlier met in 1976. She later remembered thinking, \"Conner was cute. He bounced around the bus talking to everyone—he was incredibly friendly and fun.\"\nThe Károlyis defected on the last day of the tour, along with the Romanian team choreographer Géza Pozsár. Prior to defecting, Károlyi hinted a few times to Comăneci that he might attempt to do so and indirectly asked if she wanted to join him. At that time, she had no interest in defecting, and said she wanted to go home to Romania. After the defection of the Károlyis, life changed drastically for Comăneci in Romania, as she could not have predicted. Officials feared that she would also defect. Feeling she was a national asset, they strictly monitored her actions, refusing to allow her to travel outside the country.\n\n\n==== 1984 Summer Olympics ====\nThe government did allow Comăneci to participate in the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles as part of the Romanian delegation. Although a number of Communist nations boycotted the 1984 Summer Olympics in a tit-for-tat against the U.S.-led boycott of the Olympics in Moscow four years before, Romania chose to participate. Comăneci later wrote in her memoir that many believed Romania went to the Olympics because an agreement had been made with the United States not to accept defectors. But Comăneci did not participate in the Games as a member of the Romanian team; she served as an observer. She was able to see Károlyi's new protégé, American gymnast Mary Lou Retton, who won five medals, including one gold. The Romanian delegation did not allow her to talk with Károlyi and closely watched her the entire time.\n\n\n==== Retirement ====\n\nThe Romanian government continued to restrict Comăneci from leaving Romania, aside from a few select trips to Moscow and Cuba. Throughout her career, she had been subjected to round-the-clock surveillance at the hands of the Securitate secret police. She had started thinking about retiring a few years earlier, but her official retirement ceremony took place in Bucharest in 1984. It was attended by the chairman of the International Olympic Committee.\nComăneci later wrote in her memoir:\n\nLife took on a new bleakness. I was cut off from making the small amount of extra money that had really made a difference in my family's life. It was also insulting that a normal person in Romania had the chance to travel, whereas I could not ... when my gymnastics career was over, there was no longer any need to keep me happy. I was to do as I was instructed, just as I'd done my entire life…. If Béla hadn't defected, I would still have been watched, but his defection brought a spotlight on my life, and it was blinding. I started to feel like a prisoner.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\n\nOn the night of November 27, 1989, a few weeks before the Romanian revolution, Comăneci defected with a group of other Romanians, crossing the Hungary–Romania border around Cenad. They were guided by Constantin Panait, a Romanian who later became an American citizen after defecting. Their journey was mostly on foot and at night. They traveled through Hungary and Austria, and then a plane to the United States. She was settled briefly in South Florida, then in Los Angeles and later lived in Montreal, Canada for nearly two years.\nComăneci moved to Oklahoma in 1991 to help her friend Bart Conner, another Olympic gold medalist, with his gymnastics school. She lived with the family of Paul Ziert and eventually hired him as her manager. Comăneci and Conner were together for four years before they became engaged, marrying in 1996. She returned to Romania for their wedding, which was held in Bucharest. This was after the fall of the Communist regime and the establishment of a democratic Romania; the government welcomed her as a national hero. The wedding was televised live in Romania, and the couple's reception was held in the former presidential palace. Comăneci became a naturalized US citizen in 2001 while retaining her Romanian citizenship. In 2006, the couple's son was born.\nOn May 18, 1997, Comăneci and Conner guest-starred on the season 3 finale of Touched by an Angel, titled \"A Delicate Balance\", where they performed a brief floor exercise within a montage scene.\nSince 1994, the Nadia Comăneci International Invitational has welcomed gymnasts ranging from USAG level 4 to level 10. The competition also hosted international elite competition in the mid-2010s, with Rebeca Andrade being a notable attendee in 2013 among others.\nShe was the featured speaker at the 50th annual Independence Day Naturalization Ceremony on July 4, 2012, at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, the first athlete invited to speak in the history of the ceremony.\n\n\n== Leadership roles ==\n\nComăneci is a famous figure in the world of gymnastics; she serves as the honorary president of the Romanian Gymnastics Federation, the honorary president of the Romanian Olympic Committee, the sports ambassador of Romania, and as a member of the International Gymnastics Federation Foundation. She and Conner own the Bart Conner Gymnastics Academy, the Perfect 10 Production Company, and several sports equipment shops, and are the editors of International Gymnast magazine.\nShe is also still involved with the Olympic Games. During the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, one of her perfect-10 Montreal uneven bars routines was featured in a commercial for Adidas. In addition, both Comăneci and her husband Bart Conner provided television commentary for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. A few years later, on July 21, 2012, Comăneci, along with former basketball star John Amaechi, carried the Olympic torch to the roof of the O2 Arena as part of the torch relay for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. Prior to the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Comăneci appeared in a TIDE advertisement called \"The Evolution of Power\" with Simone Biles and three-time Olympic gymnast Dominique Dawes. She also offered daily analysis of the 2016 games (along with other Olympic champions such as Mark Spitz, Carl Lewis, and Conner), for the late-night show É Campeão, broadcast on Brazil's SporTV. On July 26, 2024, she participated in the opening ceremony of the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, alongside past Olympians Carl Lewis, Serena Williams, and Rafael Nadal, carrying the Olympic flame in the final stages of the torch relay up the river Seine to the Louvre museum on its way to the lighting of the Olympic cauldron in the Tuileries Garden.\nIn addition, Comăneci is highly involved in fundraising for a number of charities. She personally funded the construction and operation of the Nadia Comăneci Children's Clinic in Bucharest that provides low-cost and free medical and social support to Romanian children. In 2003, the Romanian government appointed her as an honorary consul general of Romania to the United States to deal with bilateral relations between the two nations. In addition, both Comăneci and Conner are involved with the Special Olympics.\nTo raise money for charity, Comăneci participated in the celebrity version of Donald Trump's reality show The Apprentice. Comăneci was a member of \"The Empresario\" team (all women), which lost to \"The Hydra\" team (all men) in the second episode. Trump responded to this loss by firing Comăneci, Comăneci later commented on her participation in the show, saying she \"had great fun. I only did it because it was all for charity.\"\n\n\n== Honors and awards ==\n\n1975 and 1976: The United Press International Athlete of the Year Award\n1976: Hero of Socialist Labour\n1976: Associated Press Athlete of the Year\n1976: BBC Overseas Sports Personality of the Year\n1984: The Olympic Order (bronze)\n1990: International Women's Sports Hall of Fame\n1993: International Gymnastics Hall of Fame\n1998: Marca Leyenda\n1998: Flo Hyman Award\n2004: The Olympic Order (silver)\n2016: Great Immigrant Honoree: Carnegie Corporation of New York\n2017: She was recognized as one of the BBC's 100 Women of 2017.\n2017: an area in the Olympic Park in Montreal was renamed \"Place Nadia Comaneci\".\n2021: Order of the Star of Romania, Grand Officer\n2026: Laureus Lifetime Achievement Award\n2026: Order of the Star of Romania, Grand Cross\n\n\n== Skills ==\n\nComăneci was known for her clean technique, innovative and difficult original skills, and her stoic, cool demeanor in competition. On the balance beam, she was the first gymnast to successfully perform an aerial cartwheel-back handspring series. She is also credited as being the first gymnast to perform a double-twist dismount. Her skills on the floor exercise included a tucked double back salto and a double twist.\nComăneci has two eponymous uneven bars skills listed in the Code of Points, the Comăneci salto and the Comăneci dismount.\n\n\n== Competitive history ==\n\n\n== Book and films ==\nComăneci's 2004 memoir, Letters to a Young Gymnast, is part of the Art of Mentoring series by Basic Books.\nKatie Holmes directed a short 2015 documentary for ESPN about Comăneci entitled Eternal Princess that premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival.\nIn 2016, Arte France produced a Pola Rapaport documentary about Comăneci entitled Nadia Comăneci, la gymnaste et le dictateur (\"Nadia Comăneci: The Gymnast and the Dictator\").\nIn 1984, Comăneci was the subject of a biopic television film, Nadia. The film was developed without her involvement (although the content was described to her by others). She later stated publicly that the producers never made contact with her: \"I sincerely don't even want to see it; I feel so badly about it. It distorts my life so totally.\"\nIn 2012, Universal Pictures chose Comăneci to dub Granny Norma in Romanian in the animated movie The Lorax.\nIn 2021, Stejărel Olaru published in Romanian a biographical volume, Nadia și Securitatea (\"Nadia and the Securitate\"), at Epica Publishing House.\n\n\n== See also ==\n\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of Olympic female gymnasts for Romania\nList of Olympic medal leaders in women's gymnastics\nList of multiple Olympic medalists at a single Games\nList of multiple Summer Olympic medalists\n\n\n== Notes ==\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n=== Citations ===\n\n\n=== Cited sources ===\n\n\n== Further reading ==\nComaneci, Nadia (1981). Nadia: The Autobiography of Nadia Comaneci. Proteus Books. ISBN 978-0-9060-7178-6.\nComaneci, Nadia (2011). Letters to a Young Gymnast (Reprint ed.). Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-4650-2505-3.\nDimitriu, Dumitru (1976). Nadia Comăneci și echipa de aur. Sport-Turism. OL 4679678M.\nMeyers, Dvora (2016). The End of the Perfect 10: The Making and Breaking of Gymnastics' Top Score – from Nadia to Now. Atria Books. ISBN 978-1-5011-0136-6.\nMiklowitz, Gloria D. (1977). Nadia Comaneci. Grosset & Dunlap. ISBN 978-0-4481-2973-0.\nOlaru, Stejarel (2023). Nadia Comaneci and the Secret Police: A Cold War Escape. Bloomsbury. ISBN 978-1350321298.\nOnline scholarly book review\nTemple, Cliff (1977). The Enchanting Story of Little Miss Perfect. Everest Books. ISBN 978-0-9050-1878-2.\nWeiniger, Peter (2001). Sporting Heroes. Thomson Learning. ISBN 978-1-8696-1476-8.\nWoolum, Janet (1998). Outstanding Women Athletes: Who They Are and How They Influenced Sports in America (2nd ed.). Greenwood. ISBN 978-1-5735-6120-4.\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nOfficial website\nNadia Comăneci at World Gymnastics \nNadia Comăneci at the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame \nNadia Comăneci at Olympics.com \nNadia Comăneci at Olympedia \nNadia Comăneci at the Comitetul Olimpic și Sportiv Român (in Romanian) (archive)\nNadia Comăneci at IMDb \nVoices of Oklahoma interview with Bart Conner – First person interview conducted on February 28, 2013, with Bart Conner, husband of Nadia Comăneci.\nVideo clips:\n\nNadia Comăneci makes history at the Montreal 1976 Olympics – The Olympic Channel, 2010\nNadia Comăneci – First Olympics Perfect 10 (Uneven Bars) – Montreal 1976 Olympics – The Olympic Channel, 2015\nNadia Comăneci – Selections from all of her routines – Montreal 1976 Olympics (overview) – The Olympic Channel, 2012\nThe Adorable Way This Olympic Couple First Met | Where Are They Now | Oprah Winfrey Network – Oprah Winfrey Network (U.S. TV channel), 2016\nNadia Comaneci & Bart Conner Commentate on Their Perfect Olympic Routines | Take the Mic – The Olympic Channel, 2016\nNadia Comaneci and Bart Conner, 11 Olympic Medals in this Olympic Family – The Olympic Channel, 2016\nNadia Comaneci receives Lifetime Achievement Award from Simone Biles at Laureus Awards – NBC Sports, 2026"}
{"title": "Nafissatou Thiam", "requested": "Nafissatou Thiam", "extract": "Nafissatou \"Nafi\" Thiam (French pronunciation: [tʃam]; born 19 August 1994) is a Belgian athlete specialising in multi-event competition. She is the first athlete with three multi-event gold medals at the Olympic Games, winning the heptathlon at the 2016 Rio, 2020 Tokyo and 2024 Paris Olympics. Her three individual Olympic golds in a row for a woman equals the record of Anita Wlodarczyk of Poland in the hammer and Faith Kipyegon in the 1500 metres. Thiam is also the only Belgian athlete to successfully defend an Olympic title.\nShe won gold at the 2017 and 2022 World Championships, the 2018, 2022 and 2024 European Championships as well as the silver medal at the 2019 World Championships. Thiam was voted IAAF World Female Athlete of the Year in 2017. She was a Belgian flag bearer at the opening ceremony of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.\nIn May 2017, at the Hypo-Meeting in Götzis, Austria, Thiam became only the fourth woman to break the heptathlon 7000-point barrier. In March 2023, at the European Indoor Championships, on her way to a record third European pentathlon title, she set a world record with a score of 5055 points. In doing so, Thiam became the first ever Belgian woman to set an official athletics world record.\nAs of March 2023, Thiam holds the Belgian records in the heptathlon and pentathlon, javelin and long jump (out and indoors). She holds the world record for the high jump discipline within the heptathlon competition, set in 2019.\n\n\n== Career ==\n\n\n=== Junior career ===\n\nNafissatou Thiam was born in Brussels to a Belgian mother and a Senegalese father. She started participating in athletics when she was seven years old, winning her first national age group titles in 2009, by which time she was already specializing in the heptathlon. Her favorite athlete at the time was Swedish heptathlete Carolina Klüft.\nAt the 2011 World Youth Championships in Athletics in Lille, France, Thiam finished fourth in the heptathlon with a total of 5366 points. Then, as a first-year junior, she finished 14th at the 2012 World Junior Championships in Athletics in the heptathlon with a total of 5384 points.\nOn 3 February 2013, Thiam broke the junior world indoor record in the pentathlon at a meeting in Ghent with a total of 4558 points, breaking her personal best in four of the five events. Carolina Klüft, who later became Olympic champion and triple world champion, had held the record since 2002 with 4535 points. In doing so Thiam became the first Belgian female athlete to break a world record. However, in March 2013, the record was not ratified due to a lack of anti-doping control on the day it was achieved. The testing took place the next day, which was beyond the deadline specified by the IAAF, athletics' international governing body.\nOn 18 July 2013, she won the gold medal in the heptathlon at the European Junior Championships in Rieti, Italy achieving a new Belgian record of 6298 points.\n\n\n=== Senior career ===\nIn 2014, Thiam won the bronze medal for the heptathlon at the European Athletics Championships staged in Zürich, Switzerland.\nIn 2015, she won the silver medal in the pentathlon at the European Indoor Championships held in Prague and also claimed silver in the high jump at the European Under-23 Championships in Tallinn, Estonia.\n\nOn 13 August 2016, Thiam won the gold medal for the heptathlon at the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro with a score of 6810 points, achieving personal best marks in five of the seven disciplines and defeating reigning Olympic and world champion Jessica Ennis-Hill of Great Britain. At 21-years-old, she was the youngest Olympic heptathlon gold medalist in history. She was elected Belgian flag bearer at the Olympic closing ceremony.\nOn 3 March 2017, Thiam won the pentathlon at the 2017 European Indoor Championships in Belgrade with a total of 4870 points.\nOn 28 May 2017, she won the heptathlon at the Hypo-Meeting in Götzis, Austria with a score of 7013 points, again achieving personal best scores in five of the seven disciplines, making her the fourth woman to score 7000 points or higher in competition. As of July 2017, she was third on the world all-time list behind Jackie Joyner-Kersee of USA and Sweden's Carolina Klüft. Her 59.32m javelin throw in Götzis broke the Belgian record for the women's individual event.\nOn 6 August 2017, Thiam went into the World Championships in Athletics in London as hot favorite and won the heptathlon world title, becoming the first Belgian to win a World Athletics Championship gold medal.\n\nOn 10 August 2018, she won the gold medal at the European Athletics Championships, becoming only the third woman to win Olympic Games, World and European Championships in the heptathlon, after Carolina Klüft and Jessica Ennis-Hill.\nOn 27 June 2019, Thiam won the heptathlon competition at the Décastar meeting held in Talence, France setting a women's heptathlon high jump world record of 2.02 m (6 ft 7+1⁄2 in).\nOn 2 October 2019, she went again into the World Athletics Championships as world leader and favourite for gold, but was expected to face stronger competition than in 2017 from erstwhile rival and 2018 European runner-up, Great Britain's Katarina Johnson-Thompson. In the event, Thiam succumbed to an elbow injury that hindered her javelin, while Johnson-Thompson recorded a huge personal best of 6981 points, a national record and the sixth highest competition score in history to win comfortably. Thiam's performance was still good enough for the silver medal.\nOn 5 March 2021, she won the pentathlon at the European Indoor Championships in Toruń, Poland with a total of 4904 points.\nOn 5 August 2021, at the postponed 2020 Tokyo Games, she successfully defended her Olympic title with a score of 6791 points.\n\nAt the 2022 World Athletics Championships held in Eugene, Oregon, Thiam claimed her second world gold medal on 18 July with a total of 6947 points.\nOn 3 March 2023, at the European Indoor Championships in Istanbul, she broke the pentathlon world record set in the same Ataköy Arena back in 2012 by Ukraine's Nataliya Dobrynska (5013 points), totalling a score of 5055 points. With her third European indoor title, Thiam became the most successful female pentathlete in history of this championships. Injury, however, thwarted her capacity to defend her World Championships title, and in her absence Johnson-Thompson won her own second World title.\nAt the 2024 Paris Olympic game, for the first time in several years both Thiam and Johnson-Thompson reached the start line fit and healthy. Over the course of the two days, Thiam overcame an average high jump performance to retain once more her Olympic heptathlon title in a close contest, finishing 40 points ahead of her long-time rival who took silver. In doing so, she became the first athlete to win 3 consecutive Olympic gold medals in heptathlon.\n\n\n== Training and personal life ==\nThiam is a member of RFCL Athlétisme, an athletics club operating under the aegis of the Technical and Sports Department of the Royal Football Club de Liège. She was coached by Belgian former decathlete Roger Lespagnard for 14 years but she put an end to their collaboration in October 2022.\nBesides being a professional athlete, Thiam studied geography at the University of Liège. \"I like climatology, I like geomorphology – how the earth is shaped by rivers. A lot of subjects, like a heptathlon. Maybe that's why I love it.\" she said. She graduated from university with a bachelor's degree in September 2019.\nThiam is a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF Belgium.\n\n\n== Achievements ==\n\nAll information from World Athletics profile unless otherwise noted.\n\n\n=== International competitions ===\n\n\n=== Circuit wins ===\nHypo-Meeting: 2017, 2018\nDécastar: 2019\nDiamond League\n2016: Brussels Memorial Van Damme (High jump)\n2018: Brussels (High jump)\n2019: Birmingham Grand Prix (Long jump, NR)\n\n\n=== Personal bests ===\n\n\n=== National titles ===\nBelgian Athletics Championships\nLong jump: 2015, 2018, 2022, 2025\nJavelin Throw: 2023\nBelgian Indoor Athletics Championships\n60 m hurdles: 2017\nHigh jump: 2015, 2017\nLong jump: 2016\nPentathlon: 2016\n\n\n== Honours and awards ==\nR.F.C.L. Trophy Promising talent: 2010\nGolden Spike best female talent: 2012\nGolden Spike award: 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2021, 2022, 2024\nBelgian Promising Talent of the Year: 2013\nBelgian Sportswoman of the Year: 2014, 2016, 2017, 2022, 2024\nKnight in the Walloon Order of Merit: 2014\nEuropean Athletics women's Rising Star of the Year: 2016\nIAAF Female Rising Star of the Year: 2016\nBelgian Sports Merit Award: 2016\nCommander in the Walloon Order of Merit: 2016\nForbes 30 under 30 for Europe: 2017\nIAAF World Female Athlete of the Year: 2017\nGrand Officer in the Order of Leopold: 2023\nIn 2017, Thiam officially became UNICEF Ambassador.\nIn 2026, the Drève Nafissatou Thiam/Nafissatou Thiamdreef in the Heysel neighbourhood of Brussels, Belgium, was named in her honour.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nNafissatou Thiam at World Athletics \nNafissatou Thiam at European Athletics \nNafissatou Thiam at Diamond League \nNafissatou Thiam at Team Belgium (in Dutch and French)\nNafissatou Thiam at Olympics.com\nNafissatou Thiam at Olympedia \nNafissatou Thiam at InterSportStats \nOfficial website"}
{"title": "Naim Süleymanoğlu", "requested": "Naim Süleymanoğlu", "extract": "Naim Süleymanoğlu (23 January 1967 – 18 November 2017) was a Turkish Olympic weightlifter. He was a seven-time World Weightlifting champion and a three-time Olympic gold medalist who set 51 world records. At 147 cm in height, Süleymanoğlu's short stature and great strength led to him being nicknamed \"Pocket Hercules\". He is widely considered as one of the greatest Olympic weightlifters of all time, with many calling him the best pound-for-pound weightlifter in the history of weightlifting.\nAt the 1988 Summer Olympics, Süleymanoğlu set multiple world records in the featherweight division in the snatch, clean and jerk, and total. Following the 1988 Summer Olympics, he made the cover of Time magazine. Süleymanoğlu went on to win Olympic gold in 1992 and 1996. He was awarded the Olympic Order in 2001. In 2000 and 2004, he was elected as a member of the International Weightlifting Federation Hall of Fame.\n\n\n== Early life in Bulgaria, early career, and defection to Turkey ==\n\nSüleymanoğlu was born in Ptichar, Kardzhali Province, Bulgaria. His father was a miner who stood only five feet tall, while his mother was four-foot-seven. He set a world weightlifting record during his teens and would have been an overwhelming favorite to win gold at the 1984 Summer Olympics had Bulgaria not joined in a boycott by the Eastern Bloc.\nIn the 1980s, Bulgaria's government implemented a program called the Revival Process which required ethnic minorities to adopt Slavic names and barred their languages. As a result, Süleymanoğlu was forced to change his name to Naum Shalamanov (Bulgarian: Наум Шаламанов) in 1985. He decided to leave Bulgaria after these experiences and he conducted encrypted correspondence with Turkish Squad during the period.\nWhile on a trip to the World Cup Final in Melbourne in 1986, Süleymanoğlu escaped his handlers, and after several days in hiding, he defected at the Turkish Embassy in Canberra. When Embassy officials reported the situation to Turgut Özal, The Prime Minister ordered him to be brought at once. He landed in London first, where he was transferred into a private jet to fly into Istanbul and Ankara eventually. After making his way to Istanbul, he changed his name back to Süleymanoğlu.\nIn 2012, Süleymanoğlu said, \"Against all the odds, I've never been nostalgic. After being treated with such attitude, you wouldn't regret it. The Bulgarians changed the names of 2 million people by force. It was a very difficult period. People who witnessed the events would know. I wouldn't change any of the decisions I took that day in my life. Even if I could set back the clock, I would still escape Bulgaria. Because as the Turkish people, we were too hard-pressed in Bulgaria.\"\n\n\n== Olympic competition ==\nIn order for Süleymanoğlu to compete at the 1988 Seoul Olympics, the Bulgarian government had to agree to release his eligibility to Turkey. The Turks paid Bulgaria $1.25 million for his release.\nAt the Olympics, Süleymanoğlu competed in the featherweight division. His main competition was his old teammate from the Bulgarian team, Stefan Topurov. He came out for the snatch portion of the competition after all other athletes had finished and made three consecutive lifts, setting world records in his last two attempts. In the clean and jerk portion, Topurov completed a 175.0 kg clean and jerk after Süleymanoğlu. With his next two lifts, Süleymanoğlu set two more world records and won his first Olympic gold. His last lift was a 190.0 kg clean and jerk that was 3.15 times his body weight, which is the highest ratio clean and jerk to body weight of all time. Using the Sinclair coefficient, his performance at the 1988 Seoul Olympics was the most dominating weightlifting performance of all time. His total was high enough to win the weight class above his. After the 1988 Summer Olympics, Süleymanoğlu appeared on the cover of Time magazine. The 4'10\" Süleymanoğlu's \"diminutive size and stunning strength\" led to him being nicknamed \"Pocket Hercules\".\nSüleymanoğlu retired from weightlifting at the age of 22 after winning the world championship in 1989. However, he returned to the sport in 1991 and won a second Olympic gold medal in Barcelona in 1992. He retired after winning a third consecutive Olympic gold medal in Atlanta at the 1996 Olympic Games. That competition was noted for the rivalry between Süleymanoğlu and Greece's Valerios Leonidis, with the arena divided into partisan Turkish and Greek crowds. At the end of the competition, they were the last competitors remaining as they traded three straight world-record lifts. Süleymanoğlu managed to raise 187.5 kg, and then Leonidis failed in his attempt to lift 190 kg which earned Süleymanoğlu the gold medal. In a show of sportsmanship Süleymanoğlu embraced Leonidis, who had broken down in tears. Announcer Lynn Jones proclaimed, \"You have just witnessed the greatest weightlifting competition in history,\" according to Ken Jones of The Independent.\nSüleymanoğlu made another comeback in a late attempt to earn a fourth gold medal at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, which would have been an Olympic record. However, he failed three attempts at 145 kg and was eliminated from the competition.\nSüleymanoğlu is the first and only weightlifter to have snatched 2.5 times his body weight and also is the second of only seven lifters to date to clean and jerk three times his body weight. He is the only weightlifter to date to clean and jerk 10 kilos more than triple his body weight.\nOver the course of his career, Süleymanoğlu has won seven World Weightlifting champion and three Olympic gold medals, and set a total of 51 world records from 1983 to 1996. Only Vasily Alekseyev and David Rigert have set more world records in weightlifting. Süleymanoğlu was awarded the Olympic Order in 2001. In 2000 and 2004, he was elected a member of the International Weightlifting Federation Hall of Fame. Süleymanoğlu is widely considered to have been the best pound-for-pound Olympic weightlifter of all time, and one of the greatest Olympic weightlifters ever. He is regarded as a national hero in Turkey.\n\n\n== Political career ==\nAt the 1999 general elections, Süleymanoğlu stood as an independent candidate to represent Bursa at the Grand National Assembly of Turkey. In 2002, he was the candidate of the Nationalist Movement Party for the mayor of Kıraç municipality in Büyükçekmece district of Istanbul Province; he represented the same party in general elections in 2006. Süleymanoğlu was unsuccessful in each of these bids for public office.\n\n\n== Personal life and death ==\nA heavy drinker, Süleymanoğlu suffered from cirrhosis of the liver. In 2009, he was hospitalized for nearly three months.\n\nOn 25 September 2017, Süleymanoğlu was admitted to a hospital due to liver failure. On 6 October, a liver transplantation was made when a liver donor was found. On 11 November, he had surgery due to a hemorrhage in the brain and a subsequent edema. He died on 18 November 2017 and was interred at the Edirnekapı Martyr's Cemetery in Istanbul. Many dignitaries and prominent athletes attended Süleymanoğlu's funeral, including his rival in the 1996 Summer Olympics, Greece's Valerios Leonidis.\nA movie about his life and career entitled Cep Herkülü: Naim Süleymanoğlu was released in Turkey on 22 November 2019.\nSüleymanoğlu's grave was opened on 4 July 2018 for the purpose of extracting a DNA sample. Following his death, a Japanese woman had claimed that her daughter, Sekai Mori, had been fathered by him, and filed a paternity case at a Turkish court. A DNA test confirmed the paternity claim. Süleymanoğlu also had three daughters by a Turkish woman.\n\n\n== Legacy ==\nNaim Süleymanoğlu is regarded as one of the greatest weightlifters in the history of the sport. His achievements and international recognition made him an important cultural figure among Bulgarian Turks and in Turkey.\n\n\n=== Naim Süleymanoğlu Monument ===\nIn his hometown of Momchilgrad (Turkish: Mestanli), a monument dedicated to Süleymanoğlu was erected in the town center to commemorate his achievements and connection to the region. The monument is considered one of the notable landmarks of the town.\n\n\n=== Sport Complex “Naim Süleymanoğlu” ===\nA sports complex bearing his name was opened in Momchilgrad. The facility was established to promote youth sports and physical education. It hosts various sporting and community events throughout the year.\n\n\n=== Naim Süleymanoğlu Museum ===\nA museum dedicated to Süleymanoğlu was established in Momchilgrad. The museum contains medals, photographs, documents, and personal belongings related to his life and sporting career. It serves as a cultural and historical site visited by tourists and sports enthusiasts.\nSüleymanoğlu continues to be remembered as an influential figure in weightlifting history and among Balkan Turks\n\n\n=== Movie \"Pocket Hercules: Naim Süleymanoğlu\" ===\nThe biographical film about Naim Süleymanoğlu is titled Pocket Hercules: Naim Suleymanoglu (Turkish: Cep Herkülü: Naim Süleymanoğlu). The film was released in 2019 and directed by Özer Feyzioğlu. It depicts Süleymanoğlu's life, sporting career, and political struggles, including his rise in weightlifting, his world records, and his defection from communist Bulgaria to Turkey.\nThe film stars Hayat Van Eck as Süleymanoğlu and covers the period from his childhood in Bulgaria to his gold medal victory at the 1988 Seoul Olympics. It also portrays the assimilation campaign against Turks in Bulgaria during the communist era and Süleymanoğlu's role in drawing international attention to the situation.\nThe film was released theatrically in Turkey on 22 November 2019 and was later distributed internationally on Netflix under the English title The Pocket Hercules Naim.\n\n\n== Major results ==\n\n\n== Career bests ==\nSnatch: 152.5 kg in class to 60 kg.\nClean and jerk: 170.5 kg 1984 in Varna in class to 56 kg.\nClean and jerk: 190.0 kg in class to 60 kg.\nTotal: 342.5 kg (152.5 + 190.0) 1988 Summer Olympics in class to 60 kg.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n Media related to Naim Süleymanoğlu at Wikimedia Commons\nNaim Süleymanoğlu at IWF\nNaim Süleymanoğlu at IWRP\nNaim Süleymanoğlu at IAT Database Weightlifting (in German)\nNaim Süleymanoğlu at Olympics.com\nNaim Süleymanoğlu at Olympedia\nNaim Süleymanoğlu at InterSportStats"}
{"title": "Natalia Ishchenko", "requested": "Natalia Ishchenko", "extract": "Natalia Sergeyevna Ishchenko (Russian: Наталья Серге́евна Ищенко; born 8 April 1986) is a retired Russian synchronized swimmer, five-times Olympic champion and nineteen-times world champion.\nIshchenko announced her retirement from sports in April 2017. Since November 2017, she has served as Minister of Sports of Kaliningrad Oblast.\n\n\n== Career ==\n\nNatalia was a member of the Russian gold medal team in 2008, 2012 and 2016. She also won gold in the women's duet at the 2012 and 2016 Summer Olympics with Svetlana Romashina.\nNatalia took a break from the sport in 2013 after giving birth to her son. She returned in 2015, winning both the women's duet and team events at the European Synchro Cup in Haarlemmermeer, qualifying for the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.\n\n\n== References =="}
{"title": "Natalie Geisenberger", "requested": "Natalie Geisenberger", "extract": "Natalie Geisenberger (German: [ˈnataliː ˈɡaɪzn̩ˌbɛʁɡɐ] ; born 5 February 1988) is a retired German luger. Widely regarded as one of the greatest lugers of all time, she is a nine-time World champion and six-time Olympic champion.\n\n\n== Career ==\nShe became Olympic Champion in the women's singles event and in the team relay at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi and at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang and won a bronze medal in the women's singles event at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. She subsequently won another individual gold at the 2022 Winter Olympics, becoming the only woman luger ever to win three individual Olympic gold medals. She is the most successful and decorated female Olympic luger, with five gold medals and one bronze.\n\nGeisenberger has won a total of seven gold, six silver, and one bronze medals at the FIL European Luge Championships. She has also accrued sixteen medals at the FIL World Luge Championships, including nine gold, five silver, and two bronze medals. She is the most decorated and most successful female luger in championship history.\nAfter four consecutive seasons finishing second in the overall classification of the Luge World Cup, she finally won her first title in the 2012–13 season after completing an outstanding scoreboard with six wins and three-second places. She has won a total of 7 world cups in singles and 3 in sprint, both of which are all-time records in women's competitions.\nAfter missing the 2019–20 season because she was having a baby, Geisenberger resumed competing and won the 2020–21 Luge World Cup.\nOn September 24, 2023, Geisenberger announced her retirement.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nWhen Geisenberger was six, her family moved to the city of Miesbach, where Gert Schabbehard of the local Club RRT Miesbach introduced her to the sport at age 10. After a very successful junior career in which she won 14 Junior World Cup competitions and three Junior World Championships, she was promoted to the senior German team. Her first senior competition was on 20 January 2007 at the Altenberg, Germany World Cup, where she came in second.\nGeisenberger is currently a police officer of the German Federal Police at the Sports School in Bad Endorf.\nOn 1 June 2018, she married Markus Scheer in Schliersee.\nIn October 2019, she announced that she would not race in 2019–20 season due to pregnancy. She gave birth to her son Leo in May 2020. In July 2022, she announced that she was pregnant for a second time and subsequently would be missing 2022-23 season.\nOn October 29, 2025, it was announced that Geisenberger would be joining EuroSport's coverage of the 2026 Winter Olympics as an Olympic expert.\n\n\n=== World Cup ===\n\nNote: Prior to 2020/21 season, to be classified in sprint standings athletes must compete on all sprint events throughout the season.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nOfficial website  (in English, French, German, and Italian)\nNatalie Geisenberger at FIL\nNatalie Geisenberger at Olympics.com\nNatalie Geisenberger at the German Olympic Sports Confederation (in German)\nNatalie Geisenberger at Olympedia\nNatalie Geisenberger at InterSportStats"}
{"title": "Nathan Adrian", "requested": "Nathan Adrian", "extract": "Nathan Ghar-jun Adrian (born December 7, 1988) is an American competitive swimmer and five-time Olympic gold medalist who formerly held the American record in the long course 50-meter freestyle event.\nIn his Olympic debut at the 2008 Summer Olympics, Adrian swam in the heats of the 4×100-meter freestyle relay and earned a gold medal when the United States team won in the final. At the 2012 Summer Olympics, Adrian won gold medals in both the 100-meter freestyle and the 4×100-meter medley relay, and a silver medal in the 4×100-meter freestyle relay.  He has won thirty-two medals in major international competitions; twenty gold, seven silver, and five bronze in such competitions as the \nSummer Olympics, the FINA World Aquatics Championships, and the Pan Pacific Swimming Championships. In the 2016 Summer Olympics 4x100-meter freestyle relay a gold was won with Michael Phelps, Caeleb Dressel, and Ryan Held. He was an individual bronze medalist in the 50-meter and 100-meter freestyles.\n\n\n== Early years ==\nAdrian was born in Bremerton, Washington, in 1988. He is the son of Cecilia and James Adrian. His mother is Chinese from Hong Kong and works as a nurse for the Bremerton school district; his father is a retired nuclear engineer for the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. Adrian has an older sister, Donella, who swam at Arizona State University, and an older brother, Justin, who swam at the University of Washington. Adrian started swimming at the age of five because of the influence of his siblings. He graduated in 2006 from Bremerton High School, where he swam for the school team.\nAdrian attended the University of California, Berkeley in fall 2006, where he majored in public health and competed in swimming under Head Coach Dave Durden. He graduated with honors in the spring of 2012. Adrian was a five-time individual NCAA champion, winning the 50-yard freestyle in 2009 and 2011 and the 100-yard freestyle in 2009, 2010, and 2011.\n\n\n== Career ==\n\n\n=== 2008 Short Course World Championships ===\nAt the 2008 Short Course World Championships, Adrian won gold in the 100-meter freestyle and 4×100-meter freestyle relay and silver in the 4×100-meter medley relay.  In the 4×100-meter freestyle relay, Adrian combined with Ryan Lochte, Bryan Lundquist and Doug Van Wie won gold in a world record time of 3:08.44. In his second event, the 100-meter freestyle, Adrian won gold in a time of 46.67, just ahead of Filippo Magnini who finished second with a time of 46.70. For his last event, the 4×100-meter medley relay, Adrian combined with Randall Bal, Mark Gangloff and Ryan Lochte, won silver behind Russia.\n\n\n=== 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics ===\n\nAt the 2008 United States Olympic Trials, Adrian placed fourth in the 100-meter freestyle, qualifying him to swim in the 4×100-meter freestyle relay at the Olympics. He also placed sixth in the 50-meter freestyle.\nAt the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, Adrian swam the first leg in the preliminary heats of the 4×100-meter freestyle relay, splitting a time of 48.82 seconds. Cullen Jones, Ben Wildman-Tobriner and Matt Grevers completed the relay with a final time of 3:12.23, a world record. This record was broken one day later when Michael Phelps, Garrett Weber-Gale, Cullen Jones and Jason Lezak swam a time of 3:08.24, beating France and Australia in the final.  By swimming in the heats, Adrian earned a gold medal even though he didn't swim in the final.\nAdrian was training under coach Mike Bottom in the Florida Keys as part of The Race Club swimming training program World Team leading up to the 2008 Olympics.\n\n\n=== 2009 World Championships ===\n\nAt the 2009 National Championships, Adrian placed first in the 50-meter and 100-meter freestyle events, qualifying him to swim at the 2009 World Aquatics Championships in Rome.\nAt the 2009 World Aquatics Championships, Adrian earned gold in the 4×100-meter freestyle relay and the 4×100-meter medley relay.  Adrian also placed sixth in the 50-meter freestyle and tenth in the 100-meter freestyle. After Michael Phelps, Ryan Lochte and Matt Grevers completed their legs in the 4×100-meter freestyle relay, the United States had a slight deficit behind the Russian team.  However, Adrian swam the anchor leg in 46.79 to overtake Danila Izotov for first place.  The final time of 3:09.21 was a championship record. In the 4×100-meter medley relay, Adrian contributed in the heats (with Matt Grevers, Mark Gangloff and Tyler McGill) and earned a gold medal when the U.S. team placed first in the final.\n\n\n=== 2010 ===\nAt the 2010 National Championships, Adrian qualified to compete at the 2010 Pan Pacific Swimming Championships by winning the 50-meter and 100-meter freestyle titles. His win in the 100-meter freestyle also guaranteed him a spot on the 4×100-meter freestyle and 4×100-meter medley relay teams.\nAt the 2010 Pan Pacific Swimming Championships, Adrian won a total of four gold medals, the best performance of his career.  In his first event, the 100-meter freestyle, Adrian won the gold medal in 48.15, beating Canadian Brent Hayden and world-record holder in the 100-meter freestyle César Cielo. The following day, Adrian lined up alongside Michael Phelps, Ryan Lochte and Jason Lezak to anchor the 4×100-meter freestyle relay.  With no competition, Adrian recorded a time of 47.51 and the U.S. team won the gold in a time of 3:11.74. The following day, Adrian then competed in the 50-meter freestyle and the 4×100-meter medley relay.  In the final of the 50-meter freestyle, Adrian shocked favorite Cielo, winning in a time of 21.55 seconds; Cielo finished second in 21.57. About an hour and a half later, Adrian competed in the 4×100-meter medley relay with Aaron Peirsol, Mark Gangloff and Michael Phelps.  Swimming the freestyle leg, Adrian recorded a time of 47.54, the fastest in the field and the U.S. team won the gold in a time of 3:32.48.\n\n\n=== 2011 ===\n\n\n==== 2011 World Championships ====\n\nAdrian won his first medal, a bronze, in the 4×100-meter freestyle relay with Michael Phelps, Garrett Weber-Gale and Jason Lezak.  Swimming the anchor leg, Adrian recorded a time of 47.40. In the final of the 100-meter freestyle, Adrian placed sixth with a time of 48.23, well off his semi-final time of 48.05.  In the 50-meter freestyle final, Adrian placed fourth with a time of 21.93 seconds, just one one-hundredth (0.01) of a second ahead behind third-place finisher Alain Bernard.  In his last event, the 4×100-meter medley relay, Adrian teamed with Mark Gangloff, Michael Phelps, and Nick Thoman to win gold in a time of 3:32.06.  Swimming the freestyle leg, Adrian had a time of 47.64.\n\n\n==== 2011 National Championships ====\nAt the 2011 National Championships, Adrian defended his 50-meter freestyle title with a time of 21.84 seconds. His time moved him to fourth in the world behind César Cielo (21.52), Bruno Fratus (21.76), and Frédérick Bousquet (21.78). He chose to sit out of the 100-meter freestyle in order to prepare for the 2012 Summer Olympics.\n\n\n=== 2012 London Summer Olympics ===\n\nAt the 2012 U.S. Olympic Trials in Omaha, Nebraska, the qualifying meet for the 2012 Olympics, Adrian made the U.S. Olympic team for the second time by finishing first in his first event, the 100-meter freestyle.  In the final of the 100-meter freestyle, Adrian posted a time of 48.10 seconds to finish ahead of Cullen Jones, who had a time of 48.46.  He also placed third for the 50-meter freestyle with a time of 21.68, just missing a spot in that event.\nAt the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, Adrian won his inaugural Olympiad medal, a silver, in the 4×100-meter freestyle relay with Michael Phelps, Cullen Jones and Ryan Lochte, with the team finishing behind France.  Swimming the lead-off leg, Adrian recorded a split of 47.89 seconds, and the team finished with a final time of 3:10.38.  Adrian's lead-off time was the fastest first leg in the field, and Adrian's inaugural time breaking 48 seconds.\nOn the fifth day of competition, Adrian won the gold medal in the 100-meter freestyle final, defeating favorite James Magnussen of Australia by one one-hundredth (0.01) of a second. In the race, Adrian set a new personal record with a time of 47.52. Going into the 100-meter freestyle final, Adrian was seeded second with a time of 47.97, which was only the second time he ever broke 48 seconds in the event.  In winning the 100-meter freestyle, Adrian became the first American male to win the event since Matt Biondi did in 1988.\nAdrian won a second gold medal as a member of the winning U.S. team in the 4×100-meter medley relay on the final day of the competition. He swam the anchor freestyle leg, with Matt Grevers swimming the backstroke leadoff leg, Brendan Hansen the breaststroke second leg, and Michael Phelps the butterfly third leg. The Americans recorded a time of 3:29:35, with the Japanese team taking the silver medal and the Australians receiving the bronze.  In the race, Adrian had a split of 46.85, the fastest in the field.\nIn August 2012, a street in Adrian's hometown, Bremerton, Washington, was renamed \"Nathan Adrian Drive\" for Adrian's Olympic achievements.\n\n\n=== 2013 World Championships ===\n\nAt the 2013 U.S. National Championships, Adrian qualified to swim at the 2013 World Aquatics Championships in Barcelona by placing first in the 50 and 100-meter freestyle with times of 21.47 and 48.10, respectively.\nIn his first event at the World Championships, Adrian combined with Ryan Lochte, Anthony Ervin, and Jimmy Feigen in the 4×100-meter freestyle relay, with the team finishing behind France. Swimming the lead-off leg, Adrian recorded a split of 47.95 seconds, and the team finished with a final time of 3:11.42.  Adrian's lead-off time was the fastest first leg in the field.\nAdrian advanced to the 100-meter freestyle final as the top seed by posting 47.95 in the semi-finals. In the 100-meter freestyle, Adrian won bronze in a time of 47.84, only two-hundredths of a second behind second-place finisher Jimmy Feigen. In his second individual event, the 50-meter freestyle, Adrian was just off the podium with a fourth-place finish, finishing with a time of 21.60.\n\n\n=== 2015 World Championships ===\nAt the 2015 World Championships, Adrian swam in two relays and two individual events. In the 4x100 freestyle relay, the US team failed to advance to the final in the heats, so Adrian could not swim the finals of the relay. In his first individual event, the 100-meter freestyle, Adrian tied for seventh in the final, finishing in 48.31. Nonetheless, Adrian bounced back to break a six-year old American record in the 50-meter freestyle in 21.37 seconds in the semifinals. In the final, Adrian won a silver medal in the 50-meter freestyle, touching second behind Florent Manadou in 21.52. On the same night, Adrian was also part of the winning 4x100-meter mixed freestyle relay along with Ryan Lochte, Simone Manuel, and Missy Franklin. They broke the world record with a time of 3:23.05. Adrian won another gold medal in the 4x100-meter medley relay with Ryan Murphy, Kevin Cordes, and Tom Shields. He anchored in 47.41 to touch the wall at 3:29.93.\n\n\n=== 2016 Rio Summer Olympics ===\n\nAt the 2016 United States Olympic Trials, the U.S. qualifying meet for the Rio Olympics, Adrian qualified for his third Olympiad by winning both the 50- and 100-meter freestyle. He finished half a second ahead of the field in the 100-meter freestyle in 47.72. In the 50-meter freestyle, Adrian redeemed his third-place finish from the 2012 Trials by finishing first in 21.51, one hundredth of a second ahead of second-place finisher Anthony Ervin.\n\nIn Rio de Janeiro, Adrian won a total of four medals. He won his first medal as the anchor for the 4×100-meter freestyle relay alongside Caeleb Dressel, Michael Phelps, and Ryan Held. The Americans, with Dressel and Held as first-time Olympic competitors, finished with a time of 3:09.92, followed by France and Australia. Adrian's final leg was 46.97 seconds, the fastest of the field. In his first individual event, the 100-meter freestyle, Adrian touched third behind Kyle Chalmers and Pieter Timmers in 47.85 seconds. Adrian won another bronze medal in the 50-meter freestyle, finishing in 21.49 seconds. Another American, Anthony Ervin, won in 21.40 seconds and the defending Olympic champion Florent Manadou took second. He capped off his Olympics with another gold medal in the 4x100-meter medley relay on the final day of the competition, swimming alongside Ryan Murphy, Cody Miller, and Michael Phelps. He anchored the relay with a 46.74 split to bring home the gold in 3:27.95, a new Olympic record.\n\n\n=== 2018 Pan Pacific Championships ===\nAt the 2018 Pan Pacific Swimming Championships during August 2018 in Tokyo, Japan, Adrian won a gold medal as part of the USA men's relay in the 4x100-meter medley relay event swimming a 47.71 on the freestyle leg of the relay.\n\n\n=== 2019 ===\n\n\n==== 2019 World Aquatics Championships ====\nAfter fighting off testicular cancer and not being able to swim or lift weights over 15 pounds for some time, Adrian was back to swimming at the 2019 World Aquatics Championships in July 2019 in Gwangju, South Korea. He won a gold medal in the men's 4x100-meter freestyle relay, swimming a 47.08 as the anchoring leg of the USA's relay.\n\n\n==== 2019 Pan American Games ====\nAdrian competed at the 2019 Pan American Games in Lima, Peru in August 2019. As part of his efforts at the games, Adrian won silver in the men's 4x100-meter freestyle relay, gold in the mixed 4x100-meter freestyle relay, silver in the men's 100-meter freestyle, silver in the men's 50-meter freestyle, and gold in the men's 4x100-meter medley relay.\n\n\n=== 2021 ===\n\n\n==== 2020 US Olympic Trials ====\nAdrian entered to swim two individual events at the 2020 US Olympic Trials (postponed to June 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic), the 100-meter freestyle and 50-meter freestyle.\nOn the fourth day of the Olympic Trials, Adrian competed in the prelims of the 100-meter freestyle, ranking 6th of all heats and advancing to the semifinals with a time of 48.37. In the semifinals, Adrian swam a 48.92 coming in 13th for both semifinals and not qualifying for the final.\nIn the morning prelims of the 50-meter freestyle on day seven of competition, Adrian ranked third with his swim of 21.85 and qualified for the semifinals. During the semifinals Adrian lowered his time to a 21.78 and ranked third across both heats. This swim advanced him to the event final the following day. Adrian finished third in the final on day eight, not qualifying to swim the 50 meter freestyle at the 2020 Summer Olympics with his time of 21.73.\nAdrian had hoped to culminate his overcoming testicular cancer journey by competing in his fourth Olympic Games. His swims at the 2020 US Olympic Trials confirmed that his fourth Olympic Games would not be the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. While he did not make the 2020 US Olympic Team, Adrian's swims earned him a spot on the 2021–2022 US National Team, marking the 14th time he had achieved a spot on the team.\n\n\n== Personal bests ==\nAs of July 31, 2017\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nIn May 2017, Adrian became engaged to merchandising director Hallie Ivester after six years of dating. They were married on September 15, 2018, in Rutherford, California They have three daughters: born in February 2021, August 2022, and June 2025.\nIn January 2019, Adrian announced on Instagram that he was diagnosed with testicular cancer, for which he underwent surgery.\n\n\n== Trivia ==\n\nAdrian appeared in episode 5 of the 2009 season of the Discovery Channel series, MythBusters, to assist hosts Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman in testing the myth that it is possible to swim as fast in syrup as in water. His test results however, were declared invalid by Savage and Hyneman, because they determined that Adrian was so used to swimming in water, that his technique was completely disrupted when swimming in the syrup. This disruption caused his lap times when swimming in syrup to vary wildly in comparison with his extremely consistent lap times in water.\nIn 2014, Adrian was inducted into The Robert Chinn Foundation Asian Hall of Fame Archived August 7, 2016, at the Wayback Machine.\n\n\n== See also ==\n\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Summer Olympic medalists\nList of Olympic medalists in swimming (men)\nList of United States records in swimming\nList of University of California, Berkeley alumni\nList of World Aquatics Championships medalists in swimming (men)\nList of world records in swimming\nWorld record progression 4 × 100 metres freestyle relay\nWorld record progression 4 × 100 metres medley relay\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nOfficial website \nNathan Adrian  at World Aquatics \nNathan Adrian at Olympics.com \nNathan Adrian at Olympedia \nNathan Adrian at USA Swimming (archived January 27, 2022)\nNathan Adrian at Team USA (archive March 27, 2023)\nNathan Adrian at the Lima 2019 Pan American Games (archived, alternate link)\nNathan Adrian – University of California athlete profile at CalBears.com\nNathan Adrian at IMDb \nNathan Adrian's channel on YouTube"}
{"title": "Nedo Nadi", "requested": "Nedo Nadi", "extract": "Nedo Nadi (9 June 1894 – 29 January 1940) was an Italian fencer. He is the only fencer to win a gold medal in each of the three weapons at a single Olympic Games and won the most fencing gold medals ever at a single Games—five. Nadi won six Olympic gold medals in total.\n\n\n== Biography ==\n\n\n=== Early life ===\nNedo Nadi was born in Livorno, Italy, the elder son of famous Italian fencing master, Giuseppe (Beppe) Nadi. He had a younger brother, Aldo who was an Olympic gold medallist in his own right. Nedo had his first fencing lesson with a foil at the age of seven in his father's gymnasium at Livorno. His father taught him foil and sabre but believed the épée to be an \"undisciplined\" weapon and refused to teach it. The brothers therefore used to go and practice by themselves and were essentially self-taught on épée. At the age of fourteen Nedo won a solid silver trophy for his three weapon work during the Jubilee celebration of Emperor Franz Joseph at Vienna.\n\n\n=== 1912 Olympic Games ===\nCompeting for his country at 1912 Stockholm Olympics, Nadi became the youngest fencer to win a foil gold medal. Aged 18 years and 29 days, he beat teammate Pietro Speciale and Richard Verderber of Austria for the individual gold with seven straight victories in the final pool.\n\n\n=== World War I ===\nNadi served in the Italian Army during World War I and was decorated for bravery.\n\n\n=== 1920 Olympic Games ===\nNadi resumed his competitive career after World War I was over. Defeated central European countries and the Soviet Union did not attend the Antwerp games. This meant that Hungary, one of the strongest fencing nations, would be absent. Nadi therefore decided to expand his chances for gold and entered all three fencing disciplines in the team events, as well as the individual foil and sabre.\nNedo Nadi's 1920 Olympic performances were acclaimed as near to perfection as a fencer could execute. Nadi won the individual foil gold medal with a record 10 wins in the final pool.\nNadi's entry in the team épée event annoyed his father, who regarded the épée as \"a crude and undisciplined weapon”. Unlike the foil, where a fencer could only score off a hit which landed on the trunk of the opponent's body, or the sabre where the upper torso and face mask count as scoring hits, in épée any part of the body is a legitimate hit. Nevertheless, Nedo Nadi led the Italian épée team, which included his brother Aldo, to the Olympic gold medal.\nNadi's perfect balance, timing and rapid reflexes were an advantage in any style of fencing, so without much difficulty he won the individual sabre gold medal by 11 victories to 9. His brother Aldo won the silver medal. In the team sabre event, the Italian team supported their star fencer and cruised to an easy victory.\nNadi, carried in triumph by his opponents, added three team victories to his tally of two individual golds and his younger brother Aldo won three team gold and one silver to make the family total a record for any sport in one Olympic Games.\n\n\n=== Later life ===\nAfter his Antwerp Olympic victories Nadi turned professional and took up coaching at the Buenos Aires Jockey Club. He returned to Rome some years later and was reinstated as an amateur. In 1932 he retired from actively fencing. From 1935 to his death in January 1940 he served as president of the Italian Fencing Federation.  Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini called upon Nadi to coach the Italian fencing team to be entered in the 1936 Summer Olympics, a challenge Nadi accepted. His teams performed well, dominating the games, with Italian fencers sweeping gold, silver, and bronze in the individual épée competitions and easily claiming the team épée gold; collecting the individual gold and bronze and team gold in foil; and the individual and team silver medals in sabre. He died in 1940 in Portofino.\nThe Nadisee of Munich, a small bathing lake that was built in the Olympic Village for the 1972 Summer Olympics, is named after him.\n\n\n== See also ==\nLegends of Italian sport - Walk of Fame\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists at a single Games\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nItaly national fencing team – Multiple medallist\nNadisee\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nNedo Nadi at the Comitato Olimpico Nazionale Italiano (in Italian)\nNedo Nadi at Olympics.com"}
{"title": "Nellie Kim", "requested": "Nellie Kim", "extract": "Nellie Vladimirovna Kim (Russian: Нелли Владимировна Ким, also transliterated Nelli, born 29 July 1957) is a retired Soviet and Belarusian gymnast of Sakhalin Korean and Tatar descent who won three gold medals and a silver medal at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, and two gold medals at the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow. She was the second woman in Olympic history to earn a perfect 10 score and the first woman to score it on the vault and on the floor exercise, rivaling Nadia Comăneci, Ludmilla Tourischeva, and other strong competitors of the 1970s.\nKim worked for a long time as a coach, training several national teams, and judged many major international competitions. As president of the Women's Artistic Gymnastics Technical Committee, she coordinated the introduction of new rules in women's gymnastics, as provided by the new Code of Points, developed by the FIG in 2004–2005 and in effect since 2006. Her gymnastic appearances are remembered for \"her strong feminine, temperamental and charismatic appeal\".\n\n\n== Early life ==\nNellie Kim was born in Shurab, Tajik SSR, Soviet Union. She is the daughter of a Sakhalin Korean father, Vladimir Kim, and a Tatar mother, Alfiya Safina. Later the family moved to Kazakh SSR, where her father worked in the Chimkent slate factory. At age 9, she entered Chimkent City Children and Youth Sports School 3 of the Spartak Sports Society. Two other children in the family, her younger brother Alexander and her sister Irina, also entered a gymnastics school and trained for some time. Alexander was harassed by his classmates in the secondary school for his small stature and retired from gymnastics in favor of boxing. Irina, whom Nellie considered more talented than she, retired because of the demands of the frequent training sessions.\nKim's trainers were Vladimir Baidin and his wife, Galina Barkova. Initially, she did not have the required flexibility of many of her fellow gymnasts, but was soon able to compensate with superior technique and the difficulty of her exercises. Kim excelled and quickly became one of the best in Soviet gymnastics.\nOne of Kim's earliest successes was her victory in the republican Spartak's competition, held in Chimkent in 1969. Nevertheless, a year later she was said to \"have no future\" by celebrated gymnast Larisa Latynina. After that verdict, Kim was close to leaving gymnastics but persevered with support from Baidin. At the 1971 Junior USSR Championships, her first national competition, she placed fifth in the all-around. Success in the national junior circuit, as well as senior national and international debuts, followed two years later. Kim won the all-around title and two more gold medals at the All-Union Youth Sports Games, placed eighth in the all-around and first on the uneven bars at the USSR Cup; she also won the prestigious Chunichi Cup in Japan. After a second-place finish at the USSR Cup in August 1974, Kim was added to the team roster for the World Championships, held in October, where she earned the gold medal in the team competition. Afterwards, and until 1980, she successfully competed in numerous top-level international events.\nKim's nickname among USSR teammates and team coaches was \"Kimanellie,\" which she earned when a trainer Vladislav Rastorotsky called her very quickly: \"Kim, Nellie, to the phone!\"\n\n\n== Olympics and World Championships ==\n\nNellie Kim became one of the main medal prospects for the upcoming Olympics and actual leader of the Soviet team after the 1975 Canadian Pre-Olympics Test competition. At the Test she placed second in the all-around to Nadia Comăneci, but won three golds in the event finals (vault, balance beam, floor exercise), while Comăneci won the remaining one on bars. Larisa Latynina, who had already changed her opinion about Kim earlier, described her gymnastics style as sparkling and cheerful. She also cited a comment by Canadian newspapers about Kim's performance: \"There are moments, when a natural smile is more worth, than triumph\". However, although Kim also won the 1976 USSR Cup, beating famous compatriots such as Olga Korbut and Ludmilla Tourischeva, they were still considered leaders by the media. Even the Coach Council of the Soviet team failed to define her as the leader. That was to prove a mistake, as later recognized by Soviet experts.\nAt the 1976 Summer Olympics, the rivalry between Nellie Kim and Nadia Comăneci became the focal point of the women's gymnastics competition. Kim's teammates Ludmilla Tourischeva and Olga Korbut, the Olympic champions of Munich, were overcome by the two rising stars in the battle for the gold. Kim won three gold medals, one in the team competition and two in the event finals: on the vault and floor exercise. Music for her floor routine, choreographed by Valentina Kosolapova, was a fiery Samba, and one of the elements was the double back salto, performed for the first time in Olympic women's events. Kim also won a silver medal in the all-around, receiving the perfect 10 for the Tsukahara vault with the full twist, which was also performed for the first time in Olympic history. She was praised for her feminine beauty and the flamboyant, graceful and intense style. Comaneci won the gold in the all-around, on bars and balance beam. Nellie's weak performance on the beam together with a lower preliminary score, led her to place second in the all-around, after Nadia.\nAfter the 1976 Summer Olympics, Kim moved to the Byelorussian SSR (joining the Armed Forces sports society in Minsk) and represented her new club on the USSR team. Two years later Kim successfully competed at the World Championships. She won gold medals on the vault, floor exercise and in the team competition, and placed second in the all-around to Elena Mukhina, overcoming Nadia Comăneci. The greatest success came at the 1979 World Championships, where Kim became the all-around champion, beating Maxi Gnauck, Melita Ruhn and her teammate Maria Filatova. Her floor exercise routine, choreographed by Galina Savarina, was accompanied by a new piece of music, \"The House of the Rising Sun\" by Santa Esmeralda, which would also be used one year later at the Olympics.\nIn 1980, Kim won the all-around title at the USSR Championships and successfully competed in the Moscow Olympics, her last competitive performance. She tied for the gold medal on the floor with Nadia Comăneci after scoring 9.95 in that event finals, and won gold in the team competition. As of the 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo, she and Larisa Latynina are the only female gymnasts to defend their Olympic gold medal in the floor exercise event. After the Moscow Olympics, Kim appeared with a roster of other top-class gymnasts at Wembley Arena in January 1981 for a popular exhibition of gymnastic performances on floor and apparatus.\n\n\n== Later life ==\nAfter her competitive career ended, Nellie Kim worked as a coach and a judge. She coached the South Korean, Italian and Belarus national teams. In 1984, Kim became an International Brevet Judge and judged numerous international competitions, including European Championships, World Championships and Olympic Games. On one occasion, her judging license was suspended by the FIG for a time, after the 1990 World Cup, due to allegations of cheating and fixing scores. After her suspension ended, she was judging again at the Barcelona Games. Since 1993, she has served as President of the Judging Committee in Artistic Gymnastics of the Republic of Belarus.\nKim's first marriage was to fellow gymnast Vladimir Achasov, but the marriage did not last. She met her second husband, Soviet cyclist Valery Movchan, at the 1980 Olympics, in which he had also won a gold medal. Together they had a daughter (also named Nellie), born in the mid-1980s.\nIn 1996, Kim was elected to the Women's Artistic Gymnastics Technical Committee of the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG), and moved to Saint Paul, Minnesota soon afterwards.\nIn 1999, Kim was inducted into the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame.\nAt the FIG Congress of 22 October 2004 in Antalya, Kim was elected President of the Women's Artistic Gymnastics Technical Committee. She helped draft the 2006 changes to the Code of Points, ending the use of the perfect 10 and introducing uncapped scoring for gymnasts. Some of the main causes for the changes were judging scandals at the 2004 Summer Olympics involving Alexei Nemov and other gymnasts. FIG officials, including Kim and Bruno Grandi, believed one of the ways to prevent such scandals in the future, and make clean execution and artistry the main priorities, was a radical overhaul of the old Code.\nThe move was controversial among fans and athletes alike. Kim and other FIG officials pointed out that the changes were undertaken with the help and advice of FIG member federations and many judges, as had all previous codes. They also highlighted that the system would be tested on major international events before final adoption.\nIn a 2005 interview, Kim said that unlike her WAG TC President predecessor, Jackie K. Fie, she did not receive any salary from the federation of the country, represented by her in the FIG. And that she works for the FIG on the basis of pure enthusiasm.\nIn 2013, Kim was accused by Russian coaches of favoring American gymnasts, a view she vehemently refuted and criticized.\nKim was the subject of a half-hour National Film Board of Canada documentary Nelli Kim, co-directed by Georges Dufaux and Pierre Bernier, which was filmed at the 1976 Summer Games and released in 1978.\nAfter the collapse of the Soviet Union, she took Belarusian citizenship. The pop singer Nelly Furtado was named after her.\n\n\n== Eponymous skills ==\nKim has a total of seven eponymous skills in the Code of Points.\n\n\n== Competition history ==\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of top Olympic gymnastics medalists\nList of top medalists at the World Artistic Gymnastics Championships\nList of Olympic female gymnasts for the Soviet Union\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nNellie Kim at World Gymnastics\nNellie Kim at the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame\nNellie Kim at Olympics.com\nNellie Kim at Olympedia\nNellie Kim at InterSportStats\nOfficial website (archived 2011)\nA short biography at Gymnast.ru (in Russian)\nA signed photo and list of competitive results\nMontreal 1976 Official Olympic Film - Part 3 | Olympic History - The Olympic Channel\nOnline documentary film on Kim at the NFB.ca\nNelli Kim at IMDb"}
{"title": "Niccolò Campriani", "requested": "Niccolò Campriani", "extract": "Niccolò Campriani (born November 6, 1987) is an Italian sport shooter and shooting coach. He competed at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing in the men's 10 metre air rifle, men's small-bore rifle, three positions, 50 metres and men's small-bore rifle, prone, 50 metres, and at the 2012 Summer Olympics in the men's 10 metre air rifle, winning silver, and in the men's 50 metre rifle three positions, where he won gold with a total of 1278.5 points.\n\n\n== Biography ==\nAfter participating in the 2008 Summer Olympics, achieving his best result in 12th place in the 10 meter rifle, he won the gold medal at Euro 2009. On July 31, 2010, he won the gold medal at the World Shooting Championships in the 10 meter rifle, qualifying for the 2012 Summer Olympics. This made him the first Italian to become a world champion in shooting. On July 29, 2012, he won the silver medal at the Olympics in the 10 m rifle final. On August 6, 2012, he won a gold medal at the Olympics in the 50 m three position rifle final. He was also the first Italian in the history of shooting to win an individual world title. In the same competition he also won a bronze medal in the team in the same discipline. In 2011 he earned a bronze medal at the European championships. In the 2016 Summer Olympics, Niccolò won the gold medal in the 10 metre air rifle event on 8 August 2016, and, on 14 August 2016, he won his third olympics gold medal in the 50 metre rifle three positions event.\nIn 2018, Campriani was appointed as the shooting coach of the Italian national biathlon team.\n\n\n== See also ==\nItaly national shooting team\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nNiccolo Campriani at the International Shooting Sport Federation \nNiccolo Campriani at the Baku 2015 European Games (archived)\nNiccolò Campriani at Olympics.com \nNiccolò Campriani at Olympedia \nNiccolò Campriani at the Comitato Olimpico Nazionale Italiano (in Italian)"}
{"title": "Nicole Uphoff", "requested": "Nicole Uphoff", "extract": "Nicole Uphoff (born 25 January 1967) is a German equestrian who competes in the sport of dressage. She won four gold medals in individual and team competition at the 1988 and 1992 Summer Olympics. Riding her star horse, Rembrandt, Uphoff also won numerous other international competitions, including the World Equestrian Games and the European Dressage Championships.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nUphoff married international show jumper Otto Becker in the early 1990s, but the pair separated in late 2007 and later divorced. In January 2004, Uphoff gave birth to her first child, a son named Patrick. Long-time boyfriend Travis Morgan was the baby's father.\n\n\n== Competitive career ==\nIn 1985, Uphoff, riding Rembrandt, began to compete at events for young riders, and in 1986, the pair began working with Uwe Schulten-Baumer, a well-known dressage coach. In 1987, they began to compete, and win, at the international level. They rose to the top of the dressage world with unheard-of speed, due to Rembrandt's elegance and expression in the ring. Their rise to fame resulted in a 1988 Olympic nomination. Uphoff switched trainers four months before the Games began, leaving Schulten-Baumer to work with Harry Boldt, the German national coach.\nRembrandt and Uphoff were Olympic Champions twice, in 1988 in Seoul and 1992 in Barcelona. Both times they took both individual gold and a gold medal with the German team. The Barcelona games resulted in Rembrandt being titled a \"living work of art\" by one German sports commentator. During the last two years of his career, Rembrandt began to decline slightly, and he missed the team nomination to the 1996 Summer Olympics. Uphoff used her right as defending champion to compete as an individual, and they were again part of the German delegation in Atlanta, where they placed 14th. This placement was despite being pulled from competition before the last round, due to an injury, at which point they were in 8th place. Uphoff and Rembrandt also took both individual and team gold at the first World Equestrian Games in 1990. In 1993, he was injured by a kick from another horse during a victory lap at the German Championships, but recovered from the blow to take individual silver at the 1994 World Equestrian Games. The German team, including Uphoff, again took gold.\nUphoff and Rembrandt also competed at many other international-level events. In 1989, Rembrandt made his European Dressage Championships debut at Mondorf, Luxembourg, where they took both individual and team gold. It was the first time that the gold medal-winning German team (which had also won the previous 12 team golds) had been made up of four female riders. In 1991, at the Championships in Donaueschingen, Germany, the pair took silver in the Grand Prix Special, while again riding to gold as part of the German team. The silver medal was the first defeat in three years for the pair, and was dealt by another Schulten-Baumer student, Isabell Werth on Gigolo FRH. At the 1995 Championships, held in Mondorf, Luxembourg, Uphoff again assisted the German team to a gold medal, while taking 5th individually. The pair also won seven times at the Stuttgart German Masters international show, the last in 1995. This was a record number of wins until 2010, when Werth won for an eighth time, and Uphoff remains the only rider to have won seven masters titles on a single horse (Werth rode three different horses to her eight victories).\nIn 1996, Uphoff and Rembrandt gave a farewell show at his official retirement at the Stuttgart Indoor Show. Rembrandt spent the rest of his life at Uphoff's farm. On 30 October 2001, he was euthanized after his health deteriorated quickly and he was unable to rise. Rembrandt's transitions, particularly from passage to extended trot back to passage, have been called \"unequalled\". He was also known for his spookiness, however, to the point that crowds hushed themselves when he was performing. He is known as a \"legendary\" dressage horse, and mounted upon Rembrandt, Nicole Uphoff pioneered an era of female-dominated dressage competitions. In 2009, Uphoff donated Rembrandt's saddle to the equestrian museum at CHIO Aachen in Germany.\nAfter the 1996 Olympics and Rembrandt's retirement, Uphoff faded from the dressage world for several years, unable to find a mount that could win in international competition. However, in early 1998, she began riding Borbet Rubinstein and soon returned to international prominence, winning the 1999 CDI Frankfurt. She also began training several of Rubinstein's offspring. In 1999, she appeared on German television, giving dressage commentary, and was named the German Sportswoman of the Year. There was speculation that she may make a bid for the 2000 Olympic team. She did not compete in the 2000 Olympics, and by early 2013, she had officially retired from competition.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nNicole Uphoff at FEI\nNicole Uphoff at FEI (alternative link)\nNicole Uphoff at Olympics.com\nNicole Uphoff at Olympedia"}
{"title": "Nikolai Andrianov", "requested": "Nikolai Andrianov", "extract": "Nikolai Yefimovich Andrianov (Russian: Никола́й Ефи́мович Андриа́нов; 14 October 1952 – 21 March 2011) was a Soviet and Russian gymnast.\nHe held the record for men for the most Olympic medals at 15 (7 gold medals, 5 silver medals, 3 bronze medals) until Michael Phelps surpassed him at the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics. Andrianov is the third athlete (male or female) in cumulative Olympic medals after Phelps's 28 and Larisa Latynina's 18. Andrianov won the most medals at the 1976 Summer Olympics with 6 individual medals and one team medal. Within the sport of Men's Artistic Gymnastics, he also holds the men's record for most individual Olympic medals (12) and shares the male record for most individual Olympic gold medals in gymnastics (6) with Boris Shakhlin and Dmitry Bilozerchev (the latter of which only if you count the 1984 Alternate Olympics). In many other rankings among all-time medal winners at the Olympic, World, and European levels, he ranks very high (for example, he is second only to Vitaly Scherbo in total individual medal counts at either the gold level or any level at the combined Olympic and World levels as well as at the combined Olympic, World, and European levels), easily making him one of the most decorated gymnasts of all time. He ranks as the fourth-most decorated Olympian of all time.\n\n\n== Early life and Olympic career ==\nAndrianov and his four sisters were raised by a single mother who frequently worked double shifts at a chemical plant to provide for them. He recalled himself as a poorly behaved child who began to smoke early and frequently skipped school, and he credited gymnastics, and in particular his coach, Nikolai Tolkachov, with improving his character.\nHe entered the Children and Youth Sports School of the Burevestnik sports society in Vladimir at age 11. His first international success came in 1971 at the European Championships in Madrid, where he won two gold medals. Between 1971 and 1980 he won many international gymnastics competitions, including the Olympic Games, world championships and European championships.\nAndrianov's first Olympic medal was a gold in the 1972 floor competition. He dominated the 1976 gymnastics competition, winning four golds, including the all-around, two silvers, and a bronze. These medals included golds in the floor exercises, rings, and vault, as well as a prized gold in the 1976 all-around. His record of four gymnastic golds at a single games stood until Vitaly Scherbo won six other medals in 1992.\nAndrianov took the Olympic Oath for athletes at the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow. In the gymnastics competition, he won two more golds, two silvers, and a bronze. Andrianov's golds in that Olympics were in the vault and team competition, his silvers were in the all-around and floor exercises, and his bronze medal was in the horizontal bar. He retired shortly after that year's Olympics.\n\n\n== Later life ==\nAndrianov married another famous Soviet gymnast, two-time Olympic champion Lyubov Burda. Together they worked as children's gymnastics coaches, with Andrianov being the head coach of the Soviet national men's junior team in 1981–1992. In 1990–1992 he also coached the Soviet senior gymnastics team, and in 1990–1993 headed the Soviet and later the Russian Gymnastics Federation.\nIn 2001, Andrianov was inducted into the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame.[1] Between 1994 and 2002 he coached the Japan Olympic gymnastics team, on the invitation of his former rival, Mitsuo Tsukahara. Andrianov coached Tsukahara's son, Naoya Tsukahara, and both father and son credit him with raising Naoya's skills and confidence to equip him to compete at the international level. In 2002 he became the director of gymnastics at the N.G. Tolkachyov Specialized Children and Youth sports school in Vladimir, where he first began the sport as a youth.\n\n\n== Illness and death ==\nIn his final years, Andrianov developed the degenerative neurological disorder multiple system atrophy and in his final months was unable to move his arms or legs or talk. Andrianov died on 21 March 2011 at the age of 58, in his hometown of Vladimir. Russia's national gymnastic team coach, Alexander Alexandrov, called the death \"tragic\", but stated that he had been ill for a long time.\n\n\n== Competitive history ==\n\n\n== Honours and awards ==\nOrder of Lenin\nOrder of the Badge of Honour\nOrder of the Red Banner of Labour\nMedal \"For Labour Valour\"\nLenin Komsomol Prize\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic medalists\nList of multiple Summer Olympic medalists\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Olympic medalists at a single Games\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists at a single Games\nList of Olympic medal leaders in men's gymnastics\n\n\n== References ==\n\nThis article contains information from the website http://www.gymnast.ru/, incorporated into the Wikipedia with permission from its author E. V. Avsenev.\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nNikolai Andrianov at World Gymnastics \nNikolai Andrianov at the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame \nNikolai Andrianov at Olympics.com \nNikolai Andrianov at Olympedia \nInternational Federation of Gymnastics' Article on Nikolai Andrianov\nA short biography and achievements\nBiography (in Russian)\nIOC 1980 Summer Olympics\nIOC 1980 Summer Olympics\nObituary Nikolai Andrianov (in Spanish)"}
{"title": "Nikolay Zimyatov", "requested": "Nikolay Zimyatov", "extract": "Nikolay Semyonovich Zimyatov (Russian: Николай Семёнович Зимятов; born 28 June 1955), is a Soviet and Russian cross-country skier. He was the first man in the sport to win three gold medals at a single Winter Olympics, in the 30 km, 50 km and 4 × 10 km relay at the 1980 Lake Placid Games. In the 50 km race he finished two and half minutes ahead of the second place. He also won the 30 km event at the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo and was awarded Order of Friendship of Peoples that year.\nAt the world championships Zimyatov won only one medal, a silver over 30 km in 1978. Nationally he collected four Soviet titles: in the 30 km and 4 × 10 km relay in 1978, and in the 15 and 30 km in 1979. After retiring from competitions he had a long career as a cross-country skiing coach and prepared the Russian team for the 2002 Olympics. In 1980 he married a fellow international skier Lyubov Sykova.\n\n\n== Cross-country skiing results ==\nAll results are sourced from the International Ski Federation (FIS).\n\n\n=== Olympic Games ===\n5 medals – (4 gold, 1 silver)\n\n\n=== World Championships ===\n1 medal – (1 silver)\n\n\n=== World Cup ===\n\n\n==== Season standings ====\n\n\n==== Individual podiums ====\n2 victories\n2 podiums\n\n\n==== Team podiums ====\n1 podium\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nNikolaj Zimjatov at the International Ski and Snowboard Federation\n(in Russian) Biography and photos"}
{"title": "Ole Einar Bjørndalen", "requested": "Ole Einar Bjørndalen", "extract": "Ole Einar Bjørndalen (Norwegian pronunciation: [ˈûːɽə ˈæ̂ɪnɑr ˈbjø̂ːɳˌɖɑːɫn̩]; born 27 January 1974) is a retired Norwegian professional biathlete and coach, often referred to by the nickname, the \"King of Biathlon\". With 14 Winter Olympic Games medals, he is second on the list of multiple medalists behind Marit Bjørgen who has won 15 medals. He is also the most successful biathlete of all time at the Biathlon World Championships, having won 45 medals. With 95 World Cup wins, Bjørndalen is ranked first all-time for career victories on the Biathlon World Cup tour. He has won the Overall World Cup title six times, in 1997–98, in 2002–03, in 2004–05, in 2005–06, in 2007–08 and in 2008–09.\nIn 1992, he won his first career medal at the junior world championships. A year later in 1993, after winning three junior world championship titles, a medal haul only previously achieved by Sergei Tchepikov, Bjørndalen made his Biathlon World Cup debut. His breakthrough came in 1994 when he featured on his first World Cup podium in a sprint race held in Bad Gastein, Austria. Bjørndalen first competed in the Olympic Games at the Lillehammer 1994 Winter Olympics, held in his home country of Norway. He obtained his first major victory on 11 January 1996 in an individual competition held in Antholz-Anterselva, Italy. On 20 February 2014, Bjørndalen was elected to an eight-year term at the International Olympic Committee's athlete commission. He resigned from this role in 2016 as he elected to continue his career.\n\n\n== Career ==\n\nAt the age of 16 Bjørndalen left home to pursue his sporting career at a sports academy in Geilo, where he initially trained in both cross-country skiing and biathlon, although after one year there he decided to focus on the latter.\nIn 1993, at the age of 19, Bjørndalen first came into focus by winning 3 out of 4 possible gold medals at the Junior Biathlon World Championships, which among other things led to him being chosen to represent Norway in the 1994 Olympics, at the cost of highly merited biathlete Eirik Kvalfoss. At those Games Bjørndalen's best finish was a 28th position in the sprint.\nHe has won the World Cup six times (1997–98, 2002–03, 2004–05, 2005–06, 2007–08, and 2008–09), finished second six times (1996–97, 1998–99, 1999–2000, 2000–01, 2003–04, and 2006–07), and third once (2001–02). In his first season (1992–93) he finished 62nd, the season after, 30th and the season after that, fourth. In the 1995–96 season, he dropped down to ninth, but finished in the runner-up position in 1996–97. When winning the overall world cup in 1998, at the age of 24, he won titles at each of the three major championships in biathlon in one season – a world championship gold medal, an Olympic gold medal and the overall World Cup title. He finished second in the overall World Cup for the following three seasons and then third in 2001–02.\nHis World Cup podium record is 179 podium finishes, 95 1st places, 53 2nd places, and 31 3rd places in the individual events. Bjørndalen has 1 World Cup victory in the team event. In relay Bjørndalen has won 37 races, he has also 21 2nd places and 14 3rd.places. In total he has 72 podium finishes in the world cup, relay event. Bjørndalen has 259 World cup podium finishes, individual, team and relay races combined in Biathlon, and 5 podium finishes in cross-country skiing World cup. In total Ole Einar Bjørndalen has 257 World cup podium finishes. When he took his 87th World Cup race victory in February 2009, he overtook Ingemar Stenmark as the skier with the most World Cup wins in history.\nBjørndalen has won the Sprint world cup nine times in the seasons: 1994–1995, 1996–1997, 1997–1998, 1999–2000, 2000–01, 2002–03, 2004–05, 2007–08 and 2008–09. Ole Einar Bjoerndalen also came 2nd in the Sprint world cup in the seasons: 2003–04 and 2005–06. Ole Einar has won Pursuit world cup five times from 1999 to 1900, 2002–03, 2005–06, 2007–08 and 2008–09. He has 2nd place in the seasons 2000–01, 2003–04, 2004–05, 2006–07 and 3rd places in 1996–97, 1998–99 and 2001–02. Bjoerndalen has been winner of the Mass start world cup five times in: 2002–03, 2004–05, 2005–06, 2006–07 and 2007–08. He came 2nd in 2000–01, 2003–04 and 2008–09.\nOle Einar Bjoerndalen was number 3 in the Mass start world cup in the season 1998–99. He has also once won the Individual distance world cup. It was in 2004–05. Bjoerndalen has also finished number 2 in the 1998–99, 2000–01, 2001–02 and 2005–06 seasons.\nOle Einar also came 3rd in the 1997–98 season. He has won a total of 20 times, 13 times finished in second place and five times came in 3rd place. Overall, he has been on the podium 38 times.\nBjørndalen has won the relay world cup 11 times in the seasons: 1997–98, 1999–00, 2000–01, 2001–02, 2003–04, 2004–05, 2007–08, 2009–10, 2010–11, 2015–16 and 2017–18. He has 6 times finished second in the world cup relay in: 1996–97, 2006–07, 2008–09, 2011–12, 2012–13 and 2014–15.\nBjoerndalen also came in third place in 1998–99 and 2002–03. Altogether he has been on the podium 19 seasons in the world cup relay. Bjørndalen has won the mixed relay world cup 4 times. It happened in the seasons: 2012–13, 2013–14, 2014–15 and 2015–16.\nBjørndalen has won (together with the Norwegian biathlon team) the nations cup ten times. It happened in the: 1998–99, 2002–03, 2003–04, 2004–05, 2007–08, 2008–09, 2010–11, 2013–14, 2014–15 and 2015–16 season. Bjørndalen has also achieved five-second places in the nations cup in the years: 1999–00, 2000–01, 2001–02, 2005–06 and 2012–13. He has finished in third place in the nations cup 3 times, in the: 1996–97, 1997–98 and 2006–07 season. In total he has finished 18 times at the podium in the nations cup for men.\nHe is the only biathlete ever to win all biathlon events in a single Winter Olympics (2002 Salt Lake City Games). This encompassed the sprint, pursuit, individual, and relay events, the latter together with three other participants. He was the most successful competitor at these Games. This also made him only the third Winter Olympian to win four golds at one Games, and he was also the first biathlete to win more than two gold medals at a single Games. In addition, he had won all three competitions staged at the Olympic test event in Salt Lake City the previous year. He also took a four gold medal haul at the Biathlon World Championships 2005 in Hochfilzen, Austria and at the Biathlon World Championships 2009 in Pyeongchang, South Korea. Bjørndalen's 95 biathlon World Cup victories and one cross-country victory is two behind of Gunda Niemann-Stirnemann's record of 98 World Cup victories for a winter sport athlete.\nAt the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Bjørndalen took three medals from five events, winning two silvers and a bronze. At the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics, Bjørndalen became the most successful biathlete in Winter Olympic history by surpassing the previous record of nine career Olympic medals, which he shared with Uschi Disl of Germany. He then anchored Norway to gold in the 4 × 7.5 km relay. This was the second time that Norway had won a title in this event, with the other being at the 2002 Winter Olympics (also anchored by Bjørndalen). With this victory he became the second most decorated Winter Olympian of all time and one of only two athletes to win 11 medals at the Winter Olympics. With his gold medal in 10 km sprint at the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics, he tied fellow Norwegian Bjørn Dæhlie for most Winter Olympic medals, with 12 in total, before overtaking Dæhlie by winning his second gold of the Games as part of the Norwegian mixed relay team.\n\nBjørndalen has won eight Olympic gold medals, four silver and a bronze. He has also won 20 World Championship gold medals, 14 silver and 11 bronze (more than anybody in biathlon history), along with a record 95 World Cup victories in biathlon and 1 World Cup victory in cross-country skiing, 179 podium finishes in biathlon individual races and 3 in cross-country skiing. He also finished in the top three of the Overall World Cup rankings for a record thirteen successive seasons between the 1996–97 and 2008–09 seasons. In total Ole Einar Bjørndalen has won 44 Norwegian Championship gold medals. He has won 30 gold medals in the Norwegian Championship, biathlon, winter event: 20 individual gold medals: individual (4), sprint (6), pursuit (6), mass start (4) and 10 gold medals in relay and the team event: relay (8) and team (2). Bjørndalen has also achieved 14 individual gold medals in the Norwegian Championship, biathlon, summer event: sprint (7) and pursuit (7).\nIn January 2018 Arne Botnan, the sporting director for Norwegian biathlon, announced that Bjørndalen would not be selected for the 2018 Winter Olympics, after he failed to achieve the qualifying standard of a top six finish in a World Cup race before the Norwegian Biathlon Association was due to nominate its Olympic squad on the 15th of that month. However, he did travel to the Games after being accredited as part of the Belarusian Olympic delegation as a coach, in order to support Darya Domracheva. On 3 April 2018 Bjørndalen announced his retirement from competition, explaining that his form had been affected by heart murmurs several times during the previous season.\nIn September 2019, Bjørndalen and Domracheva were appointed as head coach and women's coach respectively of the Chinese biathlon team.\n\n\n=== 2005–06 World Cup season ===\n\nBjørndalen finished the 2005–06 International Biathlon Union World Cup season in first place, with Frenchman Raphaël Poirée in second place and German Sven Fischer in third. Bjørndalen lay in third place in the standings going into the last three races of the season in Holmenkollen, with Poirée in first, and Fischer in second. However, Bjørndalen won all three races, giving him six victories in the last eight races, and clinching the crystal globe. He also won the pursuit, and the mass start title, and came second in the individual and the sprint. In the pursuit he finished ahead of Fischer by 54 points, and 29 points ahead of Poirée in the mass start. In the individual he finished 41 points behind Michael Greis, and in the sprint he was 5 points behind Tomasz Sikora. Norway finished fourth in the relay.\nBjørndalen closed out the season by winning all three events (sprint, pursuit, and mass start) at the Holmenkollen ski festival biathlon competition. This put his career victories at the ski events to five, having won once both in 2003 (pursuit) and in 2004 (sprint).\n\n\n=== 2006–07 World Cup season ===\n\nBjørndalen made a perfect start to the season, winning all of the first five races in Östersund and Hochfilzen.  In the fifth race of the season, the pursuit race in Hochfilzen, he won with one of his largest margins ever, more than 2 minutes.  On 30 December 2006 Bjørndalen took part in the Biathlon World Team Challenge in Gelsenkirchen in the Veltins Arena. In front of about 51,000 people he won it for fourth time in a row. His partner for second consecutive time was Linda Grubben. They both left their rivals, the Robert family, more than one minute behind.\nIn Oberhof, coming down from training in the heights, Bjørndalen performed below standard for the season, and finishing only 30th and 5th in the individual competitions.\nIn Ruhpolding he led his teammates to victory in the relay event. He won the two following individual competitions.  After competing in the FIS Nordic World Ski Championships Sapporo 2007, he missed several Biathlon World Cup events; after missing eight competitions altogether Bjørndalen finished second in the overall standings, after German Michael Greis.\n\n\n=== 2008–09 World Cup season ===\n\nBjørndalen started off the season suffering from the effects of long-term illness, but still placed second in both of the pursuit events. He missed the Biathlon World Team Challenge in Gelsenkirchen, focusing on training instead. After the break, he returned with victories in both the sprint and pursuit events in Ruhpolding and a third place in the mass start in Oberhof.\nAt the Biathlon World Championships 2009 in Pyeongchang, during the men's 12.5 km pursuit, Bjørndalen with at least 15 other competitors accidentally skied the wrong way at the start of the first lap due to the bad marking. Just after leaving the start, the athletes skied over a bridge instead of skiing beside it, which was the right way. A jury meeting decided to give all these athletes a one-minute time penalty, following a complaint from the Russian team. However, another complaint by seven other member states led to the Appeal Jury reverting to the original result. Along with Bjørndalen's first ever 20 km individual World Championship title, he won four out of six possible gold medals (10 km sprint, 12.5 km pursuit, 20 km individual and the 4 × 7.5 km relay).\nAfter the World Championships Bjørndalen came second in the sprint in Vancouver, he took over the world cup overall lead. He followed up with a second place, and two victories at the events in Granåsen, Trondheim (the latter being a mass start where he shot clean).  He secured his sixth overall win in the last sprint of the season, in Khanty-Mansiysk where he placed second. In the following event (a pursuit), he was beaten at the finish line by teammate Emil Hegle Svendsen, but won the pursuit cup.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nBjørndalen grew up on a farm in Simostranda, the fourth of five children: one of his siblings is fellow biathlete Dag Bjørndalen. Both brothers were part of the Norwegian team that took the silver medal in the men's relay at the 1998 Winter Olympics.\nBjørndalen resides in the village of Obertilliach, Austria. He also used to live in Toblach, Italy, with Italian-Belgian biathlete Nathalie Santer. They started dating in 1998 and married on 27 May 2006. On 4 October 2012, they filed for divorce by mutual consent.\nIn April 2016, along with announcing that he would continue his career until the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, Bjørndalen confirmed that he was in a relationship with Belarusian biathlete Darya Domracheva, and that she was pregnant with the couple's first child. On 7 July 2016, they married in Sjusjøen, Norway. Their daughter Xenia was born on 1 October 2016. They welcomed a second daughter in 2023.\nOn 3 April 2018 Bjørndalen announced his retirement from biathlon. Bjørndalen ended his Olympic career after being left off Norway's 2018 team for PyeongChang, thus ending a bid for a seventh Winter Games.\n\n\n== Endorsement ==\nAlongside his career Bjørndalen also has a number of endorsement partnertships. He has been Certina's loyal ambassador since 2011, InstaForex brand ambassador since 2015. Among sports equipment brands that he promotes are Madshus, Odlo, and Casco.\n\n\n== Awards and honors ==\nOle Einar Bjørndalen won the Aftenposten Gold Medal in 1998. He was named the Norwegian Sportsperson of the Year in 2002 and 2014. For his accomplishments in biathlon and cross-country skiing, Bjørndalen received the Egebergs Ærespris in 2002. Bjørndalen was also awarded with the Fearnleys olympic honorary award in 2002. He was voted Best Male Athlete of 2002 by International Sports Press Association. Ole Einar Bjørndalen was nominated for Laureus World Sportsman of the Year in 2003. He came second, only lost to Lance Armstrong that year, who was later rescinded. In 2008, a nearly three meter tall bronze statue of Bjørndalen, created by sculptor Kirsten Kokkin, was erected in his hometown of Simostranda, Norway. Bjørndalen was awarded the Fair Play Mecenante Award in Castiglion in Fiorentino in Italy in 2009. Bjørndalen was elected Biathlon Athlete of the Year by AIPS Nordic Ski and Biathlon Commission in 2002, 2003, 2005 and 2009. In March 2011, he, Michael Greis and Andrea Henkel were awarded the Holmenkollen Medal, the first biathletes to receive the medal. In February 2014, Bjørndalen was voted Best Male Athlete of the 2014 Winter Olympics by International Sports Press Association. In November 2014, Bjørndalen was awarded Best Male Athlete of the 2014 Winter Olympics by the Association des Comités Nationaux Olympiques.\n\n\n== Cross-country skiing ==\nBjørndalen first participated in the FIS Cross-Country World Cup in Finland in the 10 kilometre freestyle event in a small town called Muonio in November 1998, finishing 23rd. His first podium place in the FIS Cross-Country World Cup came in Kuopio 25 November 2001, where he finished in 2nd place in the 10 km freestyle event. One month later he once again came in 2nd place, this time losing out to Per Elofsson in the 30 km freestyle mass-start event in Ramsau, Austria.\nOn 18 November 2006 Bjørndalen made history by becoming the first male biathlete to win a FIS Cross-Country World Cup event in the Swedish town Gällivare. Bjørndalen won the 15 km freestyle event. In 2007 his countryman, and fellow biathlete Lars Berger won the 15 km cross-country event at the World Championship in 2007.\nBjørndalen has twice finished on the podium in cross-country world cup relays for Norway: first in Beitostølen in 2003, where his team finished third, and secondly in La Clusaz in France in 2006, where Norway came in 2nd place. In total Bjørndalen has been on the podium 5 times in the Cross-Country World Cup.\nIn addition, Bjørndalen has won FIS events in cross-country twice. His first win was in 1997 in the 30 kilometre freestyle event in Valdres, Norway, and the second was in the 10 km freestyle event in Beitostølen, Norway in 2006. He has also two 2nd places in a FIS-event: in the 15 km freestyle event in Misurina, Italy in 1998 and in the 10 km freestyle event at Beitostølen in 2004. In addition to this, Bjørndalen has one third place in a FIS event, in the 10 km freestyle at Beitostølen in 2001. Following his two Cross-Country World Cup podium finishes in the 2001–02 season, ahead of the 2002 Winter Olympics he stated that he was hoping to become the first competitor to take Olympic medals in both biathlon and cross-country skiing, however Bjørndalen missed out on a cross-country medal, finishing 5th in the 30 km freestyle cross-country race in Salt Lake City on 9 February 2002. He won Skarverennet in 2006 and 2007, and came in 2nd after Petter Northug in 2008.\n\n\n== Other victories ==\nOle Einar Bjørndalen won the Beach Volleyball Championship at Laguna Beach in 2001. Bjørndalen has won the World Team Challenge biathlon exhibition event in Gelsenkirchen (held at the Veltins-Arena, the home ground of football club Schalke 04) in 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006. He also won a bronze together with his wife Darya Domracheva in 2018 Ole Einar Bjørndalen finished second in the 2003 Dobbiaco-Cortina, a long-distance cross-country skiing event, (42 km) in Italy in the town of Cortina. He took his second place in the 26th edition of this prestigious event, finishing behind Italy's Costantin Pierluigi, and finishing half a second behind Pierluigi's winning time of 1 hour 43 minutes and 16.5 seconds. In 2008, Bjørndalen won the biathlon exhibition event in Püttlingen together with Kati Wilhelm. He also finished in second place in 2011 alongside Magdalena Neuner. Bjørndalen also got a bronze in this event in 2005 together with Nathalie Santer and in 2010 with Sabrina Buchholz. He won the Blink Festival in Sandnes in 2008. In April 2016, Bjørndalen and Karin Oberhofer won the Champions Race in Tyumen, Russia.\n\n\n== Biathlon results ==\n\nAll results are sourced from the International Biathlon Union.\n\n\n=== Olympic Winter Games ===\n14 medals (8 gold, 4 silver, 2 bronze)\n\n*Pursuit was first added in 2002, mass start in 2006 and the mixed relay in 2014.\n\n\n=== World Championships ===\n45 medals (20 gold, 14 silver, 11 bronze)\n\n*Team was removed as an event in 1998, and pursuit was added in 1997 with mass start being added in 1999 and the mixed relay was added in 2005.\n\n\n=== Overall record ===\n\n*Results in all IBU World Cup races.\n\n\n=== Junior/Youth World Championships ===\n\n\n=== World Cup ===\n\n*Pursuit was added as an event in the 1996–97 season, and mass start was added in the 1998–99 season.\n\n\n=== Individual victories ===\n95 victories (36 Sp, 37 Pu, 8 In, 14 MS); one victory at Winter Olympics 2014 isn't counted as a World Cup victory. \n\n*Results are from UIPMB and IBU races which include the Biathlon World Cup, Biathlon World Championships and the Winter Olympic Games.\n\n\n==== Victories by year ====\n\n\n== Shooting ==\nBjørndalen is a solid shooter, but is generally outside the top twenty marksmen. Bjørndalen finished the 2005–06 season with a shooting percentage of 84%, hitting 292 out of 345 possible targets, that placed him in 36th position for shooting accuracy. His shooting record for both prone and standing were practically identical, 146/172 in the prone and 146/173 in the standing position. In the individual disciplines, he shot 92% in the individual, 89% in the sprint, 96% in the pursuit, 93% in the mass start and 96% in the relay.\nIn the 2004–05 season Bjørndalen was the 16th best shot with an 85% success rate, the second best Norwegian behind Egil Gjelland. He hit 331 targets out of a possible 364. His prone like most biathletes was much better than his standing shoot, he hit 169/180 (92%) in the prone and 163/184 (81%) in the standing. He had an average of 88% in the individual, sprint and relay, a 91% hit rate in the mass start but only 79% in the pursuit. During his career in 1999–00 he averaged 82%, in 2000–01 78%, 2001–02 74%, 2002–03 86% and in 2003–04 he hit 80% of the targets, however in those five years his standing shoot was the same or better than his prone shoot. In comparison, his greatest rival Raphaël Poirée averaged 87% in 2004–05 and 86% in 2005–06. Nikolay Kruglov was the best shot in 2004–05 with a 91% success rate, with Ricco Groß in second with 89%, and in 2005 Julien Robert was best with a 93% average and Groß again second with 91%.\n\n\n=== Shooting statistics ===\nStatistics sourced from the International Biathlon Union.\n\nand\n\n\n== Cross-country skiing results ==\nAll results are sourced from the International Ski Federation (FIS).\n\n\n=== Olympic Games ===\n\n\n=== World Championships ===\n\n\n=== World Cup ===\n\n\n==== Season standings ====\n\n\n==== Individual podiums ====\n1 victory – (1 WC)\n3 podiums – (3 WC)\n\n\n==== Team podiums ====\n3 podiums – (3 RL)\n\n\n== Equipment ==\nBjørndalen uses Madshus skis, boots and poles.\nHe uses Rottefella NNN bindings.\nHis gloves and base layer are from Odlo, and he uses Casco glasses.\nDuring the off-season in 2006 Bjørndalen was testing a new ski boot that had a high heel in the Torsby ski tunnel with boot manufacturers Madshus. The theory is that it forces the knee more forward for better position and it incorporates the large gluteal muscles.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Winter Olympic medalists\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists at a single Games\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n=== General ===\nAll placings and results are sourced by the International Biathlon Union's searchable results database: \"IBU Datacenter\". International Biathlon Union. Archived from the original on 1 March 2011.\n\"Biathlon World Cup results\". International Biathlon Union. Archived from the original on 18 January 2018. Retrieved 21 February 2014. – searchable database of all World Cup race results\n\"International Biathlon Union event results\". International Biathlon Union. Archived from the original on 18 January 2018. Retrieved 21 February 2014. – searchable database of all IBU races\n\n\n=== Specific ===\n\n\n== External links ==\n Media related to Ole Einar Bjørndalen at Wikimedia Commons\n\nOle Einar Bjoerndalen at IBU BiathlonWorld.comOle Einar Bjoerndalen at IBU BiathlonResults.com\nOle Einar Bjoerndalen at the International Ski and Snowboard Federation\nOle Einar Bjørndalen at Olympics.com\nOle Einar Bjørndalen at Olympedia"}
{"title": "Ole Lilloe-Olsen", "requested": "Ole Lilloe-Olsen", "extract": "Ole Andreas Lilloe-Olsen (27 April 1883 – 29 April 1940) was a Norwegian rifle shooter who competed in the early 20th century in rifle shooting. With his five gold medals and one silver medal, he is the Norwegian athlete with the most medals at the Summer Olympics. He participated in shooting at the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp and won the gold medal in 100 m running deer, double shots and team 100 m running deer, single shots and team 100 m running deer, double shots. At the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris, he defended the Olympic titles in 100 m running deer, double shots and team 100 m running deer, single shots and the silver medal in team 100 m running deer, double shots.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nOle Lilloe-Olsen at Olympics.com\nOle Lilloe-Olsen at the International Shooting Sport Federation\nInformation page about Lilloe-Olsen w/photo (in Norwegian)"}
{"title": "Olga Korbut", "requested": "Olga Korbut", "extract": "Olga Valentinovna Korbut (born 16 May 1955) is a Belarusian retired gymnast who competed for the Soviet Union. Nicknamed the \"Sparrow from Minsk,\" she won four gold medals and two silver medals at the Summer Olympic Games, in which she competed in 1972 and 1976 for the Soviet team, and was the inaugural inductee to the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame in 1988.\nKorbut retired from gymnastics in 1977 at the age of 22, considered young for gymnasts of the period, but her influence and legacy in gymnastics were far-reaching. Korbut's 1972 Olympic performances are widely credited as redefining gymnastics, changing the sport from emphasising ballet and elegance to acrobatics, as well as changing gymnastics from a niche sport to one of the most popular sports in the world. She emigrated to the United States in 1991, where she now lives and trains gymnasts. She became a citizen in 2000.\n\n\n== Early life ==\nKorbut was born in Grodno to Valentin and Valentina Korbut. After World War II, the family moved to Grodno from Dubniaki (a small town near Kalinkavichy). She started training at age 8, and entered a Belarusian sports school headed by coach Renald Knysh at age 9. There, Korbut's first trainer was Elena Volchetskaya, an Olympic gold medalist (1964), but she was moved to Knysh's group a year later. Initially he found her \"lazy and capricious\" but he also saw potential in her great talent, unusually supple spine, and charisma. With him, she learned a difficult backward somersault on the balance beam. She debuted this at a competition in the USSR in 1969. The same year, Korbut completed a backflip-to-catch on the uneven bars; this was the first backward release move ever performed by a woman on bars.\nShe finished fifth at her first competition in the 1969 USSR championships, where she was allowed to compete as a 14-year-old. The next year, she won a gold medal in the vault. Due to illness and injury, she was unable to compete in many of the competitions before the 1972 Summer Olympics.\n\n\n== Olympics ==\n\nAt the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Korbut's acrobatics and open high-level gymnastics brought her much fame. During the Olympics, Korbut was one of the favorites for the all-around after her dynamic performance in the team competition; however, she missed her mount on bars three times, and the title went to teammate Ludmilla Tourischeva. \nShe went on to win three gold medals for the balance beam, floor exercise, and team competitions. Korbut's first attempt at her uneven bars routine was marred by several mistakes, which all but ended her chances of winning a gold medal in the all-around. The next day, Korbut repeated the same routine in the event finals, although this time successfully. After the boards displayed a score of 9.8, the audience began to whistle and shout vulgar remarks at the judges in disapproval, believing her score to be too low. This carried on for several minutes, but the judges refused to change their score, and she finished with the silver medal. Later, Korbut said she considered it an example of unfair judging she had been subject to.\n\nKorbut is most famous for her uneven bars and balance beam routines, as well as her charismatic performances that captivated audiences. In 1973, she won the Russian and World Student (i.e., University) Games, and a silver medal in the all-around at the European Championships.\nAt the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, Soviet coaches and officials had designated Korbut as the woman who could beat the Romanian prodigy, Nadia Comăneci, but Korbut was injured and her performances in the games were sub-par. She was overshadowed not only by Comăneci, but also by her own teammate Nellie Kim. She did collect a team gold medal, and an individual silver medal for the balance beam.\n\n\n== Retirement and life after the Olympics ==\nKorbut graduated from the Grodno Pedagogical Institute in 1977, became a teacher, and retired from gymnastic competition. She married Leonid Bortkevich, a member of Belarusian folk band Pesniary. The couple had a son, Richard, born in 1979. In 1988, Korbut became the first gymnast inducted into the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame.\nIn 1991, she and her family immigrated to the United States, prompted by concerns about the aftereffects   of the Chernobyl disaster on Belarus. They settled in New Jersey, where she taught gymnastics. Two years later, the family moved to the U.S. state of Georgia, where she continued to coach. Korbut and Bortkevich divorced in 2000, the same year she became a naturalized U.S. citizen. In 2002, she moved to Scottsdale, Arizona, to become head coach at Scottsdale Gymnastics and Cheerleading. Korbut was also featured on an episode of Celebrity Boxing, which aired on May 22, 2002, with her opponent, Darva Conger, winning by unanimous decision. Since then, Korbut has worked with private gymnastics students and done motivational speaking.\nDuring the 2012 Summer Olympics, in London, Korbut appeared on Twitter and Facebook, providing live, on-site commentary on the gymnastics competitions in the North Greenwich Arena.  During the games, the Royal Opera House hosted an exhibition created in collaboration with the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland, entitled The Olympic Journey, The Story of the Games. Along with historical artifacts, the show featured the personal narratives of 16 Olympic medalists, including Korbut. Her appearance at the exhibition on August 3 of that year marked the 40th anniversary of her Olympic victories. \"I didn't even expect this,\" she said. \"I am so honored to be here.\"\nIn 2017, Korbut sold her 1972 and 1976 Olympic medals, among 32 lots (including two golds and a silver from the Munich Olympics), which fetched $333,500 at Heritage Auctions.\nIn 1999, she spoke out about the sexual assault and rape she had suffered at the hands of her coach, Renald Knysh, which he denied. \"The truth was that many of the gymnasts were not just sport machines, but sexual slaves to the trainer,\" Korbut stated. \"We were not just potential gymnasts, but future concubines for himself.\" Later, in 2018, Korbut appeared on a TV show, in which she again spoke out about several incidents of sexual assault by her coach. As a result of her speaking out publicly, several other gymnasts, who had also trained under Knysh, came forward to reveal their own similar experiences of sexual assault.\nIn 2021, Korbut was named by Carnegie Corporation of New York as an honoree of the Great Immigrants Award.\n\n\n== Legacy ==\n\nKorbut is best known for one of her eponymous moves, the Korbut flip, a backflip performed on the uneven parallel bars, starting from a standing position on the high bar and then catching the same bar from below on the under swing. Named after Korbut since she was the first to perform the skill at an international competition in 1972, the move has since been made illegal in the Code of Points, as standing on the bars is no longer allowed.\nAfter the 1972 Olympic competition, she also met United States President Richard Nixon at the White House. About the meeting, Korbut said: \"He told me that my performance in Munich did more for reducing the political tension during the Cold War between our two countries than the embassies were able to do in five years.\" In addition to greatly publicizing gymnastics worldwide, she also contributed to a marked change in the tenor of the sport itself. Prior to 1972, the athletes were generally older and the focus was on elegance rather than acrobatics. In the decade after Korbut's Olympic debut, the emphasis was reversed. Korbut, in her 1972, gold-medal Olympics, at 4 ft 11 in (1.50 m) and 82 pounds (37 kg), exemplified the deliberate and purposeful trend toward smaller women in the sport.\nHer 1972 Olympic achievement earned her the BBC Overseas Sports Personality of the Year and  ABC's Wide World of Sports title of Athlete of the Year. In a UK poll conducted by Channel 4 in 2002 the public voted \"Olga Korbut charms the world\" No.46 in the list of the 100 Greatest Sporting Moments.\nWith her display of artistry and grace, Korbut, along with Nadia Comăneci, brought unprecedented popularity to the sport in the early to mid-1970s, attributes which are now seen as a lost art in gymnastics with athleticism taking precedence.\n\n\n=== Eponymous skills ===\nKorbut has one eponymous vault listed in the Code of Points. She also performed the Korbut flip on both the uneven bars and the balance beam. The uneven bars version was removed from the Code of Points after standing on top of the high bar was banned. The balance beam version is not officially listed under her name due to the low difficulty value.\n\n\n=== In popular culture ===\nIn a Peanuts comic strip published on 15 May 1973, the character Snoopy is seen doing balance beam positions with flawless precision on top of his doghouse for three panels until coming to a rest in the fourth one saying: \"Olga Korbut has been bugging me for lessons!\"\nIn X-Men #99 (June 1976), Nightcrawler makes a slight reference to Korbut's gymnastic skills in comparison to his own, and Colossus, a fellow Soviet, admonishes him for it.\n\n\n== Competitive history ==\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of people from Belarus\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists at a single Games\nList of top Olympic gymnastics medalists\nList of Olympic female gymnasts for the Soviet Union\n\n\n== Notes ==\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== Further reading ==\nKorbut, Olga; Ellen Emerson-White (1992). My Story: The Autobiography of Olga Korbut. Random House. ISBN 978-0-7126-5495-1.\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nOlga Korbut at World Gymnastics \nOlga Korbut at the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame \nOlga Korbut at Olympics.com \nOlga Korbut at Olympedia \nOlga Korbut at the National Olympic Committee of the Republic of Belarus\nOlga Korbut at Biography.com at the Wayback Machine (archived 15 March 2018)\nIncredible Performance From Olga Korbut 'Darling Of Munich' – Munich 1972 Olympics – The Olympic Channel\nGymnast Olga Korbut charms the World – Faster, Higher, Stronger – BBC Two – BBC"}
{"title": "Otto Olsen (sport shooter)", "requested": "Otto Olsen (sport shooter)", "extract": "Otto Martin Olsen (13 December 1884 – 12 July 1953) was a Norwegian rifle shooter who competed in the early 20th century. He won eight Olympic medals, including four gold medals. He became the third shooter to win two Olympic individual gold medals and is one of five athletes to have done so at one Olympics.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Summer Olympic medalists\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nOtto Olsen at Olympics.com\nOtto Olsen at InterSportStats \nOtto Olsen at the International Shooting Sport Federation"}
{"title": "Paavo Nurmi", "requested": "Paavo Nurmi", "extract": "Paavo Johannes Nurmi (Finnish pronunciation: [ˈpɑːʋo ˈnurmi] ; 13 June 1897 – 2 October 1973) was a Finnish middle-distance and long-distance runner. He was called the \"Flying Finn\" because he dominated distance running in the 1920s. Nurmi set 22 official world records at distances between 1,500 metres and 20 kilometres, and won nine gold and three silver medals in his 12 events in the Summer Olympic Games. At his peak, Nurmi was undefeated for 121 races at distances from 800 m upwards. Throughout his 14-year career, he remained unbeaten in cross country events and the 10,000 metres.\nBorn into a working-class family, Nurmi left school at the age of 12 to provide for his family. In 1912, he was inspired by the Olympic feats of Hannes Kolehmainen and began developing a strict training program. Nurmi started to flourish during his military service, setting Finnish records in athletics en route to his international debut at the 1920 Summer Olympics. After winning a silver medal in the 5,000 m, he won gold in the 10,000 m and the cross country events. In 1923, Nurmi became the first runner to hold simultaneous world records in the mile, the 5,000 m and the 10,000 m races, a feat which has never been repeated. He set new world records for the 1,500 m and the 5,000 m with just an hour between the races, and took gold medals in both distances in less than two hours at the 1924 Summer Olympics. Seemingly unaffected by the Paris heat wave, Nurmi won all his races and returned home with five gold medals, although he was frustrated that Finnish officials had refused to enter him for the 10,000 m.\nStruggling with injuries and motivation issues after his exhaustive U.S. tour in 1925, Nurmi found his long-time rivals compatriot Ville Ritola and Sweden's Edvin Wide ever more serious challengers. At the 1928 Summer Olympics, Nurmi recaptured the 10,000 m title but was beaten for the gold in the 5,000 m and the 3,000 m steeplechase. He then turned his attention to longer distances, breaking the world records for events such as the one hour run and the 25-mile marathon. Nurmi intended to end his career with a marathon gold medal, as his idol Kolehmainen had done. In a controversial case that strained Finland–Sweden relations and sparked an inter-IAAF battle, Nurmi was suspended before the 1932 Games by an IAAF council that questioned his amateur status; two days before the opening ceremonies, the council rejected his entries. Although he was never declared a professional, Nurmi's suspension became definite in 1934 and he retired from running.\nNurmi later coached Finnish runners, raised funds for Finland during the Winter War, and worked as a haberdasher, building contractor and in the financial sector, becoming one of the richest people in Finland. In 1952, he was the lighter of the Olympic Flame at the Summer Olympics in Helsinki. Nurmi's running speed and elusive personality spawned nicknames such as the \"Phantom Finn\", while his achievements, training methods and running style influenced future generations of middle- and long-distance runners. Nurmi, who rarely ran without a stopwatch in his hand, has been credited with introducing the \"even pace\" strategy and analytic approach to running, and for making running a major international sport.\n\n\n== Early life ==\n\nNurmi was born in Turku, Finland, to carpenter Johan Fredrik Nurmi and his wife Matilda Wilhelmiina Laine. Nurmi's siblings, Siiri, Saara, Martti and Lahja, were born in 1898, 1902, 1905 and 1908, respectively. In 1903, the Nurmi family moved from Raunistula into a 40-square-meter apartment in central Turku, where Paavo Nurmi would live until 1932. The young Nurmi and his friends were inspired by the English long-distance runner Alfred Shrubb. They regularly ran or walked six kilometres (four miles) to swim in Ruissalo, and back, sometimes twice a day. By the age of eleven, Nurmi ran the 1500 metres in 5:02. Nurmi's father Johan died in 1910 and his sister Lahja a year later. The family struggled financially, renting out their kitchen to another family and living in a single room. Nurmi, a talented student, left school to work as an errand boy for a bakery. Although he stopped running actively, he got plenty of exercise pushing heavy carts up the steep slopes in Turku. He later credited these climbs for strengthening his back and leg muscles.\nAt 15, Nurmi rekindled his interest in athletics after being inspired by the performances of Hannes Kolehmainen, who was said to \"have run Finland onto the map of the world\" at the 1912 Summer Olympics. He bought his first pair of sneakers a few days later. Nurmi trained primarily by doing cross country running in the summers and cross country skiing in the winters. In 1914, Nurmi joined the sports club Turun Urheiluliitto and won his first race on the 3000 metres. Two years later, he revised his training program to include walking, sprints and calisthenics. He continued to provide for his family through his new job at the Ab. H. Ahlberg & Co workshop in Turku, where he worked until he started his military service at a machine gun company in the Pori Brigade in April 1919. During the Finnish Civil War in 1918, Nurmi remained politically passive and concentrated on his work and his Olympic ambitions. After the war, he decided not to join the newly founded Finnish Workers' Sports Federation, but wrote articles for the federation's chief organ and criticized the discrimination against many of his fellow workers and athletes.\n\nIn the army, Nurmi quickly impressed in the athletic competitions: While others marched, Nurmi ran the whole distances with a rifle on his shoulder and a backpack full of sand. Nurmi's stubbornness caused him difficulties with his non-commissioned officers, but he was favoured by the superior officers, despite his refusal to take the military oath even at the threat of a court-martial. As the unit commander Hugo Österman was a known sports aficionado, Nurmi and a few other athletes were given free time to practice. Nurmi improvised new training methods in the army barracks; he ran behind trains, holding on to the rear bumper, to stretch his stride, and used heavy iron-clad army boots to strengthen his legs. Nurmi soon began setting personal bests and got close for the Olympic selection. In March 1920, he was promoted to corporal (alikersantti). On 29 May 1920, he set his first national record in 3,000 m and went on to win the 1,500 m and the 5,000 m at the Olympic trials in July.\n\n\n== Olympic career ==\n\n\n=== 1920–1924 Olympics ===\n\nNurmi made his international debut in August at the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp, Belgium. He took his first medal by finishing second to Frenchman Joseph Guillemot in the 5000 m. This would remain the only time that Nurmi lost to a non-Finnish runner in the Olympics. He went on to win gold medals in his other three events: the 10,000 m, sprinting past Guillemot on the final curve and improving his personal best by over a minute, the cross country race, beating Sweden's Eric Backman, and the cross country team event where he helped Heikki Liimatainen and Teodor Koskenniemi defeat the British and Swedish teams. Nurmi's success brought electric lighting and running water for his family in Turku. Nurmi, however, was given a scholarship to study at the Teollisuuskoulu industrial school in Helsinki.\nBuoyed by his defeat to Guillemot, Nurmi's races became a series of experiments which he analyzed meticulously. Previously known for his blistering pace on the first few laps, Nurmi started to carry a stopwatch and spread his efforts more uniformly over the distance. He aimed to perfect his technique and tactics to a point where the performances of his rivals would be rendered meaningless. Nurmi set his first world record on the 10,000 m in Stockholm in 1921. In 1922, he broke the world records for the 2000 m, the 3000 m and the 5000 m. A year later, Nurmi added the records for the 1500 m and the mile. His feat of holding the world records for the mile, the 5000 m and the 10,000 m at the same time has not been matched by any other athlete before or since. Nurmi also tested his speed in the 800 m, winning the 1923 Finnish Championships with a new national record. After excelling in mathematics, Nurmi graduated as an engineer in 1923 and returned home to prepare for the upcoming Olympic Games.\nNurmi's trip to the 1924 Summer Olympics was endangered by a knee injury in the spring of 1924, but he recovered and resumed training twice a day. On 19 June, Nurmi tried out the 1924 Olympic schedule at the Eläintarha Stadium in Helsinki by running the 1500 m and the 5000 m inside an hour, setting new world records for both distances. In the 1500 m final at the Olympics in Paris, Nurmi ran the first 800 m almost three seconds faster. His only challenger, Ray Watson of the United States, gave up before the last lap and Nurmi was able to slow down and coast to victory ahead of Willy Schärer, H. B. Stallard and Douglas Lowe, still breaking the Olympic record by three seconds. The 5000 m final started in less than two hours, and Nurmi faced a tough challenge from countryman Ville Ritola, who had already won the 3000 m steeplechase and the 10,000 m. Ritola and Edvin Wide figured that Nurmi must be tired and tried to burn him off by running at world-record pace. Realizing that he was now racing the two men and not the clock, Nurmi tossed his stopwatch onto the grass. The Finns later passed the Swede as his pace faded and continued their duel. On the home straight, Ritola sprinted from the outside but Nurmi increased his pace to keep his rival a metre behind.\nIn the cross country events, the heat of 45 °C (113 °F), caused all but 15 of the 38 competitors to abandon the race. Eight finishers were taken away on stretchers. One athlete began to run in tiny circles after reaching the stadium, until setting off into the stands and knocking himself unconscious. Early leader Wide was among those who blacked out along the course, and was incorrectly reported to have died at the hospital. Nurmi exhibited only slight signs of exhaustion after beating Ritola to the win by nearly a minute and a half. As Finland looked to have lost the team medal, the disoriented Liimatainen staggered into the stadium, but was barely moving forward. An athlete ahead of him fainted 50 metres from the finish, and Liimatainen stopped and tried to find his way off the track, thinking he had reached the finish line. After having ignored shouts and kept the spectators in suspense for a while, he turned into the right direction, realised his situation and reached the finish in 12th place and secured team gold. Those present at the stadium were shocked by what they had witnessed, and Olympic officials decided to ban cross country running from future Games.\nIn the 3000 m team race on the next day, Nurmi and Ritola again finished first and second, and Elias Katz secured the gold medal for the Finnish team by finishing fifth. Nurmi had won five gold medals in five events, but he left the Games embittered as the Finnish officials had allocated races between their star runners and prevented him from defending his title in the 10,000 m, the distance that was dearest to him. After returning to Finland, Nurmi set a 10,000 m world record that would last for almost 13 years.  As of July 2024, this is the second-longest-standing world record for the men's 10,000 metres.  Kenenia Bekele's world record set in August 2005 in Brussels stood for over 15 years.  Nurmi now held the 1500 metres, the mile, the 3,000 metres, the 5,000 metres and the 10,000 metres world records simultaneously.\n\n\n=== U.S. tour and 1928 Olympics ===\n\nIn early 1925, Nurmi embarked on a widely publicised tour of the United States. He competed in 55 events (45 indoors) during a five-month period, starting at a sold-out Madison Square Garden on 6 January. His debut was a copy of his feats in Helsinki and Paris. Nurmi defeated Joie Ray and Lloyd Hahn to win the mile and Ritola to win the 5000 m, again setting new world records for both distances. Nurmi broke ten more indoor world records in regular events and set several new best times for rarer distances. He won 51 of the events, abandoned one race and lost two handicap races along with his final event; a half-mile race at the Yankee Stadium, where he finished second to American track star Alan Helffrich. Helffrich's victory ended Nurmi's 121-race, four-year win streak in individual scratch races at distances from 800 m upwards. Although he hated losing more than anything, Nurmi was the first to congratulate Helffrich. The tour made Nurmi extremely popular in the United States, and the Finn agreed to meet President Calvin Coolidge at the White House. Nurmi left America fearing that he had competed too often and burned himself out.\nNurmi struggled to maintain motivation for running, heightened by his rheumatism and Achilles tendon problems. He quit his job as a machinery draughtsman in 1926 and began studying business intensively. As Nurmi started a new career as a share dealer, his financial advisors included Risto Ryti, director of the Bank of Finland. In 1926, Nurmi broke Wide's world record for the 3000 m in Berlin and then improved the record in Stockholm, despite Nils Eklöf repeatedly trying to slow his pace down in an effort to aid Wide. Nurmi was furious at the Swedes and vowed never to race Eklöf again. In October 1926, he lost a 1500 m race along with his world record to Germany's Otto Peltzer. This marked the first time in over five years and 133 races that Nurmi had been defeated at a distance over 1000 m. In 1927, Finnish officials barred him from international competition for refusing to run against Eklöf at the Finland-Sweden international, cancelling the Peltzer rematch scheduled for Vienna. Nurmi ended his season and threatened, until late November, to withdraw from the 1928 Summer Olympics. At the 1928 Olympic trials, Nurmi was left third in the 1500 m by eventual gold and bronze medalists Harri Larva and Eino Purje, and he decided to concentrate on the longer distances. He added steeplechase to his program, although he had only tried the event twice before, the latest being a two-mile steeplechase victory at the 1922 British Championships.\nAt the 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam, Nurmi competed in three events. He won the 10,000 m by staying right behind Ritola until sprinting past him on the home straight. Before the 5000 m final, Nurmi injured himself in his qualifying heat for the 3000 m steeplechase. He fell on his back at the water jump, spraining his hip and foot. Lucien Duquesne stopped to help him up, and Nurmi thanked the Frenchman by pacing him past the field and offered him the heat win, which Duquesne gracefully refused. In the 5000 m, Nurmi tried to repeat his move on Ritola but had to watch his teammate pull away instead. Nurmi, looking more exhausted than ever before, only barely managed to keep Wide behind and take silver. Nurmi had little time to rest or nurse his injuries as the 3000 m steeplechase started the next day. Struggling with the hurdles, Nurmi let Finland's steeplechase specialist Toivo Loukola escape into the distance. On the final lap, he sprinted clear of the others and finished nine seconds behind the world-record setting Loukola; Nurmi's time also bettered the previous record. Although Ritola did not finish, Ove Andersen completed a Finnish sweep of the medals.\n\n\n=== Move to longer distances ===\n\nNurmi stated to a Swedish newspaper that \"this is absolutely my last season on the track. I am beginning to get old. I have raced for fifteen years and have had enough of it.\" However, Nurmi continued running, turning his attention to longer distances. In October, he broke the world records for the 15 km, the 10 miles and the one hour run in Berlin. Nurmi's one-hour record stood for 17 years, until Viljo Heino ran 129 metres further in 1945. In January 1929, Nurmi started his second U.S. tour from Brooklyn. He suffered his first-ever defeat in the mile to Ray Conger at the indoor Wanamaker Mile. Nurmi was seven seconds slower than in his world record run in 1925, and it was immediately speculated if the mile had become too short a distance for him. In 1930, he set a new world record for the 20 km. In July 1931, Nurmi showed he still had pace for the shorter distances by beating Lauri Lehtinen, Lauri Virtanen and Volmari Iso-Hollo, and breaking the world record on the now-rare two miles. He was the first runner to complete the distance in less than nine minutes. Nurmi planned to compete only in the 10,000 m and the marathon in the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, stating that he \"won't enter the 5000 metres for Finland has at least three excellent men for that event.\"\nIn April 1932, the executive council of the International Amateur Athletics Federation (IAAF) suspended Nurmi from international athletics events pending an investigation into his amateur status by the Finnish Athletics Federation. The Finnish authorities criticized the IAAF for acting without a hearing, but agreed to launch an investigation. It was customary of the IAAF to accept the final decision of its national branch, and the Associated Press wrote that \"there is little doubt that if the Finnish federation clears Nurmi the international body will accept its decision without question.\" A week later, the Finnish Athletics Federation ruled in favor of Nurmi, finding no evidence for the allegations of professionalism. Nurmi was hopeful that his suspension would be lifted in time for the Games.\n\nOn 26 June 1932 Nurmi started his first marathon at the Olympic trials. Not drinking a drop of liquid, he ran the old-style 'short marathon' of 40.2 km (25.0 mi) in 2:22:03.8 – on the pace to finish in about 2:29:00, just under Albert Michelsen's marathon world record of 2:29:01.8. At the time, he led Armas Toivonen, the eventual Olympic bronze medalist, by six minutes. Nurmi's time was the new unofficial world record for the short marathon. Confident that he had done enough, Nurmi stopped and retired from the race owing to problems with his Achilles tendon. The Finnish Olympic Committee entered Nurmi for both the 10,000 m and the marathon. The Guardian reported that \"some of his trial times were almost unbelievable,\" and Nurmi went on to train at the Olympic Village in Los Angeles despite his injury. Nurmi had set his heart on ending his career with a marathon gold medal, as Kolehmainen had done shortly after the First World War.\n\n\n=== 1932 Olympics and later career ===\nLess than three days before the 10,000 m, a special commission of the IAAF, consisting of the same seven members that had suspended Nurmi, rejected the Finn's entries and barred him from competing in Los Angeles. Sigfrid Edström, the Swedish chairman of the Council of the International Association of Athletics Federations (s.o. the board of directors), pushed independently and without receiving the support of the rules of the International Association of Athletics Federations for a decision to ban Nurmi from participating in the Los Angeles Olympics at the IAAF board meeting without consulting the Finnish Sports Federation (SUL) and Nurmi on 3.4. and 30 July 1932. [The rules for disqualification of an athlete were made only after the Olympics at the Congress (General Assembly) of the International Sports Federation (IAAF), where Edström and Bo Ekelund, secretary of the council, represented Sweden. The report for Nurmi's ban came from Avery Brundage, president of the American Sports Federation.]\nEdström stated that the full congress of the IAAF, which was scheduled to start the next day, could not reinstate Nurmi for the Olympics but merely review the phases and political angles related to the case. The AP called this \"one of the slickest political maneuvers in international athletic history\", and wrote that the Games would now be \"like Hamlet without the celebrated Dane in the cast.\" Thousands protested against the action in Helsinki. Details of the case were not released to the press, but the evidence against Nurmi was believed be the sworn statements from German race promoters that Nurmi had received $250–500 per race when running in Germany in autumn 1931. The statements were produced by Karl Ritter von Halt, after Edström had sent him increasingly threatening letters warning that if evidence against Nurmi were not provided he would be \"unfortunately obliged to take stringent action against the German Athletics Association.\" The IOC did not follow their own rules for disqualification for not being a non-amateur Olympic participant. The rulebook for the 1912 Olympics stated that protests had to be made \"within 30 days from the closing ceremonies of the games.\"\nOn the eve of the marathon, all the entrants of the race except for the Finns, whose positions were known, filed a petition asking Nurmi's entry to be accepted. Edström's right-hand man Bo Ekelund, secretary general of the IAAF and head of the Swedish Athletics Federation, approached the Finnish officials and stated that he might be able to arrange for Nurmi to participate in the marathon outside the competition. However, Finland maintained that as long as the athlete is not declared a professional, he must have the right to participate in the race officially. Although he had been diagnosed with a pulled Achilles tendon two weeks earlier, Nurmi stated he would have won the event by five minutes. The congress concluded without Nurmi being declared a professional, but the council's authority to disbar an athlete was upheld on a 13–12 vote. However, due to the close vote, the matter was postponed until the 1934 meet in Stockholm. Finns charged that the Swedish officials had used devious tricks in their campaign against Nurmi's amateur status, and ceased all athletic relations with Sweden. A year earlier, controversies on the track and in the press had led Finland to withdraw from the Finland-Sweden athletics international. After Nurmi's suspension, Finland did not agree to return to the event until 1939.\nNurmi refused to turn professional, and continued running as an amateur in Finland. In 1933, he ran his first 1500 m in three years and won the national title with his best time since 1926. At the IAAF meet in August 1934, Finland launched two proposals that lost. The council then brought forward its resolution empowering it to suspend athletes that it finds in violation of the IAAF amateur code. With a 12–5 vote, with many not voting, Nurmi's suspension from international amateur athletics became definite. Less than three weeks later, Nurmi retired from running with a 10,000 m victory in Viipuri on 16 September 1934. Nurmi remained undefeated in the distance throughout his 14-year top-level career. In cross country running, his win streak lasted 19 years.\n\n\n== Later life ==\n\nWhile active as a runner, Nurmi was known to be secretive about his training methods. Always running alone, he upped his pace and quickly exhausted anyone who was bold enough to join him. Even his club mate Harri Larva had learned little from him. After ending his career, Nurmi became a coach for the Finnish Athletics Federation and trained runners for the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin. In 1935, Nurmi along with the entire board of directors quit the federation after a heated 40–38 vote to resume athletic relations with Sweden. However, Nurmi returned to coaching three months later and the Finnish distance runners went on to take three gold medals, three silvers and a bronze at the Games. In 1936, Nurmi also opened a men's clothing store (haberdashery) in Helsinki. It became a popular tourist attraction, and Emil Zátopek was among those who visited the store trying to meet Nurmi. The Finn spent his time in the back room, running another new business venture; construction. As a contractor, Nurmi built forty apartment buildings in Helsinki with about a hundred flats in each. Within five years, he was rated a millionaire. His fiercest rival Ritola ended up living in one of Nurmi's flats, at half price. Nurmi also made money on the stock market, eventually becoming one of Finland's richest people.\nIn February 1940, during the Winter War between Finland and the Soviet Union, Nurmi returned to the United States with his protégé Taisto Mäki, who had become the first man to run the 10,000 m under 30 minutes, to raise funds and rally support to the Finnish cause. The relief drive, directed by former president Herbert Hoover, included a coast-to-coast tour by Nurmi and Mäki. Hoover welcomed the two as \"ambassadors of the greatest sporting nation in the world.\" While in San Francisco, Nurmi received news that one of his apprentices, 1936 Olympic champion Gunnar Höckert, had been killed in action. Nurmi left for Finland in late April, and later served in the Continuation War in a delivery company and as a trainer in the military staff. Before he was discharged in January 1942, Nurmi was promoted first to a staff sergeant (ylikersantti) and later to a sergeant first class (vääpeli).\n\nIn 1952, Nurmi was persuaded by Urho Kekkonen, Prime Minister of Finland and former chairman of the Finnish Athletics Federation, to carry the Olympic torch into the Olympic Stadium at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki. His appearance astonished the spectators, and Sports Illustrated wrote that \"his celebrated stride was unmistakable to the crowd. When he came into view, waves of sound began to build throughout the stadium, rising to a roar, then to a thunder. When the national teams, assembled in formation on the infield, saw the flowing figure of Nurmi, they broke ranks like excited schoolchildren, dashing toward the edge of the track.\" After lighting the flame in the Olympic Cauldron, Nurmi passed the torch to his idol Kolehmainen, who lighted the beacon in the tower. In the cancelled 1940 Summer Olympics, Nurmi had been planned to lead a group of fifty Finnish gold medal winners.\nNurmi felt that he got too much credit as an athlete and too little as a businessman, but his interest in running never died. He even returned to the track himself a few times. In 1946, he faced his old rival Edvin Wide in Stockholm in a benefit for the victims of the Greek Civil War. Nurmi ran for the last time on 18 February 1966 at the Madison Square Garden, invited by the New York Athletic Club. In 1962, Nurmi predicted that wealthier countries would start to struggle in the distance events: \"The higher the standard of living in a country, the weaker the results often are in the events which call for work and trouble. I would like to warn this new generation: 'Do not let this comfortable life make you lazy. Do not let the new means of transport kill your instinct for physical exercise. Too many young people get used to driving in a car even for small distances.'\" In 1966, he took the microphone in front of 300 sports club guests and criticised the state of distance running in Finland, reproaching the sports executives as publicity seekers and tourists, and demanding athletes sacrifice everything to accomplish something. Nurmi lived to see the renaissance of Finnish running in the 1970s, led by athletes such as the 1972 Olympic gold medalists Lasse Virén and Pekka Vasala. He had complimented the running style of Virén, and advised Vasala to concentrate on Kipchoge Keino.\n\nAlthough he accepted an invitation from President Lyndon B. Johnson to revisit the White House in 1964, Nurmi lived a very secluded life until the late 1960s when he began granting some press interviews. On his 70th birthday, Nurmi agreed to an interview for Yle, Finland's national public-broadcasting company, only after learning that President Kekkonen would act as the interviewer. Suffering from health problems, with at least one heart attack, a stroke and failing eyesight, Nurmi at times spoke bitterly about sports, calling it a waste of time compared to science and art. He died in 1973 in Helsinki and was given a state funeral. Kekkonen attended the funeral and praised Nurmi: \"People explore the horizons for a successor. But none comes and none will, for his class is extinguished with him.\" At the request of Nurmi, who enjoyed classical music and played the violin, Konsta Jylhä's Vaiennut viulu (The Silenced Violin) was played during the ceremony. Nurmi's last record fell in 1996; his 1925 world record for the indoor 2000 m lasted as the Finnish national record for 71 years.\n\n\n== Personal life and public image ==\n\nNurmi was married to socialite Sylvi Laaksonen (1907–1968) from 1932 to 1935. Laaksonen, who was not interested in athletics, opposed Nurmi raising their newborn son Matti to be a runner and stated to the Associated Press in 1933, \"[H]is concentration on athletics at last forced me to go to the judge for a divorce.\" Matti Nurmi did become a middle-distance runner, and later a \"self-made\" businessman. Nurmi's relationship with his son was termed \"uneasy\". Matti admired his father more as a businessman than as an athlete, and the two never discussed his running career. As a runner, Matti was at his best in the 3000 m, where he equalled his father's time. In the famous race on 11 July 1957 when the \"three Olavis\" (Salsola, Salonen and Vuorisalo) broke the world record for the 1500 m, Matti Nurmi finished a distant ninth with his personal best, 2.2 seconds slower than his father's world record from 1924. Hollywood actress Maila Nurmi, best known as the horror icon \"Vampira\", was often referred to as Paavo Nurmi's niece. However, the kinship is not supported by official documents.\nNurmi enjoyed the Finnish sports massage and sauna-bathing traditions, crediting the Finnish sauna for his performances during the Paris heat wave in 1924. He had a versatile diet, although he had practiced vegetarianism between the ages of 15 and 21. Nurmi, who identified as neurasthenic, was known to be \"taciturn\", \"stony-faced\" and \"stubborn\". He was not believed to have had any close friends, but he had occasionally socialized and showed his \"sarcastic sense of humour\" among the small circles he knew. Acclaimed the biggest sporting figure in the world at his peak, Nurmi was averse to publicity and the media, stating later on his 75th birthday, \"[W]orldly fame and reputation are worth less than a rotten lingonberry.\" French journalist Gabriel Hanot questioned Nurmi's intensive approach to sports and wrote in 1924 that Nurmi \"is ever more serious, reserved, concentrated, pessimistic, fanatic. There is such coldness in him and his self-control is so great that never for a moment does he show his feelings.\" Some contemporary Finns nicknamed him Suuri vaikenija (The Great Silent One), and Ron Clarke noted that Nurmi's persona remained a mystery even to Finnish runners and journalists: \"Even to them, he was never quite real. He was enigmatic, sphinx-like, a god in a cloud. It was as if he was all the time playing a role in a drama.\"\nNurmi was more responsive to his fellow athletes than to the media. He exchanged ideas with sprinter Charley Paddock and even trained with his rival Otto Peltzer. Nurmi told Peltzer to forget his opponents: \"Conquering yourself is the greatest challenge of an athlete.\" Nurmi was known to emphasize the importance of psychological strength: \"Mind is everything; muscle, pieces of rubber. All that I am, I am because of my mind.\" Regarding Nurmi's conduct on track, Peltzer found that \"in his impenetrability he was a Buddha gliding on the track. Stopwatch in hand, lap after lap, he ran towards the tape, subject only to the laws of a mathematical table.\" Marathoner Johnny Kelley, who first met his idol at the 1936 Olympics, said that while Nurmi appeared cold to him at first, the two chatted for quite a while after Nurmi had asked for his name: \"He grabbed ahold of me — he was so excited. I couldn't believe it!\"\nNurmi's speed and elusive personality led to nicknames such as the \"Phantom Finn\", the \"King of Runners\" and \"Peerless Paavo\", while his mathematical prowess and use of a stopwatch led the press to characterize him as a running machine. One newspaperman dubbed Nurmi \"a mechanical Frankenstein created to annihilate time.\" Phil Cousineau noted that \"his own innovation—the tactic of pacing himself with a stopwatch—both inspired and troubled people in an era when the robot was becoming symbolic of the modern soulless human being.\" Among the popular newspaper rumours about Nurmi was that he had a \"freakish heart\" with a very low pulse rate. During the debate over his amateur status, Nurmi was joked to have \"the lowest heartbeat and the highest asking price of any athlete in the world.\"\n\n\n== Legacy ==\n\nNurmi broke 22 official world records on distances between 1500 m and 20 km; a record in running. He also set many more unofficial ones for a total of 58. His indoor world records were all unofficial as the IAAF did not ratify indoor records until the 1980s. Nurmi's record for most Olympic gold medals was matched by gymnast Larisa Latynina in 1964, swimmer Mark Spitz in 1972 and fellow track and field athlete Carl Lewis in 1996, and broken by swimmer Michael Phelps in 2008. Nurmi's record for most medals in the Olympic Games stood until Edoardo Mangiarotti won his 13th medal in fencing in 1960. Time selected Nurmi as the greatest Olympian of all time in 1996, and IAAF named him among the first twelve athletes to be inducted into the IAAF Hall of Fame in 2012.\nNurmi introduced the \"even pace\" strategy to running, pacing himself with a stopwatch and spreading his energy uniformly over the race. He reasoned that \"when you race against time, you don't have to sprint. Others can't hold the pace if it is steady and hard all through to the tape.\" Archie Macpherson stated that \"with the stopwatch always in his hand, he elevated athletics to a new plane of intelligent application of effort and was the harbinger of the modern scientifically prepared athlete.\" Nurmi was considered a pioneer also in regards to training; he developed a systematic all-year-round training program that included both long-distance work and interval running. Peter Lovesey wrote in The Kings of Distance: A Study of Five Great Runners that Nurmi \"accelerated the progress of world records; developed and actually came to personify the analytic approach to running; and he was a profound influence not only in Finland, but throughout the world of athletics. Nurmi, his style, technique and tactics were held to be infallible, and really seemed so, as successive imitators in Finland steadily improved the records.\" Cordner Nelson, founder of Track & Field News, credited Nurmi for popularizing running as a spectator sport: \"His imprint on the track world was greater than any man’s before or after. He, more than any man, raised track to the glory of a major sport in the eyes of international fans, and they honored him as one of the truly great athletes of all sports.\"\nNurmi's achievements and training methods inspired future generations of track stars. Emil Zátopek chanted \"I am Nurmi! I am Nurmi!\" when he trained as a child, and based his training system on what he was able to find out about Nurmi's methods. Lasse Virén idolized Nurmi and was scheduled to meet him for the first time on the day that Nurmi died. Hicham El Guerrouj was inspired to become a runner so that he could \"repeat the achievements of the great man of whom his grandfather spoke.\" He became the first man after Nurmi to win the 1500 m and the 5000 m at the same Games. Nurmi's influence stretched further than running on the Olympic arena. At the 1928 Olympics, Kazimierz Wierzyński won the lyric gold medal with his poem Olympic Laurel that included a verse on Nurmi. In 1936, Ludwig Stubbendorf and his horse Nurmi won the individual and team gold medals in eventing.\n\nA bronze statue of Nurmi was sculpted by Wäinö Aaltonen in 1925. The original is held at the art museum Ateneum, but copies cast from the original mould exist in Turku, in Jyväskylä, in front of the Helsinki Olympic Stadium and at the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland. In a widely publicized prank by students of the Helsinki University of Technology, a miniature copy of the statue was discovered in the 300-year-old wreck of the Swedish war ship Vasa when it was lifted from the bottom of the sea in 1961. Statues of Nurmi were also sculpted by Renée Sintenis in 1926 and by Carl Eldh, whose 1937 work Löpare (Runners) depicts a battle between Nurmi and Edvin Wide. Boken om Nurmi (The Book about Nurmi), released in Sweden in 1925, was the first biographical book on a Finnish sportsman. Finnish astronomer Yrjö Väisälä named the main belt asteroid 1740 Paavo Nurmi after Nurmi in 1939, while Finnair named its first DC-8 Paavo Nurmi in 1969. Nurmi's former rival Ville Ritola boarded the plane when he moved back to Finland in 1970.\nPaavo Nurmi Marathon, held annually since 1969, is the oldest marathon in Wisconsin and the second-oldest in the American Midwest. In Finland, another marathon bearing the name has been held in Nurmi's hometown of Turku since 1992, along with the athletics competition Paavo Nurmi Games that was started in 1957. Finlandia University, an American college with Finnish roots, named their athletic center after Nurmi. A ten-mark bill featuring a portrait of Nurmi was issued by the Bank of Finland in 1987. The other revised bills honored architect Alvar Aalto, composer Jean Sibelius, Enlightenment thinker Anders Chydenius and author Elias Lönnrot, respectively. The Nurmi bill was replaced by a new 20-mark note featuring Väinö Linna in 1993. In 1997, a historic stadium in Turku was renamed the Paavo Nurmi Stadium. Twenty world records have been set at the stadium, including John Landy's records on the 1500 m and the mile, Nurmi's record on the 3000 m and Zátopek's record on the 10,000 m. In fiction, Nurmi appears in William Goldman's 1974 novel Marathon Man as the idol of the protagonist, who aims to become a greater runner than Nurmi. The opera on Nurmi, Paavo the Great. Great Race. Great Dream., written by Paavo Haavikko and composed by Tuomas Kantelinen, debuted at the Helsinki Olympic Stadium in 2000. In a 2005 episode of The Simpsons, Mr. Burns brags that he once outraced Nurmi in his antique motorcar. The NURMI Study, which aims to compare the athletic performance of vegetarian and vegan athletes to those with omnivorous diets, is named in honour of Paavo Nurmi.\n\n\n== Career summary (1920–34) ==\n\n\n=== Seasons ===\n\nThe starts figure excludes heats, handicap races, relays, and events where Nurmi raced alone against relay teams.\n\n\n=== Events ===\nThe starts figure excludes heats, handicap races, relays, and events where Nurmi raced alone against relay teams.\n\n\n=== Olympics ===\n\n\n== World records ==\n\n\n=== IAAF-ratified ===\n\n\n=== Unofficial ===\n\n\n== See also ==\n\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists at a single Games\nList of multiple Olympic medalists\nList of multiple Summer Olympic medalists\nList of multiple Olympic medalists at a single Games\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n=== Bibliography ===\nLovesey, Peter (1968). The Kings of Distance: A Study of Five Great Runners. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-3540002383.\nRaevuori, Antero (1997). Paavo Nurmi, juoksijoiden kuningas (in Finnish) (2nd ed.). WSOY. ISBN 978-9510218501.\nSears, Edward Seldon (2001). Running Through the Ages. McFarland. ISBN 978-0786409716.\n\n\n== External links ==\n Media related to Paavo Nurmi at Wikimedia Commons\n\nPaavo Nurmi at World Athletics \nPaavo Nurmi at Olympics.com \nPaavo Nurmi at Olympedia"}
{"title": "Pat McCormick (diver)", "requested": "Pat McCormick (diver)", "extract": "Patricia Joan Keller McCormick (May 12, 1930 – March 7, 2023) was an American competitive diver who won both diving events at two consecutive Summer Olympics, in 1952 and 1956. She won the James E. Sullivan Award for best amateur athlete in the US in 1956 – the second woman to do so, after Ann Curtis.\nAs a child in the 1930s and 1940s she executed dives that were not allowed in competition for female divers (dives reputed to scare most men) and practiced cannonballs off the Los Alamitos Bridge in Long Beach, California Harbor. She attended Woodrow Wilson Classical High School, Long Beach City College, and California State University, Long Beach.\nAfter the Olympics McCormick did diving tours and was a model for Catalina swimwear.  She served on the Los Angeles 1984 Summer Olympics organizing committee and began a program called \"Pat's Champs\"—a foundation to help motivate kids to dream big and to set practical ways to succeed.\nMcCormick's husband, Glenn, was a diving coach for her, as well as for other Olympic diving medalists. They divorced after 24 years of marriage. He died in 1995.\nThey had two children, Tim, born in 1956, just five months before McCormick won two gold medals at the Melbourne Olympics, and Kelly (born 1960), who won two Olympic medals (silver, bronze) in diving. McCormick once appeared on an episode of To Tell the Truth on February 26, 1957 (she appeared as an imposter) and on an episode of You Bet Your Life  (#58-28, aired April 2, 1959).\nMcCormick died in Orange County, California, on March 7, 2023, at the age of 92.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of members of the International Swimming Hall of Fame\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n Media related to Pat McCormick (diver) at Wikimedia Commons\nPat McCormick at the Team USA Hall of Fame (archive June 5, 2023)\nPat McCormick at Olympedia \nPatricia McCormick at Olympics.com Patricia McCormick at Olympic.org (archived) \nPatricia McCormick at databaseOlympics.com (archived) \nPat McCormick at IMDb"}
{"title": "Paul Elvstrøm", "requested": "Paul Elvstrøm", "extract": "Paul Bert Elvstrøm (25 February 1928 – 7 December 2016) was a Danish yachtsman and the founder of Elvstrøm Sails. He won four Olympic gold medals and thirteen world titles in a range of classes including Snipe, Soling, Star, Flying Dutchman, Finn, 505, and 5.5 Metre. For his achievements, Elvstrøm was chosen as \"Danish Sportsman of the Century.\"\n\n\n== Early life ==\nPaul Elvstrøm was born, north of Copenhagen, in a house overlooking the sound between Denmark and Sweden. His father was a sea captain but died when Elvstrøm was young, and he was brought up by his mother along with a brother and sister. A second brother drowned at the age of 5 when he fell off a seawall near the family home.\nGrowing up along the Øresund, Elvstrøm quickly became consumed by sailing, which began with crewing in a club fleet of small clinker keelboats. He was soon given an Oslo dinghy by a neighbour who realised Elvstrøm's mother was too poor to be able to buy one.\nIn his book Elvstrøm Speaks on Yacht Racing he claimed to be ‘word blind’ and could not read or write when he was at school, which may have been due to dyslexia. It is clear that Elvstrøm considered schooling a distraction from sailing: \"I was very bad in school,\" he said, \"The only interest I had was in sailing fast…The teacher knew that if I was not at school, I was sailing.\"\nAfter leaving school he became a member of the Hellerup Sailing Club, where he gained a reputation as an excellent sailer. He was funding himself during this period as a bricklayer, but in 1954 also started cutting sails for club members in his basement.\n\n\n== Innovation ==\nElvstrøm was noted as a developer of sails and sailing equipment, and later founded Elvstrøm sails. One of his most successful innovations was a new type of self-bailer. The new features were a wedge shaped venturi that closes automatically if the boat grounds or hits an obstruction, and a flap that acts as a non return valve to minimise water coming in if the boat is stationary or moving too slowly for the device to work. Previous automatic bailers would be damaged or destroyed if they met an obstruction, and would let considerable amounts of water in if the boat was moving too slowly.\nThe Elvstrøm self-bailer is still in production under the Andersen brand and has been widely copied; it is still found on Olympic boats, and other grand prix boats at the leading edge of the sport.  In 2016, Dan Ibsen, the executive director of the Royal Danish Yacht Club said, “Today the Elvstrøm Bailer is still the only functional bailer on Olympic dinghies and boats around the world.”\nOther innovations include the Elvstrøm Lifejacket, which was the first specifically designed and produced for active sailors.\nHe also popularised the kicking strap, or boom vang (US). This may take the form of a block and tackle linking a low point on the mast (or an equivalent point on the hull) and the boom close to the mast, which allows the boom to be let out when reaching or running without lifting. This controls the twist of the mainsail from its foot to its head, increasing the sail's power and the boat's speed and controlability. Elvstrøm did not advertise his new invention, leaving his competitors mystified at his superior boat-speed. Investigation of his dinghy revealed nothing as he used to remove the kicking strap before coming ashore.\nAmong the innovative concepts he brought to sailboat racing was the concept of gates instead of a single windward or leeward mark in large regattas. The leeward gate on a windward-leeward course is commonly used. The windward gate is less often used due to the difficulties in managing right-of-way around the right gate, the subtleties of which are understood mostly by match racers. He has also been instrumental in developing several international yacht racing rules.\n\n\n== Training ==\nElvstrøm was a very early innovator in training techniques. For example, he used the technique of 'sitting out' or hiking using toe-straps to a greater degree than previously, getting all his body weight from the knees upwards outside the boat, thus providing extra leverage to enable the boat to remain level in stronger winds and hence go faster than his competitors. This technique required great strength and fitness, and so after the 1948 Olympics, in order to improve his physical conditioning in readiness for the 1952 games, Elvstrøm built a training bench with toe-straps in his garage to replicate the sitting-out position in his dinghy. He then proceeded to spend many training hours on dry land sitting out on the bench at home.\n“He did take sailing to a level that you had to call it a sport,” said Jesper Bank, a principal at Elvstrøm Sails and a two-time Olympic gold medalist for Denmark. “Before Paul, you would see competitors with pipes in their mouths and wearing skippers’ caps. At that time, they certainly thought he was superhuman.”\nAccording to an obituary by the International Finn Association, \"He was a sportsman and the first real sailing athlete. He trained harder and longer than anyone else so that when the day of the race came he was better prepared than anyone else. He was famous for his physical strength and fitness, able to out-hike anyone on the race course.”\n\n\n== Business ==\nIn 1954, Elvstrøm established a manufacturing company, Elvstrøm Sails, whose products included masts, booms, and sails. Displaying a keen marketing mind to go along with his engineering nous, the business grew rapidly and by the 1970s Elvstrøm products were seen on boats all around the world.\nToday, Elvstrøm Sails is among the world's leading sailmakers, employing around 300 worldwide. Elvstrøm founded his business in the family villa just north of Copenhagen. It grew out of its premises multiple times, and today, Elvstrøm Sails is based in Aabenraa in the south of Denmark.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nElvstrøm was married to Anne, who pre-deceased him by three years; together they had four daughters: Pia, Stine, Gitte and Trine.\nElvstrøm continued to sail in his later years until Parkinson's disease began to afflict him. In 2009 he sailed his Dragonfly trimaran — solo — to visit his daughter Gitte and her family on the east coast of Sweden, 600 miles from his home.\nElvstrøm's success and celebrity brought personal stress. At the 1972 Games in Munich, under the pressures of competition and his challenges facing his sail-making business, he suffered a nervous breakdown.\nHe died on 7 December 2016 at the age of 88, after battling Alzheimers for a few years.\n\n\n== Legacy ==\nIn addition to being widely regarded as one of the most successful competitive sailors in history, Elvstrøm was recognized as a model of sportsmanship. He is frequently cited for his philosophy: \"If you, by winning, are losing your friends, you are not winning.\"\n\n\n== Achievements ==\nElvstrøm competed in eight Olympic Games from 1948 to 1988, being one of only nine persons ever (the others are sailor Ben Ainslie, swimmers Michael Phelps and Katie Ledecky, wrestlers Kaori Icho and Mijaín López, speed skater Ireen Wüst and athletes Carl Lewis in the long jump and Al Oerter in the discus) to win four consecutive individual gold medals (1948–60), first time in a Firefly, subsequently in Finns. In his last two Olympic games he sailed the Tornado Catamaran class, which, in those days, was normally sailed by two young men, with his daughter Trine Elvstrøm as forward hand.\nHe is one of only five athletes who have competed in the Olympics over a span of 40 years, along with fencer Ivan Joseph Martin Osiier, sailors Magnus Konow and Durward Knowles and showjumper Ian Millar.\nElvstrøm won medals at the world championships: Finn, 505, Snipe, Flying Dutchman, 5.5 Metre, Star, Soling, Tornado, and Half Ton.\nIn 1996, Elvstrøm was chosen as \"Danish Sportsman of the Century.\"\nIn 2007, Elvstrøm was among the first six inductees into the ISAF Sailing Hall of Fame.\n\n\n== Bibliography ==\nElvstrom, Paul. Expert Dinghy and Keelboat Racing, 1967, Times Books, ISBN 0-8129-0054-5\nElvstrom, Paul. Elvström Speaks on Yacht Racing, 1970, One-Design & Offshore Yachtsman Magazine, ISBN 0-8129-0134-7\nElvstrom, Paul. Elvström Speaks -- to His Sailing Friends on His Life and Racing Career, 1970, Nautical Publishing Company, ISBN 0-245-59851-0\nPaul Elvström Explains the Yacht Racing Rules, First edition 1969, title updated to Paul Elvstrom Explains the Racing Rules of Sailing: 2005–2008 Rules. Updated four-yearly in accordance with racing rules revisions, various authors and publishers. ISBN 0-07-145626-0\n\n\n== See also ==\nElvstrøm 717\nList of athletes with the most appearances at Olympic Games\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists in one event\nMultiple World champion in sailing\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n Media related to Paul Elvstrøm at Wikimedia Commons\n\nPaul Elvstrøm at World Sailing\nPaul Elvström, Sailing's Greatest at Sail-World.com\nPaul Elvstrøm at Olympics.com Paul Elvstrøm at OlympicChannel.com (archived) \nPaul Elvstrøm at Olympedia"}
{"title": "Paul Masson (cyclist)", "requested": "Paul Masson (cyclist)", "extract": "Paul Michel Pierre Adrien Masson (11 October 1876 – 30 November 1944) was a French cyclist who raced at the 1896 Summer Olympics in Athens.\nIn 1895, Masson's application for the French World Championship national team was rejected until later that same year he won two major races, securing his place on the team.\nMasson was 19 when he raced in the 1896 Summer Olympics in three track cycling events, all on the same day, winning every one. In his first event at the Neo Phaliron Velodrome, the 2 km (1.2 mi) 6-lap sprint, there were only three other finishers, German Joseph Rosemeyer having dropped out early on. Masson won the race by two seconds ahead of Stamatios Nikolopoulos of Greece, and fellow Frenchman Léon Flameng. Masson's next race was the 10 km or 30 laps of the track, against five other riders. Both Greek riders collided early on it was left to Masson and his teammate Flameng, and Austrian Adolf Schmal, to battle it out. It went right down to the line with Masson just edging out Flameng. His final race was the time trial which was one lap against the clock. Against seven other riders, Masson finished in 24 seconds, two full seconds faster than Nikolopoulos.\nAfter the Olympics he turned professional and changed his name to Paul Nassom, an anadrome of Masson. Without further major successes, his best finish was a third place in the 1897 World Professional Sprint Championships in Glasgow, Scotland.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nPaul Masson at CycleBase\nPaul Masson at Olympics.com\nPaul Masson at Olympedia\nPaul Masson at InterSportStats\nPaul Masson's profile at the British Olympic Committee"}
{"title": "Paul Radmilovic", "requested": "Paul Radmilovic", "extract": "Paolo Francesco Radmilovic (5 March 1886 – 29 September 1968) was a Welsh water polo player and competitive swimmer. Radmilovic had Croatian and Irish origins. He represented Great Britain at four Summer Olympics. He won four Olympic titles in a 22-year Olympic career.  He won four gold medals across three successive Olympic Games, a record which stood for a Great Britain Olympic athlete until broken by Sir Steve Redgrave when he won his fifth gold medal at Sydney in 2000. In 1928, he became the first person to compete for Britain at five Olympic Games, a record that would remain until surpassed by fencer Bill Hoskyns in 1976.\n\n\n== Early life and family ==\nRadmilovic was born in the Tiger Bay area of Cardiff, Wales, the third son of Antun Radmilović, a native of Dubrovnik who relocated to Cardiff in 1860s and became the landlord of the Glastonbury Arms pub in Bute Street. His mother was born in Cardiff, the daughter of Irish immigrants. Radmilovics were also the landlords of the Bute Dock Tavern in Bute Street.\nHis paternal ancestors were from Makarska; grandfather from Makarska and grandmother from Dubrovnik were married and living in Dubrovnik.\n\n\n== Swimming career ==\nRadmilovic made his debut for the Wales national water polo team at the age of 15 in 1901 and at the time was the youngest international player in the history of the sport. He competed in international swimming and water polo for nearly 30 years and was still an active swimmer well into his seventies. He was also a competent golfer and footballer.\nHe won his first Amateur Swimming Association title in 1907 when victorious in the open water 5 mile race in the River Thames. His noted versatility came to the fore two years later when he won the 100 yards freestyle. He won the English Long Distance Championships in 1907 and 1925, the latter at age 39. A year later, he won the English One Mile Championship at age 40. A reporter for the 'Swimming Times' wrote of his 1925 victory:\n\nUntil last year he had never held the 1 mile championship of England, but at the East India docks he had quite a comfortable win. \"Raddy\" believes in careful and systematic training so that before the race, he has some idea as to what the final result would be. Before the mile championship, he is credited with saying: \"I shall beat 24 minutes, 30 seconds.\"  He won easily in 24.22.  How many of the younger generation could demonstrate such judgment of pace over a distance?\n\nIn all he won nine titles over a 19-year span at a variety of distances. His victories at the Welsh national championship took place over an ever-greater timespan. A 100 yards title at the age of 15 in 1901 and a 440 yards victory at the age of 43 in 1929 book-ending his career.\n\n\n== Olympic career ==\nHis Olympic career began as a swimmer at the 1906 Intercalated Games where he finished 4th in 100 metres freestyle and 5th in the 400 metres event. In the 1 mile event he did not finish.\nIn 1908 he won a gold medal as part of the British water polo team that defeated Belgium 9–2 in the final. Radmilovic scored twice in the final. Two days later he was drafted into the 4×200 metre relay squad when another swimmer withdrew due to illness and swam the second leg of a dramatic race. Hungary appeared to be cruising to victory when anchor leg swimmer Zoltán Halmay began to lose consciousness in the water. Halmay struggled to the finish but Henry Taylor had touched four seconds earlier to give the British victory. Radmilovic also competed in three individual freestyle events but failed to make a final.\nRadmilovic moved to Weston-super-Mare in 1904 and all Olympic successes were gained whilst a resident of this Somerset resort and where he was a member of the local swimming and water polo clubs.\nHe won his third career gold as part of the British water polo team at the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm. The Austrians were defeated 8–0 in the final.\nRadmilovic's fourth and final gold came at the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp albeit in eventful circumstances. Great Britain and Belgium had impressed in reaching the final and the game itself was a tight one decided when Radmilovic scored to put the British 3–2 ahead. On the final whistle incensed Belgian spectators attempted to attack the British players. Armed police guarded the team as they left the pool.\nHe competed as a member of the British team in both the 1924 and 1928 Olympic water polo tournaments without medal success. He was 42 years old when his Olympic career ended.\nHis record of four gold medals by a British Olympian stood until Sir Steve Redgrave equalled and eventually broke it by winning his fifth title in the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney\nIncluding the 1906 Intercalated Games, he competed at six Olympic Games. It would only be in 1976 when another athlete, fencer Bill Hoskyns, would compete at six Games for Great Britain.\nRadmilovic was the first athlete to compete in water polo at five Olympics, and one of ten male players who won three Olympic gold medals in water polo.\n\n\n== Post-Olympics ==\nRadmilovic was one of only two Welsh athletes to represent Wales at the 1930 British Empire Games. Aged 44 at the time, he was sent by the Welsh Amateur Swimming Association, along with female swimmer Valerie Davies.\nHe ran the Imperial Hotel in Weston-super-Mare, England for many years, and was still swimming 400 m a day at age seventy-eight.\nIn 1967, he was inducted in the International Swimming Hall of Fame. He was the second water polo player (after American Wallace O'Connor) and the third Briton (after coach Matthew Mann and English Channel swimmer Captain Matthew Webb) to be inducted.\nRadmilovic died in Weston-super-Mare, England, in 1968 and is buried in Weston Cemetery on Milton Road. His son took over the running of the hotel and continued to display his father's vast trophy collection.\n\n\n== Legacy ==\nHe was inducted into the Welsh Sports Hall of Fame in 1993.\nTo celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of his 1908 double-gold Olympic performance, a plaque was placed on the Cardiff International Pool to honour him, paid for by the 2012 London Olympics Committee and the Welsh Assembly.\n\nA blue plaque was unveiled by the Mayor of Weston-super-Mare, Cllr Alan Peak, and Paulo Radmilovic's grandson, Simon Siddall on the wall of The Imperial, South Parade, Weston-super-Mare on 30 March 2017.\n\n\n== See also ==\nGreat Britain men's Olympic water polo team records and statistics\nList of athletes with the most appearances at Olympic Games\nList of members of the International Swimming Hall of Fame\nList of multi-sport athletes\nList of multi-sport champions\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists in one event\nList of Olympic champions in men's water polo\nList of Olympic medalists in swimming (men)\nList of Olympic medalists in water polo (men)\nList of players who have appeared in multiple men's Olympic water polo tournaments\nWorld record progression 4 × 200 metres freestyle relay\n\n\n== References ==\n\nrecord of representing Weston-super-Mare at Olympic games\nxxxxx. Britain's first great Olympian honoured[link removed] // thisisbristol.co.uk – News section brought by the Bristol Evening Post, Thursday, 21 August 2008, 08:00\n\n\n== External links ==\nPaul Radmilovic at World Aquatics\nPaul Radmilovic at the International Swimming Hall of Fame\nPaul Radmilovic at Olympics.com\nPaul Radmilovic at Team GB\nPaul Radmilovic at Olympedia"}
{"title": "Pertti Karppinen", "requested": "Pertti Karppinen", "extract": "Pertti Johannes Karppinen (born 17 February 1953) is a retired Finnish rower noted for his three consecutive Olympic gold medals in single sculls in 1976, 1980 and 1984.\n\n\n== Biography ==\nKarppinen won the world titles in 1979 and 1985 and once held the world record in indoor rowing. His style was to row a steady race and finish with a devastating sprint. In the early portions of the race, he would often trail his rivals by several boat length, only to catch them at the race finish.\nKarppinen and great German sculler Peter-Michael Kolbe had one of the greatest rivalries in the history of the sport. Although Kolbe has more Olympic and World Championship medals than any other single sculler in history, he never won an Olympic gold medal. Twice, in 1976 and 1984, Kolbe had the lead the entire race, only to be passed in the last few meters of the race by Karppinen. Kolbe and Karppinen did not face each other in the 1980 Games because West Germany chose to boycott the games to protest the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan.\nKarppinen and Kolbe faced each other one last time at the 1988 Summer Olympics. Karppinen missed making the finals, but won the consolation race for seventh place. Kolbe again won a silver medal being beaten by prodigy Thomas Lange. Karppinen would go on to compete in the 1992 Summer Olympics finishing in tenth place.\nKarppinen and Russia's Vyacheslav Ivanov are the only men to win gold medals in the single scull at three straight Olympics. Besides single sculls, Karppinen also rowed doubles with his younger brother Reima and won a silver medal at the 1981 World Rowing Championships. Currently Karppinen works as a national rowing coach, and also trains his son Juho, and daughter Eeva, who both compete in rowing at the international level.\n\n\n== See also ==\nAthletes with most gold medals in one event at the Olympic Games\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nPertti Karppinen at World Rowing \nPertti Karppinen at Olympedia \nPertti Karppinen at Olympics.com \nPertti Karppinen at Olympiakomitea.fi (in Finnish)\nVideo of the Olympic Games in 1976 on YouTube\nVIdeo of the Olympic Games in 1980 on YouTube\nVideo of the Olympic Games in 1984 on YouTube\nVideo of 1985 World Championship, Single Scull (Karppinen First Place) on YouTube\nKarppinen and Ivanov on YouTube"}
{"title": "Peter Snell", "requested": "Peter Snell", "extract": "Sir Peter George Snell  (17 December 1938 – 12 December 2019) was a New Zealand middle-distance runner. He won three Olympic gold medals, and is the only man since 1920 to have won both the 800 and 1500 metres at the same Olympics, in 1964.\nSnell had a relatively short career as a world-famous international sportsman, from 1960 to1965, yet achieved so much that he was voted New Zealand's \"Sports Champion of the (20th) Century\" and was one of 24 inaugural members of the International Association of Athletics Federations Hall of Fame named in 2012. A protégé of the New Zealand athletics coach Arthur Lydiard, Snell was known for the three Olympic and two Commonwealth Games gold medals he won, and the several world records he set.\n\n\n== Early athletic career ==\nBorn in Ōpunake, Snell moved with his family to Waikato in 1949, where he attended Te Aroha College and became an all-around sportsman. He won several middle-distance running events in his hometown of Te Aroha, although some members of his new school lived in Ngāruawāhia. In 1955, he became a boarding student at Mount Albert Grammar School in Auckland, where he took up a wide range of team and individual sports, including rugby union, cricket, tennis, badminton, and golf. As a teenager, Snell excelled in tennis, and pursued the sport through appearances at the Auckland and New Zealand Junior Tennis Championships.\nAt age 19, Snell was motivated to concentrate seriously on running by the comments for his future coach, Arthur Lydiard, who told him, \"Peter, with the sort of speed you've got, if you do the endurance training, you could be one of our best middle-distance runners.\" During his early career under the tutelage of Lydiard, he started with New Zealand titles and records for 880 yards and the mile, despite being an unusually large and powerful man by typical middle-distance runner standards.\n\n\n== Olympic success ==\nSnell came to international attention after winning the gold medal in the 800 metres at the Rome Olympics in 1960, setting a new national record. He was particularly dominant four years later at the Tokyo Olympics where he won gold and set a new Olympic record in the 800 metres, and as well as gold in the 1500 metres.\nBy winning the 800–1500 m double, Snell became only the second male athlete to achieve this feat at the Olympics after Albert Hill in 1920, and it has not been achieved by any male athlete at the Olympics since. It was not achieved by a male at an open global championship until Moroccan-born Rashid Ramzi of Bahrain won both golds at the World Championships in 2005 at Helsinki. (After the 2008 Olympic Games, Ramzi was stripped of his Olympic gold medal for doping, but the penalty was not applied retroactively to his World Championship gold medals.)\n\n\n== World records ==\nIn early 1962, Snell lowered the world mile record by a tenth of a second at Cooks Gardens in Whanganui on 27 January, and one week later set new world records for both the 800 m and 880 yards (804.7 m) in Christchurch. He then won gold and set a new record in the 880 yd at the Commonwealth Games in Perth in 1962, and won gold for the mile at those same games. In all, Snell set five individual world records and joined fellow New Zealand athletes to set a new four by one mile relay record as well.\nSnell's 800 m time of 1:44.3, set on 3 February 1962, remained the world record until Marcello Fiasconaro ran 1:43.7 on 27 June 1973. It was the Oceania area record until Joseph Deng ran 1:44.21 on 20 July 2018. It was also the oldest national record recognised by the IAAF for a standard track-and-field event, lasting for 62 years until James Preston ran 1:44.04 on 25 May 2024, five years after Snell's death. His time remains the fastest ever run over that distance on a grass track.\nFatigued after his Olympic buildup and second world mile record in 1964, his final track season in 1965 was characterised by a string of losses to athletes such as Olympic 1500 m silver medalist Josef Odlozil, Olympic 800 m silver medalist Bill Crothers, U.S. high schooler and future world record holder Jim Ryun, and the American Jim Grelle. Snell then announced his retirement.\n\n\n== Career after retirement from sport ==\nSnell worked for a tobacco company and lived in Mount Albert, before moving to the United States in 1971 to further his education. He gained a B.S. in human performance from the University of California, Davis, and then a PhD in exercise physiology from Washington State University. He joined the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas as a research fellow in 1981. He later become an associate professor, Department of Internal Medicine and also director of their Human Performance Centre. A member of the American College of Sports Medicine, Snell was honoured in 1999 as an Inaugural Inductee, International Scholar, into the Athlete Hall of Fame, University of Rhode Island.\n\nAdopting a new sport, Snell became an orienteer and won his category, men aged 65 and older, in the 2003 United States Orienteering Championship. He was a past president of the North Texas Orienteering Association and a member of the United States Orienteering Federation.\nSnell also became a competitive table tennis player including competing in Texas state (finishing in the top 4 in the 75+ age category) and U.S. championship events and also the 2017 World Masters Games in Auckland.\nSnell died at his home in Dallas, Texas, on 12 December 2019, just five days short of turning 81. The cause was heart failure. Miki, his wife, survived him.\n\n\n== Commemorations and awards ==\n\nFollowing his success at the Perth Commonwealth Games in 1962, Snell was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire for services to athletics in the 1962 Queen's Birthday Honours. Three years later, he was elevated to Officer of the same order in the 1965 New Year Honours.\nHe was voted New Zealand's Sports Champion of the Century in 2000 and was knighted soon afterwards. In the 2002 New Year Honours, he was appointed a Distinguished Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to sport, and in 2009, following the restoration of titular honours by the New Zealand government, he accepted redesignation as a Knight Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit and was invested by the Governor-General of New Zealand, Sir Anand Satyanand.\nSnell was one of five Olympic athletes from New Zealand featured on a series of commemorative postage stamps issued in August 2004 to commemorate the 2004 Olympic Games. The two-dollar stamp issued by New Zealand Post features a stylised photograph of Snell snapping the tape at the finish line of the 800 metres race at the 1960 Olympics in Rome.\nHe was selected by Track and Field News' as their \"Athlete of the '60's\" and was pictured on the cover of the December 1969 issue.\nIn 2007, he was awarded an honorary doctorate (DSc) by Massey University in recognition of his work as an exercise physiologist.\nA larger than life-size bronze statue of Peter Snell was erected in his hometown of Ōpunake, Taranaki, and was unveiled on 19 May 2007. The statue is based on a photo of Snell crossing the finish line in the historic race at Wanganui's Cook's Gardens in 1962. A similar bronze statue of Snell was unveiled in Cook's Gardens on 15 August 2009 to commemorate his athletic achievements.\nInterviewed by the Wanganui Chronicle after the unveiling, Snell said he was internationally known as a miler, but had never reached his potential over the mile and the 800 metres was probably his best distance. He said his greatest effort was the world 800 m/880 yard double record set on Lancaster Park a few days after his new mile record, with an 800 m time that would have won the gold medal 46 years later at the Beijing Olympics.\nSnell was inducted into the Taranaki Sports Hall of Fame at the Taranaki Sports Awards 2021.\n\n\n== Honorific eponyms ==\nIn 2001, Macleans College in Auckland created Snell House as part of its \"whanau house\" system.\nThe Peter Snell Youth Village, on the Whangaparaoa Peninsula, in North Auckland, is also named after him. They run holiday camps for young people.\nSnell Drive, in the Hamilton suburb of Chartwell, is named in Snell's honour.\nPeter Snell Street is a street in the Bay of Plenty town of Whakatāne.\nPeter Snell Drive is the location of Bream Bay College in Ruakaka in Te Tai Tokerau Northland.\n\n\n== Personal bests ==\n\n\n== See also ==\n Sport of athletics portal\n\n\n== Notes ==\n^1 En route in the 3:54.1 mile.\n\n\n== References ==\nCited references\n\nGeneral references\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nPage with Photo, one of two at Sporting Heroes\nPeter Snell – Athlete – A documentary made in 1964 available to view on NZ On Screen\nPeter Snell at the New Zealand Olympic Committee"}
{"title": "Pieter van den Hoogenband", "requested": "Pieter van den Hoogenband", "extract": "Pieter Cornelis Martijn van den Hoogenband (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈpitər vɑn də(n) ˈɦoːɣə(m)ˌbɑnt]; born 14 March 1978) is a Dutch retired swimmer. He is a triple Olympic champion and former world record holder.\n\n\n== Early life ==\nBorn in Maastricht, Limburg, he is the first child of Cees-Rein van den Hoogenband and Astrid Verver, a former Dutch 800 m freestyle silver medalist at the European Junior Championships. He has a younger sister named Veronique and a younger brother named Robert.\nHe grew up in Geldrop, where he swam for PSV. His father, a former judoka, was a team doctor with the professional football team of the same club.\nRussian swimmer and four-time Olympic gold medalist Alexander Popov was his role model.\n\n\n== Swimming career ==\n\n\n=== Early career ===\nIn 1993, Van den Hoogenband achieved his first success, performing well on the European Youth Olympic Days. Before the Atlanta Games, Astrid van den Hoogenband, who was coaching the Dutch team, became frustrated with the swimmers representing the Netherlands, feeling they had much potential but would not be able to live up to it due to lack of adequate support. She pleaded with Cees to take action, as he carried much weight through his professional connections.  After Astrid threatened to remove Pieter from the sport, Cees created a small foundation and signed up 20 initial sponsors who each paid $2,500 to fund a team trainer. The Dutch swimming team eventually signed contracts with Philips, Nike, and Speedo. Enough funds were raised to open a swim school in Eindhoven, Van den Hoogenband's place of residence. The team eventually grew to ten. \nVan den Hoogenband is the only swimmer in history who has managed to win both the 100–200 metre freestyle double at the Olympics and also repeat as 100 freestyle champion at the Olympics. His three Olympic gold medals are the only three won by a Dutch male pool swimmer.\n\n\n==== 1996 Olympics ====\nVan den Hoogenband's international breakthrough came at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. Only 18 years old, he exceeded the expectations of many by finishing 4th in both the 100 m and 200 m freestyle. He won the 50 m freestyle B final, and finished 5th in the 4×100 m freestyle relay, 7th in the 4×200 m freestyle relay, and 10th in the 4×100 m medley relay.\n\n\n=== Later career ===\n\n\n==== 1998 World championships ====\n\nAt the 1998 World Aquatics Championships in Perth, Australia, Van den Hoogenband won bronze medal in the 200 metre freestyle and silver in the 4×200 m freestyle relay.\n\n\n==== 2000 Olympics ====\n\nAfter winning 6 gold medals at the 1999 European Championships, Van den Hoogenband was one of the favourites at the 2000 Summer Olympics, but his adversaries were formidable. In the 200 m freestyle he faced the world record holder, Australian youngster Ian Thorpe, favourite of the home crowd in Sydney. In the semi-finals, Van den Hoogenband set a new world record, but Thorpe countered with a time only 0.02 s slower. In an exciting final, Van den Hoogenband equalled his time from the semi-finals to win the gold medal. In the 100 m freestyle, Van den Hoogenband again set a world record in the semi-finals and won his second gold medal, defeating the 1992 and 1996 champion, Alexander Popov. His 100 m world record stood until 21 March 2008 and was broken by France's Alain Bernard (47.60). Van den Hoogenband won two more medals, both bronze, in the 50 m freestyle and the 4×200 m freestyle relay, in which he was the final swimmer.\nVan den Hoogenband was named Dutch sportsman of the year in 1999, 2000 and 2004, World Swimmer of the Year in 2000, and European Swimmer of the Year in 1999, 2000, 2002 and 2004.\n\n\n==== 2001 World championships ====\n\nAt the 2001 World Championships in Fukuoka, Japan, Van den Hoogenband won four silver medals in the 50 m, 100 m, 200 m freestyle events and 4×100 m freestyle relay.\n\n\n==== 2003 World Championships ====\n\nAt the 2003 World Championships in Barcelona he split a 46.70 in the medley relay which stood as the fastest 100 m freestyle split until it was topped in 2008 by the French relay veteran Frédérick Bousquet, at 46.63 seconds. Van den Hoogenbands' 46.70, however, remained as the fastest textile relay split until it was topped in 2015 by Cameron McEvoy of Australia.   He had disappointing performances in both the 100 and 200 freestyle events though, finishing runner up to Alexander Popov and Ian Thorpe respectively, with considerably slow times.   His times from previous meets in the past year, and earlier rounds of the championships, would have won both events.  His winning time in the 200 freestyle at the 2002 European Championships was faster than Ian Thorpe's winning time at these Championships, but Pieter went about 2 whole seconds slower this time around.  His time in the semis of the 100 freestyle at these Championships would have won the final of that event as well (won by Alexander Popov), and his 100 free relay split (with nearly a second gain from a rolling start) was 2 whole seconds faster.\n\n\n==== 2004 Olympics ====\n\nAt the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, he won a gold medal in the 100 m freestyle and two silvers in the 200 m freestyle and the 4 × 100 m freestyle relay, swimming the anchor leg in 46.79 which was the 2nd fastest split in history. By finishing ahead of Michael Phelps in both the 200 m freestyle and the 4×100 m freestyle relay, he is the only swimmer to ever beat Phelps twice in Olympic competition.   While technically the second was a relay, his split was faster by a large margin, and the margin of beating the U.S. team by a far smaller one.\n\n\n==== 2007 World Championships ====\nAt the 2007 World Championships in Melbourne, Australia, Van den Hoogenband won a silver medal in the 200 m freestyle behind Michael Phelps.\nHe holds by a large margin the all-time record for most runner up finishes at the World Championships without winning.\n\n\n==== 2008 Olympics ====\nVan den Hoogenband returned to the Olympic Games in 2008 in Beijing and finished fifth in the 100 m freestyle. He retired after the race. In the semifinals he broke his own national record that stood from the 2000 Summer Olympics, bringing it to 47.68 s.\nIn making the 100 m freestyle final, Van den Hoogenband became the first swimmer to make the finals in the same event four times.\nIn December of the same year, he announced his retirement.\n\n\n== Post-swimming career ==\nVan den Hoogenband continues to swim recreationally and he remains active in the sports industry. He has served as a commentator for many swimming events, including the 2012 Summer Olympics. The swimming arena in the sporting centre of Eindhoven was named the \"Pieter van den Hoogenband Zwemstadion\".\nVan den Hoogenband was the Chef de mission for the 2024 Netherlands Olympic team. In July 2024 he said he was surprised by the fuss surrounding beach volleyball player Steven van de Velde despite the fact van de Velde pleaded guilty to three counts of child rape in 2016.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nVan den Hoogenband was married to his longtime girlfriend Minouche Smit who is also a former swimmer. They have two children. In September 2012 the couple announced their divorce. Then Van den Hoogenband dated Ranomi Kromowidjojo, also a multiple Olympic gold medalist. Their relationship ended in 2014. On 16 September 2016 Van den Hoogenband married Marie-José Crooijmans.\nDespite a fierce rivalry, Van den Hoogenband is a good friend of Australian Olympic swimmer Ian Thorpe.\n\n\n== See also ==\nDutch records in swimming\nList of multiple Olympic medalists at a single Games\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nPieter van den Hoogenband at World Aquatics\nPieter van den Hoogenband at SwimRankings.net\nPieter van den Hoogenband at the International Swimming Hall of Fame\nPieter van den Hoogenband at Olympics.com\nPieter van den Hoogenband at NOC*NSF (in Dutch)\nPieter van den Hoogenband at Olympedia\nPieter van den Hoogenband at InterSportStats\nZwemkroniek (in Dutch)"}
{"title": "Polina Astakhova", "requested": "Polina Astakhova", "extract": "Polina Ghrighorievna Astakhova (Ukrainian: Поліна Григорівна Астахова; 30 October 1936 – 5 August 2005) was a Soviet and Ukrainian artistic gymnast. She won ten medals at the 1956, 1960 and 1964 Summer Olympics.[1]\n\n\n== Biography ==\nAstakhova became interested in artistic gymnastics at age 13, after she had watched the gymnastics championships in Donetsk, where their family moved a short time before. She trained in the local gymnastics sports club Shakhtyor under Vladimir Alieksandrovitch Smirnov.\nAstakhova earned a nickname The Russian Birch in Western countries for her exceptional grace, and at the 1960 Olympics she was even called Madonna by the Italian journalists. Between 1956 and 1966 Astakhova was on top of many international and national competitions especially on the uneven bars apparatus event. She was a member of the USSR team between 1955 and 1968.\nIn 1954 Astakhova competed in the USSR Championships for the first time and in a year she made the USSR National team at the 1956 Summer Olympics. She was the youngest team member and contributed to the team's gold. At the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome she led in the all-around, but lost a whole point for a fall on beam, which was the seventh routine of eight contested. She was very disappointed by the accident and even did not compete that year, although in Rome she won the gold in the team competition and on the bars, silver on the floor and bronze in the all-around. She recovered after the 1961 European Championships, where she won gold medals on the bars and on beam.[2] Competing in the 1964 Summer Olympics, Astakhova contributed to the team's gold, won on the bars, was second on the floor and third in the all-around.[3] She became the first gymnast to defend her Olympic gold medal in the uneven bars event. Her feat was only matched in 2000 by Svetlana Khorkina and later in 2016 by Aliya Mustafina.\nAfter retiring from competitions, since 1972 Astakhova worked as a national coach in Ukraine. In 2002, she was inducted into the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame.[4] Astakhova spent the last years of her life in Kyiv before her death at age 68 from pneumonia.\n\n\n== Non-Olympic achievements ==\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic medalists\nList of top Olympic gymnastics medalists\nList of Olympic female gymnasts for the Soviet Union\nList of multiple Summer Olympic medalists\n\n\n== References ==\n^ Evans, Hilary; Gjerde, Arild; Heijmans, Jeroen; Mallon, Bill; et al. \"Polina Astakhova\". Olympics at Sports-Reference.com. Sports Reference LLC. Archived from the original on 17 April 2020.\n^ \"Полина Григорьевна Астахова\" [Polina Ghrighorievna Astakhova]. Legends of the Soviet sports (in Russian). Retrieved 2 May 2006.\n^ \"Polina Astakhova\". International Gymnastics Hall of Fame. Archived from the original on 18 October 2006. Retrieved 12 May 2007.\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nPolina Astakhova at World Gymnastics\nPolina Astakhova at the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame \nPolina Astakhova at Gymn-Forum.net\nPolina Astakhova at Olympics.com \nPolina Astakhova at Olympedia \nPolina Astakhova at Find a Grave\n\nThis article contains information from the website http://www.gymnast.ru/, incorporated into the Wikipedia with permission from its author E. V. Avsenev."}
{"title": "Pyrros Dimas", "requested": "Pyrros Dimas", "extract": "Pyrros Dimas (Greek: Πύρρος Δήμας; pronounced [piros ðimas]; born 13 October 1971) is a Greek politician and former weightlifter. He is currently the technical director for USA Weightlifting, having taken that position in June 2017. Dimas has also been involved in politics as a member of the Hellenic Parliament, representing the Panhellenic Socialist Movement from 2012 to 2015.\nDimas is the most decorated Greek athlete in the Olympics and is widely considered one of the greatest weightlifters of all time, having been three times Olympic Gold Medalist (in his fourth Olympiad, a knee injury notwithstanding, he won the bronze medal), and three times World Champion. He was named the Greek Male Athlete of the Year, for the years 1992, 1993, 1995, and 1996.\n\n\n== Early years ==\nDimas was born on 13 October 1971 in Himarë, southern Albania, to ethnic Greek parents. Dimas started the sport at 11 and competed at a junior's level at 14. At 18, in 1989, he became triple Champion of Albania for the 82.5 kg category and in 1990 he repeated himself.\nWhile in Albania, he was coached by Zef Kovaci. In 1990 he was also accorded the title \"Master of Sports\" by the Albanian government and the title \"European Master\" by the European Weightlifting Federation.\n\n\n== Results representing Albania ==\nHe was part of the Albanian weightlifting team to which he made important contributions: In 1989 in the 62nd World Championship of Weightlifting Dimas ranked 12th in the World and helped Albania rank 13th in the world.\nIn the 69th European Weightlifting Championship (held in Aalborg, Denmark May 1990), Dimas ranked 4th in Europe and Albania ranked 3rd (after 1st placed USSR and 2nd placed Bulgaria), and in the European Cup for nations (in Antalya, Turkey, December 1990) Dimas, Leonidas Sabanis and Fatmir Bushi helped Albania rank 2nd in Europe (after 1st placed Bulgaria).\n\n\n== Results representing Greece ==\nDuring his stay in Aalborg he came in contact with representatives of the Greece national team: Giannis Sgouros and Christos Iakovou and he expressed great enthusiasm for a future cooperation. However, the political situation in Albania prohibited him from leaving the country. Dimas managed to cross the Greek-Albanian border at 7 February 1991, after a several hour exhaustive trip. He then stayed in Athens. He acquired Greek citizenship in 1992, and first competed under the Greek flag in the 1992 Summer Olympics, winning a gold medal in the 82.5 kg class.\nDuring his third lift for the clean and jerk event, he shouted \"Για την Ελλάδα!\" (transliterated \"Gia tin Ellada!\"; meaning \"For Greece!\"), thus dedicating his victory to Greece. This is the catchphrase with which he is most associated in Greece.\nAt a time when Greece's success in the Olympics was limited, he and Voula Patoulidou, the surprise gold medalist in the 100m hurdles, became instant national heroes. They were greeted as such on their return to Greece at a grand ceremony attended by 60,000 people in the Panathinaikon Stadium in Athens, with a further 30,000 outside the stadium. His birthplace gave rise to his nickname \"The Lion of Himara\". His outstanding number of Olympic Gold Medals created another nickname \"Midas\".\nCharacteristic of his self-confidence was his tendency to keep the weights lifted after the buzzer had sounded so that the crowd could take photographs.\nWith the 1993 and 1995 World titles under his belt, Dimas was the favorite to win Olympic Gold in the 83 kg class for the 1996 Summer Olympics, where he was the flag bearer of the Greece Olympic team. He won the event with two new World Records.\nAt the 2000 Summer Olympics, he won another gold medal, this time in the 85 kg class. This made him one of just three weightlifters at that time to have won three Olympic gold medals; the others being Naim Süleymanoğlu (Turkey, but born in Bulgaria) and Kakhi Kakhiashvili (Greece, but born in Georgia). Halil Mutlu (like Süleymanoğlu, a Bulgaria-born Turk) would become the fourth in 2004.\nAt the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece, Dimas was chosen as Greece flag bearer for both the opening and closing ceremonies. Dimas was recovering from knee surgery and a hurt wrist and was not expected to compete in these Olympics, but he came away with a bronze medal in the 85 kg class, becoming the fourth weightlifter in history to win a medal at four different Olympic Games, the third to win those four medals successively, and the only one whose four medals include 3 golds, thus cementing his status as a national hero in Greece and as an international weightlifting legend.\nAfter earning the bronze medal he signalled his retirement by leaving his shoes on the platform, while the appreciative Greek crowd gave him a standing ovation.\nIn June 2008, Dimas became vice-president, and in October 2008 president of the Hellenic Weightlifting Federation.\n\n\n== Political activities ==\nIn 2012, Dimas entered politics as a member of PASOK, being elected as a member of Greek parliament in the May and June 2012 elections. He was soon polemical with Greece's policies with Northern Epirus- his place of origin- claiming that the Greek government has \"forgotten\" it.\nDimas has campaigned for the rights of ethnic Greeks in Albania, drawing attention to alleged human rights abuses (in particular alleged land grabs against the Greek community of Himara), while calling on the Greek government to intervene. On 17 February 2014 Dimas participated in the ceremony of 100th anniversary of the declaration of Autonomy of the Republic of Northern Epirus. Dimas propagates against what he considers to be discrimination policies of the Albanian state against the Greek community of Himara, as well as of the rights of the Greek population of Northern Epirotes in general.\nIn an interview in 2016 he stated that \"we are referring to Pontus, Cyprus, but for the first time Northern Epirus was heard in the Greek parliament when they saw me\". At December 2018 Dimas protested against the confiscation of properties that belong to the ethnic Greek community of Himara and called the Albanian government to avoid discrimination of this kind.\nOn May 15, 2023, Dimas protested against the arrest and imprisonment by the Albanian authorities of the representative of the Greek minority, Fredis Beleris, on charges of vote buying. The latter was elected mayor of Himara.\nHe was candidate for European Parliament in the 2024 elections with New Democracy but failed to get elected.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nDimas was married to Anastasia Sdougkou, a former Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation sports reporter. Together they had four children. His wife died of brain cancer on 14 June 2018.\n\n\n== Career bests ==\nSnatch: 180.5 kg 1999 in Athens in the class to 85 kg.\nClean and jerk: 215.0 kg 2000 Summer Olympics in the class to 85 kg.\nTotal: 392.5 kg 1996 Summer Olympics in the class to 83 kg.\n\n\n== Major results ==\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Summer Olympic medalists\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nPyrros Dimas on Facebook\nPyrros Dimas at Lift Up\nPyrros Dimas at IWRP\nPyrros Dimas at IWF\nPyrros Dimas at Olympics.com Pyrros Dimas at Olympic.org (archived) \nPyrros Dimas at Olympedia \nPyrros Dimas at the Hellenic Olympic Committee"}
{"title": "Pál Kovács", "requested": "Pál Kovács", "extract": "Pál Kovács (17 July 1912 – 8 July 1995) was a Hungarian athlete, who began as a hurdler, but eventually switched to fencing.\nBy the time Kovács won his first fencing gold, in 1936, he had already been a member of the winning Hungarian team at the 1933 World Championships. The Hungarians won team sabre gold in five successive Olympics, lasting from 1936 until 1960. The same team won gold eight back-to-back world championships (including the two Olympics, which double as world championships in their respective years). Kovács also won individual gold in 1952, as well as individual bronze in 1948. In 1980, he became vice-president of the Fédération Internationale d'Escrime. He died in Budapest in July 1995.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists in one event\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\n\n\n== References =="}
{"title": "Quentin Fillon Maillet", "requested": "Quentin Fillon Maillet", "extract": "Quentin Fillon Maillet (French pronunciation: [kɑ̃tɛ̃ fijɔ̃ majɛ]; born 16 August 1992) is a French biathlete. He is the a five-time Olympic champion and nine-time medallist, winning gold in the 20 km individual and the 12.5 km pursuit at the 2022 Winter Olympics and in the 10 km sprint, mixed relay, and the men's relay at the 2026 Winter Olympics. He is the first French athlete and the first biathlete to win five medals in a single edition of the Winter Games (in 2022). With nine overall Olympic medals, he is the most decorated French athlete in Olympic history. Fillon Maillet is also the winner of the 2021–22 Biathlon World Cup for men.\n\n\n== Biathlon results ==\nAll results are sourced from the International Biathlon Union.\n\n\n=== Olympic Games ===\n9 medals (5 gold, 3 silver, 1 bronze)\n\n\n=== World Championships ===\n20 medals (6 gold, 5 silver, 9 bronze)\n\n*The single mixed relay was added as an event in 2019.\n\n\n=== World Cup ===\nWorld Cup rankings\n\nIndividual podiums\n19 victories (1 In, 6 Sp, 10 Pu, 2 MS)\n63 podiums\n\n*Results are from IBU races which include the Biathlon World Cup, Biathlon World Championships and the Winter Olympic Games.\nRelay victories\n20 victories\n\nPodiums\n(World Cup + World Championships + Olympic Games)\n\n(Statistics as of 19 March 2023.)\n\n\n=== Junior World Championships ===\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Winter Olympic medalists\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nOfficial website  (in French)\nQuentin Fillon Maillet at IBU BiathlonWorld.com Quentin Fillon Maillet at IBU BiathlonResults.com \nQuentin Fillon Maillet at the International Ski and Snowboard Federation \nQuentin Fillon Maillet at Fédération Française de Ski (in French)\nQuentin Fillon Maillet at Milano Cortina 2026\nQuentin Fillon Maillet at Olympics.com \nQuentin Fillon Maillet at Olympedia \nQuentin Fillon Maillet at InterSportStats \nQuentin Fillon Maillet at Équipe de France (in French) \nQuentin Fillon Maillet at Équipe de France Olympique (archived) (in French)"}
{"title": "Raisa Smetanina", "requested": "Raisa Smetanina", "extract": "Raisa Petrovna Smetanina (Russian: Раиса Петровна Сметанина; born 29 February 1952) is a Komi cross-country skiing champion, representing the Soviet Union and later the Unified Team at the Winter Olympic games. She is the first woman in history to win ten Winter Olympic medals.\n\n\n== Career ==\nSmetanina took part in five Olympics, representing the Soviet team four times and the Unified Team once. In particular, Smetanina won two gold and one silver medals at the 1976 Winter Olympics, becoming the most successful athlete there, along with Rosi Mittermaier of West Germany.\nIn the 1992 Winter Olympics, at the age of 39, Smetanina won a further gold medal competing for the Unified Team in the 4 × 5 km relay, becoming the first woman to win ten Winter Olympic medals and at that time the oldest woman to win a Winter Olympic gold.\nSmetanina also had successes at the FIS Nordic World Ski Championships, winning four golds (20 km (1982), and 4 × 5 km relay (1974, 1985, and 1991), three silvers (10 km (1978), and 4 × 5 km relay (1982, 1989)), and four bronzes (4 × 5 km relay (1978), 5 km (1974, 1978), and 20 km (1980)). She also won three times at the Holmenkollen Ski Festival, once in the 10 km (1975) and twice in the 5 km (1975 and 1979).\nIn 1979 Smetanina received the Holmenkollen Medal (shared with Erik Håker and Ingemar Stenmark). She was also awarded Order of Friendship of Peoples (1984).\n\n\n== Cross-country skiing results ==\nAll results are sourced from the International Ski Federation (FIS).\n\n\n=== Olympic Games ===\n10 medals – (4 gold, 5 silver, 1 bronze)\n\n\n=== World Championships ===\n11 medals – (4 gold, 3 silver, 4 bronze)\n\n\n=== World Cup ===\n\n\n==== Season standings ====\n\n\n==== Individual podiums ====\n3 victories\n16 podiums\n\n\n==== Team podiums ====\n3 victories\n9 podiums\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Winter Olympic medalists\nList of multiple Olympic medalists\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nRaissa Smetanina at the International Ski and Snowboard Federation\nHolmenkollen medalists – click Holmenkollmedaljen for downloadable pdf file (in Norwegian)\nHolmenkollen winners since 1892 – click Vinnere for downloadable pdf file (in Norwegian)"}
{"title": "Ralf Schumann", "requested": "Ralf Schumann", "extract": "Ralf Schumann (born 10 June 1962) is a former German 25 m rapid fire pistol shooter. He is a three-time Olympic Champion and twice the World Champion. One of the most decorated shooters of the modern era, he is the first of two sport shooters to have won three Olympic gold medals in one individual event (25 metre rapid fire pistol) and became the first of three sport shooters to have won three Olympic individual gold medals. He won the gold medals for the 25 metre rapid fire pistol event at the 1992, 1996 and 2004 Olympics and also won two silver medals at this event, becoming the most successful Olympic shooter at this event. Schumann participated in seven consecutive Olympic Games from 1988 to 2012, setting a new record for most Olympic appearances by a German athlete.\n\n\n== Career ==\nHis international breakthrough came in the years before the Seoul Olympics in 1988, where he was considered the most likely winner. However, he was beaten by Afanasijs Kuzmins of the Soviet Union (later Latvia) by 598 to 597 in the qualification round, and could not close the gap in the finals as Kuzmins achieved a perfect 100. \nAfter this, the targets were changed, lowering results considerably, but Schumann's hegemony has only increased. He won the 1990 World Championships and the 1992 Olympics. He scored 596 points on several occasions before raising the World Record to 597 in 1995, which he equalled in 2000. After the major rule change in 2005, he beat the world record again with 588 points, bettered by Sergei Alifirenko later the same year. He also held the pre-2005 final World Record and the Olympic records (from 1996), excelling in the four-second final shooting.\nBeing the favourite in every competition he entered, it was natural that his failures to win received some attention. Most notable among these is his performance in the Sydney Olympics in 2000, when at the prospect of winning his third Olympic gold medal (something no RFP shooter before has managed) he only finished fifth. However, his results since then have proved that this was not the beginning of a long-term decline, and in the Athens Olympics in 2004, he finally won his third Olympic gold.\n\n\n== Sponsorships ==\nRalf has worked as a precision mechanic during his shooting career, and his employers have sponsored his competitive shooting by offering Ralf a 3-month paid leave of absence each year to train.  He also designed a custom .22 caliber pistol which is sold by Italian manufacturer Pardini.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nSchumann was born in Meissen in Saxony. He took up pistol shooting in 1977 and was eventually trained at the East German national shooting arena in Suhl, Thuringia. He has on several occasions been voted the athlete of the year in Thuringia. He now lives in nearby Stockheim, Bavaria. His wife, Anke Völker-Schumann is also a shooter; she joined Ralf in competing at the 1988, 1996, and 2000 Olympics.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists in one event\nList of multiple Summer Olympic medalists\nList of athletes with the most appearances at Olympic Games\nWorld Cup Multi-Medalists\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nRalf Schumann at ISSF\nRalf Schumann at Olympics.com\nRalf Schumann at the German Olympic Sports Confederation (in German)\nRalf Schumann at Olympedia\nRalf Schumann at InterSportStats"}
{"title": "Ralph Rose", "requested": "Ralph Rose", "extract": "Ralph Waldo Rose (March 17, 1885 – October 16, 1913) was an American track and field athlete. He was born in Healdsburg, California. With six Olympic medals, Rose is one of the most successful track and field Olympians of all time.\n\n\n== Biography ==\nStanding 6 ft 5.5 in (197 cm) and weighing 250 pounds (115 kg), Rose was the first shot putter to break 50 feet (15 m). His world record of 51 ft 0 in (15.5 m), set in 1909, lasted for 16 years. In 1904, while at the University of Michigan, he won both the shot put and discus at the Big Ten championships. He subsequently competed for the Olympic Club in San Francisco, California and won seven National AAU titles in the shot, discus, and javelin. A competitor in three Olympic Games, Rose compiled a medal total of three golds, two silver, and one bronze. At the 1904 Summer Olympics in St. Louis, Missouri, he won the shot, was second in the discus, third in the hammer throw, and sixth in the 56-pound (25 kg) weight throw.\nFour years later at the 1908 Summer Olympics in London, he repeated as the shot put champion. At the opening ceremony Rose, the U.S. flag bearer, refused (supported by a majority of his mostly Irish-American teammates) to dip the flag towards the royal box, as athletes from other countries did. Fellow athlete Martin Sheridan supposedly explained Rose's action with the terse statement, \"This flag dips to no earthly king.\"  According to legend, this caused acrimony between the United States and Great Britain. Several decisions by British judges went against American athletes during the games, and U.S. spokesmen felt they stemmed from bias, caused in part by the flag incident. However, there is no reliable evidence that the British spectators objected to Rose's action, nor that Sheridan ever uttered his famous quote, which did not appear in print until 1952.\nAt the 1908 Summer Olympics Rose competed in the tug of war but was not successful.\n\nIn the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm, Sweden, he won the two-handed shot put (throwing a total of 27.70 m (90 ft 10.5 in) with his right and left hands), took second in the regular shot, ninth in the hammer and 11th in the discus.\nAt the age of 28 he died of typhoid fever, in San Francisco.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nProfile\nRalph Rose at Find a Grave \nRalph Waldo Rose at World Athletics\nRalph Waldo Rose at Tilastopaja (registration required)\nRalph Waldo Rose at the USATF Hall of Fame (archived)\nRalph Waldo Rose at Athletics Podium\nRalph Waldo Rose at Olympics.com\nRalph Waldo Rose at Olympedia"}
{"title": "Ramón Fonst", "requested": "Ramón Fonst", "extract": "Ramón Fonst Segundo (August 31, 1883 – September 9, 1959) was a Cuban fencer who competed in the early 20th century. He was one of the greatest world fencers, individual and by team; he was born and died in Havana. He became the first non-European and the only Hispanic American to win an Olympic fencing title.\nAlthough Fonst was born in Cuba, he spent most of his youth in France, where he received his fencing education, and aged just 16 years old he entered the 1900 Summer Olympics which were being held in Paris. He entered the Men's épée event, which put him up against another 101 fencers from 10 other countries, in his first round group he came out top against the five fencers from France, so advanced into the next round, in the next round and again in a group of six fencers Fonst only managed to finish in third place but was still good enough to advance to the semi-finals, and again he would finish third in the group and so qualifying for the final. \nIn the final, Fonst was up against seven French and one Argentine fencer, and against the odds (and the judges) Fonst won four of his six matches to win the gold medal and so became the first Cuban and first Latin American medalist on the Olympic stage.\nA few days later after his gold medal, Fonst competed in the Men's amateurs-masters épée which put the top four amateurs with the top four professionals at the Games, Fonst managed to win six of his seven contests and won the silver medal, his only defeat was against the French professional Albert Ayat who went on to win the gold medal.\nFour years later, Fonst was in St. Louis, Missouri, competing at the 1904 Summer Olympics, and within two days he won three gold medals, retained his Olympic title in the Men's épée, added the Men's foil title and under the Mixed team banner won the Men's team foil event with fellow Cuban Manuel Díaz and American Albertson Van Zo Post.\nCuba didn't compete in the Summer Olympics again until 1924, which was again held in Paris, France. Now aged 40, Fonst again competed in the Men's épée but this time only managed to reach the semi-final. He also competed in the Men's team épée but they were knocked out of the competition in the quarter-finals.\nFonst also competed at three Central American and Caribbean Games in 1926, 1930 and 1938 and won six more gold medals.\nHe fenced often with George Worth, who later became an American Olympic medalist fencer, during Worth's two years in Cuba after fleeing Hungary at the outset of World War II.\nAfter his career as an active sportsmen Fonst became president of the National Olympic Committee for Cuba, as well as an adviser for the Department of Physical Education and Sports, which he served until he died from a diabetic coma in 1959, aged 76 years old.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nRamón Fonst at Olympedia\nRamón Fonst at InterSportStats"}
{"title": "Ray Ewry", "requested": "Ray Ewry", "extract": "Raymond Clarence Ewry (October 14, 1873 – September 29, 1937) was an American track and field athlete who won eight gold medals at the Olympic Games and two gold medals at the Intercalated Games (1906 in Athens). This puts him among the most successful Olympians of all time.\n\n\n== Personal life and early career ==\nEwry was born in Lafayette, Indiana, and contracted polio as a young boy. In his childhood, he used a wheelchair, and it was feared that he might become paralysed for life.\nHowever, Ewry did his own exercises and overcame his illness. Ewry attended Purdue University in 1890–1897, where he captained the track and field team, played American football, and became a member of Sigma Nu fraternity.  After receiving a graduate degree in mechanical engineering at Purdue, he moved to New York. There he worked as a hydraulics engineer and became a member of the New York Athletic Club. He specialized in now defunct events, the standing jumps: the standing high jump, the standing long jump and the standing triple jump. These events were similar to their modern, normal versions but the athlete jumped without a run-up.\n\n\n== Career ==\nEwry proved to be the best standing jumper in the world. At his first Olympics, held in Paris (1900), he won gold medals in all three standing jumps. Incidentally, all three finals were held on the same day (July 16).\nAt the 1904 Summer Olympics, Ewry successfully defended all three of his titles. The standing triple jump event was discontinued after those Olympics, but Ewry continued to dominate the two remaining standing jump events at both the 1906 Intercalated Games and 1908 Games, thus bringing his total to 10 Olympic gold titles including two from the Intercalated Games, the highest number achieved until 2008. The 1906 Intercalated Games are currently not officially recognised by the IOC, although they were organized as an Olympic event by the IOC. Even if the 1906 games are removed from his totals, he stands (as of 2008) as the 12th most successful Olympian of all time in terms of total individual medals and second most successful in terms of individual gold medals. The standing jumping events were no longer held in the Olympics after 1912.\nEwry's superiority is also displayed by the fact that his world record in the standing long jump (3.47 m or 11 ft 5 in) was still standing when the event was discontinued internationally in the 1930s. In 1974 he was inducted into the National Track and Field Hall of Fame and in 1983 into the United States Olympic Hall of Fame.\n\n\n== Longstanding records for Olympic medals ==\nEwry's eight Olympic gold medals in individual events (i.e. non-relay), although now second to Michael Phelps's 13, was the record, all alone, for 100 years and 23 days—from July 23, 1908, until Phelps won his eighth on August 15, 2008 (followed by his ninth on August 16).\nHis record of winning three gold medals in one event, although it had subsequently been equaled by seven other athletes, was not surpassed for 60 years—from 1908 until Al Oerter won his fourth gold (discus throw) in 1968, a feat equaled by Carl Lewis when he won his fourth (long jump) in 1996, Michael Phelps when he won his fourth (200 meter individual medley) in 2016, and by Kaori Icho when she won her fourth consecutive gold in women's wrestling in 2016.\nFinally, his record of three gold medals in two events, set in July 1908 (standing long jump on July 20 and standing high jump on July 23) was not surpassed for 108 years—until in 2016 Michael Phelps won his third gold medal in the 200-meter butterfly to win three gold medals in three events (200-meter individual medley, 100-meter butterfly, and 200-meter butterfly). Phelps equaled Ewry's record in 2012, when he won his third gold in the 100 meter butterfly on August 3, having won his third in the 200-meter individual medley on August 2.\nEwry has the most Olympic gold medals with a 100% record—8 individual golds.\n\n\n== Bibliography ==\nGenty, Clement (2021). RAY EWRY (1873-1937) Dix fois champion olympique du saut sans élan. L'Harmattan. ISBN 978-2-343-23212-6.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists in one event\nList of multiple Summer Olympic medalists\n Sport of athletics portal\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nRay Ewry at World Athletics\nRay Ewry at Tilastopaja (registration required)\nRay Ewry at the USATF Hall of Fame (archived)\nRay Ewry at Athletics Podium\nRay Ewry at Olympics.com\nRay Ewry at the Team USA Hall of Fame\nRay Ewry at Olympedia\nRay Ewry at the Team USA Hall of Fame (archive July 20, 2023)"}
{"title": "Reiner Klimke", "requested": "Reiner Klimke", "extract": "Reiner Klimke (German pronunciation: [ˈʁaɪnɐ ˈklɪmkə] ; 14 January 1936 – 17 August 1999) was a German equestrian, who won six gold and two bronze medals in dressage at the Summer Olympics — a record for equestrian events that has since been surpassed. He appeared in six Olympics from 1960 to 1988, excluding the 1980 Games that were boycotted by West Germany.\n\n\n== Equestrian career ==\nKlimke studied Harry Boldt and Gustaf Rau.\nHe won team gold in 1964, 1968 (both on Dux), 1976 (riding Mehmed), 1984 and 1988 (both with Ahlerich), and the individual gold in 1984 on Ahlerich. He is the most recent man to win Olympic gold in dressage.\nHis two bronze medals came in the individual event in 1968 and 1976. Klimke also had a fine record at the World Championships, winning six gold medals: two individual, in 1974 on Mehmed and in 1982 on Ahlerich, and four team: 1966, 1974, 1982, 1986.\nAt the European Championships, he was the individual champion in 1967, 1973, and 1985 and rode on seven winning West German teams (1965, 1973, 1983, 1985, and others) . Klimke also competed in eventing early in his career. He was a member of the winning West German three-day event team at the 1959 European Championships, and finished 18th in individual eventing at the 1960 Summer Olympics, making him the best German combination. He also won a Grand Prix show jumping competition in Berlin.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nReiner Klimke was the son of a psychologist and a neurologist. With his wife, Ruth (also a top show jumping and dressage rider), he had three children: Ingrid, Rolf, and Michael. Ingrid competes in eventing and dressage; she won a gold medal at the 2008 Summer Olympics, twenty years after her father's last Olympic gold. Michael also competes at the Grand Prix level in dressage.\nKlimke not only rode and trained, but also ran a law firm and served on several boards, including the FEI Dressage Committee. Klimke died from a heart attack at age 63 in Münster, his place of birth. Prior to his death, he had planned to start at the 2000 Summer Olympics.\n\n\n== Publications ==\nCavaletti: Ausbildung von Reiter und Pferd über Bodenricks Stuttgart: Franckh 1966\nMilitary: Geschichte, Training, Wettkampf Stuttgart: Franckh 1967, \"Eventing\"\nCavalletti: Schooling of Horse and Rider over Ground Rails (translation of Cavaletti by Daphne Machin Goodall) London: J.A. Allen 1969\nLe Concours complet: histoire, entraînement, compétition (translation of Military by Pierre André) Paris: Crépin-Leblond 1977\nGrundausbildung des jungen Reitpferdes: von der Fohlenerziehung bis zum ersten Turnierstart Stuttgart: Franckh 1980\nHorse trials (translation of Military by Daphne Machin Goodall) London: J.A. Allen 1984\nAhlerich von der Remonte zum Dressur-Weltmeister; ein exemplarischer Ausbildungsweg Stuttgart: Franckh 1984\nBasic Training of the Young Horse: From the Education of the Young Foal to the First Competition (translation of Grundausbildung by Sigrid Young) London: J.A. Allen 1985\nAhlerich: The Making of a Dressage World Champion (translation of Ahlerich by Courtney Searls-Ridge) Gaithersburg, MD: Half Halt Press 1986\nVon der Schönheit der Dressur vom jungen Pferd bis zum Grand Prix Stuttgart: Franckh-Kosmos 1991\nKlimke on Dressage: From the Young Horse Through Grand Prix (translation of the above by Courtney Searls-Ridge and Jan Spauschus Johnson) Middletown, MD: Half Halt Press 1992\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists in one event\nList of athletes with the most appearances at Olympic Games\nList of writers on horsemanship\n\n\n== References ==\nEurodressage article on Klimke\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nReiner Klimke at Olympics at Sports-Reference.com (archived)\nVideo of performance given by Klimke at the 1987 National Horse Show in New York on YouTube"}
{"title": "Ricco Groß", "requested": "Ricco Groß", "extract": "Ricco Groß (also spelled Gross, born 22 August 1970) is a German former biathlete. He is one of the most successful biathletes of all time at the Winter Olympics and the World Championships.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nHe has been married to his wife Kathrin since 1994 and they have three sons: Marco (born  1995), Simon (b. 1998), and Gabriel (b. 2004).  He is a Hauptfeldwebel (Sergeant First Class) in the German Bundeswehr.\n\n\n== Career ==\nGroß started out as a cross-country skier but switched to biathlon at the age of 13. He made his World Cup debut at the age of 20. His first club was the SG Dynamo Klingenthal until 1991. In the Biathlon World Cup of 1997/1998, he came second in the overall competition. In the biathlon competition at the 1992, 1994, and 1998 Winter Olympics, he won gold medals as part of the men's 4 × 7.5 km relay team. At the 2002 Winter Olympics in the 4 × 7.5 km relay for men the German team won silver and at the 12.5 km pursuit for men, he won bronze for himself. He took a total of eight Olympic medals during his career, including four relay golds.\nIn the Biathlon World Championships sprint (10 km) he won bronze in 1995, and silver in 2003 and 2004. In 1999, 2003, and 2004, he won gold in the pursuit (12.5 km). In the individual (20 km), he won gold in 1997, silver in 1999, and bronze in 2003 and 2005. He took a total of nine World Championship titles. Groß took a total of 53 individual podium finishes in World Cup competition, including nine race wins.\nAfter retiring from competition Groß settled in Ruhpolding. He has worked as a commentator on biathlon for German television and was appointed as coach of the German women's biathlon team in 2010. He was subsequently announced as senior trainer for the German IBU Cup team in April 2014. In August 2015 he became a senior coach for the Russian men's biathlon squad, agreeing a contract up to the 2017-18 season. In this role he guided the team to the 2016-17 relay World Cup title. In May 2018, Groß was announced as head coach for the Austrian men's biathlon team.\n\n\n== Biathlon results ==\nAll results are sourced from the International Biathlon Union.\n\n\n=== Olympic Games ===\n8 medals (4 gold, 3 silver, 1 bronze)\n\n*Pursuit was added as an event in 2002, with mass start being added in 2006.\n\n\n=== World Championships ===\n20 medals (9 gold, 5 silver, 6 bronze)\n\n*During Olympic seasons competitions are only held for those events not included in the Olympic program.\n**Team was removed as an event in 1998, and pursuit was added in 1997 with mass start being added in 1999 and the mixed relay in 2005.\n\n\n=== Individual victories ===\n9 victories (3 In, 1 Sp, 4 Pu, 1 MS)\n\n*Results are from UIPMB and IBU races which include the Biathlon World Cup, Biathlon World Championships and the Winter Olympic Games.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists in one event\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nOfficial website\nRicco Gross at IBU BiathlonWorld.comRicco Gross at IBU BiathlonResults.com\nRicco Gross at the International Ski and Snowboard Federation\nRicco Gross at Olympics.comRicco Gross at OlympicChannel.com (archived)\nRicco Groß at Olympedia"}
{"title": "Richard Röstel", "requested": "Richard Röstel", "extract": "Richard Röstel (born 1872 – after 1936) was a German gymnast.  He competed at the 1896 Summer Olympics in Athens.\nRöstel was a member of the German team that won two gold medals by placing first in both of the team events, the parallel bars and the horizontal bar.  He also competed in the parallel bars, horizontal bar, vault, and pommel horse individual events, though without success.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nRichard Röstel at Olympedia"}
{"title": "Robert Garrett", "requested": "Robert Garrett", "extract": "Robert S. Garrett (May 24, 1875 – April 25, 1961) was an American athlete, as well as investment banker and philanthropist in Baltimore, Maryland and financier of several important archeological excavations. Garrett was the first modern Olympic champion in discus throw as well as shot put. With six Olympic medals, he is one of the most successful track and field Olympians of all time.\n\n\n== Early and family life ==\nRobert S. Garrett was born in then rural/suburban Baltimore County, Maryland (which surrounds the City of Baltimore) into one of Maryland's most prominent and wealthy families. For four generations, the Garretts ran Robert Garrett and Sons, a shipping and financing, investment banking firm founded by his Irish immigrant great-grandfather, also named Robert Garrett, in 1819. His grandfather John Work Garrett (1820–1884) had led the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (the first passenger railroad line established in America, 1827–1828), for nearly three decades (1858–1884), including supporting the Union during the American Civil War (1861–1865), making it by the middle of the 19th century as one of the most important lines in the nation, and also became an important philanthropist in Baltimore. His father was Thomas Harrison Garrett (1849–1888), and his mother the former Alice Dickerson Whitridge (1851–1920); his elder brother John Work Garrett (1872–1942) became a distinguished American diplomat for the United States Department of State.\nLike his elder brother, Robert Garrett studied at Princeton University, in Princeton, New Jersey, where he excelled in track and field athletics as an undergraduate, and captained Princeton's track team in both his junior and senior years. Garrett married Katharine Barker Johnson (1885–1961), who survived him by less than a year. They had two sons and three daughters by 1920. Although their first daughter and son both died as infants, and their youngest son, a United States Army Air Corps pilot Lt. John Work Garrett (1924–1944) died during World War II (1939/1941–1945), and sons Harrison Garrett (1911–1994) and Johnson Garrett (1912–1979) survived their parents, as did daughters Katharine Garrett Bainbridge (1914–1999) and Ella Brock Johnson Garrett Brigham (1917–2006).\n\n\n== Athletic career ==\n\nAs an undergraduate, Garrett was primarily a shot-putter, though he also competed in the jumping events. When he decided to compete in the famous first modern Olympic games (First Olympiad) being revived and held in Athens, Greece, in 1896, Professor William Milligan Sloane suggested that Garrett also try the discus. They consulted classical authorities to develop a drawing and Garrett hired a blacksmith to make a discus. It weighed nearly 30 pounds (14 kg) and was impossible to throw any distance, so he gave up on the idea. Garrett paid for his own and three classmates' travel to Athens to compete in the games. Francis Lane would finish third in 100 m, Herbert Jamison finished second in 400 m, and Albert Tyler placed second in pole vault. When Garrett discovered that a real discus weighed less than five pounds (2.3 kg), he decided to enter the event for fun.\n\n\n=== 1896 First Olympics ===\nThe three Greek discus throwers among the eleven men entered in the event were true stylists. Each throw, as they spun and rose from a classical Discobolus stance, was intended to be beautiful. Garrett threw the discus with tremendous force using a style more similar to the hammer throw, after seizing the discus in his right hand and swinging himself around and around. Garrett's first two throws were clumsy. Instead of sailing parallel to the ground, the discus turned over and over and narrowly missed hitting audience members. Both foreigners and Americans laughed at his efforts, and Garrett joined in the general merriment. His final throw, however, punctuated with a loud grunt, sent the discus sailing 19 centimetres (7.5 in) beyond the second-place throw (by Panagiotis Paraskevopoulos) mark at 29.15 metres (95 ft 8 in).\nAmerican spectator Burton Holmes wrote: \"All were stupefied. The Greeks had been defeated at their own classic exercise. They were overwhelmed by the superior skill and daring of the Americans, to whom they ascribed a supernatural invincibility enabling them to dispense with training and to win at games which they had never before seen.\" According to James Connolly, the winning Americans in five of the track and field events had not had a single day of outdoor practice since the previous fall.\nGarrett also won the shot put with a distance of 11.22 metres (36 ft 10 in) and finished second in the high jump (tied equally with James Connolly at 1.65 metres (5 ft 5 in)) and second in the long jump (with a jump of 6.00 metres (19 ft 8 in)).\n\n\n=== 1900 Second Olympics ===\nIn the subsequent 1900 Olympics four years later, Garrett competed again and placed third in the shot put and the standing triple jump. His bronze medal in the shot put was unusual, as he refused to compete in the final because it was on a Sunday, his religious day of rest. However, his qualifying mark was good enough to place Garrett in third place. He also competed in the discus throw again, but due to a poorly planned course was unable to set a legal mark as all of his discus throws hit trees.\nGarrett was also a member of the Tug-of-War team at the 1900 Olympics that was forced to withdraw because three of the six members were engaged in the hammer throw final.\n\n\n== Baltimore banker and civic leader ==\n\nGarrett later became a banker and financier at his grandfather's historic mercantile firm, Robert Garrett and Sons, at their landmark office building on the southwest corner of South and Water Streets in downtown Baltimore. He was an investor in the B&O Railroad.\n\n\n=== Archeology and manuscripts ===\nGarrett had an early intensive interest in science, especially in history and archeology, and became an early collector and important donor. He helped to organize and finance an archaeological expedition to Syria, led by Dr. John M. T. Finney. From 1932 to 1939, he was involved with the Committee for the Excavation of Antioch and Its Vicinity both helping to fund the excavations and working on them.  Garrett's hobby was collecting medieval and Renaissance manuscripts. Garrett amassed a collection of historical volumes of Western and non-Western manuscripts, fragments, and scrolls, originating from Europe, the Near East, Africa, Asia and Mesoamerica, ca. 1340 B.C. – A.D. 1900s.\nHe inherited his collecting interest from his father, Thomas Harrison Garrett. After his father's sudden death in 1888, Robert spent the following two and a half years traveling extensively with his mother and two brothers, Horatio and John, in Europe and the Near East. During his travels Garrett developed a particular interest in manuscripts and began collecting. He used the text Universal Paleography: or, Facsimiles of Writing of All Nations and Periods by J. B. Silvester (by Sir Frederic Madden, London, 1949–50) as his guide for collecting primary examples of every known type of script.\nGarrett was for many years an enthusiastic alumnus and served as trustee of Princeton University and also on the governing board of the Baltimore Museum of Art, founded in 1914 by his aunt Mary Elizabeth Garrett, (1857-1915), and working in the relocation and construction project of their new museum building designed by famous American architect John Russell Pope (1874-1937), on Art Museum Drive, off of North Charles Street, and adjacent to the also newly located Homewood Campus of Johns Hopkins University. In 1942, Garrett donated his collection of more than 11,000 manuscripts to Princeton University, including the \"Aksum Scrolls\" and sixteen Byzantine Greek manuscripts, containing rare examples of illuminated Byzantine art.\n\n\n=== Baltimore activist ===\nThrough a mayoral appointment, Garrett served as the chairman of the city's Public Improvement Commission. He was also largely responsible for bringing the new Boy Scouts of America youth organization to Baltimore in 1910, shortly after its national establishment and imported from Great Britain with founder. He managed the BSA in Baltimore until his retirement in 1934. In 1919, Garrett gave to the City of Baltimore a tract of land of a city block along East Patapsco Avenue, between Second and Third Streets in its recently annexed Brooklyn neighborhood in South Baltimore to be used as a public park, which was named in his honor.\nGarrett helped develop Baltimore's public recreational facilities, many of which were privately funded by himself, colleagues and friends. Garrett organized the Public Athletic League which later merged with a similar earlier Children's Playground Association. He was the first chairman of Baltimore City's Bureau of Recreation, and the first chairman of the city's Board of Park Commissioners for the combined Department of Recreation and Parks. Garrett was through much of his life an active member of the National Recreation Association, and was elected its chairman in 1941.\nIn the Baltimore mayoral campaign of 1947, both the Republican and Democratic nominees promised that, if elected, they would name Garrett as chairman of the city's Department of Recreation and Parks. A devout Presbyterian throughout his life, he was a member of their national convention - the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States, and was recognized in 1948 as the year's outstanding layperson in the field of religious education by the International Council of Religious Education.\nIn the realm of civil rights for African-Americans, Garrett was a staunch conservative and opposed any racial integration of the city's public facilities in its parks, playgrounds, swimming pools, tennis courts and recreation centers. Controversies increased as the national civil rights movement expanded in the late 1940s and 1950s. Garrett was later asked to resign from the Board of Park Commissioners when a positive vote for integration was taken.\n\n\n== Death and legacy ==\nGarrett died on April 25, 1961, in Baltimore, Maryland He was buried at Baltimore's Green Mount Cemetery. His widow died the year prior. As noted above, the Garrett Park recreation area in Baltimore City's Brooklyn neighborhood, on East Patapsco Avenue, between Second and Third Streets, was donated and named for him. He donated his papers to Princeton University; the Library of Congress also has family papers\nIn the 1984 NBC television two-part miniseries, The First Olympics: Athens 1896, Garrett was portrayed by actor Hunt Block. In the second episode, Garrett was incorrectly portrayed as being a participant in the first Olympic Marathon.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of Princeton University Olympians\n\n\n== References ==\n\nDe Wael, Herman. Herman's Full Olympians: \"Athletics 1900\".  Accessed March 18, 2006.\nMallon, Bill (1998). The 1900 Olympic Games, Results for All Competitors in All Events, with Commentary. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. ISBN 0-7864-0378-0.\nRobert Garrett Papers, 1903-1949 (bulk 1920–1945), Princeton University Library, Manuscripts Division.\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nRobert Garrett at World Athletics\nRobert Garrett at Tilastopaja (registration required)\nRobert Garrett at Tilastopaja (registration required)\nRobert Garrett at Athletics Podium\nRobert Garrett at Olympics.com\nRobert Garrett at Olympedia\n\"Antioch Field Excavation Reports, 1932-1935,\" Baltimore Museum of Art.\n\"Robert Garrett Diaries and Calling Card,1899-1900,\" Baltimore Museum of Art.\n\"Selected Maseterpieces from the Garret Collection of Prints,\" Baltimore Museum of Art.\n\"Robert Garrett family papers, 1778-1925,\" Library of Congress."}
{"title": "Robert Korzeniowski", "requested": "Robert Korzeniowski", "extract": "Robert Marek Korzeniowski (born 30 July 1968) is a Polish former racewalker who won four gold medals at the Olympic Games and three gold medals at World Championships.\n\n\n== Biography ==\nKorzeniowski was born in Lubaczów, and is the brother of fellow Olympic athlete Sylwia Korzeniowska.\n\n\n== Career ==\nKorzeniowski won three consecutive Olympic gold medals in the 50 km walk at Atlanta 1996, Sydney 2000, and Athens 2004.\nIn addition, he became the first athlete to win the gold medal in both the 50 km walk and 20 km walk at a single Olympic Games in Sydney.\nHe won World Championship titles in the 50 km walk at the 1997 World Championships, 2001 World Championships, and 2003 World Championships.\nHe also won European Championship twice in the 50 km walk in 1998 in Budapest and 2002 in Munich.\nHe is also the former world record holder in the 50 km walk from 2002 to 2006.\n\n\n== Post-career ==\nKorzeniowski retired after the 2004 Olympic Games and became actively involved in various roles at the International Olympic Committee.\nHe was the coach and mentor of former world record-holder Paquillo Fernández.\nSince 2005 he worked for the public Polish Television (TVP) as a chief of sport department and in 2007 he became a General Manager of TVP Sport, a new specialized channel in Poland. On 6 November 2009, he announced his resignation.\nIn 2014 Korzeniowski was inducted into the International Association of Athletics Federations' Hall of Fame.\nIn 2022, the Korzeniowski Warsaw Race Walking Cup, an annual racewalking competition in Warsaw, was founded and named in his honor. Since 2022 it has been a World Athletics Race Walking Tour Gold level competition.\n\n\n== State awards ==\nFor his sport achievements, Korzeniowski received the Order of Polonia Restituta:\n\n1996  Knight's Cross (5th Class)\n2000  Officer's Cross (4th Class)\n2004  Commander's Cross (3rd Class)\n\n\n== Competition record ==\n\n\n== See also ==\nPolish records in athletics\n2002 Race Walking Year Ranking\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nOfficial website (in Polish)\nIOC tribute\nRobert Korzeniowski at World Athletics"}
{"title": "Roland Matthes", "requested": "Roland Matthes", "extract": "Roland Matthes (German pronunciation: [ˈʁoːlant ˈmatəs], ; 17 November 1950 – 20 December 2019) was a German swimmer and the most successful backstroke swimmer of all time. Between April 1967 and August 1974 he won all backstroke competitions he entered. He won four European championships and three world championships in a row, and swam 19 world and 28 European records in various backstroke, butterfly and medley events. He was trained by Marlies Grohe.\n\n\n== Swimming career ==\nAs an Olympian in 1968, 1972 and 1976 he won a total of eight medals (four gold, two silver and two bronze): In 1968 and 1972 he won gold in both the 100 m and 200 m backstroke, while in 1976 he was third in the 100 m backstroke. In addition to these individual events, he won the 4 × 100 m team medley silver in 1968 and 1972, and a bronze medal for the 4 × 100 m freestyle relay in 1972.  At Montreal, he was the only East German male swimmer to win a medal.\nIn 1973 in Belgrade he became the first world champion holding the titles in both the 100 m and 200 m backstroke. Additionally he won silver in the 4 × 100 m medley and bronze in the 4 × 100 m freestyle relay. Two years later in 1975 he defended his world title in the 100 m backstroke.\nAt the European championships in 1970 in Barcelona and 1974 in Vienna he won all four titles for the 100 and 200 m backstroke. Additionally, in Barcelona he won the individual silver for the 100 m freestyle, gold with the 4 × 100 m medley team, and bronze with both the 4×100 and 4 × 200 m freestyle teams. In Vienna, he also won the individual silver for 100 m butterfly, and bronze with the 4 × 100 m freestyle team.\nHe was selected East German Sportspersonality of the Year seven times, in 1967–1971, 1973 and 1975. In 1981 he was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame.\nFrom 1970 to 1977 he studied sport sciences at DHfK in Leipzig and from 1978 to 1984 he studied medicine at the University of Jena. After graduating he worked as an orthopedic surgeon. He retired from swimming in 1976, and in May 1978 married Kornelia Ender, a fellow East German Olympic swimmer. They divorced in 1982.\nThe issue of doping in East Germany brought into questioning most achievements of East German athletes. However, Matthes denied any involvement in doping, claiming that his swimming club was too small to be part of the government system.\n\n\n== Death ==\nMatthes died on 20 December 2019 at the age of 69.\nHis competitor in the backstroke and five time  Olympic champion John Naber said of Matthes upon his death \"Roland was the greatest backstroker that ever lived. He was the first swimmer to successfully defend both Olympic backstroke titles, and he also won medals in international competition in freestyle and butterfly. Some say that only a slow reaction to the gun kept Roland from giving Mark Spitz the race of his life in the 1972 Olympic 100-meter butterfly final in Munich. Matthes was invincible on his back for a decade. His smooth strokes and powerful acceleration made every race I watched him swim become a foregone conclusion\".\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of members of the International Swimming Hall of Fame\nWorld record progression 100 metres backstroke\nWorld record progression 200 metres backstroke\nWorld record progression 4 × 100 metres medley relay\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nRoland Matthes at the International Swimming Hall of Fame \nRoland Matthes  at World Aquatics\nRoland Matthes at Swimrankings.net \nRoland Matthes at Olympics.com Roland Matthes at OlympicChannel.com (archived) Roland Matthes at Olympic.org (archived) \nRoland Matthes at Olympedia"}
{"title": "Rudolf Kárpáti", "requested": "Rudolf Kárpáti", "extract": "Rudolf Kárpáti (17 July 1920 – 1 February 1999) was a fencer from Hungary, who won six gold medals in sabre at four Olympic Games (1948–1960). He also won seven gold, three silver and two bronze medals at the world championships. For his achievements he was named Hungarian Sportsman of the year in 1959 and 1960.\nKárpáti graduated from the National Conservatory majoring in the history of music; he was also an accomplished violinist and the artistic director of the People's Army Central Artistic Ensemble (1961–1986). Besides fencing and music, he was an employee at the Hungarian State Credit Bank and an officer with the Hungarian Army – he retired as Colonel, and later in 1990 was promoted to Major General.\nKárpáti was a member of the Hungarian Fencing Federation from 1961 to 1991. After retiring from competitions, in 1977 he became president of the Budapest Fencing Federation and an administrator with the Fédération Internationale d'Escrime.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists in one event\n\n\n== References =="}
{"title": "Ryan Crouser", "requested": "Ryan Crouser", "extract": "Ryan Crouser (born December 18, 1992) is an American track and field athlete who competes in the shot put and discus. He specializes in the shot put, in which he is the only three-time Olympic gold medalist, having won in Rio de Janeiro, Tokyo and Paris, and also a three-time outdoor World Champion. He holds the world record in the shot put, both indoors and outdoors. He set the outdoor world record at 23.56 meters in May 2023, improving upon his previous record of 23.37 m from July 2021. He has held the indoor record of 22.82 m since January 2021.\nIn his early career, Crouser set a national high school record for the indoor shot put and outdoor discus, and he won gold in the shot put at the 2009 World Youth Championships. At the University of Texas at Austin, he won four NCAA titles in the shot put. He won the national title in the shot put at the USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships seven of the eight times the event was held between 2016 and 2024. He is also a four-time national champion in the indoor shot put at the USA Indoor Track and Field Championships, winning in 2019, 2020, 2022, and 2024.\nCrouser won his first Olympic gold medal at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics with a throw of 22.52 m and retained his title at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, setting an Olympic record of 23.30 m. He also won the gold medal at the 2024 Paris Olympics with a throw of 22.90 m. At the 2019 World Championships in Doha, he won a silver medal. Crouser then went on to win gold at both the 2022 World Championships in Eugene and the 2023 World Championships in Budapest. His throw of 23.51 m in Budapest set a record for the farthest throw ever at a World Championships.\nCrouser has been named Track & Field News World Male Athlete of the Year. He was also awarded USA Track & Field's highest accolade, the Jesse Owens Award, and was twice a finalist for Male Track and Field World Athlete of the Year by World Athletics, the international governing body for track and field. Crouser holds the distinction of earning victories in a Diamond League Championship, Olympic Games, World Indoor Championship, World Outdoor Championship, and World Youth Championship.\n\n\n== Early life and youth competition ==\nCrouser was born on December 18, 1992 in Portland, Oregon, and raised in the neighboring rural area of Boring. He comes from a family with a background in throwing events. His father, Mitch Crouser, was an alternate on the 1984 Olympic discus team. His uncle, Brian Crouser, competed in two Olympics in the javelin, while his other uncle, Dean Crouser, excelled in shot put and discus. His cousins, Sam and Haley Crouser, are also javelin throwers. He started participating in track and field in the fifth grade and was competing at a high level when he reached high school.\nIn 2009, his sophomore year at Sam Barlow High School in Gresham, Oregon, Crouser set a national sophomore record with the 1.62 kg (3.58 lb) discus, throwing 61.72 m. This mark was also the Oregon high school state record until Sam Crouser broke it the following year. Crouser won both the 5 kg shot put and the 1.5 kg discus at the 2009 National Youth Championships. This performance qualified him to represent the United States in both events at the 2009 World Youth Championships in Bressanone, Italy. There, he won gold in shot put with a championship record throw of 21.56 m and silver in discus.\nIn his senior year in 2011, Crouser broke the national high school indoor record in the 5.44 kg (12 lb) shot put with a throw of 23.54 m. This performance marked a rebound from Crouser's junior year, when he was hampered by a foot injury. As a senior, Crouser also broke the national high school record in the discus by throwing 72.40 m to break Mason Finley's record from 2009. After graduating from Barlow High School in 2011, Crouser enrolled at the University of Texas at Austin, rather than keep with his family's tradition of attending the University of Oregon.\n\n\n== Collegiate competition ==\nCrouser competed for the University of Texas at Austin from 2012 to 2016, where he won four NCAA titles in the shot put. As a freshman, he dealt with  a torn ligament in his throwing hand and illness, leading him to redshirt the 2013 indoor season. His first title came as a sophomore at the 2013 NCAA Outdoor Championships, where he threw 21.09 m. Crouser, who had been successful academically, began to struggle with the heavy workload during his second year and opted to switch his major from engineering to economics.\nIn his third year at the university, Crouser won another national title in the shot put at the 2014 NCAA Indoor Championships in March, throwing 21.21 m to defeat Stephen Mozia (20.06 m). The following summer, the 21-year-old won his third national title in the shot put at the 2014 NCAA Outdoor Championships, recording a mark of 21.12 m. During this event, Crouser injured his left foot on his final throw after it collided with the toe board of the shot circle, leading him to withdraw from the discus event at these championships. In his fourth year, he placed second behind Stipe Žunić at the 2015 NCAA Indoor Championships, reaching 20.93 m on his best attempt to Žunić's 21.11 m. At the 2015 NCAA Outdoor Championships, Crouser placed fifth in both the shot put and the discus.\nDue to red-shirting the 2013 indoor season, Crouser had one more winter of collegiate eligibility left, which he used for the 2016 indoor season. The fifth-year senior recorded a personal best of 21.73 m at the 2016 Big 12 Indoor Championships. This performance matched Ryan Whiting's 2008 collegiate indoor record and was the farthest throw in the event so far that year. Later that winter, Crouser won his second collegiate indoor title and fourth title overall with his victory at the 2016 NCAA Indoor Championships. In June 2016, he was named a semi-finalist for the Bowerman, an award given by the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association to the year's outstanding student-athlete.\n\n\n== Senior competition ==\n\n\n=== 2016–2018: Gold medal at the Rio Olympics ===\n\nWhile preparing for the 2016 US Olympics trials, Crouser pursued a master's degree in finance at the University of Texas. He trained under Mac Wilkins, a former Olympic champion in the discus. At the trials, Crouser defeated the reigning world champion, Joe Kovacs, to win his first national title and qualify for the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. On August 8, Crouser won the gold medal in the event, setting an Olympic record with his throw of 22.52 m. He was the first American man to win the event since 2004.\nCrouser won another national title in the shot put in June 2017 and competed in the event at the 2017 World Championships in London, where he finished sixth. At the 2018 USA Outdoor Championships on June 23, he placed second with a throw of 20.99 m, behind Darrell Hill's 21.57 m. In the 2018 Diamond League, an annual series of international competitions, he won in Eugene with a throw of 22.53 m, in Monaco with 22.05 m, and in Zagreb with 22.09 m.\n\n\n=== 2019: Silver medalist in Doha ===\n\nCrouser began competition in 2019 with a victory at the Millrose Games in New York on February 9, where he threw 22.33 m. He followed this performance with another victory at the 2019 USA Indoor Championships on the February 23. In July, he won a national title at the 2019 USA Outdoor Championships, qualifying him for the 2019 World Championships in Qatar. At the World Championships on October 5, Crouser threw a personal best (22.90 m) to finish behind Joe Kovacs (22.91 m), in what World Athletics called the \"greatest – and closest – shot put competition ever\".\n\n\n=== 2020: Fourth best throw ever amid COVID-19 pandemic ===\nCrouser started the year with victories in the shot put at the Millrose Games and the 2020 USA Indoor Championships. His competition schedule was halted until July due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused the postponement of the 2020 Summer Games and the disruption of the international sports calendar. To cope with the frustration of these shutdowns and maintain his competitive edge, Crouser took part in bass fishing tournaments. He also built his own shot put ring near his home. On July 19, he resumed competition at the American Track League Meet, setting a personal best of 22.91 m and the fourth best mark in history. Crouser ended the year undefeated in all 10 meets in which he participated.\n\n\n=== 2021: World record and gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics ===\nOn January 24, Crouser set a world record for the indoor shot put at the American Track League meet. His throw of 22.82 m bested the previous record of 22.66 m that was set by Randy Barnes in 1989. The 28-year old recorded another world record at the 2020 US Olympic trials in July 2021. He threw 23.37 m, eclipsing the previous outdoor world record of 23.12 m held by Barnes since 1990. His record-breaking throw was ratified by World Athletics on August 11, 2021. At the 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo, Crouser defended his Olympic title, while setting an Olympic record of 23.30 m. Out of his six throws at these Games, three exceeded the previous Olympic record.\nCrouser was named the World Male Athlete of the Year by Track & Field News and received the Jesse Owens Award from USA Track & Field. He was also a finalist for the World Athlete of the Year by World Athletics. His achievements in 2021 included the three farthest throws in history, nine of the top ten marks of the year, maintaining an undefeated streak since 2019, and winning the Diamond League final. He also reached a career total of 163 throws over 22 m by the end of the season, the highest ever recorded and accounting for more than a third of all 22-m throws in the history of the sport.\n\n\n=== 2022: Gold medalist in Eugene ===\n\nOn February 27, Crouser finished first in the shot put at the 2022 USA Indoor Track and Field Championships. The following month, the American traveled to Serbia to contest the event at the 2022 World Athletics Indoor Championships. He earned a silver medal, behind Brazilian Darlan Romani. Crouser's performance came amid nerve-related issues in his throwing arm. The following summer, on June 24, the 29-year old won a national title in the shot put, which qualified him to participate in the event at the 2022 World Championships in Eugene. Later that month at the world championships, Crouser won his first world title in the event with a throw of 22.94 m. His victory led an American sweep of the podium, with Joe Kovacs and Josh Awotunde taking silver and bronze.\n\n\n=== 2023: World record and gold medalist in Budapest ===\nIn 2023, Crouser bettered his own world record in the shot put, earned gold at the 2023 World Championships, and won 13 of his 14 competitions. His world record came on May 27 at the Los Angeles Grand Prix, where he threw 23.56 m. The 30-year old attributed the performance to his development of a new technique, which he refers to as the \"step-across\". This method adds a lateral stepping motion across the throwing circle that is designed to optimize balance and power. On July 9, Crouser won another national title in the shot put at the 2023 USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships. This performance qualified him to represent the United States at 2023 World Championships later that month in Budapest, Hungary. Before he left for Budapest, a medical exam uncovered two blood clots in Crouser's legs, and he began taking blood thinners to reduce the risk of complications while competing. In Budapest, Crouser won his second world title and established a World Championship record of 23.51 m. The American finished his season at the Prefontaine Classic on September 17, where he experienced his first loss of the year to Joe Kovacs. Following the season, World Athletics announced Crouser as a finalist for World Athlete of the Year.\n\n\n=== 2024: Gold medalist in Glasgow and Paris ===\nIn February, Crouser won his fourth national title in the indoor shot put at the 2024 USA Indoor Track and Field Championships in Albuquerque, with a mark of 22.80 m. This throw qualified him for the 2024 World Athletics Indoor Championship, where he put the shot 22.77 m to win the first World Indoor Championship of his career. Crouser's throw was 70 cm farther than the second-place finisher, Tom Walsh. At the 2024 Olympic Trials in June, Crouser won his seventh national title in the shot put, defeating second-place finisher Joe Kovacs and earning another berth to the Olympic Games.\nAt the 2024 Olympic Games, Crouser won the shot put, becoming the first athlete to win gold medals in the event at three consecutive Games. The victory came after Crouser dealt with injury earlier in the year. Marcus Thompson of The Athletic wrote: \"What makes this one extra special is Crouser, at one point this year, thought his career was over\".\n\n\n=== 2025: Threepeat at Worlds ===\nCrouser spearheaded the creation of the World Shot Put Series, with the inaugural event taking place in April 2025. The event featured a unique format, in which athletes needed to best competitors to avoid eliminations. Crouser finished fifth in the competition.\nAt the 2025 World Championships, Crouser defended his title with his fifth throw at 22.34 m, which made him one of only two athletes (after Werner Günthör) to win three consecutive gold medals at the Worlds in this event.\n\n\n== Training regimen and coaching ==\nCrouser's training regimen consists of 20- to 40-meter sprints three times a week and three weekly sessions of dynamic jumping exercises like box jumps and bounding to enhance his agility and power. He also uses an agility ladder to improve his footwork. For his core discipline, he practices shot put four to five times a week. Each session involves 20 to 40 throws and lasts 90 to 120 minutes. Crouser draws training techniques from MMA and baseball pitching by using similarities in rotational power and body mechanics to increase the velocity and energy transfer in his throws. He has also incorporated radar technology to refine his throws. The technology, traditionally used by golfers to track their shots, enables Crouser to measure the angle and velocity of his throws.\nIn terms of nutrition, Crouser consumes around 5,500 to 6,000 calories daily during the competitive season. His diet is structured into five meals of approximately 1,000 calories each, which he supplements by snacking to maintain consistent levels of energy. His meals mainly consist of lean proteins, including chicken and ground beef, along with brown rice and quinoa. In an interview with GQ, he talked about the nutritional requirements to support his 6'7, 320 pound frame: \"Food is almost a part of training for me. I'm eating on a set schedule that makes sure I never get hungry.\" He also stated that he follows each of his five daily meals with 16 ounces of milk, amounting to half a gallon a day.\nIn December 2019, Crouser moved from the United States Olympic Training Center in San Diego to the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, where he took a position as a volunteer coach for the men's track and field team. Crouser has described being a coach of college students as helping him to stay excited about competing and to maintain a positive outlook. In March 2024, he stated, \"It can be helpful to have the college kids there for perspective. I was in their shoes once, and look at far how I've come.\" At the 2024 Summer Olympics, one of his Razorback mentees, Rojé Stona, broke the Olympic record in the men's discus throw to win the gold medal.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nCrouser became engaged in 2024 to the former Dr. Megan Clark. They married in 2025.\n\n\n== Achievements ==\nAll statistics from athlete's profile on World Athletics, unless otherwise noted.\n\n\n=== International championships ===\n\n\n=== National championships ===\n\n\n=== NCAA championships ===\n\n\n=== World Athletics Rankings ===\n\nKey:   World record (in bold)\n\n\n== Awards ==\nNight of Legends Award 2021: Jesse Owens Male Athlete of the Year\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nRyan Crouser at World Athletics\nRyan Crouser at Diamond League\nRyan Crouser at Tilastopaja (registration required)\nRyan Crouser at www.USATF.org\nRyan Crouser at TFRRS\nRyan Crouser at Athletics Podium\nRyan Crouser at Olympics.com\nRyan Crouser at Team USA (archive May 28, 2023)\nRyan Crouser Archived December 24, 2017, at the Wayback Machine at All-Athletics"}
{"title": "Ryan Lochte", "requested": "Ryan Lochte", "extract": "Ryan Steven Lochte ( LOK-tee; born August 3, 1984) is an American former competitive swimmer and 12-time Olympic medalist. He is the third-most decorated swimmer in Olympic history measured by total number of medals, behind only Michael Phelps and Katie Ledecky. Lochte's seven individual Olympic medals rank second in history in men's swimming (again to Michael Phelps), tied for second among all Olympic swimmers. He currently holds the world records in the 4×200-meter freestyle (long course).\nLochte's success has earned him SwimSwam's Swammy Award for U.S. Male Swimmer of the Year in 2013, the World Swimmer of the Year Award, and the American Swimmer of the Year Award twice. He has also been named the FINA Swimmer of the Year three times. He has won a total of 90 medals in major international competition (54 gold, 22 silver and 14 bronze) spanning the Olympics, the World Championships Pan American Games and Pan Pacific Championships, including six Olympic gold medals and 39 world championship titles.\nLochte specialized in the backstroke and individual medley but was also a freestyle and butterfly swimmer. He is noted for the speed and distance he attained while kicking underwater. Lochte is also known for the dominance he held in the short course format (25-yard and 25-meter-long pools). Lochte swam the 100-meter individual medley in a then-world record 50.71 seconds on December 15, 2012 at the FINA World Championships in Istanbul, Turkey. At this same event, he was also credited with swimming the then-fastest 200-meter individual medley, finishing in 1 minute 49.63 seconds.\nIn 2016, Lochte generated international controversy when he claimed that he and three other American swimmers had been pulled over and robbed by armed men with police badges while in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, at the 2016 Summer Olympics. While initial news stories reported that Lochte and three other US swimmers had been robbed at gunpoint after a night out in Rio, later details emerged that the \"armed robbers posing as police\" were actually security guards at a gas station where the swimmers had urinated outside the bathroom and Lochte allegedly vandalized a framed poster, and ended with the swimmers providing money to the guards. Lochte apologized for not being more candid about the gas station dispute, and subsequently lost four major sponsorships. On September 8, both the U.S. Olympic Committee and USA Swimming suspended Lochte for 10 months and Bentz, Conger, and Feigen for four months. Additionally, Lochte was required to complete 20 hours of community service, and Bentz was required to complete 10 hours. All were made ineligible for financial support during their suspensions, removed from the U.S. Olympic delegation to the White House, barred from U.S. Olympic training centers, and blocked from attending USA Swimming's year-end Golden Goggles celebration. Lochte was charged in Brazil with falsely reporting a crime.  The scandal gained significant media attention both during the games and after their conclusion. In July 2017, the court in Brazil dismissed the charges against Lochte, saying his actions \"did not rise to the level of filing a false crime report.\"\nOn July 23, 2018, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency imposed a 14-month suspension from competition on Lochte because he had received a \"prohibited intravenous infusion.\" Lochte immediately accepted the sanction. On May 24, 2018, the same day he had received the infusion, Lochte had posted a picture – since deleted – on Instagram \"showing him receiving an intravenous injection of what he says were 'vitamins',\" even though the USADA bans \"intravenous infusions of permitted substances at volumes greater than 100 millilitres [3.5 imp fl oz; 3.4 US fl oz] in a 12-hour period without a special 'Therapeutic Use Exemption',\" Vox reported.\n\n\n== Early life ==\n\nLochte was born in Rochester, New York, the son of Ileana \"Ike\" Aramburu-Lochte and Steven R. Lochte. His mother is a Cuban of Basque descent and was born and raised in Havana, while his father is of Dutch, English, and German descent. He has two older sisters, Kristin and Megan, and two younger brothers, Devon and Brandon. During his early childhood, his family lived in Bristol, New York where he attended Bloomfield Central Schools. The family moved to Florida when Ryan was 12 so his father could coach swimming.\nLochte only began taking swimming seriously when he was in junior high school. His father said, \"I would send him to go shower when he was messing around. He spent more time in the showers than he did in the pool.\" At 14 years old, his loss at the Junior Olympics changed his attitude. He later commented: \"I suddenly said, 'I'm sick of losing'. After that I trained hard and I never lost there again.\"\nHe graduated from Spruce Creek High School in 2002.\n\n\n== College career ==\nLochte attended the University of Florida and graduated in 2007, majoring in sport management.  As a member of the Florida Gators swimming and diving team, he swam for coach Gregg Troy in National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and Southeastern Conference (SEC) competition from 2004 to 2007.  At Florida, Lochte was the NCAA Swimmer of the Year twice, a seven-time NCAA champion, a seven-time SEC champion, and a 24-time All-American.  At the 2006 NCAA Men's Swimming and Diving Championships, during his senior year, Lochte won national titles in all three of his individual events, setting U.S. Open and American records in the 200-yard individual medley and 200-yard backstroke.  He also broke Tom Dolan's nearly decade-old NCAA record in the 400-yard individual medley.\n\n\n== International career ==\n\n\n=== 2004–2005 ===\n\nLochte qualified for his first Olympics after finishing second to Michael Phelps in the 200-meter individual medley at the 2004 U.S. Olympic Team Trials. He also qualified for the 4×200-meter freestyle relay team after finishing fourth in the 200-meter freestyle final. At the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece, Lochte swam with Phelps, Klete Keller, and Peter Vanderkaay to upset the Australian team and capture the gold medal in the 4×200-meter freestyle relay.  It was the first loss for the Australian team in six years. He also narrowly edged out George Bovell and László Cseh in the 200-meter individual medley to win the silver medal behind Phelps.\nLater that year, at the 2004 FINA Short Course World Championships in Indianapolis, Lochte won the silver medal in the 200-meter individual medley and the bronze in the 200-meter freestyle. He also won the gold medal in the 4×200-meter freestyle relay with Chad Carvin, Dan Ketchum, and Justin Mortimer.\nAt the 2005 World Aquatics Championships in Montreal, Lochte won the bronze medals in both the 200-meter backstroke and 200-meter individual medley.  In the 4×200-meter freestyle relay, Lochte teamed with Phelps, Vanderkaay, and Keller to win gold ahead of Canada and Australia.\n\n\n=== 2006–2007 ===\nAt the 2006 FINA Short Course World Championships in Shanghai, held just two weeks after the 2006 NCAA Championships, Lochte won three individual titles, one silver, and one bronze.  He won the 200-meter individual medley and the 200-meter backstroke, setting new world records in both events. He also set another world record in the 100-meter backstroke in the opening leg of the 4×100-meter medley relay, becoming the first man to complete the distance in under 50 seconds. He won his third gold medal in the 400-meter individual medley, setting a new championship record.\nAt the 2007 World Aquatics Championships in Melbourne, Australia, Lochte won his first individual gold medal at a long course world championships in the 200-meter backstroke against compatriot Aaron Peirsol, breaking Peirsol's world record and his seven-year win streak in the event.  This was Lochte's first world record in a long course event. A little more than 90 minutes later, Lochte went on to set a world record in the 4×200-meter freestyle relay with Phelps, Keller and Vanderkaay.  He also won silver medals in the 100-meter backstroke, and 200-meter and 400-meter individual medley, making his medal total for the meet second only to Phelps.\nWithin a week of the world championships, Lochte competed in the annual Mutual of Omaha Duel in the Pool where he again beat Peirsol.  In the 100-meter backstroke, he broke Peirsol's other seven-year winning streak in the shorter of the backstroke races, edging out Peirsol by 0.06 seconds.\n\n\n=== 2008 Summer Olympics ===\n\n\n==== Olympic Trials ====\nAt the 2008 U.S. Olympic Team Trials in Omaha, Nebraska, Lochte competed in six individual events and qualified to swim in three individual events at the 2008 Summer Olympics.  Also, with his third-place finish in the 200-meter freestyle, Lochte was ensured a spot on the 4×200-meter freestyle relay.  In his first event, Lochte finished second to Phelps in the 400-meter individual medley. Both Lochte and Phelps finished below Phelps' previous world record in the event.  In his second event, the 200-meter freestyle, Lochte finished in third place behind Phelps and Vanderkaay.  Less than 30 minutes after the 200-meter freestyle final, Lochte finished in third place behind Aaron Peirsol and Matt Grevers in the 100-meter backstroke final. The next day, Lochte competed in the 100-meter freestyle but withdrew after the semifinals.  Two days later, in the 200-meter backstroke, Lochte finished in second place behind Peirsol, who equalled Lochte's world record.  Less than 30 minutes after the 200-meter backstroke final, Lochte finished second to Phelps in the 200-meter individual medley.\n\n\n==== Olympics ====\nIn his first event at the 2008 Summer Olympics, Lochte won the bronze medal in the 400-meter individual medley behind Phelps and Cseh.  His time of 4:08.09 was two seconds slower than the time he swam in Omaha. In his second event, Lochte swam the second leg of the 4×200-meter freestyle relay.  With Phelps, Ricky Berens, and Vanderkaay, he won his first gold medal and set his first world record as the American team finished first with a time of 6:58.56. The Americans were the first team to break the seven-minute mark in the relay, and broke the previous record, set in Melbourne, Australia, by more than four and a half seconds.  In his third event, the 200-meter backstroke, Lochte won his first individual gold medal and set the world record, beating defending champion Peirsol.  Twenty-seven minutes after the final of the 200-meter backstroke, Lochte went on to win the bronze in the 200-meter individual medley, finishing behind Phelps and Cseh.\n\n\n=== 2009 World Championships ===\n\nAt the 2009 National Championships, the selection meet for the 2009 World Aquatics Championships, Lochte won individual titles in the 200 and 400-meter individual medley.  Lochte also qualified to swim in the 4×100 and 4×200-meter freestyle relay.  In the 200-meter backstroke final, Lochte placed second behind Aaron Peirsol, and lost his world record he set in Beijing when Peirsol recorded a time of 1:53.08.\nIn his first event at the 2009 World Aquatics Championships in Rome, Lochte swam the second leg of the men's 4×100-meter freestyle relay in a time of 47.03.  He earned a gold medal in the event along with Phelps, Matt Grevers, and Nathan Adrian.  The final time of 3:09.21 was a championship record and just ahead of Russia (3:09.52) and France (3:09.89).  With Phelps not competing in the 200 or 400-meter individual medley at these championships, Lochte won the gold in both events.  In the 200-meter individual medley, Lochte broke Phelps' world record of 1:54.23 with a time of 1:54.10.  In the 200-meter backstroke, Lochte won the bronze medal, finishing behind Peirsol and Ryosuke Irie of Japan. In the 4×200-meter freestyle relay final, Lochte swam the anchor leg in 1:44.46.  Combined with Phelps, Berens, and David Walters, Lochte won the gold medal and his team broke the previous world record by one-hundredth of a second with a time of 6:58.55.\n\n\n=== 2010 ===\nAt the 2010 National Championships, the selection meet for the 2010 Pan Pacific Swimming Championships and 2011 World Aquatics Championships, Lochte won individual titles in the 200-meter backstroke, 200-meter individual medley, and the 400-meter individual medley. He also placed second in the 100 and 200-meter freestyle. Lochte's win in the 200-meter individual medley was the first time he defeated Phelps in a major national or international meet. At the 2010 Pan Pacific Swimming Championships in Irvine, California, Lochte won a total of six gold medals.  His wins included the 200-meter backstroke, 200-meter freestyle, 200 and 400-meter individual medleys, and 4×100 and 4×200-meter freestyle relays.\nAt the 2010 FINA Short Course World Championships in Dubai, Lochte became the first individual in history to win seven medals at the Short Course Worlds and was the only person to set a world record individually since body-length swimsuits were banned. In Dubai, Lochte won gold in the 200-meter backstroke, 200-meter freestyle, all individual medleys (100, 200, 400), and 4×100-meter medley relay.  He also won silver in the 4×200-meter freestyle relay.  Lochte's world records in Dubai came on consecutive days, first in the 400-meter individual medley, then in the 200-meter individual medley.  Both world records were broken by considerable margins.\nAt year's end, Lochte was named the World Swimmer of the Year and American Swimmer of the Year by Swimming World Magazine. He was also named FINA male swimmer of the year for 2010 by FINA Aquatics World Magazine. 2010 saw Lochte win a total of 13 international medals, 12 of them gold.\n\n\n=== 2011 World Championships ===\n\nAt the 2011 World Aquatics Championships, Lochte won a total of six medals, five golds and one bronze.  Lochte won his first medal, a bronze, in the 4×100-meter freestyle relay for his contributions in the heats.  In the heats, Lochte recorded a time of 48.28, off from the 47.98 he recorded last year in Irvine.  In his second event, the 200-meter freestyle, Lochte won the gold with a time of 1:44.44, finishing ahead of Michael Phelps who recorded a time of 1:44.79. It was Lochte's first gold in the event in the long course World Championships.  Lochte won the 200-meter individual medley event in a world record time of 1:54.00, finishing ahead of Michael Phelps time of 1:54.16. In the 200-meter backstroke, Lochte dominated the competition with a time of 1:52.96, over a second ahead of second-place finisher Ryosuke Irie.  Shortly after completing the 200-meter backstroke, Lochte competed in the 4×200-meter freestyle relay with Michael Phelps, Peter Vanderkaay, and Ricky Berens.  Swimming the anchor leg in 1:44.56, Lochte was able to make up a deficit from France for the win.  The final time for the relay was 7:02.67. In his last event, the 400-meter individual medley, Lochte continued his dominance with a win in a time of 4:07.13.  His closest competitor, Tyler Clary, finished in 4:11.17, over four seconds behind.\nLochte said he was pleased with his performance at the 2011 World Aquatics Championships but feels that he can improve his times before the 2012 Olympics. \"Getting five gold medals is definitely great, but the times that I went, I know I could go a lot faster,\" he said. \"There are a lot of places in my races that I messed up on that I could have changed and gone faster, but I guess I have a whole year to make sure I have those perfect swims.\"\nAt year's end, Lochte was named the World Swimmer of the Year and American Swimmer of the Year by Swimming World Magazine, and defended his titles from 2010. He was also named FINA male swimmer of the year for 2011 by FINA Aquatics World Magazine and also defended this title.\n\n\n=== 2012 Summer Olympics ===\n\n\n==== Olympic Trials ====\nAt the 2012 United States Olympic Trials, the qualifying meet for the 2012 Summer Olympics, Lochte qualified for the Olympic team by finishing first in the 200-meter backstroke and 400-meter individual medley, and second in the 200-meter freestyle and 200-meter individual medley.  Lochte also narrowly missed a spot competing in the individual 100-meter butterfly by finishing third.\n\n\n==== Olympics ====\n\nAt the Olympics in London, Lochte won his first gold medal of the games in the 400-meter individual medley with a time of 4:05.18.  Commenting on his first medal of the 2012 Olympics and head-to-head competition with fellow American and world record holder, Michael Phelps, Lochte acknowledged Phelps' greatness while positioning himself as \"the best today.\"\nLochte won a silver medal with the U.S. 4×100-meter freestyle relay team, losing out to the French team with a 47.74 split, a full second slower than the French finishing swimmer Yannick Agnel and six tenths of a second slower than teammate Phelps.\nLochte placed fourth in the 200-meter freestyle race.  He followed that performance, however, by winning gold with the U.S. 4×200-meter freestyle team.  Lochte swam the first split and provided the U.S. team a commanding lead, which it never relinquished.\nOn the sixth night of the Games, Lochte swam his last two finals, with only 30 minutes in between. First, he won the bronze medal in the 200m backstroke, finishing behind compatriot Tyler Clary and Japan's Ryosuke Irie. His time of 1.53.94 tied the time he swam four years ago when he won the gold medal at the 2008 Games, which was then a world record. Half an hour later, Lochte took on Phelps in the 200m individual medley. He won a silver medal behind Phelps in what was thought at the time to be the last head-to-head race of their careers, as Phelps retired after the Games. This was the third consecutive Olympics in which Lochte won a medal in the 200m individual medley.\nHis five medals brought his total to 11 Olympic medals, tied for second among male swimmers with compatriots Mark Spitz and Matt Biondi, behind only Phelps. His seven individual Olympic medals are the second-most in men's Olympic swimming, surpassing Zoltán Halmay and Mark Spitz, who won six.\n\n\n=== 2013 World Championships ===\n\nIn his first event at the 2013 World Aquatics Championships in Barcelona, Lochte combined with Nathan Adrian, Anthony Ervin, and Jimmy Feigen in the 4×100-meter freestyle relay, with the team finishing behind France. Swimming the second leg, Lochte recorded a split of 47.80, and the team finished with a final time of 3:11.44. In his first individual event, the 200-meter freestyle, Lochte was unsuccessful in defending his title and placed fourth in the final with a time of 1:45.64. Lochte won his first individual medal of the competition, a gold, by defending his title in the 200-meter individual medley, recording a time of 1:54.98. The day following his 200 medley gold, Lochte also defended his title in the 200-meter backstroke, recording a time of 1:53.79 in the final. On the same day of winning the 200-meter backstroke (and swimming in the 100-meter butterfly semifinals where he set a personal best and qualified for the final), Lochte combined with Conor Dwyer, Charlie Houchin, and Ricky Berens, to win the 4×200-meter freestyle relay. Swimming the second leg, Lochte recorded a split of 1:44.98, and the team finished with a final time of 7:01.72. In winning the 4×200 relay, Lochte became the first swimmer to win 5 consecutive gold medals at the World Championships in the 4×200-meter freestyle relay (while also being the first swimmer, along with compatriot Michael Phelps, to win the 4×200-meter freestyle relay Olympic Gold Medal on 3 successive occasions).\nThe next day, Lochte competed in the 100-meter butterfly and finished 6th in the final with a time of 51.58, just off his semifinal time of 51.48.\n\n\n=== 2015 World Championships ===\n\nLochte competed in his sixth World Championships in Kazan in 2015. He made history upon his win in the 200-meter individual medley by becoming the only person other than Grant Hackett to successfully win an event in four consecutive world championships. However, he finished a disappointing fourth in the 200-meter freestyle in 1:45.83, just off the podium. In addition, Lochte also won three relay medals. Lochte led off the 4×200-meter freestyle relay in 1:45.71, but the US team could not hold on as Great Britain pulled off a great upset and beat the US team 7:04.33 to 7:04.75. Alongside Nathan Adrian, Simone Manuel, and Missy Franklin, he was also part of the winning and world record-breaking 4×100-meter mixed freestyle relay. Lochte also anchored the prelim team for the 4×100-meter medley relay and received a gold medal for his efforts since the finals team won.\n\n\n=== 2016 Summer Olympics ===\n\n\n==== Olympic Trials ====\nAt the 2016 United States Olympic Trials, the U.S. qualifying meet for the Rio Olympics, Lochte finished third in the 400-meter individual medley, just missing out on an Olympic berth. In the 200-meter freestyle, he missed his second chance at making the team in an individual event by placing fourth; nonetheless, he earned a relay spot in the 4×200-meter freestyle relay. Lochte finally qualified for an individual event by finishing second in the 200-meter individual medley behind Phelps.\n\n\n==== Olympics ====\n\nLochte's first event in Rio was the 4×200 meter freestyle relay, where he swam both the morning heats and the finals. In the finals, Lochte swam the third leg after Conor Dwyer and Townley Haas. After Lochte's leg, the U.S. had a commanding lead. Phelps anchored the relay to touch the wall first at 7:00.66. This brought Lochte's Olympic medal count up to 12 total, making him the second most decorated male Olympic swimmer of all time, second only to Phelps.\nLochte finished 5th in the 200-meter individual medley. This was his 4th consecutive final in the event, and the first time he did not win a medal.\n\n\n==== Lochtegate ====\n\nOn the morning of August 14, 2016, Lochte and Jimmy Feigen claimed that they and teammates Gunnar Bentz and Jack Conger were robbed in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, during the 2016 Summer Olympics after men forced them out of their taxi at gunpoint in the early morning hours. Lochte also alleged that a gun had been put up against his head. A police report stated that one or more of the athletes had vandalized the gas station bathroom and damaged a sign on the premises, though investigative reporters found that the athletes had damaged the sign but had neither entered the bathroom nor damaged items in the bathroom. Some of the swimmers were detained in Brazil as witnesses. Ultimately, the athletes each released statements. Lochte later stated in an interview that he had been drunk and that he \"over-exaggerated that story\". However, his amended story raised concerns about the facts, and a witness who also translated between the security guards and the athletes claimed that the swimmers had stopped to use the fuel station's bathroom, damaged the sign on the premises, and that he stepped in when it was obvious that events could get out of control.  He noted that all sides understood that the money was being paid to cover the damage done, but also that Lochte was drunk or \"very altered\" at the time of the incident.\nIn August 2016, Lochte was charged with providing a false claim of a robbery during the 2016 Olympic Games, and if convicted could be jailed up to 18 months. The charges were later dismissed by a court, which stated that Lochte's actions \"did not rise to the level of filing a false crime report.\" On August 30, 2016, when appearing on Good Morning America, he said that he was unsure how he would classify the incident, stating, \"I don't know if I would consider it as a robbery, or extortion, or us just paying up for the poster being ripped.\"  Investigative reporting by USA Today, which reviewed the security camera tapes, showed that Lochte and the other swimmers did not enter the bathroom that they were accused of vandalizing, and that the items purportedly damaged inside the bathroom were neither damaged nor recently replaced.\nLochte apologized for the gas station dispute. In the aftermath of the incident, USA Swimming suspended Lochte from domestic and international competitions for 10 months. Lochte was also dropped by all four of his major sponsors. However, by January 2017, TYR announced an apparel deal with Lochte.\n\n\n=== 2018 suspension ===\nOn July 23, 2018, the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) imposed a 14-month suspension from competition on Lochte because, on May 24 of that year, he received a 'prohibited intravenous infusion.' \"I have never taken a prohibitive [sic] substance,\" Lochte told the media, \"I have never attempted to gain any advantage by putting anything illegal in my body...I may be on the sideline from competition, but I'll continue to train every day...I want nothing more than to earn the privilege to swim for my country in my fifth Olympic Games in Tokyo 2020.\"\nOn May 24, 2018, the same day he had received the infusion, Lochte had posted a picture - since deleted - on Instagram \"showing him receiving an intravenous injection of what he says were 'vitamins',\" even though the USADA bans \"intravenous infusions of permitted substances at volumes greater than 100 millilitres [3.5 imp fl oz; 3.4 US fl oz] in a 12-hour period without a special 'Therapeutic Use Exemption',\" Vox reported.\n\n\n=== 2021 ===\nOn June 17, 2021, the fifth day of competition at the 2020 USA Swimming Olympic Trials, Lochte swam a 1:58.48 in the morning prelims of the 200-meter individual medley, ranking second and qualifying for the semifinals. In the evening semifinals, he swam a 1:58.65 ranking sixth and qualifying for the final. In the final, Lochte finished seventh with a time of 1:59.67 and not qualifying for the 2020 Summer Olympics in the event. In Michael Andrew's post-win interview for the 200-meter individual medley final, Lochte joined Andrew and called him family along with the swimming community. Lochte also said missing out on the Olympic Team was not the end of the road for him.\nA few days after the end of the US Olympic Trials, Lochte confirmed he was still committed to the sport of swimming, both in terms of competing and growing the sport, and he was not retiring. He added that one of his swimming pursuits moving forward included teaching youth how to swim.\n\n\n== Television appearances and pop culture fame ==\n\n\n=== Magazines ===\nBefore the 2012 Summer Olympics, Fortune magazine estimated that Lochte earned $2.3 million from endorsement deals with Speedo, Mutual of Omaha, Gillette, Gatorade, Procter and Gamble, Ralph Lauren, Nissan, and AT&T. Lochte has also appeared in commercials for the Nissan Altima and been featured on the covers of Vogue, Time, Men's Health, and Men's Journal.\n\n\n=== Television ===\nComedian Seth MacFarlane parodied Lochte in the 2012 season premiere of Saturday Night Live, after which Lochte said he would be open to doing a cameo appearance on the show.\nLochte appeared as an exaggerated version of himself in the 30 Rock episode \"Stride of Pride\", which aired October 18, 2012. He also had a guest appearance on 90210 in late 2012.\nWhat Would Ryan Lochte Do? began airing April 21, 2013, on E! and was cancelled after only one season, five weeks later. Lochte's public persona and character have inspired a series of unflattering Internet memes.\nOn August 30, 2016, Lochte was announced as one of the celebrities who would compete on season 23 of Dancing with the Stars. He was partnered with professional dancer Cheryl Burke. Lochte and Burke were eliminated on Week 8 of competition, finishing in 7th place.\nIn 2017, Lochte played a supporting role in Little Something for Your Birthday.\nOn January 13, 2019, the reality game show Celebrity Big Brother announced that Lochte would be a houseguest in the second American season of the show. He finished in 10th place after 13 days.\nOn the Family Guy season 17 episode \"Griffin Winter Games\", Peter Griffin meets Lochte at a party for the athletes of the Korean winter Olympics where he asks him, \"wait, aren't you a summer sport guy?\" As Lochte offers him a beer, a narrator imitating Morgan Freeman refers to him as an 'international bozo' and notes that Peter partied with him all night.\nOn September 22, 2019, Lochte appeared on Celebrity Family Feud along with his wife Kayla. Lochte won the family be family round, and between Kayla and himself they scored over 200 points in the final round to win the game.\nOn November 13, 2019, Ryan appeared on an episode of \"Back in the Game\" with Alex Rodriguez. The series focuses on Rodriguez mentoring athletes and entertainers who have fallen on hard times. In the episode Alex helps Lochte get his finances back on track.\nOn January 12, 2023, Ryan appeared on the show The Traitors. He finished in 14th place after being \"murdered\" by the traitors in episode 5.\n\n\n=== Radio ===\nNational Public Radio named Lochte as their \"platonic ideal of bro-dom\".\n\n\n== Awards ==\n\n\n== Personal life ==\n\n\n=== Trademark application ===\nOn August 1, 2012, Lochte filed an application to trademark his personal catchphrase, \"Jeah\", with the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office.  He abandoned the application before it was finalized.\n\n\n=== Sponsorships ===\nIn January 2017, active-wear maker TYR Sport, Inc. signed Lochte to his first major professional swimming sponsorship deal since the Lochtegate scandal.\nIn November 2019, Lochte revealed to Alex Rodriguez on an episode of CNBC's Back In The Game that he once made \"well over $1 million\" a year and also earned $75,000 from a single sponsor. However, he also stated to Rodriguez that his scandals – which resulted in his suspension and losing his sponsors – and lavish spending resulted in him suffering significant financial losses. He was forced to sell his 4,200 square feet (390 m2) home and now resides in a 1,800 square feet (170 m2) apartment. He also estimated that he had only about $20,000 in savings.\n\n\n=== Protests ===\nIn July 2021, Lochte spoke about his stance not supporting protests at athletic events in advance of the 2020 Summer Olympics. This reiterated sentiments Lochte shared concerning the safety and security of individuals after protesters targeting him stormed the stage during one of his performances on the television show Dancing with the Stars in September 2016.\n\n\n=== Marriage and fatherhood ===\nDuring the 2016 Summer Olympics, Lochte revealed that he was in a relationship with Playboy Playmate of the Month for July 2015 Kayla Rae Reid, whom he first got in touch with via Instagram. They became engaged in October 2016, and were married in an at-home civil ceremony in January 2018. The couple have three children together. In March 2025, Kayla filed for divorce from Lochte.\n\n\n=== Selling his medals ===\nRyan Lochte has sold nine of his 12 Olympic medals. In 2022, he sold his six bronze and silver medals for $166,000. In 2026, Lochte auctioned off three more medals through Goldin Auctions, bringing in $385,520. The three additional medals were three Olympic gold medals he won in relay events: 4×200 m freestyle relay from Athens in 2004; 4×200 m freestyle relay from Beijing 2008 and his 4×200 m freestyle relay from Rio 2016.\n\n\n== Career best times ==\n\n\n=== Long course meters (50 m pool) ===\n\n\n=== Short course meters (25 m pool) ===\n\n\n== World records ==\n\n\n=== Long course (50 m pool) ===\n\n\n=== Short course (25 m pool) ===\n\n\n== See also ==\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nOfficial website \nRyan Lochte  at World Aquatics \nRyan Lochte at Olympics.com \nRyan Lochte at Olympedia \nRyan Lochte at USA Swimming (archived April 8, 2022)\nRyan Lochte at Team USA (archive January 31, 2023)\nRyan Lochte at IMDb \nRyan Lochte's channel on YouTube\nRyan Lochte – University of Florida athlete profile at the Wayback Machine (archived April 5, 2010)\nRyan Lochte on Encyclopedia Britannica"}
{"title": "Ryan Murphy (swimmer)", "requested": "Ryan Murphy (swimmer)", "extract": "Ryan Fitzgerald Murphy (born July 2, 1995) is an American competitive swimmer specializing in backstroke. He is a five-time Olympic gold medalist and the former world-record holder in the men's 100-meter backstroke.\nAt the 2016 Summer Olympics, Murphy swept the backstroke events, winning gold medals in both the 100- and 200-meter backstroke races. He also won a gold medal in the 4×100-meter medley relay with Michael Phelps, Nathan Adrian, and Cody Miller, and Murphy's backstroke relay leg broke the world record previously set by Aaron Peirsol in 2009.\nAt the 2020 Summer Olympics, Murphy won a gold medal and set the world record in the 4x100-meter medley relay with Michael Andrew, Caeleb Dressel, and Zach Apple, in addition to a silver medal in the 200-meter backstroke and bronze medal in the 100-meter backstroke.\n\n\n== Early life and education ==\nMurphy began dreaming of competing at the Olympic Games when he was seven years old.\nMurphy graduated from Bolles School in Jacksonville, Florida in 2013 and attended the University of California, Berkeley where he competed in swimming under Head Coach Dave Durden. While competing for the California Golden Bears (Cal), he was an eight-time NCAA individual national champion, winning the 100-yard and 200-yard backstrokes in 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017.\n\n\n== Swimming career ==\n\n\n=== 2011 ===\nAt the age of 16, Murphy earned his first career international medals, both in the 200-meter backstroke.  At the 2011 World Junior Swimming Championships in Lima, Murphy won a bronze medal in the 200-meter backstroke with a time of 1:59.63. Later in 2011, at the 2011 Pan American Games, Murphy won another bronze also in the 200-meter backstroke. In the final, he recorded a time of 1:58.50.\n\n\n=== 2012 ===\n\nAt the 2012 United States Olympic Trials, Murphy missed the Olympic team, finishing sixth in the 100-meter backstroke (53.92) and fourth in the 200-meter backstroke (1:57.39).\nFollowing the Olympics, Murphy competed at the 2012 World Short Course Championships in Istanbul. He won a bronze medal in the 200-meter backstroke with a time of 1:48.86, finishing behind Radosław Kawęcki and Ryan Lochte. Murphy earned a gold medal in the 4×100-meter medley relay for his participation in the heats, swimming the backstroke leg with a time of 50.91.\n\n\n=== 2013 ===\nAt the 2013 US National Championships, Murphy just missed qualifying for the 2013 World Aquatics Championships, finishing third in the 100- and 200-meter backstroke with times of 53.38 and 1:56.37, respectively.\n\n\n=== 2014 ===\nMurphy won the 100- and 200-yard backstrokes at his first NCAA D1 Swimming Championships. His 100-yard backstroke time of 44.78 was a US 17–18 National Age Group (NAG) record, and his 200-yard backstroke time of 1:37.23 broke both Tyler Clary's NCAA record and the 17–18 NAG record. He also placed eighth in the 200-yard IM and swam on Cal's 200 and 400 medley and freestyle relays en route to Cal winning the team championship.\n\n\n=== 2015 ===\nAt the 2015 NCAA Championships, Murphy swept the backstroke events. He broke the American record previously held by Ryan Lochte in the 200-yard backstroke. He also won the 100-yard backstroke, breaking Lochte's NCAA record. Murphy also placed fifth in the 200 individual medley (IM) and was named CSCAA Swimmer of the Meet.\n\n\n=== 2016 ===\n\n\n==== NCAA Championships ====\nAt the 2016 NCAA D1 Swimming Championships, Murphy continued his backstroke winning streak with first-place finishes the 100- and 200-yard backstrokes in record times. His times of 43.49 and 1:35.73, respectively broke his own NCAA, American, and US Open records. He also placed third in the 200-yard IM in 1:40.27 and was once again was named CSCAA Swimmer of the Meet, this time sharing the title with former Bolles teammates Joseph Schooling and Caeleb Dressel.\n\n\n==== US Summer Olympic Trials ====\nAt the 2016 United States Olympic Trials in Omaha, Nebraska, Murphy made his first Olympic team by placing first in the 100- and 200-meter backstroke events. He also made the 4×100 medley relay by virtue of his win in the 100-meter backstroke.\n\n\n==== 2016 Rio Summer Olympics ====\n\nAt the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Murphy won gold medals in the 100- and 200-meter backstroke, as well as in the 4×100-meter medley relay together with Cody Miller, Michael Phelps, and Nathan Adrian. Murphy broke Aaron Peirsol's world record for the 100-meter backstroke with his relay split time of 51.85, and the relay team as a whole set a new Olympic record with a time of 3:27.95. Murphy's win in the 100-meter backstroke, with a time of 51.97 seconds, set a new Olympic record for the event. It also marked the sixth consecutive time a swimmer representing the United States had won the gold medal in the 100-meter backstroke at the Olympic Games. His gold medal was also the first won by a male alumnus of a high school in Jacksonville, Florida for the United States in an individual swimming event. In total, at his first Olympic Games, Murphy raced and won gold medals in all three of his events, set three Olympic records and one world record, and was named as one of the stars of the 2016 Summer Olympics by the International Olympic Committee.\n\n\n=== 2017 ===\n\n\n==== NCAA Championships ====\nAt the 2017 NCAA championships, Murphy completed his four-for-four sweep of the 100- and 200-yard backstroke events, becoming only the fourth man in NCAA history to sweep 100- and 200-yard events of a single stroke four years in a row after John Nabor (backstroke), Pablo Morales (butterfly), and Brendan Hansen (breaststroke). Murphy also placed third in the 200-yard IM, leading after the breaststroke leg but overtaken in freestyle.\n\n\n==== World Championships ====\n\nAt the 2017 US National Championships, the qualifying meet for the 2017 World Aquatics Championships, Murphy won the 200-meter backstroke and placed second to Matt Grevers in the 100-meter backstroke to qualify for the World Championships later that year.\nAt the 2017 World Swimming Championships in Budapest, Murphy placed third in the 100-meter backstroke behind Xu Jiayu and Grevers and second in the 200-meter backstroke behind Evgeny Rylov and ahead of countryman and former college teammate Jacob Pebley. Murphy also earned gold medals by swimming in the prelims on the 4×100-meter medley and mixed medley relays. The mixed medley relay set a World and Championship record time of 3:40.28 in the prelims, a record later broken by in the US team in finals.\n\n\n=== 2018 ===\n\n\n==== 2018 Pan Pacific Championships ====\n\nDuring the 2018 Pan Pacific Swimming Championships in August 2018 in Tokyo, Japan, Murphy won three gold medals: one in the 100-meter backstroke, one in the 200-meter backstroke, and one in the 4x100-meter medley relay. Murphy's strong finish to the Championships, winning two gold medals on the final day of competition, was noted by Jacksonville newspaper The Florida Times-Union. His gold medal performance in the 200-meter backstroke with a time of 1:53.57 established a new Championships record that was over 1.5 seconds faster than the silver medalist in the event, Ryosuke Irie. Murphy opened up to Reuters after his success at the Championships, expressing he hoped that swimming in a pool close to where swimming competitions for the 2020 Summer Olympics would be held would help quell his superstitions concerning his performance at the upcoming Olympic Games.\nUSA Swimming took notice of Murphy's swims at the 2018 Pan Pacific Championships and nominated him for the \"Relay Performance of the Year\", \"Male Race of the Year\", and  \"Male Athlete of the Year\" Golden Goggle Awards. In total, he won all three awards for which he received nominations.\n\n\n==== 2018 World Short Course Championships ====\nMurphy competed at the 2018 FINA World Swimming Championships in Hangzhou, China in December 2018. He won medals in three individual events: gold in the 100-meter backstroke, silver in the 50-meter backstroke, and silver in the 200-meter backstroke. He also medaled in three relay events: gold in the men's 4×100-meter medley relay, gold in the mixed 4×50-meter medley relay, and silver in the men's 4×50-meter medley relay.\n\n\n=== 2019 ===\n\n\n==== 2019 World Aquatics Championships ====\n\nIn July 2019 at the 2019 World Aquatics Championships in Gwangju, South Korea, Murphy won three medals. Swimming with Lilly King, Caeleb Dressel, and Simone Manuel in the final of the mixed 4×100-meter medley relay, he won a silver medal. The relay finished two hundredths of a second behind Australia. Murphy also won the silver medal in the 200-meter backstroke and the men's 4×100-meter medley relay.\n\n\n=== 2021 ===\n\n\n==== 2020 US Olympic Trials ====\nIn June 2021, Murphy qualified for the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo in the 100-meter backstroke at the 2020 USA Swimming Olympic Trials. He won the event at the US Olympic Trials, swimming a time of 52.33 at the final on June 15. He was the only veteran to qualify in the event for the 2020 Olympics; the other qualifier in the event, Hunter Armstrong, was a first-time member of the US Olympic Team. In the morning prelims of the 200-meter backstroke, Murphy placed fifth with a time of 1:57.95 and advanced to the semifinals. In the evening, Murphy swam a time of 1:55.60 and advanced to the finals in first-place overall. He swam a time of 1:54.20 in the final, winning the event and securing a spot at the 2020 Summer Olympics in the 200-meter backstroke.\n\n\n==== 2020 Summer Olympics ====\n\nMurphy was selected as one of four captains for the US Olympic swim team at the 2020 Summer Olympics along with Caeleb Dressel, Simone Manuel, and Allison Schmitt. All four swimmers were veteran Olympians chosen to provide guidance for their fellow members of the US Olympic Swim Team, with Murphy highlighted for his calm demeanor and the stability he provided the team in a competitive context.\nOn day two of Olympic competition, in the prelims of the 100-meter backstroke, Murphy swam a 53.22 and tied in overall ranking for seventh with Russian Evgeny Rylov. In the semifinals the following day, Murphy swam the fastest in both semifinals heats with a time of 52.24 and advanced to the final. In the final, Murphy raced against a field of majority veteran Olympians, with five of the eight competitors, including himself, having competed in the final of the 100-meter backstroke at the 2016 Olympic Games. His time of 52.19 seconds won him the bronze medal. Speaking to national newspaper USA Today about winning the bronze medal after winning the gold medal in 2016, Murphy said, \"Winning an Olympic gold means you're the best in the world. Being third in the world is no slouch.\"\nOn the fifth day of competition, Murphy advanced to the semifinals in the 200-meter backstroke with a time of 1:56.92, seventh overall in the prelims. In the semifinals, Murphy swam over one second faster than in the prelims with a time of 1:55.38 and qualified for the final in third place. Murphy won his second medal of the 2020 Olympics, a silver medal, in the final of the 200-meter backstroke with a time of 1:54.15 on day seven of competition.\nIn the final of the 4×100-meter mixed medley relay, Murphy swam the backstroke leg of the relay, Lydia Jacoby the breaststroke, Torri Huske the butterfly, and Caeleb Dressel the freestyle leg of the relay; they placed fifth. It was the first time the event was included in the Olympic program for swimming. Murphy held off the field in his leg of the relay, tying Thomas Ceccon of Italy for first at the wall. The American team fell to eighth place by the end of the butterfly leg of the relay but made up some time on the freestyle leg to place fifth overall. Jacoby's goggles had fallen off during her leg of the relay, to which Murphy responded, \"Anyone that's swam with their goggles in their mouth like she did, she did fantastic.\"\nOn the final day, Murphy swam backstroke in the final of the 4×100-meter medley relay with teammates Michael Andrew (breaststroke), Caeleb Dressel (butterfly), and Zach Apple (freestyle). The relay won the gold medal in a world record time of 3:26.78, setting a new Olympic record in the process. By the end of the 2020 Olympics, Murphy had won a total of six Olympic medals, four in individual events and two in relay events, between his first (2016) and second (2020) Olympic Games. His contribution to the world record and gold medal in the final of the 4×100-meter medley relay earned him a nomination from the USA Swimming Foundation for the Golden Goggle Award for Relay Performance of the Year along with his finals relay teammates. Additionally, Murphy's support of his teammates and the integrity of swimming as a sport, as well as his consistent performances since the 2016 Summer Olympics, earned him a nomination for the Male Athlete of the Year Golden Goggle Award.\nHis swims in 2021 through the end of August secured his place on the 2021–2022 US National Team in the 100-meter backstroke and 200-meter backstroke events.\n\n\n==== International Swimming League ====\nFor the 2021 season of the International Swimming League (ISL), Murphy was retained by the LA Current. He took a break from competition during the regular season of competition and remained on the roster heading into playoffs season. For his first race after the 2020 Olympic Games, Murphy swam a 1:48.43 in the 200-meter backstroke in the playoffs match number two, which was the fastest time in the 2021 year up to that point in time. For the second match of the playoffs, match thirteen overall, Murphy won enough points from his races to earn the most valuable player (MVP) of the match honor. In his second match of the playoffs season, match fifteen overall, Murphy ranked second overall in terms of MVP points, just 4.0 points behind Duncan Scott of London Roar, who was named match MVP. Starting off his third and final playoffs match of the season, Murphy won 19.0 points for his team in one race, winning the 200-meter backstroke in a personal season-best time of 1:48.10. Later the same day, in the 50-meter backstroke, Murphy won the event and set new Americas, American, and ISL records with a time of 22.53 seconds, surpassing the previous records in the event that he himself had set in the 2020 ISL season at 22.54 seconds. The second and final day of the match, Murphy won the 50-meter backstroke skins event, outscoring his competitors and winning in the final head-to-head race against Evgeny Rylov of Energy Standard with a time of 24.22 seconds. Murphy's performances earned him the number two spot for \"The Week That Was\" from Swimming World for the week of November 29. For the MVP points he had earned since the beginning of the ISL to the end of the 2021 season, Murphy ranked eighth overall with 610 points across thirteen matches.\n\n\n==== 2022 ====\nOn day two of the 2022 US International Team Trials in Greensboro, North Carolina, Murphy qualified for the final of the 200-meter backstroke, ranking third in the prelim heats with a time of 1:57.46 and winning the final, qualifying for the 2022 World Aquatics Championships team with a time of 1:55.01. He swam a time of 24.57 in the final of the 50-meter backstroke and placed fourth. In the final of the 100-meter backstroke, Murphy placed second behind Hunter Armstrong with a time of 52.46 seconds, also qualifying for the World Championships team in the event. In October, he was named to the roster for the 2022 World Short Course Championships in the 100-meter backstroke and 200-meter backstroke.\n2024\nMurphy placed first in the US Olympic Trials in the 200 M backstroke, becoming the first swimmer to win both the 200 and 100 events three years in a row. In Paris, he won bronze in the 100 M backstroke, silver in the 4 x 100 Medley, and gold in the mixed 4 x 100 medley.\n\n\n== International championships ==\n\na  Murphy swam only in the prelims heats.\n\n\n== Personal best times ==\nAs of June 21, 2024\n\n\n== World records ==\n\nLegend: r – relay lead-off leg\na  with Michael Andrew (breaststroke), Caeleb Dressel (butterfly), Zach Apple (freestyle)\n\n\n== Olympic records ==\n\nLegend: WR – World record; r – relay lead-off leg\na  split 51.85 in backstroke; with Cody Miller (breaststroke), Michael Phelps (butterfly), Nathan Adrian (freestyle)\nb  split 52.31 in backstroke; with Michael Andrew (breaststroke), Caeleb Dressel (butterfly), Zach Apple (freestyle)\n\n\n== Awards and honors ==\nInternational Swimming League, Match Most Valuable Player: 2021 Match 13\nSwimming World, The Week That Was: November 29, 2021 (#2)\nGolden Goggle Award, Male Athlete of the Year: 2018\nGolden Goggle Award, Relay Performance of the Year: 2018 (4x100-meter medley relay), 2021 (4x100-meter medley relay)\nGolden Goggle Award, Male Race of the Year: 2018 (100-meter backstroke)\nSwimSwam Top 100 (Men's): 2021 (#7), 2022 (#9)\nSwimSwam Swammy Award, U.S. Swimmer of the Year (male): 2018\nSwimSwam Swammy Award, NCAA Swimmer of the Year (male): 2014, 2016\nPac-12 Conference, Scholar-Athlete of the Year (Men's Swimming & Diving): 2016—2017\nPac-12 Conference, Swimmer of the Year: 2015, 2016, 2017\nPac-12 Conference, Freshman/Newcomer of the Year: 2014\nGolden Goggle Award nominee, Breakout Performer of the Year: 2014\nGolden Goggle Award nominee, Male Athlete of the Year: 2021\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nMurphy began dating Bridget Konttinen whom he met in college, in 2016. The couple announced their engagement on May 15, 2022.\nIn an interview with Melvin Stewart of SwimSwam in 2021, Murphy shared that he is approximately 95% Irish by ancestry; his mother is of full Irish descent and his father is approximately 90% Irish by ancestry. Murphy was raised in a strong Catholic family and remains committed to his faith, stating, \"I’m a firm believer in God. My faith is important to me. There are, however, times when I rely on him more than others. Overall, I am private in my spirituality.\"\n\n\n== See also ==\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nRyan Murphy at World Aquatics\nRyan Murphy at SwimRankings.net\nRyan Murphy at the International Swimming League (archived)\nRyan Murphy at Olympics.com\nRyan Murphy at Olympedia\nRyan Murphy at InterSportStats\nRyan Murphy at USA Swimming (archived April 22, 2022)\nRyan Murphy at Team USA (archive March 18, 2023)\nRyan Murphy – University of California athlete profile at CalBears.com\nRyan Murphy at mySwimIO"}
{"title": "Sanya Richards-Ross", "requested": "Sanya Richards-Ross", "extract": "Sanya Richards-Ross  (née Richards; born February 26, 1985) is a retired American track and field athlete who competed internationally for the United States in the 400-meter sprint. Her notable accolades in this event include being the 2012 Olympic champion, 2009 world champion, 2008 Olympic bronze medalist, and 2005 world silver medalist. With her victory in 2012, she became the second American woman to win the 400 meters at the Olympic Games and the first American woman to earn multiple global 400-meter titles. At this distance, Richards-Ross is also a six-time U.S. national champion (2003, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2009, and 2012).\nA formidable competitor throughout her career, Richards-Ross ranked number one in the world from 2005 to 2009 and again in 2012 in the 400 meters. She set the then American 400-meter record of 48.70 seconds in 2006 and was named the IAAF 2006 Female World Athlete of the Year, an honor she received again in 2009. Richards-Ross also holds the record for the most sub-50 second sprints in the history of the event, with a career total of 49 times. In addition to her individual achievements, she won three consecutive Olympic gold medals in the 4 × 400 meters relay at the 2004, 2008, and 2012 Summer Olympics, as well as five total relay medals from multiple World Athletics Championships.\nFollowing an injury at the 2016 U.S. Olympic trials, Richards-Ross retired from the sport and subsequently joined the NBC broadcasting team as a track and field analyst. She published her memoir Chasing Grace: What the Quarter Mile has Taught Me about God and Life in 2017.\nIn October 2021, Bravo announced that Richards-Ross was joining the fourteenth season of The Real Housewives of Atlanta, departing after the fifteenth season.\n\n\n== Early life ==\nRichards-Ross was born on February 26, 1985, in Kingston, Jamaica to Archie and Sharon Richards. She began running at the age of seven and represented her school Vaz Prep in annual youth championships. When she was twelve years old, her family immigrated to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, so that she could attend an American high school, increasing her chances of obtaining an athletic scholarship to an American university. She later became a naturalized citizen of the United States.\nAt St. Thomas Aquinas High School in Fort Lauderdale, she was a nine-time individual Florida high school state champion with four 100-meter titles, three 200-meter titles, one 400-meter title and one long jump title. On June 20, 2002, Richards ran the 400m in 50.69 seconds at the U.S. Junior Championships at Stanford University, the fastest high school time ever recorded in that event and still standing in 2025.\nShe graduated from Aquinas in 2002 with a cumulative 4.0 GPA and was named the 2002 Gatorade National High School Girls Track and Field Athlete of the Year and the USA Track and Field Youth Athlete of the Year. Richards-Ross attended the University of Texas, Austin from 2002 to 2005, majoring in business and starring on the women's track and field team.\n\n\n== Career ==\n\n\n=== 2003–2005 ===\nRepresenting the University of Texas in 2003, Richards-Ross became the first freshman to win the NCAA national championship in the 400 meters and the 4 × 400 meters relay. Her victory in 400 meters set the then American U20 record of 50.58 seconds. Later that June, at eighteen years old, the freshman Longhorn claimed her first senior national title by winning the 400 meters in 51.01 seconds at the 2003 U.S. national championships and qualified for the 2003 Paris World Championships. In Paris, she finished fourth in her 400 meters semi-final and did not move on to the final. However, Richards-Ross still came home with a gold medal in the 4 × 400 meters relay after anchoring Team USA to a victory.\nRichards-Ross qualified for her first Olympic team by running 49.89 seconds to place second in the 400 meters at the 2004 U.S. Olympic trials. In the 2004 Olympic 400 meters final, Richards-Ross finished sixth with a time of 50.19 seconds, behind her two American compatriots DeeDee Trotter and Monique Hennagan, who both missed the podium as well. The American women sought redemption from their disappointing run by winning gold in the 4 × 400 meters relay, days later. After leaving Athens, Richards-Ross forwent her college eligibility at Texas, competing as a Nike-sponsored athlete and training under the then head track and field coach of Baylor University, Clyde Hart.\nAt the 2005 Helsinki World Championships, 20-year-old Richards-Ross failed to maintain the lead coming off the second curve in the 400 meters final and was passed by the 2004 Olympic champion Tonique Williams-Darling of the Bahamas, who won with a season's best of 49.55 seconds. Richards-Ross attributed the difficult loss to her inexperience as a young professional athlete, fixating on beating her main competitor before the final 100 meters instead of trusting her established race strategy. Reverting to her predetermined race plan, she dipped under 49 seconds for the first time with a personal best of 48.92 seconds, the fastest time in the world that year, in Zürich, a race that also featured the newly crowned world champion Williams-Darling.\n\n\n=== 2006–2008 ===\nPursuit of the American 400 meters record, set at 48.83 seconds by Valerie Brisco-Hooks, became Richards-Ross' goal of the 2006 season. Leading into the World Cup race in Athens, the American woman was on a dominant win-streak and held the world-leading time of 49.05 seconds. She finished the World Cup race in 48.70 seconds, replacing Brisco-Hooks as the new American record holder in the 400 meters. At the time, this personal best ranked her as the seventh-fastest woman ever at the distance. Richards-Ross and her training partner Jeremy Wariner were awarded the 2006 Jesse Owens Award by USA Track and Field after both were undefeated for the entire season and each won their $250,000 portion of the IAAF Golden League. Athletes who win all six Golden League meets in an event claim a share of the $1 million jackpot.\nFor the 2007 season, Richards-Ross decided to expand her résumé, racing more 200-meter sprints and testing her ability to possibly pursue the rare 200–400 meters double Olympic victory in Beijing the following year. Only a handful of athletes have ever achieved such a feat, including Michael Johnson, her coach Clyde Hart's world-record-setting pupil. Things strayed from her plan, as she finished fourth in the 400 meters event at the 2007 U.S. national championships, only qualifying for the 2007 Osaka World Championships by placing second in the 200 meters, behind reigning 200 meters world champion Allyson Felix. In Osaka, Richards-Ross ran 22.70 seconds to finish fifth, as teammate Felix successfully defended her title from two years prior. Both American women reunited for the women's 4 × 400 meters relay, helping Team USA win gold, ahead of the Jamaican team and the British team, which featured the new 400 meters world champion Christine Ohuruogu and 400 meters silver medalist Nicola Sanders. Despite failing to qualify in her signature event at the national championships and leaving Osaka with only a spectator's memory of the individual race, the 23-year-old American woman still finished the year undefeated in the six Golden League 400-meter races and with the number one world ranking. Reflecting on her season, she admitted that losing focus on the quarter-mile race was the reason for her defeat, after constantly shifting mindsets and strategies to race the 100, 200, and 400 meters throughout the season.\nComing into 2008, despite being among the most prolific sub-50 second 400-meter sprinters of the decade, Richards-Ross had yet to win any individual world or Olympic title. Up until then, she had run a total of 27 races below the 50-second barrier. After winning the 2008 U.S. Olympic trials, Richards-Ross was favored to win gold at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. However, in Beijing, Richards-Ross faltered, coming off the curve with a significant lead and having nothing left to come home. She held on for the bronze medal as Christine Ohuruogu of Great Britain and Shericka Williams of Jamaica surged ahead. Richards-Ross later avenged her individual loss by making up a ten-meter deficit in the women's 4 × 400 meters relay and catching the Russian sprinter on the anchor leg right before the finish line, allowing the United States to win by a 0.28-second margin.\nThroughout her career, Richards-Ross answered questions regarding the 2008 Olympic 400 meters race with self-described half-truths, attributing her loss to a sudden right hamstring injury, lack of sleep, or fate. In her 2017 memoir Chasing Grace: What the Quarter Mile Taught Me about God and Life, she finally revealed the underlying reason for her disappointing loss at the 2008 Olympics; one month before the games, Richards-Ross discovered that she was pregnant and decided to terminate the pregnancy the day before leaving for Beijing. A devout Christian woman and a world-class athlete at the prime of her career, she endured much physical and emotional turmoil following her difficult decision, even into the 2008 Olympics, as explicated in the book: \"I made a decision that broke me, and one from which I would not immediately heal from. Abortion would now forever be a part of my life. A scarlet letter I never thought I'd wear.\"\n\n\n=== 2009–2011 ===\nWith the echoes of her Beijing loss still lingering into 2009, Richards-Ross began working with a sports psychologist, at the urging of coach Clyde Hart, to overcome her bouts of anxiety and emotional anguish. Her efforts on the track coupled with her mental preparation made a difference as the 2009 season became her most successful to date. Richards-Ross won the 400 meters U.S. national title in 50.05 seconds, 0.74 seconds over second-place finisher Debbie Dunn, and qualified for the 2009 Berlin World Championships. In Berlin, she won her first global 400 meters title by dominating the 400 meters final from start to finish, winning in 49.00 seconds and proving to her critics that she could perform on the sport's biggest stages. The newly crowned world champion then anchored Team USA to a gold medal in the women's 4 × 400 meters relay. The winning time of 3.17.83 minutes was the sixth-fastest time in history, up until then, with Richards-Ross unofficially splitting 48.43 seconds on her anchor leg. \nUpon leaving Berlin, Richards-Ross returned to the track to continue her 2009 IAAF Golden League win streak. In addition to winning the Berlin meet in 49.57 seconds, Oslo in 49.23 seconds, Rome in 49.46 seconds, and Paris in 49.34 seconds, all before the world championships, she claimed victory again in the last two Golden League meets in Zürich and Brussels, with times of 48.94 seconds and 48.83 seconds, respectively. This was her third time sweeping the IAAF Golden League meets, a feat she accomplished in 2006 and 2007 as well, allowing her to once again earn a share of the $1 million jackpot. After a 49.95-second win in the 400 meters IAAF World Athletics Final meet, she broke Marita Koch's record for the most career sub-50 second performances, surpassing Koch's total of 35 with her own total of 41. Her only defeat this season, in any event, was to the now three-time defending 200-meter world champion Allyson Felix at the IAAF World Athletics Final in the 200 meters, with the victor discerned via photo finish and Richards-Ross declared second in an identical time of 22.29 seconds. To cap off the successful season, the 24-year-old American woman, along with Usain Bolt, were named the 2009 IAAF World Athlete of Year.\nThe next two outdoor seasons, however, proved to be difficult and disappointing for the defending world champion. A quad injury right before the 2010 Penn Relays forced Richards-Ross to prematurely end her 2010 season to rest and regroup. She bounced back in 2011 to run a 49.66-second 400 meters race at the London Diamond League meet, just prior to the 2011 Daegu World Championships, sparking some optimism of rounding back into top form in time for the major competition. In Daegu, Richards-Ross struggled to find her rhythm as she narrowly qualified for the 400 meters final and then wound up seventh in a time of 51.32 seconds. She later returned in the 4 × 400 meters relay, this time running the lead-off leg in 49.1 seconds and setting the U.S. women up for victory.\n\n\n=== 2012 ===\n\n\n==== Road to London ====\n\nHealthy and well-rested, Richards-Ross began her 2012 quest for the coveted individual Olympic gold medal by racing a full indoor schedule to warm up for her outdoor debut. With four wins in four indoor races under her belt coming into the 2012 IAAF World Indoor Championships, she secured a resounding 400-meter victory in Istanbul with a time of 50.79 seconds, 0.97 seconds ahead of the Russian runner-up. Her first indoor world title ushered in some much-needed confidence as the outdoor season began. Richards-Ross decisively won the 400-meter final at the 2012 U.S. Olympic trials, tying the Olympic trials record of 49.28 seconds and earning a berth to her third consecutive Olympics. Longtime teammate DeeDee Trotter and the 2011 world bronze medalist Francena McCorory finished second and third, respectively, and joined her on the 400 meters team. Later at the trials, Richards-Ross also finished third in the 200-meter sprint in 22.22 seconds, allowing her to attempt the rare 200 meter-400 meter double at the 2012 London Olympics.\nOnce again, heading into the Olympic Games as the 400-meter favorite, she shouldered the same pressure and expectations, but this time, Richards-Ross was prepared to maintain her serenity amidst the vortex. Stiff competition lined up for the 400 meters final in London, including the defending 2008 Olympic champion Christine Ohuruogu of Great Britain, 2011 world champion Amantle Montsho of Botswana, and Antonina Krivoshapka of Russia, who held the world-leading time of 49.16 seconds. From the sound of the gun, Richards-Ross executed a race opposite of the one four years ago, pushing hard out of the blocks before relaxing into a comfortable stride down the backstretch and entering the homestretch in the third position, behind Krivoshapka and DeeDee Trotter. The U.S. champion willed her legs to pull ahead of the field with fifty meters left of the race and in the final moments, which almost mirrored the 2008 race in Beijing as Ohuruogu closed down quickly on the leading American, Richards-Ross held on to win in 49.55 seconds, finally earning the gold medal that had long eluded her. This victory became the first time an American woman had won the event in 28 years, since Valerie Brisco-Hooks in 1984. Despite a fifth-place finish later in the 200 meters final, the newly crowned Olympic champion concluded the Games by running 49.1 seconds on the anchor leg of the victorious U.S. women's 4 × 400 meters relay team and left London with two gold medals.\n\n\n==== Opposition to Rule 40 ====\n\nThroughout the Olympic season, Richards-Ross had appeared at the forefront of an athlete-driven #WeDemandChange movement advocating against the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) controversial Rule 40, a regulation that forbids Olympic athletes and coaches from acknowledging personal, non-Olympic sponsors by name, wearing additional logos on apparel, or promoting them on social media two weeks before or during the Olympic Games. The rule strived to prevent ambush marketing and concentrate viewer attention on messages from official Olympic sponsors, such as Coca-Cola and Visa, which had paid a hefty amount for exclusive partnerships with the Games, although none of the multi-billion dollar revenue trickled into athletes' pockets. Prior to the London Olympics, she sparked a discussion on the topic, tweeting, \"With $6 billion exchanging hands during the Olympics why do the athletes compete for free?!? #QuestionsThatNeedAnswers #WeDemandChange.\" Since track and field professionals earn the vast majority of their income through sponsorship deals, Rule 40 prevents them from thanking personal sponsors for their endorsement and also dissuades potential non-Olympic sponsors from investing in these athletes when the sport is receiving the most attention.\nStarting on July 29, 2012, a group of U.S. track and field athletes, including Trey Hardee, Bernard Lagat, Nick Symmonds, and Dawn Harper-Nelson, coordinated a Twitter campaign to criticize the restriction on athletes' rights, posting messages with hashtags #WeDemandChange, #Rule40, and #WeDemandChange2012. Richards-Ross spoke at a news conference regarding the #WeDemandChange campaign on the following day and explained that although she was fortunate to have secured major sponsorships to continue her training and treatment, many athletes have to work two or three jobs to be able to afford to stay in the sport. Answering conference reporters, she said, \"I’ve been very fortunate to do very well around the Olympics, but so many of my peers struggle in the sport, and I think it's unjust that they're not being considered, that athletes are not part of the conversation.\" At the Olympic Village in London, Richards-Ross helped organize a group of track and field athletes to share their concerns, further their message to the IOC, and discuss potential regulation amendments to accommodate the athletes, with several options including permission to post sponsors on social media, clearance to wear non-Olympic sponsor logos, and IOC-funded prize money. Efforts by these track and field athletes, along with later campaigns voicing Olympic athletes' discontent, finally pushed to the IOC to slightly amend Rule 40 for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, allowing athletes to promote personal sponsors and appear in their advertisements during the Games, within specific guidelines.\n\n\n=== 2015–Retirement ===\nFollowing two surgeries to correct a persistent toe problem, Richards-Ross injured her calf muscle right before the 2015 U.S. national championships, which lead her to finish fifth in her semi-final and prevent her from qualifying for the 2015 Beijing World Championships. Despite not making the individual team, the track veteran was still selected to be on the women's 4 × 400 meters relay in Beijing. There, she ran a 51.5-second leg to help the United States team win silver. Richards-Ross admitted later that overtraining, as she was approaching the closing stages of her career, might have contributed to the rapid decline in the latter part of the season.\n2016 began with the official announcement of her retirement by the end of the track season. Still in recovery from a third toe surgery, the reigning 400-meter Olympic champion suffered an injury to her right hamstring at the 2016 U.S. Olympic trials, prompting her to discontinue the race and salute the Hayward Field crowd one last time. Shortly after retiring, Richards-Ross joined the NBC broadcasting team as a track and field analyst for major events, such as the 2016, 2020, and 2024 Summer Olympics.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nWhile attending the University of Texas, Richards-Ross began dating Longhorn football cornerback Aaron Ross, who later won two Super Bowls with the New York Giants of the NFL. The two were engaged in 2007 and married in 2010. Their wedding was featured on an episode of Platinum Weddings. The pair welcomed their first child, Aaron Jermaine Ross II, in 2017, and announced in July 2023 that they were expecting their second child, later revealed to be a boy in September 2023. On February 23, 2025, the couple expecting their third child together. On July 2, 2025, they welcomed their third son.\nFor five years, Richards-Ross suffered from severe onsets of mouth ulcers, joint aches, and full-body skin lesions, which in 2007, doctors initially thought were caused by a rare, chronic disease involving the inflammation of blood vessels called Behçet's disease. She began donning compression arm sleeves in competition to hide her ulcerated skin, but as a fashion enthusiast, later embraced the extra garment as part of her trademark look.\nExploring new opportunities off the track, in 2013, Richards-Ross premiered her WE tv reality TV show Glam and Gold, a docu-series that followed her as she juggled appearances, ran businesses, trained for the track season, and balanced life with her husband and family. Primarily shot at their home in Austin, the series also visited Florida, New York, and Jamaica, where she took Team SRR for an Olympic victory lap and celebration.\nShe briefly appeared in the music video of Busta Rhymes 2008 remix of his song Arab Money\n\n\n== Achievements ==\n\n\n=== Competition record ===\n\n\n=== National titles ===\nSix-time national 400 meters champion – 2003 (51.01), 2005 (49.28), 2006 (49.27), 2008 (49.89), 2009 (50.05), 2012 (49.28)\n\n\n=== Personal bests ===\n\nAll information from World Athletics profile.\n\n\n=== Diamond League wins ===\n2011 – London (400 m)\n2012 – Eugene (400 m), New York (200 m), Stockholm (400 m), Zurich (400 m)\n\n\n== Awards ==\nWorld Athletics Awards\nWorld Athlete of the Year (Women)：2006, 2009\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nOfficial website\nSanya Richards-Ross at World Athletics\nSanya Richards-Ross at legacy.USATF.org (archived)"}
{"title": "Saori Yoshida", "requested": "Saori Yoshida", "extract": "Saori Yoshida (吉田 沙保里, Yoshida Saori; born 5 October 1982) is a Japanese former freestyle wrestler. Starting in 1998, she won almost every major competition, including three Olympic Games, four Asian Games, and 13 world championships, becoming the most decorated athlete in freestyle wrestling history. As of 2016, Yoshida had only suffered three senior-career losses in international competitions, to Marcie Van Dusen (0–2) on 20 January 2008 at the Team World Cup series, Valeria Zholobova (1–2) on 27 May 2012 at the World Cup, and to Helen Maroulis (1–4) on 18 August 2016 at the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.\nYoshida was the flagbearer for Japan at the 2006 Asian Games and at the 2012 Olympics. In 2007, she became the first female wrestler to be named Japanese Athlete of the Year, and in 2012 she received the People's Honour Award.\n\n\n== Weight ==\nYoshida started competing internationally as a cadet, in 1998, in the 52 kg category.  By 2002, when she moved to seniors, she competed in the 59 kg division. The same year, she lost 4 kg, and remained in the 55 kg category until 2014. She moved to the 53 kg class at the 2014 World Cup and World Championships as part of her preparation for the 2016 Olympics, where the traditional 48–55–63–75 kg scheme would be changed to 48–53–58–63–69–75 kg. However, two weeks after the World Championships she returned to the 55 kg category at the 2014 Asian Games, which kept the old weight divisions. Yoshida announced her retirement on Twitter in January 2019.\n\n\n== Family and public life ==\nYoshida is the daughter of Eikatsu Yoshida, a former national champion and wrestling coach. She started training in wrestling aged 3, following her father and two elder brothers. Since 2011, she has been a face of the ALSOK security group and regularly appears in their commercials.\nIn December 2008, the wrestling singlet which Yoshida wore in the Olympic final bout earlier that year, was sold for 551,000 yen (ca. US$6,123) at an internet auction, and the money donated to the Japanese Red Cross Society.\nIn 2013, when the International Olympic Committee named wrestling as a candidate for exclusion from the Games, she became an active part of the Japanese lobbying team that persuaded the IOC to retain wrestling at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.\nIn May 2014, Yoshida made a cameo appearance in the Japanese television drama Tokyo Metropolitan Guard Center, and later wished to resume acting once she retired from wrestling.\n\n\n== Olympic Games/World Championship/Asian Games matches ==\n\n\n== Championships and accomplishments ==\nTokyo Sports\nWrestling Special Award (2002, 2003, 2004, 2006, 2009, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015)\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists in one event\nList of multiple Olympic medalists in one event\nList of multiple Summer Olympic medalists\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nAthlete Biography at beijing2008"}
{"title": "Sarah Sjöström", "requested": "Sarah Sjöström", "extract": "Sarah Fredrika Sjöström (Swedish: [ˈsɑ̂ːra ˈɧø̂ːstrœm]; born 17 August 1993) is a Swedish competitive swimmer specialising in the sprint freestyle and butterfly events. She is one of the most decorated swimmers of all time.\nAs of 2024, Sjöström has won a total of 23 individual medals at long course World Championships, more than any other swimmer in history. She was the first female swimmer to win five individual medals at a single FINA World Aquatics Championships, a feat she accomplished in 2019. In 2021, Sjöström achieved a career total of over 1000 most valuable player points in the International Swimming League, becoming the first swimmer in history to do so. In 2022, she became the first swimmer from any country to have won a total of 28 medals at LEN European Aquatics Championships. She has won a total of 112 medals at Swimming World Cups.\nSjöström is the current world record holder in the 50 metre butterfly (long course). She is a former world record holder in the 50 metre freestyle (long course and short course), 100 metre butterfly (long course and short course), 100 metre freestyle (long course and short course), 200 metre freestyle (short course), and the 4×50 metre medley relay (short course). She is the first Swedish woman to win an Olympic gold medal in swimming. She won the Overall Swimming World Cup in 2017 and 2018. In 2022, she became the first swimmer representing a country in Europe to win 10 individual World Championships gold medals.\nSjöström participated in five consecutive Olympic Games, from Beijing 2008 through Paris 2024. She has won six Olympic medals: three gold (100 metre butterfly, 100 metre freestyle and 50 metre freestyle), two silver (200 metre freestyle and 50 metre freestyle), and one bronze (100 metre freestyle).\n\n\n== Career ==\n\n\n=== 2008–2009 ===\n\n\n==== 2008 European Championships ====\nOn 22 March 2008, at the age of 14, Sjöström won the gold medal in the 100 metre butterfly at the 2008 European Aquatics Championships in Eindhoven, Netherlands, with a time of 58.44 seconds. In the semi-finals the day before, she set a new Swedish record of 58.38 seconds, breaking the previous record of 58.71 seconds by Anna-Karin Kammerling. Three days earlier, she won her first medal of the Championships in the 4×100 metre freestyle relay, contributing a split time of 56.17 for the third leg of the relay in the preliminary heats before being substituted out for the finals relay and winning a bronze medal for her efforts when the finals relay placed third in 3:41.28. At the Swedish championships in 2008 in the same event, she finished in a time of 58.55 seconds.\n\n\n==== 2008 Summer Olympics ====\n\nSjöström earned a spot on the Swedish Swim Team for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China, where she finished 27th in the preliminary heats of the 100 metre butterfly with a time of 59.08 and 29th in the preliminary heats of the 100 metre backstroke with a time of 1:02.38, failing to advance to the semi-finals in both races. She also swam the backstroke leg of the 4×100 metre medley relay in the preliminaries, in which the Swedish team qualified in seventh place for the finals, though the team went on to be disqualified in the final for a false start. The day of the 4×100 metre medley relay final coincided with Sjöström's 15th birthday.\n\n\n==== 2009 World Championships ====\n\nOn 26 July 2009, at the 2009 World Aquatics Championships, Sjöström set a world record in the semifinals of the 100 metre butterfly with a time of 56.44 seconds, surpassing Inge de Bruijn's nine-year-old record. The next day, in the final of the event, she won the gold medal and improved her world record time to 56.06 seconds at just 15 years, 344 days of age.\n\n\n=== 2010–2012 ===\n\n\n==== 2010 European Championships ====\nAt the 2010 European Aquatics Championships in Budapest, Hungary, Sjöström defended her European title in the 100 metre butterfly by winning the event. With a split time of 53.77 seconds for the third leg of the 4×100 metre freestyle relay in the final, she helped Sweden win the bronze medal in a time of 3:38.81. For the 4×100 metre medley relay, she anchored the relay in the final with a time of 53.73 seconds to help her country finish in 4:01.18 and win the silver medal. In December 2011, she broke the Swedish record when she won the 100 metre freestyle at the Open Dutch Championships in Eindhoven. However, she failed to win a medal at the 2011 World Aquatics Championships in Shanghai.\n\n\n==== 2011 World Championships ====\nAt the 2011 World Aquatics Championships in Shanghai, China, Sjöström competed in five events, first placing fourth in the 100 metre butterfly with a time of 57.38 seconds, which was 0.32 seconds behind bronze medalist Lu Ying of China. In her next event, the 200 metre freestyle, she placed fourth, finishing less than nine-tenths of a second behind world record holder in the event and gold medalist Federica Pellegrini of Italy with a time of 1:56.41. The following day, she helped achieve a time of 8:02.30 and overall placing of twelfth in the 4×200 metre freestyle relay, splitting a 1:57.84 for the third leg of the relay in the preliminaries. Two days later, on the final day of competition, she contributed to an overall placing of tenth in the 4×100 metre medley relay, swimming the backstroke portion of the relay in 1:01.24 in the preliminaries to help achieve a time of 4:02.71 that did not qualify the relay for the evening final. Later in the day, she finished outside the podium in her third and final individual event, this time tying Lu Ying for fourth-place in the final of the 50 metre butterfly with a 25.87.\n\n\n==== 2012 European Championships ====\nFor Sjöström, 2012 was a year of both successes and setbacks. At the 2012 European Aquatics Championships, held in early summer in Debrecen, Hungary, she achieved double gold medals in her individual events, with one in the 50 metre butterfly and one in the 100 metre freestyle. In her relay event, the 4×100 metre freestyle relay, she helped her team win the silver medal in a final time of 3:38.40, swimming the third leg of the relay in 54.04 seconds.\n\n\n==== 2012 Summer Olympics ====\n\nAt the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, Sjöström competed in four individual events, reaching the semi-finals of the 50 metre freestyle, 100 metre freestyle and 200 metre freestyle, and placing fourth in the final of the 100 metre butterfly with a time of 57.17 seconds. Sjöström's world record was broken in this race by Dana Vollmer of the United States. In 2015, Sjöström regained the world record by improving it twice at the World Championships, held in Kazan, Russia.\n\n\n=== 2013–2014 ===\n\n\n==== 2013 World Championships ====\n\nOn 29 July 2013, Sjöström won the gold medal in the 100 metre butterfly at the 2013 World Aquatics Championships, in Barcelona, Spain, with a time of 56.53 seconds, which was 0.44 seconds faster than silver medalist Alicia Coutts of Australia and 0.71 seconds faster than bronze medalist Dana Vollmer. Four days later, she won a silver medal in the 100 metre freestyle, finishing 0.55 seconds behind a first-time world champion in the event, Cate Campbell of Australia, with a time of 52.89 seconds.\n\n\n==== 2013 European Short Course Championships ====\nAt the 2013 European Short Course Swimming Championships in December in Herning, Denmark, Sjöström won four medals in individual events, a gold medal in the 50 metre butterfly with a Championships record of 24.90 seconds, a gold medal in the 100 metre butterfly, a silver medal in the 50 metre freestyle, and a silver medal in the 100 metre freestyle, and two medals in relay events, one silver medal each in the 4×50 metre freestyle relay and 4×50 metre medley relay.\n\n\n==== 2014 European Championships ====\nOn 5 July 2014, Sjöström broke the world record in the long course 50 metre butterfly, set at 25.07 by fellow Swedish swimmer Therese Alshammar in 2009, with a time of 24.43 seconds. The margin of 0.64 seconds by which she lowered the world record compared to the prior record has been juxtaposed with Bob Beamon's 1968 long jump world record. At the 2014 European Aquatics Championships, held in Berlin, Germany later that summer, she won three gold medals and four silver medals. On 18 August, she and her Swedish relay teammates won the gold medal in the 4×100 metre freestyle relay. The next day she also won the final of the 50 metre butterfly. On 20 August, the she won her third gold medal, this time in the 100 metre freestyle. She also won silver medals in the 4×200 metre freestyle relay, 100 metre butterfly, 50 metre freestyle and 4×100 metre medley relay.\n\n\n==== 2014 World Short Course Championships ====\n\nIn December 2014, Sjöström competed in five individual events and two relay events at the 2014 World Short Course Swimming Championships, contested at Hamad Aquatic Centre in Doha, Qatar, medalling in four of seven of her events. She won her first medal of the Championships on day three in the 100 metre freestyle, finishing in a time of 51.39 seconds to win the silver medal just 0.02 seconds behind gold medalist Femke Heemskerk of the Netherlands. Approximately 30 minutes later, she won the gold medal in the 50 metre butterfly with a Championships record time of 24.58 seconds. Two days later, she won the gold medal in the 100 metre butterfly with a world record and Championships record time of 54.61 seconds, which was over four-tenths of a second faster than the former world record time. Approximately 70 minutes later, she won another gold medal with a world record and Championships record time, this time lowering the world record in the 200 metre freestyle by over three-tenths of a second with a final mark of 1:50.78. For her other three events during the five day competition, she placed fourth in the 4×100 metre medley relay with a 3:51.64, seventh in the 4×200 metre freestyle relay with a 4:43.44, and nineteenth in the 200 metre butterfly with a 2:09.51.\n\n\n=== 2015–2016 ===\n\n\n==== 2015 World Championships ====\n\nIn 2015, and leading up to the World Championships, Sjöström received the Jerring Prize and a Victoria Scholarship. Approximately two months earlier, at the 2015 Eindhoven Swim Cup in April, she became the first female Swedish swimmer to achieve a time faster than 1:00.00 in the 100 metre backstroke, setting a new Swedish record with a personal best time of 59.98 seconds. At the 2015 World Aquatics Championships, held in July and August, she won a total of five medals, including gold medals in the 50 metre butterfly and 100 metre butterfly events, during the latter she broke the world record twice, first with a 55.74 in the semifinals then again with a 55.64 in the final. Her gold medal in the 50 metre butterfly was the first gold medal she won at a FINA World Aquatics Championships. With both of the gold medals, she also became the first Swedish swimmer to win two World Championships gold medals during a single World Aquatics Championships. In the 100 metre freestyle, she won the silver medal with a time of 52.70 seconds, sharing the podium with Australian sisters Bronte Campbell, gold medalist, and Cate Campbell, bronze medalist.\nOn the final day, Sjöström concluded competition with a bronze medal in the 50 metre freestyle and a silver medal in the 4×100 metre medley relay. Thus she won medals in all four individual events, and in the three relay events there was a silver medal and two fourth-place finishes. In all, she won two gold medals, two silver medals and a bronze medal during world championship week; more medals than any Swede had previously won at the same world championships.\n\n\n==== 2015 European Short Course Championships ====\n\nAt the 2015 European Short Course Swimming Championships, held in December in Netanya, Israel, Sjöström won the gold medal in the 50 metre butterfly with a Championships record time of 24.58 seconds on day two. The following day, she placed first in the final of the 100 metre freestyle with a time of 51.37 seconds to win the gold medal. In her first race of the fifth and final evening, the semifinals of the 50 metre freestyle, she finished in a time of 23.75 seconds to qualify for the final ranking second overall. Approximately, 28 minutes later, she won the gold medal in the 100 metre butterfly, achieving a Championships record time of 55.03 seconds in the final to finish 0.63 seconds ahead of silver medalist Jeanette Ottesen of Denmark. She won her second medal of the evening approximately 44 minutes later, swimming to a silver medal-finish in the final of the 50 metre freestyle with a time of 23.63 seconds, which was 0.07 seconds behind the first-place finisher and 0.41 seconds ahead of the third-place finisher. Concluding with the final of the 4×50 metre medley relay approximately 26 minutes later, she split a 24.33 for the butterfly leg of the relay to help finish in a time of 1:45.34 and win the silver medal.\nBefore the end of the year, Sjöström was named as the first Swedish swimmer by Swimming World to receive their accolade \"Swimmer of the Year in Europe\"; she was also awarded the Svenska Dagbladet Gold Medal, an annual award \"for the most significant Swedish sports achievement of the year\", with the words \"For explosive willpower, double world records and a historic gold cavalcade\".\n\n\n==== 2016 European Championships ====\nAhead of her international competitions for the 2016 year, on 25 January 2016, Sjöström was awarded the Swedish public radio Jerring Award for the second year in a row. On the first day of swimming competition at the 2016 European Aquatics Championships, held in May in London, England, she won a bronze medal in the 4×100 metre freestyle relay, leading-off the relay with a 53.48 to contribute to the final mark of 3:37.84. She followed up with a gold medal-win the next day in the 50 metre butterfly, finishing first with a time of 24.99 seconds, which was 0.56 seconds slower than her world record time in the event. On the third day, she shared the podium with two Dutch swimmers in the 100 metre freestyle, winning the gold medal with a time of 52.82 seconds. The fourth day, she won her final medal of the competition, a gold medal in the 100 metre butterfly with a Championships record time of 55.89 seconds.\n\n\n==== 2016 Summer Olympics ====\n\nOn 7 August 2016, Sjöström won the gold medal in the 100 metre butterfly at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, setting a world record with a time of 55.48 seconds. With her win she became the first female Swedish swimmer to win a gold medal at an Olympic Games.  She went on to win the silver medal in the 200 metre freestyle, where she finished 0.35 seconds behind gold medalist Katie Ledecky of the United States with a Swedish record time of 1:54.08, and the bronze medal in 100 metre freestyle, where she finished 0.29 seconds behind a two-way tie for the gold medal with a time of 52.99 seconds. With her medals, she became the second female swimmer in history and the fifth swimmer of any gender to win medals in the 100 metre freestyle, 200 metre freestyle, and the 100 metre butterfly at the same Olympic Games or long course World Championships, after Mark Spitz (1972), Kornelia Ender (1975, 1976), Matt Biondi (1986, 1988) and Michael Klim (1998).\n\n\n=== 2017–2019 ===\nIn January 2017, Sjöström competed at the 19th Luxembourg Euro Meet and won the 50 metre freestyle with a time of 24.01 seconds, the 100 metre freestyle with a 53.21, the 50 metre butterfly with a time of 25.02 seconds, and the 100 metre butterfly with a 57.12. Three months later, she competed in the Stockholm Swim Open and won the 50 metre butterfly with a time of 25.63 seconds. She also won the 100 metre butterfly with a time of 56.26 seconds. She also won the 50 metre freestyle, setting a time of 23.83 seconds, the second fastest time ever. In the 100 metre freestyle she took first-place with the time of 52.54 seconds, a new personal best and Swedish record.\n\n\n==== 2017 World Championships ====\n\nAt the 2017 World Aquatics Championships, with swimming contested at Danube Arena in July in Budapest, Hungary, Sjöström won her first medal of the Championships in the 100 metre butterfly, winning the gold medal with a Championships record time of 55.53 seconds, which was 0.65 seconds faster than silver medalist Emma McKeon of Australia and 0.84 seconds faster than bronze medalist Kelsi Dahlia of the United States. With her win, she became the first woman in history at FINA World Aquatics Championships to win four gold medals in the event and in any one individual event. One day earlier, in the final of the 4×100 metre freestyle relay on the first day of competition, she set a new world record in the 100 metre freestyle, swimming a time of 51.71 seconds for the lead-off leg of the relay, and helping place fifth in a time of 3:33.94. On the sixth day, she won a silver medal in the 100 metre freestyle with a time of 52.31 seconds, finishing just 0.04 seconds behind gold medalist and 2016 Olympic champion in the event Simone Manuel of the United States.\nThe seventh day, Sjöström started the evening session off winning the gold medal in the 50 metre butterfly with a Championships record time of 24.60 seconds, which was over seven-tenths of a second faster than the second-place finisher. Approximately an hour later, in the semifinals of the 50 metre freestyle, she broke the world record of 23.73 seconds set by Britta Steffen of Germany in 2009 with a new world record and Championships record time of 23.67 seconds. Day eight of eight, she won the gold medal in the 50 metre freestyle, finishing in a time of 23.69 seconds, just 0.02 seconds off her world record time from the day before. In her sixth and final event, the 4×100 metre medley relay, she split a 55.03 for the butterfly leg of the relay in the final, which was the fastest time by any of the finals relay butterfly swimmers by over one full second and contributed to a fifth-place finish in a time of 3:55.28.\n\n\n==== 2017 Swimming World Cup ====\nFor the whole summer of 2017, Sjöström broke six world records in less than one month (the two at the aforementioned World Championships and later at 2017 Swimming World Cup short course competitions in Moscow, 50 metre freestyle at 23.10 seconds and 100 metre freestyle at 50.77 seconds, and Eindhoven, 100 metre freestyle at 50.58 seconds and 200 metre freestyle at 1:50.43). As a simultaneous holder of eight world records on the short and long course, she became the swimmer to hold the most current world records in international swimming. In early August, Sjöström improved her time in the short course 50 metre freestyle, at races in Berlin, from 23.10 to 23.00. In the race, however, she was second behind Ranomi Kromowidjojo, who with the time 22.93 took from Sjöström one of her eight records.\n\n\n==== 2017 European Short Course Championships ====\nFor the third day of competition at the 2017 European Short Course Swimming Championships, in December in Copenhagen, Denmark, Sjöström won her first medal of the evening in the final of the 100 metre freestyle, placing second with a time of 51.03 seconds to secure the silver medal. Her second medal of the evening came in the 100 metre individual medley, finishing 0.95 seconds behind gold medalist Katinka Hosszú of Hungary in the final with a time of 57.92 seconds to win a second silver medal. Medal number three for the evening was a third silver medal, this time in the 4×50 metre freestyle relay, where she contributed to the final mark of 1:35.92 with a 22.94 for the second leg of the relay. Day five of five, she won her first gold medal of the Championships in the 100 metre butterfly with a Championships record time of 55.00 seconds, which was 0.97 seconds faster than silver medalist Marie Wattel of France. She won her second gold medal approximately 48 minutes later, finishing first in the final of the 50 metre freestyle with a Championships record of 23.30 seconds. Approximately 31 minutes later, she won her third and final gold medal of the night, splitting a 24.27 for the butterfly portion of the 4×50 metre medley relay to help place first in 1:44.43.\n\n\n==== 2018 European Championships ====\nIn August, at the 2018 European Aquatics Championships in Glasgow, Scotland, Sjöström won the gold medal in the 100 metre butterfly on day two of competition with a time of 56.13 seconds. Approximately 65 minutes later, she swam a Championships record time of 23.74 seconds in the final of the 50 metre freestyle, finishing 0.01 seconds ahead of second-place finisher Pernille Blume of Denmark to win the gold medal. For the final of the 100 metre freestyle on day six, she won the gold medal with a time of 52.93 seconds after tying the Championships record time of 52.67 seconds in the semifinals the day before. In the final of the 50 metre butterfly on day seven, she won her fourth gold medal, this time finishing over half of one second ahead of silver medalist Emilie Beckmann of Denmark with a time of 25.16 seconds.\n\n\n==== 2019 World Championships ====\n\nAt the 2019 World Aquatics Championships held in Gwangju, South Korea, Sjöström won five medals, the most for a woman in individual events at the year's World Championships. She won a gold medal in the 50 metre butterfly with a time of 25.02 seconds, which marked the third consecutive gold medal she won in the event at the World Championships. In the 100 metre butterfly, she won the silver medal with a time of 56.22 seconds to finish less than four-tenths of a second behind gold medalist Maggie Mac Neil of Canada. She won her second silver medal of the Championships in the 50 metre freestyle, where she finished 0.02 seconds behind first-place finisher Simone Manuel with a time of 24.07 seconds. For her first bronze medal, she placed third in the 200 metre freestyle with a time of 1:54.78, finishing within six-tenths of a second of gold medalist Federica Pellegrini and within two-tenths of a second of silver medalist Ariarne Titmus of Australia. In the 100 metre freestyle she won her second of two bronze medals with a time of 52.46 seconds, sharing the podium with Simone Manuel, gold medalist, and Cate Campbell, silver medalist.\nBased on her performances and result as the most decorated female competitor in individual events at the Championships, Sjöström was named FINA female swimmer of the meet, which she also won in 2017.\n\n\n==== 2019 International Swimming League ====\nIn the fall of 2019, she was a member of the inaugural International Swimming League competing for the Energy Standard Swim Club of which she was co-captain with Chad le Clos. The team won the overall title in the season finale in Las Vegas, United States, in December. At the first stop of the regular season, in Indianapolis, United States, she won the Most Valuable Player title, amassing 55.5 points over the competition, and after the season finale in Las Vegas, she was named the overall Most Valuable Player for the entire season with 243.5 points. During the season, she won the 50 metre freestyle in three matches, the 100 metre freestyle in two matches, the 50 metre butterfly in three matches, and the 100 metre butterfly in one match. She also won the 50 metre freestyle skins event at three matches.\n\n\n=== 2020–2021 ===\n\n\n==== 2020 International Swimming League ====\nIn the 2020 International Swimming League season Sjöström placed 5th overall in points in 2020, due in part to a back injury that made her sit out of a full match. She ranked second to Caeleb Dressel in points-per-match with 59.4, noted 16 individual wins, including three in the skins. And while neither were official world records, Sjöström also featured on Energy Standard's women's and mixed 4×100 freestyle relays that were both the fastest of all time.\n\n\n==== 2020 Summer Olympics ====\n\nDue to a broken elbow Sjöström accidentally obtained by falling on ice in February 2020, she did not compete at the 2020 European Aquatics Championships. She returned to training in the pool in March and to competitive swimming in early June ahead of the 2020 Summer Olympics. In the 50 metre freestyle at the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo, Japan, and held in 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Sjöström won the silver medal. The persistence Sjöström demonstrated in working through her elbow injury and winning a medal at the Olympic Games earned her the \"Olympic Resilience Award\" for the 2020 Summer Olympics from Swimming World. In her other events, Sjöström placed fifth in the 100 metre freestyle, fifth in the 4×100 metre medley relay, sixth in the 4×100 metre freestyle relay, and seventh in the 100 metre butterfly.\n\n\n==== 2021 European Short Course Championships ====\nAt the 2021 European Short Course Swimming Championships held at the Palace of Water Sports in Kazan, Russia in November, Sjöström competed in nine events, winning four gold medals, one each in the 50 metre freestyle, 100 metre freestyle, 50 metre butterfly, and 100 metre butterfly, a silver medal in the 4×50 metre medley relay, and a bronze medal in the 100 metre individual medley as well as placing fourth in the 4×50 metre mixed medley relay and the 4×50 metre mixed freestyle relay and fifth in the 4×50 metre freestyle relay.\n\n\n==== 2021 International Swimming League ====\nIn the 2021 International Swimming League, Sjöström became the first swimmer in history, male or female, to achieve over 1000 most valuable player points as part of their time competing in the International Swimming League, out-ranking the second-ranked Caeleb Dressel by over 50 points. Sjöström won most valuable player honors both for the entire 2021 season and for the 2021 final match. For the whole 2021 season, Sjöström was the top-earning athlete, winning $269,125 in the form of prize money, which was over $70,000 more than the next-highest-earning athlete Siobhán Haughey.\n\n\n==== 2021 World Short Course Championships ====\n\nFor the 2021 World Short Course Swimming Championships at Etihad Arena in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates in December, Sjöström entered to compete in the 50 metre freestyle, 100 metre freestyle, and 50 metre butterfly individual events. In the 4×100 metre freestyle relay, Sjöström swam on both the prelims and the finals relay, helping to win the bronze medal in the event in a time of 3:28.80, which was the first time she won a medal in the event at a world or European short course championships. Sjöström won her heat in the prelims with a time of 52.21 seconds in the 100 metre freestyle on day two, finishing 0.17 seconds ahead of Kayla Sanchez of Canada and qualifying for the semifinals ranked second overall. Later in the day, in the final of the 4×50 metre medley relay, Sjöström split a 23.96 for the butterfly leg of the relay to help win the gold medal and tie the world record and championships record at 1:42.38. The same session, she ranked first in the semifinals of the 100 metre freestyle with a 51.53 and qualified for the final the following day.\nIn the morning of day three, Sjöström qualified for the semifinals of the 50 metre butterfly ranking first with a time of 24.92 seconds. Sjöström won the silver medal in the final of the 100 metre freestyle later in the day with a time of 51.31, finishing less than four-tenths of a second behind gold medalist Siobhán Haughey of Hong Kong. For the semifinals of the 50 metre butterfly, she qualified for the final ranking second with a 24.94. In the final the following day, Sjöström won the silver medal with a time of 24.51 seconds. The fifth morning, Sjöström advanced to the semifinals of the 50 metre freestyle ranking first by over three-tenths of a second with a 23.31 in the prelims heats. In the semifinals she swam one-hundredth of a second faster, qualifying for the final with a time of 23.30 seconds.\nOn the sixth and final day, Sjöström led-off the 4×50 metre freestyle relay with a 23.50 in the prelims, helping qualify the relay to the final ranking third. In her first final of the evening, Sjöström helped set a new Swedish record of 1:34.54 and win the silver medal in the 4×50 metre freestyle relay with a lead-off split of 23.33 seconds. For her next race, the 50 metre freestyle final, Sjöström won the gold medal and set a new Championships record of 23.08 seconds, breaking the former record of 23.19 set by Ranomi Kromowidjojo of the Netherlands in 2018 by over one-tenth of a second. In her final event of the championships, Sjöström split a 54.65 for the butterfly leg of the 4×100 metre medley relay, helping win the gold medal in a new European record time of 3:46.20.\nAt the end of 2021, Sjöström was the only swimmer to rank in the top ten internationally in two or more individual long course metre events for 11 or more consecutive years, 2021 inclusive, ranking in the top ten in the 100 metre freestyle for 12 years and the 50 metre butterfly and 100 metre butterfly for 13 years. Additionally, Sjöström was tied with Katie Ledecky for number two in terms of total number of individual world records set in the 21st century, each having achieved 14 individual world records, and was six world records behind number one ranked Katinka Hosszú.\n\n\n=== 2022 ===\n\n\n==== 2022 World Championships ====\n\nIn January 2022, Sjöström was announced as one of the team Sweden members pre-nominated for the 2022 World Aquatics Championships in Budapest, Hungary. In the 100 metre freestyle at the World Championships in June, she won the silver medal with a time of 52.80 seconds, this marked her seventeenth individual medal (eighteenth total), and sixth individual silver medal (seventh total), at FINA World Aquatics Championships. The following day, she won a gold medal in the 50 metre butterfly with a time of 24.95 seconds. It was her fourth consecutive gold medal in the event at a World Aquatics Championships. On the final day of competition, she started off with a gold medal in the 50 metre freestyle with a time of 23.98 seconds. This marked her tenth gold medal won in individual events at FINA World Aquatics Championships, making her the fifth swimmer from any country to achieve the feat, after Michael Phelps of the United States, Katie Ledecky of the United States, Sun Yang of China, and Ryan Lochte of the United States, and the first swimmer representing Europe to achieve the feat. For her final event, she swam the freestyle leg in the 4×100 metre medley relay, helping team Sweden achieve a fourth-place finish in the event with a finals relay time of 3:55.96.\n\n\n==== 2022 European Championships ====\nSjöström was one of twelve Swedish female swimmers named to the official roster for the 2022 European Aquatics Championships, held in August in Rome, Italy. On the second day of competition, she ranked first in the prelims heats of the 50 metre butterfly with a time of 25.30 seconds, qualifying for the semifinals later in the day. She lowered her time to a 25.10 in the semifinals and qualified for the final ranking first by over half a second. The following day, she won the gold medal with a time of 24.96 seconds. Her swim marked the fourteenth time she had swum the race faster than 25.00 seconds. Later in the session, she won a silver medal in the 4×100 metre freestyle relay, swimming a 53.12 for the lead-off leg of the relay in the final to help finish in 3:37.29.\nIn the morning session on day five, Sjöström started off ranking first in the prelims heats of the 50 metre freestyle with a 24.50, qualifying for the semifinals. For her second event of the session, she helped qualify the 4×100 metre mixed freestyle relay to the final ranking sixth, splitting a 54.28 for the fourth leg of the relay. With a 24.27 in the semifinals of the 50 metre freestyle, she qualified for the final ranking first, 0.09 seconds ahead of Katarzyna Wasick of Poland. Finishing off the day, she won bronze medal in the 4×100 metre mixed freestyle relay, splitting a 52.68 for the third leg of the relay to contribute to the final time, and Swedish record, of 3:23.40. The bronze medal marked her 26th medal at LEN European Aquatics Championships and set a new record for the most number of medals won at the Championships by a female swimmer from any country. She further increased the record to a total of 27 medals the following day when she won the gold medal in the 50 metre freestyle with a time of 23.91 seconds, this also marked a new overall record by a swimmer from any country, male or female. The previous record was set by male swimmer Alexander Popov of Russia at 26 medals.\nThe seventh and final morning, Sjöström split a 54.01 for the freestyle leg of the 4×100 metre medley relay, helping qualify for the final ranking first in 3:59.19. In the final, she lowered her split time to a 52.04, helping win the gold medal in a time of 3:55.25, which marked her 17th gold medal at LEN Aquatics Championships and extended the all-time total medal record to 28 medals.\n\n\n=== 2023 ===\nAt the 2023 Stockholm Swim Open in April, Sjöström won the long course 50 metre freestyle with the fastest time in the world for the 2023 year by a female at that point in the time, a 2023 World Aquatics Championships qualifying time of 23.92 seconds.\nAt the 2023 World Aquatics Championships, Sjöström won the long course 50 metre freestyle, breaking her own world record in the semifinal. In doing so, she set the record for the longest period of time in between world-record setting performances by an individual swimmer, 14 years and 3 days after first breaking the 100 metre butterfly world record in 2009. She also won the 50 metre butterfly for the fifth time in a row at the World Aquatic Championships. These two medals led her to tie and then overtake Michael Phelps as the swimmer with the most individual World Aquatic Championship medals at 21 in her career. She additionally performed on Sweden's 400 metre freestyle and 400 metre medley relays; notably, her lead-off split of 52.24 in finals for the freestyle relay would have earned her a silver medal in the 100 metre freestyle.\n\n\n=== 2024 ===\n\n\n==== 2024 World Championships ====\nAt the 2024 World Aquatics Championships in Doha, Sjöström won the long course 50 metre freestyle as well as the 50 metre butterfly. The latter for a sixth time in a row at the World Aquatic Championships. \n\n\n==== 2024 Olympic Games ====\nSjöström, now focusing on the shortest distances, had only planned to swim 50 metre freestyle at the Olympics. However, she decided to join 100 m freestyle as it suited her schedule between the 4×100m freestyle relay and the 50 metre freestyle. She first raced in the heats and the final of the 4x100m freestyle relay, where the Swedish team finished 5th in the final setting a new national record. She then went on to win the gold in 100 metre freestyle on 31 July with a time of 52.16 seconds. Despite being the World Record holder, Sjöström had never won a gold medal in this distance at the global level. On the last day of competition she won another gold medal in the 50 metre freestyle, with a time of 23.71 seconds. She closed her Olympic Games with a 7th place finish in the 4x100m medley relay alongside her Swedish teammates.\n\n\n== Personal bests ==\n\n\n=== Long course (50 m) ===\n\n\n=== Short course (25 m) ===\n\n\n=== World records (50 m) ===\n\nLegend: sf – semifinal; r – relay 1st leg\n\n\n=== World records (25 m) ===\n\nLegend: = – tied pre-existing world record\n\n\n== International championships (50 m) ==\n\na  Sjöström swam only in the heats.\nb  Team Sweden was disqualified in the final.\n\n\n=== International finals (50 m) ===\nOnly individual\n\n\n== International championships (25 m) ==\n\n\n=== International finals (25 m) ===\nOnly individual\n\n\n== Swimming World Cup circuits ==\nThe following medals Sjöström has won at Swimming World Cup circuits.\n\n\n== Accomplishments and awards ==\nSjöström won the gold in the 100 m freestyle at the 2024 Paris Olympics. She won the gold medal in the 100 m butterfly at the 2016 Rio Summer Olympics on 7 August 2016, setting an Olympic and World record with a time of 55.48.\nShe also won a gold medal in 100 m butterfly in the World Championships in Rome 2009 and set the world record.\n\n\n=== Awards ===\nSwedish Jerring Award: 2014 & 2015\nVictoria Award: 2015\nFemale European Swimmer of the Year, announced by Swimming World Magazine: 2015, 2017, 2021 & 2022\nSwedish Svenska Dagbladet Gold Medal: 2015 & 2017\nFemale World Swimmer of the Year, announced by Swimming World Magazine: 2017 \nBest Female Athlete from Europe, announced by Association of National Olympic Committees (ANOC): 2017\nFemale European Swimmer of the Year, Swammy Award announced by SwimSwam: 2017, 2018 & 2021\nMVP (season) in International Swimming League: 2019 & 2021\nOlympic Resilience Award, announced by Swimming World: 2021\nMVP in International Swimming League Final: 2021\nFemale International Swimming League Swimmer of the Year, announced by Swimming World Magazine: 2021\nBest Female Swimmer, awarded by Ligue Européenne de Natation (LEN): 2021\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nIn 2024, Sjöström married her boyfriend of twelve years, Swedish fencer Johan de Jong Skierus. In 2025, she gave birth to the couple's first child.\n\n\n== See also ==\nWorld record progression 50 metres freestyle\nWorld record progression 100 metres freestyle\nWorld record progression 200 metres freestyle\nWorld record progression 50 metres butterfly\nWorld record progression 100 metres butterfly\nList of individual gold medalists in swimming at the Olympics and World Aquatics Championships (women)\nList of Olympic medalists in swimming (women)\nList of World Aquatics Championships medalists in swimming (women)\nList of World Swimming Championships (25 m) medalists (women)\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nOfficial website \nSarah Sjöström at World Aquatics\nSarah Sjöström at SwimRankings.net\nSarah Sjöström at the International Swimming League (archived)\nSarah Sjöström at Olympics.com\nSarah Sjöström at the Swedish Olympic Committee (in Swedish)\nSarah Sjöström at Olympedia\nSarah Sjöström at InterSportStats"}
{"title": "Sawao Katō", "requested": "Sawao Katō", "extract": "Sawao Katō (加藤 澤男, Katō Sawao; born October 11, 1946) is a Japanese former gymnast and one of the most successful Olympic athletes of all time. Between 1968 and 1976 he won twelve Olympic medals, including eight gold medals, making him the most successful Japanese Olympian by number of gold medals won.\n\n\n== Biography ==\n\nKatō was born in Niigata Prefecture on October 11, 1946, and studied at the Tokyo Kyoiku University. He first competed in the Olympics in 1968, alongside his elder brother Takeshi. They won the team competition, with Sawao also taking gold medals in the all-around and on the floor. He placed third in the rings event.\nFour years later the Japanese men's gymnastics team dominated the 1972 Olympics, taking 15 out of 21 individual medals. Katō won gold medals all-around and in the parallel bars and silvers on the horizontal bar and pommel horse. He aimed for an unprecedented third gold medal in the all-around at the 1976 Summer Olympics, but was defeated by Nikolai Andrianov. The team competition was close this time, but the Japanese defeated the Soviets by four tenths of a point, earning their fifth consecutive title. Katō closed out his Olympic career by retaining his title in the parallel bars.\nKatō is one of only ten athletes to have won eight or more Olympic gold medals. He is one of the most successful male gymnasts ever at the Olympics: his eight gold and twelve overall medals are best rivaled by Nikolai Andrianov's seven gold and 15 overall, Boris Shakhlin's seven gold and 13 overall, and Takashi Ono's five gold and 13 overall. He won more Olympic gold medals than any Japanese Olympian, and is second after Ono in the total number of medals. In 2001, Katō was inducted into the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame.\nAs of 2010, Katō was a professor emeritus at the University of Tsukuba. On May 14, 2021, Jovian asteroid 43212 Katosawao, discovered by astronomers with the American LINEAR survey in 2000, was named in his honor.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Olympic medalists\nList of multiple Summer Olympic medalists\nList of Olympic medal leaders in men's gymnastics\n\n\n== Notes ==\n\n\n== References ==\n\n \n\n\n== External links ==\nSawao Katō at World Gymnastics \nSawao Katō at the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame \nSawao Katō at Olympics.com \nSawao Katō at Olympedia"}
{"title": "Serena Williams", "requested": "Serena Williams", "extract": "Serena Jameka Williams (born September 26, 1981) is an American professional tennis player. She was ranked as the world No. 1 in women's singles by the Women's Tennis Association (WTA) for 319 weeks (third-most of all time), and finished as the year-end No. 1 five times. Williams won 73 WTA Tour–level singles titles, including 23 major women's singles titles—the most in the Open Era, and the second-most of all time. She is the only player to accomplish a Career Golden Slam in both singles and doubles, and the only player to have simultaneously held Olympic gold and all four major titles in both singles and doubles.\nAlong with her elder sister Venus, Serena Williams was coached by her parents Oracene Price and Richard Williams. Turning professional in 1995, she won her first major singles title at the 1999 US Open. From the 2002 French Open to the 2003 Australian Open she was dominant, winning all four major singles titles consecutively (each time over Venus in the final) to achieve a non-calendar year Grand Slam (nicknamed the \"Serena Slam\"). After injuries, Williams returned to dominance in 2012, claiming Olympic gold (completing the career Golden Slam in singles) and winning eight out of thirteen singles majors, including all four in a row in 2014–2015 to achieve a second \"Serena Slam\". At the 2017 Australian Open, she won her 23rd major singles title, surpassing Steffi Graf's Open Era record. \nWilliams also won 23 WTA Tour-level doubles titles, including 14 major women's doubles championships, all with her sister Venus. The pair was undefeated in major doubles finals, earning the best unbeaten record in major finals in any discipline of the sport. The sisters achieved a non-calendar year Grand Slam between the 2009 Wimbledon Championships and the 2010 French Open. Williams won four Olympic gold medals, three in women's doubles—an all-time joint record in tennis, shared with her sister. The duo are the only women in the Open Era to win Olympic gold in both singles and doubles. Williams also won two mixed doubles majors, both in 1998. She is the only player, male or female, to complete three career Golden Slams—one in women's singles and two in women's doubles. In 2020, the Tennis Channel ranked her as the greatest women's tennis player of all time.\n\n\n== Early life ==\nWilliams was born on September 26, 1981, in Saginaw, Michigan, to Oracene Price and Richard Williams. She is the youngest of Price's five daughters, after half-sisters Yetunde, Lyndrea, and Isha Price, and full sister Venus. She also has at least seven paternal half-siblings. When Serena and Venus were young, Richard moved the family to Compton, California, over the objections of his wife. Richard had studied sports success stories, and believed that the rough environment of Compton would toughen up Serena and Venus in preparation for their future tennis careers. Richard home-schooled Serena and Venus, and Serena started playing tennis at the age of four. While Serena's parents have been her official coaches, her other mentors have included Richard Williams, a Compton man who shared her father's name and subsequently founded The Venus and Serena Williams Tennis Tutorial Academy.\n\nWhen Williams was nine, the family moved from Compton to West Palm Beach, Florida, so Serena and Venus could attend the tennis academy of Rick Macci, who provided her with additional coaching. Macci did not always agree with Richard's approach to coaching and training, but respected that \"he treated his daughters like kids, allowed them to be little girls\". By 1991, Williams had a 46–3 record on the United States Tennis Association junior tour and was ranked No. 1 among under-10 players in Florida. When Williams was 10, Richard stopped sending his daughters to national junior tennis tournaments, as he wanted them to \"go slowly\" and focus on school, and because he wanted to ensure they would not burn out before turning professional. Experiences of racism also influenced this decision, as he had heard white parents talk about his daughters in a derogatory manner during tournaments.\nIn 1995, when Williams was in the ninth grade, her father pulled his daughters out of Macci's academy and took over all coaching at their home.\n\n\n== Professional career ==\n\n\n=== 1995–1998: Professional debut ===\n\nWilliams's parents initially wanted their daughter to wait until she was 16 to participate in professional tournaments. In 1995, just after turning 14, Williams planned to make her professional debut as a wild-card entry in the Bank of the West Classic in Oakland, California, but was denied due to age-eligibility restrictions. She subsequently filed an antitrust lawsuit against the WTA, but withdrew it at her parents' request. Her first professional event was in October 1995 at the Bell Challenge in Quebec, where she used a wild-card entry to circumvent age-eligibility rules. She lost in the first qualifying round to 18-year-old American Annie Miller.\nAfter not playing in 1996, Williams won her first main-draw match at the Ameritech Cup Chicago in November 1997. Ranked No.304, she upset No.7 Mary Pierce and No.4 Monica Seles, recording her first career wins against top 10 players and becoming the lowest-ranked player in the Open Era to defeat two top-10 opponents in one tournament. She ultimately lost in the semifinals to No.5 Lindsay Davenport. Her run in Chicago propelled Williams into the Top 100 for the first time in her career, and she finished 1997 ranked No.99 in the world.\nAt the 1998 Sydney International, Williams defeated No.3 Davenport in the quarterfinals, before losing to Arantxa Sánchez Vicario in the semifinals. Williams's first main draw of a Grand Slam tournament was at the Australian Open, where she defeated sixth-seeded Irina Spîrlea in the first round, before losing to Venus in the second round in the sisters' first professional face-off. Williams reached six other quarterfinals during the year, but lost all of them, including her first match against No.1-ranked Martina Hingis. She lost in the fourth round of the French Open to Vicario, and in the third round of the US Open to Spîrlea. She withdrew from Wimbledon two games into a match after straining a calf muscle. After losing the French Open mixed doubles final to Venus and Justin Gimelstob, Williams won the mixed doubles titles at Wimbledon and the US Open with Max Mirnyi. Williams won her first professional title in non-mixed doubles at the U.S. National Indoor Championships in Oklahoma City with Venus, which made them the third pair of sisters to win a WTA title. Williams finished the year ranked No.20 in singles, the fastest achievement of that milestone in women's history.\n\n\n=== 1999: First major and becoming a top-5 player ===\n\nIn February 1999, Williams won her first professional singles title when she defeated Amélie Mauresmo in the final of the Open Gaz de France in Paris. In March, Williams won her first WTA 1000 event at the Evert Cup in California, defeating Steffi Graf in the final. At the Miami Masters, Williams had her 16-match winning streak ended by her sister in the first all-sister singles final in WTA history. In the doubles event at the French Open, she and Venus won the title after defeating Hingis and Anna Kournikova in the final.\nWilliams missed Wimbledon in 1999 due to injury. When she returned to the tour two months later, she made her Fed Cup debut, defeating Rita Grande to send the United States to the final. She then won her third title at the JPMorgan Chase Open. At the US Open, Williams defeated Grand Slam champions Kim Clijsters, Conchita Martínez, Monica Seles, and defending champion Lindsay Davenport to reach the final, where she defeated No.1-ranked Hingis. Williams became the second African-American woman to win a Grand Slam singles tournament, after Althea Gibson. The Williams sisters also won the doubles event at this tournament, making Serena the fifth woman in the Open Era to win both singles and doubles at the same major event. To complete her 1999 season, Williams won a doubles match against Russia in the Fed Cup final to help the US win the title. Williams ended the year ranked at a career-high world No.4, in just her second full year on the main tour.\n\n\n=== 2000–2001: Olympic gold, US Open final, and Indian Wells boycott ===\nIn 2000, Williams failed to defend her titles in Paris and Indian Wells, although she did win the Faber Grand Prix in Germany. Soon afterwards, she missed the French Open due to injury. She recovered and played at the Wimbledon Championships, where she lost to Venus in the semifinals; however, the pair won the doubles title. Her defense of the US Open title ended when she lost in the quarterfinals to Davenport. Williams and her sister won the gold medal in doubles at the Sydney Olympics that September, and Williams ended the year by winning the Toyota Princess Cup and finishing at No.6.\nWilliams began 2001 by losing to Hingis in the quarterfinals of both the Medibank International and the Australian Open. However, she and Venus won the doubles event at the Australian Open, becoming only the fifth doubles team in history to win all four Grand Slam women's doubles titles during their career, completing a \"Career Grand Slam\". Williams's next event was the Pacific Life Open in Indian Wells, where she defeated Clijsters in the final. During the tournament, Richard Williams stated that racist comments were made to him by spectators. As a result, both Serena and Venus pledged to boycott the event, even though it was a mandatory stop on the WTA tour; Serena's boycott lasted until 2015. Williams claimed her second title of the year at the Rogers Cup, defeating Jennifer Capriati in the final. In September, Williams lost to her sister in the final of the US Open, which was the first Grand Slam tournament final played by two sisters during the Open Era. Williams finished 2001 at No.6 for the second straight year.\n\n\n=== 2002–2003: \"Serena Slam\" ===\n\nEarly in 2002, Williams retired from the semifinal at the Medibank International Sydney due to injury, and later withdrew from the Australian Open. After recovering, Williams won her first title of the year in Scottsdale, Arizona, defeating No.2 Capriati, in the final. She then won the Miami Masters for the first time after beating No.3 Hingis in the quarterfinals, No.2 Venus in the semifinals, and No.1 Capriati in the final, becoming only the second player in the Open Era to defeat the world's top 3 ranked players at the same event.\n\nIn May, Williams won her first clay-court title at the Italian Open, which raised her ranking to a new high of No.3. She then claimed her first French Open title, which elevated her to No.2, second only to Venus. During the summer, Williams won Wimbledon for the first time, defeating Venus in the final. The victory propelled her to No.1, making her the third African American woman to hold the top ranking. The Williams sisters also won the doubles event at the tournament.\nAt the US Open, Williams reached the final where, for the third Grand Slam in a row, she defeated her sister to win the title. Williams won two consecutive singles titles in the fall, defeating Clijsters to win the Toyota Princess Cup in Tokyo, and Anastasia Myskina to win the Sparkassen Cup in Leipzig. She reached the final at the Home Depot Championships in Los Angeles, where she lost to Clijsters in straight sets. Williams finished 2002 with a 56–5 win/lose record, eight singles titles, and the No.1 ranking. Her three consecutive Grand Slam titles in 2002 made her only the third player in history to win the \"Surface Slam\" after Martina Navratilova and Steffi Graf.\nAt the 2003 Australian Open, Williams faced Venus for the fourth consecutive Grand Slam tournament final. She defeated her sister and became the sixth woman in the Open Era to complete a Career Grand Slam, alongside Graf, Navratilova, Margaret Court, Chris Evert and Billie Jean King. She also became the fifth woman to hold all Grand Slam singles titles simultaneously, a feat which was dubbed the \"Serena Slam\" by the press. At this tournament, the Williams sisters also won their sixth Grand Slam doubles title as a team.\nDuring the spring of 2003, Williams captured the singles titles at the Open Gaz de France and the Sony Ericsson Open. Her streak of 21 wins ended when she lost the final of the Family Circle Cup to Henin. She also lost to Mauresmo in the semifinals of the Internazionali BNL d'Italia in Rome. Despite these defeats, Williams was the top seed at the French Open, where she lost in the semifinals to eventual champion Henin; this was Williams's first loss in a Grand Slam tournament since 2001. The match was controversial, with Williams questioning Henin's sportsmanship, and spectators applauding Williams's errors. Williams rebounded from this loss at Wimbledon, where she defeated Venus in the final. Wimbledon was her last tournament of 2003; she pulled out of three events and then underwent surgery on her knee.\n\n\n=== 2004–2007: Injuries and comeback ===\n\nAfter eight months away from tennis, Williams began her comeback at the NASDAQ-100 Open in March 2004, where she won the title for the third consecutive year. Although ranked No.7, Williams was seeded second at the French Open, where she lost to Capriati in the quarterfinals. A few weeks later, Williams was seeded first at Wimbledon, even though her ranking had dropped to No.10. She was defeated in the final by Maria Sharapova. The loss caused her to drop below No.10 for the first time since 1999.\nWilliams was seeded third at the 2004 US Open, where she faced Capriati in the quarterfinals. During the match, umpire Mariana Alves made a call that favored Capriati, but subsequent video review showed that her call was incorrect. Williams argued with Alves over several other calls during the match, which Capriati eventually won. Williams acknowledged that her loss was primarily due to her 57 unforced errors, but she nevertheless felt \"cheated\" and accused Alves of temporary insanity. The controversy renewed calls for, and was widely given credit for, the adoption of new technology such as the MacCAM and Hawk-Eye systems.\nWilliams won her second title of the year at the China Open in September, defeating Svetlana Kuznetsova in the final. At the Tour Championships in Los Angeles, Williams suffered an abdominal injury in the finals, where she lost to Sharapova. Williams finished 2004 ranked No.7, but did not win a Grand Slam singles tournament for the first season since 2001.\nFollowing Venus's early exit from the 2005 Australian Open, Serena rejected suggestions that she and her sister were a declining force in tennis. She defeated the top seed Davenport to win the tournament, claiming her second Australian Open trophy and seventh Grand Slam singles title. The victory moved her back to No.2. She missed the French Open due to an ankle injury, but played at Wimbledon as the 4th-seed; she was eliminated in the third round. At the US Open, Williams lost to her sister in the fourth round. Williams failed to qualify for the WTA year-end championship for the first time since 1998, and she finished 2005 ranked No.11.\nWilliams made her 2006 debut at the Australian Open, defending her title. After she lost to Daniela Hantuchová in the third round, she told the press that she was injured. In her biography, Williams wrote that she was suffering from depression during this time. She stayed away from tennis for six months during the 2006 season, and began seeing a therapist daily. After a chance meeting with a young girl who idolized Williams and believed in her, Williams signed up to play in Cincinnati in July, her first tournament since January. She had slipped to No.139, her lowest ranking since 1997. On her return, Williams defeated Anastasia Myskina and Bethanie Mattek, before losing in the semifinals to Vera Zvonareva. She also reached the semifinals in Los Angeles, losing to Janković in straight sets. Williams was granted a wildcard to enter the US Open, where she lost to Amélie Mauresmo in the fourth round. Williams finished the year ranked No.95, her lowest year-end ranking since 1997.\nWilliams began 2007 with renewed confidence. She stated her intention to return to the top of the rankings, a goal that was labeled \"deluded\" by commentator Pat Cash. Leading up to the Australian Open, Williams was widely regarded as \"out of shape\", and at No.81 she was unseeded at the tournament. Shortly before her first match, a representative from Nike told her the company might cancel her sponsorship if she did not perform at her customary level. Williams claimed that Nike's ultimatum meant she would have to reach the quarterfinals at least.\nThe Nike situation did not distract Williams, as she lost just three games to Mara Santangelo and defeated Anne Kremer in straight sets. By this point, a blister had developed on her foot and she had contracted a cold. In the third round, Williams found herself two points away from losing to Nadia Petrova, but she fought back to win in three sets. She then made it to the final, defeating Jelena Janković, Shahar Pe'er and Nicole Vaidišová along the way. Williams speculated that the players she defeated \"didn't expect an overweight, out-of-shape, has-been champion ... to give them a game.\" Commentator Tracy Austin said she expected Sharapova to easily defeat Williams in the final. Williams thought the commentary was mean, and it motivated her to triumph over Sharapova while losing just three games. It was Williams's first tournament title in two years, and she became the first player since Chris O'Neil to capture the Australian Open title without being seeded. The victory, which elevated her to No.14, was her third Australian Open title and eighth career Grand Slam singles title. Williams dedicated the achievement to her deceased half-sister Yetunde.\nHer performance in the final was described in the press as one of the best performances of her career, and \"arguably the most powerful display ever seen in women's tennis\". Williams won the Sony Ericsson Open in Miami for the fourth time by defeating Henin, but then lost to Henin during the quarterfinals in three consecutive Grand Slam tournaments: the French Open, Wimbledon and the US Open. Williams reached the final of the Kremlin Cup, but lost to Elena Dementieva. She qualified for the WTA Championships, but retired from her first match with a knee injury and subsequently withdrew from the event. Williams finished 2007 as No.7 and the top-ranked American for the first time since 2003.\n\n\n=== 2008–2010: Injuries, controversy, and return to No. 1 ===\n\nWilliams started 2008 by winning the Hopman Cup for the US, with Mardy Fish. At the Australian Open, she lost in the quarterfinals to Janković, her fourth straight loss in the quarterfinals of a Grand Slam singles tournament. In the women's doubles event, she and Venus were defeated in the quarterfinals. Williams withdrew from her next three scheduled tournaments because of an urgent need for dental surgery. She then won three consecutive singles titles at Bangalore and her fifth Miami title, tying Graf for the most singles titles at this tournament. She claimed victory at the Family Circle Cup, her first clay-court title since 2002. Her 17-match winning streak was ended by Dinara Safina in the quarterfinals in Berlin. Williams withdrew in Rome in the quarterfinals due to a back injury, and lost in the third round of the French Open to Katarina Srebotnik.\nAt Wimbledon, Williams reached the finals for the first time in four years, but lost to Venus in their first Grand Slam final since 2003. Serena and Venus teamed up and won the doubles title, however. Williams played at Stanford, but retired in the semifinals with a knee injury, which also forced her to withdraw from a tournament in Los Angeles. During the Summer Olympics in Beijing, Williams lost to Dementieva in the singles quarterfinals, but she and Venus won the gold medal in doubles. In early September, Williams captured her third US Open title, which was also her ninth Grand Slam singles title. The victory returned her to No.1 for the first time since 2003. At the year-end championships, she defeated Safina and lost to Venus in round-robin matches, but withdrew from a match against Dementieva, citing a stomach muscle injury. She ended 2008 ranked No.2 and with four singles titles, her strongest performance in both respects since 2003.\n\nWilliams began 2009 at the Medibank International, losing in the semifinals to Dementieva. At the Australian Open, she claimed her tenth Grand Slam singles title by defeating Safina. This win restored her No.1 ranking and made her the all-time career prize money leader in women's sports, a title previously held by golfer Annika Sörenstam. Serena and Venus also won the doubles event at the Australian Open for the third time. At the Open GdF Suez, Williams withdrew before her semifinal match against Dementieva because of a knee injury. She then played in Dubai, losing to Venus in the semifinals. \nWilliams was beset by ankle and quadriceps injuries at the Sony Ericsson Open, and was upset in the final by Victoria Azarenka. This was the first of four consecutive losses for Williams, the longest losing streak of her career. After Ericsson, she was defeated in her opening matches in Barcelona, Rome, and Madrid. At the French Open, she lost in the quarterfinals to the eventual champion Kuznetsova. This ended her 18-match winning streak at Grand Slam tournaments. She rebounded at Wimbledon, prevailing over Dementieva in the semifinals and Venus in the finals. The victory was her third Wimbledon title and her 11th Grand Slam singles title. For the second consecutive year, Serena and Venus claimed the Wimbledon doubles title, which was their ninth Grand Slam title in doubles.\nAhead of the US Open, Williams suffered a third-round defeat in Cincinnati and a semifinal defeat at the Rogers Cup. At the Open, she was given a racket abuse warning after losing the first set of her semifinal match against Clijsters. Later in the match, one of her serves was called a foot fault. Williams yelled profanities at the lineswoman who made the call, and threatened to shove a tennis ball down her throat. Williams was penalized a point for unsportsmanlike conduct, which resulted in Clijsters winning the match. The following day, Williams was issued a fine of $10,500. After further investigation, the Grand Slam Committee fined her $175,000 in place of suspending her from the 2010 US Open or other Grand Slams. They also placed her on a two-year probation, which meant that if she committed another offense at a Grand Slam during the next two years, she would be suspended from the following US Open. If, however, she committed no offenses, her fine would be reduced to $82,500. Although Williams initially did not express regret for her outburst, she eventually apologized, saying she was humbled by the experience.\nWilliams continued in the US Open doubles competition, teaming up with Venus to capture their third Grand Slam doubles title of the year, and the tenth of their career. Williams won all three of her round-robin matches at the year-end WTA Tour Championships, defeating Venus, Dementieva, and Kuznetsova. She advanced to the final after Caroline Wozniacki retired from their semifinal match. In the final, Williams defeated her sister to claim her second singles title at this event. Williams finished the year ranked No.1 for the second time in her career. She played in 16 tournaments in 2009, more than any other year. With $6,545,586 in prize-money earnings, she broke the record previously set by Justine Henin for most prize money earned by a female tennis player in one year. In doubles, the Williams sisters finished 2009 at No.2, despite playing only six tournaments together. Williams now had a total of 23 Grand Slam titles, and was consequently named Female Athlete of the Year by the Associated Press. She was also the International Tennis Federation World Champion in both singles and doubles.\nIn 2010, Williams's first tournament was in Sydney, where she lost in the final to Dementieva. At the Australian Open, Williams was the defending champion in both singles and doubles. She reached the final and defeated Justine Henin, who had recently come out of retirement, for her twelfth Grand Slam singles title. In doubles, Williams and her sister successfully defended their title by defeating Cara Black and Liezel Huber in the final. Williams sat out several events with a leg injury, but returned for the Rome Masters, where she was defeated by Janković in the semifinals. At Madrid, she fell to Nadia Petrova in the third round, but partnered with Venus to win the doubles title.\nAt the French Open, Williams was bested by Samantha Stosur in the quarterfinals. She and Venus won the doubles event, achieving their fourth consecutive Grand Slam doubles title and improving their doubles ranking to No.1. Williams's next tournament was Wimbledon, where she did not lose a single set, defeating Zvonareva in the final. After the match, Navratilova said Williams was among the top five female tennis players in history. She asserted that being a great player is \"not just about how many Slams you win ... it's just your game overall ... she's got all the goods.\" The Williams sisters lost in the doubles quarterfinals to Elena Vesnina and Zvonareva. In Munich on July 7, Williams stepped on broken glass while in a restaurant, and the injury caused her to miss the rest of the year. She finished 2010 ranked No.4 in singles and No.11 in doubles.On March 2, 2011, she confirmed that she had suffered a hematoma and a pulmonary embolism.\n\n\n=== 2011–2013: Return to dominance, Career Golden Slam ===\n\nWilliams made her first appearance on the WTA tour in almost a year in Eastbourne, where she lost in round two. In June, she attempted to defend her title at Wimbledon, but was eliminated in the round of 16, which dropped her ranking to No.169. Later in the summer, she won titles in both Stanford and Toronto. Williams played the Western & Southern Open, but withdrew due to injury. She reached the final at the US Open, where she faced Stosur. During the match, Williams became angry with umpire Eve Asderaki. She made gestures and unflattering comments towards her, including calling her \"a hater\". Williams eventually lost the match, and then declined to offer Asderaki the customary handshake. A writer for ESPN suggested that Williams did not violate the terms of her probation (on which she was placed following her 2009 outburst), since she did not use profanity when addressing the umpire. In the end, Williams was fined $2,000, but was not barred from competing. The US Open was Williams's final event of 2011, and she ended the year ranked No.12, with two titles and a 22–3 record for the season. She only played in six tournaments during the season.\nWilliams started the 2012 season at the Brisbane International. During her match against Bojana Jovanovski, she injured her left ankle, and was forced to withdraw from the tournament. Next she participated in the Australian Open, where she was upset by Ekaterina Makarova in the fourth round. After a month layoff, Williams returned to competition in Miami, losing in the quarterfinals. She then won consecutive titles in Charleston and Madrid, but withdrew from her semifinal match in Rome due to a back injury. At the French Open, Williams suffered her first ever loss in the opening round of a Grand Slam. However, she notched up a 33–1 record for the second half of the season, winning five titles in the process. She captured her fifth Wimbledon singles title (her 14th Grand Slam victory), and became the first female player to serve 24 aces in a match. She also set a record for the most aces in a tournament by any player—male or female—with a total of 102. Williams and her sister also captured their fifth trophy in Wimbledon doubles.\nWilliams returned to America to successfully defend her Stanford title, overcoming CoCo Vandeweghe in the final. At the Olympics, she won gold by defeating Sharapova in a dominating performance. She and Venus also won a second consecutive Olympic doubles title. In New York, Williams claimed her fourth US Open singles title, which was her 15th career Grand Slam singles title. She ended the season by going undefeated at the WTA Championships and winning the event for the third time. She was named ITF World Champion, and was voted WTA Player of the Year for the fourth time.\nWilliams's first tournament of the 2013 season was in Brisbane, where she won the title without dropping a set. At the Australian Open, she was upset in the quarterfinals by fellow American Sloane Stephens. After defeating Petra Kvitová in Doha, Williams returned to No.1 for the sixth time in her career, becoming the oldest woman in the Open Era to hold the ranking. In the Miami final, Williams recorded her 70th come-from-behind win. The victory made Williams a six-time champion in Miami, breaking the record she held with Graf. She also became the fourth woman in the Open Era to win a given tournament six times. Williams then defended her Charleston title, winning the event for the third time. She won her 50th career singles title in Madrid, prevailing over Sharapova in the final. She then played in Rome, where she won the title a second time. At the French Open, Williams lost only one game whilst defeating Sara Errani in the semifinal. Evert said Williams's play during the match was the finest performance she had ever seen by a female player on clay. Williams bested Sharapova in the final to claim her second French Open title and her 16th Grand Slam title overall. She also became the fourth woman in the Open Era to win each Grand Slam tournament at least twice. At Wimbledon, she advanced easily to the fourth round before being defeated by eventual finalist Sabine Lisicki. Williams then won the Swedish Open, her first victory at the International level. She was undefeated on clay during the season.\n\nWilliams won her third Rogers Cup title in Toronto, beating Sorana Cîrstea in the final. She reached the final of the Western & Southern Open for the first time, but lost to Azarenka. At the US Open, Williams began as top seed and defending champion. She reached the final and defeated Azarenka in three sets, capturing her 17th Grand Slam singles title and pushing her career prize winnings past $50 million. At 31, she became the oldest US Open champion in the Open Era. After the US Open, Williams beat Janković to win the China Open, which was her 10th title of 2013. She went undefeated at the WTA Championships, triumphing over Li Na in the final and becoming the first person to defend the title since Henin in 2007. She also became the oldest player to win the WTA Championships, the fourth player to win it four times or more, and the first female player to win more than $10 million in a season (her total for 2013 was $12.4 million). Only Rafael Nadal (in 2013), and Novak Djokovic (in 2011, 2012 and 2013) have earned more money in one season.\nWilliams finished as the year-end No.1 for the third time, becoming the oldest No.1 player in WTA history. She was named the ITF World Champion for the fourth time. She received two prizes at the 2013 ESPY Awards: Best Female Athlete and Best Female Tennis Player, the latter of which she won for a record sixth time. In December, Williams received the Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year award for the third time. Only Evert and Babe Didrikson have been chosen more often as Athlete of the Year since the awards were first handed out in 1931.\n\n\n=== 2014–2015: Second \"Serena Slam\" ===\n\nWilliams defended her title at the Brisbane International by defeating No.2 Azarenka in the final. At the Australian Open, she fell in the fourth round to Ana Ivanovic. In Dubai, Williams lost her semifinal match to Alizé Cornet in straight sets. Williams then played in the Miami Open, where she won her record seventh title with a straight-sets victory over No.2 Li Na. At the Family Circle Cup, she lost to Jana Čepelová in the second round. She made it to the quarterfinals at the Madrid Open before withdrawing with a thigh injury. In Rome, Williams won her third title of the season. She suffered the worst loss of her Grand Slam career in the second round of the French Open when Garbiñe Muguruza defeated her while losing just four games in two sets. Cornet defeated Williams in the third round of Wimbledon, handing Williams her earliest Wimbledon elimination since 2005. During the doubles event with Venus, Serena hit four consecutive doubles faults. She appeared disoriented and unsteady on her feet, and withdrew from the tournament. The official cause of withdrawal was \"viral illness\".\nWilliams rebounded by winning 19 out of her next 20 matches (losing only to Venus in the semifinals of the Rogers Cup). The streak included titles at the Bank of the West Classic and the Western & Southern Open, and her third consecutive and sixth overall US Open singles title. With this victory, Williams tied Evert for most US Open singles titles won by a woman in the Open Era. Williams also tied Evert and Navratilova's record of 18 career Grand Slam singles titles won in the Open Era. By virtue of winning both the US Open and the US Open Series, Williams collected $4 million—the biggest payday in tennis history. At the 2014 WTA Finals in Singapore, Williams advanced to the final for the third consecutive year despite having equaled her career-worst loss in her second round robin match against Simona Halep. She claimed the WTA Finals title, which was her seventh title of the year, and finished the year ranked No.1 for the fourth time in her career. She held the top ranking for the entire calendar year, a feat not accomplished since Graf achieved it in 1996. Williams was voted WTA Player of the Year and ITF World Champion for a third consecutive year.\nWilliams began the 2015 season by reaching the final of the Hopman Cup, where she and her partner John Isner lost to Poland. At the Australian Open, Williams defeated Sharapova for the 16th consecutive time to claim her sixth Australian Open singles title and 19th career Grand Slam singles title. With this victory, Williams surpassed both Evert and Navratilova for the second most Grand Slam singles titles won in the Open Era. She is the only player in history to win all four Grand Slams at age 30 or older. She and Venus next traveled to Buenos Aires to face Argentina in a World Group II tie in the Fed Cup. She played and won her only match against María Irigoyen to help the US team win against the Argentines. After a 14-year boycott of the Indian Wells Masters, Williams announced that she would be competing at the event. Upon her return, she received a standing ovation from the crowd and won her first match in straight sets. She reached the semifinals, but was forced to withdraw because of a knee injury. When Williams defeated Lisicki in the quarterfinals of the Miami Open, she became the eighth woman in the Open Era to record 700 match wins in her career. This also made her one of only three active players to have won 700 or more matches in singles, the others being Nadal and Roger Federer. Williams went on to win a record eighth title in Miami.\n\nAs preparation for the clay-court season (and to ensure her eligibility for the 2016 Summer Olympics), Williams travelled to Brindisi, Italy, where she competed with that country's team for a place in the Fed Cup's World Group. Williams and teammate Alison Riske lost the decisive doubles match to Errani and Flavia Pennetta, which meant the United States was relegated to World Group II. It was Williams's first loss in the Fed Cup. The week of April 20 marked Williams's 114th consecutive week ranked No.1, the third-longest run in WTA history at the time, behind Graf's 186 weeks and Navratilova's 156. In the semifinals of the Mutua Madrid Open, Williams suffered her first defeat of the season, ending a 50-match winning streak at Premier-Mandatory events. She played one match at the 2015 Internazionali BNL d'Italia before withdrawing with an elbow injury.\nAt the 2015 French Open, Williams defeated Lucie Šafářová in three sets to claim the trophy and win her third French Open and 20th Grand Slam singles title. The accomplishment made Williams only the third person in history to win each Grand Slam at least three times, the others being Court and Graf. At Wimbledon, Williams defeated three former No.1 players—Azarenka, Sharapova, and her sister Venus—to advance to the final. Awaiting her was Muguruza, who had previously handed Williams the worst Grand Slam defeat of her career. Williams bested Muguruza and claimed her sixth Wimbledon singles title and 21st Grand Slam singles title overall. With this triumph, she completed her second \"Serena Slam\" (winning all four Grand Slams in a row, but not in the same calendar year). The Wimbledon victory made Williams the oldest woman in the Open Era to win a Grand Slam singles title. It also was her eighth consecutive victory in Grand Slam singles finals appearances, breaking Graf's Open Era record of seven and tying Pete Sampras's Open Era record of eight. The week of July 13 marked the first time in WTA history that the No.1 player had more than twice as many points as the No.2. Following her win at Wimbledon, Williams was awarded her seventh ESPY for Best Female Tennis Player.\nWilliams was the defending champion at the Bank of the West Classic, but withdrew from the tournament to recover from an elbow injury. In the semifinals of the Canadian Open, Williams had a 19-match winning streak ended by 18-year-old Belinda Bencic. The next week Williams defended her title at the Western & Southern Open with a straight sets victory over No.3 Halep. Williams's attempt at capturing the \"Grand Slam\" (winning all four Grand Slams in a calendar year) came to an end at the US Open, where she lost to Roberta Vinci in the semifinals. The defeat has been described by some as one of the biggest upsets in tennis history. On October 1, Williams called an end to her season, stating that she had been injured for most of the year and wanted to \"properly address [her] health\". Coach Patrick Mouratoglou hinted that her decision to end the season early might be due to a lack of motivation and disappointment following her loss at the Open.\nOn October 5, Williams surpassed Evert for third-most weeks ranked world No.1. Williams held the top ranking the entire season for the second consecutive year, finishing there for the fifth time in her career. She was voted WTA Player of the Year for the seventh time, and named ITF World Champion for the sixth time. She was also voted Female Athlete of the Year by the Associated Press for the fourth time in her career, and was chosen as Sportsperson of the Year by Sports Illustrated. She became the third solo woman, and the first since 1983, to receive the latter award.\n\n\n=== 2016: Equalling the records of Steffi Graf ===\n\nWilliams was the No.1 seed and defending champion at the Australian Open. She reached the final without dropping a set, and faced first time Grand Slam finalist Angelique Kerber. Williams was considered the heavy favorite, as she had never lost an Australian Open final or semifinal. She had also dominated in past matches against Kerber, losing only once to her in six meetings. Williams lost the final in three sets, however, which marked her first-ever three-set loss in the final of a Grand Slam.\nThe week of February 15 marked Williams's 157th consecutive week ranked No.1, the second-longest streak in WTA history. Only Graf had held the ranking longer, for 186 weeks. Williams competed in Indian Wells as the No.1 seed, and reached the final for the first time since 2001. She was defeated by Azarenka, whom she had beaten the last five times the pair had met. This marked the first time since 2004 that Williams lost two consecutive finals. She next played the Miami Open as the defending champion, losing in the fourth round to Kuznetsova. In Rome, she prevailed over Anna-Lena Friedsam and Christina McHale to progress to the quarterfinals, where she defeated Kuznetsova. She then defeated Irina-Camelia Begu and Madison Keys to win her 70th career WTA title and her first title of the year.\nAt the French Open, Williams dropped only one set en route to the final, where she faced Muguruza. She lost to the Spanish-Venezuelan player in straight sets, marking the first time she had lost two consecutive Grand Slam finals. At Wimbledon, Williams again dropped only one set on her way to the final, where she faced Kerber in a rematch of their Australian Open final earlier in the year. Williams defeated Kerber in straight sets and tied Graf's record of 22 Open Era Grand Slam singles titles. Later that day, Williams and her sister won their sixth Wimbledon doubles title and 14th Grand Slam doubles title overall, keeping their perfect record at Grand Slam doubles finals intact.\nIn July, Williams withdrew from the Rogers Cup due to a shoulder injury. She next participated in the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, where she was the defending gold medalist in both singles and doubles, and was the heavy favorite to retain those titles. The sisters suffered a shock exit in the first round of doubles, losing to the Czech duo of Šafářová and Barbora Strýcová, which ended their career record of 15–0 dating back to the 2000 Olympics. In singles, Williams lost to Elina Svitolina in the third round. Days after the Olympics, Williams entered the Western & Southern Open to defend her crown, but then withdrew due to the same shoulder injury from earlier in the summer. The week of September 5, 2016, marked Williams's 186th consecutive week ranked No.1, tying her with Graf for the longest run in WTA history. Williams's streak ended when she lost to Karolína Plíšková in the semifinals of the US Open. In October, she pulled out of the WTA Finals, citing her shoulder injury.\n\n\n=== 2017: Australian Open victory and pregnancy ===\n\nWilliams started 2017 by playing in the WTA Auckland Open for the first time in her career. In the second round, she lost to Madison Brengle. She then won the Australian Open for an Open Era record seventh time, defeating Venus in the final. It was her 23rd Open Era Grand Slam singles title, pushing her past Graf's record of 22. It was the first time in the Open Era that two players aged 35 or older had competed in the final of a Grand Slam tournament. The win ensured Williams's return to the No.1 ranking. She subsequently withdrew from the Indian Wells and Miami Opens, citing a knee injury.\nOn April 19, 2017, Williams revealed that she was 20 weeks pregnant and would miss the remainder of the season. The timing of her announcement meant she was already pregnant when she won the Australian Open. In interviews, she said that she intended to return to tennis after giving birth, saying she had an \"outrageous plan\" of competing in the 2018 Australian Open. On September 1, 2017, Williams gave birth to a daughter. She suffered a pulmonary embolism after delivery, leaving her bedridden for six weeks and delaying her return to training. On December 30, Williams played her first match since giving birth, an exhibition match at the World Tennis Championship in Abu Dhabi, where she lost to Jeļena Ostapenko.\n\n\n=== 2018: Return to tennis, Wimbledon, and controversies ===\nOn January 5, 2018, Williams withdrew from the upcoming Australian Open, citing a lack of sufficient preparation in the wake of her pregnancy. In February, after overcoming pregnancy-related health problems, she returned to the tennis court with Venus. The pair lost to Lesley Kerkhove and Demi Schuurs of the Netherlands in the first round of the Fed Cup. Williams then suffered back-to-back early exits in Indian Wells and Miami. Williams returned to Grand Slam tennis at the 2018 French Open, playing singles and doubles with her sister. In the first round, she defeated Kristýna Plíšková, then overcame Ashleigh Barty in the second round. She then defeated 11th seed Julia Görges to set up a fourth-round match against Sharapova, whom she had bested 18 consecutive times since 2004. Williams withdrew from the match due to an injury, however.\nIn July, she played Wimbledon and was seeded No.25. Many felt the decision showed bias and unduly favored Williams, who was ranked No.181. Others argued that the All England Club, which does not base seedings on players' world rankings—as other Grand Slam tournaments do—had sensibly considered Williams's excellent historic record at Wimbledon. Williams reached the Wimbledon semifinals, becoming the lowest-ranked player to do so. She bested 13th seed Görges in the semifinal match, but lost to Kerber in a rematch of the 2016 final. Following Wimbledon, Williams entered the 2018 Silicon Valley Classic, her first appearance in a US Open series tournament since 2015. She suffered the worst loss of her career in the first round, winning just a single game against Johanna Konta. Williams later revealed in an interview with Time that she checked Instagram prior to the match, and discovered that the man who had murdered her half-sister, Yetunde, in 2003 had been released on parole earlier in the year. Williams said she \"couldn't shake it out of [her] mind\".\nWilliams's next tournament was the Cincinnati Masters. She beat Daria Gavrilova in straight sets in the first round, but lost to Petra Kvitová in the second round. She was then seeded 17th at the US Open, although ranked 26th in the WTA. She prevailed over Magda Linette in the first round, Carina Witthöft in the second, Venus in the third, and Kaia Kanepi in the fourth. Williams's quarterfinal face-off against Karolína Plíšková was a rematch of the 2016 US Open semifinal, which the Czech player had won. Williams prevailed, notching her first win against a top 10 player since her return from pregnancy. Williams then won her semifinal match against Anastasija Sevastova, putting her into the final against Naomi Osaka. During the second set of the match, Williams was given a code violation because her coach, Patrick Mouratoglou, gave her coaching hand signals. Williams claimed Mouratoglou was simply giving her a thumbs-up, and demanded an apology from umpire Carlos Ramos. However, Mouratoglou later admitted in the after-game interview that he had been coaching, but believes Williams did not understand the hint. Williams then received a second violation for racket abuse, which resulted in a point penalty. After her third code violation for verbal abuse of the umpire, Williams received a game penalty, and went on to lose the match. She was fined a total of $17,000 for the three offenses, although she claimed she was treated unfairly because she is a woman.\nFollowing the US Open final match, the Melbourne newspaper the Herald Sun published a cartoon by Mark Knight depicting Williams throwing a tantrum while the umpire asks her opponent, \"Can you just let her win?\" The cartoon was widely criticized as racist and sexist, including by Williams's husband, Alexis Ohanian, and author J. K. Rowling. Complaints centered on the portrayal of Williams as an angry black woman with exaggeratedly large lips and a broad, flat nose; the depiction of Williams in an ape-like pose; and the rendering of Osaka with blonde hair (only some of her hair was colored blonde during the tournament). \n\n\n=== 2019: Return to the top 10 ===\nWilliams started her 2019 season at the Australian Open. In the fourth round, she bested top seed and world No.1 Halep. In the quarterfinals, she met Karolína Plíšková, who won the match after Williams twisted her ankle. Despite the loss, Williams's ranking climbed to No.11. She prevailed over Azarenka in the second round of the Indian Wells Masters, but a viral illness caused her to retire. She then experienced the recurrence of a long-term knee injury, which caused her to pull out of upcoming Miami and Rome events. Williams reached the final at Wimbledon, making 2019 the 13th consecutive year in which she played in a Grand Slam final. She became the oldest Grand Slam finalist in the Open Era. Williams lost the final to Halep in two straight sets.\nAt the Canadian Open, Williams faced Bianca Andreescu in the final. However, she was forced to withdraw early in the match after experiencing back spasms. Her back problems continued at the Cincinnati Open, where she withdrew before her first-round match. Williams was seeded eighth at the US Open, where she bested Sharapova in the first round. In the quarterfinals she defeated Wang Qiang, and in the semifinals she triumphed over Svitolina. Williams then proceeded to the final against Andreescu, who won the title in straight sets. Williams finished the year ranked No.10.\n\n\n=== 2020–2022: Final years ===\nIn January 2020, Williams won her first singles title as a mother at the ASB Classic, defeating Jessica Pegula in the final. At the Australian Open, Williams lost in the third round to Wang in three sets. Williams then entered the Top Seed Open as the No.1 seed, defeating Venus in the second round before losing to Shelby Rogers in the quarterfinals. At the US Open, Williams defeated Stephens in the third round before losing to Azarenka in the semifinals. Williams withdrew from the delayed French Open in October, citing an Achilles injury she had sustained during the US Open. She failed to reach a Grand Slam final in 2020.\nWilliams started the 2021 season by playing the Yarra Valley Classic, where she withdrew prior to her semifinal match, citing a right shoulder injury. In the Australian Open, Williams lost in the semifinal to Osaka. In May, Williams played her 1000th match of her career against Nadia Podoroska in the second round of the Italian Open, which she lost in straight sets. She sustained an injury during the first round at Wimbledon against Belarusian player Aliaksandra Sasnovich, forcing her to withdraw from the tournament. In August, a leg injury forced Williams to retire from the US Open. The withdrawal saw Williams plummet nineteen places to 41st in the world, her lowest year-end ranking in 15 years.\n\nIn December 2021, Williams announced she would not play the 2022 Australian Open, citing the same leg injury. She returned to professional play in June 2022 when she teamed up with Ons Jabeur for the Eastbourne International. The pair won two matches before retiring from the tournament due to an injury sustained by Jabeur. Williams also played singles at Wimbledon, where she lost to No.113 Harmony Tan in the first round.\nIn an August article for the September 2022 issue of Vogue, Williams announced her plans to \"evolve away\" from tennis after the 2022 US Open, indicating retirement. She stated her intention to focus on her family and her venture capital firm. Williams began her farewell tour by entering the Canadian Open in Toronto using a protected ranking. She beat Nuria Párrizas Díaz in straight sets for her first singles win in 14 months, before losing to Belinda Bencic. After her elimination, tournament organizers gave Williams gifts to remember the city. Williams subsequently entered the Cincinnati Masters, where she fell to reigning US Open champion Emma Raducanu in the first round.\nAt the 2022 US Open, Williams played doubles with Venus for the first time since 2018; the sisters lost to the Czech duo of Lucie Hradecká and Linda Nosková. In the first round of singles, Williams defeated Danka Kovinić of Montenegro. After the match—which was attended by Eric Adams, Bill Clinton, Spike Lee, Mike Tyson, Vera Wang, Ruth Westheimer, and Tiger Woods—a tribute video narrated by Oprah Winfrey was played, and an interview was conducted by Gayle King. In the second round, Williams upset world No. 2 Anett Kontaveit, becoming the oldest woman in the Open Era to defeat a top-three ranked player. She then lost to Ajla Tomljanović in what was ultimately her final singles match before her return in 2026. Williams was ranked No. 320 at the end of 2022.\n\n\n=== 2026: Return to tennis ===\nIt had been reported in 2025 that Williams had re-entered the doping testing pool, a necessary step for a potential comeback, though she shut down rumors on X.\nOn June 1, 2026, Williams announced she would return to professional tennis nearly four years after her retirement, accepting a wildcard to compete in doubles alongside Canadian teenager Victoria Mboko at the 2026 Queen's Club Championships. On 9 June 2026, Williams made her first professional appearance in 1,375 days and marked her return with a 7–6, 6–2 first-round doubles victory alongside Mboko over third seeds Erin Routliffe and Nicole Melichar-Martinez at the Queen's Club Championships. The pair advanced to the quarter-finals, however due to Mboko's withdrawal from the tournament as a result of a knee injury, Laura Siegemund and Leylah Fernandez won by walkover, ending Williams's run at Queen's. Following her return, Williams re-entered the WTA doubles rankings at world No. 593.\nWilliams expanded her comeback schedule after being awarded a wildcard into the doubles draw of the 2026 Berlin Tennis Open, partnering Karolina Muchova. Following her opening-round victory at the 2026 Queen's Club Championships alongside Victoria Mboko, Williams stated that she hoped to continue building momentum throughout the grass-court season. Her return prompted widespread speculation that she was targeting a singles comeback at Wimbledon, particularly with the tournament's wildcard announcements scheduled during the Berlin event. Williams and Muchova were defeated in the first round by Giuliana Olmos and Erin Routliffe 6–4, 6–4. Despite the loss, Williams said she felt \"more nimble and more sturdy and quicker\" than she had in her comeback match at Queen's and expressed satisfaction with her physical progress on grass courts. During her post-match press conference, Williams also fuelled further speculation about a Wimbledon singles return after learning that a singles wildcard remained available, responding, \"Oh my gosh, there are some left?\", while maintaining that her focus remained on doubles competition.\nWilliams entered the women's doubles event at Wimbledon alongside her sister Venus Williams after the pair were awarded a wildcard into the main draw. The wildcard marked the sisters' first tournament appearance together since the 2022 US Open, which had initially been expected to be the final event of Serena Williams's professional career. The Williams sisters were six-time Wimbledon doubles champions, having won titles together in 2000, 2002, 2008, 2009, 2012 and 2016. Serena Williams said her return had been partly inspired by Venus's doubles success at the 2025 US Open and by encouragement from her daughter Olympia, stating: \"My daughter Olympia told me I should play with Venus. She's always right.\" On June 21, 2026, Williams was also awarded a wildcard into the women's singles event at Wimbledon, marking her first Grand Slam singles appearance since the 2022 US Open. The wildcard was announced by the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club on the eve of the tournament's qualifying week and completed the women's singles field. Williams, a seven-time Wimbledon singles champion, had not contested a singles match at the Championships since her first-round defeat to Harmony Tan in 2022. Williams began her Wimbledon singles comeback against Australia's Maya Joint in the first round on July 1. Joint, aged 20, entered the match having lost her previous 11 matches, but defeated Williams 6–3, 6–7^(6–8), 6–3 in a match lasting two hours and 22 minutes. Williams saved a match point while trailing 6–5 in the second set before forcing a deciding set, but subsequently struggled physically as the match progressed. The defeat marked her first singles match at a Grand Slam since the 2022 US Open.\nFollowing the match, Williams said that she had enjoyed returning to Wimbledon and described the atmosphere and experience of playing again as significant factors in her comeback. Her return to singles had been partly motivated by the opportunity to play in front of her two daughters, Olympia and Adira. Williams was subsequently unable to compete in the women's doubles alongside Venus after sustaining a knee injury during the singles match. The injury reportedly swelled after the match and required treatment, including drainage of fluid from the knee. The sisters had been scheduled to face Camila Osorio and Solana Sierra in the first round. Williams said she was \"heartbroken\" to withdraw, adding that the opportunity to play alongside Venus again had been particularly meaningful to her.\nDespite her Wimbledon singles defeat and injury, Williams continued her return to competitive tennis. On August 18, she partnered Venus in the women's doubles at the 2026 Cincinnati Open, their first match together since the 2022 US Open. The sisters, who received a wildcard, lost in the first round to Marta Kostyuk and Peyton Stearns 2–6, 6–1, [10–8]. After losing the opening set, the Williams sisters won the second to force a match tie-break and recovered from a 6–0 deficit before ultimately losing 10–8. Serena described the occasion as \"special\" and said that she had returned to the court primarily to enjoy playing alongside her sister.\nWilliams subsequently returned to the US Open, where she entered the mixed doubles competition alongside Carlos Alcaraz. The pair received a wildcard and defeated Lloyd Glasspool and Erin Routliffe 5–3, 4–1 in the opening round before losing to Flavio Cobolli and Belinda Bencic 5–4^(7–4), 4–1 in the quarter-finals. The event marked Williams's first appearance at the US Open since 2022 and her first competitive appearance at the tournament since returning to tennis. She said that she had not expected to play again at Arthur Ashe Stadium and described her return as a \"really cool moment\".\nWilliams did not enter the women's singles event at the 2026 US Open, having not competed in singles since her Wimbledon defeat and subsequent knee injury. She and Venus were instead awarded a wildcard into the women's doubles draw, marking their first Grand Slam appearance together since the 2022 US Open. The sisters had won 14 Grand Slam doubles titles together, including US Open titles in 1999 and 2009, and had not lost a Grand Slam doubles final as a team. On August 31, Williams said she would \"probably\" compete in singles again following the US Open, although she stressed that a further return would not be permanent. Williams explained that her knee injury at Wimbledon had prevented her from recovering in time to compete in the US Open singles event. She said that one motivation for potentially returning to singles was to allow her daughters, Olympia and Adira, to see her compete at a different stage of her career, adding that she wanted to demonstrate to them that \"anything is possible\" with effort and dedication.\n\nOn September 2, Williams and Venus were drawn to face the 14th-seeded pairing of Chan Hao-ching and Maya Joint in the first round of the women's doubles tournament. The match was scheduled to begin on September 3, marking the sisters' first Grand Slam doubles match together since their opening-round defeat at the 2022 US Open. The draw also reunited Williams with Joint, who had defeated her in the first round of the Wimbledon singles tournament two months earlier. Williams's participation in the US Open doubles marked her fourth competitive appearance since returning to the WTA Tour in June.\n\n\n== Rivalries ==\n\n\n=== Serena vs. Venus ===\n\nSerena played her older sister Venus in 31 professional matches starting in 1998. Overall, Serena is 19–12 against her sister. The pair played 15 times in Grand Slam singles and 13 times in other tournaments (including 11 finals). They have met in nine Grand Slam tournament finals, with Serena winning seven times. Beginning with the 2002 French Open, they played each other in four consecutive Grand Slam finals, which was the first time in the Open Era that the same two players had faced off in four consecutive finals in Grand Slam singles.\nWhen both the Williams sisters entered the top ten and started facing off in tournaments, rumors of match fixing started to circulate. John McEnroe, while commenting on the 2000 Wimbledon semifinal between the two sisters, said that \"Serena may not be allowed to win. Richard [Williams] may have something to say about this.\" After losing to Venus at the Indian Wells quarterfinals in 2001, Elena Dementieva claimed that Richard Williams had decided the results of matches between the sisters. Shortly after that, Venus pulled out of her Indian Wells semifinal match against Serena at the last minute, claiming tendinitis; this led to much speculation in the press, and some spectators demanded their money back. The final, in which Serena defeated Kim Clijsters, was marred by the behavior of the crowd toward Williams and her family.\n\n\n=== Williams vs. Hingis ===\n\nOne of Williams's first rivalries was with Martina Hingis, who turned pro less than one year before her (Hingis in October 1994, Williams in 1995). They first played each other at the 1998 Miami Open where Hingis won in three sets. All but one of their matches was played on a hard court with the exception being a contest on clay in Rome in 1999, which Hingis won in straight sets. Their last match took place at the 2002 Miami Open, which Williams won. Williams leads the rivalry 7–6.\n\n\n=== Williams vs. Capriati ===\nWilliams leads the series against Jennifer Capriati 10–7. The rivalry—which began in 1999 and was once considered one of the best rivalries in women's tennis—started off one-sided, with Capriati winning four of the first five matches. Williams went on to win the next eight. Twelve of the pair's seventeen meetings went three sets.\n\n\n=== Williams vs. Henin ===\n\nJustine Henin and Williams have met 14 times, five of which were in tournament finals. In Grand Slam tournaments, they have faced each other seven times, with Henin leading 4–3. The two women's different personalities and styles of play are often credited with making the rivalry entertaining. Williams leads the series 8–6.\n\n\n=== Williams vs. Azarenka ===\nWilliams leads the series 18–5. The rivalry began at the 2008 Australian Open, and their most recent match was in the semifinals of the 2020 US Open. Williams holds a 10–1 record in Grand Slams. Azarenka is the only player to win four WTA tour-level finals against Williams, and, despite only winning five matches against Williams, is considered one of the few modern players to truly challenge Williams.\n\n\n=== Williams vs. Sharapova ===\n\nWilliams leads the series 20–2, with a third loss by walkover. The pair first met in the fourth round of the 2004 Miami Open, where Williams defeated Sharapova. Their rivalry truly began at the 2004 Wimbledon final, where Williams was the two-time defending champion; Sharapova bested her in an upset. Williams next lost to Sharapova in the finals of the 2004 WTA Tour Championships. Since then, however, Williams has dominated the rivalry, winning all of their clashes, with only three of their matches going to three sets. They met 10 times in Grand Slam tournaments, where Williams leads 9–1, with a second loss at the 2018 French Open where Sharapova won by walkover. In Grand Slam finals, Williams leads 3–1. Their last match was in the first round of the 2019 US Open, where Williams defeated Sharapova in two sets.\n\n\n== Legacy ==\nWilliams is regarded as one of the best female tennis players of all time. Many players, commentators, and sports writers regard Williams as the greatest female tennis player of all time. In 2018, Roger Federer said the player who probably has the best case for \"Greatest Of All Time\", man or woman, is Serena Williams. In 2022, John McEnroe described Williams as an \"icon\" and the \"GOAT of GOATs\". BBC presenter and former French Open Champion Sue Barker has called Williams's serve \"without question the greatest ever\".\nWilliams has won the Laureus World Sports Award for Sportswoman of the Year a record four times (2003, 2010, 2016, 2018). In 2017, BBC Sport users selected Williams as the greatest female tennis player of the Open Era. In 2018, a Tennis.com panel arrived at the same conclusion. In December 2019, the Associated Press named her Female Athlete of the Decade for the 2010s. In 2020, the Tennis Channel ranked Williams as the greatest female tennis player in history. In 2024, the International Sports Press Association (AIPS) voted her as the best female athlete of the past 100 years. In December 2025, The Sporting News ranked her as the sixth greatest athlete of the quarter century and the highest-ranked tennis player. She is the highest-earning woman athlete of all time.\n\nShe and Venus Williams have been widely credited with increasing diversity within tennis and ushering in a new era of power and athleticism on the women's tour.\nFor their first match in March 2019, the members of the United States women's national soccer team each wore a jersey with the name of a woman who inspired them on the back. Crystal Dunn chose Serena Williams. Also in 2019, Time created 89 new covers to celebrate women of the year starting from 1920; it chose Williams for 2003.\nIn September 2022, Twitter said that Williams was the most tweeted-about female athlete of all time.\nShe received the Princess of Asturias Award for Sport in 2025.\n\n\n== Player profile ==\n\n\n=== Playing style ===\nWilliams was an aggressive baseliner whose game was centered around her powerful serve and forceful groundstrokes. Owing to her high-risk playing style, she typically hit a large number of winners and a large number of unforced errors. Williams's serve—which is considered the greatest in the history of women's tennis—is known for its speed and accurate placement, which allowed her to deliver numerous aces. At the 2013 Australian Open, she delivered the third-fastest serve in WTA recorded history, a 128.6 mph (207 km/h) ace against Ayumi Morita. Williams possessed an accurate and consistent ball toss, allowing her to serve to any position on the court with minimal differences in the position of the ball in the air; this made it difficult for opponents to read her service motion and predict the position of her serve, allowing her to dominate a rally from the first stroke. Williams also possessed effective and accurate kick and slice serves. She deployed these as second serves, minimizing double faults and preventing opponents from scoring free points.\nWilliams's forehand and backhand are considered two of the most powerful shots in the history of women's tennis. She hit both her forehand and her backhand in an open stance, allowing her to generate consistently powerful, heavy, and dominating groundstrokes. She was able to generate sharp, acute angles, which allowed her to hit winners from any position on the court. Her forehand—which has been described as \"devastating\"—was hit with heavy topspin, which allowed her to dominate rallies. She was capable of hitting her forehand both crosscourt and down the line to produce winners. Her two-handed backhand was equally dominant, and has been described as one of the greatest backhands of all time. Williams tended to hit her backhand flatter than her forehand, which allowed her to hit with speed, power, and depth both crosscourt and down the line. Despite playing primarily from the baseline, Williams was an adept net player thanks to her extensive doubles experience. She frequently chose to finish points at the net, either with deft touch, aggressive drive volleys, or a solid, powerful, and reliable overhead smash. She possessed an aggressive return of serve; she neutralized powerful first serves, and attacked weak second serves. She is widely considered one of the greatest returners of all time.\nDespite predominantly employing an aggressive style, Williams was also an excellent defender who was capable of counterpunching against aggressive opponents until she created an opportunity to hit a winner. She was an exceptional athlete, known for her movement, speed, court coverage, agility, flexibility, balance, and footwork. Her on-court intelligence, shot selection, and point construction allowed her to execute her game plan effectively. American tennis player Christina McHale praised her composure in high-pressure moments, while Martina Navratilova called her mental strength \"unbelievable\". Williams has been noted for her ability to produce extraordinary comebacks, particularly at the Grand Slam level. She won three Slams after saving match points, more than any other player in history. Williams bounced back from a set down to win 37 Grand Slam matches. Her ability to come back from set and break deficits in Grand Slam matches was described by McEnroe as \"a gift\", and he called her \"the greatest\" competitor in the history of women's tennis. She has also been praised for her ability to serve aces at critical moments. As noted by retired player Li Na in 2016, \"break point down, [there is an] 80% chance [she] serves an ace\".\n\n\n=== Coaches ===\nWilliams had five coaches during her career: Richard Williams (1994–2022), Oracene Price (1994–2003), Patrick Mouratoglou (2012–2022), Eric Hechtman (2022) and Rennae Stubbs (2022).\n\n\n=== Endorsements ===\nWilliams graduated from Driftwood Academy in 1999, and soon after signed a $12 million endorsement deal with Puma. In 2004, she signed a five-year deal with Nike for $40 million, and has been sponsored by the company ever since. During Williams's tennis career, Nike designed custom clothing and footwear for her. The largest building on Nike's Portland campus is the one-million-square-foot Serena Williams Building, which features many references to the athlete's career and long partnership with Nike. According to John Hoke, Nike's Chief Design Officer, Williams assisted with the design of the building.\nIn 2015, Williams became the Chief Sporting Officer for British luxury car manufacturer Aston Martin, and in 2018 she joined the board of directors of SurveyMonkey. During her career, Williams had endorsement deals with AbbVie, Anheuser-Busch InBev, AT&T, Audemars Piguet, Beats by Dre, Berlei Bras, Block Inc, Bumble, Chase Bank, Delta Air Lines, DirecTV, DoorDash, Ford Motor, Gatorade, Gucci, Hanes, IBM, Intel, Mission Athletecare, OnePiece, OPI Products, Pepsi, Subway, Tempur, Tonal and the Walt Disney Company.\nWilliams was the world's highest paid woman athlete in 2016, earning almost $29 million. She repeated this feat in 2017 when she was the only woman on Forbes's list of the 100 highest-paid athletes, with $27 million in prize money and endorsements. She is the highest-earning woman athlete of all time.\n\n\n=== Rackets ===\nWilliams used the Wilson Hammer Stretch range of rackets when she won her first Grand Slam title in 1999, before switching to the Hyper Hammer range. She switched to the Wilson nCode briefly in 2005, and has used various iterations of the Wilson Blade since 2008. Her racket is typically oversized, with a head size of 104 square inches. Since 2017, Wilson has manufactured a signature racket, the Wilson Blade SW104, which is designed to Williams's specifications. Since 2020, Williams has used a smaller variant of this racket, the Wilson Blade SW102 Autograph.\n\n\n== Career statistics ==\n\n\n=== Grand Slam tournament performance timeline ===\n\n\n==== Singles ====\n\nCurrent through the 2026 Wimbledon Championships.\n\nNote: Williams withdrew from the 2018 French Open before her fourth round match and the 2020 French Open before her second round match, both of which do not officially count as losses.\n\n\n==== Doubles ====\n\n\n=== Grand Slam tournament finals ===\n\n\n==== Singles: 33 (23–10) ====\n\n\n==== Doubles: 14 (14–0) ====\n\n\n==== Mixed doubles: 4 (2–2) ====\n\n\n== Records ==\n\nRecords in bold indicate peer-less achievements.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nWilliams is married to Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. He proposed to her on December 10, 2016, and they married on November 16, 2017, in New Orleans. Their wedding ceremony was attended by prominent personalities such as Beyoncé, Anna Wintour, Kelly Rowland and Kim Kardashian.\nOn April 19, 2017, Williams posted a picture of herself on Snapchat that focused on her midsection. It had the caption, \"20 weeks\", prompting speculation that she was pregnant. Later that evening, her spokesperson confirmed the pregnancy. The fact that she was 20 weeks pregnant when announcing her pregnancy meant that she was roughly eight to nine weeks pregnant when she won the Australian Open earlier that year. Williams later said that posting the picture was an accident. On September 1, 2017, Williams gave birth to a daughter, Alexis Olympia Ohanian Jr. The child, who goes by \"Olympia\", was delivered through emergency caesarean-section after her heart rate dropped during labor. Williams gave Olympia a doll, Qai Qai, that has become famous on social media. By February 2021, Williams had hired a tennis coach for Olympia, then three years old. In August 2023, Williams gave birth to a second daughter, Adira River Ohanian.\nWilliams was raised as a Jehovah's Witness, but was not baptized until 2023. In 2017, she said she \"never really practiced [the faith]\". However, she would often thank Jehovah after winning a match. She does not celebrate birthdays, which is a practice of the faith.\nWilliams made an appearance on stage during Kendrick Lamar's Super Bowl LIX halftime show, doing a crip walk amongst other background dancers. Williams is alleged to have been romantically involved with Drake (with whom Lamar is involved in an ongoing feud) in 2011 and 2015.\n\n\n== Other activities ==\n\n\n=== Philanthropy ===\nWilliams runs the Serena Williams Foundation, which has partnered with major organizations to advance community development. In 2008, as part of the foundation's work, Williams helped to fund the construction of the Serena Williams Secondary School in Matooni, Kenya. The foundation also provides university scholarships for underprivileged students in the United States. In 2016, the Serena Williams Fund partnered with Helping Hands Jamaica to build the Salt Marsh Primary School for Jamaican youth in Trelawny Parish.\nWilliams received a Celebrity Role Model Award from the Avon Foundation in 2003 for her work fighting breast cancer. The same year, she won the \"Young Heroes Award\" from Big Brothers Big Sisters of Greater L.A. and Inland. In 2004, she won the \"Family Circle and Prudential Financial Player Who Makes a Difference Award\". She has been an International Goodwill Ambassador with UNICEF since 2011, and helped launch UNICEF's Schools for Asia campaign. In 2004 and 2005, Serena and Venus visited hospitals and played several tennis matches in predominantly Black cities to raise funds for the local Ronald McDonald House charities. An ESPN episode was dedicated to the charity tour.\nIn response to the 2010 Haiti earthquake, Williams, along with other ATP and WTA stars, decided to forgo their final day of preparation for the Australian Open to assist earthquake victims. Serena and Venus are contributors to First Serve Miami, a foundation for youth who want to learn tennis but face social and economic obstacles. The sisters have collaborated on philanthropic projects through the Williams Sisters Fund, which assists individuals and communities affected by violence, and aims to ensure that youth have access to education. In 2014, Williams began hosting an annual charity run named \"The Serena Williams Ultimate Fun Run\" to support the Fund. In 2016, in her childhood home of Compton, she and Venus founded the Yetunde Price Resource Center, in honor of their late half-sister Yetunde.\nWilliams's return to Indian Wells in 2015 (after a 14-year boycott) occurred in partnership with the Equal Justice Initiative, a non-profit organization that provides legal representation to people who may have been denied a fair trial. In 2017, Williams became Ambassador for the Allstate Foundation's Purple Purse project, an initiative to provide financial empowerment to domestic abuse victims. Other organizations Williams supports include the Elton John AIDS Foundation, Great Ormond Street Hospital, Hearts of Gold, the Common Ground Foundation, the Small Steps Project, the HollyRod Foundation, Beyond the Boroughs National Scholarship Fund, World Education, the Eva Longoria Foundation, the Caliber Foundation and the Cure for MND Foundation.\n\n\n=== Business ventures ===\nIn August 2009, Serena and Venus became minority owners of the Miami Dolphins after purchasing a small stake in the team. According to the Dolphins, they are the first African-American women to hold any amount of ownership in an NFL franchise. In 2014, Williams founded the venture capital firm Serena Ventures, which invests in start-up companies whose \"perspectives and innovations level the playing field for women and people of color\". As of 2022, Serena Ventures had raised more than $110 million.\nIn July 2020, it was announced that Williams was part of a nearly all-women investors' group that was awarded a new franchise in the National Women's Soccer League, the highest level of the women's sport in the United States. Williams's husband Alexis Ohanian is classified as the \"lead investor\", but he holds a minority interest, and is the only man in the ownership group. Other owners in the group include prominent actresses, media figures, businesswomen, former members of the US women's national team, and Williams's eldest daughter. The new team began playing in 2022 as Angel City FC.\n\n\n=== Activism ===\nWilliams became more involved in social change as her career progressed, primarily using social media to express her views. In 2016 she voiced her support for Black Lives Matter on her Facebook page. She expressed concern that her young nephew could be in danger from police due to his skin color. During American tennis player Tennys Sandgren's breakthrough run to the quarterfinals of the 2018 Australian Open, it was revealed that he tweeted insensitive words about the LGBT community, followed members of the alt-right, and referred to an article describing Williams's on-court behavior as \"disgusting\". Williams responded to him by saying, \"I don't need or want [an apology]. But there is an entire group of people that deserves an apology.\"\nAlso in 2016, Williams wrote an open letter in Porter Magazine's feature \"Incredible Women of 2016\" in support of gender equality and to share her personal struggles as a woman in tennis. She claimed that women's contributions to the sport are not recognized in the same way as men's contributions, and she also commented on the issue of unequal pay. Williams has received several awards for her activism, particularly her endeavors involving Black communities. The NAACP has honored Williams with its President's Award (2003) and the Jackie Robinson Sports Award (2023).\n\n\n=== Fashion ===\nWilliams has been noted for her unusual and colorful outfits on court. She arrived at the 2004 US Open in a denim skirt and knee-high leg wraps that looked like boots, which she was not allowed to wear during matches. At the 2018 French Open, she promoted her clothing line Serena by wearing a catsuit, which was subsequently banned by the French Tennis Federation. At the 2018 US Open, Williams wore a black tutu during her first match.\nIn 2009, she launched a signature collection of handbags and jewelry, Signature Statement, which is sold mainly on the Home Shopping Network. In 2010, she became a certified nail technician in preparation for her upcoming nail collection with HairTech.\nIn February 2019, Williams was appointed to the board of directors of the online fashion marketplace Poshmark. In the fall of that year, she launched the first collection of her clothing line S by Serena. Inspired by 1990s street wear, the apparel is designed for a range of body types and body sizes.\n\n\n=== Media and publishing ===\nIn 2005, the Williams sisters authored the book Venus & Serena: Serving From The Hip: 10 Rules For Living, Loving and Winning, which was written with Hilary Beard. In 2009, Williams released the autobiography On the Line. The same year, she appeared in online videos and print advertisements for Tampax Pearl tampons, becoming the first active female professional athlete to appear in advertising for a feminine hygiene product. Williams posed for the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue in 2003 and 2004.\n\n\n=== Filmography ===\nWilliams has appeared in films, television series, and music videos. She and Venus also served as executive producers on the 2021 film King Richard, a biopic about their father.\n\n\n== See also ==\n\n\n== Notes ==\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== Further reading ==\nMorgan, Terri (2001). Venus and Serena Williams: Grand Slam Sisters. Sports Achievers Biographies. Lerner Publishing. 64pp. ISBN 978-0-8225-3684-0.\nSpencer, Nancy E. (May 2004). \"Sister Act VI: Venus and Serena Williams at Indian Wells: 'Sincere Fictions' and White Racism\". Journal of Sport & Social Issues. 28 (2): 115–135. doi:10.1177/0193723504264411. S2CID 159517372.\nWilliams, Serena; Paisner, Daniel (2009). On the Line. Hachette Digital. 214pp. ISBN 978-0-446-56402-1.\nWilliams, Serena; Paisner, Daniel (2009). My Life: Queen of the Court. Simon & Schuster. 257pp. ISBN 978-1-84737-544-5.\nWilliams, Venus; Williams, Serena; Beard, Hilary (2005). Venus and Serena: Serving from the Hip: 10 Rules For Living, Loving and Winning. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 133pp. ISBN 978-0-618-57653-1.\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nOfficial website \nSerena Williams at the Women's Tennis Association \nSerena Williams at World Tennis \nSerena Williams at the Billie Jean King Cup (archived) \nSerena Williams at IMDb\nSerena Williams Archived June 7, 2017, at the Wayback Machine video produced by Makers: Women Who Make America"}
{"title": "Shane Gould", "requested": "Shane Gould", "extract": "Shane Elizabeth Gould  (born 23 November 1956) is an Australian former competition swimmer. She won three gold medals, a silver medal and a bronze, at the 1972 Summer Olympics, becoming the first woman swimmer to win five individual medals. In 2018, she won the fifth season of Australian Survivor, becoming the oldest winner of any Survivor franchise.\nGould was born in Australia, but spent most of her childhood in Fiji after she and her family moved there. After her 1972 Olympic performance, Gould was named the Australian of the Year, and received an MBE in 1981. In April 2018, Gould was awarded an Order of Merit by the Australian Olympic Committee.\nGould returned in the 1990s as a swimming mentor and competitor, and again competed in 2003, specializing in the 200m Individual Medley. In 1999, she published her autobiography Tumble Turns. In 2018, she competed on Australian Survivor: Champions vs. Contenders and won, receiving $500,000 as the Sole Survivor. Gould later returned for Australian Survivor: All Stars, but was voted out first.\n\n\n== Early education ==\nGould was born in Sydney, New South Wales, on the first day of competition of the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne. She moved to Fiji with her family at the age of 18 months. By the age of six, she was a competent swimmer. She attended primary school at Brisbane's St. Peters Lutheran College, currently the top-rated swim school in Australia.  At St. Peters, a sporting house is named after her.  She attended secondary school at Turramurra High School, Sydney, where a sporting house is also named after her and fellow Olympian Gail Neall.\nFrom around February to June 1973, during her high school junior year, she attended St. Francis High School in Mountain View, California.  While at St. Francis, she was coached by Hall of Fame Coach Nort Thornton with the Foothill Aquatics Club.  While attending St. Francis, she planned to compete in the Santa Clara International Invitational in June, and Cincinnati's National AAU Championships in April.  Two years earlier in the Santa Clara Invitational in July 1971 she set her third world record, lowering the previous mark in the 400-meter freestyle formerly set by Karen Moras in London a few months earlier.\n\n\n=== Coaching received ===\nGould was trained by leading coaches Ursula and Forbes Carlile and their assistant Tom Green at the Forbes and Ursula Carlile Swimming Organization. She won all of her world swimming titles while a teenager, travelling widely.  Carlile, a two-time Olympic Coach for Australia, was a physiologist at the University of Sydney, and at the forefront of providing scientific training to athletes.  A leader in the use of interval workouts timed with pace clocks and in the use of heart rate tests for assessing effort, he helped popularize \"tapering\", a method that slowly reduced training intensity in the weeks before important meets to maximize performance.  He helped develop the crawl stroke, focusing on a high speed two beat kick which emphasized the strong use of the arms, a technique studied and adopted by Gould.\n\n\n== Swimming career ==\n\n\n=== 1972 Munich Olympics ===\n\nAt the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, West Germany, Gould won three gold medals in the 200 and 400-meter freestyle, and the 200-meter individual medley, setting a world record in each race. She won a silver in the 800 and a bronze in the 100-meter freestyle events.\nShe is the only person, male or female, to hold 5 Long Course Meters world records simultaneously.  She held every world freestyle record from 100 metres to 1500 metres from 12 December 71 to 4 August 72.  On 4 August 1972 her world record in the 200 freestyle was broken at the United States Olympic trials.  On 28 August 1972 she set the 200-metre individual medley world record bringing her active world records back to 5. She is the first female swimmer ever to win three Olympic gold medals in world record time, and the first swimmer, male or female, to win Olympic medals in five individual events in a single Olympics. She is also the only Australian to win three individual gold medals at a single Olympics.\nAt the age of 16, she retired from competitive swimming, citing pressures placed upon her by her success and media profile.\nOver two decades later, Gould returned to competitive swimming at the Masters level. She set Australian Masters records (40–44 years 100m, 200 m, and 400 m freestyle, and 100 m butterfly) and 45–49 years (50 m butterfly, 100 m and 200 m freestyle). In 2003, she broke the world record for the 45–49 years 200 m individual medley in 2:38.13 (beating the 1961 world record for all ages).\nShe coaches swimmers and still swims in Masters competitions.\n\n\n== Later career ==\n\n\n=== Education ===\nGould returned to study in the late 2000s. She studied at the Sydney Film School (2007, Cert IV documentary film, Digital Filmmaking) and was awarded a Master of Environmental Management (2010, with a thesis on the social uses and functions of public swimming pools), and a Master of Contemporary Art (2012, with a video piece Loops and Lines). Both degrees are from the University of Tasmania. In 2019 she was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree from Victoria University.\n\n\n=== Olympics ===\nIn the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Gould carried the Olympic Torch at the stadium, as one of the runners for the final segment, before the lighting of the Olympic Flame.\n\n\n=== Photography ===\nGould is a photographer with works on display with the Art of the Olympians.\n\n\n=== Biography ===\nIn 1999, Gould published her autobiography Tumble Turns: An Autobiography.\n\n\n=== Australian Survivor ===\nIn August 2018, it was revealed that Gould would be participating in Australian Survivor: Champions vs. Contenders and would be a part of the Champions tribe. On 9 October 2018, Gould was crowned the winner of Australian Survivor: Champions vs. Contenders in a 5–4 vote against criminal barrister Sharn Coombes. With this win, Gould became the oldest person to ever win any international series of Survivor.\nShe later returned for Australian Survivor: All Stars, but was voted out first, finishing in 24th place.\n\n\n=== The Traitors ===\nIn October 2025, Gould was announced as a contestant for the forthcoming third season of Network 10's The Traitors Australia.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nGould spent most of the years after ending competitive swimming out of the public eye. She married Neil Innes at 18, became a Christian, and lived on a working farm near Margaret River in Western Australia's South West. She farmed and taught horseriding and surfing, making very few public appearances. She has four children and eight grandchildren.\nHer marriage to Innes ended after 22 years, coinciding with a return to public life, and she married Milton Nelms in 2007.\nOn 10 October 2023, Gould was one of 25 Australians of the Year who signed an open letter supporting the Yes vote in the Indigenous Voice referendum. The open letter was initiated by psychiatrist Patrick McGorry.\n\n\n== Publications ==\nGould, S. 1999, updated 2003. Tumble Turns. HarperCollins. ISBN 9780732277673 (autobiography)\nGould, S. 2004. Fit for 50+. Ibis Publishing Australia.\nGould, S. 2007. Appreciating swimming: beauty and instruction with underwater swimmer photographs.  Visual Communication 6: 170–179. doi:10.1177/1470357207077180\n\n\n== Honours and awards ==\n\nBest Sportswoman in the World (1971)\nABC Sportswoman of the Year (1971)\nABC Sportswoman of the Year (1972)\nAustralian of the Year (1972)\nInternational Swimming Hall of Fame \"Honor Swimmer\" (1977)\nMember of the Order of the British Empire (1981 Birthday Honours)\nSport Australia Hall of Fame (1985)\nOlympic Order (1994)\nOlympic Torch bearer (2000)\nAustralian Sports Medal (2000)\nCentenary Medal (2001)\nSole Survivor (2018) Australian Survivor Champions Vs. Contenders\nSwimming Australia Hall of Fame (2022) - inaugural inductee.\n\nIn 1993, the State Transit Authority named a RiverCat ferry after Gould. On 30 September 2025, the Rivercat ferry \"Shane Gould\" was retired from service.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of members of the International Swimming Hall of Fame\nList of multiple Olympic medalists at a single Games\nList of Olympic medalists in swimming (women)\nWorld record progression 100 metres freestyle\nWorld record progression 200 metres freestyle\nWorld record progression 200 metres individual medley\nWorld record progression 400 metres freestyle\nWorld record progression 800 metres freestyle\nWorld record progression 1500 metres freestyle\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nOfficial website\nShane Gould at IMDb\nOn Bicheno Beach Documentary produced by Australian Story"}
{"title": "Shaun White", "requested": "Shaun White", "extract": "Shaun Roger White (born September 3, 1986) is an American former professional snowboarder and skateboarder. He is a five-time Olympian and a three-time Olympic gold medalist in half-pipe snowboarding. He holds the world record for the most X Games gold medals and most Olympic gold medals by a snowboarder. He has also won ten ESPY Awards throughout his career in various categories.\nOutside of his Olympic and skateboarding career White plays guitar in the band the Bad Things and started his own snowboarding league \"The Snow League\" in 2025.\n\n\n== Early life ==\nWhite was born in San Diego, California, to parents Cathy and Roger. When he was young his mother was a waitress and his father, who grew up surfing, worked for the San Clemente, California, water department. He is the youngest of four children. His ancestry includes Irish and Italian. He was born with a tetralogy of Fallot, a congenital heart defect for which he required two open-heart operations before the age of one. White spent his early years riding the San Bernardino Mountains of Southern California with his family. They would stay in a van in resort parking lots.\n\n\n== Athletic career ==\n\n\n=== Skateboarding ===\nAt an early age White's skills as a skateboarder drew admirers. Professional skateboarder Tony Hawk befriended the nine-year-old White at the Encinitas, California, YMCA skate park and mentored him, helping White turn pro in skateboarding at the age of 16. White has said that \"Tony was my hero and I was too terrified to talk to him so every time I saw him at the skate park I would try to impress him with my skateboarding in the hopes that one day he would say something to me.\" White has won many titles on his skateboard, including the overall title of Action Sports Tour Champion, and was the first person to compete in and win both the Summer and Winter X Games in two different sports.\n\n\n=== Snowboarding ===\nFollowing in his older brother Jesse White's footsteps, White switched from skiing to snowboarding at age six, and by age seven, he received his first sponsorship. White has participated in five Winter Olympics in his career. At the 2006, 2010, and 2018 Winter Olympics, White won gold in the snowboard halfpipe event.  White has also participated in the Winter X Games, where he has won a medal every year since 2002. Including all winter X Games competitions through 2013, White amassed 18 medals—13 gold, 3 silver, and 2 bronze—highlighted by becoming the first male athlete to achieve a quadruple win streak in a single discipline, specifically in snowboard slopestyle. White's streak was snapped in 2007 when he lost to Andreas Wiig and Teddy Flandreau, with White taking the bronze. He won the Air & Style Contest in 2003 and 2004.\n\n\n==== 2006 Winter Olympics ====\n\nAt the 2006 Winter Olympics, White won gold in the half-pipe. After his first run in qualifications, White was almost out of competition, scoring only 37.7.  On his second run, he recorded a score of 45.3. In the finals, White recorded a score of 46.8 (50 is the highest possible score) to win. Fellow American Danny Kass won the silver with a points total of 44.0.\n\n\n==== 2008 ====\nExecuting a near-flawless second run, White captured his third consecutive snowboard halfpipe title at the 2008 U.S. Open Snowboarding Championships to go along with his third US Open slopestyle competition. This followed White's win at the 25th (2007) Burton US Open, where he placed third in slopestlyle and first in the halfpipe. At the 2007 Open, White was also crowned the first \"Burton Global Open Champion\". His take for the event was $100,000 (Global Open Champ), $20,000 (1st Place Halfpipe), $90,000 (3rd Place Slopestyle), and a new Corvette.\n\n\n==== 2009 ====\n\nControversy followed White's win on the 2009 SuperPipe at Winter X Games XIII. Kevin Pearce had five hits in the pipe, and all were the same tricks White did in his final run. White, on the other hand, had six hits and he started off his run with a big backside rodeo 540 where Pearce started his run off with a big grab. Although Pearce went bigger, he had fewer hits, and his first hit wasn't as technically difficult as White's first hit. Judges came to the conclusion that White deserved the better score because he started off with a more technical trick and he had one more hit than Pearce.  With the win, White became the second competitor, after Tanner Hall, to win a gold medal in the SuperPipe in consecutive years at the Winter X Games. He also won a gold medal in Slopestyle, finally winning gold after two consecutive years of bronze.\nOn February 14, 2009, White won the FIS World Cup Men's Halfpipe event at Vancouver's Cypress Mountain. Out of the gate in his first qualifying run, he qualified immediately with the day's best score of 45.5.  With a thumb sprained on an over-rotated backside 1080 in the second qualifying run, White clinched the event with the first of his two runs in the finals.  His first finals run was awarded the highest score ever in FIS halfpipe, a 47.3.\n\n\n==== 2010 Winter Olympics ====\n\nAt the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, White again won gold in the halfpipe. In the finals, White recorded a score of 46.8 on his first run, which proved a high enough score to secure the gold medal without a second run. He performed his second run anyway, as a victory lap, ending his run with a well-anticipated Double McTwist 1260 which he named The Tomahawk. This second run resulted in a record score of 48.4 (50 is the highest possible score) enlarging his margin of victory. His nearest competitor won the silver with a points total of 45.0 – 3.4 behind White.\n\n\n==== 2011 ====\nAfter a sub-par performance in the Slopestyle and failing to reach the finals, White \"redeemed\" himself in the SuperPipe. With an 89, he sat in second place going into his 2nd of three runs. He completed the run, landing his infamous Double McTwist 1260 and finishing with a score of 97.33 to take the lead and claim the historical 4th straight Gold in the Winter X Games, held in Aspen, Colorado. The score tied an X Games record, which was set by White one year before. His 3rd run was a simple victory run featuring mostly straight air.\n\n\n==== 2012 ====\nAt Winter X, White became the first person in the history of the Winter X Games to score a perfect 100 in the men's Snowboard SuperPipe.\n\n\n==== 2013 ====\nWhite won his 6th consecutive SuperPipe victory, making him the second participant ever to achieve this, with SnoCross racer Tucker Hibbert achieving his 6th consecutive victory earlier in the same day.\nIn December 2013, he won the third place in the Pipe & Slope contest at the FIS Snowboard World Cup in Copper Mountain, Colorado.\n\n\n==== 2014 Winter Olympics ====\nWhite finished fourth at the 2014 Winter Olympics in the Halfpipe event.\nDuring the winter games, he was the most talked-about Olympic athlete on Facebook.\n\n\n==== 2018 Winter Olympics ====\n\nWhile in New Zealand, training for the 2018 Winter Olympics, White crashed into the edge of a superpipe; the resulting injuries to his face required 62 stitches. Despite the accident, White qualified for the 2018 US Olympic Team. On February 14, he won his third Olympic gold medal for the Men's Halfpipe event with a score of 97.75, with Ayumu Hirano of Japan taking the silver medal and Scott James of Australia taking the bronze. White was trailing Hirano by one full point coming into his last run with a score of 94.25. Despite this, White dramatically won the gold medal with back-to-back 1440s. His gold medal was also the 100th for the United States at the Winter Olympic Games.\n\n\n==== 2022 Winter Olympics ====\nWhite finished fourth at the 2022 Winter Olympics in the halfpipe.\nDuring the winter games, White announced it would be the last Olympics in which he would compete. Later, he announced it would be his final competition altogether. He received a standing ovation from the crowd during his final run.\n\n\n=== Endorsements ===\nWhite has had a sponsor since he was seven years old. White signed CAA Sports for representation after working with IMG for eight years. Corporate endorsement deals include or have included Burton Snowboards, Oakley, Inc., Birdhouse Skateboards, Park City Mountain Resort, Target Corporation, Red Bull, Ubisoft, Adio, Hewlett-Packard, and American Express.  He is also a brand ambassador for Krave Jerky and as part of their partnership he has developed and released his own flavors. In 2009, Forbes magazine estimated that he had earned $9 million from his endorsements in 2008.\n\n\n== Media ventures ==\n\n\n=== Print ===\nWhite had his first published interview in TransWorld SNOWboarding Magazine in 2003.\nWhite was one of the few pro snowboarders to be a guest editor of Snowboarder Magazine (February 2008 issue).\n\n\n=== Acting ===\nWhite starred in the 2004 documentary The White Album and the 2005 snowboarding documentary First Descent.\nIn 2007, White appeared on the E! reality TV show The Girls Next Door as a snowboarding teacher for Holly Madison, Bridget Marquardt and Kendra Wilkinson.\nA film, Don't Look Down, was released on DVD and ESPN in 2009. The film tracks his journey through the year following his Olympic success.\nWhite appeared on the January 16, 2011, episode of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition to help redesign a room for an eight-year-old boy.\nWhite has made cameo appearances as himself in the 2011 film Friends with Benefits, the 2013 episode \"Da Flippity Flop\" of the animated TV series American Dad!, and the 2014 Disney Channel Original Movie Cloud 9.\nWhite appeared in the Nickelodeon TV series Henry Danger in 2018 in the episode \"Toon in for Danger\". In the episode White and Captain Man were struggling for a seat while watching the premiere of The Adventures of Kid Danger.\n\n\n=== Music ===\nWhite plays guitar in the electronic rock band Bad Things. He got his first guitar as first prize in a snowboarding competition. The band played in one of the four Saturday headlining slots at the 2013 Lollapalooza festival, as a last-minute replacement for Death Grips. \nIn October 2013, White appeared in the music video for \"City of Angels\" by Thirty Seconds to Mars.\n\n\n=== Video games ===\nWhite has appeared in several video games and has also launched his video game franchise. He appeared in 1999's Cool Boarders 4 and 2001's Shaun Palmer's Pro Snowboarder. In 2008 he released his own video game, Shaun White Snowboarding. This was followed by a sequel, Shaun White Snowboarding: World Stage, released in 2009. A skateboarding game, Shaun White Skateboarding, was also released in 2010.\n\n\n== Business ventures ==\nAfter the 2010 Winter Olympics, White created Shaun White Enterprises to consolidate his business deals. In early 2016, White purchased a minority stake in Mammoth Resorts and is now a part-owner of the Mammoth Mountain, Snow Summit, June Mountain, and Bear Mountain ski areas where he got his start in snowboarding. White took ownership of the Air + Style festival of music and snowboarding in 2014 and moved it from Austria to Los Angeles. \nWhite launched his own active lifestyle brand named 'Whitespace' in January 2022; he announced the name of the brand on his social media. The company will eventually release a line of outerwear, snowboard hard-goods, athletic equipment, and streetwear apparel.\n\n\n=== The Snow League ===\nIn 2024, White announced he would be starting his own snowboarding league called \"The Snow League\". He created the league in attempt to make snowboarding like other major sports stating \"I want to make it so you can have a decent season on the tour and make a great living, that's the goal,\" In traditional sports, it's like, you start as an amateur, then you play high school, and then go to college and get into the pros. For this, I want the same.\" The first event took place on March 7, 2025 in Aspen, Colorado.\nIn November 2024, The Snow League signed a multiyear media rights deal with NBC and Peacock. The Snow League CEO Omer Atesman said that it had plans for international broadcast deals as well. The Snow League had an initial $4.5 million in seed funding. $30 million additional funding was added by November 12, 2025.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nWhite has had the longstanding nickname \"The Flying Tomato\", due to his red hair. In 2006, Rolling Stone wrote about the nickname, saying, \"he used to embrace it, even wearing headbands with a flying-tomato logo, but he has grown tired of it.\" He has also been nicknamed \"Animal\", a reference to a character from The Muppet Show.\nOn September 17, 2012, White was arrested near a hotel in Nashville for public intoxication and vandalism after attending the wedding party of the drummer of the Black Keys, Patrick Carney.\nWhite, who underwent two open-heart surgeries as an infant, has granted 17 wishes through the Make-A-Wish Foundation since 2008.\nSince retirement he has taken up surfing.\n\n\n=== Relationships ===\nWhite was in a relationship with Sarah Barthel of the band Phantogram from 2013 to 2019.\nHe started dating actress Nina Dobrev in 2020. The two became engaged on October 30, 2024. In September 2025, it was reported that they had ended their engagement and separated.\n\n\n=== Sexual harassment allegation ===\nIn 2016, Bad Things drummer Lena Zawaideh brought a lawsuit against White, claiming sexual harassment and breach of contract. White and Zawaideh reached an out-of-court settlement in May 2017; the terms of the settlement were not disclosed. At a press conference following White's win at the 2018 Winter Olympics, he was asked if he was concerned that the lawsuit and settlement would tarnish his image. In replying, he referred to the incident as gossip, a response that created widespread condemnation of White for minimizing sexual harassment. White later apologized for his choice of words.\n\n\n== Honors and awards ==\nBest Action Sports Athlete Espy Award: 2003\nBest U.S. Olympian ESPY Award: 2006\nOutstanding/Best Male Action Sports Athlete ESPY Award: 2006, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2012\nBest US Male Olympian ESPY Award: 2010, 2018\nNSAA Industry Impact Award for athletic achievements and the tremendous exposure brought to the sport of snowboarding: 2011\nFeatured on the cover of Forbes magazine's \"30 under 30\" issue in 2016\nLaureus World Sports Awards – Action Sportsperson of the Year (2008)\nRevolver Golden Gods Awards Most Metal Athlete (2009)\nANOC Gala Awards 2018：Best Male Athlete of PyeongChang 2018\nUSOC SportsMan of the Year: 2018\nBest Olympic Moment ESPY Award: 2018\nInducted into the California Outdoor Sports Hall of Fame in 2021\nIn 2024 he was named to ESPNs list of the top 100 athletes since 2000\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nOfficial website \nShaun White at the International Ski and Snowboard Federation \nShaun White at Team USA (archive June 5, 2023)\nShaun White at the X Games (archived former page)\nShaun White at Olympics.com \nShaun White at Olympedia \nShaun White at InterSportStats \nShaun White at IMDb \nAP Winter Games Athlete Profile: Shaun White\nShaun White Project X Private Halfpipe Video\nSnowboardermag.com – interviews and videos\nShaun White Interview: Pop Magazine"}
{"title": "Shi Tingmao", "requested": "Shi Tingmao", "extract": "Shi Tingmao (Chinese: 施廷懋; pinyin: Shī Tíngmào; born 31 August 1991) is a Chinese diver representing Chongqing diving team. She has been dominant in the 3 metre springboard events in the 2010s. She has won four gold medals in Olympic competitions, two at the 2016 Olympics and two more at the 2020 Olympics. She also holds eight golds in the World Championships.\n\n\n== Career ==\nShe won the gold medal in women's 1m springboard at the 2011 World Aquatics Championships in Shanghai, becoming the first Chinese diver from provincial team to participate the World Championships.\nAt the 2016 Summer Olympics she won the gold medal in women's 3 metre synchronized springboard with Wu Minxia. She also won gold in the 3m Springboard.\nAt the 2019 World Aquatics Championships held in Gwangju, South Korea, Shi won her third consecutive World Championships gold in the 3m springboard event.  She also won gold in the 3m synchro with partner Wang Han.\nAt the 2020 Summer Olympics, celebrated in 2021, she repeated the 2016 success and won the gold medal in women's 3 metre synchronized springboard with Wang Han. She also won again the gold medal in the 3m Springboard.\n\n\n== Accolades ==\nShi was named the Best Female Diver of the Year by FINA in six consecutive years from 2015 to 2021.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nAfter winning gold in the 2020 Summer Olympics, Shi revealed that she was struggling with depression and considered abandoning professional diving. She joined Naomi Osaka and Simone Biles in openly talking about mental health issues in women's elite competitions.\n\n\n== Major achievements ==\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nShi Tingmao  at World Aquatics \nShi Tingmao at Olympics at Sports-Reference.com (archived)"}
{"title": "Sifan Hassan", "requested": "Sifan Hassan", "extract": "Sifan Hassan (Oromo: Siifan Hassan; born January 1993 in Ethiopia) is an Ethiopian-Dutch middle- and long-distance runner. She is most recognized for her versatility in running championship and world-leading performances in widely disparate distances. She completed an unprecedented triple at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, winning gold medals in both the 5,000 metres and 10,000 metres and a bronze medal for the 1,500 metres. Hassan is the only athlete in Olympic history to win medals across a middle-distance event and both long-distance races in a single Games. She is only the second of three women to complete an Olympic distance double. At the Paris 2024 Olympics, Hassan secured a bronze medal in both the women's 5,000 m and 10,000 m events and gold in the women's marathon, becoming the only woman to win the Olympic gold medal in the 5,000 metres, 10,000 metres and Marathon races.\nAt the World Athletics Championships, Hassan took 1,500 m and 10,000 m titles in 2019, becoming the only athlete (male or female) in history to win both events at a single World Championships or Olympic Games. She won a bronze at the 1500 m in 2015, and at the 5000 m in 2017, when she also finished fifth in the 1,500 m. Hassan is a three-time World Indoor Championships medallist, winning gold at 1500 m in 2016 as well as silver at 3000 m and bronze for 1500 m in 2018. She earned six European medals (including two cross country titles), and one European indoor medal. She is also a three-time Diamond League winner, having secured the 1500 m/5000 m double in 2019. In her debut over the classic 26.2-mile distance, she won the 2023 London Marathon.\nHassan has been the world record holder for the one hour run since 2020. She held the world record for the one mile on the track from July 2019 to July 2023, when Faith Kipyegon overtook it. She held a world record at 10,000 m for two days in June 2021. She holds six European records (1500 m, 3000 m, 5000 m, 10,000 m, half marathon, marathon) and three other Dutch records.\n\n\n== Early life ==\nHassan was born in Adama, Oromia, Ethiopia and raised in the countryside of Kersa in the Munesa district of the Arsi Zone of Oromia. She was a recreational runner there. She left her home country as a refugee and arrived in the Netherlands in 2008 at age 15. She began running while undertaking studies to become a nurse. She is an Arsi Oromo.\nHassan became a Dutch citizen in 2013.\n\n\n== Career ==\n\n\n=== 2011–2012 ===\n\nShe got her first spikes and kit from Yke Schouwstra. After she moved to Eindhoven, she met Ton van Hoesel who coached her for two years. In Arnhem, Hassan became a member of the Papendal national training centre for top athletes. She received her Dutch citizenship in 2013. Affiliated with Eindhoven Atletiek, Hassan entered the Eindhoven half marathon in 2011 and won the race with a time of 77:10 minutes. She was also runner-up at two cross country races (Sylvestercross and Mol Lotto Cross Cup). She won those races in 2012, as well as the 3000 m at the Leiden Gouden Spike meet.\n\n\n=== 2013–2014 ===\n\nHassan made her breakthrough in the 2013 season. She ran an 800 metres best of 2:00.86 minutes to win at the KBC Night of Athletics and took wins in the 1500 m at the Nijmegen Global Athletics and Golden Spike Ostrava meets. On the 2013 IAAF Diamond League circuit she was runner-up in the 1500 m at Athletissima with a personal best of 4:03.73 minutes and was third at the DN Galan 3000 m with a best of 8:32.53 minutes—this time ranked her the fourth-fastest runner in the world that year.\nHassan became a Dutch citizen in November 2013, too late for competing at the 2013 World Championships, and the following month she made her first appearance for the Netherlands. At the 2013 European Cross Country Championships she won the gold medal in the under-23 category on a 6 km course in a time of 19:40 ahead of  Amela Terzic and helped the Dutch team to third in the rankings. She also won the Warandeloop and Lotto Cross Cup Brussels races that winter.\nAt the beginning of 2014 she ran a world-leading time of 8:45.32 minutes for the 3000 m at the Weltklasse in Karlsruhe, then broke the Dutch indoor record in the 1500 m with a time of 4:05.34 minutes at the Birmingham Indoor Grand Prix. She ran her first sub-4 minute 1500 m in finishing fifth at the Prefontaine Classic in a time of 3:59.38. On 5 July, Hassan won the 1500 m at the Paris Diamond League and set another new personal best of 3:57.00. She followed it by winning at the Glasgow Grand Prix, holding off Abeba Aregawi. At the 2014 European Championships, Hassan won gold in the 1500 m and silver in the 5000 m. She ended her season by winning at the 2014 IAAF Continental Cup.\n\n\n=== 2015 ===\n\nHassan won gold in the 1500 m at the 2015 European Indoor Athletics Championships in Prague. She ran a new 1500 m national record of 3:56.05 at the Monaco Diamond League, she finished second behind Genzebe Dibaba who set a new world record. At the 2015 World Championships in Beijing, Hassan won the bronze medal in the 1500 metres, also making the semi-finals of the 800 m. She became the second female Dutch athlete ever to win a medal at the World Championships, after Dafne Schippers. She won gold in the senior race at the European Cross Country Championships. She was the third female Dutch winner in the event, following in the footsteps of fellow African migrants Hilda Kibet and Lornah Kiplagat.\n\n\n=== 2016–2017 ===\n\nHassan won gold in the 1500 m at the World Indoor Championships. She took silver in the same event in a slow, tactical race at the European Championships. She won her heat in the 1500 m in the 2016 Rio Olympics in 4:06.64 before Faith Kipyegon. In the semifinals she placed second in 4:03.62 after Genzebe Dibaba who won in 4:03.06. In the final Kipyegon took the Olympic gold medal with 4:08.92, Dibaba was the runner up with 4:10.27 and Jennifer Simpson took the bronze medal in 4:10.53. Hassan placed fifth in a time of 4:11.23.\nShe finished fifth in the 1500 m at the 2017 World Athletics Championships and won the bronze medal in the 5000 metres event.\n\n\n=== 2018 ===\nOn 13 July, she broke the European record for 5000 metres by finishing second at the Rabat Diamond League in 14:22.34. A few days later, Hassan won the first Millicent Fawcett Mile at the 2018 London Anniversary Games in a time of 4:14.71, the fourth-fastest result at the time.\nAt the 2018 European Championships, she won a gold medal in the 5000 m with the time 14:46:12, setting a new championships record.\nOn 16 September, she broke the European record for the half marathon with a time of 65:15, winning the Copenhagen Half Marathon.\n\n\n=== 2019 ===\nOn 17 February, Hassan set the world record for a 5 km road race stopping the clock at 14:44 in Monaco. It has since been broken, first by Beatrice Chepkoech, then by Ejgayehu Taye. The 5 km road race has been a world record event since 1 November 2017. At the Prefontaine Classic in June, she broke the European 3000 m record with a time of 8:18.49.\n\n\n==== Mile world record ====\n\nOn 12 July, Hassan entered the mile run at the Herculis meet in Fontvieille, Monaco. Olha Lyakhova was the pace setter, taking the field through the first two laps (measured at the start line, not the quarter-mile splits) in 64.26 and 63.94 (2:08.20). As is typical for Hassan, she was last off the start line, but over the next 150 metres, slowly eased herself around the field on the outside into the marking position behind Lyakhova. Gabriela DeBues-Stafford soon moved through the field in between Hassan and Lyakhova for the next lap before Hassan and Gudaf Tsegay separated from the field as the only chasers. Between 800 and 1000 metres, Lyakhova strained to keep on pace, but Hassan and Tsegay were moving forward. After Lyakhova stepped out, the two found themselves 15 metres ahead of the pack. At 1200 metres, Hassan was looking back at her close chaser Tsegay in 3:10.13 (a 61.93 lap). Hassan accelerated, opening a 5-metre gap over the next 100 metres. Continuing at this pace, she passed 1500 metres in about 3:55. Hassan covered the last 409.344 metres in 62.20, her final time of 4:12:33 breaking Svetlana Masterkova's almost 23-year-old world record. The athletes trailing Hassan rewrote the all-time top 25 list, with Laura Weightman moving into position #15, DeBues-Stafford into #17, and after #5 all-time Tsegay faded into the pack she was followed by Rababe Arafi, Axumawit Embaye, Winnie Nanyondo and Ciara Mageean moving into positions #20–23.\nShe was the double 2019 Diamond League champion, winning both the 1500 and 5000 metres Trophies.\n\nOn 28 September, she became the 2019 World Champion in the 10,000 metres in her second race for that distance. Her first race at the event was in Stanford in a time of 31:18.12, just fast enough to achieve the qualifying standard for the World Championships. The winning time of 30:17.62 was the best time of the year on the track. Alina Reh (Germany) led the field after 3000 m in 9:29.69. The front runner reached the halfway point in 15:32.70. Letesenbet Gidey finished in 30:21.23, with Agnes Tirop (Kenya) coming in third place in 30:25.50. The second half of the run was covered in 14:45. Hassan also won the 1500 metres race with a time of 3:51.95 (sixth place on the 1500 m all-time list), setting new championship and European records. The second-placed finisher was Faith Kipyegon in 3:54.22, a new Kenyan national record, and the third place went to Gudaf Tsegay with 3:54.38.\n\n\n=== 2020–2021 ===\nOn 4 September 2020, Hassan set a new world record for the rarely run One hour run completing 18,930 metres at the Memorial van Damme in Brussels.\nOn 10 October, Hassan set a European record for the women's 10,000 metres in a time of 29:36.67, breaking the best set by Great Britain's Paula Radcliffe in 2002 by more than 24 seconds.\nOn 6 June 2021, she bettered her performance at the event to set a world record of 29:06.82 in Hengelo, beating the 2016 record of Ethiopian Almaz Ayana by more than 10 seconds. Hassan lost the record two days later, however, when Ethiopia's Letesenbet Gidey achieved a time of 29:01.03 at the same stadium. On 10 June, Hassan won the 1500 metres at the Rome Diamond League in a then world-leading time of 3:53.63. She then finished second at the Monaco Diamond League in a time of 3:53.60, finishing behind Faith Kipyegon who ran a new national record of 3:51.07.\nHassan won gold in the 5000 metres and 10,000 metres at the delayed 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games. She also won bronze in the 1500 metres. In her 1500 m, Hassan fell at the start of the final lap over Edinah Jebitok (Kenya). She still won the run. She became the only athlete ever to medal in the 1500, 5000, and 10,000 metres events at the same Olympics. Her 5000 m winning time was 14:36.79, ahead of Hellen Obiri from Kenya with 14:38.36, while Gudaf Tsegay won a bronze medal with a time of 14:38.87. Her gold medal win made her the first Dutch woman with an Olympic athletics medal in a long-distance event. Herr winning time in the 10000 m run was 29:55.32, Kalkidan Gezahegne (Bahrain) placed second in a time of 29:56.18 and Letensenbet Gidey (Ethiopia) placed third with 30:01.72. She was the first non-Kenyan or Ethiopian athlete to win the event since Gabriela Szabo won in the 2000 Sydney Olympics.She carried the flag of the Netherlands in the Olympics closing ceremony.\n\n\n=== 2022 ===\nThis season was considered a resting year for Hassan. She ended a break from competing just 8 days before the World Championships in Eugene by running at the low-key Stumptown Twilight Meet in Portland where she won the 5000 metres in 15:13.41. At the aforementioned World Championships, Hassan finished sixth in the 5000 metres and fourth in the 10,000 metres.\n\n\n=== 2023 ===\nOn 23 April, on her debut over the classic marathon distance, the 30-year-old won the London Marathon with a time of 2:18:33. She lost contact with the leaders after stopping to stretch her leg twice about 19 km into the race, and was 28 seconds behind at the 25 km mark. Despite this, Hassan caught up with the slowing lead quartet with four kilometres to go and prevailed in a sprint finish on the final straight, four seconds ahead of Alemu Megertu. \"It was really amazing. I never thought I would finish a marathon\", said Hassan.\nOn 3 June, just 41 days after her marathon debut, Hassan made her return to outdoor track at the FBK Games in Hengelo, Netherlands. She won both the 10,000 metres and the 1500 metres in 29:37.80 and 3:58.12, respectively. On 23 July, she ran a new area record over 5000 metres of 14:13.42 to finish third at the London Diamond League.\n\nAt the 2023 World Championships, Hassan was leading the 10,000 metres until the final 100 m when she stumbled and fell after getting tangled with Gudaf Tsegay, she ended up finishing 11th. Hassan came back to win bronze in the 1500 metres and silver in the 5000 metres.\nOn 8 October, Sifan Hassan won the Chicago Marathon with a time of 2:13:44. This was a new course record for the Chicago Marathon as well as the second-fastest women's marathon of all time.\n\n\n=== 2024 ===\nOn 3 March, Hassan finished fourth at the Tokyo Marathon in a time of 2:18.05. She opened her track season with a win over 5000 m at the Track Fest meet held in Los Angeles. Hassan placed a disappointing seventh over the same distance at the Prefontaine Classic.\nAt the Paris 2024 Olympics, Hassan secured the bronze medal in the women's 5,000 metres. Initially upgraded to silver following Faith Kipyegon's disqualification for obstruction, Hassan was later returned to bronze after Kipyegon was reinstated following Kenya's successful appeal.\nHassan also won bronze in the 10,000 metres then, on the final day, won gold in the women's marathon after sprinting the final 200 metres to beat Ethiopian Tigst Assefa (back than Marathon world record holder) by three seconds. At 28 km into the run, Hasan lost contact with the lead group. With 300 m go to, Hassan made a move on Assefa and won in an Olympic Record of 2:22:55 hours. Ethopia filed an unsuccessful protest against Hassan. With this gold medal she became the first woman to win Olympic gold in the marathon, 5,000 metres and 10,000 metres. She also became the first Olympic athlete male or female to win medals in these three events at the same Games since Czechoslovak Emil Zátopek in 1952.\nIn December 2024, Hassan was named World Athletics Female Athlete of the Year. She was the first Dutchwoman to win the award.\n\n\n=== 2025 ===\nOn April 25, 2026, Hassan ran the 2025 London marathon and placed third in a time of 2:19:00. The race was won by Tigst Assefa (Ethopia) in a time of 2:15:50 and a women's only world record, an improvement by 26 seconds. Joyciline Jepksogei (Kenya) placed second in a time of 2:18:44.\nHassan won the newly World Marathon Major in Sydney on August, 31 2025 in a time of 2:18:22, with the former course record by Workenesh Edesa (Ethopia) 2:21:40. The half marathon mark was passed in 1:10:01, second came Brigid Kosgei (Kenya) in a time of 2:18:56 and Edesa in 2:22:15.\nOn November 2, 2025, Hassan placed 6th in the New York City Marathon in a time of 2:24:43. The run was won by Hellen Obiri (Kenya) in a time of 2:19:51 and her fellow countrymate Sharon Lokedia placing second in 2:20:07.\n\n\n=== 2026 ===\nHassan was scheduled to run the April, 26 2026 London Marathon but withdrew because of an Achilles injury sustained when she ran on a treadmill.\n\n\n=== Coach ===\nSifan Hassan achieved her first career breakthroughs while under the direction of Dutch national coach Honore Hoedt. Hassan decided to search for other coaching options at the end of 2016 after injuries hampered her buildup to the Rio Olympics.\nBeginning in 2017, Hassan moved to the United States to be coached by Alberto Salazar at the Nike Oregon Project.\nIn July 2018, the Nike Oregon Project hired Tim Rowberry as a coach—primarily to oversee the training of Sifan Hassan and her fellow team member Yomif Kejelcha—while Salazar remained the head coach over all athletes in the Nike Oregon Project.\nIn October 2019 Salazar began serving a four-year ban from athletics for doping violations dating from before he started coaching Hassan. According to court rulings which upheld Salazar's ban, there was \"no evidence put before the CAS as to any effect on athletes competing at the elite level within the Nike Oregon Project.\"\nThe aftermath of Salazar's ban caused the Nike Oregon Project to dissolve leading Hassan and Kejelcha to form a new training group under coach Tim Rowberry.\nHassan's current coach is Tim Rowberry. After her partnership with Rowberry began in 2018, she has set new personal best times in the 1500m, 3k, 5k, 10k, half marathon, and marathon. Hassan's training partner Yomif Kejelcha remained in the group until his departure to Adidas in 2021.\n\n\n== Personal bests ==\nInformation from World Athletics profile unless otherwise noted.\n\n\n== Competition results ==\nInformation from World Athletics profile unless otherwise noted.\n\n\n=== International competitions ===\n\n\n=== Circuit wins and titles ===\n Diamond League Overall 1500 m winner: 2015\n Diamond League 1500 m champion: 2019\n Diamond League 5000 m champion: 2019\n2014 (2): Paris Meeting Areva (1500 m), Glasgow Grand Prix (1500 m)\n2015 (2): Birmingham British Grand Prix (1500 m), Lausanne Athletissima (1500 m)\n2017 (3): Rome Golden Gala (1500 m), Paris (1500 m), Birmingham (3000 m)\n2018 (2): London Anniversary Games (One mile), Birmingham (1500 m)\n2019 (4): Palo Alto Prefontaine Classic (3000 m), Monaco Herculis (One mile, MR DLR WR), Zürich Weltklasse (1500 m), Brussels Memorial Van Damme (5000 m)\n2020 (1): Brussels (One hour)\n2021 (3): Rome Golden Gala in Florence (1500 m), Eugene Prefontaine Classic (5000 m), Brussels (One mile)\n2022 (1): Chorzów Kamila Skolimowska Memorial (3000 m)\n\n\n=== National titles ===\nDutch Indoor Athletics Championships\n800 metres: 2016\n1500 metres: 2015\n\n\n== Awards and honours ==\nDutch Athlete of the Year: 2018, 2019, 2021\nDutch Sportswoman of the Year: 2019, 2021, 2024\nKnight of the Order of Orange-Nassau: 2021\nEuropean Athlete of the Year: 2021\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nSifan Hassan at World Athletics\nSifan Hassan at Tilastopaja (registration required)\nSifan Hassan at the Royal Dutch Athletics Federation (archived) (in Dutch)\nSifan Hassan at Athletics Podium\nSifan Hassan at ARRS\nSifan Hassan at Olympics.com\nSifan Hassan at NOC*NSF (in Dutch)\nSifan Hassan at Olympedia\nSifan Hassan at InterSportStats\nSifan Hassan at TeamNL  (in Dutch)"}
{"title": "Simon Ammann", "requested": "Simon Ammann", "extract": "Simon Ammann (; born 25 June 1981) is a Swiss ski jumper. He is one of the most successful athletes in the history of the sport, having won four individual Winter Olympic gold medals in 2002 and 2010. His other achievements include winning the 2007 Ski Jumping World Championships, the 2010 Ski Flying World Championships, the 2010 Nordic Tournament, and the 2010 Ski Jumping World Cup overall title.\n\n\n== Career ==\nAmmann made his debut at the age of 16 during the 1997–98 FIS Ski Jumping World Cup season. He qualified for the 1998 Olympic Games in Nagano, Japan, where he placed 35th.\nBefore the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Ammann crashed and suffered injuries during training in Willingen. Despite this, he won a gold medal in both the individual normal hill and large hill competitions, being only the second athlete to accomplish this feat (Matti Nykänen having done so in 1988). During the Olympics, Ammann gained international attention not only for his victories but also for his youthful and bespectacled appearance on the podium that many compared to Harry Potter. In addition to acquiring Swiss stardom he also made appearances on American talk shows, such as the Late Show with David Letterman (on 20 February 2002).\nAmmann also won the ski jumping event at the Holmenkollen Ski Festival in 2002 and 2007. This earned him the Holmenkollen medal in 2007 (shared with Frode Estil, Odd-Bjørn Hjelmeset, King Harald V, and Queen Sonja of Norway).\nHe made his third Olympic appearance in 2006 in Turin, Italy.\nOn 24 February 2007, he won his first medal at the FIS Nordic World Ski Championships with a victory in the individual large hill in Sapporo, Japan. Ammann would follow this with a silver medal in the individual normal hill the following week. Ammann would complete his set of medals with a bronze medal in the individual normal hill event at the FIS Nordic World Ski Championships 2009 in Liberec, Czech Republic.\nIn 2010, competing in his fourth Olympics in Vancouver, Canada, Ammann won the gold medal in the individual normal hill event, becoming the first athlete in Olympic history to win gold medals in the individual normal hill event at two Olympic Games. He also won a gold medal in the individual large hill event, thus becoming the first athlete to win gold medals in both individual ski jumping events at two Olympic Games, as well as the most decorated Swiss Olympic athlete of all time.\nIn March 2010, Ammann became the overall winner of the 2009–10 FIS Ski Jumping World Cup, winning all four events at the Nordic Tournament and nine World Cup events in one season overall. He finished the season by becoming the ski flying World Champion in Planica. His 236.5 metres (776 ft) fourth round jump was the longest jump of the event, and also the second longest jump in history at the time.\nAt the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, he was selected as flag-bearer for the Switzerland Winter Olympics team.\nOn 6 January 2015, Ammann was injured on his second-round jump in Bischofshofen during the final stage of the 2014–15 Four Hills Tournament. His representation has since stated that his condition is stable, with most of the damage being on his face.\nAmmann also competed in the 2018 and 2022 Winter Olympics, with his best finish being eleventh place in the normal hill event in 2018.\nIn February 2024, in Lake Placid, he made his 500th individual start in the World Cup.\n\n\n== World Cup results ==\n\n\n=== Standings ===\n\n\n=== Individual wins ===\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of Olympic medalists in ski jumping\nList of FIS Nordic World Ski Championships medalists in ski jumping\nList of FIS Ski Flying World Championships medalists in ski flying\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nOfficial website\nSimon Ammann at the International Ski and Snowboard Federation\nSimon Ammann at Olympics.com \nSimon Ammann at Olympedia \nSimon Ammann at the Swiss Olympic Association (in German)"}
{"title": "Simone Biles", "requested": "Simone Biles", "extract": "Simone Arianne Biles Owens (née Biles; born March 14, 1997) is an American artistic gymnast. Her 11 Olympic medals and 30 World Championship medals make her the most decorated gymnast in history. She is widely regarded as one of the greatest gymnasts of all time, and one of the greatest female athletes in history. With 11 Olympic medals, she is tied with Věra Čáslavská as the second-most decorated female Olympic gymnast behind Larisa Latynina, and has the most Olympic medals earned by a U.S. gymnast.\nAt the Olympic Games, Biles is a two-time gold medalist in the individual all-around (2016, 2024). She is also a two-time champion on vault (2016, 2024), the 2016 champion and 2024 silver medalist on floor exercise, and a two-time bronze medalist on balance beam (2016, 2020). Biles led the gold medal-winning U.S. teams in 2016, dubbed the \"Final Five\", and in 2024, dubbed the \"Golden Girls\". At the 2020 Summer Olympics, where she was favored to win at least four of the six available gold medals, she withdrew from most of the competition after the qualification round due to \"the twisties\", a temporary loss of proprioception while performing twisting elements. She won a silver medal with the U.S. team nicknamed the \"Fighting Four\".\nBiles is the most-decorated gymnast of the World Championships, with 30 medals, all but seven gold. She is a six-time all-around champion (2013, 2014, 2015, 2018, 2019 and 2023), six-time floor exercise champion (2013–2015, 2018–2019, 2023), and four-time balance beam champion (2014–2015, 2019, 2023), all record totals. She is also a two-time vault champion (2018–2019) and a member of a record five gold-medal-winning U.S. teams (2014–2015, 2018–2019, 2023). She is also a four-time silver medalist (2013–2014 and 2023 on vault, 2018 on uneven bars) and a three-time bronze medalist (2015 on vault, 2013 and 2018 on balance beam).\nDomestically, Biles has won a record nine U.S. national all-around championships (2013–2016, 2018–2019, 2021, 2023–2024); in 2024, she became the oldest female gymnast to win the title. She is a seven-time champion on vault, balance beam, and floor exercise; a two-time uneven bars champion; and the only woman to win all five gold medals in a single championships twice (2018, 2024).\nBiles is the sixth woman to win an individual all-around title at both the Olympics and the World Championships; she is the first since Lilia Podkopayeva in 1996 to hold both titles simultaneously. She is the tenth woman and first American woman to win a World medal on every event, and the first woman since Daniela Silivaș in 1988 to win a medal on every event at a single Olympics or World Championships. Biles is the originator of the most difficult skill on women's vault, balance beam, and floor exercise; so far, she is the only gymnast to attempt them.\nIn 2022, President Joe Biden awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 2023, she won her eighth U.S. Gymnastics title, breaking the 90-year-old record held by Alfred Jochim. Biles has won the Laureus World Sportswoman of the Year four times (2017, 2019, 2020, 2025) and Comeback of the Year once (2024).\n\n\n== Early life and education ==\nBiles was born on March 14, 1997, in Columbus, Ohio, the third of four siblings. Her birth mother, Shanon Biles, was unable to care for Simone or her other children. All four went in and out of foster care.\nIn 2000, Biles's maternal grandfather, Ron Biles, and his second wife, Nellie Cayetano Biles, began caring temporarily for Shanon's children in the north Houston suburb of Spring, Texas, after learning his grandchildren were in foster care. In 2003, the couple formally adopted Simone and her younger sister Adria. Ron's sister, Shanon's aunt Harriet, adopted the two oldest children. Simone holds Belizean citizenship through her adoptive mother and considers Belize to be her second home. Biles and her family are Catholic.\nBiles attended Benfer Elementary School in Harris County, Texas. In 2012, Biles switched from public school to home schooling, allowing her to increase her training from about 20 to 32 hours a week. She earned her high-school diploma in mid-2015. Biles verbally committed to UCLA on August 4, 2014, and signed a National Letter of Intent in November 2014, planning to defer enrollment until after the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. Instead, on July 29, 2015, she announced that she would turn professional and forfeit her NCAA eligibility to compete for UCLA.\n\n\n== Early gymnastics career ==\nBiles first tried gymnastics at age 6 during a day-care field trip. The instructors suggested she continue with the sport, and Biles soon enrolled in an optional training program at Bannon's Gymnastics. She began training with coach Aimee Boorman at age eight.\n\n\n=== 2011–12: Junior elite ===\nBiles began her elite gymnastics career at age 14 on July 1, 2011, at the 2011 American Classic in Houston. She placed third all-around, first on vault and balance beam, fourth on floor exercise, and eighth on uneven bars. Later that month, Biles competed at the 2011 U.S. Classic in Chicago, Illinois, where she placed 20th all-around, fifth on vault and floor exercise.\nBiles's first meet of 2012 was the American Classic hosted in Huntsville, Texas. She placed first all-around and on vault, tied for second on floor exercise, placed third on balance beam, and fourth on uneven bars.\nBiles's placement in the American Classic secured her a spot to compete at the 2012 USA Gymnastics National Championships. She later competed at the 2012 U.S. Classic in Chicago. She finished first all-around and on vault, second on floor exercise, and sixth on balance beam. In June, she made her second appearance at the U.S. National Championships in St. Louis, Missouri. She finished third all-around, first on vault, and sixth on uneven bars, balance beam, and floor exercise. After this performance, Biles was named to the U.S. Junior National Team by a committee headed by Márta Károlyi, the National Team Coordinator (2001–2016).\n\n\n== Senior gymnastics career ==\n\n\n=== 2013 ===\nBiles's senior international debut was in March at the 2013 American Cup, a FIG World Cup event. She and Katelyn Ohashi were named as replacements for Elizabeth Price and 2012 Olympic gold medalist Kyla Ross, both of whom withdrew from the competition because of injuries. Biles led for two rotations but finished second behind her teammate, Ohashi, after a fall off the beam.\nBiles traveled to Jesolo, Italy, to compete at the 2013 City of Jesolo Trophy. She took the all-around, vault, balance beam, and floor exercise titles in addition to contributing to the U.S. team's gold medal. She and the U.S. delegation next competed at an international tri-meet in Chemnitz, Germany, against teams from Germany and Romania. The U.S. won the team gold medal. In addition, Biles won the vault, balance beam, and floor titles, and tied for second in the all-around, behind Kyla Ross, after a fall on the uneven bars.\nIn July, Biles competed at the 2013 U.S. Classic. She performed poorly, falling several times, and did not compete vault after twisting her ankle on the floor exercise. In the aftermath of this poor performance, Biles consulted a sports psychologist whom she credits with helping her anxiety and confidence issues and allowing her to begin her streak of dominance in the sport.\nBiles competed at the 2013 U.S. National Gymnastics Championships in August, where she was crowned the national all-around champion. Biles also won silver in all four individual events. After the USA Gymnastics National Championships, Biles was named to the Senior National Team and was invited to the qualifying camp for the 2013 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Texas. She was selected for the World Championships team.\nIn October, Biles competed at the 2013 World Championships in Antwerp, Belgium. She qualified first in the all-around, second to the vault final, sixth to the uneven bars final, fifth to the balance beam final, and first to the floor final, making her the first American gymnast to qualify to the all-around and all four event finals since Shannon Miller in 1991. Biles competed cleanly during the women's individual all-around and won the competition with a score of 60.216, almost a point ahead of silver medalist Ross, and almost a point and a half better than the bronze medalist, 2010 world all-around champion Aliya Mustafina. Biles subsequently had surgery for bone spurs in her right tibia, sidelining her for three weeks.\nAt the age of 16, Biles became the seventh American woman and the first African American to win the world all-around title. In the event finals, she won silver on the vault, behind defending world champion and Olympic silver medalist McKayla Maroney and ahead of 2008 Olympic gold medalist Hong Un Jong of North Korea; bronze on the balance beam, behind Mustafina and Ross; and gold on the floor exercise, ahead of Italy's Vanessa Ferrari and Romania's Larisa Iordache. She finished fourth in the uneven bars final, behind China's Huang Huidan, Ross, and Mustafina.\n\n\n=== 2014 ===\nBiles missed the start of the season due to injury, sitting out the 2014 AT&T American Cup and the 2014 Pacific Rim Championships. Her debut that year was at the U.S. Classic in Chicago. She won the all-around by a wide margin and also took first place on vault, beam (tied with Ross), and floor. At the 2014 USA Gymnastics National Championships, Biles repeated as national all-around champion after two days of competition, finishing more than four points ahead of silver medalist Ross, despite a fall from the balance beam during her final routine of the meet. She won the gold on vault and floor, tied for the silver on balance beam with Alyssa Baumann, and finished fourth on the uneven bars. She was once again selected for the Senior National Team.\nOn September 17, Biles was selected to compete at the 2014 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Nanning, China. She dominated the preliminary round despite a major error on the uneven bars, qualifying in first place to the all-around, vault, beam, and floor finals, in addition to contributing to the U.S. team's first-place qualification into the team final. During the team final, Biles led the United States to its second consecutive world team championship, which they won over the second-place Chinese team by nearly seven points. In the all-around, Biles performed cleanly on all four events, bettering her bars score from qualifications by more than a point, and won her second consecutive world all-around title ahead of Ross and Romanian Larisa Iordache. Biles became the second American woman to repeat as world all-around champion, following Miller (1993 and 1994), and the first woman of any nationality to do so since Russia's Svetlana Khorkina (2001 and 2003). Biles finished behind North Korea's Hong Un Jong in the vault competition, taking her second consecutive silver medal in that event. She won the gold in the balance beam final ahead of China's Bai Yawen and the gold in the floor exercise final, again, ahead of Iordache. This brought her total of World Championship gold medals to six, the most ever by an American gymnast, surpassing Miller's five.\n\n\n=== 2015 ===\nBiles competed at the 2015 AT&T American Cup at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, on March 7. She placed first with a score of 62.299, 4.467 points ahead of second-place finisher U.S. teammate MyKayla Skinner. Later that month, Biles was nominated for the James E. Sullivan Award. She ended the month at the 2015 City of Jesolo Trophy, winning the all-around title with 62.100.\nOn July 25, she competed at the U.S. Classic and finished first in the all-around, ahead of 2012 Olympic all-around champion Gabby Douglas and Maggie Nichols, with a score of 62.400. On the beam, she scored 15.250 and took first at the event, ahead of Douglas and 2012 Olympic beam bronze medalist Aly Raisman. She scored 16.050 on the floor and claimed first in the event, 1.050 points ahead of Douglas and also ahead of Nichols and Bailie Key. She had a small hop on her Amanar vault and scored 16.000. She then scored 15.150 on her second vault, to score an average of 15.575 and place first in the event, ahead of 2014 Worlds vault bronze medalist and teammate MyKayla Skinner, who averaged 14.950. Biles ended on bars and scored a 15.100 to claim the all-around title. She placed fourth in the event behind 2014 Worlds teammate Madison Kocian, Douglas, and Key.\nAt the 2015 U.S. National Championships, Biles secured her third all-around national title, becoming only the second woman ever to do so, 23 years after Kim Zmeskal (1990, 1991, 1992).\nBiles, along with Douglas, Dowell, Kocian, Nichols, Raisman, and Skinner, was selected to represent the United States at the 2015 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Glasgow, Scotland. Biles once again qualified in first place in the all-around, vault, beam, and floor finals. Her uneven bars score would have qualified her in eighth place in that final as well, but she was excluded, as per the rules, after teammates Kocian and Douglas qualified ahead of her. In team finals, she helped the United States team win their third consecutive gold medal at a World Championships event. During the all-around final, Biles performed below her usual standard, taking a large hop on the vault, landing out of bounds on floor (which she stated was a first), and grasping the beam to prevent a fall. However, her final score of 60.399 was more than enough to secure the title with her largest margin of victory yet (over a point ahead of silver medalist Gabby Douglas and bronze medalist Larisa Iordache). With that victory, Biles became the first woman to win three consecutive all-around titles in World Gymnastics Championships history. During day one of event finals, Biles competed on vault, taking bronze behind Maria Paseka (RUS) and Hong Un Jong (PRK). On day two, she competed on the balance beam and floor exercise, retaining her world title in both events by large margins. This brought Biles's total World Championships medal count to 14, the most for any American, and total gold medal count to 10, the most for any woman in World Championships history.\n\n\n=== 2016 ===\nIn April, Biles began her season at the Pacific Rim Championships, where she won the all-around title and had the highest score on vault (where she debuted a more difficult second vault), floor exercise (where she debuted a new floor routine), and balance beam. Additionally, the U.S. won the team title by a wide margin. Biles did not compete in the event finals. On June 4, Biles competed at the Secret U.S. Classic in two events only, the uneven bars and beam. She placed first on balance beam with a 15.650 and placed fifth on uneven bars with a 15.1.In the following weeks at the 2016 U.S. National Championships, Biles won the all-around title by a wide margin of 3.9 points over Aly Raisman. She won the gold medal on vault and floor exercise, receiving scores of at least 16 all four times. She also won the gold medal on the balance beam and placed fourth on uneven bars.\nOn July 10, Biles was named to the team for the 2016 Rio Summer Olympics, alongside Gabby Douglas, Laurie Hernandez, Madison Kocian, and Aly Raisman.\nIn September 2016, Biles's medical information was released, and she was accused of doping to enhance performance by the Russian media following the Russian cyber espionage group Fancy Bear's hack into the World Anti-Doping Agency. Biles then disclosed on Twitter that she has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and was permitted to take medication for it, having applied for and received a therapeutic use exemption. She was applauded for opening up about ADHD.\n\n\n==== 2016 Summer Olympics ====\n\nIn the runup to the 2016 Rio Games, Biles appeared in a Tide commercial (\"The Evolution of Power\") with gymnasts Dominique Dawes and Nadia Comăneci.\n\nOn August 7, Biles competed in the Women's Qualification at the 2016 Summer Olympics, helping the U.S. team to qualify in first place to the final with a score of 185.238 (9.959 points ahead of the second-place team, China). She also qualified as the top gymnast in four of the five individual finals: the all-around with a score of 62.416, vault with an average score of 16.050, balance beam with a score of 15.633, and floor exercise with a score of 15.733.\nOn August 9, Biles won her first Olympic gold medal in the gymnastics team event. The only gymnast for Team USA to compete in all four events in the final, she contributed an all-around score of 61.833 (15.933 on vault, 14.800 on bars, 15.300 on beam, and 15.800 on floor) as the Americans won the gold with a score of 184.897, more than 8 points ahead of the silver-medal Russian team.\nBiles won the gold medal in the individual all-around on August 11, ahead of teammate Aly Raisman and Russia's Aliya Mustafina. Biles earned a total score of 62.198 with 15.866 on the vault, 14.966 on the uneven bars, 15.433 on the balance beam, and 15.933 on the floor. Biles had the highest scores on vault, balance beam, and floor; she had the only score over 15 on balance beam in the finals. She and Raisman became the second pair of American gymnasts to win gold and silver in the individual all-around, after Nastia Liukin and Shawn Johnson in 2008.\nIn the vault final, she scored 15.900 for her Amânar and 16.033 for her Cheng to win her second individual gold medal with an average score of 15.966, more than 0.7 points ahead of second-place finisher Maria Paseka of Russia and third-place finisher Giulia Steingruber of Switzerland.\nIn the balance beam final, she grabbed the beam with her hands (a mandatory 0.5-point deduction) after underrotating her front tuck and scored 14.733. Despite her mistake, she won the bronze behind teammate Laurie Hernandez, who won the silver with a score of 15.333, and Sanne Wevers of the Netherlands, who won the gold with a score of 15.466).\nIn the floor exercise final, she won the gold with a score of 15.966. Teammate Aly Raisman won the silver with a score of 15.500 and Amy Tinkler of Great Britain won bronze scoring 14.933. With Biles's five total medals along with Madison Kocian's silver medal on the uneven bars, Team USA claimed a medal in every women's artistic gymnastics event for the first time since 1984.\n\nWith four Olympic gold medals, Biles set an American record for most gold medals in women's gymnastics at a single Games, and equaled several other records with her medals won in Rio. Biles winning four gold medals was the first instance of a quadruple gold medallist in women's gymnastics at a single Games since Ecaterina Szabo (Romania) in 1984, and fifth overall, after Larisa Latynina (USSR, 1956), Agnes Keleti (Hungary, 1956), Věra Čáslavská (Czechoslovakia, 1968) and Szabo. Biles became the sixth female gymnast to have won an individual all-around title at both the World Championships and the Olympics—the others being Larisa Latynina, Věra Čáslavská, Ludmilla Tourischeva, Elena Shushunova, and Lilia Podkopayeva. Biles is the first female gymnast since Lilia Podkopayeva (Ukraine) in 1996 to win gold in the all-around as well as in an event final, and the first female gymnast since Podkopayeva to win the Olympic all-around title while holding the World and European/American individual all-around titles. She joined Latynina (1956–1960), Čáslavská (1964–1968), and Ludmilla Tourischeva (1968–1972), as the fourth female gymnast to win every major all-around title in an Olympic cycle.\nBiles joined Mary Lou Retton in 1984, Shannon Miller in 1992, and Nastia Liukin in 2008, in winning five women's gymnastics medals at a single Olympics, along with Szabo (Roumania, 1984), Nadia Comaneci (Roumania, 1976), and Karin Janz (East Germany, 1972). Olga Mostepanova (USSR) also won five gold medals at the Alternate Olympics in 1984. The overall record for most women's Olympic gymnastics medals at a single game (majority gold), remains six medals (Latynina, 1956, 1960, and 1964, Keleti, 1956, Čáslavská, 1968, Daniela Silivas, 1988).\nBiles and her teammate Gabby Douglas are the only American female gymnasts to win both the individual all-around gold and team gold at the same Olympics. Douglas won both at the 2012 London Games.\nBiles was chosen by Team USA to be the flag bearer in the closing ceremonies, becoming the first American female gymnast to receive this honor.\n\n\n=== 2017: Hiatus ===\n\nBiles did not compete in 2017.\nAfter the 2016 Rio Games, Biles co-wrote an autobiography with journalist Michelle Burford, Courage to Soar: A Body in Motion, A Life in Balance, which reads: \"I want people to reach for their dreams and there are so many people who have inspired me with their love and encouragement along the way and I want to pass on that inspiration to readers.\" The book reached number one on The New York Times best sellers Young Adult list the week of January 8, 2017 and was turned into a Lifetime biopic.\nBiles competed on season 24 of Dancing with the Stars, attempting to replicate her Rio teammate Laurie Hernandez's win in season 23. Paired with professional dancer Sasha Farber, she was favored to win but was eliminated on May 15, 2017, one week before the finals, finishing in fourth place.\nIn August, during the 2017 P&G National Championships, Biles said that she had returned to the gym to start conditioning. Her longtime coach, Aimee Boorman, had moved to Florida with her family; in October Biles hired coach Laurent Landi, who had coached her Olympic teammate Madison Kocian.\n\n\n=== 2018: Return to competition ===\nBiles was added back to the National Team on March 1 after the Athlete Selection Committee viewed recent videos of her performances. Her first competition of the year was the U.S. Classic in July, where she won the all-around title ahead of Riley McCusker by 1.200 points. She also won the gold medal on floor and balance beam and recorded the highest single vault score. Her all-around score of 58.700 became the highest score recorded under the 2017–2020 Code of Points despite a fall on the uneven bars and an out-of-bounds penalty on floor exercise. She showed numerous upgrades to her routines from 2016, including a Fabrichnova (double-twisting double back dismount) and a Van Leeuwen on uneven bars, and a Moors (double-twisting double layout) on floor exercise.\nIn August, Biles competed at the 2018 National Championships. She placed first in every event over the two days of competition, the first woman to do so since Dominique Dawes in 1994. Biles won the all-around title 6.55 points ahead of second-place finisher and reigning world champion Morgan Hurd and set a record for the most national all-around titles with five. This placement also marked her fourth national vault title, third national balance beam and floor exercise titles, and first national uneven bars title. Her 60.100 all-around score from the first day of competition was the first score recorded above 60 since her own all-around victory at the 2016 Olympics. She was named to her seventh national team and was invited to the October selection camp for the 2018 World Championships.\nAt the 2018 Youth Olympics, the mixed multi-discipline teams were named for gymnastics legends, including Biles, Nadia Comăneci, and Kōhei Uchimura. The team named for Biles won gold.\nIn October, Biles participated in the World Team Selection Camp. She placed first in the all-around as well as first in vault and floor exercise. She placed second on the uneven bars behind McCusker, and fourth on the balance beam (due to hands touching the mat on dismount) behind Kara Eaker, McCusker, and Ragan Smith. Biles debuted a new vault: a Yurchenko with a half turn onto the table with a stretched salto forward off with two full twists (Cheng with an extra half twist). The following day she was named to the team to compete at the 2018 World Championships alongside McCusker, Hurd, Grace McCallum, Eaker, and alternate Ragan Smith.\n\n\n==== 2018 World Championships ====\nIn late October, at the 2018 World Championships in Doha, Qatar, Biles went to an emergency room the night before the qualifying round because of stomach pains that turned out to be a kidney stone. After confirming that it was not appendicitis, she checked herself out of the hospital. The next day, she qualified to the all-around, vault, balance beam and floor exercise finals in first place, and to the uneven bars final in second place behind Nina Derwael of Belgium. After successfully performing the vault she premiered at the selection camp, it was named the Biles in the Code of Points, and given a difficulty value of 6.4 (for the 2017–2020 Code of Points), which was tied with the Produnova for the most difficult women's vault ever competed. The US also qualified for the team final in first place. During the team final, Biles competed on all four events, recording the highest score of any competitor on vault, uneven bars, and floor exercise. The U.S. team won the gold medal with a score of 171.629, 8.766 points ahead of second-place Russia, beating previous margin of victory records set in the open-ended code of points era at the 2014 World Championships (6.693) and 2016 Rio Olympics (8.209).\n\nIn the all-around final, Biles won the gold medal by a margin of 1.7 points despite falling on both the vault and the balance beam. The overwhelming difficulty gap between her and her competitors allowed her to claim the title with a score of 57.491 over silver medalist Mai Murakami of Japan and bronze medalist Morgan Hurd. Earning her fourth world all-around title, Biles set a new record for most women's World All-Around titles, surpassing the previous record of three held by Svetlana Khorkina. She also became the first defending Olympic women's all-around champion to earn a world all-around title since 1972 Olympic champion Lyudmilla Turischeva did so in 1974.\nIn the event finals, Biles won the gold medal in vault, her first-ever world vault title. The two vaults she competed in were a Cheng and an Amanar. This marked her thirteenth World gold medal, meaning Biles had won the most Gymnastics World Championships titles of any gender, breaking Soviet/Belarusian gymnast Vitaly Scherbo's previous record of twelve gold medals. She then won the silver medal on uneven bars behind Nina Derwael of Belgium. By winning a medal on uneven bars, Biles became the first American and the tenth female gymnast from any country to have won a World Championship medal on every event. The following day, she won the bronze medal on balance beam behind Liu Tingting of China and Ana Padurariu of Canada after a large balance check on her Barani. She then won the gold medal in floor exercise with a strong routine. In doing so, she became the first U.S. gymnast and first non-Soviet gymnast to win a medal on every event at a single World Championships, as well as the first gymnast from any country to do so since Elena Shushunova in 1987. Her 6 medals at this World Championships brought her total number of world medals to 20, which tied her with Khorkina for most world medals won.\n\n\n==== Larry Nassar assault ====\n\nOn January 18, 2018, Biles said that former USA Gymnastics physician Larry Nassar had sexually assaulted her and that USA Gymnastics helped cover it up. She did not attend Nassar's sentencing hearings from January 16 to 24, 2018, saying that she \"wasn't emotionally ready to face Larry Nassar again\". Biles and the other survivors were awarded the Arthur Ashe Courage Award in 2018. At the 2018 U.S. National Championships, Biles wore a teal leotard that she had designed to honor the survivors of Nassar's abuse, as a statement of unity. On September 15, 2021, Biles testified to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee that she blamed \"the entire system\" for enabling and perpetuating Nassar's crimes, saying that USA Gymnastics and the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee \"failed to do their jobs\". Three of her national-team teammates, McKayla Maroney, Maggie Nichols, and Aly Raisman, testified with her.\n\n\n=== 2019 ===\n\nIn early March, Biles competed at the Stuttgart World Cup, her first World Cup appearance not on American soil. She finished in first place, 3.668 points ahead of second-place Ana Padurariu of Canada.\nIn July, Biles competed at the 2019 GK US Classic. During podium training, she performed a triple-twisting double-tucked salto backwards (upgraded from a Silivas), but did not perform it during the competition. Biles won the all-around, 2.1 points ahead of second-place finisher Riley McCusker. Individually, she placed fifth on bars behind Morgan Hurd, Sunisa Lee, Grace McCallum and McCusker, third on beam behind Kara Eaker and McCusker, and first on floor exercise. She also had the highest single vault score, ahead of Jade Carey and MyKayla Skinner.\nIn August, Biles competed at the 2019 U.S. National Gymnastics Championships. She placed first in the all-around, with a two-day combined score of 118.500. In the competition, she became the first woman to complete a triple twisting double somersault on floor exercise and the first gymnast to complete a double twisting double somersault dismount off the balance beam. She placed first on vault, ahead of Jade Carey and MyKayla Skinner, first on balance beam ahead of Kara Eaker and Leanne Wong, first on floor exercise ahead of Carey and Sunisa Lee, and third on uneven bars behind Lee and Morgan Hurd.\nIn September, Biles competed at the US World Championships trials where she placed first in the all-around, despite falling on her dismount off the uneven bars, and earned a place on the team that would compete at the 2019 World Championships in Stuttgart. The following day her teammates Sunisa Lee, Kara Eaker, MyKayla Skinner, Jade Carey, and Grace McCallum were also named to the team.\n\n\n==== 2019 World Championships ====\nDuring qualifications at the World Championships, Biles helped the USA qualify for the team final in first place, over five points ahead of second-place China. Individually, she qualified for the all-around, balance beam, and floor exercise finals in first place, the vault final in second place by a margin of one one-thousandth below teammate Jade Carey, and the uneven bars final in seventh place. She debuted two new eponymous skills: the Biles II on floor exercise, a triple-twisting double-tucked somersault, and the Biles on balance beam, a double-twisting double-tucked somersault dismount. Both elements were given the highest difficulty rating of J (1.0) for all elements on their respective apparatus, and the Biles II is the only element in artistic gymnastics to receive the J rating across all disciplines for both men and women.\nIn the team final, Biles led Team USA to its fifth consecutive team title, contributing scores of 15.400, 14.600, 14.433, and 15.333 on vault, uneven bars, balance beam, and floor exercise, respectively. In doing so, Biles surpassed Russian gymnast Svetlana Khorkina as the most-decorated female gymnast in World Championship history. Her scores on vault, balance beam, and floor exercise were the highest of the day. During the all-around final Biles won gold with a score of 58.999, a record-setting 2.1 points ahead of second-place finisher Tang Xijing of China. Once again, she recorded the highest scores of the day on vault, balance beam, and floor exercise.\nDuring the first day of event finals, Biles won the gold on vault, ahead of teammate Carey and Ellie Downie of Great Britain. After earning a medal on vault, her 23rd World Championships medal, Biles tied the record for most medals won at the World Championships with male Belarusian gymnast Vitaly Scherbo. During the uneven bars final, Biles earned a score of 14.700, ranking fifth, one-tenth behind bronze medalist and teammate Sunisa Lee.\nOn the second day of event finals, Biles scored 15.066 on the balance beam, earning the gold medal over reigning World balance beam Champion Liu Tingting and Li Shijia, both of China, by over 0.6 points. This marked Biles's 24th World Championships medal, surpassing Scherbo's record and making Biles the sole record holder for most World Championship medals won by a gymnast, whether male or female. Before the final, Biles credited her improved confidence on beam in the past year to her coach Cecile Canqueteau-Landi, who helped rework her routine following shaky performances in the event finals at the 2016 Summer Olympics and the 2018 World Championships. Biles and Landi removed inconsistent skills including the Barani, front pike, and front tuck saltos, replacing them with skills such as an aerial cartwheel (which Biles had not performed since 2014) and introducing the upgraded Biles dismount.\nOn floor exercise, Biles won gold with a score of 15.133, one point more than the silver medalist Lee. By winning five gold medals in Stuttgart, Biles tied the record of most gold medals won at a single World Championships with Larisa Latynina and Boris Shakhlin, who both accomplished this at the 1958 World Championships. Furthermore, by winning her fifth gold medal on floor exercise, Biles tied the record for most world titles on one apparatus with Italian Jury Chechi (who won five gold medals on still rings) and Russian Svetlana Khorkina (who won five gold medals on uneven bars).\n\n\n=== 2020 ===\nIn February, it was announced that Biles was chosen to represent the United States at the Tokyo World Cup taking place on April 4. However, in March USA Gymnastics announced that Biles would not attend due to concerns about the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic both domestically and worldwide (including Japan). The following day the Japanese Gymnastics Association announced that they had canceled the event.\n\n\n=== 2021 ===\nIn May, Biles competed at the U.S. Classic. She debuted a Yurchenko double pike vault, which no woman had ever completed before, en route to another U.S. Classic all-around title. The new vault was given a preliminary D-score of 6.6, making it the highest-valued vault in women's gymnastics.\nIn June, Biles competed at the U.S. National Championships and won her 7th national all-around title and qualified for the Olympic Trials. In addition to winning the all-around title by 4.7 points, Biles also placed first in the vault, balance beam, and floor exercise, as well as third in the uneven bars. At the Olympic Trials, Biles placed first and earned an automatic spot on the Olympic team. She finished 2.266 points ahead of second-place finisher Sunisa Lee; however Lee's day two score of the competition (58.166) was higher than Biles's (57.533), which was the first time anyone had posted a higher single-day all-around score than Biles since Kyla Ross in 2013. Also named to the Olympic team were Lee, Biles's club teammate Jordan Chiles, and Grace McCallum.\n\n\n==== 2020 Summer Olympics ====\nAt the 2020 Olympic Games, held in July and August 2021, Biles performed the all-around during the qualifications and helped the United States qualify for the team final, in second place behind the Russian team. She suffered several mishaps during qualifications: she bounced entirely off the floor landing on one of her tumbling passes and stepped one foot off the landing mat during her Cheng vault, and took several large stumbles back on her balance beam dismount. Despite these mistakes, Biles still qualified for the all-around final in first place. She also qualified in first place for the vault final, advanced to the floor exercise final in second place behind Vanessa Ferrari, and qualified for the balance beam and uneven bars finals. She was the only athlete to qualify for all the individual finals.\nFollowing her qualifications performance, Biles stated on Instagram that she was \"[feeling] the weight of the world on [her] shoulders\" and that she felt affected by the pressure of the Olympics.\n\nDuring warm-ups for the first rotation of the team final, Biles balked on her Amanar vault mid-air, performing 1.5 twists instead of the expected 2.5. She repeated this in the competition, balking and performing the 1.5 twist with a large lunge and near-fall on the landing, and scored just 13.766 with a difficulty score of 5.0 (rather than the Amanar's 5.8). She subsequently left the competition floor (although she returned to the floor a few minutes later) and withdrew from the rest of the team competition, citing mental health issues. Biles later explained that she was inspired by fellow female Olympian Naomi Osaka, who had withdrawn from the French Open and Wimbledon Championships earlier in the year for similar reasons. The U.S. team went on to win the silver medal behind the Russian athletes.\nOn July 28, 2021, Biles withdrew from the finals of the individual all-around competition, again citing mental health concerns. Following further medical evaluation on July 30, she also withdrew from the vault and uneven bars finals, both scheduled for the first day of the individual event finals. Due to a continued mental block, on July 31, Biles also withdrew from the floor final, scheduled for the second day of individual event finals, while still leaving the possibility of competing in the balance beam final on the last day of the event finals. She later confirmed on August 2 that she would compete in the beam final. Although Biles performed a relatively scaled-down routine with an easier double pike dismount in the beam final, she won the bronze medal behind China's Guan Chenchen and Tang Xijing. With the bronze, she tied Shannon Miller for most Olympic medals by an American female gymnast with seven total. Biles also tied Soviet/Russian female gymnast Larisa Latynina for most medals won by a woman of all time, with 32 combined World and Olympic medals. She called her bronze beam medal her most meaningful one, as she felt it symbolized her focus on mental health and her perseverance. Biles later revealed that her aunt had died unexpectedly two days before the beam event final.\nBiles explained that she withdrew primarily due to experiencing \"the twisties\", a psychological phenomenon causing a gymnast to lose air awareness while performing twisting elements, throughout the Olympics. She noted that while it was not the first time she had had the twisties on vault or floor, it was the first time she experienced them on uneven bars and balance beam. Biles made the decision to withdraw after the first rotation of the team final because she felt that she had \"simply got so lost [her] safety was at risk as well as a team medal\". During the week, Juntendo University allowed Biles to practice at their gym, located an hour outside of Tokyo, where she could practice quietly away from the public eye.\nSome commentators criticized Biles, accusing her of being a \"quitter\" or selfishly depriving another athlete of the chance to compete. She was also slandered with racist, sexist, and transphobic comments in the Russian state-owned media, as well as having been openly accused of being a drug cheat due to her therapeutic use exemption for ADHD medication. Multiple gymnasts, however, defended Biles's decision and relayed their own stories of struggling with the twisties. Biles's decision to prioritize her mental health was generally widely praised and credited with starting a wider conversation about the role of mental health in sports. Alongside Biles, other Olympians in Tokyo also showed greater willingness to discuss and publicly acknowledge mental health issues, indicative of a wider approach to sport where athletes are prioritizing their health over performance.\n\n\n=== 2023 ===\nIn late June, it was announced that Biles would return to competition at the 2023 U.S. Classic, held on August 5 in the Chicago metropolitan area. She competed all four events for an all-around score of 59.100, finishing exactly five points ahead of runner-up Leanne Wong. Biles also placed first on balance beam (14.800) and floor exercise (14.900). Although she did not attempt a second vault, she did complete a Yurchenko double pike. Biles also obtained the necessary qualification score to advance to the 2023 U.S. National Championships. At the National Championships Biles won her eighth national all-around title ahead of Shilese Jones and Leanne Wong. Additionally, she placed first on balance beam and floor exercise and third on uneven bars behind Jones and Skye Blakely. With her eighth national title, Biles broke the record of Al Jochim, who won seven titles on the national level, the last one in 1933. Additionally Biles became the oldest woman to win the title at 26 years and 166 days old; she surpassed Linda Metheny Mulvihill, who was 24 and 100 days in 1971.\nIn September, Biles attended the U.S. women's selection camp for the 2023 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships and 2023 Pan American Artistic Gymnastics Championships, held in Katy, Texas. Despite two falls, she won the first day of competition with an all-around score of 55.700 which granted her automatic qualification to the U.S. Worlds team.\n\n\n==== 2023 World Championships ====\n\nAt the World Championships, Biles qualified in first place in the all-around final with a score of 58.932, nearly two points ahead of teammate Shilese Jones. She also qualified in first place to every event final except for the uneven bars, where she placed 5th, earning a spot in that final. This made her the only gymnast to qualify for all individual event finals, at these World Championships.\nIn the team competition, Biles hit her routines on every event, contributing scores of 14.800, 14.466, 14.300, and 15.166 on vault, uneven bars, balance beam, and floor exercise, respectively, to help the US to an unprecedented seventh consecutive team gold medal.\nIn the all-around competition, Biles hit all her routines, save for a small stumble during her choreography on floor exercise. She received the highest scores of the day on vault, balance beam, and floor exercise and earned her sixth world all-around gold medal with an overall score of 58.399, ahead of Brazil's Rebeca Andrade and Biles's teammate Jones. With this, Simone Biles surpassed Vitaly Scherbo as the most successful gymnast of all time at the Olympics and World Championships. In addition, she became the only gymnast besides Kōhei Uchimura to win the all-around title six times.\nIn the vault final, Biles fell on her first vault, the Yurchenko double pike, and also incurred a deduction of 0.5 due to her coach spotting her on the podium. Despite this, she earned the silver medal with an average score of 14.549, only 0.201 points behind Andrade. In the uneven bars final, she placed 5th with a score of 14.200. In the balance beam final, she placed first with a score of 14.800, one-tenth of a point ahead of the silver medalist Zhou Yaqin. During the floor exercise final she won the gold medal with a score of 14.633 after a one-tenth penalty for a step out of bounds, finishing with a lead of just .133 over Rebeca Andrade. By winning an unprecedented sixth gold medal on floor, Biles also became the first gymnast in world championships history to win that many titles on one apparatus.\n\n\n=== 2024 ===\nBiles opened her season at the Core Hydration Classic on May 18, where she placed first in the all-around and won her seventh career U.S. Classic all-around title. Additionally she recorded the highest single-vault score and placed first on floor exercise and second on uneven bars and balance beam behind Shilese Jones and Sunisa Lee respectively.\n\nAt the U.S. Gymnastics Championships, she won the gold medal in all events and became the first gymnast to win nine all-around titles at the event. She won 5.9 points ahead of second-place finisher Skye Blakely. Biles's all-around score on day one of 60.450 was the highest recorded score in this Olympic quad. As a result, she qualified for the Olympic trials.\nAt the Olympic trials, Biles placed first in the all-around, second on uneven bars, fourth on balance beam, and first on floor exercise. Despite falling off the balance beam on day two of the competition, she still won by over five points ahead of the runner-up Sunisa Lee. After the competition, she was selected to represent the United States at the 2024 Paris Olympics alongside Jade Carey, Jordan Chiles, Lee, and Hezly Rivera.\n\n\n==== 2024 Summer Olympics ====\nBiles became the fourth American female artistic gymnast to compete at three Olympic Games.\nAhead of the 2024 Paris Olympics, Biles submitted a new skill for the code of points for the uneven bars, a Weiler kip with 1.5 pirouette, which would make her the only female gymnast to have a skill named on every apparatus. She ultimately did not compete the skill.\n\nDuring the qualification round, Biles and her team qualified for the team final in first place. Individually she qualified to the all around, vault, balance beam and floor exercise finals. Additionally she was the first reserve for the uneven bars final.  During the team final Biles competed on all four apparatuses and helped the United States win the gold medal ahead of second place Italy.\nDuring the all-around final, Biles placed first ahead of rival Rebeca Andrade and defending champion Sunisa Lee, despite an uncharacteristic mistake on the uneven bars that left her behind Andrade and Kaylia Nemour after two of four rotations. Biles recovered by recording the top scores on balance beam and floor exercise of the night to win the competition. In winning the all-around competition Biles became the third female artistic gymnast to win two Olympic all-around titles after Larisa Latynina (1956–1960) and Věra Čáslavská (1964–1968) and the first to do so non-consecutively. She is one of eight Olympic gymnasts in any discipline to win two all-around titles along with Latynina, Caslavska, Alberto Braglia (MAG), Viktor Chukarin (MAG), Sawao Kato (MAG), Kohei Uchimura (MAG), and Evgeniya Kanaeva (RG); no one has ever won three.\n\nDuring the vault final, Biles performed her eponymous Biles II (Yurchenko double pike) and a Cheng to win the gold medal; as a result, she became the second woman after Čáslavská to win two Olympic vault titles.  During the balance beam final, Biles fell off the apparatus and incurred a three-tenth neutral deduction for not properly saluting the judges at the conclusion of her routine. She finished fifth as a result.  This marked the first time in her nine appearances in Olympic or World Championship beam finals that she did not win a medal; nevertheless, she is the most decorated gymnast on balance beam of all time with four gold and four bronze medals at Olympic and World Championship competition.\nDuring the floor exercise final, Biles incurred six-tenths worth of neutral deductions for going out of bounds. She scored 0.033 points less than Rebeca Andrade and won the silver medal. This marked the first time ever in Biles's senior international career that she did not win floor exercise, ending her streak of 10 consecutive international gold medals on the apparatus.\nAfter the gymnastics apparatus finals, Biles began wearing a medical boot for ceremonies and interviews due to a calf injury in her left leg that she had aggravated during the qualification round. At the closing ceremony, Biles was part of the ceremonial passing of the Olympic flag, signifying the end of the 2024 Paris Olympics and the transition into the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.\n\n\n== Awards and recognition ==\n\nBiles was named Sportswoman of the Year by the Women's Sports Foundation in 2014, and after the world championships, she was named one of ESPNW's Impact 25. She was named Team USA Female Olympic Athlete of the Year in December 2015, the fourth person to win the honor. In December 2016, Biles was chosen as one of the sponsors of the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Enterprise, alongside Olympic gold medal-winning swimmer Katie Ledecky. They are the first Olympians to be given this honor. In 2016, Biles won the Glamour Award for the Record Breaker. That same year, she was chosen as one of BBC's 100 Women as well as ESPN's Woman of the Year. In 2016, Biles became the third gymnast, after Olga Korbut and Nadia Comăneci, to be named the BBC Overseas Sports Personality of the Year.\nIn July 2017, Biles won the ESPY Award for Best Female Athlete, the second gymnast to win this award, after Nastia Liukin won it in 2009. In 2017, Simone won the Shorty Awards for the best in sports. At the 2017 Teen Choice Awards, Simone won favorite female athlete. In 2017, Biles won Laureus World Sports Award for Sportswoman of the Year. In 2017, Biles was awarded the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. In 2018, Biles was inducted into the Texas Women's Hall of Fame. In May 2018, Biles and the other survivors were awarded the Arthur Ashe Courage Award. In December, Biles was named ESPN The Magazine's most dominant athlete of 2018. In February 2019, Biles was named Laureus World Sports Award in the category of Sportswoman of the Year for the second time, beating out tennis players Simona Halep and Angelique Kerber, snowboarder Ester Ledecká, triathlete Daniela Ryf, and skier Mikaela Shiffrin. Biles was nominated for the 2019 ESPY Award for Best Female Athlete but lost to soccer player Alex Morgan. In November 2019, Biles won the People's Choice Award for Game Changer of 2019. In February 2020, Biles was awarded the Laureus World Sports Award for Sportswoman of the Year for the second consecutive year and third time overall, beating out nominees Allyson Felix, Megan Rapinoe, Mikaela Shiffrin, Naomi Osaka, and Shelly-Ann Fraser. Biles has appeared on the covers of such magazines as Vogue, Vanity Fair, Essence, and People.\nIn February 2021, Biles criticized ESPN's SportsCenter for including no women in their \"Greatest of All Time\" photograph. In September 2021, she was named to the Time 100, an annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world, for \"championing mental health\".\n\nOn July 7, 2022, Biles became the youngest person to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest honor given to civilians. She was among 17 honorees, including Megan Rapinoe, honored by President Joe Biden at the White House.\nIn December 2023, Biles was named Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year for the third time (2016, 2019, 2023) and named international female Champion of Champions by L'Équipe for the fourth time (2016, 2018, 2019, 2023).\nIn April 2024, Biles was awarded her fourth Laureus World Sports Award in the category of Comeback of the Year. In July 2024, she received the Best Comeback Athlete ESPY Award. Biles was named Sports Illustrated's 2024 Sportsperson of the Year for winning three gold medals at the 2024 Summer Olympics, for changing gymnastics in the United States, and altering conversations about athletes. In August 2024, the International Sports Press Association (AIPS) voted her as the third-best female athlete of the past 100 years, after Serena Williams and Nadia Comăneci.\nIn April 2025, Biles was awarded her fifth Laureus World Sports Award in the category of Sportswoman of the Year for the fourth time.  The following month, Biles was awarded an honorary doctorate in humane letters from Washington University in St. Louis.\nAt the 2025 ESPY Awards, Biles won the Best Championship Performance award and Best Female Athlete ESPY Award, becoming the sixth person to win the latter award twice.\n\n\n== Sponsors and endorsements ==\nBiles signed with the Octagon sports agency in July 2015, which also markets fellow American gymnast Aly Raisman and Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps. In November 2015, she announced  her sponsorship by Nike. On November 23, 2015, she signed a deal to allow GK Elite Sportswear to sell a line of leotards bearing her name. Later in 2015, Biles signed a deal with Core Power to become a spokesperson on its Everyday Awesome team of athletes. In August 2016, Kellogg's put the Final Five's picture on the Gold Medal Edition of Special berries; the back of the box showed Biles with one of her Rio gold medals. After the 2016 Rio games, Biles signed deals to endorse Procter & Gamble, The Hershey Company, and United Airlines. In September 2016, Biles became a spokesperson for Mattress Firm's program of supporting foster homes. In 2016, Biles signed a deal with Spieth America to create a line of gymnastics equipment, and another to become a spokesperson for Beats By Dr Dre. In 2018, she worked with Caboodles to create and market products for women with active lifestyles. In April 2021, Biles announced that she was leaving Nike for a new apparel sponsorship with the Gap's Athleta brand. In 2023, Biles became a featured athlete on Wheaties cereal boxes.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\n\n\n=== Relationships ===\nBiles was in a relationship with fellow gymnast Stacey Ervin Jr. from August 2017 to March 2020.\nShe began dating professional American football player Jonathan Owens in August 2020. They met through the dating app Raya. Biles announced her engagement to Owens on February 15, 2022, and they were married on April 22, 2023.\n\n\n=== Health ===\nIn September 2017, Biles spoke about having attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) after her medical records were leaked online, revealing that she had been taking Ritalin (methylphenidate) to treat the condition during the Olympics. Having been diagnosed as a child, she had previously disclosed her condition to the World Anti-Doping Agency and obtained a medical exemption, allowing her to take the medication during competition. Biles said that ADHD is \"nothing to be ashamed of and nothing that I'm afraid to let people know.\"\nBiles underwent a breast augmentation in June 2025 and has openly discussed details of the procedure. She has also disclosed receiving other cosmetic plastic surgery procedures including a lower blepharoplasty and earlobe surgery.\n\n\n=== Tattoos ===\nAs of mid-2024, Simone Biles had seven tattoos. She got her first—the Olympic rings on her right forearm—after competing in the 2016 Summer Olympics. She also has a butterfly tattoo on the back of her right hand, an \"XO\" tattoo on her inner lip, a \"Golden\" tattoo on her inner left wrist, a \"1997\" tattoo just above her elbow, an \"I Shall Rise\" tattoo on her clavicle, and, on an unknown location, a \"444\" tattoo that matches Owens'.\n\n\n=== Volunteering ===\nIn 2021, Biles became an ambassador for Friends of the Children, a nonprofit organization that provides professional mentorship to at-risk youth. She spoke to children in the program about her experiences in foster care and about the support the nonprofit provides to children in foster care. During her Gold Over America tour, Biles donated $50,000 towards the opening of a Houston chapter for the organization.\n\n\n== Skills ==\nBiles is known for performing extraordinarily difficult skills well. Her 2023 routine on vault and her 2024 routine on floor exercise are the most difficult ever performed in women's artistic gymnastics. As of 2024, she is the sole gymnast to have competed four floor-exercise skills valued at H or higher in the 2022–2024 Code of Points.\nSkills rated E or higher that she has performed in her senior career include:\n\n\n=== Eponymous skills ===\n\nBiles's named elements on vault, balance beam, and floor exercise introduced during the 2017–2021 quad are the most difficult elements on each apparatus (the Biles on beam, Biles on vault, and Biles II on floor). She was the sole gymnast to have performed any of these skills in an FIG international competition until Hillary Heron of Panama performed the Biles I on floor at the 2023 World Championships. In May 2021, she became the first woman to complete a Yurchenko double piked on the vault during competition.\n\n\n== Competitive history ==\n\n\n== Filmography ==\n\n\n=== Documentary ===\n\n\n== See also ==\n\nFinal Five – the gold medal-winning team at the 2016 Summer Olympics\nMeToo movement\nList of Olympic female artistic gymnasts for the United States\nList of top female medalists at major artistic gymnastics events\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nOfficial website \nSimone Biles at World Gymnastics\nSimone Biles at USA Gymnastics\nSimone Biles at Team USA (archive March 18, 2023)\nSimone Biles at Olympedia \nSimone Biles at Olympics.com \nBiles (floor exercise) at g-flash.net"}
{"title": "Sixten Jernberg", "requested": "Sixten Jernberg", "extract": "Edy Sixten Jernberg (6 February 1929 – 14 July 2012) was a Swedish cross-country skier and one of the most successful cross-country skiers of all time. Between 1952 and 1964 he took part in 363 ski races, finishing on the podium in 263 and winning 134 of them; during this period he won four world titles and nine Olympic medals. In 12 starts over three consecutive Winter Games he never finished worse than fifth place, and between 1955 and 1960, he won 86 out of 161 competitions.\nJernberg was a blacksmith and a lumberjack before beginning his career as a cross-country skier. He specialized in the longer distances, with four of his eight gold medals coming over 50 km, one over 30 km and three in the 4 × 10 km relay. He also won Vasaloppet twice, 1955 and 1960. He won the 15 km at the Holmenkollen ski festival in 1954.\nAt one competition, Jernberg had a fever and coughed up blood, but still finished the 50 km event. Gunde Svan said: \"It was almost like [Sixten] didn't like his own body and tried to punish it in different ways.\"\nFor his cross-country skiing successes, Jernberg was awarded the Holmenkollen medal in 1960 (shared with Helmut Recknagel, Sverre Stensheim and Tormod Knutsen). He was also awarded the Svenska Dagbladet Gold Medal in 1956 (shared with pentathlete Lars Hall).\nJernberg retired after the Olympic Winter Games of 1964. In 1965, the International Olympic Committee awarded Jernberg the Mohammed Taher Trophy for his contributions to Nordic skiing. He died of a stroke at the age of 83. His nephew Ingemar became an Olympic pole vaulter.\n\n\n== Cross-country skiing results ==\nAll results are sourced from the International Ski Federation (FIS).\n\n\n=== Olympic Games ===\n9 medals – (4 gold, 3 silver, 2 bronze)\n\n\n=== World Championships ===\n6 medals – (4 gold, 2 bronze)\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Winter Olympic medalists\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Olympic medalists\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nSixten Jernberg at the International Ski and Snowboard Federation\nSixten Jernberg at IMDb\nHolmenkollen medalists – click Holmenkollmedaljen for downloadable pdf file (in Norwegian)\nHolmenkollen winners since 1892 – click Vinnere for downloadable pdf file (in Norwegian)\nSixten Jernberg at Olympedia \nSixten Jernberg at Olympics.com\nSixten Jernberg at Sveriges Olympiska Kommitté (in Swedish) (in English)"}
{"title": "Sonja Henie", "requested": "Sonja Henie", "extract": "Sonja Henie (8 April 1912 – 12 October 1969) was a Norwegian figure skater and film star. She was a three-time Olympic champion (1928, 1932, 1936) in women's singles, a ten-time World champion (1927–1936) and a six-time European champion (1931–1936). Henie won more Olympic and World titles than any other ladies' figure skater. She is one of only two skaters to successfully defend a ladies' singles Olympic title, the other being Katarina Witt, and her six consecutive European titles have only been matched by Witt.\nAt the height of Henie's American acting career, she was one of the highest-paid stars in Hollywood and starred in a series of box-office hits, including Thin Ice (1937), Happy Landing (1938), My Lucky Star (1938), Second Fiddle (1939), and Sun Valley Serenade (1941).\n\n\n== Biography ==\n\n\n=== Early life ===\nHenie was born on 8 April 1912 in Kristiania (now Oslo), Norway; she was the only daughter of Wilhelm Henie (1872–1937), a prosperous Norwegian furrier, and his wife, Selma Lochmann-Nielsen (1888–1961). In addition to the income from the fur business, both of Henie's parents had inherited wealth. Wilhelm Henie had been a one-time World Cycling Champion and the Henie children were encouraged to take up a variety of sports at a young age. Henie initially showed talent at skiing, then followed her older brother, Leif, to take up figure skating. As a girl Henie also was a nationally ranked tennis player, and a skilled swimmer and equestrian. Once Henie began serious training as a figure skater, her formal schooling ended. She was educated by tutors, and her father hired the best experts in the world, including the famous Russian ballerina, Tamara Karsavina, to transform his daughter into a sporting celebrity.\nHenie began skating at the age of 5. She enjoyed music and dance from an early age, studying ballet and after starting her competitive skating career, admired the Russian ballet dancer Anna Pavlova after seeing her perform in London.\n\n\n=== Competitive career ===\n\nHenie placed eighth in a field of eight at the 1924 Winter Olympics, at the age of eleven. Henie won the first of an unprecedented ten consecutive World Figure Skating Championships in 1927 at the age of fourteen. The results of 1927 World Championships, where Henie won in 3–2 decision (or 7 vs. 8 ordinal points) over the defending Olympic and World Champion Herma Szabo of Austria, was \"controversial\", as three of the five judges that gave Henie first-place ordinals were Norwegian (1 + 1 + 1 + 2 + 2 = 7 points) while Szabo received first-place ordinals from an Austrian and a German judge (1 + 1 + 2 + 2 + 2 = 8 points). Henie went on to win the first of her three Olympic gold medals the following year, becoming one of the youngest figure skating Olympic champions. She defended her Olympic titles in 1932 and in 1936, and her world titles annually until 1936. Henie and Gillis Grafström from Sweden are the only skaters to win three Olympic gold medals in single skating. She also won six consecutive European championships from 1931 to 1936.\nHenie's unprecedented three Olympic gold medals have not been matched by any ladies' singles skater since, nor have her achievements as ten-time consecutive World champion. While Irina Slutskaya of Russia has held the record for most European titles among ladies' skaters since 2006, Henie still retains the record of most consecutive titles, sharing it with Katarina Witt of East Germany/Germany (1983–1988).\nTowards the end of her career, she began to be strongly challenged by younger skaters including Cecilia Colledge, Megan Taylor, and Hedy Stenuf. However, she held off these competitors and went on to win her third Olympic title at the 1936 Winter Olympics, albeit in very controversial circumstances with Cecilia Colledge finishing a very close second. Indeed, after the school figures section at the 1936 Olympic competition, Colledge and Henie were virtually neck and neck with Colledge trailing by just a few points. As Sandra Stevenson recounted in The Independent, \"the closeness [of the competition] infuriated Henie, who, when the result for that section was posted on a wall in the competitors' lounge, swiped the piece of paper and tore it into little pieces.\nThe draw for the free skating [then] came under suspicion after Henie landed the plum position of skating last, while Colledge had to perform second of the 26 competitors. The early start was seen as a disadvantage, with the audience not yet whipped into a clapping frenzy and the judges known to become freer with their higher marks as the event proceeded. Years later, a fairer, staggered draw was adopted to counteract this situation\".\nDuring her competitive career, Henie traveled widely and worked with a variety of foreign coaches. At home in Oslo, she trained at Frogner Stadium, where her coaches included Hjørdis Olsen and Oscar Holte. During the latter part of her competitive career she was coached primarily by the American Howard Nicholson in London.\nIn addition to traveling to train and compete, she was much in demand as a performer at figure skating exhibitions in both Europe and North America. Henie became so popular with the public that police had to be called out for crowd control on her appearances in various disparate cities such as Prague and New York City.\nIt was an open secret that, in spite of the strict amateurism requirements of the time, Wilhelm Henie demanded \"expense money\" for his daughter's skating appearances. Both of Henie's parents had given up their own pursuits in Norway—leaving Leif to run the fur business—in order to accompany Sonja on her travels and act as her managers.\n\n\n=== Professional and film career ===\n\nAfter the 1936 World Figure Skating Championships, Henie gave up her amateur status and took up a career as a professional performer in acting and live shows. While still a girl, Henie had decided that she wanted to move to California and become a movie star when her competitive days were over, without considering that her strong accent might hinder her acting ambitions.\nHenie opened up opportunities for figure skaters to use their skills to earn a living. In addition to appearing in Hollywood films, she toured North America with her own professional shows, thus amassing a great deal of personal wealth and by popularizing the ice show, opened up professional skating opportunities for other lesser-known figure skaters.\nIn 1936, following a successful ice show in Los Angeles orchestrated by her father to launch her film career, Hollywood studio chief Darryl Zanuck signed her to a long-term contract at Twentieth Century Fox, which made her one of the highest-paid actresses of the time. After the success of her first film, One in a Million (1936), Henie's position was assured and she became increasingly demanding in her business dealings with Zanuck. Henie also insisted on having total control of the skating numbers in her films such as Second Fiddle (1939).\nHenie tried to break the musical comedy mould with the anti-Nazi film Everything Happens at Night (1939) and It's a Pleasure (1945), a skating variation of the often-told A Star Is Born tale about alcoholic-star-in-decline-helps-newcomer-up. It was her only film shot in Technicolor, but it was not as huge at the box office as her other films and also proved her limitations as a dramatic actress in her only dramatic film.\nWhen Zanuck realized this, he cast her in more musical comedies: Sun Valley Serenade (1941) with Glenn Miller, John Payne, The Nicholas Brothers, and hit songs such as \"In the Mood\", \"Chattanooga Choo Choo\", \"It Happened in Sun Valley\", and \"I Know Why (And So Do You)\"; followed by Iceland (1942) with Jack Oakie, Payne, and the hit song \"There Will Never Be Another You\"; and finally Wintertime (1943) with Cesar Romero, Carole Landis, Cornel Wilde, and Oakie. Sonja had by now developed a comedy flair and these films were all among the top box-office hits for 20th Century-Fox the respective years. Adjusted for 2017 dollars, eight Henie movies crossed the $100 million domestic gross mark. Happy Landing (1938) was her biggest box office hit.\n\nIn her film Everything Happens at Night (1939), Ray Milland and Robert Cummings star as rival reporters hot on the trail of Hugo Norden (Maurice Moscovich). Norden, a Nobel Prize winner, was supposedly murdered by the Gestapo, but is rumoured to be in hiding and writing anonymous dispatches advocating world peace. When Geoffrey and Ken track Norden to a small village in the Swiss Alps, they soon find themselves competing over the affections of beautiful Louise (Henie), who has a deeper connection to the missing Nobel laureate than the reporters realize. When Geoffrey and Ken get so distracted by romance that they begin to neglect their assignments, it almost leads to disaster as the Gestapo sets out to silence Norden once and for all. Released on 22 December 1939, it was banned in Nazi Germany.\nIn addition to her film career at Fox from 1936 to 1943, Henie formed a business arrangement with Arthur Wirtz, who produced her touring ice shows under the name of \"Hollywood Ice Revue\". Wirtz also acted as Henie's financial advisor. At the time, figure skating and ice shows were not yet an established form of entertainment in the United States. Henie's popularity as a film actress attracted many new fans and instituted skating shows as a popular new entertainment. Throughout the 1940s, Henie and Wirtz produced lavish musical ice skating extravaganzas at Rockefeller Center's Center Theatre attracting millions of ticket buyers.\n\nHenie broke off her arrangement with Wirtz in 1950 and for the next three seasons produced her own tours under the name \"Sonja Henie Ice Revue\". It was an ill-advised decision to set herself up in competition with Wirtz, whose shows now featured the new Olympic champion Barbara Ann Scott. Since Wirtz controlled the best arenas and dates, Henie was left playing smaller venues and markets already saturated by other touring ice shows such as Ice Capades. The collapse of a section of bleachers during a show in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1952 compounded the tour's legal and financial woes.\nIn 1953, Henie formed a new partnership with Morris Chalfen to appear in his European Holiday On Ice tour, which proved to be a great success. She produced her own show at New York's Roxy Theatre in January 1956. However, a subsequent South American tour in 1956 was a disaster. Henie was drinking heavily at that time and could no longer keep up with the demands of touring, and this marked her retirement from skating.\nShe did try to make a film series at her own expense; a series that would serve as a travelogue to several cities. Paris and London were mentioned, but only Hello London (1958) was made with her own backing, co-starring Michael Wilding and special guest star Stanley Holloway. While her ice show numbers were still worth watching, the film received few distributors and poor reviews, ending her film career.\nHer autobiography Mitt livs eventyr was published in 1938. An English translation, Wings on My Feet, was released in 1940 and republished in a revised edition in 1954. At the time of her death, the 57-year-old Henie was planning a comeback for a television special that would have aired in January 1970. She was to have danced to \"Lara's Theme\" from Doctor Zhivago.\n\n\n=== As international celebrity ===\n\nHenie's connections with Adolf Hitler and other high-ranking Nazi officials made her the subject of controversy before, during, and after World War II. During her amateur skating career, she performed often in Germany and was a favorite of German audiences and of Hitler personally. As a wealthy celebrity, she moved in the same social circles as royalty and heads of state and made Hitler's acquaintance as a matter of course.\nThrough the years, her shows and later art exhibitions drew the attention of such people as Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon and Gustaf VI Adolf of Sweden and she met with them. During the shooting of Second Fiddle (1939), she greeted the then Crown-Prince couple of Norway Olav and Märtha during their US tour.\nControversy appeared first when Henie greeted Hitler with a Nazi salute at the 1936 Winter Olympics in Garmisch-Partenkirchen and after the Games she accepted an invitation to lunch with Hitler at his resort home in Berchtesgaden in far southeastern Bavaria, where Hitler presented Henie with an autographed photo with a lengthy inscription. She was strongly denounced in the Norwegian press for this.\nIn her revised 1954 biography, she states that no Norwegian judge was in the panel for the 1936 Olympics—as she was entitled to as a Norwegian. She therefore made the best of it and won her third Olympic medal. When she—as a gold medal winner—passed Hitler's tribune with silver medalist Cecilia Colledge and bronze medalist Vivi-Anne Hultén, neither she nor the others honored Hitler with the Nazi salute. The 1936 European Figure Skating Championships also took place in Berlin and neither Henie, Colledge, nor Megan Taylor paid obeisance to Hitler.\n\n\n=== Influence ===\n\nHenie is credited with being the first figure skater to use dance choreography, to adopt the short skirt in figure skating, and to wear white boots, which deemphasized the heaviness of skates and produced a lighter and longer appearance of the skater's legs that was \"a focal point for judges' and spectators' gaze\". When white boots quickly became standard for female skaters, Henie began wearing beige boots because she wanted to remain unique.\nHer innovative skating techniques and glamorous demeanor transformed the sport permanently and confirmed its acceptance as a legitimate sport in the Winter Olympics. Figure skating writer and historian Ellyn Kestnbaum credits Henie with transforming figure skating into what she calls \"a spectacle of the skater's body\" and for \"shifting [the sport's] meanings firmly in the direction of femininity\". Kestnbaum argues that Henie influenced female skaters' costumes that emphasized their wealth, especially her fur-trimmed outfits, which were emulated at the 1930 World Championships, held for the first time in North America, in New York City. Henie incorporated dance elements into her figure skating, through the placement of spins, jumps, and choreography to reflect the mood of the music she used.\nKestnbaum argues that although Henie's skating was \"athletic and powerful for her day\", she added elements,such as using the toepicks of her skates to run or pose on the ice, in movements similar to the use of pointe technique in ballet. Kestnbaum argues that although toe steps are used as \"occasional counterpoints to the legato flow of skating movement\", Henie might have overused them, calling them \"mincing and ineffective\".\nAlso according to Kestnbaum, \"Henie's largest contribution to public images of skating\" was in her professional ice shows and in her Hollywood films, which were often the first time audiences were exposed to figure skating through the mass media. As a result, the image of the figure skater was linked to \"the image of the glamorous movie star\", within the conventions of film and stage musicals of the 1930s. Kestnbaum argues that the costumes Henie wore in her shows and films, which were short, revealing, full of sequins and feathers, and more reminiscent of the costumes of female entertainers than of the clothes worn in the more conservative world of competitive figure skating of the time, most likely contributed to the \"showiness\" that influenced the costume choices of later generations of female competitive figure skaters.\n\n\n=== Personal life ===\n\nHenie was married three times: to Dan Topping (1940–1946), Winthrop Gardiner Jr. (1949–1956), and Niels Onstad (1956–1969; her death), a Norwegian shipping magnate and art patron. After her retirement in 1956, Henie and Onstad settled in Oslo and accumulated a large collection of modern art that formed the basis for the Henie Onstad Art Centre at Høvikodden in Bærum near Oslo.\nShe studied in Oslo together with Martin Stixrud and Erna Andersen who was her competitor and skate club member.\nHenie was diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia in the mid-1960s. She died of the disease at age 57 in 1969 in an ambulance plane flight from Paris to Oslo. She is buried with Onstad in Oslo on the hilltop overlooking the Henie Onstad Art Centre.\n\n\n== Results ==\n\n\n=== Ladies' singles ===\n\n\n=== Pairs ===\n(with Arne Lie)\n\n\n== Awards ==\nInducted into the World Figure Skating Hall of Fame (1976)\nInducted into the International Women's Sports Hall of Fame (1982)\nShe has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.\nIn 1938, at age 25, she became the youngest person to be made a knight first class of The Royal Norwegian Order of St. Olav.\nHonorary Colonel and Godmother of the 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division, Fort Bragg, North Carolina\n\n\n== Filmography ==\n\n\n== Other appearances ==\n\nFor a time, Sonja Henie's picture adorned the tail of a Boeing 737-300 of the airline Norwegian Air Shuttle. As the Boeing 737-300 was being phased out, her picture was placed on the tail of a Boeing 737-800 of the same airline and in 2013 to the tail of Norwegian Air Shuttle's first Boeing 787 Dreamliner. One of the airline's trademarks is having portraits of famous deceased Norwegians on the tails of its aircraft.\nIn 2012, the Posten Norge (Norwegian postal service) issued two stamps featuring Sonja Henie.\nFootage of her skating is shown in Yugoslav Black Wave film I Miss Sonja Henie (1971).\n\n\n== In popular culture ==\nHenie was portrayed by Ine Marie Wilmann in the 2018 Anne Sewitsky film Sonja – The White Swan, shown at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival.\nHer name and likeness were mentioned and portrayed by an ice skating Donald Duck in Walt Disney's 1939 The Hockey Champ.\nHer name and appearance was shown in episode 285 of MASH 4077.\nHer animated counterpart appeared in the Disney short, The Autograph Hound when Donald asked for her autograph.\nShe is mentioned by Ty Webb, Chevy Chase's character in Caddyshack, as a possible but unavailable substitute for Rodney Dangerfield's character (Al Czervik) in the final “golf wager” round before Michael O’Keefe's Danny Noonan is chosen.\n\"Sonja Henie's tutu!\" was a frequent exclamatory utterance by Tom and Ray Magliozzi on the National Public Radio show Car Talk.\n\n\n== Works ==\nHenie, Sonja (1955). Wings on My Feet (revised ed.). New York: Prentice-Hall. OCLC 952642135.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== Works cited ==\nAndersen, Alf G. Som i en drøm: Sonja Henies liv. Schibsted (1985) ISBN 82-516-1041-9\nHenie, Leif and Raymond Strait. Queen of Ice, Queen of Shadows: The Unsuspected Life of Sonja Henie.\nHines, James R. (2011). Historical Dictionary of Figure Skating. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press. ISBN 978-0-8108-6859-5.\nKestnbaum, Ellyn (2003). Culture on Ice: Figure Skating and Cultural Meaning. Middleton, Connecticut: Wesleyan Publishing Press. ISBN 0-8195-6641-1.\nVariety (January 1943)\nVariety (January 1944)\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nSonja Henie at IMDb\nSonja Henie at Find a Grave\nOlympic.org Athlete Profile – Henie\nHenie skating in 1947, film clip by British Pathé\nSonja Henie at Olympics.com\nSonja Henie at Olympedia\nSonja Henie at InterSportStats"}
{"title": "Stanislav Pozdnyakov", "requested": "Stanislav Pozdnyakov", "extract": "Stanislav Alekseyevich Pozdnyakov (Russian: Станислав Алексеевич Поздняков, IPA: [stənʲɪˈslaf pəzʲnʲɪˈkof]; born 27 September 1973) is a Russian former fencer, five-time Olympian (1992–2008), and five-time Olympic medalist in individual and team sabre competitions who previously served as president of the Russian Olympic Committee from 2018 to 2024. He is also a ten-time individual and team world champion, in 1994–2007. In 2022, he was removed from his position as European Fencing Confederation (EFC) president at an Extraordinary Congress following a unanimous vote of no confidence in Pozdnyakov, due to his conduct in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.\n\n\n== Personal ==\nHis daughter Sofia Pozdniakova is also a fencer. She won the gold medal in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics Women's Individual Sabre event. Her clubs are the Russian Central Sports Army Club and the Novosibirsk Regional Fencing Sports School of Olympic Reserve.\nPozdnyakov's former son-in-law Konstantin Lokhanov won two world junior championships in sabre, and fenced in the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. His son-in-law emigrated to the United States in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, however, as he was against the war, and at the end of the day the couple divorced.  Describing her decision to not accept her husband's request that she join him in the United States, Sofia later said: \"As for feelings, love, there was a moment when we did not understand where to go. I got up in the morning and thought: 'That’s it, I’m going to the States.' I was figuring out how I would communicate with my parents, how to explain all this to my dad... He would simply erase me from his life. Then the next day such thoughts: 'So, I’m staying here, my parents, my family – this is important to me.'\" Pozdnyakov called his daughter’s decision \"the most important gift for Father’s Day.\"\nAfter Lokhanov moved to the United States, his father-in-law – in what The New York Times called an apparent swipe at Western frivolousness—referred to him obliquely as having \"the sad fate of frightened lovers of raspberry frappé and yellow scooters.\" When asked about the remark, Lokhanov said he found it funny and unsurprising, even though he was not quite sure why it had been made, and then added with a smile: \"I never had a scooter. I'm a big coffee lover, but not frappé.\"\n\n\n== Russian Army ==\n\nPozdnyakov has been a lieutenant colonel in the Russian Army.\nIn September 2022, Pozdnyakov urged Russian athletes to fight for Russia in Russia's war against Ukraine, saying the athletes should feel honored to do so. He said: \"From the point of view of the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC), we, being citizens of the country, consider service to the motherland is an honourable duty and an honourable duty of every citizen, including members of national teams.\"\nIn April 2023, during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Pozdnyakov announced that the ROC had awarded CSKA (the Russian Central Army Sports Club, which is a department of the Russian Defence Ministry, and which is also Pozdnyakov's own club) with the ROC's Badge of Honor \"For Merits in the Development of the Olympic Movement in Russia,\" and he attended a special presentation to present the award to Russian military officers.\n\n\n== Fencing career ==\nPozdnyakov was one of the most successful Olympic fencers of his time. At the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain, as a member of the Unified Team he received a team gold, though he lost the only bout he fenced, to Canadian Jean-Paul Banos.\nIn 1996, in Atlanta, Georgia, United States, now competing for Russia, he again won gold in the team event, and added his third gold in the individual event. His third Olympics was in 2000, where he won his third consecutive team gold (his fourth gold overall), though in the individual competition he was knocked out with a defeat in his second bout. At the 2004 Olympics, Pozdnyakov again competed as part of the Russian men's sabre team, which beat the USA 45-44 for the bronze medal.\nAt his fifth and last Olympics in 2008, Pozdnyakov lost his only bout in the individual competition. He then finished without a medal in team as well, as Russia was defeated in the semi-finals by the USA 45–44, as Pozdnyakov failed to win a bout against the Americans. The United States had been losing to Russia 40-35 going into the last bout, but in that match American Keeth Smart outscored Pozdnyakov 10-4 for the one-touch team  win.  Russia then also lost its bronze medal match. Pozdnyakov subsequently retired.\nIn his career, Pozdnyakov won the World Fencing Championships individual event five times, and the team event five times. He also won three individual and two team silver medals, and two team bronze medals.\n\n\n== Sports administrative career ==\n\n\n=== 2008–14 ===\nIn 2008 Pozdnyakov became head coach for the Russian national team in all weapons. In 2009 he was appointed first deputy president of the Russian Fencing Federation.\n\n\n=== 2015–19 ===\nIn June 2016 he was elected President of the European Fencing Confederation (EFC). All Confederation Presidents are members of the Executive Committee of the International Fencing Federation (FIE).\nFrom 2016-18 Pozdnyakov was First Vice-President of the Russian Olympic Committee.\nIn 2017 he received the \"Order of Merit for the Fatherland” classe II for \"the successful preparation of athletes who have achieved high sporting achievements at the XXXI Olympic Games in 2016.\"\n\nIn February 2018, he managed the \"Olympic Athletes from Russia\" neutral delegation at the Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea, after Russia's team was banned for doping. He was questioned by the press as to how it could be that he was managing the team, given that the Russian Olympic Committee had been suspended from the Winter Games, and he was the ROC's vice president. Pozdnyakov responded: \"The IOC decision says that the Russian Olympic Committee is suspended. The president and the general secretary for the Russian Olympic Committee are not able to participate in these games. But (there's) nothing about the vice president or other staff members of the Russian Olympic Committee.\"\nSince he was elected in May 2018, as Vladimir Putin's choice, Pozdnyakov has served as the President of the Russian Olympic Committee. He was re-elected in 2022.\nIn December 2019, after the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) banned Russia from all major sporting events for four years for tampering with laboratory data on doping, Pozdnyakov opined that the sanctions were inappropriate and excessive. WADA imposed the sanctions after its executive committee concluded that Russia had planted fake evidence, and deleted files linked to positive doping tests in laboratory data that could have helped identify drug cheats.\n\n\n=== 2020–present ===\nIn June 2022, he was removed from his position as European Fencing Confederation (EFC) President at an Extraordinary Congress following a unanimous vote of no confidence in Pozdnyakov that March, due to his xenophobic conduct in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine which had commenced in late February 2022.\nIn February 2023, Vadym Gutzeit, Ukraine's Youth and Sport Minister as well as the president of the Ukrainian Fencing Federation (and former Olympic champion sabre fencer) and the President of the National Olympic Committee of Ukraine, who had competed with Pozdnyakov when they were teammates from Russia and Ukraine on the post-Soviet Unified Team at the 1992 Olympics, said he had only contempt for Pozdnyakov. Gutzeit blames Pozdnyakov for vocally supporting Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Gutzeit said: \"I don't want to talk to him. I don't want to know him at all. He is my enemy, who supports this war, who considers it an honor for athletes to take part in the war against Ukrainians, to kill Ukrainians. Therefore, for today and forever, this person does not exist for me.”\nIn April 2023, Pozdnyakov expressed surprise that there was talk of Russian athletes losing motivation during their continued ineligibility to compete in major international events, as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.\nIn July 2023, a Russian effort to have Ukrainian three-time world sabre champion Olha Kharlan black-carded at the 2023 World Fencing Championships backfired dramatically. Kharlan had offered her defeated Russian opponent a tapping of blades at the end of their bout, a pandemic substitute for handshakes, rather than a handshake. Kharlan was briefly black-carded by the FIE, an hour after the Russian's protest was lodged, but upon the event being reviewed by the IOC its president granted Kharlan an automatic berth in the 2024 Paris Olympics, expressed empathy for what she had gone through, and had the FIE reverse itself. Pozdnyakov railed against what he called the \"duplicity\" of the IOC, and accused it of picking a sides in a political conflict.\nIn December 2023, Pozdnyakov directly threatened any Russian athlete who may choose to participate as a \"neutral\" at the 2024 Olympics, saying: \"As the head of the ROC, I voice a clear position: ... We live in a free state... But... we strongly recommend that you thoroughly understand ... the extent and consequences of the personal responsibility assumed.\" In June 2024, top Russian Olympic official and Vladimir Putin's lieutenant Dmitry Chernyshenko stated that Russian athletes would not violate Russian law by competing in Paris as neutrals and encouraged them to participate.\nPozdnyakov resigned as head of the ROC on 15 October 2024, citing \"timely\" reasons such as \"geopolitical changes\".\n\n\n== See also ==\nMultiple medallist at the World Fencing Championships\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n Media related to Stanislav Pozdnyakov at Wikimedia Commons\n Quotations related to Stanislav Pozdnyakov at Wikiquote\nStanislav Pozdnyakov at the International Fencing Federation \nStanislav Pozdnyakov at Olympedia \nStanislav Pozdnyakov at Olympics.com"}
{"title": "Steve Redgrave", "requested": "Steve Redgrave", "extract": "Sir Steven Geoffrey Redgrave (born 23 March 1962) is a British retired rower who won gold medals at five consecutive Olympic Games from 1984 to 2000. He has also won three Commonwealth Games gold medals and nine World Rowing Championships golds. He is the most successful male rower in Olympic history, and the only man to have won gold medals at five Olympic Games in an endurance sport.\nRedgrave is regarded as one of Britain's greatest-ever Olympians. Celebrated as the most decorated and successful British Olympian in history at the time of his retirement in 2000, as of 2025 he is the fifth-most successful British Olympian, after Chris Hoy, Jason Kenny, Bradley Wiggins, and Laura Kenny, all track cyclists. He has carried the British flag at the opening of the Olympic Games on two occasions. In 2002, he was ranked number 36 in the BBC poll of the 100 Greatest Britons. He received the BBC Sports Personality of the Year – Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011.\nAlthough he raced in a series of different pairs and foursomes, Redgrave's career is most closely associated with long-term colleague and fellow knight of the realm, Sir Matthew Pinsent, with whom he won three of his Olympic gold medals, and seven of his World Championship titles.\n\n\n== Early life and education ==\n\nRedgrave was born in Marlow, Buckinghamshire, to Geoffrey Edward Redgrave, a submariner in the Second World War who became a builder, and Sheila Marion, daughter of Harold Stevenson, a local bus driver. His great-grandparents Harry and Susannah Redgrave moved to Marlow from Bramfield, Suffolk, in 1887. He was educated at Great Marlow School.\n\n\n== Rowing career ==\nRedgrave's primary discipline was sweep rowing, in which he won Olympic Gold rowing both bowside and strokeside (port and starboard).\nFrom 1991, the crews in which he rowed became renowned for their consistent dominance, winning almost every time they raced. Profiles of the Redgrave-Pinsent pairing in particular reflected their perceived invulnerability, arguing \"the best pair in the world today is Steve Redgrave, and whomever Steve Redgrave chooses to row with. The second best pair is Matthew Pinsent, and whomever Matthew Pinsent chooses to row with\"; the pair were not only widely considered the best pair in the world at their peak, but the best two individual sweep rowers.\nFor much of his career he suffered illness: in 1992 he was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, and in 1997 he was diagnosed with diabetes mellitus type 2.\n\n\n=== Olympic Games ===\nRedgrave won gold medals at five consecutive Olympic Games from 1984 to 2000, plus a bronze medal at the 1988 Summer Olympics.\nImmediately after winning the 1996 Olympic gold medal, he stated in a televised interview that if anyone found him close to a rowing boat again, \"you have my permission to shoot me\". However, he changed his mind shortly afterward, and resumed training after a four-month break. The gold medal achieved by him and Matthew Pinsent in the coxless pair at the Atlanta 1996 games was particularly notable for being the only gold medal achieved by the entire British Olympic team across all sports during that particular Olympic games.\nIn 2000, he won his fifth consecutive Olympic gold medal and retired from the sport. In August 2000, prior to his final Olympic Games, the BBC broadcast Gold Fever, a three-part BBC documentary which had followed the coxless four in the years leading up to the Olympics. It included video diaries recording the highs and lows in the quest for gold, the switch from a pair to a four, and Redgrave's struggles with a series of debilitating conditions. At the medal ceremony after the 2000 Summer Olympics he was also presented with a gold Olympic pin by IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch in recognition of his achievement.\n\n\n=== World Championships ===\nAt the World Rowing Championships he won nine gold medals, two silvers, and a bronze.\nHe won the World Championship for Indoor rowing in 1991.\n\n\n=== Henley Royal Regatta ===\nHe competed at Henley Royal Regatta for more than two decades, winning: the Silver Goblets & Nickalls' Challenge Cup for coxless pairs seven times (twice with Andy Holmes, once with Simon Berrisford and four times with Matthew Pinsent); the Stewards' Challenge Cup for coxless fours five times; the Diamond Challenge Sculls twice; the Prince Philip Challenge Cup for coxed fours twice; the Double Sculls Challenge Cup with Eric Sims then with Adam Clift; and the Queen Mother Challenge Cup for quadruple sculls.\n\n\n=== Wingfield Sculls ===\nHe won the Wingfield Sculls for single scullers five times between 1985 and 1989.\n\n\n== Life after rowing ==\nIn April 2006 Redgrave completed his third London Marathon, raising a record £1,800,000 for charity.\nHe starred in Top Ground Gear Force for Sport Relief in 2008, where the Top Gear Team (Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond) took on Ground Force with predictable results, and trashed his garden.\nHe launched his own Fairtrade Cotton Brand of clothing called FiveG, which was sold in Debenhams department stores.\nHe was involved in starting a rowing academy in India at Lavasa, the new Hill City being developed near Pune City.\nIn April 2008, Redgrave took part in the Olympic Torch relay for the games in Beijing, and he went on to be one of the final torch-bearers for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, carrying the torch into the stadium, where seven young athletes shared the task of lighting the cauldron at the opening ceremony.\nHe was named a Patron of the Jaguar Academy of Sport in 2010.\nIn 2012, he took up kayaking and attempted the Devizes-to-Westminster marathon kayak race, but had to withdraw halfway through due to tiredness.\nHe rowed on the Gloriana as part of the royal pageant for the Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II.\nIn August 2014, Redgrave was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian expressing their hope that Scotland would vote to remain part of the United Kingdom in September's referendum on that issue.\nIn May 2018, Redgrave assumed the High-Level Performance Director role for the Chinese Rowing Association to help China's rowing team's target of one gold medal at the Tokyo 2020 Games and two golds at Paris 2024.\nIn 2025, Redgrave is set to appear as a contestant on the seventeenth series of Dancing on Ice.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\n\nHe married Ann Callaway (now Lady Ann Redgrave) in 1988; also an elite rower, she represented Great Britain in the women's eight at the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984. She was Chief Medical Officer to the GB rowing team from 1992 to 2001 and since 2009 their first full-time Medical Officer. He was the honorary president of British Rowing.\nRedgrave has three children, Natalie, Sophie and Zak. Natalie rowed with the Oxford University Women's Boat Club which won the women's boat race at Henley Boat Races in 2011.\nHe is a supporter of Chelsea Football Club.\n\n\n== Honours ==\nRedgrave was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in 1987, and promoted to Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1997. In the 2001 New Year Honours he was appointed a Knight Bachelor \"for services to Rowing\", which he received in Buckingham Palace from Queen Elizabeth II on 1 May 2001.\nHe was voted the BBC Sports Personality of the Year in 2000, , and received the BBC Sports – Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011.\nHe was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of the University from Heriot Watt University in November 2001, having previously been awarded an Honorary Blue in 1997.\nIn 2001, he was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Technology by Loughborough University.\nIn 2000, his fifth Olympic gold was voted the greatest sporting moment in Channel 4's 100 Greatest Sporting Moments.\nThe Redgrave Pinsent Rowing Lake was opened by him and Matthew Pinsent in 2006. The lake and boathouse provide training, medical and scientific facilities for the GB rowing squad.\nIn 2013, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Edinburgh \"in recognition of his outstanding sporting achievements and role as a sports ambassador\".\n\n\n== Achievements ==\nOlympic medals: 5 gold, 1 bronze\nWorld Championship medals: 9 gold, 2 silver, 1 bronze\nJunior World Championship medals: 1 silver\nHenley Royal Regatta: 19 wins\n\n\n=== Olympic Games ===\n2000 – Gold, Coxless Four (with Matthew Pinsent, Tim Foster, James Cracknell)\n1996 – Gold, Coxless Pair (with Matthew Pinsent)\n1992 – Gold, Coxless Pair (with Matthew Pinsent)\n1988 – Gold, Coxless Pair (with Andy Holmes)\n1988 – Bronze, Coxed Pair (with Andy Holmes and Patrick Sweeney)\n1984 – Gold, Coxed Four (with Martin Cross, Adrian Ellison, Andy Holmes and Richard Budgett).\n\n\n=== World Rowing Championships ===\n\n\n=== Junior World Rowing Championships ===\n1980 – Silver, Double Sculls\n1979 – Single Sculls\n\n\n=== Henley Royal Regatta ===\n\n\n=== Other ===\n1996 – Winner of Celebrity Gladiators\n2000 – BBC Sports Personality of the Year\n2001 – Collected a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II\n2001 – Received an Honorary Doctorate from Heriot-Watt University\n2001 - had the new sports room named after him, at The World Famous Phoenix Club\n2010 – Awarded the degree of Hon. LLD from the University of St Andrews\n2011 – BBC Sports – Lifetime Achievement Award\n2012 – Carried the London 2012 Olympic Torch into the Olympic Stadium\n2013 – Awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Edinburgh \"in recognition of his outstanding sporting achievements and role as a sports ambassador\".\n\n\n== Bibliography ==\nSteve Redgrave: A Golden age (2000) with Nick Townsend (ghostwriter). ISBN 0-563-55182-8\n2nd edition: 2001 ISBN 0-563-53821-X\nSteve Redgrave's Complete Book of Rowing (1992). ISBN 1-85225-124-7\n2nd edition: 1995 ISBN 1-85225-230-8\nYou Can Win At Life! (2005) with Nick Townsend. ISBN 0-563-48776-3.\nInspired (2009). ISBN 978-0755319640\nForeword to Diabetes: The at Your Fingertips Guide 5th edition (2003) ISBN 1-85959-087-X\n\n\n== See also ==\nJack Beresford, rower, Britain's most successful Olympian prior to Redgrave's fourth gold medal, with three gold and two silver medals from 1920 to 1936\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists in one event\nList of people diagnosed with ulcerative colitis\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nOfficial website \nSteve Redgrave at World Rowing \nSteve Redgrave at the Commonwealth Games Federation (archived) \nSteven Redgrave at Team GB \nSteven Redgrave at Olympics.com \nSteven Redgrave at Olympedia \nSteven Redgrave at InterSportStats\nVirtual Library rowing information at the Wayback Machine (archived 29 November 2005)\nMarlow information at the Wayback Machine (archived 15 April 2007)\nVideo 1988 Pair (2-) Olympic race\nVideo Sir Steve Redgrave discusses the key to a winning team at the Wayback Machine (archived 21 August 2009)\nDeprecated link at archive.today (archived 19 April 2013)\nThe Sonshine of Our Lives: Sheila Redgrave tells the broader story of her son Sir Steve Redgrave at the Wayback Machine (archived 27 August 2018)\nMotion in Action Inspirational Story on Steve Redgrave at the Wayback Machine (archived 9 November 2017)"}
{"title": "Sue Bird", "requested": "Sue Bird", "extract": "Suzanne Brigit Bird (born October 16, 1980) is an American former basketball player who played professionally for 20 years in the United States and Russia. She played her entire Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) career with the Seattle Storm. Bird was drafted with the first overall pick by the Storm in the 2002 WNBA draft and is considered one of the greatest players in WNBA history. As of 2025, Bird is the only WNBA player to win titles in three different decades. In 2025 she was inducted into the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame and the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame, and in 2026 she was inducted into the NYC Basketball Hall of Fame and the FIBA Hall of Fame. In addition to her WNBA career, Bird played for 10 seasons in the Russian Premier League for Dynamo Moscow, Spartak Moscow Region and UMMC Ekaterinburg, winning 5 Premier League championships (2007, 2008, 2012–2014) and five EuroLeague Women championships (2007–2010, 2013).\nIn high school, Bird was the New York State Player of the Year, the New York Daily News Player of the Year, and a WBCA All-American. In her senior year on the undefeated University of Connecticut (UConn) team in 2002, she won the Wade Trophy and the Naismith Award as College Player of the Year. She finished her UConn career ranked first in three-point field goal percentage and free throw percentage, and second in assists and steals. She won the Nancy Lieberman Award three times as the top point guard in the nation. During her UConn career, Bird had a record of 114–4.\nBird has won a joint-record four WNBA championships with the Storm (2004, 2010, 2018, 2020), five Olympic gold medals (2004, 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2020), two NCAA Championships with UConn (2000, 2002), and four FIBA World Cups (2002, 2010, 2014, 2018). She is one of only 11 women to attain all four accolades, and is one of only two basketball players—of any gender—to win five Olympic gold medals.\nDuring Bird's WNBA career, she was selected to thirteen WNBA All-Star teams and eight All-WNBA teams. She was voted by fans as one of the WNBA's Top 15 Players of All Time in 2011, was voted into the WNBA Top 20@20 as one of the league's top 20 players of all time in 2016, and was voted into The W25 as one of the league's top 25 players of all time in 2021. Bird retired from professional basketball after the 2022 WNBA season.\n\n\n== Early life ==\nBird was born on October 16, 1980, in Syosset, New York, on Long Island, to Herschel and Nancy Bird. Her father's ancestry is Russian-Jewish. She has an older sister named Jen. In the 1900s, Bird's paternal grandparents immigrated to the United States from what later became Ukraine. After arriving, their last name was changed from \"Boorda\" to \"Bird\".\nBird was interested in sports from an early age, partly influenced by her athletic older sister. In addition to basketball, she played soccer and tennis and ran track. Her fifth grade yearbook lists her potential future careers as a lawyer, doctor, and professional soccer player. Bird started playing Amateur Athletic Union basketball in the sixth grade, and soon after began receiving college recruiting letters. At the age of 11, she played during halftime at a St. John's University basketball game. Her play was so impressive that a security guard asked for her autograph.\n\n\n== High school career ==\nBird played her freshman and sophomore years at Syosset High School, but wanted more competition. She enrolled at Christ the King Regional High School in Queens, New York, where she played on the Lady Royals team for two seasons. During Bird's junior year, the team's record was 24–3. During her senior year the Royals went undefeated, winning the New York state championship and the national title. Bird won the New York State Player of the Year award and the New York Daily News Player of the Year award, and was named a WBCA All-American. She played in the WBCA High School All-America Game, scoring 11 points.\n\n\n== College career ==\nBird was recruited by several university teams, including those of Stanford, Vanderbilt and University of Connecticut (UConn). She leaned toward selecting the UConn Huskies, partly because the UConn campus was close to her home, but hesitated when two point guards announced their commitments to the team. After one of the point guards withdrew, Bird decided to accept UConn's offer. Eight games into her freshman season, Bird suffered a torn ACL. Since she had played more than 20% of the team's games in the 1998–1999 season, she was not able to redshirt. During her sophomore season (1999–2000), she returned to lead the team to a 36–1 record, the Big East Championship, and the 2000 NCAA Division I championship. In her junior season (2000–2001), the Huskies went 32–3. In her senior season (2001–2002), the Huskies went 39–0, with Bird winning the Wade Trophy, the Honda Sports Award and the Naismith Award as College Player of the Year. During her junior year, Bird played in a game against Notre Dame which sportswriter Jeff Goldberg referred to as \"the best women's basketball game ever played\". He memorialized the game in his book Bird at the Buzzer, whose title refers to Bird's game-winning shot at the buzzer. \nAs of 2024, Bird ranks No. 39 on the list of UConn players to score 1,000 career points, with 1,378 points. She is No. 7 in career assists with 585. She ranks number 1 in three-point field goal percentage (45.9) and free throw percentage (89.2). During her career with the Huskies, she won two NCAA National Championships and three Big East Championships. In 2000, Bird was the first winner of the Nancy Lieberman Award, which is given to the top Division I point guard in the nation; she won it again in 2001 and 2002. Her record at UConn in games she played is 114–4. Bird was a member of the 2006 inaugural class of inductees to the University of Connecticut women's basketball \"Huskies of Honor\" recognition program.\n\n\n== Professional career ==\n\n\n=== WNBA ===\n\nThe Seattle Storm selected Bird with the first overall pick of the 2002 WNBA draft. She would play alongside superstar Lauren Jackson who was also drafted first overall the year before. In her rookie season, Bird started all 32 games for the Storm and averaged 14.4 ppg. She was selected as a starter on the 2002 WNBA Western Conference All-Star team. Bird was the runner-up for the Rookie of the Year award and one of only two rookies to make the All-WNBA First Team. Both Bird and Jackson led the Storm to their first playoff appearance. During her first year in the league, Bird scored a career-high 33 points in a regular-season game against the Portland Fire. From  2002 (rookie season) to 2022 (retirement), she made a record 13 appearances playing in the Western Conference All-Star team.\nIn 2004, the Storm acquired shooting guard Betty Lennox in a dispersal draft, joining Bird and Lauren Jackson to form a dominant trio of star players that helped lead the Storm to its first WNBA Championship. With the WNBA Championship win, Bird became one of 11 women to receive an Olympic gold medal, an NCAA Championship, Fiba World Cup gold, and a WNBA Championship. The others are Sheryl Swoopes, Cynthia Cooper-Dyke, Tamika Catchings, Brittney Griner and fellow Huskies Swin Cash, Kara Wolters, Diana Taurasi, Maya Moore, Breanna Stewart, and Asjha Jones.\nEn route to the Storm's second championship, Bird had one of the most clutch moments in WNBA Playoff history; during the Conference Finals against the championship-defending Phoenix Mercury with the Storm up 1–0 in the series, Bird hit a game-winning three-pointer with two seconds left in Game 2 to put the Storm up 91–88, after erasing a 19-point deficit to advance to the 2010 WNBA Finals. Also in Game 1 of the 2010 WNBA Finals, Bird hit a game-winning jump shot with 2 seconds left to put the Storm up 79–77 and would later sweep the series. In 2011, she was voted one of the WNBA's Top 15 Players of All Time by current players and coaches, the media, and fans on the WNBA website.\nDuring the 2012 WNBA season, Bird experienced knee problems, yet she managed to play 29 games throughout the regular season and the playoffs. In the off-season, Bird had knee surgery, which would prevent her from playing the entire 2013 season.\n\nBird returned for the 2014 WNBA season. That year, she played 33 games, averaged 10.6 ppg and 4.0 apg, and was voted as a WNBA all-star. However, the Storm did not make it to the 2014 playoffs and would also fail to do so the following year.\nOn February 16, 2016, Bird re-signed with the Storm to a multi-year deal in free agency.\nIn the 2016 season, Bird would have a resurgence, putting up her best numbers since coming back from knee surgery. She averaged 12.8 ppg while shooting a career-high in 3-point field goal percentage and led the league in assists with 5.8 apg. For the fifth time in her career and the first time in 12 years, Bird was named to the All-WNBA First Team. Prior to the season, the Storm selected Breanna Stewart first overall in the 2016 WNBA draft, their second number one overall pick in a row after drafting Jewell Loyd the year before. With the addition of Stewart and Loyd quickly developing into a star player, the Storm made it back to the playoffs for the first time in 3 years with a 16–18 record. With the WNBA's new playoff format in effect, the Storm were the number 7 seed in the league and faced the Atlanta Dream in the first round, losing the single elimination game 94–85. Bird was also listed in the WNBA Top 20@20, a list of the league's best 20 players ever in celebration of the WNBA's twentieth anniversary.\n\nIn April 2017, Bird underwent left knee surgery, which caused her to miss training camp. However, she returned on May 21, 2017, following her recovery and made her season debut, making her both the oldest active player and starter in the WNBA. She scored 9 points and 10 assists in an 81–71 victory over the Washington Mystics. On June 11, 2017, Bird scored a season-high 21 points and 10 assists in a 94–86 loss to the New York Liberty. She was voted into the 2017 WNBA All-Star Game, making it her 10th all-star game appearance (tying Tamika Catchings for most all-star game appearances). Bird had set the All-Star Game record for assists with a performance of 8 points and 11 assists for the Western Conference All-Stars team in a 130–121 victory. On September 1, 2017, Bird became the WNBA all-time leader in assists with a career total of 2,600 assists, passing Ticha Penicheiro in a 110–106 overtime loss to the Washington Mystics. She finished the game with 19 points and a season-high 13 assists. Bird would finish off the 2017 season, averaging a career-high in assists per game as the Storm finished 14–19 with the 8th seed in the league. The Storm would lose 79–69 to the Phoenix Mercury in the first-round elimination game.\nOn July 8, 2018, Bird scored a season-high 21 points in a 97–91 victory over the Washington Mystics. During that game, she became the Storm's all-time leading scorer, passing Lauren Jackson's 6,007 points. On July 19, 2018, Bird was voted into the 2018 WNBA All-Star Game, passing Tamika Catchings for most all-star appearances. On July 22, 2018, Bird broke yet another record, this time for the most WNBA regular-season games played after she passed Delisha Milton-Jones by playing her 500th game against the Atlanta Dream. By the end of the season, Bird finished with a career-high in assists, field goal shooting, and a new career-high in three-point shooting percentage as the Storm finished as the number 1 seed in the league with a 26–8 record, receiving a double-bye to the semi-finals and home court advantage throughout the playoffs. In the semi-finals, the Storm defeated the Phoenix Mercury in a hard-fought five-game series. The Storm had a 2–0 lead, lost two in a row, and finished the series with a win in game 5 at home. Bird scored a season-high 22 points in game 5. With that win, the Storm would advance to the WNBA Finals for the first time since 2010. They would sweep the Washington Mystics in the Finals, winning their first championship in 8 years.\nIn August 2018, Sue Bird became vice president of the WNBA players' union. During her term, Bird was a part of the leadership that navigated the WNBA during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and negotiated with the league on how to play the game safely with other teams. As the MNBA worked on the players' contracts, they were united in prioritizing activism and listed their use of social justice messages during games as a top \"nonnegotiable\". Consequently, Bird's presidency is credited with the WNBA allowing the players to express social justice messages, for example, on jerseys and basketball courts.\n\nIn May 2019, Bird needed arthroscopic surgery on her left knee and could not play in either of the Storm's preseason games. She underwent surgery on May 30, missing the remainder of the 2019 season as she recovered. Another key player for the Storm, Breanna Stewart, also missed the 2019 season due to injuries. The Storm still secured a playoff berth, winning their Round 1 matchup of the playoffs without Bird and Stewart. The team, however, was eliminated in the second-round elimination game by the Los Angeles Sparks.\nIn 2020, Bird returned to play, limited to playing 11 games in the regular season. Due to the pandemic, the season was delayed and shortened to 22 games, with all activities occurring at the IMG Academy in the wubble, the contained Academy area. She had reaggravated her knee during the season, causing her to miss five games. With an active roster, the Storm finished 18–4 with the number 2 seed, receiving a double bye to the semi-finals. In the semi-finals, they would sweep the Minnesota Lynx in three games, advancing back to the WNBA Finals for the second time in three years. In the Finals, the Storm would win the championship after defeating the Las Vegas Aces in a three-game sweep, earning Bird her fourth WNBA championship, making her the first player in WNBA history to win a championship in three different decades.\nIn 2021, Bird re-signed with the Storm on a one-year deal, which allowed her to play her 18th season in the league, moving her past Milton-Jones for most seasons played in the WNBA. During a game against the Los Angeles Sparks in July 2021, Bird surpassed Katie Smith's 6452 career points on the WNBA career scoring list with her first three-pointer, ending the game with 6490 points. She was honored in The W25 list, the WNBA's official list recognizing \"the 25 greatest and most influential players in WNBA history\", selected to commemorate the league's 25th season (2021).\nOn June 16, 2022, Bird announced that she would be retiring following the 2022 WNBA season.\nOn July 23, 2023, Bird's number 10 jersey was retired by the Seattle Storm during a ceremony at Climate Pledge Arena and attended by team owners and former teammates Swin Cash and Lauren Jackson.\n\n\n=== Foreign leagues ===\nBird played in Russia for the Dynamo Moscow with Storm teammate Kamila Vodichkova during the 2004–05 and 2005–06 WNBA off-seasons. During the 2005–06 off-season, the Dynamo reached the Russian championship and the EuroLeague playoffs.\nDuring the 2006–07 off-season, Bird joined Storm teammate Lauren Jackson and fellow UConn stars Diana Taurasi and Svetlana Abrosimova on the Russian team Sparta&K, winning both the Russian Super League and the EuroLeague championships. Bird played with the team during the next four WNBA off-seasons. From 2011 to 2014, Bird played during the off-season for UMMC Ekaterinburg in the Russian League, winning three consecutive league championships.\nTo circumvent rules which limit European basketball teams to only two American players, Bird obtained Israeli citizenship.\n\n\n== National team career ==\n\nBird has competed with USA Basketball as a member of the 2000 Jones Cup Team in Taipei, Taiwan. She started all four games, leading the team with 17 assists and helping them to the gold medal.\nIn 2002, Bird was named to the national team which competed in the World Championships in Zhangjiagang, Changzhou, and Nanjing, China. The team was coached by Van Chancellor. Bird scored 4.3 points per game. The USA team won all nine games, including a close title game against Russia, which was a one-point game late in the game.\nIn the 2003–2004 off-season, Bird was named to the United States 2004 Women's Olympic Basketball Team's roster. The USA team went on to win the gold at the games in Athens, Greece.\nIn 2006, Bird was invited back to the National team for the World Championships held in Sao Paulo, Brazil in September 2006. With Lisa Leslie and Dawn Staley retiring and Sheryl Swoopes sidelined by injuries, Bird, Candace Parker, and Diana Taurasi stepped into leading roles on the national team. The USA team won eight of the nine games they played but fell against Russia 75–68 in the medal round; they ended up with the bronze medal. Over the nine games, Bird hit 50% of her three-point attempts, tying her for accuracy leadership with Taurasi and Swoopes. She also led the team with 41 assists.\nIn the summer of 2008, Bird once again qualified for the Olympic basketball team, which won the 2008 gold medal in Beijing, China. Bird started all eight games and tied with teammate Tamika Catchings with 14 steals, both ranking seventh in the tournament's top 10 for steals.\nBird was invited to the USA Basketball Women's National Team training camp for the 2010 World Championship in the fall of 2009. Usually, players for the 2010 USA FIBA World Championship and the 2012 Olympics teams are selected from the National Team. Following the training camp, the team was scheduled to play in the 2009 UMMC Ekaterinburg International Invitational in Ekaterinburg, Russia.\nOn July 10, 2010, Bird competed with the National team in the WNBA-sponsored All-Star game, which pitted the USA National team against the \"best-of-the-best\" WNBA All-Stars. In non-Olympic seasons, the WNBA normally holds the annual All-Star game between top players in the Eastern and Western Conferences. University of Connecticut head coach Geno Auriemma coached the National team in this game, training camp, and through 2012. Team USA won the exhibition game 99–72, with players like Bird, who subsequently qualified for the USA team competing in the FIBA World Championships in the Czech Republic, held in September and October 2010.\nBecause many team members were still playing in the WNBA until just before the World Cup, the USA World team had only one day of practice with the entire 12-member squad before they opened play in Ostrava, Czech Republic. Even with limited practice, the team won its first game against Greece by 26 points. They continued to dominate with victory margins exceeding 20 points in the first five games. Several players shared scoring honors, with Swin Cash, Angel McCoughtry, Maya Moore, Diana Taurasi, Lindsay Whalen, and Sylvia Fowles all ending as high scorers in the first few games. USA's sixth game was against undefeated Australia. They took a 24-point lead and ultimately prevailed with an 83–75 victory. Team USA won its next two games by over 30 points, then faced the host team, the Czech Republic, in the championship game. They had only a five-point lead at halftime, which was cut to three points, but the Czechs never got closer. Team USA went on to win the championship and gold medal. Bird averaged 5.6 points per game and led the team in assists with 26.\n\nBird competed for the U.S. in the 2012 Summer Olympics. The Americans won their fifth straight gold medal.\nIn 2014, Bird played for Team USA during the 2014 FIBA World Championship for Women, in which they defeated Spain 77–64 to win the gold medal.\nBird competed for Team USA in the 2016 Summer Olympics, helping the team win its sixth straight gold medal. In the gold medal game, they beat Spain 101–72. This was Bird's fourth Olympic title.\nIn 2018, Bird once again qualified for Team USA during the 2018 FIBA Women's Basketball World Cup held in Spain. USA defeated Australia 73–56 to win the gold medal. By winning the gold medal, Bird became the only player in history, male or female, to win four World Cup gold medals. Bird finished the final with five assists, bringing her career total to 107 assists in the FIBA World Cup—making her the leader for the U.S. with the most assists at the World Cup.\nOn July 23, 2021, in the lead-up to her quest for her fifth gold medal, Bird carried the U.S. flag at the opening ceremony of the Tokyo Summer Olympics. Bird and baseball player Eddy Alvarez were selected by fellow athletes to be the flag bearers. Bird described the honor as \"mind-blowing\". The Games were delayed from 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. On May 8, 2025 it was announced that Bird would be the first managing director for the USA national women's team. She will be in charge of picking the coaching staff for the 2026 FIBA Women's World Cup and the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nBird publicly came out as a lesbian on July 20, 2017, revealing that she had been dating soccer player Megan Rapinoe for several months after the two met at the 2016 Rio Olympics. In 2018, Bird and Rapinoe became the first same-sex couple on the cover of ESPN The Magazine's \"Body Issue\", and in June 2020 they co-hosted the ESPYs with quarterback Russell Wilson. They announced their engagement in October 2020. In 2022, Bird was included on the Queer 50 list. On April 17, 2026, Bird and Rapinoe announced they had separated after 10 years as a couple. \nIn 2022, Bird became a part-owner of the National Women's Soccer League franchise NJ/NY Gotham FC as a minority investor. She also assists in promoting the club and acts as an advisor to the league. In April 2024, she joined Force 10 Hoops, the ownership group of the Seattle Storm. In July of the same year, Mattel announced a Sue Bird Barbie as part of the 65th anniversary of the Barbie doll.\n\n\n== Career statistics ==\n\n\n=== WNBA ===\n\n\n==== Regular season ====\n\n\n==== Playoffs ====\n\n\n=== College ===\n\n\n== Awards and honors ==\nWNBA\n\n4× WNBA champion (2004, 2010, 2018, 2020)\n13× WNBA All-Star (2002, 2003, 2005–2007, 2009, 2011, 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2021, 2022)\n5× All-WNBA First Team (2002–2005, 2016)\n3× All-WNBA Second Team (2008, 2010, 2011)\n3× WNBA assists leader (2005, 2009, 2016)\n2× WNBA turnovers leader (2002, 2003)\nWNBA free throw percentage leader: (2002)\n3× WNBA peak performer (2005, 2009, 2016)\nWNBA 10th Anniversary Team (2006)\nWNBA 15th Anniversary Team (2011)\nWNBA 20th Anniversary Team (2016)\nWNBA 25th Anniversary Team (2021)\nCommissioner's Cup champion (2021)\nNo. 10 retired by Seattle Storm\nStatue in front of Climate Pledge Arena — the first statue erected for a WNBA player.\nNCAA\n\n2× NCAA National Champion (2000, 2002)\n3× Nancy Lieberman Award (2000, 2001, 2002)\n2× First-team All-Big East (2001, 2002)\nBig East Conference Women's Basketball Player of the Year (2002)\nNaismith College Player of the Year (2002)\nSenior CLASS Award (2002)\nWade Trophy (2002)\nHonda Sports Award (2002)\nNo. 10 retired by UConn Huskies\nUSA Basketball\n\n5× Olympic gold medalist (2004, 2008, 2012, 2016, 2020)\n4× FIBA World Cup gold medalist (2002, 2010, 2014, 2018)\n2006 FIBA World Cup bronze medalist\nUSA Basketball Female Athlete of the Year (2021)\nInternational\n\n5× Russian Women's Basketball Premier League champion (2007, 2008, 2012, 2013, 2014)\n5× EuroLeague Women champion (2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2013)\n2× FIBA Europe SuperCup Women winner (2009, 2010)\n2× EuroLeague All-Star (2008, 2011)\nMedia\n\nThird Team All-American – Associated Press (2001)\nFirst Team All-American – Associated Press (2002)\nAssociated Press Women's College Basketball Player of the Year (2002)\nUSBWA Women's National Player of the Year (2002)\nAll-American – United States Basketball Writers Association, Kodak (2002)\nESPY Award – Best Female College Athlete (2002)\nHalls of Fame\n\nNaismith Basketball Hall of Fame (class of 2025)\nWomen's Basketball Hall of Fame (class of 2025)\nLGBTQ Sports Hall of Fame (class of 2025).\nNYC Basketball Hall of Fame (class of 2026)\nFIBA Hall of Fame (class of 2026)\nState/local\n\nIn 2024, the city of Seattle renamed a street near Climate Pledge Arena to \"Sue Bird Court\".\nIn 2026, the Connecticut legislature approved a bill that named Bird the state bird of Connecticut every March, alongside the American robin, which is the permanent state bird.\n\n\n== See also ==\n\nUConn Huskies women's basketball\nList of athletes with the most appearances at Olympic Games\nList of Connecticut women's basketball players with 1000 points\nList of Connecticut Huskies women's basketball players with 500 assists\nList of select Jewish basketball players\nList of Jewish Olympic medalists\nList of WNBA career scoring leaders\nList of WNBA career assists leaders\nList of Women's National Basketball Association career steals leaders\nList of WNBA career games played leaders\nList of WNBA career minutes played leaders\nList of Women's National Basketball Association season assists leaders\n\n\n== Notes ==\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n=== Citations ===\n\n\n=== Works cited ===\nGoldberg, Jeff (2011). Bird at the Buzzer: UConn, Notre Dame, and a Women's Basketball Classic. foreword by Doris Burke. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 9780803224117. OCLC 660801685.\nPorter, David L., ed. (2005). Basketball: A Biographical Dictionary. Greenwood Press. ISBN 9780313309526. OCLC 57243370.\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nSue Bird at FIBA (archive)\nSue Bird at USA Basketball\nSue Bird at Team USA (archive March 18, 2023) (archive August 20, 2004)\nSue Bird at Olympedia \nSue Bird at Olympics.com \nUMMC profile at the Wayback Machine (archived December 8, 2012)\nSue Bird at IMDb \nA Touch More production company and podcast"}
{"title": "Summer McIntosh", "requested": "Summer McIntosh", "extract": "Summer Ann McIntosh  (born August 18, 2006) is a Canadian competitive swimmer. She is a three-time Olympic champion, eight-time World Aquatics champion, and two-time Commonwealth Games gold medallist. Noted for her strength in medley, freestyle and butterfly events, she is the world record holder in the 200 meter butterfly, 200 and 400 meter individual medley and 400 meter freestyle. In the short course pool, she is a four-time World Swimming Championships gold medallist and holds world records in the 400 metre freestyle, 200 metre butterfly, and 400 metre individual medley events.\nMcIntosh first drew international recognition when, at age 14, she was the youngest member of the Canadian team for the 2020 Summer Olympics, where she achieved a fourth-place finish in the 400 meter freestyle. The following year she became the youngest World Aquatics champion in swimming in over a decade, and the first Canadian to win two gold medals at a single World Championships, for which she was dubbed a \"teen swimming sensation.\" \nIn March and April 2023, in the span of five days, McIntosh set her first and second world records, in the 400 meter freestyle and 400 individual medley events, at the Canadian national trials. McIntosh's performance at the 2024 Summer Olympics, in which she won four individual medals (three gold and one silver), further increased her fame, with Time dubbing it the \"Summer of Summer\".\nAccolades bestowed upon McIntosh include the Northern Star Award as the top Canadian athlete of 2024, three consecutive Bobbie Rosenfeld Awards as The Canadian Press' choice for Canadian female athlete of the year (2023–2025), and two World Aquatics Female Swimmer of the Year honours (2024–2025).\n\n\n== Early life ==\nMcIntosh is the daughter of Greg McIntosh and former Canadian Olympic swimmer Jill Horstead. She and her older sister, Brooke McIntosh, both competed in swimming and figure skating in their early childhood. Brooke went on to become a competitive pair skater, while McIntosh dropped figure skating in favour of swimming.\n\n\n== Career ==\nIn her time as a junior swimmer, McIntosh broke over 50 Canadian national Age Group Records. In May 2021, McIntosh swam a 4:05.13 in the 400 meter freestyle, the fastest time ever recorded worldwide by a 14-year-old female swimmer.\n\n\n=== 2021 season ===\nAs part of the 2021 Canadian Olympic swimming trials in Toronto, McIntosh won the 200 meter freestyle event over training partner Penny Oleksiak, with a personal best time of 1:56.19, which also marked the fastest time ever by a 14-year-old swimmer worldwide. This qualified her for the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. McIntosh followed this up with a win in the 800 meter freestyle event, in another personal best time of 8:29.49. She was the youngest person named to the Canadian Olympic team.\n\n\n==== Summer Olympic Games ====\n\nIn her first event, McIntosh finished fourth in the 400 meter freestyle, breaking the Canadian national record with a time of 4:02.42. She advanced to the semifinals of the women's 200m freestyle, but placed ninth there and thus missed the final. She was part of the Canadian team for the 4 × 200 meter relay, along with Oleksiak, Rebecca Smith and Kayla Sanchez. They set a new Canadian record in the event final, placing fourth. McIntosh's last event was the 800 metre freestyle, where she placed eleventh and thus did not advance to the final. Following the Olympics, McIntosh made her debut in the International Swimming League as part of the Toronto Titans.\n\n\n==== World Swimming Championships ====\n\nMcIntosh was part of the Canadian team for the 2021 World Swimming Championships in Abu Dhabi, and won a silver medal as part of the 4×100 metre medley relay, where she swam in the preliminaries for Canada as the team finished in second in the final. She then helped the Canadian team in the 4×200 metre freestyle relay, swimming the first leg as Canada won gold. McIntosh won her first individual medal of the competition when she won the silver in the 400 metre freestyle race. She was third at the halfway mark but passed Siobhán Haughey and held on to the second position, finishing behind Li Bingjie. McIntosh had set a Canadian record in the 800 metre freestyle heats, but she withdrew from the event to focus on the 400 and women's relay events.\n\n\n=== 2022 season ===\nOn March 4, 2022, McIntosh swam the 400 metre individual medley at a preparatory event for the Canadian swimming trials, recording a time of 4:29.12. This was both a national and Commonwealth record, and the third-fastest of all time, as well as the fastest time recorded by any swimmer since Katinka Hosszú's winning time at the 2016 Summer Olympics. At the national swimming trials, McIntosh won titles in the 200 metre and 400 metre freestyle, the 200 metre butterfly, and the 400 metre individual medley, before scratching from the 800 metre freestyle.\n\n\n==== World Championships ====\n\nMcIntosh made her long course (50m) FINA World Aquatics Championships debut at the 2022 edition in Budapest, with her first event being the 400 metre freestyle. She finished second in the final, taking the silver medal with a new personal best and national record time of 3:59.39. She was only the fourth woman in history to record a time of under four minutes. McIntosh set another world junior record in the semi-final of the 200 metre butterfly with a 2:05.79 time, exceeding her own as-yet-unratified record from the Canadian swimming trials. She broke the record again the following day, June 22, in the event final, claiming her first World title, the first medal of any colour for Canada in the event. She was the first 15-year-old to win a World title since China's Ye Shiwen in 2011, and the youngest Canadian world champion in history, surpassing 18-year-old Victor Davis in 1982. Later in that same session, she participated in the event final of the 4 × 200 metre freestyle relay, breaking another junior world record with a 1:54.79 opening leg, the second-fastest of any woman in the event behind Katie Ledecky of the United States. The Canadian team won the bronze medal.\nIn her final event, the 400 metre individual medley, McIntosh won her second gold medal of the championships, beating American Katie Grimes by 0.63 seconds. She became the first Canadian swimmer to win two gold medals at a single World Championships, and set a new record for the most medals won by a Canadian at a single World Championships (4), which would be tied later that same day by Penny Oleksiak and Kayla Sanchez. Moreover, she was the youngest winner since Tracy Caulkins in 1978. McIntosh called the results \"a dream come true\", and praised Grimes, noting \"she is around my age and she's a really tough competitor. So I'm looking forward to racing her and keep pushing myself.\"\n\n\n==== Commonwealth Games ====\n\nA month later, McIntosh was part of her first Commonwealth Games team, for the 2022 edition in Birmingham, England. She opted not to contest the 200 metre butterfly there, citing the need to focus on other events. Heavily favoured in the 400 m medley, she won gold on the first day of the competition schedule, improving her world junior, Commonwealth, and national records to 4:29.01. She finished 7.77 seconds ahead of silver medallist Kiah Melverton, and was the first Canadian gold medallist of the Games. McIntosh was then given the novel opportunity to participate in Canada's 4 × 100 metre freestyle relay team, with mainstay members like Oleksiak, Sanchez and Taylor Ruck absent, winning a bronze medal. She noted that she \"didn't really know what to expect, the 100 free is not my main event so I just tried to put a good time down to set it up for the rest of the girls.\"\nThe next day, McIntosh took her more customary place on the 4 × 200 metre freestyle relay team, swimming the leadoff leg and helping take the silver medal. Of this, she said she was \"very proud.\" On the fourth day, she competed in the 200 metre individual medley, a much more uncommon event for her than the 400 metre individual medley. McIntosh won the gold medal, defeating reigning World silver medallist Kaylee McKeown of Australia and setting a new world junior record. McIntosh noted that \"the 200 IM is more of a sprinting event for me\", adding \"the only pressure I feel is what I put on myself. The only thing that matters is my expectations.\" With the result, McIntosh recorded one of the top four results of 2022 in five different events. On the final day of the swimming competitions, McIntosh won two more silver medals, finishing behind Ariarne Titmus in the 400 metre freestyle while lowering her own national record and then swimming the freestyle leg of the 4 × 100 metre medley relay, typically performed for the Canadian team by the absent Oleksiak.\nFollowing the conclusion of the Commonwealth Games, Swimming World magazine, assessing her \"vast talent on display at two championship-level events\", opined \"it's not hype and bluster anymore. Based purely on results from this year, not career medal totals or performance over a long stretch of time, McIntosh is the third-best female swimmer in the world.\" On October 28, at the 2022 FINA Swimming World Cup in Toronto, and conducted in short course metres, McIntosh set a new world junior record, World Cup record, Americas record, and Canadian record in the 400 metre freestyle on day one, finishing in a time of 3:52.80 in the final to win the gold medal. The following day, she won the gold medal in the 400 metre individual medley with a world junior record and Canadian record time of 4:21.49. She and fellow Canadians Sydney Pickrem and Bailey Andison won all the medals in the event. Approximately 50 minutes later, she placed eighth in the 100 metre backstroke with a time of 58.84 seconds. The following, and final, day, she won a pair of bronze medals, the first in the 200 metre backstroke with a personal best time of 2:02.85 and the second in the 200 metre individual medley with a personal best time of 2:06.57.\nThe next and final stop of the World Cup circuit, McIntosh won the gold medal in the 200 metre butterfly on November 3, finishing in a personal best time of 2:03.40, which was the only time in the final faster than 2:04.00. Day two, she finished in a personal best time of 1:52.63 in the 200 metre freestyle final to place fifth. On the third and final day, she dropped 6.25 seconds from her personal best time in the 800 metre freestyle to win the silver medal with a Canadian record time of 8:07.12. The following month, at the 2022 U.S. Open Swimming Championships, McIntosh won the gold medal in the 400 metre individual medley with a Championships record, world junior record, and US Open record time of 4:28.61. The following day, she won the silver medal in the 200 metre backstroke with a personal best time of 2:07.15, which was 1.87 seconds behind gold medallist Regan Smith of the United States. Earlier in the meet, on day two, she won the silver medal in the 400 metre freestyle.\n\n\n=== 2023 season ===\nMcIntosh drew headlines early in 2023 with performances at the 2023 Pro Swim Series event in Fort Lauderdale, first lowering her national and world junior records in the 200 metre butterfly. Days later in the 200 metre freestyle event, she broke Taylor Ruck's national record and lowered her prior world junior record with a time of 1:54.13, and won the event over Katie Ledecky. This was the first time Ledecky had lost a domestic final in the 200 metre distance or higher since 2014. McIntosh remarked that \"I'm really happy with that swim but it hurts really bad.\" She then broke Sydney Pickrem's national record in the 200 metre individual medley.\nAt the national swim trials at the end of March at the Toronto Pan Am Sports Centre, McIntosh set her first world record, winning the 400 metre freestyle event with a time of 3:56.08 seconds and surpassing Ariarne Titmus's prior time of 3:56.40. Speaking afterward, she said that \"going into tonight, I didn't think the world record was a possibility, but you never know.\" Days later, McIntosh won the 400 metre medley with a time of 4:25.87, breaking the world record that Katinka Hosszú had set at the 2016 Summer Olympics. She became the first swimmer in history to hold both the 400m freestyle and 400m individual medley long course world records at the same time. McIntosh also improved her own world junior records in three other events at the meet.\n\n\n==== World Championships ====\n\nMcIntosh's first event of the 2023 World Aquatics Championships in  Fukuoka was a highly-anticipated 400 metre freestyle, touted as a three-way contest between her, Titmus and Ledecky. She came third in the heats, but in the final she finished narrowly in fourth place, being overtaken for bronze in the final stretch by New Zealander Erika Fairweather. McIntosh called it a \"learning experience.\" Later the same session she joined the Canadian team in the final of the 4×100 metre freestyle relay; with Oleksiak absent and Ruck recovering from a hand injury, the team finished seventh. McIntosh competed in the 200m freestyle at the World Championships for the first time, finishing second in the semi-finals, 0.03 back of Titmus and 0.24 ahead of Mollie O'Callaghan. She came third in the event final, out touching reigning Olympic silver medallist Siobhan Haughey for the bronze.\nOn July 27, McIntosh successfully defended her title in the 200m butterfly and improved on her world junior record in the event, claiming that she \"was just trying to have as much fun as possible and race as hard as I could.\" She became only the second Canadian to win three World titles, after Kylie Masse, as well as the second to defend a World title, again after Masse. Later in the day she joined the Canadian team in the final of the 4×200 metre freestyle relay. The team, depleted of some of its most important members from years prior, finished in fifth, but McIntosh's 1:53.97 was the second-fastest in the event, behind Titmus, and the ninth-fastest of all time to that point. After finishing second in her heat for the 400m medley, McIntosh defended her title, winning in championship record time (4:27.11) and a margin of 4.30 seconds over repeat silver medallist Katie Grimes. In so doing, she broke her tie with Masse for sole possession of the record for Canadian World Aquatics titles. Later in the same session, she swam the freestyle leg of the 4×100 m medley relay, helping the team to a bronze medal. Her 53.48 time was an improvement by almost a second and a half over her performance in the earlier freestyle relay.\nIn her final major competition of the year, the 2023 U.S. Open Swimming Championships, McIntosh won the gold medal in the 400m freestyle race, defeating Ledecky and breaking the latter's championship record with a time of 3:59.42. She went on to defend her gold medal in the 400m individual medley, defeating Israeli silver medallist Anastasia Gorbenko by almost eight seconds. McIntosh was a finalist in voting for the Northern Star Award, given to the Canadian athlete of the year, and received the Bobbie Rosenfeld Award as the Canadian Press' choice for Canadian female athlete of the year.\n\n\n=== 2024 season ===\nAs with most of the Canadian team's top swimmers, McIntosh opted not to attend the 2024 World Aquatics Championships in Doha, citing its proximity to the 2024 Summer Olympics. She drew headlines in early February when she defeated Katie Ledecky at a sectional event in Orlando, becoming the first person to outpace Ledecky in the 800 metre distance since 2010. Her 8:11.39 time broke a ten-year-old national record previously set by Brittany MacLean at the 2014 Pan Pacific Swimming Championships. At the inaugural edition of the Canadian Swimming Open in April, McIntosh won the 200m freestyle with a world-leading time of 1:54.21. She came in second in the 100m backstroke final later in the same session, finishing just behind Maggie Mac Neil. She would go on to win the 100m freestyle, 100m butterfly, and 200m individual medley.\nMcIntosh was the centre of attention at Canada's Olympic swimming trials, which featured audiences, unlike in the pandemic-afflicted 2021 events. On the first day, she won the 400m freestyle with a world-leading time that she nevertheless said she was \"definitely not happy with\". She then won the 200m freestyle on the second day. McIntosh drew headlines on the fourth day in the 400m individual medley, where she broke her own world record with a 4:24.38, an improvement of a second and a half. She finished more than fourteen seconds ahead of second-place Ella Jansen. In her fourth event of the trials, the 200m butterfly, she posted a world-leading time of 2:04.33. On the final day of the trials, McIntosh won the 200m individual medley, and was formally named to the Canadian Olympic team.\n\n\n==== Summer Olympic Games ====\n\nMcIntosh competed in the 400m freestyle, 400m individual medley, 200m butterfly, 200m individual medley, 4 × 100m freestyle relay, 4 × 200m freestyle relay, and the 4 × 100m medley relay at the Paris 2024 Olympics. The 400m freestyle was first, in which McIntosh, Ariarne Titmus, and Katie Ledecky were the favourites to compete for gold. McIntosh won the silver medal, finishing 0.88 seconds behind Titmus. This was her first Olympic medal and the first Canadian medal in Paris. Later in the same session McIntosh participated in the final of the 4 × 100m freestyle relay, where the Canadian team finished fourth.\nMcIntosh's next event was the 400m individual medley, where she was the heavy favourite. She won the gold medal, finishing more than five seconds ahead of American silver medallist Katie Grimes to take her first Olympic title. It was the first time a Canadian had ever won the event, and McIntosh said after the race that winning the gold felt \"surreal.\" CBC Sports wrote that it was a \"dominating victory\", and Swimming World wrote that \"McIntosh’s mastery was unveiled\".\nCompeting next in the 200m butterfly, forty years after her mother's appearance in the same event in the 1984 Olympics, McIntosh won the gold medal and set a new Olympic record time of 2:03.03. This was the second-fastest time in the history of the women's 200m butterfly, and the fastest of the textile era. McIntosh became the first Canadian woman to win two individual gold medals at a Summer Olympics, the first Canadian to win two gold medals at a Summer Olympics since sprinter Donovan Bailey in 1996, and the first Canadian swimmer to win three individual medals at a single Olympics. In the same session she joined the Canadian team in the final of the 4×200m freestyle relay, where they finished fourth, a result she said she was \"pretty disappointed with.\" McIntosh's next race, the 200m individual medley, drew media attention as a contest for featuring her and two other individual Olympic gold medallists, America's Kate Douglass and Australian Kaylee McKeown. This was only the second time that she had appeared in the 200 metre medley at an international competition, after the 2022 Commonwealth Games. Considered one of the favourites, she won the title with an Olympic record time of 2:06.56. She became the first Canadian to win three gold medals at a single Summer Olympics, and with four total medals she tied teammate Penny Oleksiak for the most Canadian medals in a single Olympics.\nMcIntosh's final swim of the Paris Olympics was as part of the Canadian team in the 4 × 100m medley relay, having replaced Oleksiak as the anchor for the event final. For the third time, the Canadians finished fourth, denying McIntosh's chance to tie Cindy Klassen's record for the most medals won by a Canadian Olympian in a single Olympics. Following the end of the Olympic swimming competitions, she returned to Canada to vacation at her family's Muskoka Lakes cottage, but travelled back to Paris a few days later upon being named Canada's co-flag bearer at the closing ceremony, alongside hammer throw champion Ethan Katzberg.\n\n\n==== World Swimming Championships and recognition ====\n\nIt was announced that McIntosh would compete at the short course (25m) 2024 World Aquatics Swimming Championships, her first appearance in this World Championships format since 2021. On the first day of the event, McIntosh swam to gold in the 400m freestyle, setting a new short course world record of 3:50.25 and lowering it by over a second in the process. Later in the same session she participated in the 4×100m freestyle relay, earning a bronze medal with the Canadian team. On the same day, she was voted the recipient of the Northern Star Award as Canada's top athlete for 2024. She won another gold medal in the 200m butterfly, setting a second short course world record by breaking Spaniard Mireia Belmonte's decade-old best time.\nOn the penultimate day of the championships, McIntosh won gold in the 400m individual medley, breaking the last of Belmonte's world records and improving on it by over three seconds for a time of 4:15.48. On the final day, McIntosh contested the 200m backstroke, the first time she had appeared in that event at a major international championship. She took the silver medal and set a national and world junior record time of 1:59.96. McIntosh expressed disappointment with the result, but added that it was \"a great motivator the next time I'm training and I'm hurting and I just remember what it's like to get silver, so it keeps me pushing forward.\" At the conclusion of the meet, World Aquatics named her female swimmer of the year.\nIn addition to the Northern Star Award and World Aquatics athlete of the year, McIntosh received her second consecutive Bobbie Rosenfeld Award as the Canadian Press's choice for female athlete of the year, winning 52 of 53 votes cast for the distinction. She was named to the Time 100 Next list, with a tribute written by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who described her as \"a superstar at age 18 and still warming up.\" Forbes included McIntosh in their year-end 30 Under 30 list.\n\n\n=== 2025 season ===\nIn February, McIntosh raced in the 800m freestyle at the Southern Zone Sectionals meet, setting a new national record time of 8:09.86. This was the tenth-fastest time in history, the nine times ahead of hers all having been set by Katie Ledecky. At the end of the month, she announced that this would be her final season training in Sarasota under Brent Arckey, and that she was contemplating working with Bob Bowman in the future. As well, she stated she would be looking to add a fifth individual event to her program for the 2025 World Aquatics Championships. On May 28, McIntosh confirmed that she would move to train under Bowman at the University of Texas at Austin in August of that year. \nOn June 7, McIntosh regained the world record in the women's 400m freestyle event at the Canadian swimming trials with a time of 3:54.18. Then, on June 8, she improved her national record in the 800m freestyle from an 8:09.86 to a 8:05.07. On the following day, she broke Katinka Hosszú's decade-old world record in the 200m individual medley with a time of 2:05.70, becoming the first woman with a time under 2:06. On June 10, she lowered her own national record in the 200m butterfly with a time of 2:02.26, and became the second-fastest performer of all time, in this event. In her final swim of the meet, McIntosh again lowered her own world record in the women's 400m individual medley, with a time of 4:23.65.\n\n\n==== World Championships ====\n\nOn the opening day of the swimming competitions at the 2025 World Aquatics Championships in Singapore, McIntosh raced in two heats, a semi-final, and won the gold medal in the 400m freestyle, her first in that event. With a time of 3:56.26, she finished nearly two seconds clear of silver medalist Li Bingjie. In what had been anticipated as a race between McIntosh and Ledecky, the latter finished third. On the second day, she swam the final of the 200m individual medley, her first appearance in the event at the World Aquatics Championships. McIntosh won her second gold medal of the Singapore championships with a time of 2:06.69. This was her tenth World Aquatics Championships medal, surpassing Kylie Masse and Penny Oleksiak for the most earned by a Canadian swimmer. \nMcIntosh entered the 200m butterfly as the prohibitive favourite for the gold medal, with speculation focused on whether she would break the world record of 2:01.81, set in 2009 by Liu Zige using a \"supersuit\" that would be prohibited from World Aquatics competition three months after. As a result of this, Liu's record became the longest-standing record in women's competitive swimming. McIntosh won with a time of 2:01.99, three seconds ahead of silver medalist Regan Smith. She was 0.18 seconds short of the world record, but broke Jessicah Schipper's supersuit era championship record from 2009. McIntosh faulted herself, saying \"that last 15 metres I took an extra breath and I should've had my head down,\" but vowed \"this is definitely going to fuel me for next season,\" adding: \"If there's one world record that I wanted to break since the start of my career it's this one.\"\nContinuing her quest to win five individual gold medals, McIntosh entered the 800m freestyle, an event she had not contested at an international championship since 2021. McIntosh held the lead at the 700-metre mark, but was passed by both Ledecky and Lani Pallister over the closing stretch, winning the bronze medal. She called the race \"not even close to what I wanted time-wise, place-wise, how I executed the race.\" On the final day of the championship, she won gold in the 400m individual medley, and raced the butterfly leg for the Canadian team in the 4×100m medley relay, finishing fifth. With four gold medals and a bronze medal, she became only the third swimmer to take five individual medals at a World Aquatics Championship, after Michael Phelps and Sarah Sjöström. McIntosh was named Female Swimmer of the Meet by World Aquatics. \n\n\n==== U.S. Open ====\nMcIntosh initially planned to compete in the 2025 World Aquatics Swimming World Cup in October, but then pulled out of the Carmel stop because of illness, subsequently revealed to be consequences of a lumbar puncture. She ultimately withdrew from the remainder of the Swimming World Cup, including her hometown of Toronto. After recovery, McIntosh returned to competition at the U.S. Open in Austin, Texas, winning two events and finishing third in another. At the end of the year, McIntosh finished second in balloting for the Northern Star Award, behind basketball player Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, and received her third consecutive Bobbie Rosenfeld Award as Canadian female athlete of the year. On December 30, World Aquatics named her the Female Swimmer of the Year for a second consecutive time. L'Equipe would later vote McIntosh its female International Champion of Champions for 2025.\n\n\n=== 2026 season ===\nIn January, McIntosh secured victories in two events during the first leg of the Pro Series held in Austin. She also competed in the Westmont leg, winning three. In May, McIntosh competed at the Speedo Fort Lauderdale Open. She secured victories in the 200m freestyle (1:54.36) and the 400m freestyle (3:58.91), notably defeating Katie Ledecky in the latter. To refine her technical proficiency for individual medley events, she also entered the 200m breaststroke, finishing sixth with a time of 2:29.92. At the Canadian Trials in July, McIntosh won the 200m butterfly finals with a time of 2:01.65, breaking Liu Zige's 17-year-old world record. With this, she held four world records simultaneously. McIntosh said of the feat: \"Growing up this is the one world record I thought I would never break and to do it tonight is really special in front of a home crowd.\" She went on to compete in and win the 400m individual medley, but announced on July 7 that she would be withdrawing from the remainder of the trials, citing illness.\nMcIntosh declined to participate in the 2026 Commonwealth Games, instead focusing on the 2026 Pan Pacific Swimming Championships, held that year in Irvine. This was the first edition of the championships since 2018, the scheduled 2022 edition having been cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to scheduling, McIntosh opted against competing in the 200m butterfly on the first day of the event, instead choosing to enter the 200m freestyle for the first time internationally since 2023. She took the silver medal, having finished 0.19 seconds behind Australian swimmer Lani Pallister. McIntosh expressed disappointment in the result, but said it was part of \"working towards\" the Los Angeles Olympics. On the second day, she took gold in the 400m medley and, swimming the second leg of the Canadian 4×200m freestyle relay, won a bronze medal with her teammates. The pre-event favourite in the 400m freestyle on the third day, McIntosh unexpectedly missed qualification to the 'A' final, having come ninth in the heats. On the final day, she won silver in the 200m medley, coming 0.02 seconds behind Yu Yiting of China, and then finished fourth in the 4×100m medley relay with the Canadian team. She observed that the medley was \"probably one of my better swims of the meet, but overall this meet didn't go the way I wanted it to. So there will definitely be a lot of reflection and focus on how I can be better next season.\"\n\n\n== Results ==\n\n\n=== Championships ===\n\na  McIntosh withdrew from the 800 freestyle after swimming in the heats.\n\n\n=== Swimming World Cup ===\nThe following medals McIntosh has won at Swimming World Cup circuits.\n\n\n== Personal bests ==\n\n\n=== Long course (50-metre pool) ===\n\n\n=== Short course (25-metre pool) ===\n\n\n== World Records ==\n\n\n=== World records ===\n\n\n==== Long course meters (50 m pool) ====\n\n\n==== Short course meters (25 m pool) ====\n\n\n=== World junior records ===\n\n\n==== Long course meters (50 m pool) ====\n\n\n==== Short course meters (25 m pool) ====\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of World Aquatics Championships medalists in swimming (women)\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nSummer McIntosh at Swimming Canada\nSummer McIntosh at World Aquatics\nSummer McIntosh at SwimRankings.net\nSummer McIntosh at Olympics.com\nSummer McIntosh at Team Canada\nSummer McIntosh at Olympedia\nSummer McIntosh at InterSportStats\nSummer McIntosh on Instagram"}
{"title": "Sun Yang", "requested": "Sun Yang", "extract": "Sun Yang (Chinese: 孙杨; Mandarin pronunciation: [swə́n.jǎŋ]; born 1 December 1991) is a Chinese Olympic and former world-record-holding competitive swimmer. In 2012, Sun became the first Chinese athlete to win an Olympic gold medal in men's swimming. Sun is the first male swimmer in history to earn Olympic and World Championship gold medals at every freestyle distance from 200 to 1500 metres. A three-time Olympic gold medalist and eleven-time world champion, he is the most decorated Chinese swimmer in history. In 2017, NBC Sports described him as \"very arguably the greatest freestyle swimmer of all time\".\nIn September 2018 Sun was involved in a controversial incident during an out-of-competition doping test at his home. The doping control assistant (DCA) lacked proper accreditation and took photos of Sun without his permission, leading him to refuse the blood sample collection. A security guard broke open the container to prevent the testers from taking the vials. The DCA later admitted to unprofessional conduct. FINA ruled that Sun did not violate anti-doping rules due to the DCA's actions. However, on 28 February 2020, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) overturned FINA's decision, banning Sun for eight years for tampering with the doping control process. Some analysts opined that the trial was marred by severe translation problems, conflict of interest, bias and an \"absence of evidence\" around doping activity.\nCAS also ruled that Sun would not be stripped of any of his medals, noting that doping tests conducted shortly before and after the aborted doping control in September 2018 returned negative results. Furthermore CAS stated that \"in the absence of any evidence that the Athlete may have engaged in doping activity since 4 September 2018, including on the occasion of the FINA World Championships in Gwangju, South Korea in July 2019, the results achieved by the Athlete in the period prior to the CAS award being issued should not be disqualified\". On 22 June 2021, after a retrial, CAS upheld the ban but reduced it to four years and three months due to issues related to lack of impartiality in the prior trial.\n\n\n== Early life ==\nSun was born on 1 December 1991 in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China. He was named after his parents' surnames. Sun is an only child, and his family is athletic. His father, Sun Quanhong (孙全洪), was a basketball player for Anhui Tigong. His mother, Yang Ming (杨明), was a volleyball player for Zhejiang and is a sports coach. Sun started swimming in 1998, and his potential was recognised by a teacher at Jinglun Sports School in Hangzhou.\n\n\n== Career ==\n\n\n=== 2007–2011: Early career ===\nSun made his international debut at the 2007 World Championships in Melbourne, Australia. He finished 32nd in the 400 metre freestyle and 23rd in the 800 metre freestyle. In early 2008, he competed at the \"Good Luck Beijing\" China Open, a test event for the 2008 Summer Olympics. He finished 2nd in the 400 metre freestyle with a time of 3:49.34. At the Olympics, Sun, aged 16, finished 28th in the 400 metre freestyle, unable to reach the final. He later came 7th in the qualifying heats of the 1500 metre freestyle, reaching the final, where he finished last. Sun rebounded the following year at the 2009 World Championships, where he won his first international medal, a bronze, in the 1500 metre freestyle with a time of 14:46.84. He finished 18th in the 400 metre freestyle with a time of 3:47.51.\nSun achieved further success during the 2010 Asian Games. He won gold medals in the 1500 metre freestyle and the 4 × 200 metre freestyle relay, and silver medals in the 200 metre and 400 metre freestyle. His 1500-metre freestyle time of 14:35.43 was a new Asian record and the second-fastest time in history, behind Grant Hackett, whose record Sun would surpass the following year. Sun was subsequently named Rookie of the Year at the 2010 China Central Television (CCTV) Sports Awards.\nOn the first day of competition at the 2011 World Championships in Shanghai, Sun came 2nd in the 400 metre freestyle with a time of 3:43.24, 1.2 seconds behind South Korean Park Tae-hwan. Three days later, Sun won his first World Championship title in the 800 metre freestyle with a time of 7:38.57. After a day of rest, he swam the anchor leg in the 4 × 200 metre freestyle relay, helping the Chinese team win bronze. The last day of competition, Sun competed in the 1500 metre freestyle. He won the race with a time of 14:34.14, ten seconds ahead of the rest of the competition. At age 19, Sun beat Hackett's world record of 14:34.56, which had stood for ten years. This was the longest-held world record in swimming and the only men's swimming world record not to have been beaten during the techsuit era.\n\n\n=== 2012: Breakthrough at the Olympics ===\nFor the 2012 Summer Olympics, Sun was considered a favourite in the 400 metre and 1500 metre freestyle, as well as a contender in the 200 metre freestyle. In his first event, the 400 metre freestyle, he won the gold medal with a time of 3:40.14, breaking the Olympic record previously held by Ian Thorpe and becoming the first Chinese male swimmer to win a gold medal at the Olympics. His time was also the third fastest in history, 0.07 seconds away from the world record, and setting a new Asian record. After a day of recuperating, Sun competed in the 200-metre freestyle. He won a silver medal in the final, tying with Park Tae-hwan with a time of 1:44.93, a new national record. The following day, Sun swam the anchor leg in the 4 × 200 metre freestyle relay to help the Chinese team win bronze, China's first Olympic medal in a men's relay event.\nAfter the relay, Sun did not return to the pool until the last day of competition to compete in his strongest event, the 1500 metre freestyle. He had qualified for the final with the fastest time. At the initial line-up on the starting blocks, a step-down command was issued because of noise from the crowd, but instead of stepping back, Sun reacted by diving in. The officials ruled the early dive was the result of noise from the crowd and did not constitute a false start, and Sun was allowed to continue in the competition. He went on to win the race with a time of 14:31.02, breaking his own world record by over three seconds. He finished over eight seconds ahead of second-place finisher, Canadian Ryan Cochrane. With two gold medals and a team bronze medal, Sun became the most decorated Chinese male swimmer in Olympic history, and the first swimmer to win the 400/1500 double since Vladimir Salnikov at the 1980 Moscow Olympics. Sun completed the last 50 metres of the race in 25.68 seconds, nearly two seconds faster than Cochrane.\n\n\n=== 2013: Continued success ===\nFrom 28 July to 4 August 2013, Sun competed at the World Championships. On the first day of competition, he won gold in the 400 metre freestyle with a time of 3:41.59. It was nearly 1.5 seconds off his Olympic-winning time from the previous year, but he was still 3.23 seconds ahead of runner-up Kosuke Hagino. Two days later, Sun retained his title in the 800 metre freestyle with a time of 7:41.36. It was his second gold medal in the Championship and the 100th gold medal won by China in World Aquatics Championships' history.\nOn the sixth day of competition, Sun was tasked with swimming the anchor leg for the 4 × 200 metre freestyle relay. China barely qualified for the final in eighth place. Going into the last leg of the race, China was in fifth place, over two seconds behind France and Japan, but Sun was able to overtake both teams in the end for a final time of 1:43.16. This was the second-fastest split time in history and 1.82 seconds faster than the other 31 swimmers in the final, including Ryan Lochte and Yannick Agnel. Accounting for the relay exchange advantage, it was still over a second faster than his flat start time of 1:44.93.\nOn the final day of the competition, Sun successfully defended his title in the 1500 metre freestyle. He finished with a time of 14:41.15, beating runner-up Ryan Cochrane by 1.33 seconds. This result made Sun the second swimmer in history, after Grant Hackett, to win gold medals in all three long-distance freestyle events—400, 800, and 1500 metres—in a single World Championships.\nOne month later, Sun competed in the 2013 National Games of China. Aiming to become the first man to win seven gold medals at a single championship, he added to his range the 100 metre freestyle, an event typically reserved for sprinters. With the games holding the same schedule as the Olympics, he competed first in the 400-metre freestyle, winning in 3:43.68—over a second ahead of Hao Yun. The following day, Sun won the 4 × 100 metre freestyle relay, swimming the anchor leg in 48.14 seconds. He followed these performances the next day by setting a new Asian record in the 200-metre freestyle with a time of 1:44.47, about half a second faster than his time in London. The following day, he won bronze in the 100-metre freestyle, finishing with a time of 48.94 seconds, his first time finishing under 49 seconds.\n\n\n=== 2014: Doping ban and Asian Games ===\n\nIn May 2014, the Chinese Swimming Association handed Sun a warning but let him off without suspension after he tested positive for trimetazidine, a drug that was banned four months earlier and classified as a stimulant at the time by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). It was December 2014 at the insistence of FINA, the global regulator, that Chinada confirmed it had handed Sun a retrospective suspension of three months. The lenient penalty was based on this: Sun said that Dr. Ba Zhen, an Olympic team doctor for Chinese swimming, prescribed the drug to treat heart palpitations, a condition he has suffered since 2008, and was unaware that it had been newly added to the banned substances list. After reviewing the full case file, WADA chose not to pursue the case after an investigation. They also announced that they would not challenge the CSA's decision to impose a retrospective three-month sanction. Since Sun's ban, WADA has reclassified trimetazidine from an S6 stimulant (prohibited in competition) to an S4 hormone and metabolic modulator (prohibited in and out of competition). Dr Ba Zhen was handed two suspensions by WADA, the first for supplying a banned substance to Sun, the second, to run concurrently, because journalist Craig Lord alerted WADA to a photograph confirming that the doctor had worked with Sun at the Asian Games in August 2014 at a time when he ought to have been serving a suspension. Asked by FINA to explain, the CSA said that Ba Zhen had not been accredited for the Games through them. Ba Zhen also played a part in events that led to Sun's suspension for four years and three months after an altercation with anti-doping testers in September 2018.\nSun claimed a gold medal in the 200-metre freestyle at Chinese Spring Nationals in May 2014. At the 2014 Asian Games, Sun participated in the 200, 400, and 1500 metre freestyle events. He won silver in the 200 metre freestyle, finishing behind Kosuke Hagino. In the 400 metre freestyle, he came 1st with a time of 3:43.23, which was 1.25 seconds ahead of runner-up Hagino. Leading from start to finish, Sun won gold in the 1500 metre freestyle. He finished with a time of 14:49.75, over five seconds ahead of runner-up Kohei Yamamoto. Sun also participated in the 4 × 100 metre freestyle relay, helping China win gold with an overall time of 3:13.17, setting a new Asian Record in the event.\n\n\n=== 2015 World Championships ===\n\nAt the 2015 World Championships, Sun won silver in the 200 metre freestyle with a time of 1:45.20, finishing 0.06 seconds behind James Guy. In the 400 metre freestyle, he won gold with a time of 3:42.58, finishing 1.17 seconds ahead of Guy. He finished 1st in the 800 metre freestyle with a time of 7:39.96, which was 0.85 seconds ahead of runner-up Gregorio Paltrinieri.\nIn the 1500 metre freestyle, where he was the two-time defending champion, Sun withdrew from the competition, later citing heart problems during a warm-up. \"I feel very sorry that I couldn't be present for the 1500m\", Sun told reporters. \"I didn't feel good in my heart. Today I felt really uncomfortable at the pool during my warm-up and I had to give up the idea of competing. I feel really sorry about that.\"\nAt the World Championships, Sun was accused by Brazilian coaches of assaulting one of their female swimmers, Larissa Oliveira. Brazil team spokeswoman Eliana Alves told the Associated Press that there was \"contact\" between Sun and Oliveira, \"but it was not a fight\". Swimming's world governing body, FINA, later cleared Sun of any wrongdoing. FINA executive director Cornel Marculescu explained that the altercation that led to a complaint against Sun was due to congestion in the warm-up pool, and did not warrant further action. According to Marculescu, there were over 1,000 swimmers present, so the preparation pool became very crowded.\n\n\n=== 2016: Historic first at the Olympics ===\n\nIn June 2016, Sun competed at the Arena Pro Swim Series finale in Santa Clara, California. He won the 200 metre freestyle event with a time of 1:44.82, giving him 1st in the world ranks.\nAt the 2016 Summer Olympics, Sun won the 200 metre freestyle with a time of 1:44.65, finishing 0.55 seconds ahead of runner-up Chad le Clos. It was Sun's first major international title in this event, and he became the first Chinese athlete to win a gold medal in this event. He won a silver medal in the 400 metre freestyle with a time of 3:41.68, finishing 0.13 seconds behind Mack Horton of Australia. Sun finished 16th in the qualifying heats of the 1500 metre freestyle, clocking in at 15:01.97. With his 200-metre freestyle gold medal and his 400 and 1500 metre freestyle gold medals from the 2012 Summer Olympics, Sun became the first swimmer in history to win Olympic gold medals in the 200, 400, and 1500 metre freestyle events.\nThe lead-up to the 400 metre freestyle was marred by controversy. Sun was accused of splashing water into rival Horton's face during practice. Horton accused Sun of attempting to distract him. Sun and Xu Qi, the Chinese swim team manager, denied the allegations and said it must have been a misunderstanding. Horton responded by accusing Sun of being a \"drug cheat\", in reference to his 2014 suspension. Horton's social media pages garnered negative criticism from Chinese fans, with many calling the Australian as a racist, a \"snake\", and a \"disrespectful person\". The Chinese Swimming Association requested an apology for the allegation, stating that Horton's claims \"have greatly damaged sporting ties between China and Australia, and damaged the image of Australian athletes\"; the request was turned down. Further controversy arose when the Global Times, a Chinese newspaper, printed critical editorials about Australia. An op-ed piece in another Chinese newspaper, Changjiang Daily, called for calm and indicated that the dispute was only between the two athletes and should not become a conflict between the two countries.\n\n\n=== 2017–18: Asian Games success and testing incident ===\n\nIn 2017, Sun competed at the World Championships. In the 200 metre freestyle, Sun won gold with a time of 1:44.39, setting a new Asian and Chinese national record. In the 400 metre freestyle, he won gold with a time of 3:41.38, finishing 2.47 seconds ahead of runner-up Mack Horton and winning his third straight 400 metre freestyle world title. Sun finished 5th in the 800 metre freestyle, failing to defend his title. He withdrew from the 1500 metre freestyle.\nIn August 2018, Sun competed in every freestyle event from the 200 to the 1500 metre freestyle at the Asian Games. He also competed in the 4 × 100 and 4 × 200 metre freestyle relay events. In the 200 metre freestyle, Sun won gold with a time of 1:45.43. He finished 1st in the 400 metre freestyle with a time of 3:42.92, over four seconds ahead of runner-up Naito Ehara. By beating Horton's time of 3:43.76 from the 2018 Commonwealth Games, Sun became the number-one swimmer in the world for that event for 2018. In the men's 800 metre freestyle, which was introduced to the Asian Games for the first time, he won gold with a time of 7:48.36. In the 1500 metre freestyle, he finished 1st with a time of 14:58.53, beating runner-up Nguyễn Huy Hoàng by over three seconds. It was the first time Sun swam the event within 15 minutes since the 2014 Asian Games, and his third consecutive Asian Games title in the 1500 metre freestyle. Representing China, Sun helped his team finish second in the 4 × 100 metre freestyle relay with an overall time of 3:13.29, behind Japan's time of 3:12.68. In the 4 × 200 metre freestyle relay, he helped China win silver with an overall time of 7:05.45, behind Japan's 7:05.17.\nIn September 2018, Sun experienced an out-of-competition test at his home. Following investigations, FINA's inquiry panel ultimately concluded that \"Mr. Sun Yang has not committed an anti-doping rule violation\", which FINA accepted. In December at the 2018 FINA World Swimming Championships (25 m), Sun participated in the 4 × 200 metre freestyle relay, helping China win bronze.\n\n\n=== 2019 World Championships ===\nAt the 2019 World Championships, Sun finished 2nd behind Danas Rapšys in the 200 metre freestyle. After the race was over, Rapšys was disqualified for a false start, giving Sun the gold and his third straight medal in the event at the World Championships. In the 400 metre freestyle, Sun won gold with a time of 3:42.44, finishing 0.73 seconds ahead of runner-up Horton and earning his fourth consecutive title in this event. He is the first and the only swimmer to do so.\nSun clashed with Duncan Scott during the 200 metre freestyle presentation. Both the British and Australian camps had been critical about Sun's actions the year prior. Scott refused to share the podium with Sun, and neither competitor shook hands, after which Sun could be seen gesturing and shouting at Scott. In a similar incident a few days earlier, Australian swimmer Mack Horton had also refused to share the podium with Sun. Horton was given an official warning by the sport's organising body, FINA. Following the medal ceremonies, Horton, Scott, and Sun were served letters by FINA, warning them about their behaviour. In a statement, FINA said: \"While FINA respects the principle of freedom of speech, it has to be conducted in the right context ... [athletes should not] use FINA events to make personal statements or gestures\".\nDespite Horton not having any evidence of cheating against Sun Yang, except for the circumstantial FINA and later CAS ruling against Sun on unrelated charges, he claims to \"know\" that Sun Yang was doping, and says his stance is not personal or due to national prejudice.\n\n\n=== 2024: Back after suspension ===\nAt the 2024 Chinese National Summer Swimming Championships in Hefei, Anhui, Yang qualified with the second fastest time of 3:54.98 in the preliminaries, which was his first appearance after a 51-month suspension. In the final, Sun won with a time of 3:49.58.\n\n\n== Controversies ==\n\n\n=== 2013 driving without license ===\nOn 3 November 2013, Sun was found driving without a licence following a collision in Hangzhou. He was ordered to be detained for seven days by the police and fined CN¥5,000. On 4 November, he issued a public apology: \"I should have been a role model as an athlete and a public figure, but I failed my responsibility ... I am deeply sorry for what I have done and will reflect on my behavior.\" On 6 November, the State General Administration of Sports announced that Sun was temporarily banned from the national team swimming camp and all competitions and business-related activities. On 24 April 2014, Sun had his endorsement and business-related ban lifted as a result of \"good behavior\".\n\n\n=== 2014 doping ban ===\nIn May 2014, Sun was banned for three months by the Chinese Swimming Association (CSA) after he tested positive for trimetazidine, a drug that had been included on a ban list four months earlier and was newly classified as a stimulant at the time by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). The substance was later reclassified from a S6 stimulant (prohibited in competition) to an S4 hormone and metabolic modulator (prohibited in and out of competition). Sun was tested while competing in the Chinese national swimming championships, and said that a doctor prescribed the drug to treat heart palpitations, a condition he has suffered since 2008, and that he was unaware that it had been newly added to the banned substances list. He was eligible to file a medical exception to use the drug for his heart condition, but he did not do so.\nThe World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) admonished the Chinese Swimming Association for tardiness in reporting the failed test and the subsequent ban until after it had been served, meaning that Sun never missed a major event. FINA's handling of the case was criticized for allegedly \"protect[ing] one of the sport's biggest stars in a key market\". According to Swimming World Magazine, Sun's mother Yang Ming said in a now-deleted social media post that the Chinese Swimming Association attempted to hide Sun's three-month suspension in 2014.\nIn January 2015, WADA reclassified and downgraded trimetazidine from \"stimulant\" to \"modulator of cardiac metabolism\", prohibiting its use out of competition in addition to the previous prohibition of use in competition. Ben Nichols, a WADA representative, explained that drugs like trimetazidine are reclassified and downgraded when they are recognised as being less likely to be used as doping agents and trimetazidine will be moved off the prohibited stimulant list as of January 1, 2015. It remains a banned substance as of 2020. WADA criticised the CSA for its lateness in reporting the failed test result and subsequent ban until after it had been served. WADA, which had a right to petition if it believes a sanction to be lenient, chose not to take further action after reviewing the case. CHINADA (China Anti-Doping Agency) deputy director Zhao Jia said that \"Sun proved with sufficient evidence that he did not intend to cheat, which helped reduce his ban to three months\", but he was stripped of his win in the 1500 metre freestyle at the 2014 Chinese nationals. One Australian writer opined that the punishment was lenient, but pointed out that Yang was not found to have doped intentionally. After the ban, Swimming Australia ordered coach Denis Cotterell to stop working with Sun, but Cotterell continued coaching him.\n\n\n=== 2018 testing incident and 2020 ban ===\nOn the night of 4 September 2018, three anti-doping testers from IDTM, the organisation responsible for conducting out-of-competition doping tests around the world, arrived at Sun's home in Zhejiang province and were asked to wait outside for almost an hour because the swimmer was not home. The testers took photographs to prove they were there as the swimmer's chosen one-hour window of availability between 10 and 11 pm was about to close. Sun had almost missed this deadline for testing but managed to arrive within the window. After giving blood, he was escorted to the bathroom by a doping control assistant (DCA) to be observed passing urine. Sun noticed the DCA had been taking pictures of him and requested his accreditation, which was not provided. The DCA later said he was a construction worker.\nAfter calling his coach, his lawyer, and the head of the Chinese swimming delegation, Sun did not sign the testing paperwork and argued that the doping control officer's paperwork was incomplete and that two of the three members of the anti-doping party lacked proper identification. According to evidence presented to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), he offered to wait for a properly accredited team, but was rejected. The anti-doping testers later testified to the CAS that Sun and his entourage intimidated them.\nBy around 3:00 am, Sun's camp and the anti-doping testers were at a standoff. Sun's entourage including his doctor Ba Zhen, refused to let the testers take his blood vials. The testers refused to leave without their casing and had rejected Sun's suggestion for a properly credentialed team to come and do the work instead. During the argument Sun's team then directed his security guard to smash the case containing the vials to take back the vials containing Sun's blood. Sun believed that the testing personnel did not have proper credentials.\nThe official report from the FINA inquiry dated 3 January 2019 stated the following:\n\nThe blood that was initially collected (and subsequently destroyed) was not collected with proper authorisation and thus was not properly a \"sample\" ... as a result, the sample collection session initiated by IDTM on September 4, 2018, is invalid and void. No FINA DC rule violations can result therefrom. ... The conduct on the part of the DCA (doping control assistant) is highly improper and extremely unprofessional. This should never happen ... proof of this conduct by a DCA prior to the athlete providing a chaperoned urine sample is unquestionably reason to immediately suspend the DCA's involvement in the testing mission. ... Ultimately, the BCA (blood collection assistant) did not testify at the hearing or answer any questions from the athlete. The Doping Panel is left with significant doubt whether the BCA was properly qualified to draw blood from an athlete.\n\nThe inquiry panel concluded that \"Mr. Sun Yang has not committed an anti-doping rule violation\", which FINA accepted. Their official inquiry report concluded that the testing officer indeed did not abide to the proper testing protocol. WADA disagreed with FINA's decision and appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), which accepted the case and held a public hearing in November 2019. Sun's lawyers told the Associated Press he requested that his CAS hearing to be public and \"fully transparent to clear his name\". FINA supported a move to stop the CAS hearing.\nIn January 2019, The Sunday Times published an exclusive article reporting that Sun and his entourage had presided over the smashing of a vial of the swimmer's blood sample with a hammer in front of anti-doping testers and that he may face a lifetime ban. However according to ABC reporter Tracey Holmes, media coverages claiming that the glass blood vials being smashed, were incorrect as the blood vials themselves were not smashed, but only the outer container carrying it. Sun himself has threatened legal action against The Sunday Times, according to a report that appeared on the Channel News Asia website. The swimmer claimed that the officials had failed to produce proper documentation for the testing, resulting in himself attempting to reject the testing.\nOn February 3, leading rivals and the World Swimming Coaches Association called for Sun to be banned.\nAfter The Sunday Times report, Wada, the global anti-doping regulator opened an inquiry and announced on March 13, 2019, to appeal the ruling at the Court of Arbitration for Sport.\nCAS issued a report on 20 August 2019, stating the appeal hearing brought by WADA against Sun and FINA in September had been postponed due to a party's unexpected personal circumstances. It was announced that the hearing date would be rescheduled and made open to the public, including to the media, as requested. WADA requested for a ban of between two and eight years according to a later media release from CAS.\nAccording to Sun's coach Dennis Cotterell, the drug test conducted on the 4 September 2018, was the swimmer's ninth drug test in two weeks. Sun had just finished competing in the Asian Games in Jakarta, Indonesia two days earlier. Sun Yang had competed and won Gold medals in the 200, 400, 800 and 1,500 metres freestyle. During the Asian Games, he had been tested five times and had passed all tests without any adverse analytical findings.\nA year before the 2018 testing incident, Sun had heated tensions with the same unnamed female doping control officer who presided over his sample collection in the 2018 incident. In 2017, the officer was a doping control assistant in training to become an officer. Sun wrote that the DCA \"lacked proper accreditation and also lacked authorization to perform her assigned role\". The report covering the 2017 disagreements of Sun and his testers did not clearly indicate that the quarrels were ever resolved.\nOn 15 November 2019, the public hearing was held at CAS in Montreux, Switzerland. It was live streamed and released online. The hearing was affected by translation issues throughout the day. According to Time, the translation issues made it unclear how much of the testimony and questions were understood, and both judges and lawyers expressed frustration. The transcript of Sun's final remarks in Chinese during the public hearing was posted online by Sun himself after the hearing.\nOn 18 November, the DCA, who remained anonymous and did not appear at the hearing, said that he was a construction worker rather than a trained doping tester. According to Xinhua News Agency, he had submitted his written testimony in Chinese to CAS and WADA several days before the hearing.  WADA's lead counsel Richard Young referred to \"concerns over intimidation and protection issues\", while during cross-examination of witnesses WADA co-counsel Brent Rychener highlighted the threats and warnings made by members of Sun's entourage to the testing officers, including exchanges involving the swimmer's mother, Dr. Ba Zhen (the head of the Chinese Swimming Association), and Dr. Han Zhaoqi (the head of the Zheijang Anti-Doping Center). The WADA provided witness statements from the DCO and the BCA, indicating that they had been contacted by Sun's entourage and were \"concerned for their physical and economic well-being, and for the well-being of their family members\". They indicated they were \"fearful that, if they would agree to testify in this proceeding, they would suffer significant retaliation in some form from [Sun Yang] and/or his entourage and supporters\". WADA further noted if they had not issued an order, there would be little or no chance that IDTM's Sample Collection Personnel would be willing to testify under such threats.\nOn 28 February 2020, a panel of three senior judges at CAS unanimously found Sun guilty of refusing to co-operate with sample testers and banned him from swimming until February 2028. The eight year ban, the maximum CAS can hand out, was imposed because it was his second offence after his 2014 suspension.\n\nThe panel said:  \"it is one thing, having provided a blood sample, to question the accreditation of the testing personnel while keeping the intact samples in the possession of the testing authorities; it is quite another thing, after lengthy exchanges and warnings as to the consequences, to act in such a way that results in destroying the sample containers, thereby eliminating any chance of testing the sample at a later stage. It was striking that, in the course of his testimony, at no point did the athlete express any regret as to his actions, or indicate that, with the benefit of hindsight, it might have been preferable for him to have acted differently. Rather, as the proceedings unfolded, he dug his heels in and, eventually, sought to blame others for the manifest failings that occurred. At no point ... did he confront the possibility that he might have overreacted in his actions.“ \nWADA issued a statement welcoming the verdict, saying that the \"CAS ruling confirms those concerns\" about the original FINA decision that seemed to be incorrect under the World Anti-Doping Code. The ban rules Sun out for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and \"effectively ends his career\". The only remaining possibility for Sun and his legal team is to appeal the decision to the Swiss Federal Court, but only on narrow procedural grounds. The court ruled that Sun can maintain the two world titles he won in South Korea.\nSoon after the verdict was announced, Sun told Xinhua News Agency he would definitely appeal the \"unfair\" ban. Some analysts said the hearing was marred by severe translation problems, conflict of interest, and bias. One Australian sports writer suggested that there was hypocrisy and double standards against Sun, with an actual \"absence of evidence\" around doping activity.\nWhen the verdict was announced, Chinese online users continued to defend Sun while insulting his chief rival Mack Horton. An unnamed analyst noted that the harassment against Horton—which had been ongoing since 2016—was likely \"state-orchestrated\" on Sun's behalf, saying: \"the [Horton] family's ordeal is believed to be well-organised and part of a systematic pattern of harassment and intimidation directed at perceived critics of China\". This is not an amateur operation. The Hortons' story is very disturbing ... It says something about the reach of foreign powers within Australia.\" According to Jonathan White at SCMP, some Chinese users bypassing China's Great Firewall to log onto Instagram apologized to Horton for the harassment, with statements that include \"sometimes our Chinese could not get the truth, but most of us are kind and goodness person\" (sic), criticizing Sun as \"arrogant\" and a \"baby\", and noted that \"Sun deleted all of his post-verdict posts purporting to offer new 'evidence'\".\nThe CAS decision against Sun Yang was scrutinized, and many unknown facts about the case were brought to light, in an article published at Sports Integrity Initiative on 15 May 2020. The article stated that CAS decision against Sun Yang was \"unfair\" and needs to be overturned given the extenuating circumstances such as the test team not meeting standards and that the \"DCO failed to give the required warning\". And stated it was \"highly probable\" that Yang was innocent of doping as they pointed out context that Sun has just completed a \"stressful competition\" during which he had been tested many times and all those tests had come back negative. And that Sun at that time, after finishing a major competition, was about to start a vacation. Also that swimmers are allowed to miss two drug tests per year, and so that if Sun had anything to hide that night, he could have just skipped the test, and that Sun hasn't missed a single test in the previous 12 months before the incident. They also pointed out that Sun had also been tested shortly after the night in question, and that test had also came back negative. The article also alleged political bias in the three judge CAS panel and exhibited tweets from the panel president, former Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini, who in his tweets castigated the practice of dog slaughter and denounced the consumption of dog meat at a Chinese festival and had used racially tinged language. One of his tweets stated, \"Torturing innocent animal is a flag of chinese!Sadics,inhumans with the protection of chinese authorities and the tolerance of western powers focusing on more business with China,regardless any massive violence!Shame on china and their protectors!\". The South China Morning Post identified one of Frattini's tweets as \"describing one person who appeared to mistreat a dog as a 'yellow face Chinese monster'\". It also reported that Frattini denied that he was being a racist for his tweets. With the revelations of this article, Sun Yang's legal team filed a second request to appeal the verdict. This appeal was successful.\nThe CAS clarified that Sun (\"the Athlete\") would not be stripped of any of his medals because \"doping tests performed on the Athlete shortly before and after the aborted doping control in September 2018 were negative\" and \"in the absence of any evidence that the Athlete may have engaged in doping activity since 4 September 2018, including on the occasion of the FINA World Championships in Gwangju, South Korea in July 2019, the results achieved by the Athlete in the period prior to the CAS award being issued should not be disqualified.\" On 24 December 2020, the verdict of eight-year ban for Sun was rescinded and referred back to CAS, after the Swiss Federal Tribunal upheld an appeal lodged by Sun against the chair of the CAS Panel. The SFT decision said that \"doubts as to the impartiality of the arbitrator were objectively justified\"   The later CAS retrial on 22 June 2021 resulted in the suspension still being upheld but reduced the total suspension time to 4 years and three months. As of May 24, 2024, Sun is once again eligible for competition. However, because he missed Chinese Olympics Trials, he was not able to compete in the Paris Olympics.\n\n\n== Major achievements ==\nIn 2012, Sun became the first Chinese man to win an Olympic gold medal in swimming. He is the first male swimmer in history to earn Olympic and World Championship gold medals at every freestyle distance between 200 and 1500 metres. A three-time Olympic gold medallist and eleven-time world champion, Sun is the most decorated Chinese swimmer in history.\nSun's major achievements include:\n\nNotes\n\n\n== Honours and awards ==\n\nAs of 2019, Sun has received the following awards:\n\nSwimming World World Swimmer of the Year Award: 2013\nSwimming World Pacific Rim Swimmer of the Year Award: 2011, 2012, 2013, 2017, 2018\nSwimSwam Swammy Awards \"Asian Male Swimmer of the Year\" Award: 2017\nFINA \"Outstanding Contribution to Swimming Popularity in China\" Award: 2017\nFINA World Championships \"Best Male Swimmer\" Award: 2013, 2015\nChina Laureus \"Best Male Athlete\" Award: 2011, 2017\nChina Laureus \"Most Popular Male Athlete\" Award: 2017\nCCTV Sports Awards \"Best Male Athlete\" Award: 2011, 2012\nCCTV Sports Awards \"Rookie of the Year\" Award: 2010\nZhejiang Province \"Best Male Athlete of the Year\" Award: 2016\n\n\n== Personal bests ==\n\nKey: AS = Asian Record, NR = National Record, OR = Olympic Record\n\n\n== Personal life ==\n\nIn July 2014, Sun graduated from Zhejiang University with a bachelor's degree in sports studies. According to FINA, Sun \"has studied for a master's degree in physical education at Soochow University\". In 2018, he began his Doctor of Philosophy degree in kinesiology at the Shanghai University of Sport in Shanghai, China.\nSun's sporting philosophy is \"You succeed when you believe that you can succeed\". His idol is Chinese swimmer Zhang Lin. In addition to swimming, Sun enjoys listening to music and playing basketball.\nOn 20 July 2023, Sun announced his marriage to former rhythmic gymnast Zhang Doudou.\n\n\n== See also ==\nChina at the 2012 Summer Olympics\nChina at the 2016 Summer Olympics\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nSun Yang at World Aquatics\nSun Yang at SwimRankings.net\nSun Yang at Olympics.com\nSun Yang at Olympedia\nSun Yang at InterSportStats\nSun Yang on Weibo (in Chinese)"}
{"title": "Sven Fischer", "requested": "Sven Fischer", "extract": "Sven Fischer (born 16 April 1971) is a German former biathlete. He trained with the WSV Oberhof 05 club, and was coached by Frank Ullrich and Fritz Fischer (national coaches) and Klaus Siebert (club coach). After the 2006/07 biathlon season, he retired. Fischer also won the overall World Cup twice, in 1997 and 1999, as well as eight season World Cups in various disciplines.\n\n\n== Background ==\nFischer, who stands at 1.85 m (6 ft 1 in) and weighs 85 kg (187 lb), was born in Schmalkalden, Thuringia (former East Germany). His apparent talents for athletics was discovered early and already in third grade he was training three times a week in the BSG Werkzeugkombinat sports club. In the fifth grade, he became district champion of his age class.\nIn September 1983, the boarding school Kinder- und Jugendsportschule (KJS) accepted him on a biathlon youth scholarship. After his exam in 1989, he joined the army studying to become a sports teacher. The German reunification and the fall of the Berlin Wall and subsequent unification of the East and West German armies, forced him to leave the military in 1990.\nHe instead started training for international sport events, but in 1989, when Fischer was eighteen, he had problems with both his kneecaps after a growth spurt as a youth: \"I grew too fast and didn't stretch well.\" As a result he sat out the whole of the 1989 season and thought he might have to retire from the sport at his young age. However, in the 1990 season when he came back he found that he had become more powerful than before his injury, and in December 1990, he celebrated his first European cup victory in sprint in Hochfilzen. One week later he participated in his first world cup relay. He was soon rewarded B–status and because of success in the German Championship in 1992 he qualified for the world cup in Pokljuka in December 1992.\nIn 1993, he won a World Championship gold medal in the 10 km Team in Borovets, Bulgaria, and a world cup race, in sprint, in Kontiolahti, Finland. In 1994, he won the Olympic bronze medal in the 20 km individual.\nFischer was an integral part of the German biathlon team until his retirement.\nFischer has eight biathlon victories at the Holmenkollen ski festival, three in individual (1995, 1999, 2004), two in sprint (1995, 1999), two in pursuit (2002, 2004), and one in mass start (2001).\n\n\n== Career ==\nFischer won the World Cup overall on two occasions (1996/97 and 1998/99), he's also come second twice (1993/94 and 2004/05), and third three times (1995/96, 1997/98, and 1999/2000). In the 2004/05 season Fischer lost the World Cup by only eleven points, which he most probably would have earned had he competed in the final race of the year, but he missed it because of a cold.\nIn the Olympics, Fischer won four gold medals, one of them in the sprint in 2006 Winter Olympics, and the other three in the relay (1994, 1998, and 2006). He also won two silver, and two bronze.\nIn the World Championships, Fischer amassed seven gold medals, six silver, and seven bronze. Four of his gold medals were won in relays, one in the team event, one in the individual, and one in the mass start. In the sprint he has one of his silver medals (Hochfilzen 2005). He has three bronze from the pursuit (Kontiolahti 1999, Pokljuka 2001, and Hochfilzen 2005). In the mass start he has one gold (Oslo Holmenkollen 1999), two silver (Khanty-Mansiysk 2003 and Hochfilzen 2005), and one bronze (Pokljuka 2001). His remaining silver and two bronze came in the relay (silver in Ruhpolding 1996, bronzes in Borovets 1993 and Lahti 2000).\n\n\n== Biathlon results ==\nAll results are sourced from the International Biathlon Union.\n\n\n=== Olympic Games ===\n8 medals (4 gold, 2 silver, 2 bronze)\n\n*Pursuit was added as an event in 2002, with mass start being added in 2006.\n\n\n=== World Championships ===\n20 medals (7 gold, 6 silver, 7 bronze)\n\n*During Olympic seasons competitions are only held for those events not included in the Olympic program.\n**Team was removed as an event in 1998, and pursuit was added in 1997 with mass start being added in 1999 and the mixed relay in 2005.\n\n\n=== Individual victories ===\n33 victories (6 In, 13 Sp, 10 Pu, 4 MS)\n\n*Results are from UIPMB and IBU races which include the Biathlon World Cup, Biathlon World Championships and the Winter Olympic Games.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nFan page\nSven Fischer at IBU BiathlonWorld.comSven Fischer at IBU BiathlonResults.com"}
{"title": "Sven Kramer", "requested": "Sven Kramer", "extract": "Sven Kramer (Dutch pronunciation: [sfɛŋ ˈkraːmər]; born 23 April 1986) is a retired Dutch long track speed skater who has won an all-time record nine World Allround Championships as well as a record ten European Allround Championships. He is the Olympic champion of the 5000 meters at the Vancouver 2010, Sochi 2014 and Pyeongchang 2018 Olympics, and won a record 21 gold medals at the World Single Distance Championships; eight in the 5000 meters, five in the 10,000 meters, and eight in the team pursuit. Kramer used to be the world record holder in the team pursuit (alongside Douwe de Vries and Marcel Bosker) and broke the world records in the 5000 meter and 10,000 meter events three times. By winning the 2010 World Allround Championship, Kramer became the first speed skater in history to win four consecutive world allround championships and eight consecutive international all round championships. He was undefeated in the 18 international allround championships he participated in from the 2006/2007 season until the 2016/2017 season. From November 2007 to March 2009, he was ranked first in the Adelskalender, but despite his dominance as an all-round skater he has since been overtaken on that list by Shani Davis and, more recently, by his teammate Patrick Roest and Jordan Stolz.\nOn 27 March 2020, it was announced that Kramer extended his contract with the Jumbo-Visma speed skating team until the 2022 Winter Olympics.\nOn 28 October 2021 it was announced that Sven was going to retire in 2022.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nSven Kramer was born on 23 April 1986 in Heerenveen, Friesland, Netherlands. He is the son of former speed skater Yep Kramer, and the four-year-older brother of speed skater Brecht Kramer. He is a born Frisian.\nSince 2007 he has been in a long-term relationship with Dutch field hockey player Naomi van As, and they welcomed a daughter in October 2018. And a son in 2022.\nOn 3 March 2010, Kramer was awarded as Knight of the Order of the Netherlands Lion for his services to sport, i.e., winning the Men's 5000 m speed skating competition at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. On 12 March 2022, he was further appointed as Officer of the Order of Orange-Nassau for his exceptional performance in sport over the years.\n\n\n== Speed skating career ==\n\n\n=== Junior career ===\nIn the 2004 season, he came in second at the Junior allround world championships.\nIn December 2004, he won the Dutch Allround Championships at just 18 years old and thus qualified for the European Allround Championships for the first time, where he won the silver medal. He came third at the World Allround Championships 2005. At the end of that season, he signed a contract with the Dutch TVM-team.\nKramer set a new world record for the 5000 m in Salt Lake City on 19 November 2005, when he was 19 years old. With his time of 6:08.78, he also entered the top 10 of the all-time world ranking, the Adelskalender. The previous season he had become the Junior allround world champion.\nKramer stopped skating in the junior competition and became a senior speed skater when he was 20 years old.\n\n\n=== Season 2005–2006 ===\nOn 11 February 2006, he won the silver medal in the 5000 m at the 2006 Winter Olympic in Turin. Kramer also participated in the team pursuit event. The Dutch team was the favourite and was leading Italy by nearly a full second in their semi-final, but Kramer stepped on a block and fell, taking Carl Verheijen with him. In the race for bronze, they defeated Norway, giving Kramer his second medal of the Games.\nKramer also competed in two other distances, the 1500 and the 10,000 meter. Due to a screw in his skate that broke just a few minutes before his race, Kramer came in 15th at the 1500. The 10,000 meters did not go as planned, and he finished in 7th. Afterward, Kramer stepped on the concrete with his skates in his frustration, damaging the blades.\nDuring the 2006 European Allround Championships in Hamar, Kramer reached fourth place after a tournament full of incidents. The ice began to melt on the first day, and the skaters had to wait until later in the evening to continue skating.\nDuring the 2006 World Allround Championships in Calgary, Kramer set a new world record in the 10,000 meter event with a time of 12:51.60. Kramer won both the two longest distances of the tournament, but had to settle for bronze overall.\n\n\n=== Season 2006–2007 ===\nIn the 2006–2007 season, Kramer won the first two 5000 m World Cup races, the second in 6:09.78, just outside his world record time. In December 2006, he again became national allround champion, where a personal record in the 500 meter event, his weakest distance, gave him great prospects for the international allround championships.\nOn 14 January 2007, Kramer was crowned European Allround Champion in Collalbo, Italy. There had been a tight battle between Kramer and the 2006 winner Enrico Fabris. Fabris won the two shorter and Kramer the two longer distances, but his overall score was lower than Fabris' (148.800 to 149.389). In addition, his times in the 5 and 10 km were new world records for outdoor skating. By skating a new personal best in the 1500 m, Kramer overtook fellow Dutchman Jochem Uytdehaage and Enrico Fabris on the Adelskalender. On the Adelskalender, he was ranked first as of 17 November 2007.\nOn 11 February 2007, Kramer became World Allround Champion for the first time. He skated the 500 m and the 10 km in personal bests, the latter in a new world record of 12:49.88.\nAt the World Championships of 2007 in Salt Lake City, Kramer participated in the 5000, 10,000 meters, and the team pursuit. He won three out of three, the 10,000 m and the team pursuit in world records.\nKramer became Skater of the year. The female skater of the year was Ireen Wüst.\n\n\n=== Season 2007–2008 ===\nIn the first season competition, Fabris beat Kramer in the 5000 meter, where he set a new world record, 6:07.40. A week later, Kramer got his world record back with a time of 6:03.32.\nIn Kolomna, Russia, Kramer won the European Allround Championship for the second time.\nOn 10 February, Kramer became World Allround Champion in Berlin, Germany, for the second time.\nDuring the Essent ISU World Cup in Hamar (Norway), Kramer was awarded the Oscar Mathisen Award mainly due to the four world records he skated during 2007. Kramer skated four distances: 1500, 5000, 10,000 meters, and the team pursuit. In the 1500 meter event, Kramer skated a good race and placed second, ahead of Olympic Champion Enrico Fabris and Shani Davis. Denny Morrison from Canada won the race. Kramer won three gold medals in the 5000 and 10,000 m distances and the team pursuit, just like the year before.\nKramer became Skater of the year for the second time in a row. The female skater of the year was Paulien van Deutekom.\n\n\n=== Season 2008–2009 ===\nAt the national single distance championships in Heerenveen, Kramer won the 1500, 5000, and the 10,000 meters; by winning these three distances, he brought his national titles total up to 11.\nHe won gold at the national allround championships in Heerenveen and at the European allround championships in Heerenveen. At the world single distance championships in Vancouver, Kramer won gold in the 5000, 10,000 meters, and the team pursuit.\nKramer won gold at the world allround championships in Hamar.\nFor the third time, he was chosen as \"skater of the year\" in the Netherlands and received the Ard Schenk Award.\n\n\n=== Season 2009–2010 ===\n\nAt the national championships for single distances in Heerenveen, Kramer won the 5000 and the 10,000 meters. He failed to qualify for the World Cup for the 1500 meters.\nKramer won gold at the European allround championships in Hamar in January 2010. He became the allround European champion for the fourth year in a row. He won the final 10,000 meter race from the Italian Enrico Fabris, who ended second in the overall rankings. Russian Ivan Skobrev finished third.\nAt the 2010 Winter Olympics, Kramer was the favourite to win three gold medals, like his countryman Ard Schenk at the 1972 Olympics in Sapporo. At the 5000 meters race of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Kramer grabbed the gold medal with a new Olympic record of 6:14.60, beating the previous time of Jochem Uytdehaage by 0.06 seconds. He finished ahead of South Korean Lee Seung-hoon and Russian Ivan Skobrev, leaving four Olympic champions, Shani Davis, Enrico Fabris, Chad Hedrick and Bob de Jong, empty-handed.\nShortly after his 5000-meter victory, an NBC-affiliated reporter asked Kramer to say his name, country, and what he'd just won, to which Kramer replied, \"Are you stupid? Hell no, I'm not gonna do that.\"\nIn the 10,000 meter event, Kramer finished first, with a time of 12:54.50, only to be disqualified for incorrectly changing lanes during one of the later laps. As a result, Lee Seung-hoon won gold with a new Olympic record, 12:58.55. The lane change mistake was caused by incorrect directions shouted to Kramer by his coach, Gerard Kemkers, near the end of the race.\nKramer didn't participate at the Dutch national championships since he needed rest after the Olympic games in Vancouver and to recover for the World Allround Championships in Heerenveen on 19–21 March.\nAt the World allround championships in Heerenveen on 19–21 March 2010, Kramer won an unprecedented fourth consecutive title. In the general classification after three distances, he ranked number 2, but in the final 10K race he skated 12:57.97 which was more than enough to pass Jonathan Kuck who was leading the overall classification before the start. Kuck ended number 2, Håvard Bøkko third. It was Kramer's 8th consecutive championship title in the European and World allround championships, another unprecedented feat.\nKramer became Skater of the year for the fourth time in a row. The female skater of the year was Ireen Wüst.\n\n\n=== Season 2010–2011 ===\nKramer did not participate in this season because of an injury to one of the nerves (neuropathy) in his leg.\n\n\n=== Season 2011–2012 ===\nIn the 2011–2012 season, Kramer returned to professional speed skating. He completed the European allround championships in Budapest in first place, claiming his fifth European allround championship.\nAt the world allround championships in Moscow, he also finished in first place, claiming his fifth championship. This tied the record shared by Oscar Mathisen, who won his 5th title in 1914, and Clas Thunberg, who won his 5th title in 1931.\n\n\n=== Season 2012–2013 ===\nKramer won the European allround championships in Heerenveen in January for a record sixth time, tying the record of Rintje Ritsma.\nKramer also won the World Allround Championships in Hamar in February for a record sixth time.\n\n\n=== Season 2013–2014 ===\n\nIn preparation for the Winter Olympics, Kramer chose not to compete in the European allround championships.\nAt the 2014 Winter Olympics, Kramer won gold at the 5000 m with an Olympic record of 6:10.76. Kramer also won silver in the 10,000 m. He withdrew from the 1500 m.\n\n\n=== Season 2014–2015 ===\n\nAt the 2015 European allround championships in Chelyabinsk, Kramer won his 7th title.\n\n\n=== Season 2015–2016 ===\nAt the 2016 European allround championships in Minsk, Kramer won a record 8th title.\n\n\n=== Season 2017–2018 ===\nAt the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, Kramer won the gold medal in the 5000 meter event, breaking his own Olympic record from 2014 with a time of 6:09.76. This was his third gold medal in a row in this event, and he became the only male speed skater to win the same Olympic event three times. He also became the first man to win eight Olympic medals in speed skating. In the 10,000 m event he finished sixth. In the following World championship allround he placed fourth overall.\n\n\n== Records ==\n\n\n=== Personal records ===\n\nSource:\nHe is currently in 4rd position in the adelskalender.\n\n\n== World records ==\n\n\n== Olympic records ==\n\nSource:Vancouver 2010 Archived 25 October 2009 at the Wayback Machine\n\n\n== Tournament overview ==\nSource:\nDNF = Did not finish\nDQ = Disqualified\nWDR = Withdrew\nNC = No classification\n\n\n== World Cup overview ==\n\nSource:\n\n– = did not participate\n* = 10000m\n(b) = Division B\n\n\n== Medals won ==\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n Media related to Sven Kramer at Wikimedia Commons\nOfficial website \nSven Kramer at the International Skating Union (archived former page)\nSven Kramer at Olympics.com \nSven Kramer at Olympedia \nSven Kramer at InterSportStats\nSven Kramer at TeamNL  (in Dutch)\nSven Kramer at NOC*NSF (in Dutch) (English translation)\nSven Kramer, profile on the official team website at the Wayback Machine (archived 22 February 2014) (in Dutch)"}
{"title": "Svetlana Romashina", "requested": "Svetlana Romashina", "extract": "Svetlana Alekseyevna Romashina (Russian: Светлана Алексеевна Ромашина, IPA: [svʲɪˈtɫanə rɐˈmaʂɨnə]; born September 21, 1989) is a former Russian synchronized swimmer. She won a total of 41 gold medals while competing in four Olympic Games, seven world championships, and six European championships. After winning two golds at the 2020 Summer Olympics, she became the most decorated athlete in the history of her sport.\nAfter leading the Russian Olympic Committee squad to victory at the Tokyo Games, Romashina announced the end of her Olympic career.\n\n\n== Career ==\n\n\n=== Early career ===\nBorn in Moscow, Romashina began training in artistic swimming at age six. At fifteen years old, she won two gold medals in team competition and combo routine at the 2005 World Aquatics Championships.\n\n\n=== World Championships ===\nAfter the 2019 World Aquatics Championships in Gwangju, South Korea, Romashina became the most awarded athlete in the history of synchronized swimming with 21 gold medals. She surpassed her compatriot, Natalia Ishchenko, who holds 19 gold medals from the World Championships.\n\n\n=== Olympic Games ===\nRomashina won four consecutive Olympic gold medals in the team competition at the 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2020 Summer Olympics. She also won the duet event at London and Rio de Janeiro with Natalia Ishchenko. At the 2020 Summer Olympics, held in Tokyo in 2021, Romashina partnered with Svetlana Kolesnichenko and won the duet event.\n\n\n== Retirement ==\nRomashina announced her retirement from artistic swimming in 2023.\n\n\n=== Personal life ===\nIn 2017, Romashina gave birth to her daughter Alexandra.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nSvetlana Romashina at World Aquatics\nSvetlana Romashina at Olympics.com\nSvetlana Romashina at Olympedia\nSvetlana Romashina at InterSportStats\nSvetlana Romashina on Instagram"}
{"title": "Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone", "requested": "Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone", "extract": "Sydney Michelle McLaughlin-Levrone ( mə-GLOK-lin ləv-ROH-nee; née McLaughlin; born August 7, 1999) is an American hurdler and sprinter who holds the world record for the 400 meters hurdles and the American record for the flat 400 meters. She won gold in the 2020 and 2024 Summer Olympics, as well as at the 2022 World Athletics Championships and 2025 World Athletics Championships. She set a world record time in the 400 m hurdles of 50.37 seconds at the 2024 Summer Olympics on August 8, 2024, breaking the world record she previously set of 50.65 seconds. She set a championship record in the flat 400 of 47.78 at the 2025 World Championships, making her the second fastest woman in history over that distance. She was the first woman to break the 52-second (June 2021) and 51-second (July 2022) barriers in the 400 m hurdles. She won a silver medal at the 2019 World Championships. At all four competitions, she also took gold as part of the women's 4 × 400 m relay team.\nAs a 15-year-old, McLaughlin won the 400 m hurdles event at the 2015 World Youth Championships. In 2016, she was the youngest athlete since Denean Howard in 1980 to qualify for the U.S. Olympic track team, having placed third at the U.S. Olympic Trials, with the current world under-18 best of 54.15 seconds, then subsequently setting the world U20 record. She holds the current world U20 record of 53.60 seconds, having achieved a junior personal best of 52.75s (not ratified), with both marks set in 2018. Aside from McLaughlin-Levrone, only three other women have ever broken the 52 second barrier, and only one other has broken 51. She holds six of the ten all-time fastest 400 m hurdles times. She was the 2019 Diamond League champion.\nIn 2022, McLaughlin-Levrone was voted World Athletics Female Athlete of the Year. She became the fifth female athlete to receive this honor more than once when she was chosen again in 2025.\n\n\n== Early life and background ==\nMcLaughlin-Levrone was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, on August 7, 1999. She grew up in Dunellen, New Jersey.\nHer parents are Willie McLaughlin and Mary Neumeister McLaughlin. Her father Willie was part of a long line of track & field stars from East Orange High School, in East Orange, New Jersey. He is a member of the Manhattan College Athletic Hall of Fame as a three-time All-American. He was a semi-finalist in the 400 meters at the 1984 Olympic Trials with a time of 45.72 seconds. Her mother Mary was a 2:12 half-miler at Cardinal O'Hara High School in Tonawanda, New York, where she ran on the boys' team. Her parents met as students at Manhattan College; there was no women's track team when Mary arrived in 1979, so she became the manager of the men's track team.\nIn addition to being successful academically, McLaughlin-Levrone took up running at an early age, following brother Taylor and their older sister Morgan. When she was 14, her father said, \"All of our kids are fairly talented, but [Sydney's] a little special. We saw it coming. It was just a matter of time.\" She is a member of the class of 2017 at Union Catholic Regional High School in Scotch Plains, where she was the first two-time Gatorade Player of the Year in Track & Field. Her older sister, Morgan, ran for St. Peter's University. Her older brother, Taylor, ran for the University of Michigan, and won silver in the 400 meter hurdles at the 2016 IAAF World U20 Championships. Her younger brother, Ryan, took after his older siblings as a track stand-out at Union Catholic. He was the fifth member of the family to win a New Jersey county track title.\n\n\n== High school and college career ==\nAt the national junior championships in 2014, McLaughlin-Levrone placed a close second behind Shamier Little in the 400-meter hurdles; her time of 55.63 s was a national high school freshman record and a world age-14 best. She would have qualified to represent the United States at the 2014 IAAF World Junior Championships, but was a year too young to be eligible. McLaughlin-Levrone also set a world age group best of 13.34 s in the 100-meter hurdles over 76.2 cm (2 ft 6.0 in) hurdles that summer.\nIn 2015, she improved her 400-meter hurdles best to 55.28 s at the national youth trials; the time was an age 15 world best, and ranked second on the all-time world youth list behind Leslie Maxie's world youth best (and national high school record) of 55.20 s set in 1984. She qualified for the World Youth Championships in Cali, Colombia, where she won gold in 55.94 s; she finished the year as the world youth and junior leader in the event.\n\n\n=== 2016 ===\nMcLaughlin-Levrone won the 400-meter hurdles in 54.46 s at the New Balance national outdoor high school championships; the time broke Maxie's prep record and world youth best, as well as Lashinda Demus's American junior record of 54.70 s. In addition, she ran on Union Catholic's team in the sprint medley relay, running a fast 50.93 s split for 400 meters as the team set a new high school record of 2:07.99. She won the USATF junior championship in 54.54 s the following week; in recognition of her accomplishments, she was named Gatorade National Girls Athlete of the Year.\n\nMcLaughlin-Levrone placed third in the 400-meter hurdles in 54.15 s at the US Olympic Trials , setting a new world youth best and world junior record and qualifying for the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro before her senior year in high school. She was the youngest athlete to make the American Olympic track and field team since Carol Lewis and Denean Howard qualified for the boycotted Moscow Olympics in 1980. At the Games, she placed fifth in her semi-final heat, failing to advance to the finals.\n\n\n=== 2017 ===\nShe was part of an American record setting quartet that broke the indoor distance medley relay world record with a time of 10:40.31, set at the New Balance Indoor Grand Prix on January 28 at Boston's Reggie Lewis Center. The splits for the four legs were: 3:18.40 (1200 m) by Emma Coburn, 52.32 (400 m) by McLaughlin, 2:01.92 (800 m) by Brenda Martinez, and 4:27.66 (1600 m) by Jenny Simpson. Later that indoor season on March 12, McLaughlin-Levrone lowered her own national 400-meter record to a 51.61 s at the New Balance Nationals in New York City.\n\nIn April, McLaughlin-Levrone opened her outdoor season by breaking the 300 m hurdles national high school record at the Arcadia Invitational, running 38.90 s. The record was previously held by Lashinda Demus who achieved 39.98 s in 2001. The record was the first ever attempt over 300 m hurdles for McLaughlin-Levrone as high school track meets in New Jersey do not contest the 300 m hurdles. Her time was a North American record and number 2 all-time worldwide behind Zuzana Hejnová who ran 38.16 in 2013. Later that month, McLaughlin-Levrone ran the fastest ever high school girls relay split (400 m) during the Championship of America high school girls 4 × 400 at the 123rd Penn Relays. After taking the baton at the back of an eight-team field, she posted a split of 50.37 s, passing five teams to lead her Union Catholic relay team to a third-place finish in 3:38.92. McLaughlin-Levrone bettered this mark at the New Balance Nationals Outdoor Meet on June 18. Taking the baton in sixth place on the final handoff, she passed five runners to lead Union Catholic to victory, posting a split of 49.85 seconds.\nMcLaughlin-Levrone was named the Gatorade National Female Athlete of the Year in 2015–16 and 2016–17. She was the first athlete to repeat in the then-15-year history of the award. At the age of 17, she was on the cover of Sports Illustrated when she won the award the second time in July 2017 and the magazine said she \"ranks as one of the most dominant high school athletes ever.\". McLaughlin-Levrone also excelled in the classroom graduating with a GPA of 3.55.  Additionally she volunteered for the Central Jersey Chapter of Hope Worldwide, distributed fire safety and disaster relief information to residents on behalf of the American Red Cross and donated time to Hurricane Sandy recovery efforts in Toms River, New Jersey.\n\n\n=== University of Kentucky ===\nIn November 2016, McLaughlin-Levrone signed a National Letter of Intent to attend the University of Kentucky and compete for their track and field program.\nIn March 2018, she set the world junior 400-meter record of 50.36 seconds at the NCAA Division I Indoor Track and Field Championships. On May 13, McLaughlin-Levrone broke the collegiate record in the 400 m hurdles, running 52.75 s to win the event in her first SEC championship appearance.\n\nOn September 18, 2024, McLaughlin-Levrone was inducted into the University of Kentucky Athletic Hall of Fame.  Although she attended the university for just one year and did not receive a degree, during her induction speech she told the audience: \"I would not be the woman that I am had I not attended UK.\"\n\n\n== Professional career ==\nIn June 2018, after one year at Kentucky, she forfeited her remaining eligibility to compete in college and turned professional, and signed a sponsorship deal with New Balance in October of the same year. Instead of hiring an agent specializing in athletes, McLaughlin-Levrone contracted with William Morris Endeavor, a firm that typically represents Hollywood stars.\nShe is coached by track coach Bob Kersee, whose successes have mainly been with female athletes.\n\n\n=== 2019 ===\n\nAt the World Athletics Championships, held between September 27 and October 6, 2019, in Doha, Qatar, McLaughlin-Levrone ran the 400 m hurdles in 52.23 s finishing in second place behind Dalilah Muhammad. She won every Diamond League she ran over 400 m hurdles that year, picking up wins in Oslo, Monaco, and the Diamond League Final in Zürich.\n\n\n=== 2021 ===\nIn 2021, McLaughlin-Levrone defeated Muhammad at the Olympic Trials in Eugene, Oregon, setting a new world record in the process with her time of 51.90. Later, at the Olympic Games in Tokyo, McLaughlin-Levrone bettered her time to 51.46 to claim the Olympic gold. She later won a second gold as part of the women's 4 × 400 m relay.\n\n\n=== 2022 ===\n\nIn 2022, McLaughlin-Levrone opened her season at the Penn Relays Carnival, dropping down in distance to the 100 m hurdles, which she won in 12.75 seconds. In June, she broke her own world record in the 400-Meter Hurdles again, running a time of 51.41 seconds during the USATF Championships at Hayward Field in Eugene. A month later at the World Championships, also at Hayward Field, she broke her own world record again with a time of 50.68 seconds and became the first woman to run the 400-Meter hurdles in under 51-seconds. She also won gold as part of the Women's 4 × 400 m relay, running the final leg. She ended her season by winning at the Gyulai István Memorial in Szekesfehervar, setting a European all-comers record of 51.68 seconds.\n\n\n=== 2023 ===\nOn June 9, 2023, in her first race running the 400 meters as a professional, McLaughlin-Levrone ran 49.71 seconds while finishing second to Marileidy Paulino at the Diamond League meet in Paris, France. Later that month, McLaughlin-Levrone ran 49.51 at the New York Grand Prix. On July 8, 2023, McLaughlin-Levrone produced a world-leading performance of 48.74 seconds at the USATF Championships in Eugene, Oregon, narrowly missing out on Sanya Richards-Ross's American record of 48.70 seconds.\nOn August 11, 2023, she withdrew from the 2023 World Athletics Championships due to a knee injury.\n\n\n=== 2024 ===\n\nOn May 18, McLaughlin-Levrone won the 200 m at the Los Angeles Grand Prix, beating 200 m specialists such as Gabby Thomas and Abby Steiner. At the New York Grand Prix in June, McLaughlin-Levrone competed in her first 400 m race of the season with a then-world-leading time of 48.75, just 0.01 seconds slower than her personal best. Having led the race early on, she powered ahead at 200 metres to beat the second-place finisher, Talitha Diggs, by over two seconds.\nIn June, McLaughlin-Levrone signed with Michael Johnson's Grand Slam Track league for the then-upcoming 2025 season, in the long hurdles (400 m hurdles / 400 m flat) category.\nOn June 30, at the 2024 Olympic Trials, McLaughlin-Levrone broke her own 400-meter hurdles world record once more, finishing with a time of 50.65 seconds and qualifying for the 2024 Summer Olympics. On August 8, 2024, at the Olympic Games in Paris, McLaughlin-Levrone once again broke her own world record, finishing with a time of 50.37 seconds and defending her Olympic title. She went on to win another gold as part of the Women's 4 × 400 m relay.\nOn September 3, 2024, it was announced that McLaughlin-Levrone would compete in both the 200 and 400 m in the 2024 Diamond League finals in Brussels, Belgium, on September 13 and 14. However, a day later, Diamond League CEO Petr Stastny said that she was ineligible to compete in the finals, because she hadn't competed in any Diamond League events in the 2024 season, so she hadn't accumulated any points and didn't qualify for a wild card. She went on to compete in the pre-programme events in these distances instead, winning both with times of 22.40 and 49.11 seconds respectively.\n\n\n=== 2025 ===\nOn April 6, at the Grand Slam Track’s inaugural event in Kingston, Jamaica. McLaughlin-Levrone ran an impressive 50.32 seconds in the 400 meter flat, despite windy conditions for a win. She also sped to a 52.76 world-leading time in the 400 m hurdles.\nOn May 3, in Miami, Florida, McLaughlin-Levrone posted a time of 52.07 seconds in the 400 meter hurdles to win her 12th consecutive 400 meter hurdle finals.\nOn May 31, at Grand Slam Track’s Philadelphia meet, Mclaughlin-Levrone moved away from her traditional 400 m hurdles and 400 m flat races to take on the short hurdles. In the 100 m hurdles, she finished fifth with a time of 12.70.\nOn September 16, during the semi-finals at the 2025 World Athletics Championships in Tokyo, Japan, Mclaughlin-Levrone broke the U.S. record for the women's 400 meters; running that distance in 48.29 seconds. Two days later, on September 18, Mclaughlin-Levrone won the 400 m final in a time of 47.78, the second-fastest time ever run by a woman and a new championship record. On the final day of the Tokyo meet McLaughlin-Levrone earned a second gold medal anchoring the U.S. women's 4 × 400 meter relay team to victory on a rain soaked track. McLaughlin-Levrone's anchor split of 47.82 seconds gave the U.S. a meet record of 3:16.61, the fifth fastest time ever for women's 4 × 400 meters.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nMcLaughlin-Levrone is married to Andre Levrone Jr. (born March 9, 1995), who played four seasons at wide receiver for the University of Virginia before graduating in 2018, and who was with three NFL teams before retiring in 2020 without ever playing in a regular-season NFL game. Levrone and McLaughlin announced their engagement on August 25, 2021, at the Four Seasons Resort, Scottsdale. They married at Early Mountain Vineyards in Madison, Virginia on May 5, 2022. On July 12, 2026, she and her husband announced the birth of their first child, Savannah Michelle Levrone.\nMcLaughlin-Levrone is a Christian. She and her husband are part of Grace Community Church in Los Angeles, and Andre is enrolled at The Master's Seminary, which is affiliated with the church.\nHer hometown of Dunellen, New Jersey, named the track at the town's Columbia Park for McLaughlin-Levrone on August 28, 2021.\nOn January 30, 2024, McLaughlin-Levrone released Far Beyond Gold: Running from Fear to Faith, an autobiographical book recounting her life and experiences from the 2016 U.S. Olympic trials through the 2023 outdoor season. McLaughlin-Levrone's book focuses on her running career, while showcasing her journey to become closer to God. Her goal in writing this book was to not only share her personal journey, but also encourage others to do the same.\nMcLaughlin-Levrone is also an investor in USL Championship soccer club OKC Energy.\n\n\n== Endorsements ==\nMclaughlin-Levrone has endorsements with brands including New Balance, Gatorade, Procter & Gamble, TAG Heuer, Coca-Cola, Visa Inc., and Oakley, Inc.. She signed her first deal with New Balance at age 19 and is worth reportedly $2 million per year.\n\n\n== Personal bests ==\nInformation from World Athletics profile unless otherwise noted.\nOutdoor\n\nIndoor\n\nProgression\n\n\n== Competition results ==\nInformation from World Athletics profile unless otherwise noted.\nInternational championships\n\nWins and titles\n\nDiamond League 400 m hurdles champion: 2019\n2019 (3) (400 mH): Oslo Bislett Games, Monaco Herculis, Zürich Weltklasse\nNational championships\n\n\n== Honors and awards ==\nGatorade Player of the Year awards\nFemale Athlete of the Year: 2016, 2017\nFemale Track and Field Athlete of the Year: 2016, 2017\nWorld Athletics Awards\nRising Star (Women)：2018\nWorld Athlete of the Year (Women)：2022 and 2025 \nWomen’s Track Athlete of the Year：2024\nNight of Legends Award\nJackie Joyner-Kersee Female Athlete of the Year：2021, 2022\nMost Dominant Performer Wing Award：2022, 2024\nTrack & Field News Athlete of the Year\nFemale Athlete of the Year: 2022, 2024\nLexington Herald-Leader Kentucky Sports Figure of the Year\nKentucky Sports Figure of the Year: 2024\n\n\n== Notes ==\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nSydney McLaughlin-Levrone at World Athletics\nSydney McLaughlin-Levrone at Tilastopaja (registration required)\nSydney McLaughlin-Levrone at www.USATF.org\nSydney McLaughlin-Levrone at Athletics Podium\nSydney McLaughlin-Levrone at Olympics.com\nSydney McLaughlin-Levrone at Olympedia\nSydney McLaughlin-Levrone at InterSportStats\nSydney McLaughlin-Levrone at Team USA (archive May 7, 2023)"}
{"title": "Sylvia Fowles", "requested": "Sylvia Fowles", "extract": "Sylvia Shaqueria Fowles (born October 6, 1985) is an American professional basketball coach and former player who is an assistant coach for the Portland Fire of the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA). She previously played for the Chicago Sky and Minnesota Lynx during her WNBA career. She won the WNBA MVP Award in 2017 and the WNBA Defensive Player of the Year award four times (2011, 2013, 2016, 2021). She led the Lynx to win the WNBA Championship in 2015 and 2017, and she was named the MVP of the WNBA Finals both times. In 2020, Fowles overtook Rebekkah Brunson to become the WNBA's career leader in rebounds. In 2025, Fowles was inducted into the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame and the Naismith Hall of Fame.\n\n\n== Early life ==\nFowles was born in Miami, Florida, the daughter of Arrittio Fowles.  She has three brothers, Walter, Jeremy, Morris, and one sister, Dorothy. Fowles grew up in some of the rougher neighborhoods of Miami-Dade, including Coconut Grove, Little Haiti, and the Victory Home Housing Projects. She attended Little River Elementary School, Horace Mann Middle School, Miami Edison Senior High School and graduated from Gulliver Preparatory School.\nShe also led Edison Senior High School to two state championships before transferring to Gulliver Preparatory School. Fowles averaged 20.6 points and 11.6 rebounds at Gulliver and led them to the class 3A state championship against East Gadsden High School. Fowles was also named a McDonald's All-American. Fowles was named a WBCA All-American. She participated in the 2004 WBCA High School All-America Game, where she scored fifteen points, and earned MVP honors.\n\n\n== College career ==\n\nFowles played in all 36 of LSU's games as a freshman, helping the team to an appearance in the NCAA Final Four.  As a sophomore, she started all 35 games and again helped the team reach the Final Four.  In her junior year, she led LSU to the Final Four again and earned All-American honours.\nFowles was named to the pre-season All-American team prior to her senior season. She dunked the ball in the Lady Tigers' game against the University of Louisiana at Lafayette on November 21, 2007, becoming the sixth woman to dunk in an American college game.\nIn December 2007, Fowles suffered a partial tear of the meniscus of her right knee during a game against the University of Miami. She then underwent surgery and missed several weeks of play.\nFowles was named the 2008 SEC Player of the Year.  During a March 24, 2008 NCAA Tournament game, she broke the all-time SEC record for career rebounds. She led LSU to the Final Four again in her senior year.\nFowles finished additional academic credits after beginning her professional basketball career and received her bachelor's degree from LSU in the spring of 2009.\nDuring her college career at LSU, Fowles had also played with future WNBA teammate Seimone Augustus. On May 15, 2017, it was announced that Fowles' uniform number (34) will be retired by LSU during the 2017–18 season. She is the second women's basketball player in school history to receive that honor.\n\n\n== Professional career ==\n\n\n=== WNBA ===\n\n\n==== Chicago Sky (2008–2014) ====\n\nFowles was selected 2nd overall by the Chicago Sky in the 2008 WNBA draft. After being drafted second overall, Fowles entered the Sky's rotation in the starting lineup and averaged 10.8 points, 7.6 rebounds per game and 2.1 blocks per game in her rookie season. However, her rookie season was shortened due to a knee injury as she played only 17 games with 14 starts.\nAfter establishing herself as a solid inside scorer, tenacious rebounder and elite rim protector in her rookie season, Fowles would earn her first career WNBA all-star selection in 2009. She averaged 11.3 points per game, 7.8 rebounds per game and 1.5 blocks per game. However, injuries would once again shorten her season as she missed 10 games.\nFowles dunked on her second attempt during the 2009 WNBA All-Star Game while representing the Eastern Conference after everyone on both teams cleared out of her way. Her first attempt clanged off the bottom of the rim. The game took place on July 25, 2009 at Mohegan Sun, the home of the Connecticut Sun. She is the third WNBA player to dunk in an all star game, following Michelle Snow in 2006 and Lisa Leslie in 2005.\nDuring the 2010 season, Fowles scored a career-high 35 points in a 97–96 loss to the Phoenix Mercury. She had also led the league in blocks with a career-high average of 2.6 blocks per game. For her shot blocking efforts, she would be named to WNBA All-Defensive First Team.\nIn the 2011 season, Fowles was voted as a WNBA all-star for the second time in her career. She had averaged a double-double in points and rebounds for the whole season with a career-high 20 points per game and 10.2 rebounds per game, she also led the league in blocks for the second year in the row, averaging 2.0 blocks per game. She would win WNBA Defensive Player of the Year.\nIn 2012, Fowles re-signed with the Sky to a multi-year deal once her rookie contract expired.\nIn the 2014 season, Fowles averaged a double-double in points and rebounds for the fourth consecutive season, which would help the Sky make the playoffs. Fowles eventually would earn her first career Finals appearance as the Sky had advanced all the way to the WNBA Finals despite a 15–19 record and the number four seed in the Eastern Conference. The Sky faced the 29–5 Phoenix Mercury and were defeated in a 3-game sweep. It would be Fowles's final season playing with the Sky.\n\n\n==== Minnesota Lynx (2015–2022) ====\n\nFowles turned down a contract extension offer with the Sky in September 2014. She requested a trade but no trade offers from other teams for her had been sufficient. She sat out the first half of the 2015 WNBA season until she was traded to the Minnesota Lynx on July 27, 2015 as part of a three-team deal that sent Érika de Souza to the Sky and Damiris Dantas and Reshanda Gray to the Atlanta Dream. Joining forces with Maya Moore, Seimone Augustus and Lindsay Whalen, the Lynx were a powerhouse in the Western Conference, finishing first place and advancing all the way to the WNBA Finals, facing the Indiana Fever. With the series tied 2–2 in the decisive game 5, Fowles proved to be relentless against the Fever, scoring 20 points along with 11 rebounds in a 69–52 victory. She was named the WNBA Finals MVP as the Lynx won their third WNBA Championship in five years.\nFollowing her first WNBA Championship victory, Fowles re-signed with the Lynx during free agency in February 2016.\n\nDuring the 2016 season, Fowles averaged 13.9 points per game, 8.5 rebounds per game and 1.7 blocks per game. She would win Defensive Player of the Year for the third time in her career. The Lynx remained a championship contending team, finishing with a franchise best 28–6 record. With the WNBA's new playoff format in effect, the Lynx were the number 1 seed in the league with a double-bye to the semi-finals (the last round before the WNBA Finals) facing the Phoenix Mercury. The Lynx defeated the Mercury in a 3-game sweep, advancing to the WNBA Finals for the fifth time in six years. The Lynx were up against the Los Angeles Sparks, making it the second time in league history where two teams from the same conference faced each other in the Finals due to the new playoff format. However, the Lynx were defeated by the Sparks in a hard-fought five-game series.\nIn the 2017 season, Fowles would be the focal point of the Lynx's offense, leading the team in scoring. Fowles scored 26 points along with 10 rebounds in the Lynx's season home opener against her former team, the Chicago Sky in a 70–61 victory. On June 11, 2017, Fowles scored a season-high 30 points along with 9 rebounds in a 91–74 victory over the Dallas Wings. Fowles was also voted into the 2017 WNBA All-Star Game, making it her fourth career all-star appearance. On August 12, 2017, the Lynx made history as they defeated the Indiana Fever 111–52, marking it the largest margin of victory in WNBA history, they also exploded on a league record 37-0 scoring run during the game. Fowles finished off the season averaging a double-double in points and rebounds for the fourth time in her career and also led the league in field goal shooting for the fifth time in her career. The Lynx would once again finish with the league's best record of 27–7, earning the number 1 seed with a double-bye to the semi-finals. On September 14, 2017, the WNBA announced that Fowles won the WNBA Most Valuable Player Award (Fowles had received 35 of 40 first-place votes from a national panel of sportswriters and broadcasters).\n\nIn the semi-finals, the Lynx defeated the Washington Mystics in a 3-game sweep, advancing to the WNBA Finals for the sixth time in seven years, setting up a rematch with the Sparks. With the series tied 2-2, Fowles set the Finals record for most rebounds in a game with 20 rebounds along with 17 points in Game 5 of the 2017 WNBA Finals, helping the Lynx win the game 85-76 and their fourth WNBA championship in seven years, tying the now-defunct Houston Comets for most championship titles. Fowles would also win her second Finals MVP award, becoming the fifth player in league history to win regular season MVP and Finals MVP in the same season.\n\nOn May 23, 2018, Fowles put on a historic performance in a 76–68 victory against the Dallas Wings in which scored 23 points along with 20 rebounds and 5 steals, becoming the first player in Lynx franchise history to have a 20-point, 20-rebound performance, secondly making it the 18th in league history and also marking the league's first ever stat line of 20 points, 20 rebounds and 5 steals. Fowles would be voted into the 2018 WNBA All-Star Game, making it her fifth all-star game appearance. On July 19, 2018, Fowles scored a season-high 30 points along with 16 rebounds in an 89–65 win over the Indiana Fever. In 2018, Fowles was chosen All-WNBA second team, Associated Press WNBA Defensive Player of the Year for the 4th time, and she broke the single-season record for rebounds with 404. Fowles would lead the league in field goal percentage and rebounds and tied the record for highest rebound per game average in a season, but the Lynx finished 18–16 with the number 7 seed, making it the first time in 8 years they did not finish as a top 2 seed. They lost in the first round elimination game to the rival Los Angeles Sparks 75–68, ending their streak of three consecutive finals appearances.\nIn 2019, Fowles was voted into the 2019 WNBA All-Star Game, making it her sixth all-star appearance. On August 27, 2019, Fowles scored a season-high 25 points in a 93–85 victory against the Chicago Sky. On September 8, 2019, Fowles signed a multi-year contract extension with the Lynx. By the end of the season, Fowles led the league in field goal percentage for the third consecutive season. With Maya Moore sitting out the entire season, the Lynx were still a playoff team as they finished as the number 7 seed with a 18–16 record. The Lynx were eliminated in the first round elimination game 84–74 by the defending champion Seattle Storm.\n\nIn 2020, the season was delayed and shortened to 22 games in a bubble at IMG Academy due to the COVID-19 pandemic. On July 29, 2020, Fowles grabbed her 3,357th career rebound during the second game of the 2020 season to surpass Rebekkah Brunson, who happened to be the assistant coach of the Lynx at the time, and became the WNBA all-time leading rebounder. She finished the game with 15 points and 10 rebounds, bringing her total career rebounds to 3,360. On August 14, 2020, Fowles suffered a calf injury and was ruled out indefinitely, causing her to miss the rest of the regular season. Fowles would make her return just in time for the playoffs. The Lynx finished 14–8 with the number 4 seed, receiving a bye to the second round. In the second round elimination game, the Lynx beat the Phoenix Mercury 80–79, advancing the franchise back to the semi-finals. However, in the semi-finals, they would get swept by the Seattle Storm who would end up being the eventual champions, Fowles was unable to play for the entire series.\nIn 2021 Fowles won her fourth WNBA Defensive Player of the Year joining Tamika Catchings as the only player with 4 Defensive Player of the Year Awards averaging a career high 1.8 steals and also averaging 1.8 blocks. During that season, she was named to The W25, the league's official list of the top 25 players of its first 25 seasons.\nFowles retired from the WNBA after the 2022 season with the Lynx. The WNBA bestowed the Kim Perrot Sportsmanship Award to Fowles in her final season in 2022. The Minnesota Lynx retired her jersey on June 11, 2023. In 2023, the Lynx also created the Sylvia Fowles Altruism Award for the Lynx player who \"best embodies the altruistic traits of kindness, selflessness and overall regard for the well-being of others throughout the community.\" The award is decided by a panel of team staff and players. In 2023, Fowles was also honored as part of the All-25 Team of the top 25 players in the team's history.\nIt was announced in November of 2024 that Fowles was named to the class of 2025 Women's Basketball Hall of Fame.\n\n\n=== Overseas ===\nFowles played for Spartak Moscow in Russia during the 2008–09 and 2009-10 WNBA off-seasons.\n Fowles played for Galatasaray Medical Park of Turkey for three off-seasons from 2010 to 2013. In the 2013–14 and 2014-15 WNBA off-seasons, Fowles played in China for the Shanghai Swordfish. Fowles had spent the second portion of the 2014-15 WNBA off-season in Turkey playing for Canik Belediyesi. In the 2015-16 WNBA off-season, Fowles played once again in China for the Beijing Great Wall, leading the team to a championship As of August 2016, Fowles re-signed with Beijing for the 2016-17 off-season. Fowles would lead Beijing to its second consecutive championship of the Women's Chinese Basketball Association in 2017. In 2017, Fowles would once again re-sign with Beijing for the 2017-18 off-season.\n\n\n== National team career ==\nFowles was a member of the team representing the US at the 2005 World University Games Team in Izmir, Turkey. In the game against China, she led her team in scoring with 23 points. In the semi-final against Russia, she led the team with 25 points, helping the team win 118–67. Fowles averaged 15.0 points per game, and 7.3 rebounds, both team highs, and helped the team to a 7–0 record, resulting in a gold medal at the event.\nFowles is a member of the United States women's national basketball team and she earned a gold medal at the 2008 Summer Olympics.\nFowles was again invited to the USA Basketball Women's National Team training camp in the fall of 2009. The team selected to play for the 2010 FIBA World Championship and the 2012 Olympics is usually chosen from these participants. At the conclusion of the training camp, the team  traveled to Ekaterinburg, Russia, where they competed in the 2009 UMMC Ekaterinburg International Invitational.\nFowles was named as one of the  National team members to represent the USA Basketball team in the WNBA versus USA Basketball. This game replaces the normal WNBA All-Star game with WNBA All-Stars versus USA Basketball, as part of the preparation for the FIBA World Championship for Women to be held in the Czech Republic during September and October 2010.\nIn 2010, Fowles was named to the national team which competed in the World Championships in Ostrava, and Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic. The team won all nine games to win the gold medal. They held all opponents to no more than 75 points, while scoring in triple digits four times. The win against Australia by eight points was the only game with a single digit margin of victory. Fowles averaged 8.9 points per game over the course of the tournament.\nFowles was one of 21 finalists for the U.S. Women's Olympic Basketball Team Roster. The 20 professional women's basketball players, plus one collegiate player (Brittney Griner), were selected by the USA Basketball Women's National Team Player Selection Committee to compete for the final roster which would represent the US at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, where the USA victory brought Fowles her second Olympic gold medal.\nFowles also played with Team USA for the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio, and won her third gold medal as USA beat Spain 101–72.\nOn June 21, 2021, Fowles was named to her fourth Olympic roster for Team USA for the 2020 Summer Olympics. She and Team USA went on to win the gold medal in the tournament (Fowles' fourth gold), defeating Japan 90–75 in the final.\n\n\n== Coaching career ==\nOn December 22, 2025, Fowles was announced as an Assistant Coach of the Portland Fire.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nIn 2015, Fowles enrolled in a mortuary science program at the American Academy McAllister Institute, where she has online studies in embalming, cremation, and funeral directing. In 2025, she began working on completing her remaining credits and then taking her board exams. She plans to open her own funeral home somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. Interested in the field since the death of her grandmother when she was a child, and holding funerals for her stuffed animals, she wants to present the deceased in an attractive way so that loved ones can say goodbye. Her hobby has been knitting since she was 6. She also loves bicycling. She gave some of her 2017 MVP bonus to a Saint Paul nonprofit to provide bikes for girls and also led a local bike ride. She also led local bike rides in connection with her final WNBA season, and the Lynx gave fans a commemorative bike license plate at her final regular season home game.\nFowles founded the Sylvia Fowles Family Fund in 2010 to help needy children. She is a spokesperson for the Citizens United for Research in Epilepsy (CURE) and has two nephews who have epilepsy.\n\n\n== Career statistics ==\n\n\n=== WNBA ===\n\n\n==== Regular season ====\n\n\n==== Postseason ====\n\n\n=== College ===\n\nSource\n\n\n== Awards and honors ==\n\n\n== See also ==\nWNBA records\nList of WNBA career blocks leaders\nList of WNBA career rebounding leaders\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nCareer statistics from WNBA.com · Basketball Reference\nLSUSports.net biography Archived December 1, 2017, at the Wayback Machine\nOfficial LSU National Player of the Year Promotional Site\nBDA Sports - BDA Athletes\nSylvia Fowles at USA Basketball\nSylvia Fowles at Team USA (archive March 28, 2023)\nSylvia Fowles at Olympedia \nSylvia Fowles at Olympics.com"}
{"title": "Tadahiro Nomura", "requested": "Tadahiro Nomura", "extract": "Tadahiro Nomura (野村 忠宏, Nomura Tadahiro; born 10 December 1974) is a retired Japanese judoka. He is the only judoka in the world who has won three individual Olympic gold medals in a row, all in the extra lightweight (‍–‍60 kg) division.\n\n\n== Biography ==\n\nNomura was born into a family of judoka. His grandfather was a local judo instructor, and his father was the coach of Shinji Hosokawa, who won a gold medal at the 1984 Summer Olympics. Nomura's uncle, Toyokazu Nomura, was also a gold medalist at the 1972 Summer Olympics in the (–70 kg) division.\nNomura began learning judo at his grandfather's dojo at age six. He was successful in several local and national level competitions during high school and junior-high school, and entered Tenri University in 1993. He won the All-Japan Selected judo championships for his weight class in April, 1996, to gain a spot on the Japanese olympic team for the 1996 Summer Olympics held in Atlanta, United States. Though relatively unknown at the world level at the time, he won his first olympic gold medal on July 26, 1996, defeating Girolamo Giovinazzo by seoi nage.\nNomura swept the All-Japan Selected judo championships again in 1997, and won a gold medal at the 1997 World Judo Championships in Paris to reinforce his position as the premier competitor at his weight class. After winning the All-Japan Selected judo championships for the third consecutive year in 1998, he injured his left knee in the Jigoro Kano Cup semi-finals on January 9, 1999, and was forced to withdraw from the competition. He did not participate in competitions for the rest of the year to recover from this injury and to complete his degree in health education.\nNomura made his return at the All-Japan Selected judo championships in 2000, winning the competition for the third time to gain a second trip to the olympics. He became the first -60 kg division competitor to win consecutive olympic gold medals on September 16, 2000, by defeating Jung Bu-Kyung of South Korea by sumi otoshi only 14 seconds into the match.\nNomura married former model Yoko Sakai in May, 2001. During this time Nomura took time off from judo to study abroad in San Francisco. He won the All-Japan Selected judo championships for the first time in three years (fourth total win) in April, 2003 to advance to the 2003 World Judo Championships where he made a disappointing bronze medal finish. He won the Japanese nationals for the second consecutive year (fifth total win) in April, 2004, which enabled him to seek an unprecedented third consecutive olympic gold medal at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens. On August 14, 2004, he achieved this feat with a win over Nestor Khergiani of Georgia. This made Nomura the only olympic judo practitioner to have won three consecutive gold medals, and the first olympic competitor from Asia to win three consecutive gold medals in any competition. This was also the 100th gold medal won by Japan in the Summer Olympics.\nNomura did not participate in judo competitions after the 2004 olympic final, but on January 10, 2006, he announced his intention to seek a fourth consecutive gold medal at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. He made his return with a win at an international tournament held in the Czech Republic, and won the All-Japan Selected judo championships for the sixth time in 2007.  In 2008, however, Nomura failed to qualify for the 2008 Olympic Games when, on April 5, he was defeated by Daisuke Asano in the semifinals of the -60 kg category at the National Weight Class Invitational Tournament, which represented the last opportunity to clinch the berth as the Japanese athlete in the -60 kg category.  A day after his defeat, Nomura made it known, through a spokesperson, his intention to retire from competitive judo.  On April 25, he underwent knee surgery, although it remains unknown whether this injury might have played any role in his unexpected elimination from the aforementioned Olympic-qualifying competition.\nHe announced he would continue his career and intended to qualify for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.  Ultimately he did not do so, and announced his retirement from judo in August 2015, stating that his health no longer allowed him to compete.Tadahiro presented an honorary black belt to action star Keanu Reeves for his intense study and performance of judo in the movie franchise John Wick\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of judoka\nList of Olympic medalists in judo\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists in one event\nList of multiple Olympic medalists in one event\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nOfficial website  (in Japanese)\nTadahiro Nomura at the International Judo Federation\nTadahiro Nomura at JudoInside.com\nTadahiro Nomura at Olympics.com\nTadahiro Nomura at Olympedia\nTadahiro Nomura at InterSportStats\nTadahiro Nomura at The-Sports.org \nCompetition videos of Tadahiro Nomura at Judovision"}
{"title": "Takashi Ono (gymnast)", "requested": "Takashi Ono (gymnast)", "extract": "Takashi Ono (小野 喬, Ono Takashi; born 26 July 1931) is a retired Japanese gymnast. He competed at the 1952, 1956, 1960 and 1964 Olympics and won five gold, four silver and four bronze medals, making him the most decorated Japanese athlete and fourth-most decorated gymnast in Olympic history by number of total medals won. Ono was the flag bearer for Japan at the 1960 Olympics, and took the Olympic Oath at the 1964 Games. In 1998, he was inducted into the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame.\n\n\n== Gymnastics career ==\n\n\n=== 1952 Helsinki Olympics ===\nOno made his Olympic debut at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki. He won his first Olympic medal, a bronze in the men's vault, sharing the position with his compatriot Tadao Uesako with a score of 19.10, behind the winner Viktor Chukarin of the Soviet Union.\n\n\n=== 1956 Melbourne Olympics ===\nAt the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne, Ono became the first Japanese gymnast to win an individual Olympic gold medal, claiming the title on the horizontal bar. He also won three silver medals in the all-around, pommel horse and team events, as well as a bronze on the parallel bars.\n\n\n=== 1960 Rome Olympics ===\nThe 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome represented Ono's most successful Games. He was selected as the flag bearer for Japan during the opening ceremony. He won six medals in total, including gold on the horizontal bar, gold shared with Boris Shakhlin on the vault, and gold in the team competition — the first of five consecutive Olympic team golds for Japan. He narrowly missed the all-around gold, finishing second behind Shakhlin by 0.05 points.\n\n\n=== 1962 World Championships ===\nAt the 1962 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Prague, Ono won two gold medals — on the horizontal bar and in the team event.\n\n\n=== 1964 Tokyo Olympics ===\nAt the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Ono served as the captain of the Japanese men's gymnastics team and was chosen to recite the Olympic Oath on behalf of all athletes during the opening ceremony. He competed with a serious right shoulder injury sustained during preparations for the Games, requiring anaesthetic injections to manage the pain. Despite this, he contributed to Japan's successful defence of the team gold medal before the home crowd.\nIn 1998, Ono's Olympic and World Championship combined total of 20 medals led to his induction into the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nIn 1958, Ono married Kiyoko Ono, a fellow Olympic gymnast who competed for Japan at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. They had two sons and three daughters; the first two children were born between 1961 and 1963 while both parents were actively competing. Kiyoko Ono died on 13 March 2021.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic medalists at a single Games\nList of multiple Olympic medalists\nList of multiple Summer Olympic medalists\nList of Olympic medal leaders in men's gymnastics\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nTakashi Ono at World Gymnastics \nTakashi Ono at the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame \nTakashi Ono at Olympics.com \nTakashi Ono at Olympedia"}
{"title": "Tamara Press", "requested": "Tamara Press", "extract": "Tamara Natanovna Press (10 May 1937 – 26 April 2021) was a Soviet athlete who dominated the shot put and discus throw in the early 1960s. She won three gold medals and one silver medal at the 1960 and 1964 Olympics and three European titles in 1958–1962. Between 1959 and 1965, she set 11 world records: five in the shot put and six in the discus. Domestically, she held 16 national titles, nine in the shot put (1958–66) and seven in the discus (1960–66).\nHer younger sister Irina Press was also a prominent track athlete, mostly in the sprint events.\n\n\n== Career ==\nTamara Press was born to parents in Kharkov. Her father died fighting in World War II in 1942 and her mother took the daughters to Samarkand, where they started training in athletics. In 1955, Press moved to Leningrad to train under the renowned coach Viktor Alekseyev. The following year she was shortlisted for the Olympic team but was cut due to a strong domestic competition in the throwing events. She subsequently won four Olympic medals, three of them gold.\n\n\n== Retirement and gender rumors ==\nBoth sisters were accused of being either secretly male or intersex. They retired in 1966, just before sex verification became mandatory on location. In 1942 wartime Soviet evacuation records (at age 5) Tamara Press is documented as a girl.\nIn retirement, Press worked as an athletics coach and official in Moscow. She wrote several books on sport, social and economical subjects. In 1974, she defended a PhD in pedagogy. She was awarded the Order of Lenin (1960), Order of the Badge of Honour (1964) and Order of Friendship (1997).\n\n\n== Notes ==\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nPhoto in old age"}
{"title": "Tamika Catchings", "requested": "Tamika Catchings", "extract": "Tamika Devonne Catchings (born July 21, 1979) is an American former professional basketball player who played her entire 15-year career for the Indiana Fever of the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA). Widely considered as one of the greatest female basketball players and one of the most decorated players in WNBA history, Catchings has won a WNBA championship (2012), WNBA Most Valuable Player Award (2011), WNBA Finals MVP Award (2012), five WNBA Defensive Player of the Year Awards (2005, 2006, 2009, 2010, 2012), four Olympic gold medals (2004, 2008, 2012, 2016), the WNBA Rookie of the Year Award (2002), and an NCAA championship with the University of Tennessee Lady Vols (1998).  She is one of only 11 women to receive an Olympic gold medal, an NCAA Championship, a FIBA World Cup gold and a WNBA Championship. She has also been selected to ten WNBA All-Star teams, 12 All-WNBA teams, 12 All-Defensive teams and led the league in steals eight times. In 2011, Catchings was voted in by fans as one of the WNBA's Top 15 Players of All Time, and would be named to two more all-time WNBA teams, the WNBA Top 20@20 in 2016 and The W25 in 2021.\nCatchings served as President of the WNBA Players Association from 2012 to 2016. She was inducted into the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame in 2020.\n\n\n== Early life and college career ==\nCatchings was born in New Jersey. She lived in Italy for one year while her father Harvey Catchings played professional basketball for Segafredo Gorizia, during which time she befriended Kobe Bryant. She played for both Adlai E. Stevenson High School and Duncanville High School, where she was named a WBCA All-American. Catchings participated in the WBCA High School All-America Game where she scored twelve points. She is also the first player at any level in history to be officially credited with scoring a quintuple-double (25 points, 18 rebounds, 11 assists, 10 steals and 10 blocks).\nCatchings was an All-American with the Tennessee Lady Volunteers basketball for 1997–2001. She earned the Naismith College Player of the Year award, the AP Player of the Year award, the USBWA Women's National Player of the Year award, and the WBCA Player of the Year award in 2000. As a freshman on the undefeated 1997–98 National champions, she was part of the \"Three Meeks\" with Semeka Randall and Chamique Holdsclaw.\n\n\n== College statistics ==\n\nSource\n\n\n== WNBA career ==\nCatchings was drafted 3rd overall by the Indiana Fever in 2001. Unable to play in the 2001 season due to an ACL injury sustained during her senior year at Tennessee, she had an outstanding year in 2002 and was named WNBA Rookie of the Year while averaging 18.6 ppg, immediately making an impact on the Fever roster in her first year as a pro. During her rookie season, in a regular season game against the Minnesota Lynx, Catchings had tied a then WNBA record, 9 steals (which has since been broken by Ticha Penicheiro). That year, the Fever made it to the playoffs and despite losing 2–1 in the first round, Catchings had a dominant series, averaging a playoff career-high 20.3 ppg.\nCatchings's best season of her career would be in the 2003 season, where she averaged a career-high 19.7 ppg although the Fever never made it to the playoffs that year.\nIn 2005, Catchings scored her 2,000th point in the Women's National Basketball Association. With this she became the fourth fastest player to score 2000 career points in the WNBA, reaching the milestone in only four seasons of play. She is also the fastest to 1,000 rebounds, 400 assists, and 300 steals. In 2005, Catchings was also named the WNBA Defensive Player of the Year. Catchings then repeated as Defensive Player of the Year in 2006. She was again named Defensive Player of the Year in 2009, 2010 and 2012.\nIn 2006, Catchings was voted into the 2006 WNBA All-Star Game, and was also the leading vote-getter, but had to sit out because of a foot injury. At half-time she was announced as a member of the All-Decade Team along with nine other players and former Comets coach Van Chancellor. Five years later she was voted in by fans as one of the Top 15 players in the fifteen-year history of the WNBA.\nMonths before the 2008 season, the Fever traded for hometown all-star shooting guard Katie Douglas (who would play with the team until 2013) to pair up with Catchings, forming an all-star duo to compete for a championship and strengthen their lineup. However, the Fever fell way short of championship contention in 2008 as they were eliminated in the first round by the Detroit Shock during the playoffs.\nIn 2009, the Fever would have more postseason success, as the chemistry developed between Catchings and Douglas, the Fever would advance to the WNBA finals, making it Catchings's first finals appearance. Prior to this, Catchings led the league in steals with 2.9 spg and helped lead the Fever to a 22–12 record, earning the top seed in the Eastern Conference. In the finals they faced the Phoenix Mercury and had a 2–1 series lead but would lose the next two games to be defeated in the finals 3–2.\nIn 2011, Catchings won WNBA Most Valuable Player while averaging 15.5 ppg, 7.1 rpg, 3.5 apg and 2.0 spg also leading the Fever to a 21–13 record, topping the Eastern Conference standings. However, in the playoffs she performed poorly offensively averaging a playoff career low 10.0 ppg. The Fever would end up making it to the Eastern Conference finals where they got eliminated 2–1 to the Atlanta Dream. In game 2 of the series, Catchings suffered a right foot injury. Although she was able to play in game 3, she had a sub-par performance following the injury, playing only 10 minutes and was 0 for 4 from the field.\nIn 2012, the Fever made a change in their starting line-up, with Douglas playing the small forward, Catchings at power forward and Shavonte Zellous at shooting guard during the regular season. The Fever finished second in the Eastern Conference with a 22–12 record. They made it back to finals that year, this time against the championship defending Minnesota Lynx, but they would defeat Minnesota 3–1 in the series becoming only the second Eastern Conference franchise to win a WNBA title, despite playing without Katie Douglas who suffered an ankle injury in the Conference finals. Catchings scored a game-high 25 points in the final game of the series and also won WNBA Finals MVP. In February 2013, Catchings signed a multi-year contract with the Fever.\nIn 2014, Catchings missed the Fever's first 17 games of the season with a sore back. She returned six games prior to the 2014 WNBA All-Star Game in which she was selected to play. During the all-star game, Catchings scored a game winning basket for the Eastern Conference all-star team to put them up 125–124 with 6 seconds left in overtime. Later on in the season, the Fever finished second in the East with a 16–18 record. On August 23, 2014, Catchings became the WNBA's all-time leading playoff scorer after making a three-point field goal in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference semifinals against the Washington Mystics surpassing Lisa Leslie's 908 career playoff points. She finished the game with 22 points, 10 rebounds and 7 steals also surpassing Lisa Leslie for most WNBA career playoff rebounds (471). The Fever would then advance to the Conference Finals and were one win away from advancing to the 2014 WNBA Finals but lost 2–1 to the Chicago Sky.\nIn October 2014 in a TV interview, Catchings revealed that she would be retiring after the 2016 Summer Olympics. She said:\n\nI will be retiring in 2016, Lord willing, if my body holds up. Although I plan to step away as a player that is not to say I'll step away from the game, hopefully. I am so thankful and blessed to have had an opportunity to play the game I have loved for so long. God has truly blessed me with an amazing playing career, and now it's time to start transitioning to what He has for me beyond the lines of the basketball floor.\nIn the 2015 season, Catchings was voted as a WNBA All-Star for the 10th time in her career while averaging 13.1 ppg, passing Tina Thompson for most all-star appearances. With a new all-star sidekick Marissa Coleman joining her in the frontcourt, the Fever finished third in the Eastern Conference with a 20–14 record and made it back to the finals for the first time in three years for a rematch with the Minnesota Lynx, this time with Minnesota winning the series 3–2.\nIn the 2016 season, Catchings caught her 3,308th rebound in a regular season game loss to the Minnesota Lynx becoming the WNBA all-time leader in regular season rebounds also passing Lisa Leslie. Prior to becoming the WNBA all-time leading rebounder, Catchings had also become only the second player in WNBA history to have 7,000 points and 3,000 rebounds in the month of May. Catchings's final WNBA game was on September 21, 2016, in a first round playoff game loss to the Phoenix Mercury, due to the WNBA's new playoff format that had just been in effect, where the first and second rounds contains only a single elimination game instead of the traditional best-of-3 series. Also teams get seeded based on overall league standings instead of conference standings with the top two seeded teams receiving double byes to the semifinals (the last round before the WNBA finals) as well as the third and fourth seeded teams receiving byes to the second round. Catchings scored 13 points and grabbed 10 rebounds in 30 minutes of play.\nAs of her retirement, Catchings ranked 1st all-time in career playoff scoring, 1st all-time in career playoff rebounds, 2nd in all-time regular season rebounds, 2nd in all-time career regular season scoring, 1st in total career steals and 1st in career steals per game average. She also holds another WNBA record for most consecutive playoff appearances of 12 straight seasons. Catchings had also appeared in 3 WNBA finals. She was also listed in the WNBA Top 20@20, a list of the league's best 20 players ever in celebration of the WNBA's 20th season in 2016, and The W25, a similar list of 25 players announced during the league's 25th season in 2021.\n\n\n== WNBA career statistics ==\n\n\n=== Regular season ===\n\n\n=== Postseason ===\n\n\n== USA Basketball ==\nCatchings was named to the USA Basketball Women's Junior National Team (now called the U18 team). The team participated in the third Junior World Championship, held in Chetumal, Mexico in late August and early September 1996. The USA team won their early games easily, but lost by four points to the team from Brazil, ending up with the silver medal for the event.\nCatchings continued with the team when it was invited to the 1997 FIBA Junior World Championship (now called U19) held in Natal, Brazil. After beating Japan, the next game was against Australia, the defending champion. The USA team pulled out to a 13-point lead in the second half, but gave up the lead and lost the game 80–74. She had a double-double in the game with 17 points and ten rebounds. The USA rebounded with a close 92–88 victory over Cuba, helped by 23 points each from Maylana Martin and Lynn Pride. The USA then went on to beat previously unbeaten Russia. After winning the next two games, the USA faced Australia in the gold medal game. The USA team has a three-point lead late, but the Aussies hit a three-pointer with three seconds left in regulation to force overtime. Although the Aussies scored first, Catchings scored to tie the game, then the USA pulled into the lead and held on to win 78–74 to earn the gold, and the first medal for a USA team at a Junior World Championship. Catchings was the second leading scorer for the USA team with 13.2 points per game and the leading rebounder with 7.2 per game.\nIn 1998, Catchings was named to the team representing the US at the William Jones Cup competition in Taipei, Taiwan. The USA team won all five games, earning the gold medal for the competition. Catchings averaged 6.4 points per game over the five games.\nCatchings played for the USA women's basketball team at the 2004 Summer Olympic Games in Athens, helping the team win the gold medal.\nCatchings was invited to the USA Basketball Women's National Team training camp in the fall of 2009. The team selected to play for the 2010 FIBA World Championship and the 2012 Olympics is usually chosen from these participants.\nCatchings was selected to be a member of the National team representing the US at the World Championships held in September and October 2010. The team was coached by Geno Auriemma. Because many team members were still playing in the WNBA until just prior to the event, the team had only one day of practice with the entire team before leaving for Ostrava and Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic. Even with limited practice, the team managed to win its first games against Greece by 26 points. The team continued to dominate with victory margins exceeding 20 points in the first five games. Several players shared scoring honors, with Swin Cash, Angel McCoughtry, Maya Moore, Diana Taurasi, Lindsay Whalen, and Sylvia Fowles all ending as high scorer in the first few games. The sixth game was against undefeated Australia—the USA jumped out to a 24-point lead and the USA prevailed 83–75. The USA won its next two games by over 30 points, then faced the host team, the Czech Republic, in the championship game. The USA team had only a five-point lead at halftime, which was cut to three points, but the Czechs never got closer. Team USA went on to win the championship and gold medal. Catchings averaged 8.8 points per game.\nCatchings was named as one of the National team members to represent the USA Basketball team in the WNBA versus USA Basketball. This game replaces the normal WNBA All-Star game with WNBA All-Stars versus USA Basketball, as part of the preparation for the FIBA World Championship for Women to be held in the Czech Republic during September and October 2010.\nCatchings was one of 21 finalists for the U.S. Women's Olympic Basketball Team Roster. The 20 professional women's basketball players, plus one collegiate player (Brittney Griner), were selected by the USA Basketball Women's National Team Player Selection Committee to compete for the final roster which will represent the US at the 2012 Olympics in London.  She was selected for the final roster, and was part of the US team that won the gold medal.\nIn the 2016 Summer Olympics, Catchings played for Team USA and earned her fourth Olympic gold medal as they beat Spain 101–72.\n\n\n== Overseas career ==\nCatchings played her first year overseas during the WNBA offseason in 2003, she played in South Korea for Asan Woori Bank Wibee. In the 2005–06 off-season, Catchings played for Spartak Moscow in the Russian League. Catchings would once again play in South Korea for Chuncheon Woori Bank Hansae in the 2006 and 2007 off-seasons. In the 2008–09 off-season, Catchings played in Poland for Lotos VBW Clima Gdynia and would play two consecutive off-seasons in the Turkish League from 2009 to 2011 for Galatasaray. In Catchings's first season with Galatasaray, she played with then Indiana Fever teammate, Katie Douglas.\n\n\n== Life after basketball ==\nIn January 2017, it was announced that Catchings will serve as a game analyst for Women's Basketball Games on SEC Network.\nIn February 2017, Catchings purchased a tea shop, Tea's Me Cafe from the previous owners on the near north side of Indianapolis that she had been frequenting while playing for the Indiana Fever. The store expanded to three locations and in-store sales by 2023.\nIn April 2017, Catchings was named Director of Player Programs and Franchise Development for Pacers Sports & Entertainment.\nCatchings competed in the Baltimore qualifying round of Season 11 of American Ninja Warrior. The episode aired on NBC on July 1, 2019.\nCatchings previously served as the Vice President of Basketball Operations and General Manager for the Indiana Fever from 2020 to 2022.\n\n\n== Philanthropy and activism ==\n\nIn 2004, Catchings founded the Catch the Stars Foundation, a charitable organization that provides basketball camps, fitness clinics, mentoring and literacy programs for underprivileged children to help them become successful in sports and academics.\nCatchings advocates in support of the Black Lives Matter movement and against police brutality and gun violence. Before the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, she and Carmelo Anthony, an NBA athlete, attended a town meeting in Los Angeles to discuss violence committed by and to police officers. She and her teammates decided to kneel during the playing of the National Anthem to protest infringements upon human rights.\n\nAt another game, she and her teammates, along with members of two other teams, were fined $500 per player and $5000 per team for wearing warm up shirts that read \"#BlackLivesMatter\" and \"#Dallas5\", in reference to violence by and against police officers.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nCatchings is the daughter of former NBA player Harvey Catchings. Her sister Tauja also played basketball at Stevenson and the University of Illinois, was drafted by the WNBA and now plays in Sweden. Tamika's cousin Bobby is a starting forward for Eastern Illinois University's basketball team. Tamika majored in Sports Management at the University of Tennessee.\nCatchings helped Stevenson High School to Illinois's IHSA Div. AA State Championship in her Sophomore year in 1995 under head coach Frank Mattucci before moving to Texas.  During her sophomore year at Stevenson she won Illinois Ms. Basketball (at the time she was the youngest player to have won the award). In addition to leading Duncanville High to the state basketball title in her senior season (she played only two years at Duncanville after moving from the Chicago area), she also led the volleyball team to its only state title as a junior.\nCatchings is hearing impaired. While living in Abilene, Texas, as a third grader, she lost her hearing aids by throwing them into a field while walking home from school; her parents, unwilling and financially unable to replace the hearing aids, told her to learn to live without them. Catchings did not resume using hearing aids until shortly before her first season at Tennessee, when head coach Pat Summitt encouraged her to do so. In 2000, she was honored with the Reynolds Society Achievement Award by the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary in Boston. On June 24, 2008, Catchings was awarded the Dawn Staley Community Leadership Award for her work in the Indianapolis community with her Catch the Stars foundation.\nCatchings refereed a game of 3-on-3 basketball played by Barack Obama along with local students from Kokomo, Indiana, at the Maple Crest Middle School on April 25, 2008. Fever teammate Alison Bales also played on Obama's team.\nIn February 2016, Catchings married Parnell Smith, a former basketball player for the University at Buffalo. The couple first met in July 2014 through a mutual friend.\nCatchings is also a Christian. She had opened up about her faith in an interview by saying \"God is definitely my Savior. He's the one that walks beside me through my ups and downs and the one that keeps me focused on where I am going in life. He protects me. He provides for me. He guides me and he leads me\". She became an honorary member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority in 2023.\n\n\n== Awards and achievements ==\n\n2011 WNBA MVP\n2012 WNBA Finals Most Valuable Player Award\nTen-time WNBA All-Star Selection; appeared in nine All-Star Games. She has sole possession of the record for most appearances and selections.\nSix-time All-WNBA Team\nThe first of three recorded Quintuple-double with Duncanville High School (Duncanville, Texas) with 25 points, 18 rebounds, 11 assists, 10 steals and 10 blocks in 1997.\nWBCBL Professional Basketball Trailblazer Award\nWKBL (South Korea League) 2003 Winter League, 2003 Summer League, 2006 Winter League Finals MVP\n2010 – Kim Perrot Sportsmanship Award\n2013 – Kim Perrot Sportsmanship Award\n2016 – Kim Perrot Sportsmanship Award\n2016 – awarded a star (#37) on The Flag for Hope on May 9, 2016, in recognition of her outstanding basketball career and philanthropic efforts.\n2020 – Women's Basketball Hall of Fame Inductee\n2024 – Kevin R. Armstrong Ethical Leadership Award (University of Indianapolis) Inaugural Recipient\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of WNBA career rebounding leaders\nDeaf people in the Olympics\n\n\n== Further reading ==\nFarrington, Lisa (2011). Catch a star : shining through adversity to become a champion. christianaudio. ISBN 9781441219633. OCLC 946928897.\nZerbonia, Ralph (2004). Contemporary Black biography. Volume 43 : profiles from the international Black community. Detroit Michigan: Gale Research Inc. ISBN 9781441219633. OCLC 527355695.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nWNBA Tamika Catchings\nArchive of Tamika Catchings' Official website\nWKBL.or.kr Page"}
{"title": "Tamás Darnyi", "requested": "Tamás Darnyi", "extract": "Tamás Darnyi (born 3 June 1967 in Budapest) is a Hungarian retired male swimmer. He is considered by many to be one of the greatest medley swimmers in history. He won four gold medals at two Olympic Games (1988 and 1992) and was unbeaten in the individual medley events from 1985 until his retirement in 1993. He is the first swimmer ever to swim the 200 m medley (long course) in less than 2 minutes.\n\n\n== Career ==\nPossibly one of the greatest medley swimmers of all time, Tamás Darnyi dominated his speciality between 1985 and 1993. He won the 200/400 m medley double at the 1988 and 1992 Olympics, the 1986 and 1991 World Championships, and the 1985, 1987 and 1989 European Championships. He also won a European title in the 200 m butterfly, and a world bronze in the same event.\nA teen talent, Darnyi might have competed at the 1984 Olympics, but both the Eastern European boycott and a personal accident prevented this. He was hit by a snowball in the left eye, which left him blind in one eye. After recovering, he started an unbeaten streak in medley events that lasted from 1985 to 1993. During that period, he bettered the world record in both medley events three times. After his final European title in 1993 (400 medley), he retired and managed a Budapest sports school.\nHe was named Male World Swimmer of the Year in 1987 and 1991 by Swimming World magazine. He was elected Hungarian Sportsman of the Year in 1986, 1987, 1988, 1990 and 1992 for his achievements.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of members of the International Swimming Hall of Fame\nWorld record progression 200 metres medley\nWorld record progression 400 metres medley\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nTamas Darnyi (in Hungarian)\nTamás Darnyi at Olympics at Sports-Reference.com (archived)"}
{"title": "Tatyana Kazankina", "requested": "Tatyana Kazankina", "extract": "Tatyana Vasilyevna Kazankina (Russian: Татья́на Васи́льевна Каза́нкина; born 17 December 1951 in Petrovsk, Soviet Union) is a Russian former runner who set seven world records and won a total of three gold medals at the Olympic Games for the Soviet Union. She was also awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labour and the title Honoured Master of Sports of the USSR in 1976. Kazankina competed for VSS Burevestnik.\nA month before the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal, Kazankina became the first woman to run 1500 m in under 4 minutes, her time of 3:56.0 beating Ludmila Bragina's world record by 5.4 seconds. She won the 1500 m and 800 m in the Montreal Games, setting a world record in the latter. In 1980, she ran the 1500 m in 3:52.47, becoming the first woman to run the distance faster than Paavo Nurmi. This stood as a world record for thirteen years.\nHer career came to an abrupt end in September 1984, when she was suspended for 18 months for refusing to undertake a drugs test after winning a 1500 m race in 3:58.63 in Paris.\nApart from her sports achievements, Kazankina is known for her scientific works. She graduated from the Faculty of Economics at the Leningrad State University in 1975. Later, she defended her dissertation for the Candidate of Pedagogical Science degree at the Lesgaft Institute of Physical Education and worked as a lecturer until 1997. She is the author of more than 20 scientific works.\nKazankina lives in Saint Petersburg where she worked at the State Committee of Physical Culture and Tourism of Russian Federation.\nIn 2023, she criticized the International Olympic Committee for requiring Russian athletes to compete under a neutral flag, calling the idea of them condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine \"absurd\".\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of doping cases in sport\n\n\n== References ==\n\nL. Yu. Leonidov (1982). Tatiana Kazankina. Heroes of the Olympic Games (in Russian). Moscow: Fizkultura i sport. Archived from the original on 2007-05-02.\n\n\n== External links ==\nAlmost Forgotten Star: Interview with Tatiana Kazankina\nDetailed biography (in Russian)\nhttp://www.alltime-athletics.com/w_1500no.htm"}
{"title": "Teddy Riner", "requested": "Teddy Riner", "extract": "Teddy Pierre-Marie Riner (, French: [tedi pjɛʁ maʁi ʁinœʁ]; born 7 April 1989) is a French heavyweight judoka. A nine-time world champion in the heavyweight (+100 kg) division, two-time openweight world champion, and one-time world champion with the French men's team, he is the first and only judoka in history to win twelve gold medals at the World Judo Championships. He won the gold medal in the Men's +100 kg event at the Summer Olympics three times (2012, 2016, and 2024) and, as a member of the French team, in the mixed team event twice (2020 and 2024). Additionally, he is a two-time Olympic bronze medalist (2008 and 2020), a five-time European champion, a four-time World Masters gold medalist, and an eleven-time Grand Slam winner in his weight category.\nRiner went undefeated between October 2010 and February 2020 before his winning streak was finally ended by Japanese judoka Kokoro Kageura in the third round of the 2020 Grand Slam Paris, marking Riner's first defeat in nearly a decade after 154 consecutive victories.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nRiner was born on 7 April 1989 in Les Abymes, in Guadeloupe, an insular region of France in the Caribbean. The son of Moise and Marie-Pierre Riner, Teddy, his brother Moise Jr., and his parents left the island for France in the early '90s, before his second birthday. He was raised in Paris. He was enrolled at a local sports club by his parents and played football, tennis, and basketball, but says he preferred judo \"because it is an individual sport and it's me, only me.\"\nHe is 2.04 metres (6 ft 8 in) tall and weighs 141 kilograms (311 lb). He is nicknamed \"Teddy Bear\", or \"Big Ted\".\nWith his partner, Luthna Plocus, Riner has a son born in 2014 and a daughter born in 2018.\n\n\n== Judo career ==\n\nRiner was a member of the Levallois Sporting Club in Levallois-Perret before joining Paris Saint-Germain in August 2017. He is coached by Christian Chaumont and Benoît Campargue. He won the World and European junior titles in 2006. In 2007, he won a gold medal at the European Judo Championships in Belgrade, Serbia, on the day after his eighteenth birthday. At the 2007 World Judo Championships in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, he became the youngest ever senior world champion when he won the heavyweight (+100 kg) event, defeating the 2000 Olympic gold medallist, Kosei Inoue of Japan, in the semi-final.\nAt the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China, Riner competed in the men's heavyweight event. He received a bye into the second round of the competition before beating Anis Chedli of Tunisia and Kazakhstan's Yeldos Ikhsangaliyev to advance to the semi-finals. In the semis he was beaten by Uzbek judoka Abdullo Tangriev on the golden score, meaning Riner had to enter the repechage rounds. In the repechage he defeated Andreas Tölzer and João Schlittler to reach a bronze medal final against Lasha Gujejiani of Georgia; Riner took the bronze medal by a score of one ippon, one yuko and one koka to nil. In December 2008 he won his second World Championship gold medal at the Open weight Championships held in Levallois-Perret, France, by beating Alexander Mikhaylin of Russia in the final.\n\nRiner won his third world title at the 2009 World Championships in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. He won bouts against Daniel McCormick, Vladimirs Osnachs, Ivan Iliev and Martin Padar in the pool stage before beating Marius Paškevičius in the semi-finals and Oscar Bryson in the final to take the gold medal.\nIn 2010, he won two medals, a gold and a silver, at the World Championships in Tokyo. After winning the +100 competition Riner was defeated by Daiki Kamikawa of Japan in the final of open weight class by a 2–1 judge's decision. After the bout, Riner refused to bow or to shake Kamikawa's hand, claiming that he \"was robbed\".\nRiner won his second European gold medal at the 2011 Championships in Istanbul, Turkey. He defeated Nodor Metreveli, Emil Tahirov and Zohar Asaf to win Pool A of the +100 kg competition before defeating Estonian Martin Padar in the semi-finals and Barna Bor of Hungary in the final to win the title. At the 2011 World Judo Championships in Paris Riner won the gold medal in men's +100 kg division, beating Germany's Tölzer in the final. The result meant that Riner became the first ever male Judoka to win five world titles. He won his sixth World Championship gold medal as part of the French side that won the team event.\nRiner was selected to compete for France at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, England in the men's heavyweight event. The event took place at ExCeL London on 3 August. Riner won the gold medal by defeating Russia's Alexander Mikhaylin in the final.\nAt the 2016 Olympics, he defended his Olympics heavyweight title, defeating Hisayoshi Harasawa in the final.\nIn his career, Riner was only defeated nine times in elite international championships. He lost to Brayson and Tölzer in 2006, to Bianchessi and Rybak in 2007 and to Muneta and Grim Vuijsters in 2008. He lost to Abdullo Tangriev in the third round of the 2008 Summer Olympics, before obtaining the bronze medal, and on 13 September 2010 he lost the openweight title at the 2010 World Judo Championships in Tokyo to Daiki Kamikawa, his last defeat before a series of 154 victories. After almost 10 years, he lost in the third round of the Paris Grand Slam against World No. 2 Kokoro Kageura.\nIn 2021, he won the gold medal in his event at the 2021 Judo World Masters held in Doha, Qatar.\nAt the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, Riner achieved a bronze medal in the over 100-kilogram class following a defeat by Russian judoka Tamerlan Bashaev. He also won the gold medal in the mixed team event.\nHe also competed in the 2024 Summer Olympics, where he, along with Marie-José Pérec, was one of the two individuals to light the Olympic cauldron in the Tuileries Garden. He won the gold medal in the over 100-kilogram class, defeating the world champion Kim Min-jong from South Korea. With that, he equaled the record of Japan's Tadahiro Nomura, becoming one of the only judokas to have won three individual Olympic golds in judo.\nThe following day in the mixed team event, France faced Japan in the gold medal match for the second straight Olympics. Sanshiro Murao and Rika Takayama gave Japan an early 2–0 lead before Riner beat Tatsuru Saito. Natsumi Tsunoda subsequently put Japan on the brink of the gold medal, but Joan-Benjamin Gaba's shock win over Hifumi Abe and Clarisse Agbegnenou's win over Miku Takaichi leveled the score at 3–3 and forced a golden score tiebreaker. The 90+ kg men were randomly chosen, and Riner and Saito fought for 6 minutes and 26 seconds and both received shido twice before Riner successfully executed an ōuchi gari to achieve the gold medal-winning ippon. It marked Riner's fifth gold Olympic gold medal and France successfully defending their mixed team gold medal from Tokyo.\n\n\n== Awards and honours ==\n2016: Officier de l'ordre national du Mérite\n2011: RTL Champion of Champions – This annual sports award was inaugurated in 2008 and is awarded by RTL, a French commercial radio network. The previous winners were Alain Bernard (2008), Sébastien Loeb (2009) and Christophe Lemaitre (2010).\n2012: L'Équipe Champion of Champions (France male category)\n2013: Chevalier (Knight) of the Legion of Honour\n2024: Along with Marie-José Pérec, one of the two final torchbearers of the Olympic torch relay who lit the Olympic cauldron in the Tuileries Garden at the opening ceremony of the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n Media related to Teddy Riner at Wikimedia Commons\n\nOfficial website \nTeddy Riner at the International Judo Federation\nTeddy Riner at the European Judo Union\nTeddy Riner at JudoInside.com\nTeddy Riner at Olympics.com\nTeddy Riner at Team France (in French)\nTeddy Riner at the French Olympic Committee (archived) (in French)\nTeddy Riner at Olympedia\nTeddy Riner at The-Sports.org"}
{"title": "Teresa Edwards", "requested": "Teresa Edwards", "extract": "Teresa Edwards (born July 19, 1964) is an American former women's basketball player and four time Olympic gold medalist.\nIn 2000, Sports Illustrated magazine placed her as 22nd of the \"100 Greatest Female Athletes of the 20th Century\". She played for, and graduated from, the University of Georgia.\nThe US Olympic Committee appointed Edwards as chef de mission for the 2012 Olympic Games. In 2010, Edwards was inducted into the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame. In 2013, she was inducted into the FIBA Hall of Fame. She has been inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame twice: in 2011 for her individual career, and in 2026 as a member of the 1996 United States women's Olympic basketball team. In 2021, Edwards published an autobiographical audio book, Black Gold, about her basketball career, with a  focus on her Olympic experiences.\n\n\n== High school ==\nBorn in Cairo, Georgia, Edwards attended Cairo High School, where she was a four-year starter. In her junior and senior years, the Syrupmakers were 58–3. She scored 1,982 points in her high school career, and was honored as the Georgia High School Player of the Year in 1982.\n\n\n== College years ==\nEdwards began her college career for the Georgia Lady Bulldogs basketball at the University of Georgia where she was a two time All-American.  She was the starting point guard for the Georgia Lady Bulldogs, helping lead them to the Final Four in 1983 and 1985. Edwards played in her first Olympic Games in 1984 as a collegian, and won her first of four gold medals as the youngest member of the team.  Her college jersey number (#5) was retired, making her one of only three Lady Bulldog players given that honor. She earned her degree in leisure studies in 1990.\n\n\n=== Georgia statistics ===\nSource\n\n\n== ABL career ==\nEdwards was the star player and head coach for the Atlanta Glory of the American Basketball League (ABL). She played in the ABL inaugural game between the Glory and the San Jose Lasers, won by the Lasers 78–70.  She was traded to the Philadelphia Rage in 1998.\n\n\n== WNBA career ==\nDuring the 2003 WNBA draft, at the urging of Minnesota Lynx head coach Suzie McConnell Serio, the Lynx selected Edwards even though she was 38 years old.  Edwards and Serio were teammates on the women's basketball team during the Summer Olympics of 1988 and 1992.\nEdwards played for the Lynx during the 2003 and 2004 seasons. Afterwards, her contract expired and she became a free agent.  No other WNBA team offered her a contract for the 2005 season.\nIn December 2006, Edwards returned to Lynx as an assistant coach.\nEdwards served as an analyst for NBC Sports coverage of Basketball at the 2008 Summer Olympics.\nIn 2011, Edwards was named as assistant coach of the Tulsa Shock. She would later become the interim head coach after Nolan Richardson resigned on July 9, 2011.\nOn March 4, 2014, Edwards was hired by the Atlanta Dream as the assistant coach.\n\n\n== WNBA career statistics ==\n\n\n=== Regular season ===\n\n\n=== Playoffs ===\n\n\n== International career ==\nAfter Edwards graduated, she played abroad for nine seasons splitting time between Vicenza- Italy,  Nagoya- Japan, Spain (Dorna Godella), and France (Tarbes and Valenciennes). During this time, she also continued to appear in international competition.\nAfter the 1994 season, she stayed in the United States to train for her fourth Olympic appearance at the 1996 Summer Olympics. Edwards was selected to take the competitors' oath at the Opening Ceremonies in Atlanta (the opening ceremonies took place on her 32nd birthday). She was named the 1996 Sportswoman of the Year (in the team category) by the Women's Sports Foundation.\nShe competed for the United States in international competition a total of 19 times.  Her teams won 14 gold medals.\nIn 1984, the USA sent its National team to the 1984 William Jones Cup competition in Taipei, Taiwan, for pre-Olympic practice. The team easily beat each of the eight teams they played, winning by an average of just under 50 points per game. Edwards averaged 5.5 points per game.\nEdwards is the first female basketball player to have played in five Olympics. She is jointly (with Australian Andrew Gaze) the third basketball player to compete at five Olympics along with Puerto Rican Teófilo Cruz and Brazilian Oscar Schmidt.\nShe also holds the distinction of being the 'youngest gold medalist in women's basketball' (age 20 in 1984) and the oldest gold medalist in women's basketball (age 36 in 2000).\nShe made a record fifth Olympic basketball team, earning a fourth gold medal to go with her bronze medal.  She returned to Europe in 2002.\nEdwards was named to the team representing the US at the 1987 William Jones Cup competition in Taipei, Taiwan. The team won all seven games to win the gold medal for the event. Edwards led the team in scoring with 23 points against China. The USA won the gold medal game by a single point over South Korea, helped by Edwards key free throws with a minute left in the game. She was the team's second leading scorer with 12.4 points per game over the seven games, and was named to the all-tournament team. In the following year, 1988, Edwards was also named to the Jones Cup team. The USA team was not as successful, with a 3–2 record, but that was enough to secure the silver medal. She averaged 15.4 points per game to lead her team in scoring.\nEdwards was a member of the 1987 gold medal-winning USA Women's Pan American Team in Indiana, and the 1991 bronze medal-winning team in Havana, Cuba.\nEdwards was a member of the USA National team at the 1990 World Championships, held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The team won their opening round games fairly easily, with the closest of the first three games a 27-point victory over Czechoslovakia. Then they faced Cuba, a team that had beaten the US in exhibition matches only a few weeks earlier. The USA team was losing at halftime, but came back to win 87–78. Edwards hit four of her five three-point attempts, and scored 32 points, along with five steals. The USA team found itself behind at halftime to Canada in their next game, but came back to win easily 95–70. After an easy match against Bulgaria, the USA team faced Czechoslovakia again, end achieved an almost identical result, winning 87–59. In the title match, the USA team won the gold medal with a score of 88–78. Edwards led the team in scoring and assists, averaging 21.9 points per game and recording 24 assist for the event.\nEdwards was named to the USA national team and competed in the 1994 World Championships, held in June 1994 in Sydney, Australia. The team was coached by Tara VanDerveer, and won their first six games, when they faced Brazil. In a closely contested, high-scoring game, Brazil hit ten of ten free throws in the final minute to secure a 110–107 victory. The USA won a close final game against Australia 100–95 to earn the bronze medal. Edwards  had the second highest scoring average on the team with 12.7 points per game.\nShe also holds the record for points in an ABL game with 46.[1]\n\n\n== Head coaching record ==\n\n\n== Awards and honors ==\n2001: Georgia Sports Hall of Fame\n2010: Women's Basketball Hall of Fame\n2009–2012: USA Basketball Board of Directors\n2011: Inducted to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame\n2011: NCAA Silver Anniversary Award\n2013: FIBA Hall of Fame\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists in one event\nList of athletes with the most appearances at Olympic Games\n\n\n== Notes ==\n\n\n== References ==\nGrundy, Pamela (2005). Shattering the glass. New Press. ISBN 978-1-56584-822-1.\nDavid L. Porter, ed. (2005). Basketball: A Biographical Dictionary. Greenwood Press. ISBN 978-0-313-30952-6.\n\n\n== External links ==\nTeresa Edwards at the FIBA Hall of Fame\nTeresa Edwards at FIBA (archive)\nWNBA Player Profile at the Wayback Machine (archived December 8, 2004)\nWNBA trivia page celebrating her 40th birthday at the Wayback Machine (archived July 16, 2012)\nUSA Basketball Player Biography at the Wayback Machine (archived August 10, 2002)\nProfile from Sports Illustrated \"100 Greatest Female Athletes of the 20th Century\"\nTeresa Edwards at the Team USA Hall of Fame (archive July 20, 2023)\nTeresa Edwards at Olympedia \nTeresa Edwards at Olympics.com \nIOC 1996 Summer Olympics Archived August 22, 2008, at the Wayback Machine"}
{"title": "Teófilo Stevenson", "requested": "Teófilo Stevenson", "extract": "Teófilo Stevenson Lawrence (Spanish pronunciation: [teˈofilo steˈβenson]; 29 March 1952 – 11 June 2012) was a Cuban amateur boxer who competed from 1966 to 1986.\nStevenson won the Val Barker Trophy (1972) as well was honored with the Olympic Order (1987) and is one of only three boxers to win three Olympic gold medals – alongside the Hungarian László Papp and the fellow Cuban Félix Savón.\n\n\n== Early life ==\nTeófilo Stevenson Lawrence was born in Puerto Padre, Cuba. His father, Teófilo Stevenson Patterson, was an immigrant from Saint Vincent. His mother Dolores Lawrence was a native Cuban, but her parents were immigrants from the Anglophone island of Saint Kitts. Teófilo senior arrived in Cuba in 1923, finding work wherever he could, before settling in Camagüey with Dolores, where he gave English lessons to top up his meagre earnings. Due to his large size, Teófilo senior was encouraged into boxing by local trainers, fighting seven times before becoming disillusioned by the corrupt payment structure on offer to young fighters.\nTeófilo junior was a bright child who at nine years old soon found himself sparring at the makeshift open-air gym his father had frequented. Under the tutelage of former national light heavyweight champion John Herrera, Teófilo junior began his career fighting far more experienced boxers, but according to Herrera, \"had what it took\". Despite his growing involvement in the sport, Stevenson had yet to tell his mother about his activities. Eventually Teófilo Sr. broke the news to his wife, who was furious; but she agreed to acquiesce on the provision that the boy was accompanied by his father.\n\n\n== Boxing career ==\n\n\n=== Beginnings ===\nThe young Stevenson continued to improve under Herrera in the mid-1960s, winning a junior title and gaining additional training in Havana. His victories drew the attention of Andrei Chervonenko, a head coach in Cuba's newly implemented state sports system. Professional sports throughout the island had been outlawed since 1962 by government resolution 83-A, and all boxing activity had come under the guidance of the government sponsored National Boxing Commission. Chervonenko, a retired boxer himself, sent by the Soviet Union, who had created Cuba's Escuela de Boxeo (Boxing school) in a derelict old gym in Havana, began to champion Stevenson's progress.\nStevenson's senior boxing career began at age seventeen with a defeat in the national championships against the experienced heavyweight Gabriel Garcia. Despite the setback, Stevenson went on to register convincing victories over Nancio Carrillo and Juan Perez, two of Cuba's finest boxers in the weight division, securing a place in the national team for the 1970 Central American and Caribbean Boxing Championships. Defeat in the final after three victories was considered no shame, and Stevenson firmly established himself as Cuba's premier heavyweight. Back in the gym Chervonenko and leading Cuban boxing coach Alcides Sagarra worked on Stevenson's jab, which became his ultimate weapon, and paid dividends when the Cuban easily defeated East Germany's Bernd Anders in front of a surprised Berlin crowd. The victory made the entire amateur boxing world take notice of Stevenson as a serious heavyweight contender.\n\n\n=== Munich Olympics 1972 ===\nStevenson, now twenty, joined the Cuban boxing team for the Munich Olympics of 1972. His opening bout against experienced Polish fighter Ludwik Denderys began dramatically when Stevenson knocked the other man down within thirty seconds of the opening bell. The fight was stopped moments later due to a large cut next to the Pole's eye.\nProceeding to the quarter finals, Stevenson met American boxer Duane Bobick. Bobick, a gold medalist at the 1971 Pan American Games, had beaten Stevenson previously. After a close first round, Stevenson lost the second, but a ferocious display in the third round knocked Bobick to the canvas three times and the contest was stopped. The victory was viewed on television throughout Cuba, and is still considered Stevenson's most memorable performance.\nStevenson easily defeated German Peter Hussing in the semifinal by TKO in the second round, and received his gold medal after Romanian Ion Alexe failed to appear in the final due to injury. The Cuban boxing team won three gold medals, their first in Olympic boxing history, as well as one silver and one bronze. The Munich games established Cuba's dominance over the amateur sport that was to last decades. It also established Stevenson as the world's premier amateur heavyweight boxer.\nLess than two years after his successful performance at the Munich Olympics, Stevenson, then 22-years-old, was rewarded with a house for himself in Havana and another for himself and his family in Delicias. Stevenson later recalled: \"I had no idea the house in Delicias was going to be so big. When I was shown the plans, I said, 'What is this? A bunker?'\" AIBA president Anwar Chowdhry, when asked did the Cuban authorities acted properly in giving Stevenson two houses and two cars, said: \"These things should not be allowed. If gifts are to be given it should be for everybody—not for a few.\" Over tea in his office in Havana's Sports City Coliseum, INDER president Conrado Martínez Corona defended the local practice of giving cars and apartments to top athletes. \"Our country has the obligation of solving the problems of all citizens—the problems of their nourishment, housing, education and health\", he said. \"It's a pity we can't solve this problem in the way we need to for everybody.\"\n\n\n=== Prime years ===\nStevenson did the same at the inaugural 1974 World Championships in Havana, Cuba, and then in the 1976 Summer Olympics, held in Montreal, Stevenson repeated the feat once again. By then, he had become a national hero in Cuba. This was the point where he was the closest to signing a professional contract, as American fight promoters offered him US$5 million to challenge world heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali. If he had accepted, it would have made Stevenson the second boxer to go straight from the Olympics into a professional debut with the world's heavyweight crown on the line, after Pete Rademacher. Stevenson refused the offer, however, asking \"What is one million dollars compared to the love of eight million Cubans?\" Stevenson went to the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow and became the second boxer ever, after Papp, to win three Olympic boxing gold medals. The Moscow Games were the 19th occurrence of the modern Olympic Games.\nStevenson participated at the 1982 World Amateur Boxing Championships in Munich, but lost to the eventual silver medalist and future professional world champion Francesco Damiani from Italy. This fight ended an eleven-year unbeaten run by Stevenson and was the only occasion that he did not win the gold medal at the World Championships when he entered the competition.\nHis loss by a split decision to Aleksandr Lukstin of the Soviet Union in the finals of the 1983 Córdova Cardín, as the Soviet head coach Kontsantin Koptsev later admitted, was due to a plaster-like tape they handwrapped Lukstin's fists with instead of a regular elastic-band hand wrapping.\nStevenson might have won a fourth gold medal at the 1984 Summer Olympics, but the Soviet Union boycotted the games, which were hosted by Los Angeles, in retaliation for the American boycott of the 1980 Moscow competition. Cuba followed the Soviet lead, and Stevenson did not compete. For consolation, he beat future Olympic champion Tyrell Biggs in February 1984 (breaking three ribs in the process) and won the super heavyweight gold at the 1984 Friendship Games, defeating Ulli Kaden of East Germany and, in the final, Valeriy Abadzhyan of the Soviet Union.\nAt the 1986 World Amateur Boxing Championships, he won the super heavyweight gold, defeating Alex Garcia from the United States in the final. Stevenson retired from boxing shortly after the 1988 Summer Olympics, which Cuba also boycotted.\n\n\n=== Rivalry with Vysotsky ===\nStevenson was known for two fights with Soviet boxer Igor Vysotsky, who defeated him twice. Vysotsky later said in an interview with East Side Boxing:\n\nI fought Teofilo twice. We first met at the \"Córdova Cardín\" tournament in 1973 in Cuba. I took the first two opponents, both being Cuban, out early. In the third, I beat Stevenson on points. Although the score was 3:2, the pace of the fight forced Teófilo to take two necessary breaks to retie his gloves. We had a saying in the USSR, \"It's easier to win the World championships than it is to win 'Córdova Cardín'.\" The second time was at a class A International tournament in Minsk, in March 1976. In each stanza, Stevenson took a count, while in the final three minutes, I knocked him out.\nVysotsky was the only boxer out of hundreds of Stevenson's opponents to ever stop him, let alone by knockout, and to defeat him twice, both times in his prime, without being avenged. And on top of it, Vysotsky scored his first victory over Stevenson at the Córdova Cardín, Cubans' home tournament, where they do their best to never let any foreigner get into the finals.\nStevenson's second loss to Vysotsky happened six weeks before his knockout winning streak at the 1976 Olympics in Montreal, which ended up with victories over John Tate and Mircea Șimon. After losing to Vysotsky for a second time he said, \"Nobody is invincible.\"\n\n\n=== Highlights ===\n\nHe finished his twenty-years-long career having 332 fights under his belt, with a record of 302 wins, 22 losses (only 1 by knockout,) and 8 draws. Various western estimates totaling his record to 500+ fights, including there hundreds of unaccounted tough sparrings with a degree of aliveness outstanding for amateur boxing, which paid off with such an excellent career (his fearsome reputation alone brought him 22 walkover wins, and a number of byes to skip unnecessary encounters with a limited opposition.)\n\n\n=== 1984 and 1988 Summer Olympics ===\nStevenson might have captured more gold medals for his country, but the Cuban government for purely political reasons boycotted the 1984 Los Angeles Games and refused to attend the 1988 Seoul Games because North Korea was not allowed to cosponsor the event.\n\nAt his prime in the 1970s, Stevenson dominance in the amateur heavyweight division coincided with Muhammad Ali's reign as the world's heavyweight champion in professional boxing. Stevenson was often dubbed by the American media as Ali's \"Communist twin\", and speculations went back and forth as to their much anticipated fight if Stevenson would accept an offer to turn pro (which in essence meant to defect and to leave Cuba permanently). Along with Pete Rademacher, he was the only amateur boxer who was offered a shot at the world's heavyweight title in his potential pro debut. Eventually Ali spent one week in Cuba with Stevenson, but their matchup would never happen. Stevenson, when he finally met Ali, suggested to Ali to arrange a three- or four-round fight. Ali refused to fight Stevenson's way, implying he would face him off in a standard 15-round championship bout, in which he would have an edge by outlasting his opponent (although in 1971 Ali himself invited the recent Soviet heavyweight champion Kamo Saroyan, who visited the United States, for a two-round bout). When the aging Ali was going to fight Larry Holmes in 1980, and Stevenson was making his way to the third gold medal in Moscow, Stevenson commented to the press that now it was Ali who should have insisted on a three- or four-round fight.\n\nStevenson turned down several lucrative offers to go pro, which came from various internationally well-known U.S. boxing kingpins, most notably from Don King and Bob Arum. King's top rival Arum almost succeeded and came the closest to pulling off an Ali-Stevenson matchup when the Cubans accepted his $1 million offer for five three-round exhibition fights. \"We plan to use this money for social problems,\" an INDER official said at the time. But the U.S. Treasury Department did not allow the series, saying that it violated terms of the U.S. embargo against Cuba. Apart from that attempt, Arum used a Jamaican promoter, Lucien Chen, as a mediator, to propose a $1 million fight against Leon Spinks. \"I envisioned a fight that would be attended by the two presidents, Fidel Castro and Jimmy Carter,\" Chen said.\nNevertheless, Stevenson's professional debut never did happen, because he remained loyal to the Cuban revolutionary ideals, never accepting any payday for himself, no matter how big it appeared. After knocking out three opponents at the Munich Olympics in September 1972, including Duane Bobick of the United States, Stevenson was approached by an American promoter, who offered him $1 million to turn pro on the spot. \"I will not trade the Cuban people for all the dollars in the world,\" Stevenson was heard to say. \"Stevenson would have been phenomenal as a pro, he could have been in the same class as Muhammad Ali or Joe Frazier. But we'll never know,\" said Don King.\n\n\n=== Retirement ===\nStevenson finished his sports career in 1988. He started to work as a boxing trainer and sports functionary. He worked at the National Institute for Sports, Physical Education, and Recreation (INDER,) also he served as vice president of the Cuban Boxing Federation.\n\n\n== Later life ==\nIn 1999, Stevenson was arrested for an altercation incident at Miami International Airport where, before boarding a United Airlines chartered jet of the Cuban national boxing team, he allegedly headbutted a 41-year-old United Airlines ticket counter employee, knocking out several of his teeth. According to Stevenson, an \"agitator\" approached him at the airport shouting insults against the Cuban government. Stevenson failed to attend the subsequent court proceedings, having travelled to Havana after his release from custody while on bail. The Cuban state newspaper Trabajadores blamed what it described as the \"Miami mafia\" (i.e. Cuban exiles, whose vast diaspora reside in Florida) for provoking the incident, alleging that the Cuban American National Foundation organised a public gathering to abuse Stevenson when he returned to Miami airport after his arrest. The newspaper believed that the motives for the alleged provocation were somehow to cast a shadow upon a Cuban sports star.\n\n\n== Death ==\nStevenson died on 11 June 2012 of a heart attack in Havana at the age of 60. It was first reported by Cuban state media, stating \"the Cuban sporting family was moved today by the passing of one of the greatest of all time\".\nHe was survived by his two children.\nA forthcoming documentary by Brin-Jonathan Butler, Split Decision, contains the last known interview with Stevenson.\n\n\n== Awards and honours ==\nStevenson was awarded the Val Barker Trophy for Outstanding Boxer at the 1972 Olympic Games.\nIn 1972, Stevenson became a Merited Master of Sport of the USSR, one of a few foreign athletes to be awarded the title in its history.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nTeófilo Stevenson at BoxRec (registration required)\nTeófilo Stevenson at Olympics.com\nTeófilo Stevenson at Olympedia\nTeófilo Stevenson at InterSportStats\nBoxing record for Teófilo Stevenson from BoxRec (registration required)\nAmateur career of Teófilo Stevenson (in Spanish) compiled by Pedro Cabrera Isidrón of the Cuban Olympics Committee. Last updated: 25 June 2008\n Media related to Teófilo Stevenson at Wikimedia Commons\n Quotations related to Teófilo Stevenson at Wikiquote"}
{"title": "Therese Johaug", "requested": "Therese Johaug", "extract": "Therese Johaug (born 25 June 1988) is a Norwegian former cross-country skier from the village of Dalsbygda in Os Municipality. In World Ski Championships she won ten individual gold medals along with four gold medals in relays, and she is a four-time Olympic gold medallist.\n\n\n== Career ==\nAfter skiing some domestic races in the 2006 season, Johaug took part at the Norwegian Championships in 2007, winning a bronze at the 7.5 km + 7.5 km double pursuit event. She was selected for two World Cup races before the World Championships, finishing eighth and 33rd in two interval start races over 10 km, which was enough to be selected for competition in the 30 km distance at the 2007 Sapporo World Championships where she won a surprising bronze medal.\nAt the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, she won gold in the 4 × 5 km relay, came sixth in the 15 km pursuit and seventh in the 30 km mass start (classic) race.\nJohaug won her first individual gold medal in the 30 km mass start race at the 2011 World Championships in Oslo. She also won gold in the 4 x 5 km relay, bronze in the 7.5 km + 7.5 km double pursuit and fourth in the 10 km individual start. At the 2013 World Championships, she won her second individual gold medal in the 10 km freestyle race.\nAt the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, she won the silver medal in the 30 km mass start (free), the bronze medal in the 10 km classical, and finished fourth in the 15 km skiathlon.\nJohaug and compatriot Martin Johnsrud Sundby became the first Norwegians to win the Tour de Ski when they won the women's and men's competitions in the 2013–14 edition of the race. Johaug subsequently won the overall and distance competitions in the 2013–14 FIS Cross-Country World Cup.\nShe won the Birkebeinerrennet ski marathon in 2015 with a time of 2.41.46. That year she also enjoyed her most successful World Championship performance in Falun, where she took three gold medals: two in individual events (the 15km skiathlon and the 30km classic mass start) and one as part of the Norwegian women's team in the 4x5km relay.\nJohaug followed her World Championship success with her best-ever World Cup season in 2015–16, winning a second Tour de Ski by overturning a 39-second deficit to Ingvild Flugstad Østberg on the final stage to complete the climb up Alpe Cermis with a lead of 2 minutes 21 seconds over runner-up Østberg. She went on to capture the overall and distance World Cups, rounding off her season by winning the inaugural Ski Tour Canada in a similar fashion to her Tour de Ski win, eradicating Heidi Weng's 30-second lead on the final stage pursuit to take victory by over a minute.\nUntil 2016 Egil Kristiansen coached Johaug, and was described (by media) as \"in reality her best coach ... [and he had] helped her master freestyle\" skiing.\nIn August 2019, Johaug competed in the Norwegian national athletics championship and won the 10,000 metres on 32:20.87. She followed this up with a time of 31:33.15 in May 2021 falling just 8 seconds short of an Olympic berth.\nIn May 2025, less than a year before the 2026 Olympics, Johaug announced her retirement from competitions.\n\n\n== Anti-doping rule violation ==\nJohaug served an 18-month competition ban from October 2016 to April 2018 for an anti-doping rule violation after testing positive for unintentional use of clostebol. An initial suspension of 13-months was overturned and extended by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) following an appeal by the International Ski Federation (FIS). The ruling accepted Johaug's explanation that the source of the clostebol was an ointment provided by the team physician, Fredrik Bendiksen, but it was deemed that Johaug to have \"failed to conduct a basic check of [the treatment's] packaging\".\n\n\n== Cross-country skiing results ==\nAll results are sourced from the International Ski Federation (FIS).\n\n\n=== Olympic Games ===\n6 medals – (4 gold, 1 silver, 1 bronze)\n\n\n=== World Championships ===\n23 medals – (14 gold, 5 silver, 4 bronze)\n\n\n=== World Cup ===\n8 titles – (3 Overall, 5 Distance)\n\n\n==== Individual podiums ====\n89 victories – (50 WC, 39 SWC)\n160 podiums – (89 WC, 71 SWC)\n\n\n==== Team podiums ====\n18 victories – (18 RL)\n22 podiums – (22 RL)\n\n\n==== Overall record ====\n\n\n== Sponsors ==\nAs of 13 October 2016, her sponsors were Tag Heuer, Huawei, Isklar and Eger.\nThe sponsorship with Huawei ended in December 2020.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n Media related to Therese Johaug at Wikimedia Commons\n\nOfficial website Archived 5 August 2021 at the Wayback Machine\nTherese Johaug at the International Ski and Snowboard Federation \nTherese Johaug at World Athletics \nTherese Johaug at Olympics.com\nTherese Johaug at Olympedia \nTherese Johaug at Team Norway  (in Norwegian)"}
{"title": "Thomas Alsgaard", "requested": "Thomas Alsgaard", "extract": "Thomas Alsgaard (born 10 January 1972) is a Norwegian former professional cross-country skier. Alsgaard is regarded by many as the best performer of the freestyle technique (skating) in cross-country skiing and many of today's best skiers have studied his technique. In total, Alsgaard won 15 medals in the Winter Olympics and FIS Nordic World Ski Championships, making him one of the most successful skiers of all time.\n\n\n== Early life ==\nBorn in Flateby, Enebakk, Alsgaard began cross-country ski racing at the age of three. That was when he was entered into a race against many 5-year-olds. He beat all of them. A year later, it was rumored that he was lost in the village the family lived in. In fact, he was found at the local ski area, just about to start his third time around a 9-kilometer loop. Alsgaard says that his passion for skiing comes from liking to be outdoors.\n\n\n== Athletic career ==\nAlsgaard got his international breakthrough in the Lillehammer 1994 Winter Olympics winning the 30 kilometre freestyle event. In total, Alsgaard won 15 medals in the Winter Olympics and FIS Nordic World Ski Championships, making him one of the most successful skiers of all time. Excluding his World Championships debut in 1993, Alsgaard won at least one gold medal at every Olympic Games and World Championships that he participated from 1994 to 2003. Alsgaard retired from racing after the 2003 World Championships.\nHe won the Holmenkollen medal in 2001 (shared with Adam Małysz and Bente Skari).\n\n\n== After his career as a professional skier ==\nAlsgaard retired from racing in 2003. Between 2013 and 2017 he was the owner and manager of a ski team, Team LeasePlan.\nHe now works as a technical advisor for Alpina Sports, working in the Nordic boot department.\nHe is also known as a sports commentator for the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation.\nIn the Norwegian Championship in January 2011, Alsgaard took a sensational bronze medal at the 15 km classical individual race, defeating many skiers on the Norwegian World Cup team. He was only beaten by Eldar Rønning (gold) and Martin Johnsrud Sundby (silver). He repeated the feat in 2012, expressing frustration with the lack of aggressiveness and initiative in both the younger elite athletes and the team surrounding them.\n\n\n== Ski Classics team owner ==\nAs of December 2016 the team consists of four \"allround\" skiers and six skiers with langløp (or long races) as their specialty; Swede Lina Korsgren is the team's only female (as of 2016); Hans Kristian Stadheim assists in coaching. On 21 April 2017, Alsgaard announced that Team LeasePlan had to shut down due to sponsorship problems.\n\n\n== Cross-country skiing results ==\nAll results are sourced from the International Ski Federation (FIS).\n\n\n=== Olympic Games ===\n6 medals – (5 gold, 1 silver)\n\n\n=== World Championships ===\n9 medals – (6 gold, 2 silver, 1 bronze)\n\n\n=== World Cup ===\n\n\n==== Season titles ====\n3 titles – (1 overall, long distance, 1 sprint)\n\n\n==== Season standings ====\n\n\n==== Individual podiums ====\n13 victories\n29 podiums\n\n\n==== Team podiums ====\n12 victories – (12 RL)\n25 podiums – (24 RL, 1 TS)\n\n\n== Equipment ==\nAlsgaard used skis from Madshus, one of Alpina's partners, with Alpina boots and Rottefella bindings.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\n\n\n== References ==\n\nThomas Alsgaard at the International Ski and Snowboard Federation\nHolmenkollen medalists – click Holmenkollmedaljen for downloadable pdf file (in Norwegian)\nHolmenkollen winners since 1892 – click Vinnere for downloadable pdf file (in Norwegian)"}
{"title": "Thomas Burke (sprinter)", "requested": "Thomas Burke (sprinter)", "extract": "Thomas Edmund Burke (January 15, 1875 – February 14, 1929) was an American sprinter. He was the first Olympic champion in the 100 and 400 meter sprint races.\n\n\n== Biography ==\nBurke was born in Massachusetts in 1875. He competed for the Suffolk Athletic Club in South Boston and the Boston Athletic Association (BAA).\nBurke, a student at Boston University School of Law, was a reputed runner in the 400 meters and 440 yards, having won the AAU title (440 yards) in 1895. He had no such reputation for the first event he entered in the inaugural modern Olympic Games in Athens, 1896. With many top sprinters absent, Burke surprisingly won the 100 meters. He was also noted for his \"crouch start\", which was uncommon at that time but in standard use now. His time in the final was 12.0 seconds. In the preliminary heat, he had an even better time – 11.8 seconds.\nAt the same Olympics, Burke also won the 400 meters, his top event.  His times for that event were 58.4 seconds in the preliminary heats and 54.2 seconds in the final, in both of which Burke finished first.\nLater in his career, Burke specialized in the longer distances, winning IC4A titles in the 440 and 880 yards events. In 1897, he was one of the initiators of the annually held Boston Marathon, inspired by the success of the marathon event at the 1896 Olympics.\nBurke later became a lawyer, but was also an athletics coach and a part-time journalist, writing for The Boston Journal and the Boston Post.\nDuring World War I, at an age when most soldiers had long since retired from active duty, Burke earned his aviator’s wings at 43, making him the oldest man in the U.S. military to achieve this distinction. Burke died in 1929, aged 54.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nThomas Burke at World Athletics\nThomas Burke at Tilastopaja (registration required)\nThomas Burke at legacy.USATF.org\nThomas Burke at www.USATF.org\nThomas Burke at Athletics Podium\nThomas Burke at Olympics.com\nThomas Burke at Olympedia\n\n\n== Further reading ==\nWallechinsky, David; Loucky, Jaime (2012). The Complete Book of the Olympics (2012 ed.). London: Aurum Press. pp. 43–44, 77. ISBN 978-1-84513-695-6."}
{"title": "Thomas Wassberg", "requested": "Thomas Wassberg", "extract": "Lars Thomas Wassberg (born 27 March 1956) is a Swedish former cross-country skier. A fast skating style – push for every leg – is still called \"Wassberg\" after him in several countries. Wassberg's skiing idols when growing up were Sixten Jernberg and Oddvar Brå. He has described his mental strength and physical fitness as his greatest abilities as a skier, with his main weakness being a lack of sprinting ability.\nWassberg won four Olympic gold medals: in 15 km (1980), 50 km (1984), and the 4 × 10 km relay (1984, 1988), and served as the Olympic flag bearer for Sweden in 1988. At the FIS Nordic World Ski Championships, he earned three golds (50 km: 1982, 30 km: 1987, and 4 × 10 km relay: 1987), three silvers (15 km: 1985, 1987; 50 km (1987), and one bronze (4 × 10 km relay: 1985). Additionally, Wassberg won the 50 km at the Holmenkollen ski festival three times (1980, 1982 and 1987) and the 15 km twice (1979, 1985).\nAt the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, Wassberg edged out Finland's Juha Mieto by 0.01 seconds in the 15 km, the closest cross-country ski race in Olympic history. Wassberg subsequently suggested to Mieto that the gold medal should be split between them \"as one one-hundredth of a second is nothing in a 15-kilometer race\". This incident led the International Ski Federation (FIS) to change their timing to the nearest one-tenth of a second. It also resulted in an apocryphal urban legend that Wassberg and Mieto's medals were cut in half and re-welded into half-gold, half-silver medals. At the 1984 Winter Olympics, Wassberg beat out fellow Swede Gunde Svan by 4.9 seconds in the 50 km, the closest margin of victory ever in that event until Giorgio Di Centa edged out Yevgeny Dementyev by 0.8 seconds at the 2006 Winter Olympics though the 2006 event was a mass start event while the 1984 event was an interval start event.\nHe won the World Cup in 1977, and in 1980 was awarded the Holmenkollen medal. For some reason his teammate Sven-Åke Lundbäck did not receive the Svenska Dagbladet Gold Medal in 1978. In protest to this decision Wassberg refused to accept his Svenska Dagbladet Gold Medal in 1980.\nAccording to Bengt Erik Bengtsson, Chief of the Nordic Office of the FIS from 1984 to 2004, Wassberg was the first to suggest in 1984 the splitting of the sport of cross country skiing into classic and freestyle disciplines. This was subsequently implemented by FIS in 1986.\nAfter retiring from competitions Wassberg worked as a sports reporter for Swedish Radio and a cross-country skiing coach for his club Åsarna IK. In 2009 he appeared on Swedish television in the show contests Mästarnas mästare, and in 2016 participated in Let's Dance 2016 which was broadcast on TV4. In the 2010s he oversaw the preparation of ski tracks for Åsarna IK, organized bird hunting events for tourists and worked as a forester.\n\n\n== Cross-country skiing results ==\nAll results are sourced from the International Ski Federation (FIS).\n\n\n=== Olympic Games ===\n4 medals – (4 gold)\n\n\n=== World Championships ===\n7 medals – (3 gold, 3 silver, 1 bronze)\n\n\n=== World  Cup ===\n\n\n==== Season standings ====\n\n\n==== Individual podiums ====\n6 victories\n18 podiums\n\n\n==== Team podiums ====\n7 victories\n10 podiums\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nThomas Wassberg at the International Ski and Snowboard Federation\nHolmenkollen medalists – click Holmenkollmedaljen for downloadable pdf file (in Norwegian)\nHolmenkollen winners since 1892 – click Vinnere for downloadable pdf file (in Norwegian)\nWassberg tar emot Bragdguldet – efter 33 år\nThomas Wassberg at Olympedia \nThomas Wassberg at Olympics.com \nThomas Wassberg at Sveriges Olympiska Kommitté (in Swedish) (in English)"}
{"title": "Thorleif Haug", "requested": "Thorleif Haug", "extract": "Thorleif Haug (28 September 1894 – 12 December 1934) was a Norwegian skier who competed in Nordic combined and cross-country. At the 1924 Olympics he won all three Nordic skiing events (18 km, 50 km and combined). He was also awarded the bronze medal in ski jumping, but 50 years later a mistake was found in calculation of scores, Haug was demoted to fourth place, and his daughter presented her father's medal to Anders Haugen.\n\n\n== Biography ==\nThorleif Haug was born in Vivelstad, a narrow valley between the Lier Lier, Drammen in Buskerud county, Norway. He was raised on the Årkvisla farm.\nDominating Nordic combined and cross-country skiing events during the 1920s, he won three gold medals in the first Winter Olympics in Chamonix and was fourth in ski jumping. In addition, he won the 50 kilometres cross-country event at the Holmenkollen ski festival a record six times (1918–1921, 1923–1924) and the Nordic combined three times (1919–21). Haug shared the Holmenkollen medal in 1919 with fellow Norwegian Otto Aasen. Haug also won a silver in the Nordic combined at the 1926 FIS Nordic World Ski Championships in Lahti. Haug represented his club, SBK Drafn, Drammen.\nHaug worked as a plumber after his sporting career, and died of pneumonia in 1934, 40 years old.\n\n\n== Legacy ==\nIn 1946, a statue of Thorleif Haug by Norwegian sculptor Per Palle Storm was erected in Drammen. A road in the Voksenkollen area in Oslo was named after Haug during 1952. Since 1966, his skiing club has held a Memorial Race in his name (Thorleif Haugs Minneløp) as a part of the Thorleif Haug Ski Festival (Thorleif Haug Skifestival). The race runs from Geithus to Drammen, encompassing Haug's home at Årkvisla. Drammen has an illuminated track along Bragernesåsen named Thorleif Haug's way. Thorleif Haug Lodge was officially established 21 January 1984, as the fifth lodge of the Sons of Norway in Norway.\n\n\n== Cross-country skiing results ==\nAll results are sourced from the International Ski Federation (FIS).\n\n\n=== Olympic Games ===\n2 medals – (2 gold)\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multi-sport champions\nList of multiple Summer Olympic medalists\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nThorleif Haug at the International Ski and Snowboard Federation. Cross-country profile\nThorleif Haug at the International Ski and Snowboard Federation. Nordic combined profile\nHolmenkollen medalists – click Holmenkollmedaljen for downloadable pdf file (in Norwegian)\nHolmenkollen winners since 1892 – click Vinnere for downloadable pdf file (in Norwegian)\nThorleif Haug Skifestival"}
{"title": "Thorsten Margis", "requested": "Thorsten Margis", "extract": "Thorsten Margis (born 14 August 1989) is a German bobsledder.\n\n\n== Career ==\nMargis competed at the 2014 Winter Olympics for Germany. He teamed with driver Francesco Friedrich, Gregor Bermbach and Jannis Bäcker in the Germany-2 sled in the four-man event, finishing 10th.\nAs of April 2014, his best showing at the World Championships is 4th, in the 2013 team event, with his best finish in an Olympic discipline 13th in the 2013 four-man event.\nMargis made his World Cup debut in January 2013. As of April 2014, he has three World Cup podium finishes, with his best result being a pair of silver medals in 2013–14.\nMargis and Francesco Friedrich tied with Canada's Justin Kripps and Alexander Kopacz for the gold medal at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea.\n\n\n== World Cup podiums ==\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nThorsten Margis at World Athletics\nThorsten Margis at Tilastopaja (registration required)\nThorsten Margis at IBSF\nThorsten Margis at Olympics.com\nThorsten Margis at the German Olympic Sports Confederation (in German)\nThorsten Margis at Olympedia\nThorsten Margis at InterSportStats\nThorsten Margis at the German Bobsleigh, Luge, and Skeleton Federation (in German)\nThorsten Margis at Milano Cortina 2026\nThorsten Margis on Instagram"}
{"title": "Tirunesh Dibaba", "requested": "Tirunesh Dibaba", "extract": "Tirunesh Dibaba (Oromo: Xirunesh Dibaabaa, Amharic: ጥሩነሽ ዲባባ ቀነኒ; born 1 June 1985) is an Ethiopian long-distance runner athlete who competes in long-distance track events and international road races. She has won three Olympic track gold medals, five World Championship track gold medals, four individual World Cross Country (WCC) adult titles, and one individual WCC junior title. Tirunesh was the 5,000 metres (outdoor track) world record holder until 2020. She is nicknamed the \"baby-faced destroyer.\"\nAt the 2005 IAAF World Championships in Helsinki, Finland, Tirunesh became the first woman to win the 5000 m and 10000 m at the same championship. She is the one of two women (the other Sonia O'Sullivan) who won the short and long course World Cross Country title at the same championship (2005 in Saint-Galmier, France). With her 2003 World championship title, she became the youngest World Champion at the age of 18 years and 90 days.\nTirunesh comes from a sporting family of several Olympic medalists, which includes her sisters Genzebe, Ejegayehu and Anna, and her cousin, Derartu Tulu. The matriarch of the Dibaba athletics dynasty, Tirunesh is the most decorated of the family.\n\n\n== Background ==\nTirunesh was born in the village of Bekoji, Arsi Zone of the Oromia Region and the fourth of six children. She is of Oromo descent. She began competing in athletics at the age of 14. She was raised in the high-altitude Arsi Zone in Oromia, Ethiopia but has lived in Addis Ababa, the capital, since 2000.\nTirunesh comes from an athletic family. Her older sister Ejegayehu won the silver medal in the 10,000 metres at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens. As of 25 June 2017, her younger sister Genzebe holds the world record for 1,500 metres, 2,000 metres and the indoor world records for 1,500 metres, one mile (pending ratification), 3,000 metres, and 5,000 metres. Tirunesh and Genzebe are the only siblings in history to hold concurrent world records. Their cousin, Derartu Tulu, won gold medals in the 10,000 metres at the 1992 and 2000 Summer Olympics, the bronze medal in the 10,000 metres at the 2004 Summer Olympics, the silver medal in the 10,000 metres at the 1995 World Championships, and the gold medal in the 10,000 metres at the 2001 World Championships.\n\n\n== Career ==\n\n\n=== Junior races ===\nTirunesh's first fully international outdoor event as a junior was the 2001 World Cross Country Championships (WCCC) in Ostend, Belgium, where, at the age of 15, she finished fifth.\nTirunesh finished second in the junior race at the 2002 WCCC in Dublin, Ireland before winning that race in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 2003.\nTirunesh also earned a silver medal in the 5000 metres at the 2002 World Junior Championships in Kingston, Jamaica, 1.05 seconds behind Meseret Defar and just 0.05 seconds ahead of bronze medalist Vivian Cheruiyot.\n\n\n=== 2003: First World Championships gold medal ===\nIn May, Tirunesh won the only Ethiopian national track championship of her senior career. The event was the 5000 metres, with Meseret Defar finishing second.\nIn Paris at her World Championships debut, Tirunesh won the 5000 metres in a sprint finish against Marta Dominguez of Spain and Edith Masai of Kenya. This made her the youngest athlete to win an individual gold medal at the World Championships. Recalling the race, Tirunesh said, \"I competed in Paris only because I had the 'A' standard. No one expected me to win. There was no pressure from anywhere. All of them [the pre-race favorites] were looking at each other [during the race] and no one was focusing on the finish line. I just went for it and was surprised that I had won.\"\nIn October, she finished fourth in the 5000 metres at the All-Africa Games in Abuja, Nigeria and second in the same event at the Afro-Asian Games in Hyderabad, India. Meseret Defar won both races. Tirunesh said, \"I was a bit tired after Paris and did not train well. I was not ready to run those races.\"\n\n\n=== 2004: Bronze medalist at the Athens Olympics ===\nAt the Summer Olympics in Athens, Tirunesh finished third in the 5000 metres, behind Meseret Defar and Kenyan Isabella Ochichi. At age 19, she became the youngest-ever medalist for Ethiopia at the Olympics. She said about the race, \"I was a bit overweight and after following Elvan [Abeylegesse] at the early part of the race, I just could not follow the rest at the end. I was not disappointed. I had learned my lesson.\"\n\n\n=== 2005: Double gold medalist at the World Championships ===\nAt the Reebok Boston Indoor Games in January, Tirunesh set a world record in the 5000 meters with a finish time of 14:32.93. This was 6.36 seconds faster than the previous world record set by Berhane Adere. Finishing second was Tirunesh's sister Ejegayehu, over 25 seconds behind. She faded during the last 1000 metres after running with Tirunesh through 4000 metres in a hand-timed 11:46.2. Tirunesh's 1000 metre splits were 2:56.0 - 2:55.2 - 3:00.0 - 2:55.0 - 2:46.8.\nTirunesh won two gold medals in March at the World Cross Country Championships in Saint-Galmier, France. She was the second woman, the other being Sonia O'Sullivan, to win two events since these championships began in 1998.\nDibaba out-sprinted her sister Ejegayehu and Adere to win the 10,000 metres at the World Championships in Helsinki, Finland. One week later, Tirunesh broke the championships record while defeating Meseret Defar and sister Ejegayehu to win the 5000 metres and become the first woman to win the 10,000/5000 metres double at the same World Championships. The International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) recognized these two victories as the 2005 Female Performances of the Year. Just before these races, Tirunesh said, \"When I won [the 2003 World Championships] in Paris, everybody called me the 'little girl'. I am no longer that little girl. I have matured and certainly am afraid of no one during competition.\"\n\n\n=== 2006: Tirunesh-Defar rivalry intensifies ===\nTirunesh won the long race on 1 April at the World Cross Country Championships in Fukuoka, Japan. The next day, however, she was unable to finish the short race.\nTirunesh won five of the six Golden League 5000 metre races, which earned her a bonus of US$83,333. She also won the 5000 metres at the World Athletics Final. Tirunesh and Meseret Defar raced against each other in five of those seven races, with Tirunesh winning four times.\nDefar defeated Tirunesh in the 5000 metres at the African Championships in Bambous, Mauritius, and in the 3000 metres at the World Athletics Final.\n\n\n=== 2007: Successful defense of 10,000 metres World Championship ===\n\nTirunesh earned a US$25,000 bonus for breaking her own 5000 metres indoor world record at the Reebok Boston Indoor Games on 27 January, with a finish time of 14:27.42. Tirunesh's 1000 metre split times were 2:55.28 - 2:53.2 - 2:51.5 - 2:56.68 - 2:46.4. She held this record until Meseret Defar broke it on 18 February 2009 in Stockholm with a finish time of 14:24.37.\nDuring the 10,000 metres race at the World Championships in Osaka, Tirunesh again used her sprint finish to overhaul Turkey's Elvan Abeylegesse, whose second-place finish here was expunged in 2017 for doping. Tirunesh won despite having a mid-race tumble and abdominal pains throughout the race. Tirunesh's finish time was 31:55.41. She thus became the only woman to win consecutive 10,000 metre titles at the World Championships. She did not compete in the 5000 metres.\n\n\n=== 2008: Double gold medalist at the Beijing Olympics & 5000 metres world record ===\nAt the 6 June Bislett Games in Oslo, a Golden League event, Tirunesh Dibaba set a world record in the 5,000 metres which would stand for over twelve years, running the distance in 14:11.15. Lucy Wangui Kabuu from Kenya ran a personal best and finished in second place, 22 seconds behind Tirunesh. Tirunesh's sister Ejegayehu Dibaba finished in third place with a time of 14:36.78 (4.04 seconds off her personal best). Tirunesh bettered Meseret Defar's world record by 5.48 seconds. Tirunesh said after the race, \"I've been thinking about this for a long time and this is a very special day for me. I was trying my best, and I knew I was going to break the record with two laps to go. The early part of the race was pretty good, but at 3,000 metres we were a little behind, so then I had to catch up on the pace. I could have run faster if the pacing was a little better.\" Tirunesh's 800 metre split times were: 2:13.7 - 2:19.0 (4:32.7 through 1600 metres) - 2:22.5 (6:55.2 through 2400 metres and 8:03.7 through 2800 metres) - 2:17.8 (9:13.0 through 3200 metres) - 2:15.4 (11:28.4 through 4000 metres)- 2:10.1 (13.38.5 though 4800 metres), with a last 200 metre split of 32.7.\nSix days later, Tirunesh defeated her sister Ejegayehu by 0.68 seconds in the 10,000 metres at the Golden Spike Grand Prix in Ostrava, Czech Republic. Tirunesh's finish time was 31:03.37.\nDibaba won the 10,000 metres at the Summer Olympics in Beijing on 15 August. Her finish time of 29:54.66 broke the existing Olympic record of 30:17.49, which had been set by cousin Derartu Tulu at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney. In addition, her finish time was the second fastest 10,000 metres of all time and an African record. The previous African record of 30:04.18 was set by Berhane Adere at the 2003 World Championships.\nSeven days later, Tirunesh won the 5000 metres, defeating the defending champion Meseret Defar by 2.72 seconds. This made Tirunesh the first woman to win both the 5,000 and the 10,000 metres at the same Olympic games.\nTirunesh was named the 2008 Athlete of the Year by Track & Field News. The IAAF awarded its Female Performance of the Year to Tirunesh and Czech javelin thrower Barbora Špotáková. Tirunesh was nominated for IAAF World Athlete of the Year, which was won instead by Russian pole vaulter Yelena Isinbayeva for the third time.\n\n\n=== 2009: World record at 15 kilometres during injury-shortened season ===\nInjuries prevented Tirunesh from competing in the World Cross Country Championships in Amman, Jordan and the World Championships in Berlin.\nOn 15 November, Tirunesh won the Zevenheuvelenloop 15 kilometres road race in Nijmegen, Netherlands in a world best time of 46:28. This bettered Kayoko Fukushi's previous world best by almost half a minute. (Tirunesh's record was broken by Florence Kiplagat on 15 February 2015.) This was her first competitive road race since 2005, but she downplayed the idea of moving on to road running, stating that the track remained her priority. Her 5 kilometre splits were 15:58 – 15:25 – 15:05. She said, \"Although I trained a lot together with my husband for this race, a roadrace is something different. I did not know what I could expect. Therefore, I was not that fast in the beginning. ... After 10 kilometres, I pressed the pace and in the final three kilometres it felt like flying. It feels good as you hear after the finish that your husband also has won.\"\n\n\n=== 2010 ===\nIn February, Tirunesh ran the third fastest indoor two-mile race to date (9:12.23) at the Aviva Grand Prix in Birmingham, U.K. Her mile splits were 4:41.2 followed by 4:31.1.\nAt the World Cross Country Championships in Bydgoszcz, Tirunesh finished fourth.\nTirunesh successfully defended her 10,000 metres title at the African Championships in Nairobi with a finish time of 31:51.39. Her last 400 metres was timed at 61 seconds.\n\n\n=== 2012: Successful defense of 10,000 metres Olympic gold medal ===\nA stress fracture in her right leg kept Tirunesh out of competition for 16 months. She returned to racing on 31 December 2011 to win the 10 kilometre San Silvestre Vallecana Silver Label Road Race in Madrid, Spain by overcoming Gelete Burka in a sprint finish.\nShe won the two-mile race at the New Balance Indoor Grand Prix in Boston on 4 February and took her second career win at the Carlsbad 5000 road race in April.\nOn 1 June in her first outdoor track race of the year, she won the 10,000 metres at the Prefontaine Classic in Eugene, Oregon, United States, a Diamond League event, by holding off Florence Kiplagat at the finish line.\nEight days later at the Diamond League Adidas Grand Prix in New York City, Tirunesh won the 5,000 metres with her last 400 metres being run in 61.54 seconds. Her winning margin over second-place finisher Meseret Defar was more than 6 seconds.\nAt the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, she successfully defended her 10,000 metres title with a powerful performance over the final 600 metres, winning in a time of 30:20.75. This was the fastest of the year by any female athlete. This made her the first woman to win consecutive Olympic 10,000 metres titles. After the win, she said, \"I have never been happier than today – this is even better than in Beijing\". In the 5000 metres, she finished third behind gold medalist Meseret Defar and silver medalist Vivian Cheruiyot, thus failing to repeat her 5,000/10,000 double from the 2008 Olympics. After the race, Tirunesh said, \"I'm not very pleased today. I gave it a good shot, but I wasn't aiming for bronze. I'm a bit disappointed.\"\nAfter the Olympics, she returned to road racing on 16 September at the BUPA Great North Run, a Gold Label Road Race in northern England. She had one of the fastest ever half marathon debuts while winning in a time of 1:07:35. She defeated the marathon gold medalists from the 2012 Summer Olympics and the 2011 World Championships, Tiki Gelana and Edna Kiplagat, respectively, even though both ran personal bests.\nTirunesh closed her year on 18 November with a win at the ABN-AMRO Zevenheuvelenloop in Nijmegen, Netherlands, setting the fastest time that season for the 15 kilometre distance.\n\n\n=== 2013: Third World Championship in the 10,000 metres ===\nIn February, Tirunesh hoped to break the indoor 2 mile world record at the New Balance Indoor Grand Prix in Boston. Her pacer, however, quit at the 1 kilometre mark, and she finished in 9:13.17, seven seconds off the record. Tirunesh said after the race, \"With this first race [of the year], I am happy. But I could have run faster with better pacing--9:03 or 9:04. I would have liked to have broken the meet record.... Running alone is a bit tough. When I broke the world record at 5000 meters, I had good pacemakers.\"\nTirunesh had planned to run the London Marathon on 21 April, but an injury to the bottom of her heel forced postponement of her debut at this distance.\nShe was in good form in May at the Great Manchester Run, setting a course record and an Ethiopian record of 30:49 to win this 10 kilometre road race.\nOn 1 June, Tirunesh won the 5000 metres at the Prefontaine Classic in Eugene, a Diamond League event that doubled as Ethiopia's trials for the World Championships. Her finish time of 14:42.01 was one-half second faster than second-place finisher Mercy Cherono of Kenya. Tirunesh also finished ahead of five countrywomen, including London Olympian Belaynesh Oljira.\nTirunesh on 27 June ran her last 10,000 metre race before the World Championships at the Golden Spike Ostrava in the Czech Republic. She won with a finishing time of 30:26.67, with Gladys Cherono Kiprono of Kenya finishing second in 30:29.23 and Belaynesh Oljira finishing third.\nJust nine days later on 6 July at the Diamond League meeting in Paris, Tirunesh clocked the fastest 5000 metres by any woman since 2008: 14:23.68. Ethiopian Almaz Ayana finished second in a personal best of 14:25.84, followed by countrywomen Gelete Burka, Sule Utura, and Buze Diriba.\nTirunesh was the favourite to win the 10,000 metres at the World Championships in Moscow. She shadowed the leaders during the race until taking the lead with 500 metres remaining and sprinting to her fifth individual World Championships gold medal. Her finish time was 30:43.45, with her last 400 metres clocked at 59.98 seconds.\nTirunesh did not enter the 5000 metres at the World Championships, despite saying in July immediately after her Paris 5000 metres victory that she intended to contest both events. In explaining her decision to skip the race, she denied that she was avoiding longtime rival Meseret Defar, saying, \"The [Ethiopian athletics] federation asked us to just run one race each, and that's why I left that race. Both of us have run many times, and they told us that they wanted upcoming athletes to have a chance, and we agreed with that.\"\nOn 29 August, Tirunesh resumed her rivalry with Defar in the 5000 metres at the Weltklasse Zürich, a Diamond League event. Genzebe Dibaba took the lead after the last pacer dropped out, but she quit the race with 600 metres remaining. Tirunesh then took the lead, with Defar close behind, before Defar passed her in the last 100 metres. Defar finished the race in 14:32.83 with Tirunesh in second at 14:34.82.\nThree days later in Tilburg, Netherlands, Tirunesh attempted to break Paula Radcliffe's 10 kilometer road race world record of 30:21. Although Tirunesh fell short by 9 seconds, her 30:30 finish time was the fourth fastest ever and broke Gladys Cherono Kiprono's 2012 course record by 27 seconds. Tirunesh also broke the Ethiopian national record (and her previous personal best) by 19 seconds.\nTirunesh's final race of the season was the Great North Run in northern England on 15 September, where she was the defending champion. The race was billed as a \"showdown\" between Tirunesh and Defar. However, the winner of the 2013 London Marathon and silver medalist at the 2012 London Olympics, Priscah Jeptoo from Kenya, won the race in the third fastest time ever for a half marathon (1:05.45). Only Radcliffe and Kenya's Susan Chepkemei had run faster. Defar finished second with a personal best and Tirunesh third in a personal best time of 1:06:55.\n\n\n=== 2014–2015: Marathon debut followed by motherhood ===\nTirunesh made her marathon debut at the 2014 London Marathon. She finished third in a time of 2:20:35, 14 seconds behind winner Edna Kiplagat and 11 seconds behind Florence Kiplagat (unrelated). Dibaba stopped briefly near the 30 kilometre mark to pick up a dropped water bottle.\nAfter becoming pregnant with her first child, Tirunesh announced on 5 November that she would skip the 2015 season. Tirunesh gave birth to a son in March 2015.\n\n\n=== 2016: Olympic bronze medalist in historic 10,000 metre race ===\nTirunesh returned to the track in 2016 to qualify for and run in the 10,000 metres at the Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. She did not compete in the 5000 metres at the Olympics for the first time since 2004.\nOn 29 June, Tirunesh lost a 10,000 metres race for the first time in her career. Almaz Ayana won the Ethiopian Olympic Trials in Hengelo, Netherlands with the fastest time (30:07.00) since Meselech Melkamu's 29:53.8 finish time in June 2009, the seventh fastest time ever, and the fastest time ever for a 10,000 metres debut. Gelete Burka finished in second (30:28.47) with Tirunesh in third (30:28.53).\nIn perhaps the greatest 10,000 metres race of all time, Tirunesh ran the fourth fastest time in history while winning the bronze medal. Her finish time of 29:42.56 was 12.1 seconds faster than her previous personal best of 29:54.66, which she set at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. Teammate Almaz Ayana smashed Wang Junxia's 22 year old (and controversial) world record (29:31.78) by 14.33 seconds on her way to the gold medal in a time of 29:17.45. Silver medalist Vivian Cheruiyot of Kenya came within 0.75 seconds of Wang's world record while running the third fastest time (29:32.53) in history. Fourth place finisher Alice Aprot Nawowuna of Kenya ran the fifth fastest time (29:53.51) in history. (She led the race for the first 5000 metres, reaching that mark in a very quick 14:46.81.) The next 9 finishers each set an area record (Molly Huddle of the U.S.), a national record (Cheruiyot of Kenya, Sarah Lahti of Sweden, Diane Nukuri of Burundi), or a personal best. National records for Greece, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan also were broken. Before this race, a woman had finished a 10,000 metres race in under 30 minutes only five times - but four did so in this race. Tirunesh said after the race, \"I had a short time after delivery. Fortunately I got bronze.... This is great for me, my family and all of Ethiopia. The bronze is for my son.\"\n\n\n=== 2017: 10,000 metres silver medalist at the World Championships ===\nTirunesh again ran the London Marathon, finishing in second place in a time of 2:17:56. This made her the third fastest woman ever in a marathon. Mary Jepkosgei Keitany's winning finish time of 2:17:01 was a world record for a women-only marathon and was the second-fastest performance in history. Only Paula Radcliffe has run faster, 2:15:25 at the mixed-gender 2003 London Marathon.\nShe won the silver medal in the 10,000 metres at the World Championships in London in August, finishing 46.37 seconds behind Almaz Ayana. Ayana broke open the race at the 4000 metres mark, running her next 1000 metres in 2:49.18. Tirunesh had been training for this race for only two months, explaining after the race, \"If I had followed ... [Ayana], I wouldn't have won a medal. I know my capacity these days because my training for this race was very short.\" This was the third consecutive 10,000 metres race that Ayana had defeated Tirunesh. Tirunesh's 1000 metre splits were as follows:\n\n1000 metres: 3:31.43 (20th position)\n2000 metres: 3:18.88 (6:50.31) (17th)\n3000 metres: 3:09.37 (9:59.68) (2nd)\n4000 metres: 3:04.66 (13:04.34) (6th)\n5000 metres: 2:56.30 (16:00.64) (6th)\n6000 metres: 2:59.86 (19:00.50) (6th)\n7000 metres: 3:02.10 (22:02.60) (4th)\n8000 metres: 3:05.70 (25:08.30) (5th)\n9000 metres: 3:04.41 (28:12.71) (4th)\nFinish: 2:49.98 (31:02.69) (2nd)\nLast 5000 metres: 15:02.05\nTirunesh committed to run the Chicago Marathon on 8 October. She won a gold medal during the 40th edition of the marathon, with a time of 2:18:30.\n\n\n=== 2018 ===\nTirunesh again ran the London Marathon in April, but failed to finish. She won the Great Manchester Run road 10K for the third consecutive time and fifth time overall the following month. She finished third in the Berlin Marathon with a time of 2:18:55 in September. Tirunesh placed sixth at the Delhi Half Marathon in October and ran the San Silvestre Vallecana road 10k in Madrid on 31 December. She finished third with a time of 30:40. The run was won by Brigid Kosgei (Kenya) in 29:54, the runner up was Hellen Obiri (Kenya) with 29:59. Due to the downhill nature of the course, times set there are not eligible for world record purposes.\n\n\n=== 2023 ===\nThe 37-year-old returned after giving birth to a third child running her first race since December 2018 at the Houston Half Marathon in January. She finished 16th with a time of 71:35.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nTirunesh is married to 2004 and 2008 Olympic 10,000 meter silver medallist Sileshi Sihine and they have a son, Nathan Sileshi, born in March 2015. She gave birth to a second child named Allon. She had a third child in 2021.\nAfter the Beijing Olympics, her club, the Prisons Police, bestowed the rank of Chief Superintendent for her services to club and country. Tirunesh has an honorary doctorate from Addis Ababa University, and has a hospital on the outskirts of Addis Ababa named after her.\nShe has ventured into the hotel industry by establishing an eponymous Three Star hotel, which was set to open at the end of 2013.\n\n\n== Results ==\n\n\n=== Olympics (outdoor) ===\nIn these track races at the Olympics, Tirunesh's win–loss record against the following women is as follows:\n\n\n=== IAAF world championship events ===\nTirunesh has not participated in any edition of the IAAF World Indoor Championships. In other IAAF world championship races, Tirunesh's win–loss record against the following women is set forth below. Only event finals are counted. A \"did not finish\" (DNF) is counted as a loss to everyone who completed the race. A \"did not start\" is treated as being absent from the race.\n\n\n=== African Championships in Athletics (outdoor track) ===\nIn these African Championship outdoor track races, Dibaba's win–loss record against the following women is as follows:\n\n\n=== All-Africa Games (outdoor track) ===\nIn these All-Africa Games outdoor track races, Dibaba's win–loss record against the following women is as follows:\n\n\n=== Diamond League, Golden League (outdoor track) ===\nSince 2010, the Diamond League has been an annual series of athletics meetings organised by the IAAF around the world. The Golden League was an annual series of athletics meetings organised by the IAAF in Europe from 1998 through 2009.\nIn these Golden League and Diamond League races, Dibaba's win–loss record against the following women is as follows:\n\n\n=== World Athletics Finals (outdoor track) ===\nWorld Athletics Final was an annual athletics competition organised by the IAAF from 2003 to 2009. In these races, Dibaba's win–loss record against the following women is as follows:\n\n\n=== Grand Prix, World Athletics Challenge (outdoor track) ===\nIn these Grand Prix and World Athletics Challenge races, Dibaba's win–loss record against the following women is as follows:\n\n\n=== Other outdoor track & cross country races ===\nIn these outdoor track and cross country races, Dibaba's win–loss record against the following women is as follows:\n\n\n== Personal bests ==\n\n\n=== Outdoor ===\nAs of 29 June 2017, Dibaba's outdoor personal bests are as follows:\n\n\n=== Indoor ===\n\n\n== Notes ==\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nTirunesh Dibaba at World Athletics \n\"Dibaba – A jewel of inestimable value\", by Steven Downes, Athletics Africa, 20 March 2005\nTirunesh Dibaba's profile from Global Athletics\nBeijing 2008 Women's 10000 m EthioTube Video\nBeijing 2008 Women's 5000 m EthioTube Video\n\"Spend a Day With Tirunesh Dibaba\", by Toby Tanser, Runner's World\nVideo Interview of Tirunesh Dibaba before and after 2007 IAAF World Championships 10,000m"}
{"title": "Tobias Arlt", "requested": "Tobias Arlt", "extract": "Tobias Arlt (born 2 June 1987) is a German luger, acting as a back driver. He won a silver medal in the men's doubles event at the 2008 FIL World Luge Championships, a silver and a bronze at the 2010 FIL European Luge Championships, a gold medal at the FIL World Luge Championships 2013, and two gold medals at his debut Olympics, the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.\n\n\n== Career ==\nTobias Arlt was born on 2 June 1987 in Berchtesgaden, West Germany. He began luging at the age of four, beginning to compete in 1991; his national debut was in 2006. Arlt is a back driver in luging, and his partner for doubles is Tobias Wendl. As a team, they have several nicknames, including \"The Bayern-Express\" and \"The Two Tobis\".\nAt the 2008 FIL World Luge Championship in Oberhof, Germany, in the men's doubles, Arlt won a silver medal. At the 2010 FIL European Luge Championships in Sigulda, Latvia, Arlt won a silver in the men's doubles and a bronze in the team relay disciplines; and at the 2013 FIL World Luge Championships, he won a gold medal. Arlt and Wendl have finished in first place in the overall World Cup standings three times in the last four years.\nHe competed at the 2024 FIL World Luge Championships and won a gold medal in the team relay and a bronze medal in the doubles event.\n\n\n=== Olympics ===\nAt Arlt's debut Olympics, the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Arlt won gold in the luge double with Tobias Wendl in a time of 1 minute and 38:933 seconds at the Sanki Sliding track, half a second ahead of the second-placed Austrians Andreas Linger and Wolfgang Linger. This was the biggest ever winning margin in Olympic luge doubles. In Arlt and Wendl's first run, they set a track record of 49.373 seconds. Arlt then won the team relay with Felix Loch, Natalie Geisenberger, and Tobias Wendl. They won in a time of 2 minutes and 45.649 seconds, which was one second ahead of the second-placed Russian Federation.\nAt the 2026 Winter Olympics, Arlt won a bronze medal in the doubles event, along with Wendl. This ended Germany's bid for a fourth consecutive gold medal in doubles at the Olympics.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nArlt is also a police officer in the German Federal Police. His hobbies, besides luging, include tennis, windsurfing, snowboarding, and motorbiking.\nArlt has a girlfriend, who, in December 2013, gave birth to a daughter.\n\n\n== Luge results ==\nAll results are sourced from the International Luge Federation (FIL) and German Bobsleigh, Luge and Skeleton Federation (BSD).\n\n\n=== World Championships ===\n21 medals – (10 gold, 7 silver, 5 bronze)\n\n\n=== World Cup ===\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nTobias Arlt at the International Luge Federation \nTobias Arlt at Milano Cortina 2026\nTobias Arlt at Olympics.com\nTobias Arlt at Olympedia \nTobias Arlt at InterSportStats \nTobias Arlt at Team Deutschland (in German)"}
{"title": "Tobias Wendl", "requested": "Tobias Wendl", "extract": "Tobias Wendl (born 16 June 1987) is a German luger who has competed since 1993, acting as a front. He won a silver medal in the men's doubles event at the 2008 FIL World Luge Championships in Oberhof, Germany, a silver and a bronze at the FIL European Luge Championships 2010 in Sigulda, a gold at the FIL World Luge Championships 2013, and two gold medals at his debut Winter Olympics at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. He is also a Master Sergeant in the German Army.\n\n\n== Career ==\nWendl was born on 16 June 1987 in Aachen, Germany. He began competing in the luge in 1993; and became a part of the national team in 2005, luging as a front. At the 2008 FIL World Luge Championships in Oberhof, Germany, he won a silver medal; and at the FIL European Luge Championships 2010 in Sigulda, Wendl won a silver medal in men's doubles and a bronze medal in the team relay events. He won a gold medal at the FIL World Luge Championships 2013, in Whistler, Canada. Wendl competes in the double with Tobias Arlt, and is the front. Their nickname when competing together is \"The Bayern-Express\" and \"The Two Tobis\".\nHe competed at the 2024 FIL World Luge Championships and won a gold medal in the team relay and a bronze medal in the doubles event.\n\n\n=== Olympics ===\nWendl won two gold medals at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi; in the luge double with Tobias Arlt, he won a gold in a time of 1 minute and 38:933 seconds at the Sanki Sliding track: this was half a second ahead of the second-placed Andreas Linger and Wolfgang Linger of Austria; this winning margin was the biggest ever in Olympic luge doubles. In the pair's first run, they set a track record of 49.373 seconds.\nWendl then won the team relay with Felix Loch, Natalie Geisenberger, and Tobias Arlt; finishing more than one full second ahead of the second-placed Russian Federation team, in a time of 2 minutes and 45.649 seconds.\nAt the 2026 Winter Olympics, Wendl won a bronze medal in the doubles event, along with Arlt. This ended Germany's bid for a fourth consecutive gold medal in doubles at the Olympics.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nHe is also a Master Sergeant in the German Army.\n\n\n== Luge results ==\nAll results are sourced from the International Luge Federation (FIL) and German Bobsleigh, Luge and Skeleton Federation (BSD).\n\n\n=== World Championships ===\n21 medals – (10 gold, 6 silver, 5 bronze)\n\n\n=== World Cup ===\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nTobias Wendl at the International Luge Federation \nTobias Wendl at Milano Cortina 2026\nTobias Wendl at Olympics.com\nTobias Wendl at Olympedia \nTobias Wendl at InterSportStats \nTobias Wendl at Team Deutschland (in German) \nTobias Wendl on Instagram"}
{"title": "Tom Jager", "requested": "Tom Jager", "extract": "Thomas Michael Jager (born October 6, 1964) is an American former competition swimmer. He is five-time Olympic gold medalist in relay events, a two-time World Championship individual gold medalist for the 50-meter freestyle, and a former world record-holder in two events. Jager set the 50-meter freestyle world record on six occasions during his career. He held this record for over ten years from August 1989 to June 2000.\n\n\n== Swimming career ==\nJager started his swimming career as a 6 year old “Gaslight Gator” in his hometown of Collinsville, IL.  He then competed for the East St. Louis YMCA, before coming under the tutelage of Carol Pence “Penny” Taylor, his coach at the Parkway Swim Club in St. Louis.  Taylor was a 1948 Olympic swimmer. She was instrumental in his development as a swimmer. Tom won numerous Illinois high school state meet \ntitles as a Collinsville Kahok, and was the number one recruit in the nation his senior year.\nJager attended the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and swam for coach Ron Ballatore's UCLA Bruins swimming and diving team in National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) competition from 1983 to 1985.  He won NCAA individual national championships in the 100-yard freestyle (1983, 1984), the 50-yard freestyle (1984, 1985), and the 100-yard backstroke (1985).  In 1984, he was honored as the Pacific-10 Conference Swimmer of the Year.\nHe was also an eleven-time United States national open champion, with wide-ranging diversity that allowed him to win titles in three different strokes, freestyle, backstroke, and butterfly.\nJager won seven Olympic medals for the United States, competing in the 1984, 1988, and 1992 Olympics. He won five gold medals in relay events. He also won an individual silver medal in the 50-meter freestyle in 1988, and an individual bronze medal in the 50-meter freestyle in 1992.\nAt the World Championships, Jager won gold medals in the 50-meter freestyle in 1986 and 1991. He also won gold medals in the 50-meter freestyle at the Pan Pacific Swimming Championships in 1989 and 1991.\nThough yard-based races are only competed in the United States, Jager also held the world record in the 50 yard freestyle of 19.05 seconds from 1990 until 2005.\nIn 1991, Jager competed against then 41 year old Olympic swimming legend Mark Spitz, who was attempting a comeback in the sport, hoping to qualify for the U.S. Olympic Trials in perhaps his historically best event, the 100 meter butterfly. The contest  was over in the first 15 meters of the 50-meter butterfly race. Jager, who was considered the quickest starter in the world, was off the blocks and in the lead quickly. He widened his lead throughout the race. Jager won in 24.92 seconds, while Spitz finished 1 1/2 body lengths behind, in 26.70 seconds.\nJager and his friend and rival, Matt Biondi, were pioneers in making competitive swimming professional, which allowed athletes to compete beyond their collegiate years, the typical career-ending point for most high-level swimmers before the 1980s, as they often lacked financial resources to continue their careers. Biondi, like Jager, competed in the 1984, 1988, and 1992 Olympics. Biondi set numerous world records, and won multiple NCAA, Olympic and world championship medals.\nJager was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame in 2001.\n\n\n== Coaching career ==\nIn 2004, Jager became the head coach of the University of Idaho's Idaho Vandals women's swim team. Jager then accepted the head coaching position for the Washington State Cougars swim team at Washington State University in 2011.\nHe is now the head coach of the Aspen Swim club in Colorado.\n\n\n== Family ==\nTom is the youngest of a family of swimming siblings. While under a swimming scholarship at the University of Iowa, his older sister Diane was an All-American swimmer in the backstroke. His brother, Bill, qualified for Nationals while in high school and then went on to earn a full swimming scholarship at the University of Illinois. Bill and Tom won the Illinois High School Athletic Association state swimming title in the 100 backstroke for five years in a row, with Bill claiming the title his senior year in high school (1978) and Tom then winning four in a row (1979 - 1982). All three siblings went on to work as swimming coaches.\nTom and his wife, Becky, have two sons, Wyatt (born 1996) and Cy (born 1999), both of whom swam for his swimming club, the Gold Medal Swim Club. Wyatt swam in college for the Ohio State University, while Wyatt swam for the University of Denver.\n\n\n== See also ==\n\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of Olympic medalists in swimming (men)\nList of University of California, Los Angeles people\nList of World Aquatics Championships medalists in swimming (men)\nWorld record progression 50 metres freestyle\nWorld record progression 4 × 100 metres freestyle relay\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nEvans, Hilary; Gjerde, Arild; Heijmans, Jeroen; Mallon, Bill; et al. \"Tom Jager\". Olympics at Sports-Reference.com. Sports Reference LLC. Archived from the original on April 17, 2020.\nTom Jager (USA) – Honor Swimmer profile at International Swimming Hall of Fame at the Wayback Machine (archived November 8, 2017)"}
{"title": "Tomas Gustafson", "requested": "Tomas Gustafson", "extract": "Sven Tomas Gustafson (born 28 December 1959) is a retired Swedish speed skater and distance skater, active in the 1980s, who won several events and set world records.\n\n\n== Early career ==\nBorn in Katrineholm, he won the World Junior Championships title in Grenoble, France, in 1979. A year later, at the European Championships for seniors, he finished 4th. The following month, he participated in the 1980 Winter Olympics at Lake Placid, New York, US achieving a 7th place finish in the 1500 m as his best performance. Later that same month, he defended his Junior World title.\n\n\n== 1982 to Sarajevo leadup ==\nIn 1982, he became allround European Champion in Oslo, where he set a 10,000 m world record. As of 2017 this was the last outdoor world record for men on a lowland track. For this performance, he was awarded the Oscar Mathisen Award for the best skating performance of the season. A year later, on the same track, he won silver at the World Allround Championships, finishing second behind Rolf Falk-Larssen. Gustafson had the better allround point total (samalog), but Falk-Larssen was declared champion due to a rule stating that a skater winning three of the four distances and finishing the fourth was automatically pronounced the champion. This result caused a renewed debate about the three-distance-wins rule, which was subsequently abolished. From 1984 onwards, the champion was determined by the skater with the best samalog point sum.\n\n\n== Sarajevo to Calgary leadup ==\nThe following year, his focus shifted from the World Allround Championships to the 1984 Winter Olympics at Sarajevo. He won Olympic gold in the 5,000 m, finishing just two hundredths of a second ahead of Soviet skater Igor Malkov. In the 10,000 m he again faced a close finish with Malkov, this time losing by five hundredths of a second. Following these Olympics, Gustafson underwent knee surgery, contracted meningitis, and his father died.\n\n\n== Calgary ==\nIn January 1988, he won the European Allround Championships in The Hague, the only speedskater to win at all four distances since the Second World War. His rival Malkov had retired, and Gustafson focused on outpacing long-distance skaters such as Dutchmen Leo Visser and Gerard Kemkers and Austrian skater Michael Hadschieff. Gustafson first succeeded in the 5000 m. He trailed Leo Visser's pace by eight hundredths of a second with only 400 m remaining but skated a strong final lap to win by one third of a second. Four days later, he won Olympic gold again, this time in the 10,000 m, setting a new world record time of 13:48.20, broken three years later by Johann Olav Koss. Gustafson received the Oscar Mathisen Award again for his 1988 performances. He also earned the Svenska Dagbladet Gold Medal and the Jerring Award.\n\n\n== Late career ==\nGustafson's only notable achievement after the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary was a second-place finish behind Bart Veldkamp in the 1990 European Allround Championships. At the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville, he only took part in the 5000 m race, finishing 13th; this was Gustafson's last international race.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nGustafson is married to curler Elisabet Gustafson.\n\n\n== Records ==\n\n\n=== World records ===\nGustafson set two world records:\n\nSource: SpeedSkatingStats.com\n\n\n=== Personal records ===\n\nGustafson holds an Adelskalender score of 157.701 points. In March 1988, he reached third place in the ranking, behind Eric Flaim and Michael Hadschieff. After improving his personal best time in the 1500 metres distance in December 1990, he reached second place. Gustafson was ranked among the top 3 for 1468 days.\n\n\n== References ==\n\nTomas Gustafson at SpeedSkatingStats.com\nTomas Gustafson (1994) Mål, vilja och seger Sportförlaget ISBN 91-88540-42-1 (in Swedish)\n\n\n== External links ==\nTomas Gustafson at Olympics.com\nTomas Gustafson at Olympics at Sports-Reference.com (archived)"}
{"title": "Toni Sailer", "requested": "Toni Sailer", "extract": "Anton Engelbert \"Toni\" Sailer (17 November 1935 – 24 August 2009) was an Austrian alpine ski racer, considered among the best in the sport. At age 20, he won all three gold medals in alpine skiing at the 1956 Winter Olympics. He nearly duplicated the feat at the 1958 World Championships with two golds and a silver. He also won world titles both years in the combined, then a \"paper\" race, but awarded with medals by the International Ski Federation (FIS).\n\n\n== Career ==\nBorn and raised in Kitzbühel in Tyrol, Sailer was nicknamed \"Blitz from Kitz\" (Blitz = German word for \"bolt of lightning\" or \"flash\"). A phenomenon as a teenager, he won the downhill and combined at the Grand Prix at Megève in 1952 at age 16. A broken leg caused him to miss the 1953 season and kept him from performing well at the World Championships in 1954. He returned to championship form in 1955 at age 19 and the following year became the first to win all three alpine skiing events at the Olympics, taking gold in the downhill, slalom, and giant slalom by 3.5, 4.2 and 6.2 seconds, respectively. He was the fifth athlete to win three gold medals in the same Olympic games, and became the most successful athlete at the 1956 Winter Olympics. The Super-G event did not exist until the 1980s. It was added to the Olympics in 1988.  Through 2014, Sailer remains the youngest male gold medalist in Olympic alpine skiing.\nFrom 1948 through 1980, Olympic alpine ski events doubled as the FIS World Championships, therefore the Olympic champion in any event was also the world champion. The combined event was dropped after 1948 to make way for the giant slalom in 1950. No Olympic medals were awarded for the combined event from 1952 through 1984, but it was an FIS world championship from 1954 through 1980. During this era, it was conducted as a \"paper\" race, using the results of the three events. A stand-alone combined event returned to the world championships in 1982 and to the Olympics in 1988, with one run of downhill and two runs of slalom.\nTwo years after the 1956 Olympics, Sailer won three gold medals and one silver at the 1958 World Championships in Bad Gastein, Austria. He won five of six possible Olympic/World Championship races, missing a perfect record with a silver in the Bad Gastein slalom, seven-tenths of a second back. Sailer also repeated as champion in the combined for a seventh world title in two years. Due to controversy over his amateur status after receiving compensation for acting (and skiing) in movies, he retired from ski racing competition in 1959.\n\n\n== After racing ==\n\nSailer's business interests included ski clothing and equipment, including the first successful fiberglass skis, made in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. In 1957–71, he appeared in a handful of movies, most of them shallow comedies at least partly set in alpine regions, with Sailer showing off his talent. In 1972–76, he was chief trainer and technical director of the Austrian Skiing Association (ÖSV). During the 1960s and 1970s, he ran a summer ski camp at Whistler in western Canada. Occasionally, as late as 2003 he was noted for appearing in a number of TV episodes or made for TV movies. He also sang professionally for a time, making 18 record albums.\nSailer, although not associated with any political party, announced in January 2004 that he would run for Mayor of Kitzbühel. A few weeks later he withdrew his candidature, saying he had only now realized that being mayor was a full-time job. In 2006 he announced his retirement as chief of race of the Hahnenkamm Race, a position which he had occupied for 20 years.\n\n\n== Honors ==\nSailer was named Austrian Sportspersonality of the year in 1956, 1957, and 1958, and \"Austrian Sportspersonality of the Century\" in 1999. On 16 September 1958, he was featured on the cover of Bravo magazine.\nFor his contribution to the Olympic Movement, the International Olympic Committee awarded him the Bronze Olympic Order in 1982.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nSailer married Gaby Rummeny in 1976 in Vancouver; she died of cancer in 2000. His second marriage, to Hedwig Fischer, lasted from 2006 until his death. His son Florian (by Rummeny) also survives him.\n\n\n== Death ==\nIt was announced in January 2008 that Sailer had laryngeal cancer, for which he had been undergoing chemotherapy in the preceding months. He died of cancer in Innsbruck, aged 73, in 2009, and was buried in Kitzbühel. His funeral ceremonies took place near the Hahnenkamm finish line.\n\n\n== Selected filmography ==\nA Piece of Heaven (1957)\nA Thousand Stars Aglitter (1959)\nTwelve Girls and One Man (1959)\nKauf dir einen bunten Luftballon (1961)\nSein bester Freund (1962)\nSansone e il tesoro degli Incas (1964)\nThe Sky Is Blue (1964, TV film)\nSki Fever (1966)\nThe Great Happiness (1967)\nAunt Trude from Buxtehude (1971)\nHolidays in Tyrol (1971)\nWenn das die Nachbarn wüßten (1991)\nAlmenrausch und Pulverschnee (1993, TV series)\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nToni Sailer at the International Ski and Snowboard Federation \nToni Sailer at Ski-DB Alpine Ski Database \nToni Sailer at Olympics.com \nToni Sailer at Olympedia \nToni Sailer at Team Austria (in Austrian German)\nToni Sailer (1935–2009) – AustrianInformation.org\nToni Sailer, skier, actor and singer (with images) – NevaSport.com\nToni Sailer at IMDb\nToni Sailer – Kitzbühel legends – Hahnenkamm.com\nToni Sailer clothing\nToni Sailer in Austria-Forum (in German) (at AEIOU)"}
{"title": "Tony Estanguet", "requested": "Tony Estanguet", "extract": "Tony Estanguet (French pronunciation: [ɛstɑ̃gɛ]; born 6 May 1978 in Pau) is a French slalom canoeist and a three-time Olympic champion in C1 (canoe single). He competed at the international level from 1994 to 2012.\nHe successfully led Paris's bid for the 2024 Summer Olympics and served as the head of the organising committee for those games.\n\n\n== Racing career ==\nEstanguet won three Olympic gold medals in the C1 event in 2000, 2004 and 2012. At the 2004 games in Athens he won the gold medal after a late judges decision to award a 2-second penalty to Michal Martikán, for which he was promoted to the rank of Commander in the Ordre national du Mérite, having been inducted as a Chevalier ('Knight') in the order in 2000.\nEstanguet was the flag-bearer for France at the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics opening ceremony. He finished in the 9th position (out of 12 competitors; only the first eight would qualify for the final) in the semi-finals of the C1 event and was thus eliminated from the final.\nAt the 2012 London Summer Olympics, he became the first French Olympian to win three gold medals in the same Olympic discipline. He was promoted to the rank of Officer of the Legion of Honour on 31 December 2012, having been inducted as a Chevalier in 2000.\nHe won 12 medals at the ICF Canoe Slalom World Championships with five golds (C1: 2006, 2009, 2010; C1 team: 2005, 2007), six silvers (C1: 2003, 2005, 2007; C1 team: 1997, 2003, 2009), and a bronze (C1 team: 1999).\nEstanguet won the overall World Cup title in C1 in 2003 and 2004. He also won a total of 10 medals at the European Championships (4 golds, 3 silvers and 3 bronzes).\nTogether with his brother Patrice, he developed the Pau-Pyrénées Whitewater Stadium (opened in 2008) in their home town of Pau.\nHe announced his retirement on 30 November 2012.\n\n\n== Post-racing career ==\nIn 2012, Estanguet was elected to the IOC Athletes' Commission. He  served as an IOC member for eight years. In 2016, he was appointed to lead the Paris effort to host the 2024 Summer Olympics. The Paris bid proved successful, and Estanguet served as the head of the organizing committee for those Games.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nEstanguet graduated from French business school ESSEC, specializing in sports marketing.\nTony is the son of Henri Estanguet, himself a canoeist who won medals at the Wildwater Canoe World Championships in the 1970s. His older brother Patrice won a bronze medal at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta.\n\n\n== World Cup individual podiums ==\n\n1 World Championship counting for World Cup points\n2 European Championship counting for World Cup points\n3 Pan American Championship counting for World Cup points\n\n\n== References ==\n\n2010 ICF Canoe Slalom World Championships 12 September 2010 C1 men's final results. – Retrieved 12 September 2010.\n12 September 2009 final results of the men's C1 team slalom event for the 2009 ICF Canoe Slalom World Championships. – Retrieved 12 September 2009.\n13 September 2009 final results of the men's C1 event at the 2009 ICF Canoe Slalom World Championships. – Retrieved 13 September 2009.\nDatabaseOlympics.com profile\nKamber, Raymond, ed. (2008). Medal Winners – Olympic Games and World Championships (1936–2007) – Part 2: rest of flatwater (now sprint) and remaining canoeing disciplines. CanoeICF.com. International Canoe Federation. pp. 42–83 at WebCite (archived 9 November 2009). Additional archives: 11 March 2016.\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nTony Estanguet at CanoeICF.com at the Wayback Machine (archived 2021-05-08)\nTony Estanguet at Olympics.com \nTony Estanguet at Olympedia \nTony Estanguet at InterSportStats \nTony Estanguet on Instagram"}
{"title": "Ugo Frigerio", "requested": "Ugo Frigerio", "extract": "Ugo Frigerio (16 September 1901 – 7 July 1968) was an Italian race walker. He competed in four events at the 1920, 1924 and 1932 Olympics, ranging from 3 to 50 km, and won three gold and one bronze medals. He was the Olympic flag bearer for Italy in 1924 and 1932.\n\n\n== Biography ==\nNationally Frigerio won nine race walking titles: in the 3 km (1921, 1922), 10 km (1919–1922, 1924, 1931), and one-hour walk (1920).\nBefore the 3 km Olympic race in 1920 in Antwerp Frigerio gave pages of sheet music that he wanted to hear to the band playing at the competition venue. During the race he would scold the conductor when the band was deviating from its tempo, and chat to the public, which eventually began to cheer him.\nFrigerio won the British AAA Championships title in the 2 miles walk event at the British 1922 AAA Championships.\nFrigerio semi-retired after learning that race walking was excluded from the 1928 Summer Olympics. He resumed training in 1931 to prepare for the 1932 Games, where the only walking event was 50 km, five times longer than his favourite 10 km distance. He won a bronze medal and retired for good, becoming a sports administrator. In 1934, he wrote an autobiography titled Marciando nel nome dell’Italia (Walking in the Name of Italy).\n\n\n== Olympic achievements ==\n\n\n== See also ==\nLegends of Italian sport - Walk of Fame\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nFIDAL Hall of Fame\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nUgo Frigerio at World Athletics\nUgo Frigerio at European Athletics\nUgo Frigerio at Tilastopaja (registration required)\nUgo Frigerio at the Italian Athletics Federation (in Italian)\nUgo Frigerio at Athletics Podium\nUgo Frigerio at Olympics.com\nUgo Frigerio at the Italian National Olympic Committee (in Italian)\nUgo Frigerio at Olympedia"}
{"title": "Ulrich Wehling", "requested": "Ulrich Wehling", "extract": "Ulrich Wehling (born 8 July 1952 in Halle) is a retired German skier who won the Nordic combined event in the Winter Olympics three consecutive times, in 1972, 1976, and 1980. Wehling was the first man to win three consecutive gold medals in the same event at Winter Olympics but not the first Olympian to win three Gold in a winter discipline as Gillis Grafström had won a figure skating title at the Summer Olympics 1920 before winning twice at the first two Winter Olympics.\nAt the FIS Nordic World Ski Championships, Wehling won two Nordic combined medals with a gold in 1974 and a bronze in 1978. Wehling also won the Nordic combined at the Holmenkollen ski festival three straight years (1975–1977). For his successes in the Nordic combined, he received the Holmenkollen medal in 1976. He was a Stasi informer under the codename \"Springer\".\nWehling is currently FIS Race Director for the Nordic combined, a role he also did for the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin and the FIS Nordic World Ski Championships 2007 in Sapporo. He now lives in Switzerland.\n\n\n== Other successes ==\n1971 junior European champion\n1975 GDR masters\n1976 GDR master\n1977 GDR master\n1978 GDR master\n1979 GDR master\n\n\n== Citations ==\n\n\n== References ==\nFIS Official listings\nUlrich Wehling at the International Ski and Snowboard Federation\nHolmenkollen medalists - click Holmenkollmedaljen for downloadable pdf file (in Norwegian)\nHolmenkollen winners since 1892 - click Vinnere for downloadable pdf file (in Norwegian)"}
{"title": "Usain Bolt", "requested": "Usain Bolt", "extract": "Usain St. Leo Bolt ( YOO-sayn; born 21 August 1986) is a Jamaican retired sprinter. Widely regarded as the greatest sprinter of all time, he is an eight-time Olympic gold medalist and the world record holder in the 100 metres, 200 metres, and 4 × 100 metres relay.\nBolt is the only sprinter to win Olympic 100 m and 200 m titles at three consecutive Olympics (2008, 2012, and 2016). He also won two 4 × 100 relay gold medals. He gained worldwide fame for his double sprint victory in world record times at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, which made him the first person to hold both records since fully automatic time became mandatory.\nAn eleven-time World Champion, Bolt won consecutive World Championship 100 m, 200 m and 4 × 100 metres relay gold medals from 2009 to 2015, with the exception of a 100 m false start in 2011. He is the most successful male athlete of the World Championships. He is the first athlete to win four World Championship titles in the 200 m and is one of the most successful in the 100 m with three titles, being the first person to run sub-9.7s and sub-9.6s races.\nBolt improved upon his second 100 m world record of 9.69 with 9.58 seconds in 2009 – the biggest improvement since the start of electronic timing. He has twice broken the 200 metres world record, setting 19.30 in 2008 and 19.19 in 2009. He has helped Jamaica to three 4 × 100 metres relay world records, with the current record being 36.84 seconds set in 2012. Bolt's most successful event is the 200 m, with three Olympic and four World titles. The 2008 Olympics was his international debut over 100 m; he had earlier won numerous 200 m medals (including 2007 World Championship silver) and held the world under-20 and world under-18 records for the event until being surpassed by Erriyon Knighton in 2021.\nHis achievements as a sprinter have earned him the media nickname \"Lightning Bolt\", and his awards include the IAAF World Athlete of the Year, Track & Field Athlete of the Year, BBC Overseas Sports Personality of the Year (three times), and Laureus World Sportsman of the Year (four times). Bolt was included in Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People of 2016. Bolt retired after the 2017 World Championships, when he finished third in his last solo 100 m race, opted out of the 200 m, and pulled up injured in the 4 × 100 m relay final.\n\n\n== Early years ==\nUsain St. Leo Bolt was born on 21 August 1986 to parents Wellesley Bolt (1957–2025) and Jennifer Bolt in Sherwood Content, a small town in Jamaica. Jennifer named her son Usain at the suggestion of her nephew-in-law, who suggested the name as he had a classmate of that name, while Bolt's middle name, St. Leo, was given to him by his aunt. He has a brother, Sadiki, and a sister, Sherine. His parents ran the local grocery store in the rural area, and Bolt spent his time playing cricket and football in the street with his brother, later saying, \"When I was young, I didn't really think about anything other than sports.\" As a child, Bolt attended Waldensia Primary, where he began showing his sprinting potential when he ran in his parish's annual national primary school meet. By the age of twelve, Bolt had become the school's fastest runner over the 100 metres distance. Bolt also developed an affection for European football teams Real Madrid and Manchester United.\nUpon his entry to William Knibb Memorial High School, Bolt continued to focus on other sports, but his cricket coach noticed Bolt's speed on the pitch and urged him to try track and field events. Pablo McNeil, a former Olympic sprint athlete, and Dwayne Jarrett coached Bolt, encouraging him to focus his energy on improving his athletic abilities. The school had a history of success in athletics with past students, including sprinter Michael Green. Bolt won his first annual high school championships medal in 2001; he took the silver medal in the 200 metres with a time of 22.04 seconds. McNeil soon became his primary coach, and the two enjoyed a positive partnership, although McNeil was occasionally frustrated by Bolt's lack of dedication to his training and his penchant for practical jokes.\n\n\n=== Early competitions ===\nRepresenting Jamaica in his first Caribbean regional event, Bolt clocked a personal best time of 48.28 s in the 400 metres in the 2001 CARIFTA Games, winning a silver medal. The 200 m also yielded a silver, as Bolt finished in 21.81 s.\nHe made his first appearance on the world stage at the 2001 IAAF World Youth Championships in Debrecen, Hungary. Running in the 200 m event, he failed to qualify for the finals, but he still set a new personal best of 21.73 s. Bolt still did not take athletics or himself too seriously, however, and he took his mischievousness to new heights by hiding in the back of a van when he was supposed to be preparing for the 200 m finals at the CARIFTA Trials. He was detained by the police for his practical joke, and there was an outcry from the local community, which blamed coach McNeil for the incident. However, the controversy subsided, and both McNeil and Bolt went to the CARIFTA Games, where Bolt set championship records in the 200 m and 400 m with times of 21.12 s and 47.33 s, respectively. He continued to set records with 20.61 s and 47.12 s finishes at the Central American and Caribbean Junior Championships.\nBolt is one of only eleven athletes (along with Valerie Adams, Veronica Campbell-Brown, Armand Duplantis, Jacques Freitag, Yelena Isinbayeva, Kirani James, Faith Kipyegon, Jana Pittman, Dani Samuels, and David Storl) to win World Championships titles at the youth, junior, and senior levels of an athletic event. Former Prime Minister P. J. Patterson recognised Bolt's talent and arranged for him to move to Kingston, along with Jermaine Gonzales, so he could train with the Jamaica Amateur Athletic Association (JAAA) at the University of Technology, Jamaica.\n\n\n=== Rise to prominence ===\nThe 2002 World Junior Championships were held in front of a home crowd in Kingston, Jamaica, and Bolt was given a chance to prove his credentials on a world stage. By the age of 15, he had grown to 1.95 metres (6 ft 5 in) tall, and he physically stood out among his peers. He won the 200 m in a time of 20.61 s, which was 0.03 s slower than his personal best of 20.58 s, which he set in the 1st round. Bolt's 200 m win made him the youngest world-junior gold medallist ever. The expectation from the home crowd had made him so nervous that he had put his shoes on the wrong feet, although he realized the mistake before the race began. However, it turned out to be a revelatory experience for Bolt, as he vowed never again to let himself be affected by pre-race nerves. As a member of the Jamaican sprint relay team, he also took two silver medals and set national junior records in the 4 × 100 metres and 4 × 400 metres relay, running times of 39.15 s and 3:04.06 minutes respectively.\nThe rush of medals continued as he won four golds at the 2003 CARIFTA Games and was awarded the Austin Sealy Trophy for the most outstanding athlete of the games. He won another gold at the 2003 World Youth Championships. He set a new championship record in the 200 m with a time of 20.40 s, despite a 1.1 m/s (4.0 km/h; 2.5 mph) head wind. Michael Johnson, the 200 m world-record holder, took note of Bolt's potential but worried that the young sprinter might be over-pressured, stating, \"It's all about what he does three, four, five years down the line\". Bolt had also impressed the athletics hierarchy, and he received the IAAF Rising Star Award for 2002.\nBolt competed in his final Jamaican High School Championships in 2003. He broke the 200 m and 400 m records with times of 20.25 s and 45.35 s, respectively. Bolt's runs were a significant improvement upon the previous records, beating the 200 m best by more than half a second and the 400 m record by almost a second. Bolt improved upon the 200 m time three months later, setting the former World youth best at the 2003 Pan American Junior Championships.\nBolt turned his main focus to the 200 m and equalled Roy Martin's world junior record of 20.13 s at the Pan-American Junior Championships. This performance attracted interest from the press, and his times in the 200 m and 400 m led to him being touted as a possible successor to Johnson. Indeed, at sixteen years old, Bolt had reached times that Johnson did not register until he was twenty, and Bolt's 200 m time was superior to Maurice Greene's season's best that year.\nBolt was growing more popular in his homeland. Howard Hamilton, who was given the task of Public Defender by the government, urged the JAAA to nurture him and prevent burnout, calling Bolt \"the most phenomenal sprinter ever produced by this island\". His popularity and the attractions of the capital city were beginning to be a burden to the young sprinter. Bolt was increasingly unfocused on his athletic career and preferred to eat fast food, play basketball, and party in Kingston's club scene. In the absence of a disciplined lifestyle, he became ever-more reliant on his natural ability to beat his competitors on the track.\nAs the reigning 200 m champion at both the World Youth and World Junior championships, Bolt hoped to take a clean sweep of the world 200 m championships in the Senior World Championships in Paris. He beat all comers at the 200 m in the World Championship trials. Bolt was pragmatic about his chances and noted that, even if he did not make the final, he would consider setting a personal best a success. However, he suffered a bout of conjunctivitis before the event, and it disrupted his training schedule. Realising that he would not be in peak condition, the JAAA refused to let him participate in the finals, on the grounds that he was too young and inexperienced. Bolt was dismayed at missing out on the opportunity, but focused on getting himself in shape to gain a place on the Jamaican Olympic team instead. Even though he missed the World Championships, Bolt was awarded the IAAF Rising Star Award for the 2003 season on the strength of his junior record-equalling run.\n\n\n== Professional athletics career ==\n\n\n=== 2004–2007 Early career ===\n\nUnder the guidance of new coach Fitz Coleman, Bolt turned professional in 2004, beginning with the CARIFTA Games in Bermuda. He became the first junior sprinter to run the 200 m in under twenty seconds, taking the world junior record outright with a time of 19.93 s. For the second time in the role, he was awarded the Austin Sealy Trophy for the most outstanding athlete of the 2004 CARIFTA Games. A hamstring injury in May ruined Bolt's chances of competing in the 2004 World Junior Championships, but he was still chosen for the Jamaican Olympic squad. Bolt headed to the 2004 Athens Olympics with confidence and a new record on his side. However, he was hampered by a leg injury and was eliminated in the first round of the 200 metres with a disappointing time of 21.05 s. American colleges offered Bolt track scholarships to train in the United States while continuing to represent Jamaica on the international stage, but he refused them all, stating that he was content to stay in his homeland of Jamaica. Bolt instead chose the surroundings of the University of Technology, Jamaica, as his professional training ground, staying with the university's track and weight room that had served him well in his amateur years.\nThe year 2005 saw Bolt begin working with a new coach, Glen Mills. Mills recognised Bolt's potential and aimed to cease what he considered an unprofessional approach to the sport. Bolt began training with Mills in preparation for the upcoming athletics season, partnering with more seasoned sprinters such as Kim Collins and Dwain Chambers. The year began well, and in July, he knocked more than a third of a second off the 200 m CAC Championship record with a run of 20.03 s, then registered his 200 m season's best at London's Crystal Palace, running in 19.99 s.\n\nMisfortune awaited Bolt at the next major event, the 2005 World Championships in Helsinki. Bolt felt that both his work ethic and athleticism had much improved since the 2004 Olympics, and he saw the World Championships as a way to live up to expectations, stating, \"I really want to make up for what happened in Athens. Hopefully, everything will fall into place\". Bolt qualified with runs under 21 s, but he suffered an injury in the final, finishing in last place with a time of 26.27 s. Injuries were preventing him from completing a full professional athletics season, and the eighteen-year-old Bolt still had not proven his mettle in the major world-athletics competitions. However, his appearance made him the youngest ever person to appear in a 200 m world final. Bolt was involved in a car accident in November, and although he suffered only minor facial lacerations, his training schedule was further upset. His manager at the time, Norman Peart, made Bolt's training less intensive, and he had fully recuperated by the following week. Bolt had continued to improve his performances, and he reached the world top-5 rankings in 2005 and 2006. Peart and Mills stated their intentions to push Bolt to do longer sprinting distances with the aim of making the 400 m event his primary event by 2007 or 2008. Bolt was less enthusiastic, and demanded that he feel comfortable in his sprinting. He suffered another hamstring injury in March 2006, forcing him to withdraw from the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, and he did not return to track events until May. After his recovery, Bolt was given new training exercises to improve flexibility, and the plans to move him up to the 400 m event were put on hold.\nThe 200 m remained Bolt's primary event when he returned to competition; he bested Justin Gatlin's meet record in Ostrava, Czech Republic. Bolt had aspired to run under twenty seconds to claim a season's best but, despite the fact that bad weather had impaired his run, he was happy to end the meeting with just the victory. However, a sub-20-second finish was soon his, as he set a new personal best of 19.88 s at the 2006 Athletissima Grand Prix in Lausanne, Switzerland, finishing behind Xavier Carter and Tyson Gay to earn a bronze medal. Bolt had focused his athletics aims, stating that 2006 was a year to gain experience. Also, he was more keen on competing over longer distances, setting his sights on running regularly in both 200 m and 400 m events within the next two years.\n\nBolt claimed his first major world medal two months later at the IAAF World Athletics Final in Stuttgart, Germany. He passed the finishing post with a time of 20.10 s, gaining a bronze medal in the process. The IAAF World Cup in Athens, Greece yielded Bolt's first senior international silver medal. Wallace Spearmon from the United States won gold with a championship record time of 19.87 s, beating Bolt's respectable time of 19.96 s. Further 200 m honours on both the regional and international stages awaited Bolt in 2007. He wished to run in the 100 metres but Mills was skeptical, believing that Bolt was better suited for middle distances. The coach cited the runner's difficulty in smoothly starting out of the blocks and poor habits such as looking back at opponents during sprints. Mills told Bolt that he could run the shorter distance if he broke the 200 m national record. In the Jamaican Championships, he ran 19.75 s in the 200 m, breaking the 36-year-old Jamaican record held by Don Quarrie by 0.11 s.\nMills complied with Bolt's demand to run in the 100 m, and he was entered to run the event at the 23rd Vardinoyiannia meeting in Rethymno, Crete. In his debut tournament, he won the gold medal in a time of 10.03 s, feeding his enthusiasm for the event.\nHe built on this achievement at the 2007 World Championships in Osaka, Japan, winning a silver medal. Bolt recorded 19.91 s with a head wind of 0.8 m/s (2.9 km/h; 1.8 mph). The race was won by Tyson Gay in 19.76 s, a new championship record.\nBolt was a member of the silver medal relay team with Asafa Powell, Marvin Anderson, and Nesta Carter in the 4 × 100 metres relay. Jamaica set a national record of 37.89 s. Bolt did not win any gold medals at the major tournaments in 2007, but Mills felt that Bolt's technique was much improved, pinpointing improvements in Bolt's balance at the turns over 200 m and an increase in his stride frequency, giving him more driving power on the track.\n\n\n=== World-record breaker ===\nThe silver medals from the 2007 Osaka World Championships boosted Bolt's desire to sprint, and he took a more serious, more mature stance towards his career. Bolt continued to develop in the 100 m, and he decided to compete in the event at the Jamaica Invitational in Kingston. On 3 May 2008, Bolt ran a time of 9.76 s, with a 1.8 m/s (6.5 km/h; 4.0 mph) tail wind, improving his personal best from 10.03 s. This was the second-fastest legal performance in the history of the event, second only to compatriot Asafa Powell's 9.74 s record set the previous year in Rieti, Italy. Rival Tyson Gay lauded the performance, especially praising Bolt's form and technique. Michael Johnson observed the race and said that he was shocked at how quickly Bolt had improved over the 100 m distance. The Jamaican surprised even himself with the time, but coach Glen Mills remained confident that there was more to come.\nOn 31 May 2008, Bolt set a new 100 m world record at the Reebok Grand Prix in the Icahn Stadium in New York City. He ran 9.72 s with a tail wind of 1.7 m/s (6.1 km/h; 3.8 mph). This race was Bolt's fifth senior 100 m. Gay again finished second and said of Bolt: \"It looked like his knees were going past my face.\" Commentators noted that Bolt appeared to have gained a psychological advantage over fellow Olympic contender Gay.\nIn June 2008, Bolt responded to claims that he was a lazy athlete, saying that the comments were unjustified, and he trained hard to achieve his potential. However, he surmised that such comments stemmed from his lack of enthusiasm for the 400 metres event; he chose not to make an effort to train for that particular distance. Turning his efforts to the 200 m, Bolt proved that he could excel in two events – first setting the world-leading time in Ostrava, then breaking the national record for the second time with a 19.67 s finish in Athens, Greece. Although Mills still preferred that Bolt focus on the longer distances, the acceptance of Bolt's demand to run in the 100 m worked for both sprinter and trainer. Bolt was more focused in practice, and a training schedule to boost his top speed and his stamina, in preparation for the Olympics, had improved both his 100 and 200 m times.\n\n\n=== 2008 Summer Olympics ===\nBolt doubled-up with the 100 metres and 200 metres events at the Beijing Summer Olympics. As the new 100 m world-record holder, he was the favourite to win both races. Michael Johnson, the 200 m and 400 m record holder, personally backed the sprinter, saying that he did not believe that a lack of experience would work against him. Bolt qualified for the 100 m final with times of 9.92 s and 9.85 s in the quarter-finals and semi-finals, respectively.\n\nIn the Olympic 100 m final (16 August), Bolt broke new ground, winning in 9.69 s (unofficially 9.683 s) with a reaction time of 0.165 s. This was an improvement upon his own world record, and he was well ahead of second-place finisher Richard Thompson, who finished in 9.89 s. Not only was the record set with no favourable wind (0.0 m/s), but he also visibly slowed down to celebrate before he finished and his shoelace was untied. Bolt's coach reported that, based upon the speed of Bolt's opening 60 m, he could have finished with a time of 9.52 s. After scientific analysis of Bolt's run by the Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics at the University of Oslo, Hans Eriksen, and his colleagues also predicted a sub-9.60 second time. Considering factors such as Bolt's position, acceleration, and velocity in comparison with second-place-finisher Thompson, the team estimated that Bolt could have finished in 9.55±0.04 s had he not slowed to celebrate before the finishing line.\nBolt stated that setting a world record was not a priority for him, and that his goal was just to win the gold medal, Jamaica's first of the 2008 Games. Olympic medallist Kriss Akabusi construed Bolt's chest slapping before the finish line as showboating, noting that the actions cost Bolt an even faster record time. IOC president Jacques Rogge also condemned the Jamaican's actions as disrespectful. Bolt denied that this was the purpose of his celebration by saying, \"I wasn't bragging. When I saw I wasn't covered, I was just happy\". Lamine Diack, president of the IAAF, supported Bolt and said that his celebration was appropriate given the circumstances of his victory. Jamaican government minister Edmund Bartlett also defended Bolt's display, stating, \"We have to see it in the glory of their moment and give it to them. We have to allow the personality of youth to express itself\".\n\nBolt then focused on attaining a gold medal in the 200 m event, aiming to emulate Carl Lewis's double win in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. Michael Johnson felt that Bolt would easily win gold, but believed that his own world record of 19.32 s set at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta would remain intact. Bolt eased through the first and second rounds of the 200 m, jogging towards the end of his run both times. He won his semi-final and progressed to the final as the favourite to win. Retired Jamaican sprinter Don Quarrie praised Bolt, saying he was confident that Johnson's record could be beaten. The following day, at the final, he won Jamaica's fourth gold of the Games, setting a new world and Olympic record of 19.30 s. Johnson's record fell despite the fact that Bolt was impeded by a 0.9 m/s (3.2 km/h; 2.0 mph) head wind. The feat made him the first sprinter since Quarrie to hold both 100 and 200 m world records simultaneously and the first to hold both records since the introduction of electronic timing. Furthermore, Bolt became the first sprinter to break both records at the same Olympics. Unlike in the 100 m final, Bolt sprinted hard all the way to the finishing line in the 200 m race, even dipping his chest to improve his time. Following the race, \"Happy Birthday\" was played over the stadium's sound system as his 22nd birthday would begin at midnight.\nTwo days later, Bolt ran as the third leg in the Jamaican 4 × 100 metres relay team, increasing his gold medal total to three. Along with teammates Nesta Carter, Michael Frater, and Asafa Powell, Bolt broke another world and Olympic record, their 37.10 s finish breaking the previous record by three-tenths of a second. Powell, who anchored the team to the finishing line, lamented the loss of his 100 m record to Bolt but showed no animosity towards his Jamaican rival, stating that he was delighted to help him set his third world record. Following his victories, Bolt donated US$50,000 to the children of Sichuan province in China to help those harmed by the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. However, in January 2017, the Jamaican relay teammates were stripped of their gold medals when a blood sample taken from Carter after the race was retested and found positive for a banned substance.\n\nBolt's record-setting runs caused commentators not only to praise his achievements, but to speculate about his potential to become one of the most successful sprinters in history. Critics hailed his Olympic success as a new beginning for a sport that had long suffered through high-profile drug scandals. The previous six years had seen the BALCO scandal, Tim Montgomery and Justin Gatlin stripped of their 100 m world records, and Marion Jones returning three Olympic gold medals. All three sprinters were disqualified from athletics after drugs tests detected banned substances in their systems. Bolt's record-breaking performances caused suspicion among some commentators, including Victor Conte, and the lack of an independent Caribbean anti-doping federation raised more concerns. The accusations of drug use were vehemently rejected by Glen Mills (Bolt's coach) and Herb Elliott (the Jamaican athletics team doctor). Elliott, a member of the IAAF anti-doping commission, urged those concerned about the issue to \"come down and see our programme, come down and see our testing, we have nothing to hide\". Mills had been equally ardent that Bolt was a clean athlete, declaring to the Jamaica Gleaner: \"We will test any time, any day, any part of the body ... [he] doesn't even like to take vitamins\". Bolt stated that he had been tested four times prior to the Olympics, and all had tested negative for banned substances. He also welcomed anti-doping authorities to test him to prove that he was clean, stating, \"We work hard and we perform well and we know we're clean\".\n\nI was slowing down long before the finish and wasn't tired at all. I could have gone back to the start and done it all over again.\n\n\n=== After the 2008 Olympics ===\nAt the end of the 2008 athletics season, Bolt competed in the ÅF Golden League, beginning in Weltklasse Zürich. Despite having the slowest start among his competitors in the 100 m race, he still crossed the finishing line in 9.83 s. Even though the time was slower than both his newly set world record and Asafa Powell's track record, it was still among the top-fifteen 100 m finishes by any sprinter to that date. Bolt admitted that he was not running at full strength because he was suffering from a cold, but he concentrated on winning the race and finishing the season in good health. At the Super Grand Prix final in Lausanne, Bolt ran his second-fastest 200 m with a time of 19.63 s, equalling Xavier Carter's track record. However, it was the 100 m final, featuring Asafa Powell, that drew the most interest. Powell had moved closer to Bolt's world record after setting a new personal best of 9.72 s, reaffirming his status as Bolt's main contender. Bolt's final event of the season came three days later at the Golden League final in Brussels. This was the first 100 m race featuring both Bolt and Powell since the final in the Olympics. Both Jamaicans broke the track record, but Bolt came out on top with a time of 9.77 s, beating Powell by 0.06 s. Victory, however, did not come as smoothly as it had in Beijing. Bolt made the slowest start of the nine competitors and had to recover ground in cold conditions and against a 0.9 m/s (3.2 km/h; 2.0 mph) head wind. Yet, the results confirmed Jamaican dominance in the 100 m, with nine of the ten-fastest legal times in history at that time being recorded by either Bolt or Powell.\nOn his return to Jamaica, Bolt was honoured in a homecoming celebration and received an Order of Distinction in recognition of his achievements at the Olympics. Additionally, Bolt was selected as the IAAF Male Athlete of the year, won a Special Olympic Award for his performances, and was named Laureus World Sportsman of the Year. Bolt turned his attention to future events, suggesting that he could aim to break the 400 metres world record in 2010 as no major championships were scheduled that year. \n\n\n=== 2009 Berlin World Championships ===\n\nBolt started the season competing in the 400 metres in order to improve his speed, winning two races and registering 45.54 s in Kingston, with windy conditions giving him his first sub-10 seconds finish of the season in the 100 m in March. In late April, Bolt suffered minor leg injuries in a car crash. However, he quickly recovered following minor surgery and (after cancelling a track meet in Jamaica) he stated that he was fit to compete in the 150 metres street race at the Manchester Great City Games. Bolt won the race in 14.35 s, the fastest time ever recorded for 150 m. Despite not being at full fitness, he took the 100 and 200 m titles at the Jamaican national championships, with runs of 9.86 s and 20.25 s respectively. This meant he had qualified for both events at the 2009 World Championships. Rival Tyson Gay suggested that Bolt's 100 m record was within his grasp, but Bolt dismissed the claim and instead noted that he was more interested in Asafa Powell's return from injury. Bolt defied unfavourable conditions at the Athletissima meet in July, running 19.59 seconds into a 0.9 m/s (3.2 km/h; 2.0 mph) head wind and rain, to record the fourth fastest time ever over 200 m, one-hundredth of a second slower than Gay's best time.\n\nThe 2009 World Championships were held during August at the Olympic Stadium in Berlin, which was coincidentally the same month and venue where Jesse Owens had achieved world-wide fame 73 years earlier. Bolt eased through the 100 m heats, clocking the fastest ever pre-final performance of 9.89 s. The final was the first time that Bolt and Gay had met during the season, and Bolt set a new world record–which stands to this day–with a time of 9.58 s to win his first World Championship gold medal. Bolt took more than a tenth of a second off his previous best mark with the largest-ever margin of improvement in the 100 m world record since the advent of electronic timing. Gay finished with a time of 9.71 s, 0.02 s off Bolt's 9.69 s world-record run in Beijing. With a top speed of 12.32 m/s (44.35 km/h; 27.56 mph), it was the recorded fastest speed a human has ever ran.\n\nAlthough Gay withdrew from the second race of the competition, Bolt once again produced world record-breaking time in the 200 metres final. He broke his own record by 0.11 seconds, finishing with a time of 19.19 seconds. He won the 200 m race by the largest margin in World Championships history, even though the race had three other athletes running under 19.90 seconds, the greatest number ever in the event. Bolt's pace impressed even the more experienced of his competitors; third-placed Wallace Spearmon complimented his speed, and the Athens 2004 Olympic champion Shawn Crawford said \"Just coming out there ... I felt like I was in a video game, that guy was moving – fast\". Bolt pointed out that an important factor in his performance at the World Championships was his improved start to the races: his reaction times in the 100 m (0.146 s) and 200 m (0.133 s) were significantly faster than those he had produced in his world record runs at the Beijing Olympics. However, he, together with other members of Jamaican 4 × 100 m relay team, fell short of their own world record of 37.10 s set at 2008 Summer Olympics by timing 37.31 s, which is, however, a championship record and the second fastest time in history at that date.\n\nOn the last day of the Berlin Championships, the Governing Mayor of Berlin, Klaus Wowereit, presented Bolt with a 12-foot high section of the Berlin Wall in a small ceremony, saying Bolt had shown that \"one can tear down walls that had been considered as insurmountable.\" The nearly three-ton segment was delivered to the Jamaica Military Museum in Kingston.\nSeveral days after Bolt broke the world records in 100 and 200 metres events, Mike Powell, the world record holder in long jump (8.95 metres set in 1991), argued that Bolt could become the first man to jump over 9 metres, the long jump event being \"a perfect fit for his speed and height\". At the end of the season, he was selected as the IAAF World Athlete of the Year for the second year running.\n\n\n=== 2010 Diamond League and broken streak ===\nEarly on in the 2010 outdoor season, Bolt ran 19.56 seconds in the 200 m in Kingston, Jamaica for the fourth-fastest run of all time, although he stated that he had no record breaking ambitions for the forthcoming season. He took to the international circuit May with wins in East Asia at the Colorful Daegu Pre-Championships Meeting and then a comfortable win in his 2010 IAAF Diamond League debut at the Shanghai Golden Grand Prix. Bolt made an attempt to break Michael Johnson's best time over the rarely competed 300 metres event at the Golden Spike meeting in Ostrava. He failed to match Johnson's ten-year-old record of 30.85 and suffered a setback in that his 30.97-second run in wet weather had left him with an Achilles tendon problem.\nAfter his return from injury a month later, Bolt asserted himself with a 100 m win at the Athletissima meeting in Lausanne (9.82 seconds) and a victory over Asafa Powell at Meeting Areva in Paris (9.84 seconds). Despite this run of form, he suffered only the second loss of his career in a 100 m final at the DN Galan. Tyson Gay soundly defeated him with a run of 9.84 to Bolt's 9.97 seconds, and the Jamaican reflected that he had slacked off in training early in the season while Gay had been better prepared and in a better condition. This marked Bolt's first loss to Gay in the 100 m, which coincidentally occurred in the same stadium where Powell had beaten Bolt for the first time two years earlier.\n\n\n=== 2011 World Championships ===\n\nBolt went undefeated over 100 and 200 m in the 2011 season. He began with wins in Rome and Ostrava in May. He ran his first 200 m in over a year in Oslo that June and his time of 19.86 seconds was a world-leading one. Two further 200 m wins came in Paris and Stockholm the following month, as did a 100 m in Monaco, though he was a tenth of a second slower than compatriot Asafa Powell before the World Championships.\nConsidered the favourite to win in the 100 metres at the 2011 World Championships in Daegu, South Korea, Bolt was eliminated from the final, breaking \"ridiculously early\" according to the starter in an interview for BBC Sport, and receiving a false start. This proved to be the highest profile disqualification for a false start since the IAAF changed the rules that previously allowed one false start per race. The disqualification caused some to question the new rule, with former world champion Kim Collins saying it was \"a sad night for athletics\". Usain Bolt's countryman, Yohan Blake, won in a comparatively slow 9.92 seconds.\n\nIn the World Championships 200 m, Bolt cruised through to the final which he won in a time of 19.40 s. Though this was short of his world record times of the two previous major tournaments, it was the fourth fastest run ever at that point, after his own records and Michael Johnson's former record, and left him three tenths of a second ahead of runner-up Walter Dix. This achievement made Bolt one of only two men to win consecutive 200 m world titles, alongside Calvin Smith. Bolt closed the championships with another gold with Jamaica in the 4 × 100 metres relay. Nesta Carter and Michael Frater joined world champions Bolt and Blake to set a world record time of 37.04 s.\nFollowing the World Championships, Bolt ran 9.85 seconds for the 100 m to win in Zagreb before setting the year's best time of 9.76 seconds at the Memorial Van Damme. This run was overshadowed by Jamaican rival Blake's unexpected run of 19.26 seconds in the 200 m at the same meeting, which brought him within seven hundredths of Bolt's world record. Although Bolt failed to win the Diamond Race in a specific event, he was not beaten on the 2011 IAAF Diamond League circuit, taking three wins in each of his specialities that year.\nIn November 2011, Deadspin reported that Bolt had been training with Memo Heredia, an admitted steroid dealer and former star witness of the BALCO scandal, who was operating under the assumed name Angel Hernandez.\n\n\n=== 2012 Summer Olympics ===\n\nBolt began the 2012 season with a leading 100 m time of 9.82 seconds in May. He defeated Asafa Powell with runs of 9.76 seconds in Rome and 9.79 seconds in Oslo. At the Jamaican Athletics Championships, he lost to Yohan Blake, first in the 200 m and then in the 100 m, with his younger rival setting leading times for the year.\nHowever, at the 2012 London Olympics, he won the 100 metres gold medal with a time of 9.63 seconds, improving upon his own Olympic record and duplicating his gold medal from the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Blake was the silver medallist with a time of 9.75 seconds. Following the race, seventh-place finisher Richard Thompson of Trinidad and Tobago declared \"There's no doubt he's the greatest sprinter of all time\", while USA Today referred to Bolt as a Jamaican \"national hero\", noting that his victory came just hours before Jamaica was to celebrate the 50th anniversary of its independence from the United Kingdom. With his 2012 win, Bolt became the first man to successfully defend an Olympic sprint title since Carl Lewis in 1988.\n\nI'm now a legend. I'm also the greatest athlete to live.\nBolt followed this up with a successful defence of his Olympic 200 metres title with a time of 19.32 seconds, followed by Blake at 19.44 and Warren Weir at 19.84 to complete a Jamaican podium sweep. With this, Bolt became the first man in history to defend both the 100 and 200 m Olympic sprint titles. He was dramatic in victory: in the final metres of the 200 m race, Bolt placed his fingers on his lips, gesturing to silence his critics, and after crossing the line he completed five push-ups – one for each of his Olympic gold medals.\n\nOn the final day of the 2012 Olympic athletics, Bolt participated in Jamaica's gold medal-winning 4 × 100 metres relay team along with Nesta Carter, Michael Frater and Blake. With a time of 36.84 seconds, they knocked two tenths of a second from their previous world record from 2011. He celebrated by imitating the \"Mobot\" celebration of Mo Farah, who had claimed a long-distance track double for the host nation.\nInternational Olympic Committee (IOC) President Jacques Rogge initially stated that Bolt was not yet a \"legend\" and would not deserve such acclaim until the end of his career, but later called him the best sprinter of all time. Following the 2012 Olympics, he was confirmed as the highest earning track and field athlete in history.\nBolt ended his season with wins on the 2012 IAAF Diamond League circuit; he had 200 m wins of 19.58 s and 19.66 s in Lausanne and Zürich before closing with a 100 m of 9.86 s in Brussels. The latter run brought him his first Diamond League title in the 100 m.\n\n\n=== 2013 World Championships ===\n\nBolt failed to record below 10 seconds early season and had his first major 100 m race of 2013 at the Golden Gala in June. He was served an unexpected defeat by Justin Gatlin, with the American winning 9.94 s to Bolt's 9.95 s. Bolt denied the loss was due to a hamstring issue he had early that year and Gatlin responded: \"I don't know how many people have beaten Bolt but it's an honour\". With Yohan Blake injured, Bolt won the Jamaican 100 m title ahead of Kemar Bailey-Cole and skipped the 200 m, which was won by Warren Weir. Prior to the 2013 World Championships in Athletics, Bolt set world leading times in the sprints, with 9.85 for the 100 m at the London Anniversary Games and 19.73 for the 200 m in Paris.\nBolt regained the title as world's fastest man by winning the World Championships 100 metres in Moscow. In wet conditions, he edged Gatlin by eight hundredths of a second with 9.77 s, which was the fastest run that year. Gatlin was the sole non-Jamaican in the top five, with Nesta Carter, Nickel Ashmeade and Bailey-Cole finishing next.\n\nBolt was less challenged in the 200 m final. His closest rival was Jamaican champion Warren Weir but Bolt ran a time of 19.66 s to finish over a tenth of a second clear. This performance made Bolt the first man in the history of the 200 metres at the World Championships in Athletics to win three gold medals over the distance.\nBolt won a third consecutive world relay gold medal in the 4 × 100 metres relay final, which made him the most successful athlete in the 30-year history of the World Championships. The Jamaican team, featuring four of the top five from the 100 m final, were comfortable winners, with Bolt reaching the finish line on his anchor leg three tenths of a second ahead of the American team anchored by Gatlin. Bolt's performances were matched on the women's side by Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, meaning Jamaica took a complete sweep of the short sprint medals at the 2013 World Championships.\nAfter the championships, Bolt took 100 m wins on the 2013 IAAF Diamond League circuit in Zürich and Brussels. He remained unbeaten in the 200 m and his only loss that year was to Gatlin over 100 m in Rome. For the fifth time in six years, Bolt was named IAAF World Male Athlete of the Year.\n\n\n=== 2014: Injury and Commonwealth Games ===\nAn injury to Bolt's hamstring in March 2014 caused him to miss nine weeks of training. Having recovered from surgery, Bolt competed in the 4 × 100 metres relay of the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. Not in peak form, Bolt said that he was attending the Games for the fans and to show his progress since the injury. Bolt and his teammates won the 4 × 100 metres relay in 37.58 seconds – a Commonwealth Games record. This was the foremost competition of the year for Bolt, given no Olympics or World Championships in 2014.\nIn August 2014, Bolt set the indoor 100 m world record in Warsaw with a time of 9.98 seconds. This was his sole individual outing of the 2014 season. Soon afterwards he ended his season early in order to be fit for the 2015 season. In Bolt's absence, Justin Gatlin had dominated the sprints, holding the year's fastest times, including seven of the top ten 100 m runs that season.\n\n\n=== 2015 Beijing World Championships ===\nAt the start of 2015, he intended to make the 2017 World Championships in Athletics his last major competition before retirement.\n\nUpon his return from injury, Bolt appeared a reduced figure at the start of the 2015 season. He ran only two 100 m and three 200 m before the major championship. He opened with 10.12 seconds for the 100 m and 20.20 for the 200 m. He won the 200 m in New York and Ostrava, but his season's best time of 20.13 seconds ranked him 20th in the world going into the championships. Two 100 m runs of 9.87 in July in London showed better form, but in comparison, Justin Gatlin was easily the top ranked sprinter – the American had times of 9.74 and 19.57 seconds, and had already run under 9.8 seconds on four occasions that season. Bolt entered the World Championships to defend his sprint titles, but was not the comfortable favourite he had been since 2008.\nIn the World Championships 100 m, Bolt won his semi-final in 9.96, which lagged Gatlin's semi-final win in 9.77 seconds. However, Gatlin did not match that form in the final while Bolt improved through the rounds. In a narrow victory, Bolt leaned at the line to beat Gatlin 9.79 to 9.80 seconds. Bolt joined Carl Lewis and Maurice Greene on a record three 100 m world titles.\n\nA similar outcome followed in the 200 m World finals. In the semi-final, Gatlin outpaced Bolt – the Jamaican at 19.95 and the American at 19.87. Despite such slow times prior to Beijing, Bolt delivered in the final with his fifth fastest run ever for the 200 m at 19.55 seconds. Gatlin failed to reach his early season form and finished almost two-tenths of a second behind Bolt. Bolt's four consecutive wins over 200 m at the World Championships was unprecedented and established him clearly as the best ever sprinter at the competition.\nThere was also a fourth straight win in the 4 × 100 metres relay with the Jamaica team (Nesta Carter, Asafa Powell, Nickel Ashmeade, Usain Bolt). The Americans initially had a lead, but a poor baton exchange saw them disqualified and Jamaica defend their title in 37.36 seconds – well clear of the Chinese team who took a surprise silver for the host nation.\nConscious of his injuries at the start of the season, he did not compete after the World Championships, skipping the 2015 IAAF Diamond League final.\n\n\n=== 2016 Rio Olympics ===\n\nBolt competed sparingly in the 200 m before the Olympics, with a run of 19.89 seconds to win at the London Grand Prix being his sole run of note over that distance. He had four races over 100 m, though only one was in Europe, and his best of 9.88 seconds in Kingston placed him fourth on the world seasonal rankings. As in the previous season, Gatlin appeared to be in better form, having seasonal bests of 9.80 and 19.75 seconds to rank first and second in the sprints. Doping in athletics was a prime topic before the 2016 Rio Olympics, given the banning of the Russian track and field team for state doping, and Bolt commented that he had no problem with doping controls: \"I have no issue with being drug-tested ... I remember in Beijing every other day they were drug-testing us\". He also highlighted his dislike of rival Tyson Gay's reduced ban for cooperation, given their close rivalry since the start of Bolt's career, saying \"it really bothered me – really, really bothered me\".\n\nI want to be among greats Muhammad Ali and Pelé.\nAt the 2016 Rio Olympics, Bolt won the 100 metres gold medal with a time of 9.81 seconds. With this win, Bolt became the first athlete to win the event three times at the Olympic Games. Bolt followed up his 100 m win with a gold medal in the 200 m, which also makes him the first athlete to win the 200 m three times at the Olympic Games. Bolt ran the anchor leg for the finals of the 4 × 100 m relay and secured his third consecutive and last Olympic gold medal in the event. With that win, Bolt obtained the \"triple-triple\", three sprinting gold medals in three consecutive Olympics, and finished his Olympic career with a 100% win record in finals. However, in January 2017, Bolt was stripped of the 4 × 100 m relay gold from the Beijing Games in 2008 because his teammate Nesta Carter was found guilty of a doping violation.\n\n\n=== 2017 season ===\n\nBolt took a financial stake in a new Australia-based track and field meeting series – Nitro Athletics. He performed at the inaugural meet in February 2017 and led his team (Bolt All-Stars) to victory. The competition featured variations on traditional track and field events. He committed himself to three further editions.\nIn 2017, the Jamaican team was stripped of the 2008 Olympics 4 × 100 metre title due to Nesta Carter's disqualification for doping offences. Bolt, who never failed a dope test, was quoted by the BBC saying that the prospect of having to return the gold was \"heartbreaking\". The banned substance in Carter's test was identified as methylhexanamine, a nasal decongestant sometimes used in dietary supplements.\nAt the 2017 World Athletics Championships, Bolt won his heat uncomfortably after a slow start in 10.07 s; in his semi-final he improved to 9.98 s but was beaten by Christian Coleman by 0.01 s. That race broke Bolt's four-year winning streak in the 100 m. In his final individual race, in the final, Bolt won the bronze medal in 9.95 s, 0.01 s behind silver medalist Coleman and 0.03 s behind World Champion Justin Gatlin. It was the first time Bolt had been beaten at a major championship since the 4 × 100 m relay of the 2007 World Athletics Championships. Also at the 2017 World Athletics Championships, Bolt participated as the anchor runner for Jamaica's 4 × 100 metres relay team in both the heats and the final. Jamaica won their heat comfortably in 37.95 seconds. In what was intended to be his final race, Bolt pulled up in agony with 50 metres to go and collapsed to the track after what was later confirmed to be another hamstring injury. He refused a wheelchair and crossed the finish line one last time with the assistance of his teammates Omar McLeod, Julian Forte, and Yohan Blake.\nFollowing his 2017 season, Bolt had a statue of him unveiled in his honour at the National Stadium in Kingston on 3 December 2017. The statue shows him in his signature \"lightning bolt\" pose.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\n\nBolt expresses a love for dancing and his character is frequently described as laid-back and relaxed. His Jamaican track and field idols include Herb McKenley and former Jamaican 100 and 200 m world record holder Don Quarrie. Michael Johnson, the former 200 m world and Olympic record holder, is also held in high esteem by Bolt.\nBolt has the nickname \"Lightning Bolt\" due to his name and speed. He is Catholic and known for making the sign of the cross before racing competitively, and he wears a Miraculous Medal during his races. His middle name is St. Leo.\nIn 2010, Bolt also revealed his fondness of music, when he played a reggae DJ set to a crowd in Paris. He is also an avid fan of the Call of Duty video game series, saying, \"I stay up late [playing the game online], I can't help it.\"\n\nIn his autobiography, Bolt wrote that he suffered from scoliosis, a curvature of the spine which made his right leg 1⁄2 inch (13 mm) shorter than his left. This condition causes an uneven stride, with his left leg remaining on the ground for longer than his right, and hitting the ground with a lesser force. Biomechanics researchers have studied, with no firm conclusions, whether this asymmetry has helped or hurt Bolt in his sprinting career.\nHe popularised the \"lightning bolt\" pose, also known as \"to di world\" or \"bolting\", which he used both before races and in celebration. The pose consists of extending a slightly raised left arm to the side and the right arm folded across the chest, with both hands have the thumb and index finger outstretched. His performance of the pose during his Olympic and World Championship victories led to widespread copying of the move, from American President Barack Obama to small children. It has been suggested that the pose comes from Jamaican dancehall moves of the period, though Olympic sprint champion Bernard Williams also had performed similar celebration moves earlier that decade. His habit of fist bumping the volunteers for good luck has been noted in the media.\nIn 2021, Bolt told the BBC that his love for video games, such as Mario Kart and Mortal Kombat, had helped him during his Olympic career.\n\n\n=== Financial crisis ===\nOn 19 January 2023, Bolt fell victim to a fraud scheme, resulting in the disappearance of more than $12 million from his retirement savings account, according to a letter from his attorneys obtained by the Associated Press. The account, held with Kingston-based investment firm Stocks and Securities Ltd., showed a balance of only $12,000, down from its previous $12.8 million. Bolt's legal team stated that if the allegations were true, a serious act of fraud or larceny had been committed against their client.\nTwo years later, SSL announced plans to pay back the lost money. Former SSL employee Jean-Ann Panton was charged with orchestrating the fraud scheme. However, no such payout has occurred as of February 2025.\n\n\n=== Family ===\nBolt had two or three girlfriends before he began dating Slovak fashion designer Lubica Kucerova in late 2011; their relationship ended in May 2012.\nIn either 2013 or 2014, Bolt began a relationship with Jamaican model Kasi Bennett. On 17 May 2020, Bennett gave birth to their first child, daughter Olympia Lightning. Bolt and Bennett then welcomed twin boys Thunder and Saint Leo in June 2021.\n\n\n=== Other sports ===\nCricket was the first sport to interest Bolt, and he has said if he were not a sprinter, he would be a fast bowler instead. As a child, he admired the Pakistani cricket team and the bowling of Waqar Younis. He is also a fan of Indian batsman Sachin Tendulkar, West Indian opener Chris Gayle, and Australian opener Matthew Hayden. During a charity cricket match, Bolt clean-bowled Gayle, who was complimentary of Bolt's pace and swing. Bolt also struck a six off Gayle's bowling. Another bowler complimentary of Bolt's pace was former West Indies fast-bowling great Curtly Ambrose.\nAfter talking with Australian cricketer Shane Warne, Bolt suggested that if he were able to get time off he would be interested in playing in the cricket Big Bash League. Melbourne Stars chief executive Clint Cooper said there were free spots on his team should he be available. Bolt stated that he enjoyed the Twenty20 version of the game, admiring the aggressive and constant nature of the batting. Of his own ability, he said, \"I don't know how good I am. I will probably have to get a lot of practice in.\"\nBolt is also a fan of Premier League football team Manchester United. He has declared he is a fan of Dutch striker Ruud van Nistelrooy. Bolt was a special guest of Manchester United at the 2011 UEFA Champions League Final in London, where he stated that he would like to play for them after his retirement.\nIn 2013, Bolt played basketball in the NBA All-Star Weekend Celebrity Game. He scored two points from a slam dunk but acknowledged his other basketball skills were lacking.\nIn an interview with Decca Aitkenhead of The Guardian in November 2016, Bolt said he wished to play as a professional footballer after retiring from track and field. He reiterated his desire to play for Manchester United if given a chance and added, \"For me, if I could get to play for Manchester United, that would be like a dream come true. Yes, that would be epic.\"\nIn 2018, after training with Norwegian football club Strømsgodset, Bolt played for the club as a forward in a friendly match against the Norway national under-19 team. He wore the number \"9.58\" in allusion to his 100 m world record. Bolt wore the same number whilst captaining the World XI during Soccer Aid 2018 at Old Trafford.\nOn 21 August 2018, on his 32nd birthday, Bolt started training with Australian football club Central Coast Mariners of the A-League. He made his friendly debut for the club as a substitute on 31 August 2018 against a Central Coast Select team, made up of players playing in the local area. On 12 October, he started in a friendly against amateur club Macarthur South West United and scored two goals, both in the second half, with his goal celebration featuring his signature \"To Di World\" pose.\nBolt was offered a two-year contract from Maltese football club Valletta, which he turned down on 18 October 2018. On 21 October 2018, Bolt was offered a contract by the Mariners. The Australian FA aided the Mariners to fund the contract. Later that month, Perth Glory forward Andy Keogh was critical of Bolt's ability, stating his first touch is \"like a trampoline.\" He added Bolt has \"shown a bit of potential but it's a little bit of a kick in the teeth to the professionals that are in the league.\"\nBolt left the Mariners in early November 2018 after eight weeks with the club. In January 2019, Bolt decided not to pursue a career in football, saying his \"sports life is over.\"\nBolt, a Green Bay Packers fan, stated in July 2021 he could have considered a career as a wide receiver in the National Football League had the rules on violent tackles related to concussions been as tightly regulated 'back in the day' as they were by that stage. If he had switched to gridiron football, his concern was that he would have been a high-priced target for very heavy hits which made him back out of his desire to try the sport. He also felt certain that even at 34 and being retired he would comfortably be the fastest player in the league.\n\n\n=== Documentary film ===\nThe 2016 documentary film I Am Bolt, was released on 28 November 2016 in the United Kingdom. It was directed by Benjamin and Gabe Turner.\n\n\n== Sponsorships and advertising work ==\n\nAfter winning the 200 m title in the 2002 World Junior Championships in Kingston, Bolt signed a sponsorship deal with Puma. To promote Bolt's chase for Olympic glory in the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China, Puma released a series of videos including Bolt's then-world-record-setting run in Icahn Stadium and his Olympic preparations. After his record-breaking run in New York City, which was preceded by a lightning storm, the press frequently made puns on the Jamaican's name, nicknaming him \"Lightning Bolt\" and the \"Bolt from the blue\". During the 2008 Beijing 100 m final, Bolt wore golden Puma Complete Theseus spikes that had \"Beijing 100 m Gold\" emblazoned across them. Writing of Bolt's performance at the Olympics, The Associated Press said:\n\nAlmost single-handedly, Bolt has helped track transform itself from a dying sport to one with a singular, smiling, worldwide star.\nIn September 2010, Bolt travelled to Australia where his sponsor Gatorade was holding an event called the \"Gatorade Bolt\" to find Australia's fastest footballer. The event was held at the Sydney International Athletic Centre and featured football players from rugby league, rugby union, Australian rules football, and association football. Prior to the race Bolt gave the runners some private coaching and also participated in the 10th anniversary celebrations for the 2000 Summer Olympic Games.\nIn January 2012, Bolt impersonated Richard Branson in an advertising campaign for Virgin Media. The campaign was directed by Seth Gordon and features the Virgin founder Branson to promote its broadband service. In March 2012, Bolt starred in an advert for Visa and the 2012 Summer Olympics. In July 2012, Bolt and RockLive launched Bolt!, an Apple iOS game based on his exploits. Bolt! quickly became the No. 1 app in Jamaica and climbed the UK iTunes charts to reach No. 2 on the list of Top Free Apps. Additionally, Bolt was added as a playable character to the mobile video game Temple Run 2 in 2013.\nIn 2012, Bolt collaborated with headphone maker Soul Electronics to design his own line of headphones. Bolt designed both an in-ear bud and over-ear model with the Jamaican color scheme and his signature \"To Di World\" pose.\nBolt's autobiography, My Story: 9.58: Being the World's Fastest Man, was released in 2010. Bolt had previously said that the book \"...should be exciting, it's my life, and I'm a cool and exciting guy.\" His athletics agent is PACE Sports Management.\nAs part of his sponsorship deal with Puma, the manufacturer sends sporting equipment to his alma mater, William Knibb Memorial High School, every year. At Bolt's insistence, advertisements featuring him are filmed in Jamaica, by a Jamaican production crew, in an attempt to boost local enterprise and gain exposure for the country. In 2017, Bolt had the third highest earning social media income for sponsors among sportspeople (behind Cristiano Ronaldo and Neymar), and he was the only non-footballer in the top seven.\nBolt is the highest paid athlete in the history of the sport. In 2016, Bolt earned about $33 million in one year putting him at No. 32 on Forbes list of The World's Highest-paid Athletes making him the only track and field athlete on the list.\nAfter retirement, Bolt is still a brand ambassador for Puma.\nRecently, he was named as the \"Ultimate Legend\" by World Athletics for the inaugural World Athletics Ultimate Championships September 2026 in Budapest, Hungary.\n\n\n== Entrepreneurship ==\n\nUsain Bolt co-founded electric scooter company Bolt Mobility in 2018, created in his namesake. Bolt founded the micromobility company, which provides electric scooters and other yet-to-be released mobility devices, such as the company's upcoming Bolt Nano. Bolt appeared in Bolt Mobility's debut commercial, released through YouTube and his official Facebook account. Bolt appeared in a number of interviews for the company, alongside CEO Sarah Pishevar Haynes. Bolt made his first public appearance for the company in March 2019, during the company's New York City launch and in CNBC interviews on the NYSE.\nIn May 2019, the company expanded its services to Europe, introducing the product first in Paris.\n\nIn May 2019, Bolt spoke in Paris at the Viva Technology conference, where he introduced the company's future release of the Nano minicar. He also met with French president Emmanuel Macron while at the conference. While in France, Bolt participated in a CNN interview where he revealed his reasons for founding the company.\nBolt argues that his scooter is different, which allows storage for riders' bags, shopping, and mobile phones. The scooters have capabilities to reach up to 30 mph, but are typically capped at 15 mph depending on city regulation. The company has begun operations in a number of U.S. cities, and plans to expand throughout Europe and Asia.\nIn 2021, Usain Bolt partnered with SprintRay Inc, a company specializing in dental 3D printing, to launch \"Bolt Labs powered by SprintRay\" in Jamaica. This initiative aims to increase access to dental care across Jamaica and the Caribbean through the use of advanced 3D printing technology. Bolt Labs focuses on creating high-quality dental prosthetics quickly and cost-effectively, serving both urban and remote communities. Bolt's collaboration with SprintRay also includes outreach efforts via mobile dental clinics equipped with 3D printers, enabling accessible, on-site dental treatments for underserved populations. Through this partnership, Bolt has expanded his role in social impact, promoting innovations in healthcare in his home country.\nIn March 2022, Bolt became a co-owner of Irish esports organisation, WYLDE.\nIn early July 2022, Bolt Mobility abruptly ceased operations, leaving bike-sharing programs up in the air, including in Burlington, Vermont; Portland, Oregon; Richmond, California; and Richmond, Virginia.\n\n\n== Music production ==\nIn July 2019, Bolt made his debut as a dancehall music producer with the release of the Olympe Rosé riddim that featured 5 tracks from Jamaican dancehall artistes: Dexta Daps's \"Big Moves\", Munga Honorable's \"Weekend\", Christopher Martin's \"Dweet\", Ding Dong's \"Top A Di Top\", and football-player-turned-artist Ricardo \"Bibi\" Gardner's \"Mount A Gyal\".\nIn November 2019, he followed up with another compilation called Immortal Riddim that included tracks from Vybz Kartel, Masicka, Munga Honorable and Christopher Martin.\nIn early January 2021, Bolt released a single titled \"Living the Dream\" with his childhood friend and manager Nugent 'NJ' Walker.\n\n\n== Recognition ==\n\nIAAF World Athlete of the Year: 2008, 2009, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2016\nTrack & Field Athlete of the Year: 2008, 2009\nLaureus World Sportsman of the Year: 2009, 2010, 2013, 2017\nGazzetta Sports Awards World Sportsman of the Year: 2008, 2009, 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016\nBBC Overseas Sports Personality of the Year: 2008, 2009, 2012\nL'Équipe Champion of Champions: 2008, 2009, 2012, 2015\nJamaica Sportsman of the year: 2008, 2009, 2011, 2012, 2013\nAIPS Male Athlete of the Year: 2015\nMarca Leyenda (2009)\nIn October 2008, he was made a Commander of the Order of Distinction, which entitles him to use the post nominal letters CD.\nIn 2009, at age 23, Usain Bolt became the youngest member so far of the Order of Jamaica. The award was \"for outstanding performance in the field of athletics at the international level\". In the Jamaican honours system, this is considered the equivalent of a knighthood in the British honours system, and entitles him to be formally styled \"The Honourable\", and to use the post nominal letters OJ.\n\n\n== Statistics ==\n\n\n=== Personal bests ===\nEvents tracked by World Athletics, the international governing body for the sport of athletics:\n\nThe following events are not regulated by World Athletics, and are not tracked as official world records:\n\n\n=== Records ===\nBolt's personal best of 9.58 seconds in 2009 in the 100 metres is the fastest ever run. Bolt also holds the second fastest time of 9.63 seconds, the current Olympic record, and set two previous world records in the event. Bolt's personal best of 19.19 s in the 200 metres is the world record. This was recorded at the 2009 World Championships in Athletics in Berlin against a head wind of −0.3 m/s (−1.1 km/h; −0.67 mph). This performance broke his previous world record in the event, his 19.30 s clocking in winning the 2008 Olympic 200 metres title.\nBolt has been on three world-record-setting Jamaican relay teams. The first record, 37.10 seconds, was set in winning gold at the 2008 Summer Olympics, although the result was voided in 2017 when the team was disqualified due to his team member Nesta Carter's urine sample being retested and found positive for the prohibited substance methylhexaneamine. The second record came at the 2011 World Championships in Athletics, a time of 37.04 seconds. The third world record was set at the 2012 Summer Olympics, a time of 36.84 seconds.\nBolt also holds the 200 metres world teenage best results for the age categories 15 (20.58 s), 16 (20.13 s, former world youth record), 17 (19.93 s) and 18 (19.93 s, world junior record). He also holds the 150 metres world best set in 2009, during which he ran the last 100 metres in 8.70 seconds, the quickest timed 100 metres ever.\nBolt completed a total of 53 wind-legal sub-10-second performances in the 100 m during his career, with his first coming on 3 May 2008 and his last on 5 August 2017 at the World Championships. His longest undefeated streak in the 200 m was in 17 finals, lasting from 12 June 2008 to 3 September 2011. He also had a win-streak covering 14 100 m finals from 16 August 2008 to 16 July 2010.\n\n\n=== Season's bests ===\n\nWorld rank in parentheses\n\n\n=== World rankings ===\n\n\n=== International competitions ===\n\n\n=== National titles ===\nJamaican Athletics Championships\n100 m: 2008, 2009, 2013\n200 m: 2003, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009\n\n\n=== Circuit wins ===\n\nOther distances\nManchester GreatCity Games: 2010 (150 m)\nOstrava Golden Spike: 2010 (300 m)\n\n\n== Publications ==\nAllen, Matt; Bolt, Usain (2013). Faster Than Lightning: My Autobiography. London: HarperSport. ISBN 978-0-00-752364-1.\nBolt, Usain; Custis, Shaun (2010). Usain Bolt: 9.58. London: HarperSport. ISBN 978-0-00-737139-6.\nBolt, Usain; Custis, Shaun (2012). The Fastest Man Alive: The True Story of Usain Bolt. New York: Sports Publishing. ISBN 978-1-61321-067-3.\n\n\n== See also ==\nAthletics in Jamaica\nJamaica at the Olympics\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists at a single Games\nMen's 100 metres world record progression\nMen's 200 metres world record progression\nSport in Berlin\nNominative determinism\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n Media related to Usain Bolt at Wikimedia Commons\n Usain Bolt at Wikinews\n Quotations related to Usain Bolt at Wikiquote\nOfficial website\nUsain Bolt at World Athletics \nUsain Bolt timeline via The Daily Telegraph\n\n\n=== Videos ===\nUsain Bolt wins the 2009 IAAF World Championships in Athletics men's 100 metres final in 9.58 seconds via IAAF on YouTube\nUsain Bolt wins the 2009 Great CityGames Manchester men's 150 metres final in 14.35 seconds via Athletics Weekly on YouTube\nUsain Bolt wins the 2009 IAAF World Championships in Athletics men's 200 metres final in 19.19 seconds via IAAF on YouTube\nUsain Bolt wins the 2012 Olympic Games men's 100 metres final in 9.63 seconds via the Olympic Channel on YouTube\nUsain Bolt wins the 2012 Olympic Games men's 200 metres final in 19.32 seconds via the Olympic Channel on YouTube\nUsain Bolt wins the 2016 Olympic Games men's 100 metres final in 9.81 seconds via the Olympic Channel on YouTube\nUsain Bolt wins the 2016 Olympic Games men's 200 metres final in 19.79 seconds via the Olympic Channel on YouTube\nAll of Usain Bolt's Olympic Games finals via the Olympic Channel on YouTube"}
{"title": "Valentin Muratov", "requested": "Valentin Muratov", "extract": "Valentin Ivanovich Muratov (Russian: Валентин Иванович Муратов, 30 July 1928 – 6 October 2006) was a Soviet gymnast and gymnastics coach. He competed at the 1952 and 1956 Olympics in all artistic gymnastics event and won four gold and one silver medal. He also won four gold medals at the 1954 world championships, sharing the all-around gold medal with Viktor Chukarin and the floor gold medal with Masao Takemoto.\n\n\n== Biography ==\nMuratov's father worked at a munitions factory in Moscow; he volunteered to fight in World War II and went missing in action in 1942. Valentin then took his place at the munitions factory to support his mother. After the war ended, he went back to school, where he was introduced to gymnastics.\nIn 1951, Muratov married Sofia Muratova, a fellow Olympic gymnast. They had two sons, Sergei (born 1952) and Andrei (born 1961); Sergei later also became a gymnast and gymnastic coach. The careers of both parents were marred with injuries, which eventually forced them to retire in 1958 and 1964, respectively. They both went into coaching, with Valentin being the head coach of the Soviet team from 1960 to 1968.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nValentin Muratov at World Gymnastics\nValentin Muratov at Olympedia\nValentin Muratov at InterSportStats"}
{"title": "Valentina Vezzali", "requested": "Valentina Vezzali", "extract": "Maria Valentina Vezzali (Italian pronunciation: [valenˈtiːna vetˈtsaːli]; born 14 February 1974) is an Italian politician and retired Olympic and World Champion foil fencer. As a fencer, Vezzali won six Olympic gold medals and was a 16-time World Champion in foil. She is one of only five athletes in the history of the Summer Olympic Games to have won five medals in the same individual event. She is widely considered to be the greatest women's foilist in fencing history.\nIn 2013, Vezzali became a member of the Italian Chamber of Deputies as part of the Civic Choice party. In 2021, she became Italy's cabinet undersecretary in charge of sports.\n\n\n== Fencing ==\nAs a child, she was first trained in fencing by her father, and then by the sword master Ezio Triccoli.\nVezzali was the first fencer in Olympic history to win three individual foil gold medals at three consecutive Olympics – Sydney 2000, Athens 2004 and Beijing 2008. Vezzali won nine Olympic medals in all: five in individual foil (three gold, one silver, one bronze) and four in team foil (three gold, one bronze). She medaled in all five of her Olympic appearances from 1996 to 2012; she attempted to qualify for Rio 2016 at the age of 41, but did not gain enough points. Vezzali has the fourth-most Olympic medals (9) of any Italian athlete and the most of any female summer Olympian from Italy, behind fencer Edoardo Mangiarotti (13), short-track speed skater Arianna Fontana (11) and cross-country skier Stefania Belmondo (10).\nShe also won sixteen gold medals at the World Fencing Championships, six in individual competitions (1999, 2001, 2003, 2005, 2007, 2011) and another ten in team competitions (1995, 1997, 1998, 2001, 2004, 2009, 2010, 2013, 2014, 2015), plus six silver medals (two individual, 1994 and 2006, and four with Italian team, in 1994, 2006, 2011, 2016) and four bronze medals (individual, 1995, 1998, 2012 and 2014).\nIn European championships, she won nine gold medals (individual: 1998, 1999, 2001, 2009, 2010; team: 1999, 2001, 2009, 2010), three silver medals (individual: 2003, 2007; team: 2007), two bronze medals (individual: 1993; team: 1998).\nShe was the official flag bearer of the 2012 Italy Olympic team in London.\nIn 2016, she came second at the Rio finals, failing to qualify for the next Olympics. She announced her retirement from fencing.\n\n\n== Political career ==\nVezzali was a member of the Italian Parliament in the XVIIth Legislatura between 2013 and 2018. She was originally a member of the Civic Choice party led by Mario Monti. In 2021, she was named cabinet undersecretary in charge of sports for Italy.\nOn 27 July 2022, Vezzali joined Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia (FI).\n\n\n== Prize List ==\n\nFencing World Cup\n Foil (1996, 1997, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2007, 2008, 2010)\n\n\n== Achievements ==\n\n\n=== Olympic Games ===\n\n\n=== World Championships ===\n\n\n== Honors ==\n Italy: Grande Ufficiale Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana (Italian for: Grand Officer Order of Merit of the Italian Republic), 1 September 2008.\n\n\n== Publications ==\nVezzali, Valentina; Luchetti, Caterina (2006). A viso scoperto [With uncovered face] (in Italian). Dalai Editore. ISBN 978-8866203551.\nVezzali, Valentina; Carbone, Betta (2012). Io, Valentina Vezzali (in Italian). Milan: Dalai Editore. ISBN 978-88-6620-355-1.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nShe married Italian football player Domenico Giugliano and has two sons: Pietro, born on 9 June 2005, and Andrea, born on 16 May 2013. Vezzali is Catholic.\n\n\n== See also ==\nWalk of Fame of Italian sport\nMultiple Olympic medalists | Multiple Olympic gold medalists | Multiple Summer Olympic medalists | Multiple Olympic medalists in one event\n\n\n== Further reading ==\nMarabini, Paolo (2022). Valentina Vezzali, la regine de Fioretto. Bolis Edizione. ISBN 9788878275201.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nValentina Vezzali at the International Fencing Federation \nValentina Vezzali at the European Fencing Confederation (archive) \nValentina Vezzali at the Italian Fencing Federation (archived)\nValentina Vezzali at Olympedia \nValentina Vezzali at Olympics.com \nValentina Vezzali at the Comitato Olimpico Nazionale Italiano (in Italian)\nOfficial website  (archived)"}
{"title": "Venus Williams", "requested": "Venus Williams", "extract": "Venus Ebony Star Williams (born June 17, 1980) is an American professional tennis player. She has been ranked as the world No. 1 in both women's singles and doubles by the Women's Tennis Association. Williams has won 49 WTA Tour-level singles titles, including seven majors (five at Wimbledon and two at the US Open), as well as a gold medal at the 2000 Sydney Olympics and the 2008 WTA Tour Championships. She has also won 22 doubles titles, including 14 majors and three Olympic gold medals.\nAlong with her younger sister, Serena, Venus Williams was coached by her parents Oracene Price and Richard Williams. Turning professional in 1994, she reached her first major final as a 17-year-old at the 1997 US Open. In both 2000 and 2001, Williams claimed the Wimbledon and US Open titles, as well as Olympic singles gold at the Sydney Olympics. She first reached the singles world No. 1 ranking on February 25, 2002, becoming the first African-American woman to do so in the Open era, and the second of all time after Althea Gibson. Williams reached four consecutive major finals between 2002 and 2003, but lost each time to Serena. She then suffered from injuries, winning just one major title between 2003 and 2006. Williams returned to form starting in 2007, when she won Wimbledon (a feat she repeated the following year). In 2010, she returned to the world No. 2 position in singles, but then suffered again from injuries. Starting in 2014, she gradually returned to form, culminating in two major final appearances in 2017 at the Australian Open and Wimbledon Championships.\nAlong with her seven singles major titles, Williams has won 14 women's doubles major titles, all partnering Serena; the pair are unbeaten in major doubles finals. She became the world No. 1 in doubles for the first time on June 7, 2010, alongside Serena, after the pair completed a non-calendar-year Grand Slam at the French Open. The pair also won three Olympic gold medals in women's doubles, in 2000, 2008, and 2012, adding to Venus's singles gold in 2000 and her mixed doubles silver in 2016. Williams has also won two mixed doubles major titles for a combined total of 23 major titles.\nThe Williams sisters are credited with ushering in a new era of power and athleticism on the women's professional tennis tour. Venus Williams was twice the season prize money leader (in 2001 and 2017), and ranks fourth in all-time career prize money winnings, having earned over US$42 million as of November 2025.\n\n\n== Early life ==\nVenus Ebony Star Williams was born on June 17, 1980, in Lynwood, California, to Richard Williams and Oracene Price. In addition to her full sister Serena, Venus has three maternal half-sisters—the late Yetunde, Lyndrea, and Isha Price—and at least seven paternal half-siblings. Venus and Serena were home-schooled by their father.\nWhen Venus was three years old, Richard moved the family to Compton, over the objections of his wife. Richard had studied sports success stories, and believed that the rough environment of Compton would toughen up Venus and Serena in preparation for their tennis careers.\nThe family moved to West Palm Beach, Florida, when Venus was eleven, so that she and Serena could attend the tennis academy of Rick Macci, who took notice of the sisters and who would provide additional coaching. He did not always agree with Williams's father but respected that \"he treated his daughters like kids, allowed them to be little girls\". Richard stopped sending his daughters to national junior tennis tournaments when Williams was eleven, since he wanted them to take it slowly and focus on schoolwork. Another motivation was racial, as he had allegedly heard parents of other players disparage the Williams sisters during tournaments. At that time, Williams held a 63–0 record on the United States Tennis Association junior tour and was ranked No. 1 among the under-12 players in Southern California. In 1995, Richard pulled his daughters out of Macci's academy and took over all coaching.\n\n\n== Career ==\n\n\n=== 1994–96: Turned professional ===\nVenus Williams turned professional on October 31, 1994, at the age of 14. In the first round of her first professional tournament, the Bank of the West Classic in Oakland, she defeated former NCAA singles champion Shaun Stafford. In the second round, Williams was up a set and a service break against world No. 2, Arantxa Sánchez Vicario, before losing the match. That was the only tournament Williams played in 1994.\nIn 1995, Williams played three more events as a wildcard. She lost in the first round of tournaments in Los Angeles and Toronto, but reached the quarterfinals in Oakland, defeating No. 18 Amy Frazier in the second round, before losing to Magdalena Maleeva. Williams played five events in 1996, losing in the first round four times but reaching the third round in Los Angeles, before losing to No. 1 Steffi Graf.\n\n\n=== 1997: Major debut and first final ===\nWilliams played 15 tour events in 1997, including five Tier I tournaments. She reached the quarterfinals in three of the Tier I events—the State Farm Evert Cup in Compton, California, the European Indoor Championships in Zürich, and the Kremlin Cup in Moscow. At the State Farm Evert Cup in March, Williams defeated No. 9 Iva Majoli in the third round, marking her first win over a player ranked in the top 10. She then lost in the quarterfinals to No. 8 Lindsay Davenport. Williams's was first ranked in the top 100 on April 14, 1997. She made her debut in the main draw of a Grand Slam tournament at the French Open, reaching the second round before losing to Nathalie Tauziat. She then lost in the first round of Wimbledon to Magdalena Grzybowska.\nDuring Williams's debut at the 1997 US Open, she collided with Irina Spîrlea in a semifinal match. Sports Illustrated claimed that Spîrlea intentionally \"bumped\" Williams. After Williams won the match, her father Richard accused Spîrlea of racism. Williams lost to Martina Hingis in the final.\n\n\n=== 1998: First WTA Tour singles title and top 5, first major doubles titles ===\nIn her debut at the Australian Open, Williams defeated her younger sister Serena in the second round, which was the sisters' first professional meeting. Williams eventually lost in the quarterfinals to No. 3 Davenport.\nThree weeks later, Williams defeated Davenport, now No. 2, in the semifinals of the Cellular South Cup in Oklahoma City. Williams then won against Joannette Kruger in the final, earning the first singles title of her career. In her first Tier I event of the year, Williams lost in the semifinals of the State Farm Evert Cup to No. 1 Hingis. The following week, Williams won the Tier I Lipton International Players Championships in Key Biscayne, Florida. On March 30, 1998, she achieved her highest world ranking yet, at No. 10.\nWilliams played only one tournament on clay before the 1998 French Open. At the Italian Open in Rome, she defeated her sister in the quarterfinals and Sánchez Vicario in the semifinals, before losing to No. 1 Hingis in the final. Williams lost again to Hingis in the quarterfinals of the French Open, and was defeated by No. 3 Jana Novotná in the quarterfinals of Wimbledon. On July 27, 1998, Williams's ranking rose to world No. 5.\nWilliams played three tournaments during the North American 1998 summer hardcourt season. She reached her fifth final of the year at the Stanford Classic in California, defeating No. 6 Monica Seles in the semifinals before losing to No. 1 Davenport. Patellar tendonitis in her left knee caused her to retire from her quarterfinal match in San Diego while trailing Mary Pierce in the third set. At the US Open, Williams defeated fourth-seeded Sánchez Vicario in the quarterfinals before losing to second seeded and eventual champion Davenport in the semifinals. 1998 was the first year that Williams reached at least the quarterfinals of all majors.\nWilliams played four tournaments in the remainder of 1998. She won her third title of the year at the Grand Slam Cup in Munich in September, defeating No. 9 Patty Schnyder in the final. She lost in the second round of the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix in Filderstadt, before losing in the final of the Tier I Swisscom Challenge in Zürich to No. 1 Davenport and the semifinals of the Tier I Kremlin Cup in Moscow to Pierce. She had earned enough points during the year to participate in the year-ending WTA Tour Championships but withdrew from the tournament because of tendonitis in her knee. She finished the year ranked No. 5.\nIn 1998, Williams teamed with Justin Gimelstob to win the mixed doubles titles at the Australian Open and the French Open. Her sister Serena Williams won the other two Grand Slam mixed doubles titles that year, completing a \"Williams Family Mixed Doubles Grand Slam\". Williams won the first two women's doubles titles of her career, in Oklahoma City and Zürich. Both titles came with her sister, becoming only the third pair of sisters to win a WTA tour doubles title.\n\n\n=== 1999: Three Tier I titles ===\nWilliams started the 1999 season in Australia, where she lost to No. 10 Steffi Graf in the quarterfinals of the Sydney International and to No. 1 Davenport in the quarterfinals of the Australian Open. However, she rebounded at the Faber Grand Prix in Hanover, defeating Graf for the first time in the semifinals before losing the final to No. 3 Novotná. Williams then successfully defended her titles in both Oklahoma City and Key Biscayne. The Key Biscayne tournament marked the first time a pair of sisters faced off in a final on the WTA Tour.\nWilliams lost her first match at the Amelia Island Championships in Florida. Three weeks later, however, she won her first title on clay at the WTA Hamburg, defeating Mary Pierce in the final. Williams then won the Tier I Italian Open in Rome, defeating No. 1 Hingis in the semifinals and No. 8 Pierce in the final. At the French Open, she extended her winning streak to 22 matches before losing in the fourth round to No. 125, Barbara Schwartz. Williams teamed with Serena Williams to win the women's doubles title at this event, the first Grand Slam title the pair won together.\nAt Wimbledon, Williams reached the quarterfinals for the second consecutive year, losing to eventual runner-up Graf.\nWilliams rebounded in the summer when she won two Fed Cup matches against Italy and lost in the final of the Stanford Classic to No. 1 Davenport. One week later, Williams defeated Davenport in the semifinals of the San Diego Classic, before losing to No. 2 Hingis in the final. In her last tournament before the US Open, Williams won the New Haven Open in Connecticut, defeating No. 5 Seles in the semifinals and Davenport in the final. On August 30, 1999, her world ranking reached third for the first time. Seeded third at the 1999 US Open, Williams lost in the semifinals to No. 1 Hingis in three sets. However, she teamed with singles champion Serena Williams at this event to win their second Grand Slam women's doubles title.\nWilliams contributed to the victory of the USA team over Russia in the Fed Cup final, winning one singles rubber before joining her sister to win the doubles rubber. At the Grand Slam Cup in Munich, Williams defeated Hingis in the semifinals before losing to her sister Serena for the first time in the final. Williams won her sixth title of the year at the Tier I event in Zurich, defeating No. 1 Hingis in the final. Four weeks later, she lost to Davenport in the semifinals of the tournament in Philadelphia. Making her debut at the year-ending WTA Championships, Williams lost to Hingis in the semifinals. She finished the year ranked No. 3.\n\n\n=== 2000: Olympic gold medals, first major titles ===\nIn 2000, Williams missed the first five months of the year with tendinitis in both wrists. She returned to the tour during the European clay court season. She lost in the quarterfinals of the Betty Barclay Cup in Hamburg to Amanda Coetzer and in the third round of the Tier I Italian Open in Rome to Jelena Dokić. Although she had won only two of her four matches before the French Open, she was seeded fourth there. She won her first four matches in Paris without losing a set before losing in the quarterfinals to eighth-seeded and former champion Arantxa Sánchez, in three sets.\nWilliams then won 35 consecutive singles matches and six tournaments. She won her first major singles title at Wimbledon, defeating No. 1, Martina Hingis, in the quarterfinals, sister Serena in the semifinal and defending champion, Lindsay Davenport, in the final. She also teamed with her sister Serena to win the women's doubles title at this event.\nShe won three Tier II events during the North American summer hardcourt season, defeating Davenport in the final of the Silicon Valley Classic in Stanford and Monica Seles in the finals of both the San Diego Classic in and the Pilot Pen Tennis championships in New Haven.\nAt the 2000 US Open, Williams defeated No. 1 Hingis in the semifinals and No. 2 Davenport in the final. At the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, she defeated Sánchez Vicario in the quarterfinals, Seles in the semifinals, and Elena Dementieva in the final to win the gold medal. She also won the gold medal in women's doubles with her younger sister Serena. Davenport eventually snapped her winning streak in October in the final of the Linz Open. Williams did not play a tournament the rest of the year because of anemia. She finished the year ranked world No. 3 and with six singles titles.\n\n\n=== 2001: Third & fourth major titles ===\n\nIn 2001, Williams reached the semifinals of the Australian Open for the first time, where she lost to No. 1 Hingis. However, Williams teamed with her sister to win the doubles title at the event, completing a Career Golden Slam in women's doubles for the pair.\nWilliams also reached the semifinals of the Tier I Tennis Masters Series tournament in Indian Wells, where she controversially defaulted her match with her sister just before the match started. Williams had been suffering from knee tendinitis throughout the tournament and eventually this prevented her from playing. The following day, Williams and her father Richard were booed as they made their way to their seats to watch the final. Serena Williams was subsequently booed during the final with Kim Clijsters and during the trophy presentation. Due to this, neither Williams sister entered the tournament for 14 years, with her sister Serena entering in 2015 after appeals for forgiveness from the event and the WTA Tour. Williams rebounded from the Indian Wells 'boycott' controversy to win the next tournament on the tour calendar, the Tier I Key Biscayne Open. She defeated Hingis in the semifinals and No. 4 Jennifer Capriati in the final, after saving eight championship points. Because of this victory, her ranking rose to a career high of No. 2.\nDuring the European clay-court season, Williams won the Tier II tournament in Hamburg but lost in the third round of the Tier I German Open to No. 18 Justine Henin and the first round of the French Open to Barbara Schett. This was only the second time that she had lost in the first round of a Grand Slam singles tournament. Williams then successfully defended her Wimbledon title, defeating third-seeded Davenport in the semifinals and eighth-seeded Henin in three sets in Henin's first Wimbledon final.\nDuring the North American summer hardcourt season, Williams won for the second consecutive year the tournaments in San Diego, defeating Seles in the final, and in New Haven, defeating Davenport in the final. Williams also won the 2001 US Open singles title for the second consecutive year, without dropping a set. In the quarterfinals, she beat fifth-seeded Clijsters, followed by a semifinal victory over No. 2 Capriati. She played her sister Serena in the final, which was the first Grand Slam singles final contested by two sisters during the open era. Venus won the match and her fourth Grand Slam singles title. Williams also became only the sixth woman in history to win the singles titles at both Wimbledon and the US Open in consecutive years, the others being Martina Navratilova (twice), Steffi Graf (twice), Althea Gibson, Maureen Connolly Brinker, and Helen Wills Moody (twice).\n\n\n=== 2002: World No. 1 ranking ===\nWilliams began 2002 by winning the Mondial Australian Women's Hardcourts in Gold Coast, defeating Henin in the final. However, she then lost for the first time in her career to Seles in the quarterfinals of the Australian Open. Williams then went on to win the Open Gaz de France in Paris when Jelena Dokić withdrew from the final, and the Proximus Diamond Games in Antwerp, defeating Henin in the final. As a result of her strong start to the season, Williams assumed the world No. 1 position for the first time on February 25, dislodging Capriati. Williams was the first African-American woman ever to hold the ranking. She held it for just three weeks before surrendering it back to Capriati.\nWilliams failed to defend her title in Miami, after losing in the semifinals to her sister Serena. However, she made a strong start to the clay-court season, winning the Amelia Island Championships, defeating Henin in the final. A week after winning that tournament, she once again replaced Capriati as the No. 1, before losing it again to Capriati after three weeks. During those three weeks, Williams had made the final in Hamburg, defeating Hingis in the semifinals, before losing to Clijsters in the final. Seeded second at the French Open, Williams defeated former champion Seles to reach the semifinals for the first time. There, she defeated Clarisa Fernández. In the final, Williams met her sister Serena for a second time in a Grand Slam final, with her sister winning. Williams once again replaced Capriati as the No. 1 as a result of reaching the final.\nAs the top seed at Wimbledon, Williams defeated Henin in the semifinals to make the final for the third consecutive year. However, there, she lost to her sister Serena. This result meant Serena Williams replaced Venus as the No. 1. The Williams sisters teamed up to win the women's doubles title at the event, their fifth major women's doubles title together.\nWilliams won the titles in San Diego and New Haven for the third consecutive year, defeating Davenport and Dokic to win the former and defeating Davenport in the final of the latter. At the 2002 US Open, Williams defeated Seles in the quarterfinals and Amélie Mauresmo in three sets to make the final. Playing her younger sister Serena for their third consecutive Grand Slam final, her sister won once again. After that, Williams played just four more matches during the season. She reached the semifinals at the year-ending Tour Championships after defeating Seles in the quarterfinals, but she then was forced to retire against Clijsters due to injury. Williams finished the year ranked No. 2 having won seven titles, her best showing in both respects of her career.\n\n\n=== 2003: Australian Open & Wimbledon finals, injuries ===\nWilliams started 2003 by defeating fifth seed Justine Henin to make the final of the Australian Open for the first time. In the final, however, she lost to her sister Serena. This marked the first time in the open era that the same two players had met in four consecutive Grand Slam finals (matched by Rafael Nadal & Novak Djokovic who met in Wimbledon 2011 final through the French Open 2012 final). Venus and Serena Williams teamed to win the women's doubles title at the event, their sixth Grand Slam title in women's doubles.\nIn February, Williams won the Proximus Diamond Games in Antwerp for the second consecutive year, defeating Kim Clijsters in the final. However, shortly afterwards, she began to struggle with injury. She reached the final of the clay-court J&S Cup in Warsaw, before being forced to retire against Amélie Mauresmo. She then suffered her earliest exit at a Grand Slam tournament in two years when she lost in the fourth round of the French Open to Vera Zvonareva.\nAt Wimbledon, Williams was seeded fourth. Williams defeated former champion Lindsay Davenport in the quarterfinals and Kim Clijsters in the semifinals to advance to her fourth consecutive Wimbledon final, where she lost again to sister Serena.\nWimbledon was Williams's last event of the year as an abdominal injury that occurred during the Clijsters match prevented her from playing again. While she was recovering from the injury, her sister Yetunde Price was murdered. Williams finished the year ranked No. 11. It was the first time in nearly six years that she had dropped out of the top 10.\n\n\n=== 2004: Tough losses and further injuries ===\nIn 2004, Williams came back to the tour suffering inconsistent results. As the third seed because of a protected ranking, she reached the third round of the Australian Open, where she lost to Lisa Raymond. She then lost in the quarterfinals of her next three tournaments.\nWilliams began to find her form at the beginning of the clay-court season. At the Tier I Family Circle Cup in Charleston, Williams defeated Conchita Martínez in the final to win her first title in over a year and the second Tier I title on clay of her career. She then won in Warsaw, defeating Svetlana Kuznetsova in the final, before reaching the final of the Tier I German Open in Berlin. She then withdrew from that match against Mauresmo due to injury. Going into the French Open, Williams had the best clay-court record among the women and was among the favorites to win the title; however, after making the quarterfinals to extend her winning streak on the surface to 19 matches, she lost to eventual champion Anastasia Myskina. Despite her defeat, she re-entered the top 10.\nIn Wimbledon, Williams lost a controversial second-round match to Croatian Karolina Šprem. The umpire of the match, Ted Watts, awarded Šprem an unearned point in the second-set tiebreak. Upon the conclusion of the match, he was relieved of his duties. This defeat marked the first time since 1997 that Williams had exited Wimbledon prior to the quarterfinals. After Wimbledon, she reached her fourth final of the year at the Stanford Classic in California, where she was beaten by Lindsay Davenport for the first time since 2000.\nAs the defending champion at the Athens Olympics, Williams lost in the third round to Mary Pierce. She then won three very close matches against Petra Mandula, Shikha Uberoi and Chanda Rubin to make the fourth round of the 2004 US Open where she lost to Davenport, the first time she had ever lost at the US Open prior to the semifinals. Williams completed the year by losing in the quarterfinals of three indoor tournaments in the fall, a period that included defeat in her first meeting with 17-year-old Wimbledon champion Maria Sharapova at the Zurich Open. Williams finished the year as No. 9 and did not qualify for the year-ending WTA Tour Championships.\n\n\n=== 2005: Third Wimbledon title ===\nIn 2005, Williams started the year by losing in the fourth round of the Australian Open to Alicia Molik. She then reached the final in Antwerp, defeating Clijsters and Myskina en route. In the final, Williams was a set and a service break up against Mauresmo before eventually losing.\nIn March, at the Miami Open, she defeated sister Serena in the quarterfinals, the first time she had defeated her since 2001. Venus Williams went on to lose in the semifinals to No. 3 Sharapova. In May, she won her first title in over a year at the clay-courts at the İstanbul Cup, defeating Nicole Vaidišová in the final. However, at the French Open, she lost in the third round to 15-year-old Sesil Karatantcheva, who subsequently tested positive for steroids and was suspended.\nWilliams was seeded 14th for the Wimbledon Championships. In the quarterfinals of the tournament, she defeated French Open runner-up Pierce in a second-set tiebreak, winning it 12–10 to make the semifinals of a Grand Slam for the first time in two years. There, she defeated defending champion and second-seeded Sharapova to make the Wimbledon final for the fifth time in six years. Playing top-seeded Davenport in the final, Williams saved a match point with a backhand winner en route to winning. This was her third Wimbledon singles title, her fifth Grand Slam singles title overall and her first since 2001. It was the first time in 70 years that a player had won after being down match point during the women's final at Wimbledon.\nWilliams reached her fourth final of the year in Stanford, where she lost to Clijsters. At the 2005 US Open, Williams achieved her second consecutive win over sister Serena in the fourth round, but then lost in the quarterfinals to eventual champion Kim Clijsters. Williams did not qualify for the year-ending Tour Championships because of an injury sustained during the China Open. She finished the year ranked No. 10. It was the first year since 2001 that she had finished a year ranked higher than her sister Serena Williams.\n\n\n=== 2006: Wrist injury and drop in the rankings ===\nIn 2006, Williams was upset in the first round of the Australian Open by Tsvetana Pironkova, which was her earliest loss ever at that tournament. After that loss, she did not play again for three months due to a wrist injury. She returned in late April on clay in Warsaw, where she defeated former No. 1 Hingis in the second round, before losing to Svetlana Kuznetsova in the quarterfinals. Williams completed the clay-court season by reaching the quarterfinals of the French Open, where she lost to Nicole Vaidišová.\nWilliams was the defending champion and one of the favorites to win the singles title at Wimbledon. However, she lost in the third round to 26th-seeded Jelena Janković. After the loss, Williams said that she was having pain in her left wrist, although she admitted that the injury was not the cause of her loss. Williams did not play in the US Open Series or the US Open itself due to the wrist injury. In October, during her first tournament in almost three months, she reinjured her wrist at the Luxembourg Open and lost in the second round to qualifier Agnieszka Radwańska. Williams finished the season as No. 46, her lowest finish since she began to play on the WTA Tour full-time in 1997. It was the second consecutive year she finished higher than her sister Serena, who finished the year at No. 95.\n\n\n=== 2007: Fourth Wimbledon title ===\nWilliams withdrew from the 2007 Australian Open, the second consecutive Grand Slam that she had missed due to her recurring wrist injury. She returned in February at the Cellular South Cup in Memphis, defeating top-seeded Shahar Pe'er in the final, her first singles title since her victory at Wimbledon in 2005.\nAt the beginning of the clay-court season, Williams reached the semifinals of the Tier I Charleston Open, where she lost to Janković on a third set tiebreak. She also lost to fourth seed Janković in the third round of the French Open, her third consecutive loss to Janković. During her second round win over Ashley Harkleroad, Williams hit a 206 km/h (128 mph) serve, which was the second fastest woman's serve ever recorded and the fastest ever recorded during a main draw match at the time.\nWilliams was ranked No. 31 going into Wimbledon and was seeded 23rd at the tournament due to her previous results at Wimbledon. Williams was a game away from defeat in her first round match against Alla Kudryavtseva and in her third round match against Akiko Morigami she was two points away from defeat, but she eventually won both 7–5 in the third set. She then advanced to reach her sixth Wimbledon final, after beating Maria Sharapova, Svetlana Kuznetsova and Ana Ivanovic in straight sets en route, where she defeated 18th seed Marion Bartoli also in straight sets. Williams thus became only the fourth woman in the open era to win Wimbledon at least four times, along with Billie Jean King, Martina Navratilova and Steffi Graf. She also became the lowest-seeded Wimbledon champion in history, breaking the record she herself set in 2005. Williams returned to the top 20 as a result of the win.\nAt the 2007 US Open, after setting a Grand-Slam record 129 mph (208 km/h) serve in the opening round, Williams advanced to her first major semifinal outside of Wimbledon since 2003. However she then lost to eventual champion Justine Henin. The tournament resulted in Williams's ranking moving up to No. 9. Williams then won her third title of the year at the Korea Open in Seoul, defeating Maria Kirilenko in the final, before then losing in the final of the Japan Open Tennis Championships in Tokyo to Virginie Razzano. Williams had earned enough points during the year to qualify for the year-ending WTA Championships in Madrid; however, she withdrew because of continuing problems with anemia.\n\n\n=== 2008: Fifth Wimbledon title, and Olympic gold in doubles ===\nIn 2008, as the eighth seed at the Australian Open, Williams reached the quarterfinals for the first time since 2003. However, she then lost to eventual runner-up Ana Ivanovic. Williams made her first semifinal of the year at the Bangalore Open in India, where she met sister Serena for the first time since 2005 with Serena Williams winning despite Venus Williams holding a match point in the third set tie break.\nWilliams missed two tournaments at the beginning of the clay-court season due to undisclosed medical problems. At the French Open, Williams was seeded eighth but was eliminated by 26th-seeded Italian Flavia Pennetta in the third round.\nWilliams was the defending champion and seventh-seeded player at Wimbledon. Without dropping a set, she reached her seventh Wimbledon singles final. She then won her fifth Wimbledon singles title, and seventh Grand Slam singles title overall, by beating sister Serena in straight sets. This was the first time since 2003 that Venus and Serena Williams had played each other in a Grand Slam final and was the first time since 2001 that Venus had defeated her in a Grand Slam final. Venus and Serena Williams then teamed to win the women's doubles title, their first Grand Slam doubles title together since 2003.\nWilliams lost in the quarterfinals of the Beijing Olympics to Li Na. She did, however, earn a gold medal along with her sister Serena in women's doubles, their second gold medal as a team, having won together at the Sydney Olympics in 2000. At the 2008 US Open, Williams was playing some of her best tennis since dominating the circuit in 2003, However, she was defeated in two tiebreaks by Serena Williams (the eventual tournament winner) in a close quarterfinal match, after Williams had led 5–3 in both sets.\n\nAt the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix in Stuttgart in October, Williams defeated a player ranked in the top three for the first time that season by defeating No. 3 Dinara Safina to reach her third semifinal of the year. There, she lost to Janković. A fortnight later, Williams won the Zurich Open, defeating Ivanovic in the semifinals, before defeating Pennetta in the final to claim her second title of the year and secure a position in the 2008 WTA Tour Championships in Doha. There, Williams defeated No. 2 Safina, No. 3 Serena Williams and No. 5 Dementieva in the preliminary round-robin stage. In the semifinals, Williams defeated No. 1 Janković, before winning the year-ending tournament for the first time by defeating Vera Zvonareva in the final. She ended the year ranked No. 6 with three titles and a winning percentage of 78.\n\n\n=== 2009: Four consecutive major doubles titles ===\nAs the sixth seed at the 2009 Australian Open, Williams lost in the second round to Carla Suárez Navarro, after holding a match point in the third set. However, she teamed up with her sister Serena to win the women's doubles title at the event, their eighth Grand Slam doubles title together. Williams rebounded in singles play in February at the Premier 5 (formerly Tier I) Dubai Tennis Championships, defeating defending champion and No. 4 Dementieva in the quarterfinals and No. 1 Serena Williams in the semifinals on a third set tiebreak. The latter win meant that Williams led the head-to-head in career matches with her sister for the first time since 2002. Williams went on to defeat Virginie Razzano in the final. This win meant Williams was ranked in the top five for the first time since 2003, while it also marked her 40th professional singles title, only the twelfth player in the Open era to achieve the feat. Williams won another title the following week at the Abierto Mexicano in Acapulco defeating Pennetta in the final. This was her first title on clay since 2005.\nOn European clay, Williams reached the semifinals in Rome before losing to No. 1 Safina. This run meant Williams was ranked in the top three for the first time since 2003. Seeded third at the French Open, Williams lost to Ágnes Szávay in the third round, the third consecutive year she had exited at that stage.\nWilliams was seeded third at Wimbledon. She advanced to her eighth Wimbledon final, at which point she had won 34 straight sets (held since Wimbledon 2007). In the final, however, she lost the first set tie-break, and from then on lost in two sets to sister Serena. The Williams sisters teamed up to win the doubles tournament for the fourth time.\nIn Stanford, Williams defeated Maria Sharapova and Elena Dementieva to advance to the finals, where she would lose to Marion Bartoli. Teaming with her sister, she played doubles and won the title, defeating Monica Niculescu and Chan Yung-jan.\n\nAt the 2009 US Open, as the third seed, Williams made it to the fourth round, before losing to Kim Clijsters in three sets. Williams then teamed up with Serena Williams to play doubles at the open, where they won the title over defending champions and No. 1s in doubles, Cara Black and Liezel Huber, claiming their third major doubles title in 2009.\nWilliams's last tournament in 2009 was the year-ending Tour Championships, where she was the defending champion in singles. She was in the maroon group which includes her sister Serena Williams, along with Elena Dementieva and Svetlana Kuznetsova. She lost her first match against Dementieva, and her second match against her sister Serena- both in straight sets, after taking the first set. In her third and final round-robin match, Williams defeated Kuznetsova. Because of Dementieva's loss to Kuznetsova in their round robin match, Williams advanced to the semifinal of the championships. In her semifinal match, she defeated Jelena Janković of Serbia to advance to her second consecutive final in the tournament which she lost to her sister Serena. In doubles, Williams teamed with her sister as the second seeds. However, they lost to Nuria Llagostera Vives and María José Martínez Sánchez in the semifinal. Their doubles record at the end of the year stood at 24–2.\nWilliams finished 2009 ranked No. 6 in singles (with a winning percentage of 70 percent) and No. 3 in doubles with Serena Williams, in spite of them playing only six events together that year.\n\n\n=== 2010: World No. 2 in singles and No. 1 doubles ===\nAt the 2010 Australian Open, Williams lost to 16th-seeded Li Na in the quarterfinals. In doubles, she and Serena successfully defended their title, defeating the top-ranked team of Cara Black and Liezel Huber in the final. At the Mexican Open in Acapulco, Williams was the defending champion. She reached the semifinals after recovering from a 1–5 third set deficit to Laura Pous Tió in the quarterfinals. In the final, she defeated first-time finalist Polona Hercog from Slovenia. This was her 43rd career title, the most among active female players.\nWilliams's next tournament was the Premier Mandatory Miami Open in Key Biscayne. She defeated Agnieszka Radwańska in the quarterfinals and Marion Bartoli in the semifinals to reach her third straight WTA Tour final and fourth Miami Open final. She was defeated by Kim Clijsters in the final in just 58 minutes, ending her 15-match winning streak. By reaching the final, her ranking improved to No. 4 and she crossed the $26 million mark in career prize money, the only player besides Serena to do so.\nThe knee injury that hampered Williams during the Miami Open forced her to skip the Fed Cup tie against Russia and the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix. She returned to the tour at the Premier 5 Italian Open in Rome, where she suffered the worst defeat of her career in the quarterfinals, losing to No. 4 Jelena Janković. Despite this loss, her ranking improved to No. 3. At the Madrid Open, Williams lost to Aravane Rezaï in the final, but won the doubles title with Serena. On May 17, her ranking improved to No. 2, behind Serena. This was the fourth time that the Williams sisters occupied the top two spots, and the first time since May 2003.\nWilliams played both singles and doubles at the French Open despite her knee injury. She lost in singles to Nadia Petrova in the round of 16. She and Serena defeated Květa Peschke and Katarina Srebotnik in the final to win their fourth consecutive Grand Slam women's doubles title. Their doubles ranking was now No. 1, making Venus and Serena the sixth and seventh women respectively to reach the No. 1 ranking in both singles and doubles.\nWilliams played at Wimbledon, where she had reached the final the past three years. Despite her knee injury, she made it to the quarterfinals, where she lost to Tsvetana Pironkova. She was the defending champion in doubles with Serena, having won the tournament in the previous two years. However, they lost this time in the quarterfinals to Elena Vesnina and Vera Zvonareva.\nDue to injury, Williams missed all the tournaments in the US Open Series, but still played at the 2010 US Open. She defeated Pe'er and French Open champion Schiavone en route to her eighth US Open semifinal, against defending champion Clijsters. Williams won the first set of their match and recovered from 5–2 down in the second set but ultimately double-faulted on a key point near the end of the match and lost in three sets. Because of Serena's withdrawal from the US Open, Venus did not participate at the doubles event, where she was the defending champion.\nThe recovery of her left knee took longer than expected and it forced her to miss the rest of 2010, including the year-ending WTA Championships and Fed Cup final. Williams ended the year ranked fifth in singles, the first time she ended a year in the top five since 2002, while playing only nine tournaments. She finished the year ranked 11th in doubles.\n\n\n=== 2011: Sjögren syndrome diagnosis ===\nWilliams began the year at the final edition of Hong Kong Tennis Classic exhibition event. She lost both her singles matches against Vera Zvonareva and Li Na, but she helped Team America to win the silver group. At the Australian Open, Williams retired in the second game of her third round match against Andrea Petkovic after sustaining a hip muscle injury in her second round. This was Williams's first retirement during a match in a Grand Slam tournament since 1994 and thus ended her record of most Grand Slam matches without ever retiring, with 250 consecutive matches. This was also her first retirement from a match since LA Women's Championships in Los Angeles in 2004, ending her 294 consecutive matches without retiring. The injury forced Williams to pull out of the Fed Cup quarterfinal against Belgium, the Dubai Tennis Championships, and the Mexican Open, where she was the two-time defending champion in both tournaments. She subsequently withdrew from the Miami Open causing her ranking to drop to No. 15. She also missed the clay court season which caused her ranking to drop to No. 29. Her absence from the French Open marked the first Grand Slam tournament since the 2003 US Open where neither of the Williams sisters were competing.\nWilliams then made her first appearance since the Australian Open in Eastbourne. Unseeded, she lost for the first time in eleven meetings to Daniela Hantuchová in the quarterfinals. She was seeded 23rd at the 2011 Wimbledon Championships. She played for nearly three hours in her second round match against Japanese veteran Kimiko Date-Krumm, winning in three tough sets. She then defeated Spaniard María José Martínez Sánchez in the third round, but was defeated by Bulgarian 32nd seed Tsvetana Pironkova in the fourth round.\nOriginally scheduled to participate in the 2011 Rogers Cup in Toronto and the 2011 Western & Southern Open in Cincinnati, Williams withdrew due to viral illness. Her next scheduled tournament was the 2011 US Open. Unseeded at the US Open, Williams defeated Vesna Dolonc in the first round. She was scheduled to meet 22nd seed Sabine Lisicki in the second round, but withdrew before the match began after being diagnosed with Sjögren syndrome, an autoimmune disease which causes fatigue and muscle and joint pain. This was the first time in her career that she did not reach the quarterfinals or better in any of the Grand Slam tournaments in a season. As a result, her ranking dropped to one-hundred and five.\nWilliams did not play for the rest of the year at a competitive level; she appeared in three exhibitions tournaments in November and early December. She played against sister Serena in Colombia, which she won in straight sets. The week later, the sisters appeared in Milan, Italy to play exhibition against Italian duo Francesca Schiavone and Flavia Pennetta. Williams lost both her singles tie-break matches but won the doubles pairing with her sister. Williams played her third exhibition tournament in Barbados where she lost to Victoria Azarenka. She ended the year ranked No. 102. This was her first year-end finish ranked outside of the top 50 since 1997.\n\n\n=== 2012: Comeback and Olympic gold record ===\nWilliams was scheduled to play in Auckland in preparation for the Australian Open. but withdrew from both tournaments due to health problems, announcing that she would return to the WTA tour in February. This dropped her ranking to No. 135. In February, Williams returned to competition in the doubles match of the Fed Cup World Group II tie between USA and Belarus. Playing with Liezel Huber, she won the dead-rubber in straight sets.\nWilliams was granted wildcards to participate in the Miami and Charleston tournaments. In the first round of Miami — her first singles match since the 2011 US Open — Williams defeated Japanese veteran Kimiko Date-Krumm, in straight sets. In the second round, she defeated No. 3 Petra Kvitová, her first top-3 victory since beating Svetlana Kuznetsova in 2009. In the third round, she saved a match point and defeated Aleksandra Wozniak in a three-set tiebreaker that ended a nearly three-hour match. In the round of 16, she bested No. 15 Ana Ivanovic in three sets to reach the quarterfinals, where she lost to the eventual champion, Agnieszka Radwańska in straight sets. Her run improved her ranking to No. 87. A week later in Charleston, she reached her second consecutive quarterfinal, where she lost in three sets to Samantha Stosur.\n\nWilliams was granted wildcards to participate in Madrid and Rome. In Madrid, she lost in the second round to Angelique Kerber, but still improved her ranking to No. 63. A week later in Rome, she reached her third quarterfinal of the four tournaments she had participated in with a straight-sets victory against Samantha Stosur in the third round. She lost in the quarterfinals, in straight sets, to the No. 2, defending and eventual champion, Maria Sharapova. Her appearance in Rome increased her ranking to No. 52, placing her as the third-ranked American. She lost in the second round of the French Open to Agnieszka Radwańska, in straight sets.\nAt Wimbledon, Williams was unseeded for the first time since 1997. She lost to Elena Vesnina in the first round in straight sets. This was the first time Williams lost in the first round of a Grand Slam since the 2006 Australian Open, and her first opening round loss at Wimbledon since her debut in 1997. Williams fared better in her return to doubles competition where she played alongside her sister Serena. In just the pair's first tournament since 2010 Wimbledon, the unseeded sisters advanced to the final with victories over fourth-seeds Maria Kirilenko and Nadia Petrova in the second round and top-seeds Liezel Huber and Lisa Raymond in the semifinals. The Williams sisters claimed their fifth Wimbledon doubles title after defeating sixth-seeds Andrea Hlaváčková and Lucie Hradecká in straight sets in the final, on the same day Serena Williams won her fifth Wimbledon singles title.\nWilliams's next stop was the 2012 London Olympics. She entered the women's singles and women's doubles events, partnering with sister Serena in doubles. In singles, Williams reached the third round where she lost to Angelique Kerber. In doubles, the unseeded Williams sisters advanced to the final, which was a repeat of their final at Wimbledon against Hlaváčková and Hradecká. The sisters won their third gold medal in doubles after defeating the Czech pair in straight sets. With the win (and her sister Serena's win in the singles event), the Williams sisters claimed the most Olympic gold medals of any other tennis player, male or female.\nNext, Williams played at Cincinnati where she received a singles wild card entry. She defeated her first two opponents, Maria Kirilenko and Chanelle Scheepers, in three tight sets before eliminating eighth seed Sara Errani in the third round. In the quarterfinal, she defeated Samantha Stosur, in three sets. In the semifinal Williams played through a back injury, eventually losing in three sets to Li Na. Her semifinal run brought her ranking back within the top 50 for the first time in almost a year. At the US Open, Williams lost in a second-round match against Angelique Kerber in three sets, despite having a lead in the third set.\nWilliams won her 44th career title and her first title in over 2+1⁄2 years at the Luxembourg Open, where she defeated Monica Niculescu in straight sets. Williams also qualified for the Tournament of Champions in Sofia, but withdrew as the tournament clashed with her and her sister Serena's 'Breaking the Mould' tour in Africa. With her title in Luxembourg, her ranking rose to No. 24. She ended the year with this ranking.\n\n\n=== 2013: Back injury ===\nAt the 2013 Hopman Cup, and playing for USA (with John Isner), the first rubber was against South Africa. Williams beat Chanelle Scheepers and, with John Isner, they comfortably defeated the South African pair Scheepers and Kevin Anderson. In USA's second rubber against France, she won both her singles and in mixed doubles defeated Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and Mathilde Johansson. Next she faced Anabel Medina Garrigues of Spain and won in two sets.\nFrom there Williams went onto the Australian Open, seeded 25, after missing it the previous year due to injury. She beat Galina Voskoboeva and Alizé Cornet before losing to the second seed, Maria Sharapova. Her next tournament was Brasil Tennis Cup. She participated the tournament as the top seed. She defeated Mirjana Lučić-Baroni in the first round, Garbiñe Muguruza in the second round and Magdaléna Rybáriková during the quarterfinals. Reaching her first semifinal of the year, she was then defeated by Olga Puchkova in three sets. This tournament allowed Williams to strengthen her position in the top 20. She retired from the Miami Open in the third round due to a lower back injury.\n\nOne week after Miami, Williams participated in Charleston as the fifth seed. She reached the semifinals, where she lost to her sister Serena in two sets in the sisters' first meeting since the 2009 WTA Tour Championships. A few weeks later she participated in Fed Cup, in a tie between the United States and Sweden. After Sloane Stephens lost the opening match, Williams stepped into her spot, winning a match against Johanna Larsson. This was the first time in Williams's career that she clinched the winning match in a Fed Cup tie, leading the United States to a 3–2 victory over Sweden. Williams's next event was the Madrid Open where she withdrew just before playing her first round match. Her next tournament was the Italian Open in Rome where she lost in the first round to Laura Robson. Williams then played at the 2013 French Open where she lost to Urszula Radwańska in the first round. She was also entered in doubles with her sister Serena but pulled out just before their first-round match. Williams pulled out of the 2013 Wimbledon Championships due to a back injury. It was the first time she missed Wimbledon in her career.\nAt the Roger's Cup, she lost in the first round to 13th seed Kirsten Flipkens in three sets. At the Western and Southern Open, she defeated qualifier Jana Čepelová in straight sets, before losing in the second round to Elena Vesnina in three sets. Her next tournament was the 2013 US Open. She pulled an upset in the first round by defeating 12th seed Kirsten Flipkens in a rematch of the Roger's Cup first round. She was defeated by Zheng Jie in three sets. She entered the doubles with Serena Williams. Their run ended in the semifinals against the fifth seeded team and eventual champions Lucie Hradecká and Andrea Hlaváčková.\nHer next tournament was the Pan Pacific Open. In the quarterfinals she defeated Canadian Eugenie Bouchard in three sets, but fell in the semifinals to Petra Kvitová in another three set match. Williams subsequently played at the 2013 China Open in Beijing where she played singles and doubles. Williams lost her second round match in singles losing to Sabine Lisicki and she also lost her first round match in doubles despite having two match points. Williams's last tournament of the season was the 2013 Kremlin Cup in Moscow, but she withdrew due to injury, bringing an end to her 2013 season.\n\n\n=== 2014: Ending title drought ===\nWilliams started her official tennis season as No. 47 in Auckland, where she finished runner-up to Ana Ivanovic. She next participated, unseeded, at the Australian Open where she lost in the first round to No. 23 Ekaterina Makarova in three sets. Moving on to Doha, Williams lost to No. 6 Petra Kvitová in the second round at the Qatar Open after failing to put away match point in the third set tie-break. Williams then entered the Dubai Tennis Championships where she defeated five top-40 players to win her biggest title since the Madrid Open in 2010 and, at 33 years and 8 months of age, became the seventh-oldest woman to win a WTA singles title. En route, she avenged her loss to Ana Ivanovic in Auckland and her sister Serena's loss to Alizé Cornet in the semifinals, then won the title match, keeping her head-to-head record perfect against Caroline Wozniacki. Williams then competed in Miami and in Charleston where she lost to Dominika Cibulková on hard and Eugenie Bouchard on clay, respectively – both in the round of 16 and both in three sets. At the Italian Open, Williams failed to force three sets in a loss for the first time that year, falling in two sets to Carla Suárez Navarro. At the French Open, Williams was upset by No. 56 Anna Karolína Schmiedlová in three sets. Williams then lost in the third round of Wimbledon to eventual champion Petra Kvitová in a classic and much-praised encounter that saw 34 holds of serve and only two breaks. Williams was the only player to take a set against Kvitová in the tournament.\nWilliams played her first tournament of the 2014 US Open Series at the Standord Classic, where she is a two-time former champion. In the second round, she scored her first Top-10 victory of the year and improved her head-to-head record against Victoria Azarenka to 4–0. In the quarterfinals, Williams lost to No. 18 Andrea Petkovic in three sets.\nAt the Rogers Cup, Williams defeated No. 24 Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova in three sets, scoring her first victory at that tournament on her fifth attempt. She defeated No. 7 Angelique Kerber in the third round in a three-set thriller described by one of the commentators as \"quite simply one of the matches of the 2014 season so far on the WTA\". Williams produced yet another upset in three sets against Suárez Navarro to advance to the semifinals, where she defeated younger sister and No. 1 Serena Williams in the pair's 25th meeting. It was her 14th victory over a reigning No. 1 and her first since the 2009 Wimbledon Championships, when she defeated Dinara Safina 6–1, 6–0 in the semifinals. It was also the first time since 2009 that Williams had beaten her younger sister Serena. She lost the championship match to No. 5 Agnieszka Radwańska.\nAt her final tournament before the US Open, Williams lost in a tight three-setter to No. 17, Lucie Šafářová, in the first round at the Cincinnati Open. At the 2014 US Open Williams made it to the third round for the first time since 2010 and was two points away (multiple times) from moving into the Round of 16 before ultimately going down to 13th-seeded Sara Errani for the first time in four meetings.\nWilliams's next tournament was at the Bell Challenge in Quebec, where she received a wildcard as the No. 1 seed. She advanced to the quarterfinals in straight-set first- and second-round victories and was set to play Czech player Lucie Hradecká. She defeated Hradecká in a 2-hour, 13-minute match in three sets. In the semifinal, Williams beat fellow countrywomen Shelby Rogers in straight sets to progress to her fourth final of the year, where she lost to a resurgent Mirjana Lučić-Baroni in straight sets. Williams then played at the Wuhan Open, where she lost in the first round to Caroline Garcia despite having held a match point. Her final tournament of the year was at the China Open, where she won her first two matches before withdrawing before the third round. Williams ended the year ranked No. 19 in singles, the first finish since 2010 inside the top 20. Williams joined the Bangalore Raptors team in 2014 for the first edition of Champions Tennis League India.\n\n\n=== 2015: Re-entering the top 10 ===\nWilliams started off her season at the Auckland Open, where she won her 46th career singles title by defeating Caroline Wozniacki in three sets in the final. Then, at the Australian Open, Williams made it to the quarterfinals at a Grand Slam championship for the first time since the 2010 US Open. She defeated Camila Giorgi in the third round having to recover from a set and break down to reach the second week of a Grand Slam tournament for the first time since the 2011 Wimbledon Championships and then overturned a three-match losing streak to Agnieszka Radwańska before losing to Madison Keys after being up a break in the deciding set. Williams had her 16-match winning streak at the Dubai Tennis Championships ended by Lucie Šafářová in the third round. Her next tournament was at the Qatar Open where she saved a match point in a heated encounter versus Barbora Záhlavová-Strýcová in the second round before defeating Agnieszka Radwańska for a second time in 2015 to advance to the semifinals. She ended up losing in three sets to Victoria Azarenka. Williams competed at the Miami Open, where she won against Samantha Stosur in the third round and Caroline Wozniacki in the fourth round (scoring her fourth top-10 win of the season and improving her head-to-head record against Wozniacki to a perfect 7–0). In the quarterfinals, she was defeated by Suárez Navarro, in three sets.\nWilliams began her clay-court season at the Madrid Open where she lost in the first round to Victoria Azarenka in straight sets. She made it to the third round of the Italian Open, before losing to Simona Halep. Williams failed to win her opening match at the French Open, where she lost in straight sets to Sloane Stephens. She did not attend her mandatory post-match press conference and was subsequently fined $3000. Williams then played at Wimbledon, winning her first three rounds in straight sets. She then lost to her sister, Serena, in the fourth round in straight sets. Williams then played at the İstanbul Cup where she lost in the first round to qualifier Kateryna Bondarenko.\nWilliams began her US Open series at the Rogers Cup, where she was a finalist last year. She lost in the first round to Sabine Lisicki. Her loss pushed her outside of the top 20. Her next tournament was at the Cincinnati Open. She made it to the second round and was set to play Ana Ivanovic, before she withdrew due to a virus.\nShe was seeded 23rd for the 2015 US Open and played Monica Puig in the first round. She won in three tough sets. In the second round, she overcame two costly double faults in the second set to defeat fellow American Irina Falconi. She defeated 12th seed Belinda Bencic and qualifier Anett Kontaveit in straight sets in the third and fourth rounds, respectively. Williams played her sister Serena in the quarterfinals in their fifth meeting at the US Open and their 27th meeting overall. Williams lost the match in three sets.\nWilliams scored her fifth top 10 win of the season by defeating No. 7, Agnieszka Radwańska, in the first round of the Wuhan Open. She then beat qualifier Julia Görges in the second round for her 700th career win (becoming only the ninth woman in the Open Era to achieve this feat). She landed another top 10 victory by winning against No. 10 Suárez Navarro in the third round. Williams defeated both Johanna Konta and Roberta Vinci (saving match point) in three sets to move into the championship match where she won her biggest title in more than five years when her opponent, No. 8 Garbiñe Muguruza, retired while trailing a set and a double break. The next week Williams lost to Ana Ivanovic in the second round of the China Open. She made it to the semifinals of the Hong Kong Open where she lost in a tight two-setter to eventual champion Jelena Janković.\nWith her results throughout the season, Williams became an Alternate for the WTA Finals in Singapore. Additionally, she qualified for the WTA Elite Trophy in Zhuhai where she is the number one seed. She defeated Madison Keys in her first round-robin match in three sets. In her second round-robin match she defeated wildcard Zheng Saisai to advance to the semifinals, where she defeated Roberta Vinci for a fifth consecutive time. Williams captured the first WTA Elite Trophy, her third WTA title of the season and 48th title of her career by defeating Karolína Plíšková, in the final. She re-entered the top ten for the first time since 2011 and ended the year at No. 7 in the WTA rankings. Williams was the 10th most popular player of the year according to the WTA's website and received the WTA Comeback Player of the Year award.\n\n\n=== 2016: Wimbledon semifinal ===\nWilliams began 2016 by playing at the World Tennis Thailand Championship – an exhibition event in Thailand – where she lost to Sara Errani and Angelique Kerber. She then entered the Auckland Open, where she was the No. 1 seed and defending champion, and lost in the first round to 18-year-old Daria Kasatkina. (This was also Williams's first tournament since the 2011 Australian Open as a top-10 player.) At the Australian Open, Williams, seeded 8th, lost to Johanna Konta in the first round. Afterwards, she helped the USA Fed Cup Team to a 4–0 victory over Poland, winning both of her singles matches. Williams's next tournament was at the Taiwan Open, where she was the No. 1 seed. She defeated Misaki Doi in the final, earning her 49th career title.\nWilliams returned to Indian Wells for the first time in 15 years after boycotting the tournament in 2001, but lost in the second round to Kurumi Nara. The following week, she was knocked out in the second round of the Miami Open by qualifier Elena Vesnina. Both results marked her worst exits at Indian Wells and Miami in her 23-year career. She began the clay-court season with a win over Alison Riske at the Charleston Open, before losing to Yulia Putintseva in the third round in three tight sets. Williams was scheduled to begin her clay-court season at the Madrid Open but withdrew due to a hamstring injury. The following week, she lost in the second round in Rome. Seeded ninth at the French Open, Williams won her first two rounds in straight sets to set up a third-round clash with Alizé Cornet, whom she defeated in three sets to reach the fourth round for the first time since 2010. She recorded the 200th loss of her career against 8th-seeded Timea Bacsinszky, who won in straight sets. However, her result pushed her back into the top 10 for the first time since her loss at the Australian Open. She also won her first Grand Slam doubles match with sister Serena Williams since the 2014 US Open.\n\nAt the Wimbledon Championships, Williams reached the third round of the championships where she overcame the 29th seed, Daria Kasatkina, in a 2-hour, 42-minute marathon. She defeated 12th seed Carla Suárez Navarro in the fourth round, and now leads 4–3 in their head-to-head meetings. Williams advanced to the quarterfinals for the first time in six years, where she defeated Yaroslava Shvedova. In her first major semifinal since the 2010 US Open and her first Wimbledon semifinal since 2009, she lost to fourth seed Angelique Kerber in straight sets. In the doubles tournament, Venus and Serena Williams advanced to their first major final since 2012. They then won their 14th major title together and sixth at Wimbledon.\nWilliams began her US Open Series at the Stanford Classic, where she was the No. 1 seed. She defeated Magda Linette in the second round and compatriots Catherine Bellis and Alison Riske in the quarterfinals and semifinals, respectively, to reach her eighth final in Stanford. She lost to Johanna Konta, in three sets. By virtue of her result, Williams ascended to No. 6 in the rankings, her highest position since being diagnosed with Sjögren's syndrome in 2011. Williams then entered the Rogers Cup. Having received a bye in the first round, Williams won her second-round match against Barbora Strýcová, in straight sets. She fell to Madison Keys in the third round in three sets.\nWilliams failed to medal in her singles and doubles events at the 2016 Rio Summer Olympics, falling in the first round in both events, marking her worst exits of her Olympic career. She entered the mixed doubles event with Rajeev Ram, defeating the Netherlands in the first round after saving match point. The pair then defeated Italy in the quarterfinals and India in the semifinals to set up a clash with the United States team of Bethanie Mattek-Sands and Jack Sock in the gold medal match. The duo lost to Mattek-Sands and Sock. By winning a silver medal, Williams became the only female player (besides Kathleen McKane Godfree) to win a medal in all three events (singles, doubles and mixed); her five medals mean she now shares the record for most Olympic medals won in tennis with Godfree.\nAt the 2016 US Open, Williams broke the record for the most major appearances, surpassing Amy Frazier's record of 71. This is also the first time that she's been seeded in the top ten at all four Grand Slam tournaments this year, having last achieved this in 2010. She won her first three-round matches respectively against Kateryna Kozlova, Julia Görges and the 26th seed Laura Siegemund. She lost in the fourth round to 10th seed Karolína Plíšková after failing to convert match point.\nIn September 2016, in response to WADA database leak, Williams confirmed the usage of banned substances classified by WADA as Therapeutic Use Exemptions (TUEs), stating: \"The applications for TUEs under the Tennis Anti-Doping program require a strict process for approval which I have adhered to when serious medical conditions have occurred\".\nWilliams failed to defend her title in Wuhan, falling in the third round to ninth seed Svetlana Kuznetsova. This pushed her outside of the top ten for a second time this year. The following week she was bundled out of the China Open in the first round by No. 223-ranked Peng Shuai. Williams qualified for the WTA Elite Trophy, where she was the defending champion, however she decided not to participate. She finished the year ranked No. 17.\n\n\n=== 2017: Two major finals and return to the top 5 ===\nWilliams began her 2017 season at Auckland, winning her opening match against local wildcard Jade Lewis before withdrawing due to a right arm pain. Seeded 13th at the Australian Open, Williams defeated Kateryna Kozlova, qualifier Stefanie Vögele, Duan Yingying and qualifier Mona Barthel in the opening four rounds respectively in straight sets to advance to the quarterfinals. She defeated 24th seed Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova for her 50th win at the Australian Open, the first time Williams won a quarterfinal match in Melbourne since defeating Daniela Hantuchová in 2003. Coming back from a set down in her semifinal match, Williams defeated rising American star CoCo Vandeweghe to advance to her first Grand Slam final since Wimbledon 2009 and her first Australian Open final since 2003. In doing so, she set the Open era record for the longest span (20 years) between grand slam singles final appearances, having first reached a Grand Slam singles final at the 1997 US Open. In a closely fought final, she lost in two sets to her younger sister Serena, who made history by winning her 23rd Grand Slam singles title, surpassing the mark set by Steffi Graf. The following week, Williams competed in the St. Petersburg Ladies' Trophy, but lost in the second round to eventual champion Kristina Mladenovic. At the Indian Wells Open, Williams came back from a set down and saved three match points in the second round to defeat Jelena Janković, tying their head-to-head record at seven-all. This was her first win at Indian Wells since 2001. She defeated Lucie Šafářová and qualifier Peng Shuai in the third and fourth rounds respectively, avenging her previous losses to both players. She lost to the eventual champion, Elena Vesnina, in the quarterfinals. The following week, Williams scored her first top-ten win since 2015, against Svetlana Kuznetsova in the fourth round of the Miami Open. She defeated No. 1 Angelique Kerber in the quarterfinals, becoming the oldest player to beat a current No. 1. She lost for a third consecutive time to eventual champion Johanna Konta in straight sets in her first semifinal in Miami since 2010. This marked her fourth consecutive loss to eventual champions.\nThe following week, after receiving a bye, Williams lost to eventual semifinalist Laura Siegemund in the Volvo Car Open. Having saved match point in the second set, Williams forced two match points in the third set, but Siegemund saved both. After the match, Williams said, \"This could be the best match she'll ever play in her life. I basically won the match but still lost.\" Williams withdrew from the Madrid Open after an injury to her right arm. She made her European clay-court debut at the |Italian Open where she defeated Yaroslava Shvedova and Lesia Tsurenko in straight sets. She defeated No. 6 Johanna Konta in the third round, but lost in her first quarterfinal in Rome since 2012 to Garbiñe Muguruza in three sets. During this match, Williams hit a reactionary lob off an attacking forehand that was voted WTA shot of the month. Williams defeated Wang Qiang, Kurumi Nara and Elise Mertens in the first three rounds of the French Open before again losing to Bacsinszky in the fourth round, this time in three sets.\nWilliams entered Wimbledon as the number 10 seed. She defeated Elise Mertens, Wang Qiang, Naomi Osaka and Ana Konjuh to reach the quarterfinals for the 13th time in her career, where she defeated the 2017 French Open champion Jeļena Ostapenko in straight sets. This was also her 100th career match at Wimbledon. She advanced to her ninth Wimbledon final by defeating Johanna Konta, in straight sets in the semifinals. This marked her 87th win at Wimbledon, the third most on the all-time list. This also marked the first season since 2003 that Williams reached two slam finals. Williams lost the final in straight sets to Garbiñe Muguruza. She gained the No. 9 ranking by reaching the final, her second appearance in the top 10 in 2017; she had briefly returned to the top 10 in 2017 by virtue of beating Angelique Kerber in Miami.\nWilliams began her play in the US Open Series at the Canadian Open. She defeated qualifier Irina-Camelia Begu in three sets and Kateřina Siniaková in straight sets before losing to fifth seed and eventual champion Elina Svitolina in the third round. The next week, Williams competed in Cincinnati and defeated Alison Riske in the first round before losing to Ashleigh Barty in the second round. Barty was the first person to have defeated Williams and fail to reach at least the semifinals of the event in which they had defeated her in 2017. At the 2017 US Open, Williams defeated Viktória Kužmová, Océane Dodin, and Maria Sakkari to reach the fourth round. Williams reached the second week of all majors in a single season for the first time since 2010, and reached the second week of seven consecutive Grand Slam tournaments, the longest streak among WTA players at that time. In the fourth round, Williams beat Suárez Navarro in three sets to reach her 12th US Open quarterfinal, where she defeated Petra Kvitová in a third set tiebreak during the two-hour, 35-minute match. She also guaranteed her return to the top five in the WTA rankings at the conclusion of the tournament for the first time since January 2011. Williams then lost in three sets to fellow American and eventual champion Sloane Stephens in her first US Open semifinal since 2010.\nOn September 26, Williams qualified for the WTA Finals for the first time since 2010. In her first tournament after the US Open, Williams defeated Risa Ozaki in the first round of the Hong Kong Open, before falling to Naomi Osaka. At the WTA Finals, Williams was placed in the White Group with Karolína Plíšková, Garbiñe Muguruza and Jeļena Ostapenko. After losing her first match to Pliskova in straight sets, Williams defeated Ostapenko in a marathon match lasting almost 3+1⁄2 hours. She defeated Muguruza in straight sets to progress to the semifinals, avenging her loss to the Spaniard in the Wimbledon final. Williams then defeated Caroline Garcia in three sets to advance to her first final at the year-end championships since 2009, where she finished runner-up to sister Serena Williams. She met Caroline Wozniacki in the final, where she found herself down a set and 0–5. Despite winning the next four games, she lost the match in two sets. She finished the year ranked No. 5 and topped the prize money list for this year.\n\n\n=== 2018: 1000th match, struggle with form ===\nWilliams began her 2018 season at the Sydney International, where she was the second seed and received a first-round bye. In the second round she lost to Angelique Kerber, who went on to win the tournament. As the fifth seed and defending finalist at the Australian Open, Williams lost in straight sets to Belinda Bencic in the first round, ending her streak of seven consecutive appearances in the second week of the Grand Slams, and as a result dropping considerably in the rankings as well.\nWilliams competed in the Fed Cup quarterfinals against the Dutch team. She won both her singles matches in straight sets against Arantxa Rus and Richèl Hogenkamp to send the United States into the semifinals. She also played her career 1000th match and earned her 20th Fed Cup singles win.\nAfter receiving a first round bye at the Indian Wells Open, Williams defeated Sorana Cîrstea to set up a match with her sister Serena, in the third round. She defeated her for the 12th time in her career – her first straight sets victory against her since the 2008 Wimbledon Championships final almost a decade earlier. She then defeated Anastasija Sevastova in the fourth round and Suarez Navarro in the quarterfinals, both in straight sets. She then fell to Daria Kasatkina in a close three set match in the semifinals. The following week at the Miami Open, Williams saved three match points in her third round match against Dutch woman Kiki Bertens. She subsequently knocked out defending champion Johanna Konta in the fourth round, before falling rather unexpectedly to her compatriot and qualifier Danielle Collins in the quarterfinals.\nWilliams began her clay court season at the Madrid Open where she lost to Anett Kontaveit in the first round. Seeded eighth at the Italian Open, she received a first round bye, before defeating Elena Vesnina in three sets. She lost to Kontaveit again in the third round. Williams also played doubles with compatriot Madison Keys, but the team withdrew after winning their first round match with Keys sustaining an injury. Williams lost to Wang Qiang in the first round of the French Open, marking the first time she has lost in the first round of consecutive Grand Slam events. Williams also reached the third round in doubles with Serena, losing to third seeds Klepač and Martínez Sánchez.\nThe defending finalist at the Wimbledon, Williams defeated Johanna Larsson and Alexandra Dulgheru in the first and second rounds respectively, before losing to Kiki Bertens in the third round. As a result, she dropped out of the top ten rankings.\nWilliams began her US Open Series at the Silicon Valley Classic after accepting a wildcard, defeating Heather Watson in the second round, before losing in the quarterfinals to eventual finalist Maria Sakkari. She won her opening two rounds at the Rogers Cup before losing to the then-world No. 1, Simona Halep, hampered by a right knee injury. She withdrew from the Western & Southern Open the following week with the same injury.\nAt the 2018 US Open, Williams defeated 2004 champion Svetlana Kuznetsova and Camila Giorgi en route to a third round encounter – and 30th career match overall, with Serena, where she was handed her most-lopsided loss against her in five years. Following the US Open, Venus withdrew from the Wuhan Open and China Open, citing \"she was not physically ready to compete\". She was scheduled to finish her season at the Luxembourg Open, but pulled out due to a knee injury. She finished the season ranked No. 40, the first time since 2013 she failed to finish the season inside the top 20.\nWilliams parted ways with her long-time coach David Witt at the end of the 2018 season.\n\n\n=== 2019: Continued struggles, out of top 50 ===\nWilliams began her 2019 season with an exhibition match against Serena at the Mubadala World Tennis Championship, which she won in the match tiebreak. Williams then played in the ASB Classic in Auckland, where she was seeded sixth. She defeated Victoria Azarenka and Lauren Davis, before losing in the quarterfinals to Bianca Andreescu in three sets. Unseeded at the Australian Open, Williams defeated Mihaela Buzărnescu and Alizé Cornet, both in three sets, to set up a meeting with the topseeded Simona Halep in the third round. Williams lost to Halep in two sets.\nRanked 36th and unseeded at Indian Wells, Williams started with a win over Andrea Petkovic, before coming back from a set and a double break down to beat the third seed Petra Kvitová in the second round. This was Williams's first top five win since the 2017 WTA Finals. She then defeated Christina McHale and Mona Barthel to advance to her third straight Indian Wells quarterfinal, where she lost to the eighth seed and eventual runner-up, Angelique Kerber.\nRanked 43rd as she entered the Miami Open, Williams beat Dalila Jakupović, Suarez Navarro and Daria Kasatkina, all in straight sets, before falling again to third ranked Simona Halep in the fourth round.\nWilliams started her clay-court season as a wildcard at the Italian Open where she defeated Elise Mertens in a third set tiebreak (after three hours of play) to set up a second round match with her sister Serena. Due to a left knee injury, however, Serena was forced to withdraw from the match. Williams then fell to eventual runner-up Johanna Konta in the third round in straight sets. She subsequently fell to the ninth seed, Elina Svitolina, in the French Open first round, her second year in a row failing to win a match at the French Open.\nFor the first time since 2011 and fourth time in her career, Williams played a Wimbledon warmup event after accepting a wildcard into the Birmingham Classic. She defeated Aliaksandra Sasnovich in the first round to set up a meeting with Wang Qiang, which Williams also won to reach the quarterfinals, where she lost to eventual champion and new world No. 1, Ashleigh Barty. However, thanks to this run, Williams returned to the top 50 in the rankings. She also accepted a wildcard to play doubles with Harriet Dart, losing in the first round in a match tiebreak. At Wimbledon, Williams faced Coco Gauff, the youngest qualifier in the history of the event at 15 years old. Gauff defeated Williams in a tight two-set match.\n\n\n=== 2020: Out of top 75 ===\nWilliams was scheduled to start her 2020 season at the Brisbane International but withdrew before the tournament began. She also withdrew from the Adelaide International. At the Australian Open, Williams was beaten by Coco Gauff in the first round. At the Mexican Open, where she was the fifth seed, Williams was beaten by qualifier Kaja Juvan.\nAfter a four-month break due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Williams returned to competition by playing World TeamTennis. Her first official tournament back was the Top Seed Open, where she defeated Victoria Azarenka in the first round, then took on Serena in the second round, losing to her in a tight three-set match. Williams then fell to Dayana Yastremska in the first round of the Western & Southern Open. Following the tournament, Williams dropped to No. 67 in the WTA rankings.\nWilliams lost to Azarenka at the Italian Open, then fell to Anna Karolína Schmiedlová at the French Open. She finished the year with one match win and a 1–8 tour record. Her ranking fell to 78 in the world by the end of the season.\n\n\n=== 2021–2022: Out of the top 100, 90th major appearance ===\n\nWilliams started the 2021 season at the Yarra Valley Classic, where she defeated Arantxa Rus, in straight sets, before losing in straight sets to fourth seed Petra Kvitová. She also reached the second round of the Australian Open. Since then, Williams was on a five-match losing streak and dropped out of the top 100 in May, before the French Open, to her lowest ranking since 2011. At the French Open, she lost in the first round to the 32nd seed, Ekaterina Alexandrova. She received a wildcard for the main draw of Wimbledon but she was later upgraded to the main draw as direct entry due to Naomi Osaka's withdrawal. She won her first round match against Mihaela Buzărnescu. This was Venus Williams's record breaking 90th Grand Slam appearance and also her 90th match win at Wimbledon.\nShe missed the next four Grand Slam tournaments in singles before receiving a wildcard for the 2022 US Open. She lost in the first round in straight sets to Alison Van Uytvanck. She also played doubles with Serena at the US Open. Their first round match was the first doubles match in history to be given the nighttime slot on Arthur Ashe Stadium. The pair lost to Lucie Hradecká and Linda Nosková. With Serena's retirement, this was the final Grand Slam tournament match for the 14-time major doubles champions. Venus later stated that when Serena retired, she too retired from playing doubles.\n\n\n=== 2023: 30th year on the WTA Tour, ongoing struggle with injuries ===\nIn January, she received a wildcard for the main draw of Auckland Open, and started her 30th year on the WTA Tour with a straight-sets victory over fellow American Katie Volynets in the first round. She opened the second round by winning the first set against Zhu Lin but then went on to lose the match when she dropped the next two sets. Williams received a main draw wildcard to the 2023 Australian Open but was forced to withdraw after sustaining an injury in her second round match against Lin in Auckland. The injury caused Williams to miss the rest of the hard court swing and the clay season.\nWilliams received a wildcard at the Rosmalen Grass Court Championships where she lost in the first round to Céline Naef. Venus then competed in the 2023 Birmingham Classic and won her first match as a 43-year-old, defeating Camilla Giorgi in over three hours in an epic three-set thriller. It was her first victory over a top 50 player in almost four years. The success was short-lived, and Williams fell in the second round to Jelena Ostapenko in another close three-set match. Williams continued to be hampered by injuries during the match and received an off-court medical timeout. Williams received a wildcard to the 2023 Wimbledon main draw but lost in straight sets to Elina Svitolina in the first round, suffering a serious knee injury. Williams expressed frustration at her improving form being affected by injuries, stating in her post-match press conference that the injuries were \"hard to process emotionally, mentally and physically on the court\".\nWilliams lost in the first round of the Canadian Open in Montreal but secured her first Top 20 win in more than four years with a straight sets win over No. 16 seed Veronika Kudermetova in the Western & Southern Open. She followed that win with a lopsided first set win over rising star Zheng Qinwen but eventually lost the next two sets and the match. The first set was described as \"vintage Venus\" and gave hope for Williams's return to the US Open.\nAt the US Open, in her first round match, which was also Williams's 100th career US Open match, she suffered one of her most lopsided Grand Slam losses, winning only two games against qualifier Greet Minnen.\nWilliams ended the 2023 season ranked No. 412 in the world.\n\n\n=== 2024–2026: Multiple wildcards, losing streak ===\nDespite her injury-plagued season in 2023, Williams announced her intention to return to action in March 2024. While her injuries forced her to miss the Australian summer hardcourt swing, she said her target was to participate in the US hardcourt tournaments in Indian Wells and Miami. She lost in the first round of both tournaments to Nao Hibino and Diana Shnaider respectively.\nIn 2025, Williams again received a main-draw wildcard for Indian Wells, but she turned it down. While attending the Met Gala in May 2025, Williams denied that she has retired, and she said that she will return to the court \"when the time feels right\". In July, Williams accepted a wildcard entry for the 2025 Washington Open, beating Peyton Stearns in the first round. She also reached the doubles quarterfinal with Hailey Baptiste.\nWilliams then lost in the first round at 2025 Cincinnati Open to Jessica Bouzas Maneiro and at 2025 US Open to Karolína Muchová. She also lost in the opening round in mixed doubles with Reilly Opelka, but she managed to reach her first Grand Slam quarterfinal since 2017 in women's doubles alongside Leylah Fernandez, at which point they were eliminated by top seeds Kateřina Siniaková and Taylor Townsend.\nIn 2026, Williams received a wildcard to the Auckland Open, but was eliminated in the first round by Magda Linette. The following week, she was a wildcard entry at the Hobart International, where she was eliminated in straight sets by Tatjana Maria in the first round. Their combined ages, 84, set a record for the highest combined age of a match in the history of the WTA Tour. She then received another wildcard, this time to the Australian Open, where she was eliminated in the first round by Olga Danilović. Williams received a wildcard entry into the main-draw at the 2026 Madrid Open, losing to Kaitlin Quevedo in the first round to become the first former world No. 1 to be defeated in 10 successive singles matches since the rankings were first published in 1975. At the same tournament, she teamed up with Katie Boulter in the doubles and the wildcard pairing overcame Jiang Xinyu and Xu Yifan, before losing to seventh seeds Sofia Kenin and Hsieh Su-wei in the second round.\n\n\n== Fight for equal prize money ==\nDespite years of protests by tennis pioneer Billie Jean King and others, the French Open and Wimbledon still refused to pay women's and men's players equally through all rounds as of 2005. That year, Williams privately met with officials from both tournaments, arguing for complete equal prize money.\nThe turning point was an essay by Williams published in The Times on the eve of Wimbledon in 2006, in which she accused Wimbledon of being on the \"wrong side of history\". British Prime Minister Tony Blair and members of Parliament publicly endorsed Williams's arguments. Later that year, the Women's Tennis Association and UNESCO teamed for a campaign to promote gender equality in sports, asking Williams to lead the campaign. Under enormous pressure, Wimbledon announced in February 2007 that it would award equal prize money to all competitors in all rounds; the French Open followed suit a day later. In the aftermath, the Chicago Sun-Times cited Williams as \"the single factor\" that \"changed the minds of the boys\" and a leader whose \"willingness to take a public stand separates her not only from most of her female peers, but also from our most celebrated male athletes\". Williams herself commented, \"Somewhere in the world a little girl is dreaming of holding a giant trophy in her hands and being viewed as an equal to boys who have similar dreams.\"\nWilliams herself became the first woman to benefit from equal prize money at Wimbledon, as she won the 2007 edition and was awarded the same amount as the men's champion, Roger Federer. Williams's fight for equality was documented in Nine for IX, Venus Vs. It premiered on July 2, 2013.\n\n\n== Other on court activities ==\n\n\n=== 1998: Karsten Braasch vs. the Williams sisters ===\n\nWilliams, along with her sister Serena, competed in a \"Battle of the Sexes\" against Karsten Braasch at the 1998 Australian Open. Braasch, the world's 203rd-ranked player, was more than 13 years older than the sisters and was described by a journalist as \"a man whose training regime centered around a pack of cigarettes and more than a couple bottles of ice cold lager.\" He defeated both sisters in a single set against each, beating Serena 6–1 and Venus 6–2.\n\n\n== Playing style ==\nWilliams is an aggressive player, with an all-court game. Due to her assertive playing style, she typically accumulates large numbers of both winners and unforced errors. She possesses powerful groundstrokes on both sides, and is capable of hitting both her forehand and backhand flat, and with topspin. She is also adept at hitting her backhand with slice to slow down rallies and disrupt pace within rallies. Her serve is powerful, allowing her to serve numerous aces in any match. At the peak of her career, her first serve would average 182 km/h (113 mph), and would frequently peak at 199 km/h (124 mph); her serve has slowed since then, averaging 172 km/h (107 mph), and peaking at 189 km/h (117 mph). She possesses effective kick and slice serves, which she deploys as second serves, preventing opponents from scoring free points. Up to 2014, she held the record for the fastest serve on the WTA Tour, recorded at the 2007 US Open, at 208 km/h (129 mph). She likes to approach the net, and finish points quickly. Her height, at 6 ft 1 in (1.85 m), provides her with a long arm span, allowing her to reach difficult returns while positioned at the net. She has a repertoire of shots to perform at the net, which leads to many won points.\nDue to her all-court game, Williams can hit winners from any position. A tactical player with problem-solving skills, she relies on defense infrequently, rarely hitting drop shots and lobs, as her speed and court coverage allow her to hit with assertive power and strength from frequently defensive positions. Further strengths include her intricate footwork, and supreme athleticism.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\n\nIn 2003, Yetunde Price, Venus and Serena Williams's 31-year-old sister and their personal assistant, was shot dead in Compton, California, near the courts on which the sisters once practiced.\nIn 2007, Williams received her associate degree in fashion design from the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale.\nIn 2011, Williams was forced to withdraw from the US Open before her second-round match following a Sjögren's syndrome diagnosis. After the diagnosis, she adopted a vegan diet and reduced her intake of calories and sugars.\nIn 2015, Williams received a Bachelor of Science degree in business administration from Indiana University East. She began her degree in 2011 through a reciprocal agreement between the university and the Women's Tennis Association that allows athletes to play tennis professionally while studying online.\nWilliams was raised as a Jehovah's Witness.\nIn July 2025, Williams opened up about her decades-long struggle with adenomyosis and uterine fibroids, detailing the impact it had on her career and life, as well as the lack of knowledge and proper support from doctors that delayed diagnosis and treatment.\n\n\n=== Relationships ===\nWilliams has dated golfer Hank Kuehne. In 2012, she met Cuban model Elio Pis when he was hired as an underwear model for her clothing line; they dated until 2015. She dated publishing heir Nicholas Hammond for two years until 2019. On December 19, 2025, following a previous September 18 wedding in Ischia, Italy, Williams officially married actor-producer Andrea Preti.\n\n\n=== 2017 car crash ===\nOn June 9, 2017, Williams was driving in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, when another car collided with hers. The crash killed a 78-year-old man and injured another person. Police originally said that Williams was at fault for the crash, but on December 21, 2017, authorities determined that it was caused by an unidentified third driver.\n\n\n=== Business ventures ===\nWilliams is the chief executive officer of her interior design firm V Starr Interiors, located in Jupiter, Florida. Her company designed the set of the Tavis Smiley Show on the Public Broadcasting Service, the Olympic athletes' apartments as part of New York City's failed bid to host the 2012 Summer Olympics, and residences and businesses in the Palm Beach, Florida area.\nIn 2001, Williams was named among the 30 most powerful women in America by the Ladies Home Journal.\nIn 2007, Williams teamed with retailer Steve & Barry's to launch her own fashion line, EleVen. \"I love fashion and the idea that I am using my design education to actually create clothing and footwear that I will wear on and off the tennis court is a dream come true for me\" Williams's line debuted during the 2012 New York fashion week. It was modeled by athletes rather than models, as Williams chose to feature the type of people for whom the line was designed. She also wears outfits from her fashion line on the tennis court.\nIn June 2009, Williams was named 77th in the Top 100 Most Powerful Celebrities list compiled by Forbes magazine.\nIn August 2009, Williams and her sister Serena became minority owners of the Miami Dolphins. This made the sisters the first African-American women to obtain ownership in an NFL franchise.\nIn late June 2010, Williams released her first book, Come to Win; On How Sports Can Help You Top Your Profession, which she cowrote with Kelly E. Carter. To promote the book, she embarked on a nationwide tour and appeared on several talk shows, including The Early Show and Good Morning America. The book reached the top five on The New York Times Best Seller list.\n\n\n== Recognition ==\nWilliams is widely regarded as one of the greatest tennis players of all time.\nIn 2005, Tennis Magazine ranked Williams as the 25th-best player of the past 40 years.\nIn June 2011, she was named one of the \"30 Legends of Women's Tennis: Past, Present and Future\" by Time.\nIn 2018, Tennis Magazine ranked Williams as the eighth-best female player of the Open Era.\nIn May 2020, both the Tennis Channel and Newsday ranked Williams as the eighth-greatest female player of all time.\n\n\n== Equipment ==\nIn 1995, when Williams was 14, she signed an endorsement deal with Reebok and wore the company's apparel and shoes. She used a Wilson Hammer 6.2 Stretch racket.\n\n\n== Career statistics ==\n\n\n=== Grand Slam tournament performance timeline ===\n\nCurrent through the 2026 US Open.\n\n\n=== Grand Slam tournament finals ===\n\n\n==== Singles: 16 (7 titles, 9 runner-ups) ====\n\n\n==== Doubles: 14 (14 titles) ====\n\n\n==== Mixed doubles: 3 (2 titles, 1 runner-up) ====\n\n\n== World Team Tennis ==\nWilliams has played 14 seasons of World TeamTennis, making her debut in 2000 with the St. Louis Aces, playing a season with the Delaware Smash in 2005, three seasons with the Philadelphia Freedoms from 2006 to 2008, and eight seasons with the Washington Kastles in 2010–2015, 2017–2019. She has five King Trophies, claiming her first with the Freedoms in 2006 and four trophies with the Kastles in 2011, 2012, 2014, and 2015. She was also named the 2012 WTT Final MVP for her efforts. It was announced she will be joining the Washington Kastles during the 2020 WTT season set to begin July 12 at The Greenbrier.\n\n\n== Records and achievements ==\nAt the 2026 Australian Open, Williams extended her record as the all-time leader, male or female, in Grand Slam singles tournaments played, with her 95th appearance. With her run to the 2017 Wimbledon singles final, she claimed the record for the longest time between a player's first and most recent major singles finals appearances (a record later surpassed by her sister Serena at the 2019 US Open). Venus won four Olympic gold medals (one in singles and three in women's doubles with her sister) and one silver (in mixed doubles), equal to Kathleen McKane Godfree for the most Olympic medals won by a tennis player in history. At the 2000 Sydney Olympics, she became only the second player to win Olympic gold medals in both singles and doubles at one Olympic Games. After winning silver in mixed doubles with Rajeev Ram at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics, Williams became the first tennis player to win a medal at four Olympic Games, as well as the first player in the Open Era to win an Olympic medal in all three events (singles, doubles, mixed). She and Serena are also the only tennis players in history with four Olympic gold medals, as well as the only ones to win Olympic gold in the same event on three occasions. She along with her sister Serena are the only women in the Open Era to win Olympic tennis gold in both singles and doubles.\n\nThese records were attained in Open era of tennis.\nRecords in bold indicate peer-less achievements.\nRecords in italics are currently active streaks.\n\n\n== Awards ==\n\n\n== Filmography ==\nVenus and Serena (2012), documentary film that takes an inside look at lives and careers of professional tennis players, Venus and Serena Williams.\nKing Richard (2021, executive producer), biographical sports drama film on Venus and Serena Williams.\n\n\n=== Television ===\n\n\n== See also ==\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n=== Citations ===\n\n\n=== Works cited ===\nMorgan, Terri (2001). Venus and Serena Williams: Grand Slam Sisters. Sports Achievers Biographies. Lerner Publishing. 64pp. ISBN 978-0-8225-3684-0.\n\n\n== Further reading ==\nEdmondson, Jacqueline (2005). Venus and Serena Williams: A Biography. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-313-33165-7.\nWilliams, Venus; Williams, Serena; Beard, Hilary (2005). Venus and Serena: Serving from the Hip: 10 Rules For Living, Loving and Winning. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 133pp. ISBN 978-0-618-57653-1.\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nVenus Williams at the Women's Tennis Association \nVenus Williams at World Tennis \nVenus Williams at the Billie Jean King Cup (archived)"}
{"title": "Viktor An", "requested": "Viktor An", "extract": "Viktor An (Russian: Виктор Ан; born Ahn Hyun-soo (Korean: 안현수) on November 23, 1985) is a South Korean-born Russian short-track speed skating coach and retired short-track speed skater. With a total of eight Olympic medals, six gold and two bronze, he is the only short track speed skater in Olympic history to win gold in every distance, and the first to win a medal in every distance at a single Games. He has the most Olympic gold medals in the sport, three of which he won in the 2006 Winter Olympics and the other three in the 2014 Winter Olympics. Considered to be the greatest short track speed skater of all time, he is a six-time overall World champion (2003–2007, 2014), two-time overall World Cup winner (2003–04, 2005–06), and the 2014 European champion. He holds the most overall titles at the World Short Track Speed Skating Championships, and is the only male short track skater to win five consecutive world titles.\nIn 2008, Ahn suffered a knee injury and could not regain his health by the time the national qualifiers for Vancouver 2010 came around. His recovery being slow and his South Korean local team dissolved in 2010, Ahn, aiming for his second Olympics, became a Russian citizen the next year and began racing for the Russian team. After winning gold in Sochi, Ahn explained his reasons for joining the Russian team saying, \"I wanted to train in the best possible environment and I proved my decision was not wrong.\" As expected, a gold-winning athlete leaving the national team caused public uproar in South Korea. However, it was aimed not at Ahn, but at the country's skating union. Most South Korean fans in a poll said they understood his decision. Ahn continued his skating career in his adopted nation until 2019 and declared his retirement in April 2020.\nIn 2023, Ahn returned to Korea as a short track leader. Ahn returned to South Korea and applied to be a coach for Seongnam's short track speed skating team, despite having renounced his South Korean citizenship when becoming Russian. However, since his change in 2014 he had been increasingly criticized for his work in Russia amid the Russo-Ukrainian War and his coaching position in the Chinese team at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. Some Korean coaches have formed The Korea Skating Coaches' Union and urged \"Seongnam to appoint a coach that meets the public eye level\" and criticized Ahn that he \"lied during the naturalization process and betrayed his country\". He was criticized by the public for betraying his country by transferring Korean sports skills to Russia and China. Ahn was eventually denied the coaching position due to significant public opposition.\nAfter being denied his position as Seongnam City Hall coach due to strong public opposition, Ahn explained the controversy he knew about his loss of nationality in advance and receives a full Olympic medal pension prior to Russian naturalization. He said: \"I donated every pension I had received prior to naturalization\". According to his explanation and a Korean ice skating official mentioned in Chosun Ilbo shortly thereafter, the entire lump sum pension he received was spent on rehabilitating \"children who needed heart surgery and Korean junior players\". He made his debut as a Korean sports leader when he was named a coach in the 2023–2024 national team trials at the request of younger members. The Korea Skating Union officially announced this through the Yonhap News Agency, and the Korean media reported it collectively.\n\n\n== Early life and education ==\nAhn began skating in 1993 in his first year of primary school. The first time he watched the sport on television was during the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer where one of his heroes, Chae Ji-hoon, took gold in the 500 m and silver in the 1000 m for South Korea. Incidentally, these were the Games where Russia achieved a national record of 11 Olympic golds, a feat that he himself would help to repeat twenty years later. His coach, Kim Ki-hoon, was a three-time Olympic gold medalist who scouted Ahn and continued to train him. He trained ten hours every day from techniques, speed, and endurance to video analysis.\n\n\n== Career ==\n\n\n=== 2000s ===\n\n\n==== Early career and the 2002 Winter Olympics ====\nAhn made his international debut at the World Junior Short Track Speed Skating Championships in 2002. Finishing first in the 1500 m, 1000 m, and 5000 m relay events, he claimed the overall title.\nAhn then participated in the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. He made the finals for the 1000 m event but returned home without a medal, after a controversial fall involving Apolo Ohno, Li Jiajun, and Mathieu Turcotte that allowed Australian Steve Bradbury to sweep the gold medal. Ahn finished in fourth place, behind Ohno and Turcotte.\nAfter the 2002 Olympics, Ahn finished second to Kim Dong-sung at his first senior-level world championship competition the same year, almost duplicating Kim's feat of winning both the Junior and Senior World Championship titles in 1997.\nAhn began dominating the sport from the 2002–2003 season. As well as claiming four overall and 1500 m World Championship titles in a row between 2003 and 2006, Ahn excelled himself at 1000 m and 3000 m during that period and also starred with the Republic of Korea's 5000 m relay team. In all, he won a total of 23 medals in that prolific spell, and took the 2004 and 2006 World Cup titles for good measure. He also set the world records for the 1500 m in 2003 at World Cup #2 in Marquette and the 3000 m at World Cup #4 in Beijing, which he held for the following eight years.\n\n\n===== National team 'recommendation system' =====\nSouth Korea has produced many outstanding short track speed skaters and is highly competitive in selecting the national team. Their key method of selecting players is to automatically select the best players in advance according to the comprehensive podium rankings of the World Championships. However, there is a system that has disappeared after much controversy and factional fight. It was the 'recommendation system'.\nSouth Korea's elite sports system was strictly a top-down relationship between leaders and athletes. and the factions were formed according to the leaders and the factions of the players were also determined by their universities and leaders. And the players was disadvantaged if he disobeyed the instructions from the factional leader.  Viktor Ahn is one of these representative players.\nAhn graduated from Korea National Sport University. His leaders were Kim Ki-hoon, a three-time Olympic champion, and Jun Myung-kyu, former vice president of the Korea Skating Union who was also the head coach of the Korean short track speed skating team from 1987 to 2002. Ahn as a junior, consistently excelled in Korea's domestic competitions and captured the Overall title at the Junior World Championships. Though he initially didn't participate in the national team trial, he was subsequently recommended to join the 2002 national team as a substitute for an injured player. This recommendation came from Park Seong-in, the president of the Korea Skating Union, and Yoo Tae-wook, the federation's director. After observing Ahn's stellar performance at the Junior World Championships, head coach Jun Myung-kyu chose him for the Olympic team. In a bold move, Jun opted for the 16-year-old, who lacked international experience, to compete in the 1000 m individual event, a decision that faced opposition from the Korea Skating Union and others.  The 2002 Olympics was his Senior international debut. In addition to Ahn, many athletes and leaders were recommended by the Korea Skating Union. They were Chae Ji-hoon, Chun Lee-kyung, Kim So-hee, Choi Min-kyung Ko Gi-hyun, Lee Ho-suk, and Choi Eun-kyung, and also included were Kim Dong-sung and Kim Sun-tae, who were injured and failed to participate in the national team trials.\nThis referral system was used to discover talented players and give opportunities to injured players. However, there were players who were alienated, which led to conflict. In 2006, the recommendation system for selection of representative players of the Korea Skating Union disappeared from the national team trials as the conflict of factional fighting was exposed to the public.\n\n\n==== 2002–2005, KNSU and Non-KNSU ====\nFactional fight in South Korean ice skating was allegedly mentioned as a form of Korea National Sport University (KNSU) and non-Korea National Sport University. But it was far more complicated inside. The power struggle of first-generation ice skating leaders, which started in the 1990s, changed form and influenced leaders, their direct disciples and athletes and changed their relationship. In 2002, when Ahn became a member of the national team, it was the time when Korean society was noisy due to the corruption of the ice skating world. Athletes and parents, who were University entrance students, gave money to professors who were influential in the ice skating world, and the professor received it. And the person who reported the case and accused his senior of corruption is Jun Myung-Kyu who becomes professor at the Korea National Sport University. In June 2003, Ahn decided to enter the Korea National Sport University in spite of exceptional conditions, including the guarantee of professor posts in other universities. The recommendation system that selected Ahn for the national team in 2002 had been in place since 1995, even before Ahn's inclusion. but in the process, At 16, he became the emblematic figure of the Korea National Sport University and professor Jun. And those on the other side accused 16-year-old Ahn of being responsible for factional conflicts in Korea's skating world.\nIn 2003–2004, when Ahn's heyday began, conflicts in the ice skating world and the tyranny of leaders were serious. In the national team Jun Myung-kyu stepped down from his post due to poor performance at the 2002 Salt Lake Olympics, and Olympic medalists Kim Ki-hoon took over the men's national team, but in 2004, Kim was forced to resign due to the controversy over forcing his athletes to wear skates made by the family-run skating company. In November 2004, Choi Eun-kyung, Byun Chun-sa etc. six women's team members left the athletes' village due to the coach's habitual beating scandal. The coaches for the women's team have all been replaced. Two months later, Ahn was assaulted at the Winter Universiade in January 2005. The men's team coach Yoon had to resign after the World Team Championships in March due to controversy over match-fixing and assault allegations raised at the time. Kim Ki-hoon was reelected coach of the men's team for the Turin 2006 Olympics instead of Yoon Jae-Myung. However, in April 2005, seven other non-Korea National Sport University athletes, with the exception of Ahn Hyun-soo, declined to enter the athletes' village. They insisted, The main person is fixed. We can't trust a coach who favours a specific player. At the end of the day, Kim Ki-hoon resigns, saying, \"I can't teach these players anymore.\" Kim Ki-hoon was professor Jun's direct disciple. Kim is known to have passed on special know-how skating skills to Ahn.\nKim Ki-hoon mentioned in an interview in 2018: \"Ahn hyun-soo was really outstanding. Teach him one thing and he really absorbs it in like a sponge. Ahn was not the only one to teach more. I coached everyone on the national team, but Ahn came to see me more often.\"\n\n\n==== 2005, Conflict with Korea Skating Union ====\nAhn was reported to be the victim of senior player Seo Ho-jin's assault at the 2005 Winter Universiade. Though Seo was expelled from the national team and Yoon Jae-myung, head coach for the event, was dismissed on charges of match-fixing, Seo returned to the national team for the 2006 Winter Olympics the next year.\nAhn refused to join the national team and take training in 2005 and also confronted with the leaders of the Korea Skating Union. In July 2005, parents and coaches, including Ahn and Choi Eun-kyung, Sung Si-bak held a press conference and exposed coach Yoon Jae-myung's Aiding and abetting assault. It also called for the resignation of all federation leaders and announced its absence from the 2006 Turin Olympics. As a result, coach Yoon's appointment has been canceled. However, the conflict at that time was at its peak. At the height of the conflict, the Korea Skating Union dismissed the national team coach Chun Jae-Su, who had called for the resignation of the entire leadership, accusing him of stirring unrest among parents and athletes. He was subsequently suspended for six months. As a result, Ahn declined to train with the national team. Parents further alleged that there was political pressure exerted by a national assembly member associated with the Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism. This situation led Ahn to train with the women's team instead of the men's, presenting considerable challenges leading up to the 2006 Olympics. Prior to his naturalization in Russia in 2011, Ahn mentioned that during this difficult time, Sung Si-bak and Lee Seung-hoon, who weren't then part of the national team, supported him.\nThe issue came back to the fore after Ahn's victory as a Russian in the 2014 Winter Olympics, as the South Korean public questioned the Korea Skating Union of losing their biggest Olympic star. Regarding the uproar against him, Seo argued that the incident was just a form of discipline from senior to junior, but Ahn revealed in 2015 that he and his junior were hit with helmets on.\nIn 2014, some Korean media outlets criticized that there was a line that went down from Jun Myung-kyu - Kim Ki-hoon - Ahn Hyun-soo and it couldn't just blame the fact that the alienated players who became coaches held Ahn Hyun-soo in check to oppose Jun Myung-kyu, and Ahn Hyun-soo also wanted it or not, he also could not be free from the responsibility of factional fighting. However, in May 2005, The Hankyoreh newspaper reported:\nThe officials of the Korea Skating Union were investigated by police for receiving money from the father of a player who was disqualified for hitting a junior player at a Universiade in Austria earlier this year to return his son to the national team.\n\n\n==== 2006 Winter Olympics ====\nAt the 2006 Winter Olympics, Ahn won gold medals in the 1500 m and 1000 m events. He set a new Olympic record time of 1:26.739 in the 1000 m, finishing ahead of teammate Lee Ho-suk and rival Ohno. Ahn also won gold in men's 5000 m relay along with teammates Lee Ho-suk, Seo Ho-jin, and Song Suk-woo. With his patented outside overtaking maneuver, he overtook defending champion Canada to get his third gold medal of the Games. Ahn became the second South Korean athlete ever to win three gold medals in one Olympics, following Jin Sun-yu who had accomplished this earlier on the same day. He also won a bronze medal in the 500 m event. Ahn was the only athlete in Turin to step on to the podium four times.\nAhn became the first short track speed skater to win a medal in every distance at a single Games, a feat unprecedented by any athlete in his sport. He is the first South Korean man to win at least 3 medals in a single Winter Olympics.\nFollowing the 2006 Olympics, Ahn maintained his record at the 2006 World Championships in Minneapolis. Despite being disqualified in the finals of the 500 m and 3000 m events, his victories in both the 1000 m and 1500 m events helped him defend his title with 68 points, followed by countryman Lee Ho-suk with 60 points. He became the first male short track skater to win four consecutive world titles.\n\n\n==== After Torino ====\nAfter the 2006 World Championships, Ahn flew back to South Korea. At Incheon International Airport, Ahn's father had a loud quarrel with the vice president of the Korea Skating Union (KSU), claiming that the coach did not associate with Ahn and conspired with other skaters to prevent Ahn from winning the title of overall champion.\nAhn collided with Lee Ho-suk and Oh Se-jong in the World Championship 3000m Super Final. The airport incident, which was reported on news screens, caused a stir in the media and the public along with factional issues. As a result, the Korea Skating Union said it would hold a committee meeting to consider disciplinary action. On April 26, 2006, the reward and punishment committee concluded that \"it was not an intentional collision after  playing the videos more than 100 times,\" and that Ahn Hyun-soo, Lee Ho-suk, and Oh Se-jong were all unintentional.\nThe South Korean short track team was split into two groups, in one of which Ahn was being coached by the women's coach Park Sae-woo due to conflicts with the men's coach Song Jae-kun. even though Ahn was the main player winning the gold medal in the Turin Olympics 5000m relay, the men's team members held a ceremony to their mentor commentator Lee Joon-ho, excluding only Ahn Hyun-soo. The tensions had risen so high that the skaters refused to dine in the same room, sit next to each other on the plane, or even share the same floor with each other. Ahn and Lee Ho-suk used to attend the same high school together, and even shared a room the previous year in skating camps, but due to the conflict they had begun to rarely speak to each other.\nAhn mentioned on his personal website that the pressure was too much for him and he contemplated quitting the sport. Due to the issue, KSU stated that starting next season, the team would be united under one head coach to prevent deleterious rivalries.\nIn spite of the conflicts, Ahn continued to dominate the sport. At the 2007 World Championships held in Milan, Ahn won his fifth world championship, finishing first in the 1000 m and in the 5000 m relay with teammates Kim Byeong-jun, Sung Si-bak, Song Kyung-taek, and Kim Hyun-kon. He also won silver in the 3000 m behind Song, and won two bronze medals in the 500 m and the 1500 m. With this victory, Ahn became the first man to win five consecutive world championships. Ahn is the only male short track skater to have won at least three consecutive world championships; Canadian short track legend Marc Gagnon has won four times, but his titles did not come back to back.\n\n\n==== Injury in early 2008 ====\nOn January 16, 2008, the Korea Skating Union (KSU) reported that Ahn had injured his knee after colliding with a fence during national team training at the Korea Training Center in Taeneung. The skate blade got stuck on the ice then the Ahn fell and bumped his knee on the fence. The fence, placed to absorb the shock, froze hard like a rock, causing serious injury rather than absorbing the impact. After being sent to the hospital, the injury was diagnosed as a fractured knee.\nDue to the injury, KSU announced that Ahn would not be competing in the ISU Samsung World Cup Series #5 and #6 in Quebec City and Salt Lake City, respectively. It was also reported that he would not be competing in the 2008 World Championships in Gangneung or the 2008 World Team Championships in Harbin, China. As a result of the unexpected injury, it was clear that Ahn would be unable to defend his sixth World title, leaving his countrymen Lee Ho-suk, Song Kyung-taek, and Lee Seung-hoon to make up the ground. After undergoing three surgeries, his rehabilitation period was predicted to be around 2–3 months.\nAfter eight months off the ice, a South Korean news article reported on September 5, 2008, that Ahn was back training, undergoing approximately two hours of physical reinforcement and skating along with around five hours of rehabilitation accompanied by muscular power training. The article also reported that Ahn was eyeing the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada.\nHowever, his recovery from the injury was much slower than initially expected, and he had to undergo four surgeries in 15 months.\n\nIn 2009, Ahn finished seventh overall at the Korean national team trials, which was not enough for him to qualify for the Olympic team. Not having fully recovered from his injury, he again was unable to qualify for the national team in the following season.\n\n\n=== 2010s ===\n\n\n==== 2010, Conflict with Korea Skating Union ====\nAfter the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, the Korean short track was embroiled in scandals such as match-fixing and internal factions. Deals for rights of Olympic and World Championship participation took place among athletes and coaches of the same faction. However, this soon caused divisions between the athletes leading to subsequent exposures. The word of these incidents spread among the athletes' parents and was exposed by Ahn Hyun-soo's father.  Ahn Hyun-Soo's father has decided to reveal the match-fixing of the national team trial for the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver due to various reasons.\nA family of Lee Jung-su noticed that  Lee lost his opportunity to participate individual event for the World Championship. Moreover, Lee Jung-Su had to forcefully write down an oath stating that he will not participate the World Championship as demanded by his coaches and head coach. The family of Lee has informed this event to the other parents of the athletes, and they have decided to report the Korea Skating Union to Korean Sports Council Investigation Committee for thorough investigation. They started a petition for the investigation and more than 200 people agreed to join the petition, yet more than 300 people's engagement was needed in order to file the case to the committee. In this sense, they requested the father of Ahn who is influential to the public to post this scandal on his son' s Fan Club Page and finally this scandal has been completely revealed to Korean society and the public. This incident had a huge impact. The players involved and the Vancouver Olympic coaches have all been disciplined. The leaders of the Korea Skating Union were all forced to resign.\nAhn Ki-won, Ahn Hyun-soo's father, pointed out the Korea Skating Union's leadership, including the then-resigned vice president Yoo Tae-wook and Jun Myung-kyu, for exerting undue pressure on coaches and athletes.\nAhn became a whistleblower who informed the South Korean society of the dark side of Korean shorttrack speed skating of factional fight and match-fixing regardless of his will. And it took a toll on him, officially or informally. The selection of the national team was suddenly postponed, and Ahn Hyun-soo, overlapped with the four-week basic military training period, disrupted his own training plan. Suspicions have also been raised that he missed an Olympic opportunity by disobeying the factional leader's words. Noise and controversy continued around him regarding factional issues and the way the national team was selected.\nAnd his team Seongnam declared a moratorium in July 2010 and decided to dismantle the ice skating team in December 2010. But there was not a team to scouted Ahn Hyun-soo.\n\n\n==== Naturalization to Russia ====\nAhn last competed as a South Korean citizen at the national team trials in April 2011, where he took gold in the 500 m. Prior to the trials, his local team Seongnam City Hall dissolved due to financial reasons, and therefore Ahn had to train by himself. Shortly before this competition, he informed the South Korean media that it would be his farewell performance. Ahn finished fifth overall at the national team trials. After the trials, Ahn announced that he will be moving to Russia because he wanted to skate in an environment where he could concentrate on skating, apart from the issues surrounding him.\nHe moved to Russia in June 2011 and decided to naturalize in July. On December 28, 2011, he was officially granted a Russian nationality by President Dmitry Medvedev. His Korean nationality was automatically extinguished by the South Korean nationality law, which does not allow dual nationality. Since then, South Korean media has reported that he received the full Olympic medal pension in July 2011, and decided to naturalized to Russia in August. Based on this, when the Korea skating coach union pointed out \"pension receipt\" due to \"morality\" issues in the process of hiring Seongnam coach in 2023, Viktor Ahn said he decided on everything in July 2011 and donated the entire pension just before Russian naturalization for the first time in 12 years.\nIn a 2015 documentary aired on South Korea's MBC, Ahn disclosed that there was pressure from a Korea Skating Union official just before his naturalization in Russia. The official warned: \"This athlete is a problematic player in South Korea and should never be accepted.\"\n\n\n==== 2011, Conflict with the South Korean coaches ====\nSouth Korean coaches and staff were already in Russia before Ahn decided to go to Russia. But in October 2011, the Russian Skating Union fired everyone, leaving Viktor Ahn alone. According to South Korean media reports at the time, 'internal conflicts between leaders', 'South Korean experts never notified Russian coaches how to prepare skating equipment accordingly in shorttrack speed skating', 'compulsory training ' and 'corporal punishment on athletes' were the reasons for the dismissal.\nAt that time, however, there were rumors in South Korea that Ahn was reluctant to undergo Korean-style training again. After this incident, Ahn's wife Woo Nari and coach Hwang Ik-hwan who were coach of his team for Seongnam just before his naturalization, were invited to Russia for Viktor Ahn's rehabilitation and psychotherapy. Along with this incident during the 2014 Sochi Olympics, the 2004 women's short track team assault incident was re-examined. This is because the assault incident of women player team in 2004, and one of the coaches who had a conflict with Viktor Ahn in Russia in 2011 was on the coaching staff of the South Korea national team.\nAbout this issue, coach Hwang Ik-hwan had an interview as follows. \"Hyun-soo won first place in the 500m in the last national trial in Korea before going to Russia. In other words, his physical condition was not bad. However, he was in the worst slump when I met him after six months. Even after they were expelled from the Russian Skating Union, Hyun-soo could not easily get out of that wound for a while.\"\nIn 2018, an official from the Korean skating world also revealed the following. \"Viktor Ahn had to went through hard time in the early days of settling in Russia. And he was able to train normally only after the Russian Skating Union fired the coach.\"\n\n\n==== Heading to Sochi ====\nAhn participated in the Russian national team trials for the 2011–2012 season and was selected as a relay member for the season. He made his debut as a Russian short track speed skater at World Cup #5 in Moscow.\nIn the national trials for the 2012–2013 season, Ahn won the 1000 m and 3000 m events, successfully pulling off to the national team. At World Cup #1 in Calgary, he won his first individual gold in the international stage since his knee injury four years ago. He also contributed to Russia's first-ever relay gold at World Cup #5 in Sochi, making an inside pass that reminded of performances in his heyday.\nAhn came through the Olympic season with flying colors, finishing second in the overall World Cup rankings and winning four golds at the 2014 European Championships. While his knee injury did not allow him to top the 1500 m races that he had dominated when representing Korea, his experience, technique, and exclusive training on the 500 m helped Ahn lead the distance in the World Cup rankings.\n\n\n==== 2014 Winter Olympics ====\n\nAt the 2014 Winter Olympics, Ahn won the bronze medal in the 1500 m event, which was the first short track speed skating medal that Russia had ever earned. Ahn then won the first Russian gold medal in short track, winning the 1000 m event by leading the first Russian 1–2 finish in short track with Vladimir Grigorev. On February 21, Ahn won his seventh overall and fifth Winter Olympic gold medal when he finished first in the 500 m men's final. With that gold medal, he became the first short track skater to win all four Olympic golds, the 500 m, 1000 m, 1500 m, and 5000 m relay. He also became the short track speed skater with the most Olympic gold medals, with five, which increased to six with a 5000 m relay win later the same day. With that gold, he became the short tracker with the most Olympic medals, at eight, tied with Apolo Ohno; he also became the short tracker with the most Olympic gold medals, at six.\nAfter his victory, Koreans came to an uproar questioning the Korea Skating Union of the reason for Ahn's naturalization, which eventually caused Korean President Park Geun-hye to order an investigation on the issue. Contrary to the public opinion in Korea, Ahn contended that he did not move to Russia because of factionalism. He also added that his father, who had argued Ahn was the victim of faction fight in Korea, was contradicting him, and going to the Olympics was the sole reason why he made the difficult decision to come to Russia. Ahn expressed his concern that though his relationship with the Korean athletes had no problems, the press was making them awkward.\n\n\n==== After Sochi ====\nIn the 2014 World Championships held a month after the Olympics, Ahn won the 1000 m and finished third in the 3000 m, grabbing his sixth world title by 63 points. He became the only man to win six world championships in the sport.\nAfter his prolific season, Ahn continued his skating career despite a part-move into coaching. He missed the 2015–2016 season due to knee problems and his wife's pregnancy. In an interview after the 2016 World Championships, which he did not take part in but did watch, he told the press that doctors have warned him undergoing extra surgery would jeopardize his career, and thus he is working on adding muscles to relieve the pain.\nAhn continued to win medals at the World and European championships for Russia. He won bronze in the 500 m and silver in the 5000 m relay at the 2017 European Championships, and won silver in the 500 m race at the 2018 European Championships. Although Ahn had planned to retire after participating the 2018 Winter Olympics in his native South Korea, he missed out the Olympics in the wake of the alleged sports doping in Russia. The IOC did not disclose the specific reasons for banning Ahn, only mentioning \"lingering suspicions\" about doping use regarding the country. Ahn, who had never tested positive for drugs, challenged the decision writing an open letter to IOC president Thomas Bach, but he was not answered.\n\n\n==== Retirement ====\nAhn decided to retire from the sport and return to his home country of South Korea after rejecting an offer to coach the Russian team in September 2018.\nAfter stepping off ice, Ahn starred in the South Korean variety-reality show Real Man 300. He was also noticed working as a player-coach at Korea National Sports University.\nIn 2018, Ahn received an offer as a national team leader from the South Korea as well as the Russia national team. A senior South Korean official revealed in February of that year that there had been informal discussions and the final decision rested with Ahn. However, the Korea Skating Union was soon mired in controversy due to an assault on a female player and a related #MeToo incident involving a national team coach, which drew significant attention in South Korean society and led to government investigations. Amid the tumultuous events within the Korea Skating Union, Viktor Ahn's discussions to lead the South Korean national team were hindered by his controversies and lack of coaching experience. The offer ultimately dissolved when he rejoined the Russian national team for the 2019–2020 season.\nIn February 2019, Ahn reversed his decision, announcing that he wanted to compete as an athlete.\nAged 33, he won silver in the 500 m and 1000 m races respectively at the ISU Short Track Speed Skating World Cup in Salt Lake City and Shanghai before anchoring Russia to gold in the mixed gender 2,000 m relay and men's 5,000 m relay.\nIn April 2020, Ahn revealed that knee problems were affecting his ability to train and that it was time for him to finally finish his skating career. In his retirement statement, he announced he will continue to work for the sport.\n\n\n=== 2020s ===\n\n\n==== 2022 Winter Olympics ====\nIn 2018, Ahn was offered a coaching position for China's national speed skating team by Wang Meng, who had been Ahn's acquaintance since 2002. Although Ahn declined the offer in 2018, he accepted the offer in late 2019.\nAs the top assistant of Kim Sun-tae, head coach for China's short track team in the 2022 Winter Olympics and previous head coach for Korea's short track team in the 2018 Winter Olympics, Ahn helped Chinese players win two gold medals, one silver medal, and one bronze medal in Beijing. His training style was to skate with the athletes throughout the sessions, so that they could naturally learn how to make steps.\nWhen Korean skaters were disqualified during the men's 1000 m semifinals, arousing short track speed skating controversies, South Korean netizens directed anger and criticism towards Ahn, who was seen congratulating his team for winning gold in the 2000 m mixed relay.\nIn addition, some Korean media and the public have remarked that he received an Olympic medal pension ('sports pension') just prior to his naturalization in Russia.\nRegarding the Olympic medal pension, he has already been confirmed to have received the most 'sports pension' among South Korean sports athletes through a parliamentary audit by the South Korean National Assembly in October 2012. During his career, he received a pension of more than 370 million won from the state.\n\"The receipt of the Olympic medal pension\" has been raised since his naturalization, but it has not been much controversy. However, in 2021, his junior Lin Xiaojun (Lim Hyo-jun), an Olympic gold medalist, was known to have decided to naturalize to China, and major South Korean media compared Lin XiaoJun, who was naturalized to China over the repeated naturalization of Korean ace athletes to other countries and pensions for the first time in 10 years. And anti-Chinese sentiment during the 2022 Beijing Olympics has raised criticism over his receipt of the Olympic medal pension.\nNot responding to interview requests during the Games, Ahn shared his thoughts on the issue in March in an interview with the Korean press by saying, \"I kept a stiff upper lip because I didn't want to be an irresponsible person. Due to the nature of the sport, judgment problems can occur at any time. All players come to the game with the mindset that they should be careful about decision issues, but the unexpected often happens on ice.\" Regarding the accusations that were poured on not only him but also his family, Ahn said, \"It suddenly occurred to me that if I gave up short track speed skating, this controversy would end,\" adding, \"I thought I had been supported for my passion and games, but it was heartbreaking to see unexpected things lead to criticism.\" He yet stated that despite the adversities, he won't be leaving the sport.\nAfter the Olympics, Ahn rejected a four-year coaching position and returned to Korea, having not met his family for 19 months due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, Ahn declined long-term leadership offers from third countries outside of South Korea, China, and Russia.\n\n\n==== Failure to return to South Korea for coaching ====\nIn 2023, Ahn returned to South Korea and applied to be a coach for Seongnam City's short track speed skating team. However, he is under huge criticism from the South Korean short track speed skating coaches as he has helped South Korean rival China to gain medals during the 2022 Beijing Olympics. The Korea skating coach union urged \"Seongnam City to appoint a coach that meets the public eye level\" and criticized Ahn that he \"lied during the naturalization process and betrayed his country\", avoiding the fact that Ahn was mistreated by the Korea Skating Union after his injuries. In late January, Seongnam City's short track speed skating team announced that no one is qualified to be a coach, meaning that Ahn is unlikely to be coach for his homeland. After Seongnam City has since announced that there are no successful candidates, and the city ultimately decided not to fill the vacant coaching position.\nsince then, the Korea skating coach union has been known as a close aide to a specific candidate, and suspicions have been raised that the disciplinary history of a specific candidate has not been raised. As a result, some South Korean media outlets suggested that there was a factional power struggle and political involvement in the ice skating world.\nFollowing South Korea's rejection of Viktor Ahn, through TASS, Russian Skating Union president expressed that they would like to appoint Ahn. In 2022, Russia invited Viktor Ahn to become an advisor to the Skating Union, but he refused due to objections by Ahn's wife. While Russia sports media outlet Sport Express urged Ahn to return to Russia as a leader.\nOn February 7, Viktor Ahn expressed his position on the controversy over Russian naturalization on his social network service (SNS) after \"received a lump-sum payment of the athletes' pension,\" which the Korea skating coach union pointed out as a moral issue. At first, he thought dual citizenship was possible. However, when he found out that he had to give up his Korean nationality, he decided that it was right to return the Olympic medal pension he received. And before naturalization in Russia, he made a full donation to \"children in need of heart surgery and junior athletes in need of rehabilitation and treatment.\" Since then, some of the pensions have been delivered to the family of Noh Jin-kyu, his junior athlete at the Korean National Sport University, according to a South Korean ice skating official. Ahn then said that he would humbly accept the criticism of choosing naturalization for any reason, but he said he would raise speak out when there is misunderstanding.\nOn February 9, The Hankyoreh pointed out Seongnam City's negligence in administration in that Ahn's coaching support was exposed in advance in connection with the recruitment of the ice skating team at Seongnam. While the Korea Skating Coaches Union pointed out that it was not the opinion of the Korean ice skating leaders as a whole, and that it was a serious problem for the media to report the opinions of certain unofficial organizations as the opinions of the entire leaders.\n\n\n==== South Korean leadership activities ====\nOn April 13, 2023, South Korean media reported as follows. Viktor Ahn will participate as a coach for multiple skaters in the 2023–24 season for the South Korean national team trials. He personally coached young skaters at the Korea National Sport University after the 2022 Beijing Olympics. Among them, seven players from high school and Korea National Sport University wrote him as a leader on the application form for participation in the national team trials. This is Ahn's first official South Korean leadership activity.\nAccording to JTBC, Ahn completed the Korea Skating Union's \"leader's lesson\" in Korea after the 2022 Beijing Olympics. According to the Korea Sports Association and  the Korea Skating Union Registration Regulations, which have been changed since April 12, 2021 due to years of \"violation of human rights of ice sports\" and \"ethical controversy of ice coaches\" in Korea, even a leader who has obtained a \"coach national license\" must complete a leader course before he can serve as a leader of the Korea Skating Union.\n\n\n== Conflict with mentor ==\nThis issue that has been consistently mentioned due to Ahn's choice of naturalization in Russia is the issues of conflict with his mentor, Jun Myung-kyu, vice president of the Korea Skating Union. According to Korean medias, Professor Jun was the planner of all Ahn's career paths. Jun was Ahn's professor. And he was Ahn's personal coach in 2007. However, Ahn disobeyed the professor Jun's words.\nIn 2014, his father and Lee Joon-ho, who was the former coach of the national team, said the following. : \"Ahn, was set to graduate from Korea National Sport University in 2007.  Ahn chose the Seongnam City Hall Short track team that Professor Jun did not want, and the relationship between Professor Jun and Ahn was estranged\". During the Olympics, Chang Myung-hee, former president of the Korea Skating Union, also said that Vice-president Jun Myung-kyu had abused his authority, and Ahn was disadvantaged. In fact, the conflict with factional leaders was also mentioned by the South Korean media in 2010. In 2018, Another a Korean skating official commented, \"A mere 16 days after Viktor Ahn joined the Seongnam City Hall skating team, he sustained a severe injury during training. Subsequently, Seongnam City Hall suspended the team's operations. Ahn's strained relationship with Jun Myung-kyu, the president of Korea Ice Skating, made it challenging for him to find a suitable place to train and compete within the country.\"\nIn March 2014, Professor Jun stepped down as vice-president of the Korean Skaters Union. However, in 2014, Ahn and the Korea Skating Union denied any conflicts or factional issues.\nThe assault of the women's short track team coach during the 2018 PyeongChang Olympics and the athletes' discord over women's speed skating factions raised the issue of the responsibility of Samsung, which had sponsored the Korea Skating Union and the Korea Skating Union. The Korea Skating Union was investigated by the government, including the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism. Viktor Ahn and Professor Jun have returned to the agenda. However, in February 2018, Viktor Ahn sent a text message to South Korean Culture, Sports and Tourism Committee Member of parliament Ahn Min-seok. Ahn Min-seok said that Ahn hyun-soo has a good relationship with Professor Jun Myung-kyu, and released it to the South Korean media.\nIn March 2022, Viktor Ahn said Yonhap News Agency in an interview that he had never been disadvantaged by the Korea Skating Union.\n\n\n== Style ==\n\"Ahn is a master of short track speed skating, particularly in controlling the track during competition.\" - Wu Dajing\n\"In terms of his racing strategy, when he's following the other skaters, he's not really just following. He's always waiting for that perfect chance to pass.\" - Chae Ji-hoon\n\"Viktor Ahn, as he's now called, is the most beautiful short track skating athlete in the world in terms of his technique and the way he skates.\" \"If there is any athlete that is designed for short track, body-type wise, it is him,\" \"If you watch him stand and jog, his pelvic is tilted forward naturally, which is perfect for a skater. He has incredible technique, tons of experience.\" - Apolo Anton Ohno\n\n\n== Awards and honors ==\nRepresenting Korea\nAhn was awarded the Outstanding Player Award at the Sports Chosun Coca-Cola Sports Awards in January 2006. After his victory in Torino, he was selected as Player of the Month by the American Sports Academy. He was also named as honorary ambassador for the PyeongChang Winter Olympics bidding committee with Jin Sun-yu.\nIn 2008, Ahn was selected as the Most Valuable Player with Lee Kyou-hyuk and Yuna Kim by the Korea Skating Union. In the same year, he also received the Men's Team Award at the Asian Sports Awards. with Lee Ho-seok, Song Suk-woo, Oh Se-jong, and Seo Ho-jin.\nAhn was chosen as the ambassador for the Korea Sports Promotion Foundation in 2009.\nRepresenting Russia   \nIn March 2013, Ahn was named as Merited Master of Sport by the Russian Federation.\nAfter his feat in Sochi, Ahn was awarded the Order \"For Merit to the Fatherland\" from Russian president Vladimir Putin and the Medal \"For Strengthening Military Cooperation\". He was also selected Most Valuable Player in the Sochi Winter Olympics by NBC, and 2014 Athlete of the Year by the Russian edition of 'GQ' magazine. In light of his status as a South Korean-born Russian, Ahn was further named as honorary ambassador for the 2014–2015 Korea-Russia Year of Mutual Visit in 2014.\nIn 2016, Ahn received the Proud Alumnus Award at his alma mater. He was also inducted into the Korea National Sports University Ice Rink Hall of Fame as the 2006 Winter Olympics champion and the Sochi Walk of Fame as the 2014 Winter Olympics champion.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nAhn is married to Woo Nari (Korean: 우나리), a Korean born in 1983. Nari was a member of Ahn's fan club. Ahn said that her presence and care helped him adapt to Russia. Their daughter was born in December 2015. But his wife, Woo Nari, couldn't endure the life in Russia and missed South Korea, so eventually left  Russia. The Russian media reported that his wife wanted to raise their daughter in South Korea, and Viktor Ahn's choice to go to South Korea was influenced by his wife.\nAhn's younger brother is speed skater Ahn Hyun-Jun. He made the Korean national speed skating team for the 2022–23 season. The younger Ahn switched from short track to speed skating in 2021.\n\n\n=== Russian citizenship ===\n\nAhn trained in Russia and received Russian citizenship to compete for Russia in the 2014 Winter Olympics. Ahn's father stated that the decision was due to lack of support from the South Korean skating association. Prior to moving to Russia, Ahn did not know the Russian language and had no familial ties to Russia. He had considered competing for the United States, but found that the process for gaining Russian citizenship was much easier. He chose \"Viktor\" as his Russian name as it derived from Victory, and to pay tribute to Viktor Tsoi, a Soviet rock star of ethnic Korean descent.\nIn South Korea, fury erupted over the loss of Ahn to Team Russia, after his participation in the 2014 Winter Olympics. Several newspapers reported the scorn of the South Korean public and newspaper editors on the actions of the skating federation. Right after the Olympics, the Minister of Sports and President Park Geun-hye of South Korea both promised action in rooting out corruption and feuding at the organization that may have led to Ahn's \"defection\", in a bid to clean it up in preparation for the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea. In September 2018, Ahn announced his retirement from short track and moved back to South Korea.  The South Korean public was generally supportive of Ahn in early 2014, but he also received online bashing amidst controversies at Sochi and in later years. In 2023, Ahn sought a coaching position in South Korea, despite having renounced his South Korean citizenship when becoming Russian. He was denied that position due to significant public opposition.\n\n\n=== Political issues ===\nIn 2011, Ahn's decision to naturalize became a contentious political issue, with some attributing the responsibility to Seongnam Mayor at the time, Lee Jae-myung. By 2014, Lee defended himself by emphasizing that the state-supervised Korea Skating Union should be held accountable rather than the leaders of Local government. A significant development occurred in February 2022 when Won Hee-ryong, associated with Yoon Suk Yeol's People's Power presidential campaign, asserted that Viktor Ahn's choice to become a Russian national was influenced by Lee Jae-myung. Won Hee-ryong further claimed that the halting of operations for the Seongnam City Hall ice skating team was a disguise for bankruptcy and alleged that 30 billion won from Seongnam's funds were diverted to acquire Seongnam FC in a bid to boost the mayor's re-election prospects. The Democratic Party of Korea refuted the allegations, deeming them false. Concurrently, Korean ice skating officials emphasized the difficulty in isolating a single cause, especially when injuries and team disbandments coincided with ongoing factional controversies within the ice skating community. As of 2022, Lee Jae-myung faces legal scrutiny for allegedly accepting 17 billion won in unauthorized bribes from companies, masked as donations to Seongnam FC.\n\n\n== Notes ==\nHe can restore his South Korean nationality under the South Korean nationality law. In 2003, at the age of 17, he was exempted from military service by winning three gold medals at the Asian Games and finished his four-weeks of basic military training in 2010. For sports personnels who are exempted from active duty are recognized to have completed 34 months of military service if they have spent time as athletes in their field.  In September 2018, A South Korean Ministry of National Defense official said in an interview with South Korean media. \"Ahn hyun-soo has already completed his military service\".\nBut if Ahn gets his South Korean citizenship back, he has to renounce his Russian citizenship.\n\n\n== In the media ==\nIn the 2010–2011 season, Ahn served as a short track commentator for SBS Sports. He covered the World Cup series (#3~#6) and the World Championships.\nFrom 2014 to 2016, he guest-starred in three episodes of Russia's late-night talk show Evening Urgant (episodes S3.E90, S4.E104, S5.E157).\nFrom 2017 to 2018, Ahn guest-starred in the South Korean variety-reality show The Return of Superman (episodes 202~204, 237, 241) with his daughter.\nIn 2018, he starred in the South Korean variety-reality show Real Man 300 (episodes 1~15, 18).\nOther television appearances of Ahn are as follows:\n\nHan Su-jin's Sunday Click (South Korean talk show) - with Jin Sun-yu (episode 49) \nHuman Docu Love (South Korean documentary) - with wife Woo Nari (episodes 44, 45) \nLive Talk Show Taxi (South Korean talk show) - with wife Woo Nari (episode 488)\n\n\n== Detailed results ==\n\n\n=== Olympics results ===\n\n\n=== World Championships Podiums results ===\nSix-time Overall world champion. 20 world titles. 18 gold medals.\n\nOverall points and medals results\n\nWorld Team Championships\n\n\n=== World Cup Podiums results ===\n2 times Overall World Cup winner, 6 time individual distances World Cup winner, 67 World Cup victories\n\nWorld Cup Ranking Podiums\n\n\n=== World Cup medals results ===\n\n\n==== 67 Gold medals ====\n\n\n==== 37 Silver medals ====\n\n\n==== 25 Bronze medals ====\n\n\n=== National competitions ===\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nVictor An at the International Skating Union (archived former page)\nVictor An at ShorttrackOnLine.info\nVictor An at Olympics.com\nViktor An at Olympedia\nViktor Ahn at IMDb\nAhn Hyun-Soo at the Chinese Olympic Committee (archived)"}
{"title": "Viktor Chukarin", "requested": "Viktor Chukarin", "extract": "Viktor Ivanovich Chukarin (Russian: Виктор Иванович Чукарин, Ukrainian: Віктор Іванович Чукарін; 9 November 1921 – 25 August 1984) was a Ukrainian gymnast who competed for the Soviet Union. He won eleven medals, including seven gold medals at the 1952 and 1956 Summer Olympics (including the individual all-around title on both occasions) and was the all-around world champion in 1954. He was the most successful athlete at the 1952 Summer Olympics. His performance at the 1952 Summer Olympics became second after Anton Heida for medals received in gymnastics, which was overcome by Boris Shakhlin at the 1960 Summer Olympics.\n\n\n== Biography ==\nChukarin was born in Krasnoarmeyskoye village in Donets Governorate (modern-day Novoazovsk Raion of the Donetsk Oblast) to a Don Cossack father Ivan Evlampievich Chukarin and a Pontic Greek mother Hristina Klimentievna Lamizova. In 1924 his family moved to Mariupol where he started training in gymnastics. \nHe began gymnastics classes in the yard on the horizontal bar, then in the school section under the leadership of Vitaliy Polikarpovich Popovich. During the Stalinist years of the \"Great Terror\", the Chukarin family experienced a tragedy: in 1937, Chukarin's father was repressed for a letter to his relatives who lived in Romania in which he asked for help with food.\nLater, Chukarin studied at the Institute of Physical Education in Kyiv. In 1940, Chukarin became a champion of Ukraine during the Ukrainian championship in Kharkiv and received the title of the Master of Sports.\nIn the summer of 1941, with the start of the German–Soviet War, he volunteered for the Red Army. He fought under the general Mikhail Kirponos. Sometime in September of 1941, Chukarin was wounded in action, taken prisoner of war near Poltava (Kyiv Cauldron) and sent to a prisoner camp in Sandbostel. He then went through a chain of 17 prisoner camps and by the time he was freed in 1945 weighed only 40 kg (88 lb). He was not accepted back to the sports institute in Kyiv and studied in a similar institution in Lviv.\nIn 1946, he already competed in gymnastics at the Soviet national championships; next year, he finished fifth, and in 1948 won a national title. He became the all-around Soviet champion in 1949 and repeated this achievement in 1950, 1951, 1953, and 1955. In 1951, for his sports performances, Chukarin was granted an honorary sports title as the Honoured Master of Sports.\nIn 1952, when the Soviet Union joined the International Olympic Movement, Chukarin was 30. By then, Chukarin gained much weight and was considered bulky for a gymnast. As a result, he had low scores on the floor, yet he won six medals, including the individual all-around by a margin of 0.7 points. Nevertheless, with four gold and two silver medals, he became a star feature of the Soviet Olympic team and the leader among the Olympic medalists. Aged 35, he won five more Olympic medals at the 1956 Summer Olympics, including a silver on the floor.\nHe led the Soviet team to victory at the 1954 World Championships, winning gold in the team all-around and the individual all-around.\nIn 1957 along with Larisa Latynina, Chukarin was awarded the first ever Order of Lenin given to an athlete.\nHe recounted his sports career in the 1955 book entitled The Road to the Peaks (Put K Vershinam). In 1961, he coached Armenian gymnastics team, and in 1963 became an assistant professor at the Lviv Institute of Physical Culture. He died in 1984 and was buried at the Lychakiv Cemetery. One of the streets in Lviv was named after him.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists at a single Games\nList of multiple Summer Olympic medalists\nList of Olympic medal leaders in men's gymnastics\n\n\n== Footnotes ==\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== Further reading ==\nRysovanyy, Y. Sportsmen of Ukraine in the Olympic Games, Zdorovya, Kyiv 1978.\n\n\n== External links ==\nViktor Chukarin at World Gymnastics  (archive)\nViktor Chukarin at the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame \nViktor Chukarin at Olympics.com \nViktor Chukarin at Olympedia \nList of competitive results\nThe Olympic Database Archived 3 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine"}
{"title": "Viktor Krovopuskov", "requested": "Viktor Krovopuskov", "extract": "Viktor Alekseyevich Krovopuskov (Russian: Ви́ктор Алексе́евич Кровопу́сков; born 29 September 1948 in Moscow) is a retired sabre fencer, who competed for the USSR.\nKrovopuskov began fencing at age 13 at the Children and Youth Sport School in Moscow, his first trainer being Igor Chernyshev. In 1967, he joined the Armed Forces Sports Society in Moscow. He was a member of the USSR National Team between 1973 and 1986. At the 1976 Olympics he won gold medals in both the individual and team sabre events. He repeated his performance at the 1980 Summer Olympics, where he, again, won gold medals in both events.\nKrovopuskov was world champion in individual sabre twice (1978 and 1982), and team sabre five times (1974, 1975, 1979, 1983, and 1985). He also won the World Cup in sabre twice (1976 and 1979). In 1979, he was named the Best Sabre Fencer of the World by the International Fencing Federation.\nHe was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labour in 1976 and the Order of Lenin in 1980.\n\n\n== Bibliography ==\nV. L. Golubev (1981). Viktor Krovopuskov. Heroes of the Olympic Games (in Russian). Moscow: Fizkultura i sport.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n(in Russian) Biography and photo"}
{"title": "Viktor Saneyev", "requested": "Viktor Saneyev", "extract": "Viktor Danilovich Saneyev (Russian: Виктор Данилович Санеев; Georgian: ვიქტორ სანეევი; 3 October 1945 – 3 January 2022) was a Georgian triple jumper who competed internationally for the USSR. He won four Olympic medals – three golds (1968, 1972 and 1976) and one silver (1980). Saneyev set the world record on three occasions. He was born in Sukhumi, Georgian SSR, trained in Sukhumi and Tbilisi, and died in Sydney.\n\n\n== Athletics career ==\nSaneyev was born into a poor family in 1945, with a disabled and paralyzed father who died when Saneyev was 15 years old. He took up athletics in 1956, training in the high jump at the Gantiadi boarding school; his first coach was Akop Kerselyan. Six years later Kerselyan advised him to specialize in the triple jump. In 1963 Saneyev finished third in his first All-Union competition – Schoolchildren's Spartakiad. \nHis first major success came in 1968, when he won both the USSR Championships and the 1968 Summer Olympics, where on 17 October he set the World Record twice, 17.23 m and 17.39 m. On the same date four years later, in Sukhumi, Saneyev improved the World Record to 17.44 m. He won gold medals at the 1972 Summer Olympics and at the 1976 Summer Olympics and a silver at the 1980 Summer Olympics.\nHe also won the 1969 and 1974 European Championships, the 1970, 1971, 1972, 1975, 1976 and 1977 European Athletics Indoor Championships. Saneyev was USSR champion in 1968–71, 1973–75 and 1978.\n\n\n=== 1980 Olympics ===\n\nSaneyev came to the 1980 Olympics hoping for a fourth gold medal, though he understood that several jumpers had better chances for a gold, especially the world record holder João Carlos de Oliveira of Brazil. Estonian Jaak Uudmäe won the gold medal (17.35 m), followed by Saneyev (17.24 m) and Oliveira (17.22 m). The event was marred by controversial judging. Five out of seven jumps by Australia's Ian Campbell were discarded, as well as four jumps by De Oliveira; Uudmäe had two fouls and Saneyev one. All IAAF inspectors were pulled out of the field on the day of the triple jump final and replaced by Soviet staff.\nBoth Campbell and De Oliveira jumped beyond Uudmäe's leading mark more than once, but all of these jumps were discarded despite protests. The longest of Campbell's jumps was ruled a \"scrape\" foul: the officials claimed his trailing leg had touched the track during the step phase, though it was unlikely to scrape and jump that far. Saneyev did not contest his foul, though it also fell on his strongest jump. He later noted that the winning jump by Uudmäe was likely overstepped. Saneyev retired after the 1980 Olympics. In retirement, he headed the USSR jumping team for four years, and later worked at his formative club, Dynamo Tbilisi.\n\n\n== Later life and death ==\nIn the early 1990s, after the Soviet Union broke up and a civil war started in Georgia, Saneyev lost his job and moved to Australia with his wife and 15-year-old son. His brief coaching contract soon expired, and Saneyev was about to sell his Olympic medals to feed his family. He reconsidered at the last moment and took odd jobs instead, such as pizza delivery. He found a regular job as a physical education teacher at St Joseph's College, Hunters Hill, and later as the jumping coach at the New South Wales Institute of Sport.\nSaneyev had graduated from the Georgian State University of Subtropical Agriculture and Tbilisi State University, and enjoyed growing subtropical plants in his backyard, including lemons and grapefruits. He died on 3 January 2022, at the age of 76.\n\n\n== Honors ==\nOrder of the Red Banner of Labour in 1969\nOrder of Lenin in 1972\nOrder of Friendship of Peoples in 1976.\nVakhtang Gorgasali Order, 1st and 2nd Degree\nInternational Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) Silver Medal (2005)\nHonorary Citizen of Tbilisi\nOrder of Merit and the Presidential Order of Excellence (2018)\nOrder of the International Olympic Committee\nAt the 1980 Games he was selected as an Olympic torch bearer, though this honor is usually given to retired athletes.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== Further reading ==\nE. B. Chen (1978). Viktor Saneyev. Heroes of the Olympic Games (in Russian). Moscow: Fizkultura i sport. Archived from the original on 27 September 2007. Retrieved 28 March 2007.\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nViktor Saneyev at World Athletics\nViktor Saneyev at European Athletics (archived former page)\nViktor Saneyev at Olympics.com Viktor Saneyev at Olympic.org (archived) \nViktor Saneyev at Olympedia \nViktor Saneyev at sporting-heroes.net"}
{"title": "Viktor Sidyak", "requested": "Viktor Sidyak", "extract": "Viktor Aleksandrovich Sidyak (Russian: Ви́ктор Алекса́ндрович Сидя́к; born 24 November 1943) is a Russian former left-handed sabre fencer, a pupil of Mark Rakita and David Tyshler. He was known for his aggressive style and the \"one-and-a-half tempo attack\".\n\n\n== Biography ==\nSidyak was born in Anzhero-Sudzhensk in Kemerovo Oblast, but spent most of his childhood in Donetsk. He started fencing at age fifteen. In the 1960s, while training in Lviv, he represented Ukraine on the internal Soviet circuit. He was part of the winning team at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City. In 1970, he moved to Minsk and joined the Belarusian fencing lobby which had produced Elena Belova, Alexandr Romankov, and Nikolai Alyokhin.\nAt the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Sidyak became the first Soviet sabreur to win individual gold. At the same Olympics, he fenced in the team final with his right eye bandaged over after having a fragment of the Italian Michele Maffei's blade removed from his eye the previous day. Besides Sidyak, the team consisted of Vladimir Nazlymov, Eduard Vinokurov, and Viktor Bazhenov. The Soviet and Italian teams met again in the finals, Italy taking gold, and USSR silver.\nAt the world championships Sidyak's won an individual title in 1969 and team titles in 1969–1971, 1974, 1975 and 1979.\nIn 1994, Maffei's 1972 teammate Mario Aldo Montano invited Sidyak to coach the young fencers at his club in Livorno, including his own son Aldo Montano. Aldo went on to win five olympic medals. Right before the 2008 Summer Olympics Aldo called him again as his trainer.\nAs of 2016, Sidyak was the chairman of the professional boxing association of Belarus.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nViktor Sidyak at Olympedia \nViktor Sidyak at Olympics.com\nViktor Sidyak at the National Olympic Committee of the Republic of Belarus"}
{"title": "Ville Ritola", "requested": "Ville Ritola", "extract": "Vilho \"Ville\" Eino Ritola (18 January 1896 – 24 April 1982) was a Finnish long-distance runner. Known as one of the \"Flying Finns\", he won five Olympic gold medals and three Olympic silver medals in the 1920s. He holds the record of winning most athletics medals at a single Games – four golds and two silvers in Paris 1924 – and ranks second in terms of most athletics gold medals at a single Games.\n\n\n== Childhood and emigration to the United States ==\nRitola's parents, Johannes Ritola (1851–1944) and Serafia Gevär (1863–1919), were farmers in western Finland near Seinäjoki. He was born in Peräseinäjoki, Finland. He was the 14th child in his family and had altogether 19 siblings, five of whom died in infancy. Six of the children were from his father's first marriage, 14 from the second, including Ville.\nIn 1913 he followed seven of his siblings and emigrated to the United States to work as a carpenter. There he started training in 1919 when he was already 23 years old. Later he referred many times to this late start of his sports career, and how it put him at a disadvantage compared to his rivals, especially the more famous of the Flying Finns, Paavo Nurmi, who started systematic training in his teens. In 1919 he joined the Finnish-American Athletic Club and trained together with Hannes Kolehmainen, who had moved to the United States after the 1912 Summer Olympics. In spring 1919 he took part in his first competition, a New York street race, and finished 33rd among 700 competitors. It was only after this that he started to train systematically.\nKolehmainen tried to convince the young Ritola to join the Finnish 1920 Summer Olympics team, but Ritola stated that he was not ready yet. He had also just married Selma née Aaltonen. In 1921 he started to compete systematically, and in 1922 he won his first AAU Championship gold medals. The same year he came second in the Boston Marathon.\n\n\n== Paris Olympics 1924 ==\nIn 1923, American Finns started collecting funds to pay for Ville Ritola's trip to Finland, where in May 1924 he took part in the Finnish Olympic qualification competitions. In the 10,000 m qualifying race Ritola won with a world record time of 30.35.4. This was Ritola's first official world record.\nAt the 1924 Paris Olympics, he won four gold and two silver medals. He had a start on eight consecutive days to achieve this, all long-distance.\nIn his first race, the 10,000 m, in the absence of Nurmi, he won by half a lap and obliterated his own fresh world record by more than 12 seconds. Finnish officials had selected Ritola for the race as Nurmi was already running in five other distance events. Three days later, Ritola won the 3000 m steeplechase by 75 metres. The next day he finished second in the 5000 m, 0.2 seconds behind Nurmi. Ritola later earned another silver medal behind Nurmi in the individual cross-country race and gained a gold medal as a member of the Finnish cross-country team. Finally, Ritola joined Nurmi to win the 3000 m team race.\nRitola's 1924 triumph in Paris is historical. His six medals from Paris is still the biggest number of medals won by an athlete in one Olympic games event. His four gold medals put him in second place after Paavo Nurmi in the number of gold medals won by an athlete in one Olympic Games event.\n\n\n== Back to the United States ==\nAfter the Olympics, Ritola had to return to the US to find employment, while his pregnant wife remained in Finland. His daughter Anja was born in November 1924. Selma joined her husband in the US with the baby in March 1925.\nIn winter 1924–1925, Ritola competed in the United States and Canada and beat world record times in the 3000 m (8 min 26.8 sec), 3000 m steeplechase (9 min 18.6 sec), 5000 m (14 min 23.2 sec), 2 miles, 2 mile steeplechase, 3 miles and 5 miles.  These were not official world records as they were run indoors.\n\n\n== Amsterdam Olympics 1928 ==\n\nIn 1928, Ritola was 32 years old and had worked in construction for more than a decade. He had not trained systematically even though he still had won four gold medals in the AAU Championships 1927.\nIn the 1928 Summer Olympics, Ritola's main competitor was again Paavo Nurmi. This time each got one win. The first race was 10,000m. Ritola took the lead at 1,500m, and only four competitors followed. At 3,000m, Ray (US) dropped from the leading group and before 4,000m, Beavers (UK). As Wide (Sweden) dropped at 6,500m, only Nurmi followed Ritola. At 100m before the finish Nurmi sprinted and won by 0.6 seconds. Wide was third, losing by a 45.2s margin.\nRitola's last Olympic appearance was in the 5,000 m at the 1928 Summer Olympics. Both Ritola and Nurmi had hurt themselves in the steeplechase qualification competitions. Nurmi had a sore hip and Ritola a sore ankle. However, Ritola again took the lead at 2,500m. At 600m before the finish, only Ritola and Nurmi were left in the leading group. This time, Ritola pulled away from Nurmi in the final curve and won by 12 metres – 3 seconds. Wide nearly caught Nurmi, and Nurmi only held on to silver by a 0.2s margin. This victory brought Ritola's career total to five Olympic gold medals and three silver medals.\nRitola never competed in the Finnish championships, but won a handful of medals in the AAU Championships in the United States. He was the AAU champion at 6 miles (9.7 km) in 1927, at 10 miles (16 km) road race in 1922, 1923 and from 1925 to 1927, at 2,000 yd (1,800 m) steeplechase in 1923, 1926 and 1927 and at cross country in 1922, 1923 and from 1925 to 1927.\n\n\n== After sports career ==\nRitola retired from athletics soon after the 1928 Olympic Games. He took part in only a few US competitions after 1928. He returned to American construction sites and worked in physically demanding jobs until 1959. He took US citizenship in 1937. His daughter, Anja Impola, married and lived in the US until her death in 2013. Ritola's wife Selma died in 1965 and he remarried, to Liisa Lauren, in 1967. Ritola moved back to Helsinki, Finland with his wife in 1971 and died in Helsinki aged 86.\n\n\n== Honours ==\nA statue for Ville Ritola was prepared by sculptor Maija Nuotio in 1978 and placed in his homeplace Peräseinäjoki (now part of Seinäjoki).\nA sports hall in Peräseinäjoki was named RitolaHalli.\nAt Ville Ritola's funeral in 1982 the coffin bearers included other Olympic heroes such as Lasse Virén.\nKunto-Ritola, annual long-distance event\n\n\n== Curiosities ==\nRitola's career inspired a phrase into colloquial Finnish. \"Ottaa ritolat\", translating as something like \"pull a Ritola\", means to make a quick exit from somewhere.\n\n\n== See also ==\n\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Olympic medalists at a single Games\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists at a single Games\nList of multiple Summer Olympic medalists\n\n\n== References =="}
{"title": "Vincent Hancock", "requested": "Vincent Hancock", "extract": "Vincent Charles Hancock (born March 19, 1989) is an American Army sergeant, sports shooter, and four-time Olympic champion. He won the gold medal in men's skeet shooting at the 2008 Summer Olympics (with a then Olympic record), 2012 Summer Olympics, 2020 Summer Olympics, and 2024 Summer Olympics. He is the first skeet shooter to repeat as the Olympic champion.\n\n\n== Biography ==\nIn 2005, at age 16, Hancock won his first World Championship title in men's skeet and went on to win the prestigious International Shooting Sport Federation's Shooter of the Year award. He won the gold medal in the World Championships in 2009.\nHancock later attended Troy University in Troy, Alabama, where he graduated in 2014 with a degree in business management.  After his graduation, Hancock became a sergeant in the U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit, and in 2015 became the third athlete to win three men's skeet World Championships. He has participated in 11 World Championships.\nFollowing his gold medal win in the 2015 World Championships, Hancock represented the United States at the 2016 Summer Olympics. He finished in 15th place.\nHe qualified to represent the United States at the 2020 Summer Olympics, where he won his third Olympic gold medal, ahead of Jesper Hansen of Denmark and Abdullah Alrashidi of Kuwait.\nHancock is one of the most decorated shooters in the history of the sport, holding a total of 29 medals from various world competitions, including the Olympics.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\n\nHancock resides in Fort Worth, Texas, with his wife and two daughters. He is an owner of Northlake Shooting Sports, a youth-oriented range focused on clay shooting where he has coached fellow Olympic medalist Conner Prince. In 2024, Hancock expressed an interest in shifting attention from Olympic training to the business side of sport shooting and plans to open multiple shooting ranges in the United States, though after winning at Paris he has said he plans to compete in the 2028 games. Hancock is a Christian.\n\n\n== Records ==\n\n\n== Performance timeline ==\n\n\n=== Skeet ===\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nVincent Hancock at ISSF\nVincent Hancock at Olympics.com\nVincent Hancock at Olympedia\nVincent Hancock at InterSportStats\nVincent Hancock at Team USA (archive March 18, 2023)\nVincent Hancock at USA Shooting\nVincent Hancock at Beijing 2008 Olympics at the Wayback Machine (archived August 19, 2008)\nBio on Army.mil at the Wayback Machine (archived July 15, 2014)"}
{"title": "Viorica Susanu", "requested": "Viorica Susanu", "extract": "Viorica Susanu (born 29 October 1975) is a Romanian rower and winner of four Olympic Gold medals.\nSusanu rowed in the Romanian women's eight that won the World Rowing Championships in 1997, 1998 and 1999, and the 2000 Summer Olympics. In 2001 and 2002, rowing with Georgeta Damian, she won the World Championships in the women's pair, setting a world's best time in 2002, while continuing to row in the eight. At the 2004 Summer Olympics, she won gold medals in both the pair and the eight, and in 2008 the pair.\n\n\n== Medals at Olympic Games ==\n2000 Summer Olympics\n1st, Women's Eight\n2004 Summer Olympics\n1st,  Women's Eight\n1st, Women's Pair\n2008 Summer Olympics\n1st, Coxless pair\n3rd, Women's Eight\n\n\n== Medals at World Championships ==\n1997\n1st, Women's Eight\n3rd, Women's Double Sculls\n1998\n1st, Women's Eight\n1999\n1st, Women's Eight\n2001\n1st, Women's Pair\n2nd, Women's Eight\n2002\n1st, Women's Pair\n2003\n2nd, Women's Eight\n3rd, Women's Pair\n\n\n== References =="}
{"title": "Vitaly Scherbo", "requested": "Vitaly Scherbo", "extract": "Vitaly Venediktovich Scherbo (born 13 January 1972) is a Belarusian former artistic gymnast. One of the most successful gymnasts of all time, as of at least as recently as after the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, he is the only male gymnast in the 100+ year history of the World Championships to have won a world title in all 8 events (individual all-around in 1993, team in 1991, floor in 1994, 1995 and 1996, horizontal bar in 1994, parallel bars in 1993 and 1995, pommel horse in 1992, rings in 1992, vault in 1993 and 1994). He was the most successful athlete at the 1992 Summer Olympics, winning 6 of 8 events – team, all-around, and 4 of the 6 event finals.\n\n\n== Gymnastics career ==\nHis first international performances were in 1990–1991, when he competed for the USSR team at the World Championship and the World Cup. He was the 1991 World All-Around silver medalist behind teammate Grigori Misutin; scored a perfect 10.0 on the vault at the European Championships in 1990; and starred at the Goodwill Games in Seattle. He had occasional bouts of inconsistency, and as the 1992 Barcelona Olympics approached, the Unified Team coaches regarded him as less of a medal prospect than his more experienced and reliable teammates. In one of the most dominant performances in history, Scherbo won six out of the possible eight awarded gold medals at the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona. His golds came in the team event, the all-around, pommel horse (tie), rings, vault, and parallel bars.\nScherbo and his wife Irina relocated to the United States, settling in State College, Pennsylvania. The move enabled them to take advantage of Scherbo's Olympic success. He followed up on his Olympic accomplishments, placing first in the 1993 World All-Around title, third place in 1994, and second place in 1995's World All-Around title.\nOn 13 December 1995, Scherbo's wife Irina was involved in a single-car accident, in which she skidded off a road and slammed into a tree. She suffered multiple fractures to her ribs and pelvis, lapsed into a coma, and her internal injuries were so severe that doctors told her husband that she only had a 1 in 100 chance of surviving. Scherbo stopped his training altogether. He gained 15 pounds and began abusing alcohol. After a month, Irina finally woke up from her coma, and insisted that her husband resume his training for the upcoming Olympic season. As his wife made a recovery, Scherbo similarly began to regain peak physical condition, winning yet another World title in 1996. At the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, his performances reflected his lack of preparation time, both due to his wife's accident and a recent shoulder surgery.\nScherbo had planned to compete in the 1997 World Championships but broke his hand in a motorcycle accident before then and retired soon after.\n\n\n== Sexual assault allegations ==\nIn October 2017, former Ukrainian Olympic champion gymnast Tatiana Gutsu accused Scherbo of violently raping her when she was 15, when they were at the USSR national team training camp in 1991.\n\n\n== Eponymous skills ==\nScherbo (vault) – a Yurchenko-style vault defined by its unique entry, specifically a full twist within the back-handspring between the springboard and the vaulting table.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists at a single Games\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of Olympic medal leaders in men's gymnastics\nList of multiple Summer Olympic medalists\n\n\n== Notes ==\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nVitaly Scherbo at World Gymnastics\nVitaly Scherbo at the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame\nVitaly Scherbo at Olympics.com\nVitaly Scherbo at Olympedia\nVitaly Scherbo at InterSportStats\nVitaly Scherbo at the National Olympic Committee of the Republic of Belarus"}
{"title": "Vladimir Artemov", "requested": "Vladimir Artemov", "extract": "Vladimir Nikolaevich Artemov (Russian: Владимир Николаевич Артемов, born 7 December 1964) is a former Russian artistic gymnast, Olympic champion and world champion who competed for the Soviet Union. He is considered to be one of the greatest parallel bars workers of all time.\nHe was born in Vladimir.\nArtemov competed at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul where he received gold medals in horizontal bar, parallel bars, all-around individual and team combined exercises.\n\n\n== World championships ==\nArtemov won a gold medal in parallel bars at the 1983 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Budapest, and again at the 1987 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Rotterdam. He has received five silver medals and two bronze medals at the World Gymnastics Championships. He participated on the Soviet teams which won the team final in 1985, 1987 and 1989, and finished second in 1983.\n\n\n== Awards ==\nArtemov was listed among the USSR top ten athletes of the year in 1988.\n\n\n== After the Olympics ==\nArtemov immigrated to the United States from the failing Soviet Union in 1990, settling in Pennsylvania. However, he has mistakenly been identified as the father of former US gymnast Alexander (Sasha) Artemev. The two men are not related. Artemov currently lives in San Antonio, Texas, where he runs a gym with his wife Natalia.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists at a single Games\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nVladimir Artemov at World Gymnastics\nVladimir Artemov at the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame\nVladimir Artemov at Olympics.com\nVladimir Artemov at Olympedia"}
{"title": "Vladimir Salnikov", "requested": "Vladimir Salnikov", "extract": "Vladimir Valeryevich Salnikov (Russian: Владимир Валерьевич Сальников; born 21 May 1960) is a Russian former freestyle swimmer who set 12 world records in the 400, 800 and 1,500 metre events. Nicknamed the \"Tsar of the Pool\", \"Monster of the Waves\" and \"Leningrad Express\", he was the first person to swim under fifteen minutes in the 1500 m freestyle and also the first person to swim under eight minutes in the 800 m freestyle. He was named the Male World Swimmer of the Year in 1979 and 1982 by Swimming World.\n\n\n== Career ==\n\nBorn in Leningrad, Salnikov was the son of a sea captain. When he was seven years old, his mother took him to a swimming pool to join a swimming team. One year later he began training regularly under the lead of his coach. Salnikov trained at Zenit and later at the Armed Forces sports society.\nSalnikov made his debut at the Olympic Games in 1976 in Montreal, at the age of 16. He broke the European record in the 1,500 m, but finished fifth.\nHis long sequence of international victories began at the 1977 European Championship where he won the gold medal in his favorite distance, the 1,500 m. At the 1978 World Championships in Berlin, Salnikov won gold medals in the 400 and 1,500 m, setting a new world record in the 400 meters. One year later, he set another world record, in the 800 m, becoming the first person to complete the distance in less than eight minutes.\nThe United States boycotted the 1980 Olympics in Moscow in protest of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, but Salnikov demonstrated that he was far superior to everybody, winning the 1500 m race in 14:58.27 and becoming the first person to swim the distance under 15 minutes. He won two more gold medals, in the 4×200 m relay and in the 400 m. In the 1,500 m, his target was not just to win the gold, but to break the world record and the 15-minute barrier. During the race, he managed to control his timing by peeking at the clock by the pool side. Salnikov also planned to break the 400 m world record, but failed, and had to settle for the Olympic record. He did not prepare for the 4×200 m relay, and was enlisted to this event by the team managers.\n\nIn the early 1980s, Salnikov was the absolute ruler of the freestyle races on the longer distances: in 1982, he retained his world titles, and one year later, at the Soviet Winter Nationals, he set a new world record in the 1,500 m with a time of 14:54.76: the record lasted until 1991, when it was beaten by the German Jörg Hoffmann (Salnikov's record had actually been beaten by Glen Housman in Adelaide in December 1989, but due to a malfunction with the electronic timing, his new record time was disallowed).\nThe Soviet Union boycotted the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, so Salnikov could not defend his title. Salnikov went back to Seoul in 1988, aged 28, when he was considered too old. He had set a world record in 1986 in the 800 m, but since then never returned to his former form: he finished fourth in the 1,500 m at the 1986 world championships, and failed to reach the final at the 1987 European championships. His pre-Olympic results did not meet the standards set for the Soviet Olympic team, and he was included in the team only by intervention of Soviet officials. Salnikov did not fail, and won the 1,500 meters race, though he later admitted that in that race he went flat out and swam the last 20–30 metres in a blackout state. That night, when entering the Olympic Village restaurant, he was awarded a standing ovation by the other athletes.\nHis titles also include four World Championship gold medals, four European Championship gold medals and one European Championship silver medal.\n\n\n== Coaches ==\nIgor Koshkin is credited with bringing Salnikov to the elite level. Later in his career, Salnikov had a brief stay at Mission Viejo in the United States, where he worked with coaches Mark Schubert, Brian Goodell and Tim Shaw. In the mid-1980s, Salnikov parted with Koshkin, who thought that a 25-year-old swimmer had no further prospects. Since 1984–85, he was coached by his wife Marina, a former Soviet track and field record holder in the 100 meters and a sports psychologist.\n\n\n== After retirement ==\nAfter the 1988 Olympics Salnikov retired from competitions and until 1990 worked as the head coach of the Soviet swimming team. In parallel, between 1989 and 1991 he acted as vice-president of the Soviet Swimming Federation. In 1991–2001, he worked at the company Olimp and represented Speedo in Russia. In 1984–1990 he was a member of the Soviet Olympic Committee and in 1991–2000 a member of the International Swimming Federation’s (FINA) Athletes' Commission. In 2009, he was elected president of the Russian Swimming Federation.\n\nSalnikov was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labour (1980), Order of Lenin (1985), Order of the October Revolution (1988) and Order of Honour (2010). In 1993, he was inducted to the International Swimming Hall of Fame. He graduated from the Lesgaft Institute of Physical Education in Saint Petersburg and holds a PhD in pedagogy.\nSalnikov's 1988 victory in Seoul is mentioned in the Irish 2011 fictional film The Guard. The protagonist, claiming to have finished fourth, says that he aimed for bronze, behind two Germans (Stefan Pfeiffer and Uwe Dassler), but underestimated Salnikov who \"was supposed to be over-the-hill\" (in real life, fourth place went to Matt Cetlinski).\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of members of the International Swimming Hall of Fame\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists at a single Games\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nWorld record progression 400 metres freestyle\nWorld record progression 800 metres freestyle\nWorld record progression 1500 metres freestyle\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nheat 400 m freestyle Olympic Games −80 on YouTube\nVladimir Salnikov at World Aquatics\nVladimir Salnikov at SwimRankings.net\nVladimir Salnikov at the International Swimming Hall of Fame\nVladimir Salnikov at Olympics.com\nVladimir Salnikov at Olympedia\nVladimir Salnikov at InterSportStats"}
{"title": "Vreni Schneider", "requested": "Vreni Schneider", "extract": "Verena \"Vreni\" Schneider (born 26 November 1964) is a retired ski racer from Switzerland. She is the most successful alpine ski racer of her country, the fourth most successful female ski racer ever (after Lindsey Vonn, Annemarie Moser-Pröll and Mikaela Shiffrin) and was voted \"Swiss Sportswoman of the Century\".\n\n\n== Early life ==\nSchneider was born in Elm, the daughter of a shoemaker. Her mother died of cancer when Schneider was a teenager: as a result she put her ski career on hold and dropped out of school to look after the family home.\n\n\n== Racing career ==\nSchneider made her World Cup debut at the age of 20. Schneider won the overall alpine skiing World Cup three times and eleven discipline World Cups in Slalom and Giant slalom, along with 55 World Cup races (number four all-time among women to Moser-Pröll, Vonn and Shiffrin).  She also won five medals at the Winter Olympics including 3 golds (Slalom and giant slalom at Calgary in 1988 and Slalom at Lillehammer in 1994), and six medals at the World Championships including 3 more golds (Giant slalom at Crans-Montana in 1987 and Vail in 1989; Slalom at Saalbach in 1991).\nDuring the 1988–89 season she won 14 World Cup races, a record for single season wins that stood until Shiffrin beat that record in the 2018–19 season.\nIn April 1995, after eleven successful seasons, she announced her retirement. Today she runs a ski and snowboard school in her home village of Elm as well as a sport equipment shop in Glarus.\nVreni Schneider is praised in the Half Man Half Biscuit song 'Uffington Wassail' thus: \"Vreni Schneider – you’re my downhill lady! Vreni Schneider – you’re the queen of the slopes!\" The song is on the album Trouble Over Bridgwater from the year 2000.\n\n\n== World Cup results ==\n\n\n=== Season titles ===\n14 titles – (3 overall, 6 Slalom, 5 Giant slalom)\n\n\n=== Season standings ===\n\n\n=== Race victories ===\n\n\n== World Championship results ==\n\n\n== Olympic results ==\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nVreni Schneider at FIS (alpine)\nVreni Schneider at FIS (ski jumping)\nVreni Schneider at Olympics.com\nVreni Schneider at Olympedia\nVreni Schneider at InterSportStats\nVreni Schneider at Ski-DB Alpine Ski Database"}
{"title": "Vyacheslav Ivanov (rower)", "requested": "Vyacheslav Ivanov (rower)", "extract": "Vyacheslav Nikolayevich Ivanov (Russian: Вячеслав Николаевич Иванов; 30 July 1938 – 5 August 2024) was a Soviet rower, and one of the most accomplished rowers of his generation. He rowed for the Soviet Union, and he won the Olympic gold medals in the single sculls class at the 1956 Melbourne Games, the 1960 Rome Games, and the 1964 Tokyo Games.\nIvanov was the first man to win the single sculls event three times in the Olympics. At the time, only Americans Jack Kelly Sr. and Paul Costello and Briton Jack Beresford had won three Olympic gold medals in the sport of rowing (since surpassed by Steve Redgrave and others). The only other person to match Ivanov's achievement and win three gold medals in the single scull is Finland's Pertti Karppinen. \nHis fierce rivalry with Stuart Mackenzie turned in to a lifelong friendship until Mackenzie’s passing, as was documented in Ivanov’s autobiography. In the last few pages of his book, Ivanov wrote the following about Mackenzie when they reunited again at Henley Royal Regatta in 2010: “I looked at Stuart and suddenly realised that this elderly foreigner whom I have not seen for almost 50 years and whom I might never see again, who used to drive me crazy and whom I almost hated once, is actually very dear to me. In some respects, and in his own way, he might be the closest friend I have.”\n\n\n== Rowing career ==\nIvanov started as a boxer, in 1950. In 1952, he combined boxing with rowing, eventually opting for the latter sport. By 1955, at the age of 17, he won the USSR junior championships and finished third in the senior championships, beating the Olympic single scull champion Yuriy Tyukalov. In 1956, he won his first Soviet and European titles and an Olympic gold medal. At the Olympics he was placing fourth at the 1500 meter mark. With only 500 meters left, he began a devastating sprint, catching Teodor Kocerka, Jack Kelly Jr., and then Mackenzie who had been leading the race. At the award ceremony, excited, Ivanov dropped his gold medal into Lake Wendouree, where the race took place. His diving attempts to rescue the medal failed, and the IOC later provided him with a replacement.\nAfter the Olympics, Mackenzie consistently defeated Ivanov at the Henley Royal Regatta and at the European Rowing Championships in 1957 and 1958. Disappointed by his losses, Ivanov was considering retirement, but was brought back to shape by his coach Arkady Nikolayev. In 1959 Ivanov regained the European title. He also set a world best time of 6:58.8 for a 2000 m single scull race, becoming the first person to break the seven-minute barrier.\nAt the 1960 Olympics, Ivanov won again with a blistering sprint, defeating Achim Hill by more than 6 seconds. Mackenzie withdrew because of illness before being rushed into a hospital for a stomach operation. In 1962, Ivanov won the first ever World Rowing Championship, defeating Mackenzie and Seymour Cromwell. At the 1963 European Rowing Championships, he came fourth. Ivanov faced Hill again at the 1964 Olympics. This time he trailed Hill by 7 seconds with 500 m to go, but finished 3.73 seconds ahead owing to his trademark sprint. Ivanov missed the 1965 European Rowing Championships due to illness. Ivanov was hoping to compete at the 1968 Olympics, but was left out of the Soviet team in favor of a younger rower (Viktor Melnikov). Melnikov failed to reach the Olympic final, while Ivanov retired next year.\nIn addition to the Olympics, Ivanov won 11 Soviet single scull titles (1956–1966) and 4 European titles. He was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labour (1960) and two Orders of the Badge of Honour (1957 and 1965).\n\n\n== Life after retirement ==\nIn 1960, at the peak of his rowing career, Ivanov graduated from a military school, and in 1969 received his master's degree from the Volgograd Institute of Physical Education. After retiring from competitions he served as a Soviet Navy officer and retired in the rank of captain. He then resumed competing in rowing in the masters category.\nIvanov died on 5 August 2024, at the age of 86.\n\n\n== Publications ==\nВячеслав Николаевич Иванов (2010). Ветры олимпийских озер. Ассоциация любителей гребного спорта. ISBN 978-5-903274-40-6.\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nVyacheslav Ivanov at World Rowing\nVyacheslav Ivanov at Olympics.com\nVyacheslav Ivanov at Olympedia\nVyacheslav Ivanov at InterSportStats\nIvanov and Karppinen on YouTube"}
{"title": "Věra Čáslavská", "requested": "Věra Čáslavská", "extract": "Věra Čáslavská (Czech pronunciation: [ˈvjɛra ˈtʃaːslafskaː]; 3 May 1942 – 30 August 2016) was a Czechoslovak artistic gymnast and Czech sports official. She won a total of 22 international titles between 1959 and 1968 including seven Olympic gold medals, four world titles and eleven European championships. Čáslavská is the most decorated Czech gymnast in history and is one of only three female gymnasts, along with the Soviet Larisa Latynina and American Simone Biles, to win the all-around gold medal at two  Olympics. She remains the only gymnast, male or female, to have won an Olympic gold medal in each individual event. She was also the first gymnast to achieve a perfect 10 at a major competition in the post-1952 era. She held the record for the most individual gold medals (with 7) among all female athletes (not only gymnasts) in Olympic history as well until it was surpassed by swimmer Katie Ledecky in 2024 after 56 years.\nIn addition to her gymnastics success, Čáslavská was known for her outspoken support of the Czechoslovak democratization movement and her opposition to the 1968 Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia. At the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, she took this protest to the world stage by quietly looking down and away while the Soviet national anthem was played during the medal ceremonies for the balance beam and floor exercise event finals. While Čáslavská's actions were applauded by her compatriots, they resulted in her becoming a persona non grata in the new regime. She was forced into retirement and for many years was denied the right to travel, work and attend sporting events.\nČáslavská's situation improved in the 1980s after the intervention of members of the International Olympic Committee, and following the Velvet Revolution her status got better significantly. During the 1990s she held several positions of honor, including a term as president of the Czech Olympic Committee.\n\n\n== Gymnastics career ==\n\nBorn in Prague and originally a figure skater, Čáslavská debuted internationally in 1958 at the World Artistic Gymnastics Championships, winning a silver medal in the team event. Her first international title came the following year at the European Women's Artistic Gymnastics Championships where she won gold on the vault and silver on the balance beam. She first participated in the 1960 Summer Olympic Games, winning a silver medal with the Czechoslovak team, and then won bronze in the all around event at the 1961 European Championships. She fought for the all-around title at home in the 1962 World Championships, held off only by Larisa Latynina, and managed to win her first world title, in the vault. She did not compete at the 1963 European Championships in Paris.\nBetween 1964 and 1968, Čáslavská won 19 individual gold medals in major international competitions. In this period she remained undefeated in the all-around in major international competition. She is the only female gymnast ever to win every Olympic, World Championships and European Championships all-around title from one Olympiad to the next one. She was at her peak at the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, winning the overall title and taking gold medals in the balance beam and the vault, in addition to another silver medal in the team event. At the 1966 World Championships, Čáslavská defended her vault title, winning a team gold – breaking the Soviet monopoly in that event – and became all-around world champion. Čáslavská dominated the 1965 and 1967 European Championships, taking all five individual titles and scoring two perfect scores of 10 in 1967. She is the only gymnast who has swept all five European individual golds twice.\nPrior to the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City, Čáslavská lost her training facility due to the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia. Instead, she used potato sacks as weights and logs as beams whilst training in the forests of Hrubý Jeseník mountains in northern Moravia. She was again dominant at the 1968 Summer Olympics, winning medals in all six events. She defended her all-around title and won additional gold medals on the floor, uneven bars and vault, as well as two silvers, for the team competition and balance beam. She won the 1968 Olympic all-around title with the highest recorded score up to that time. Her win by 1.4 points has remained the largest margin of victory in Olympics, World, World Cup, or European Championships for women in an all-around competition for 48 years. It was finally surpassed in 2016, ten years after a major rule change (the 2006 implementation of open ended scoring). As of the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, she and Larisa Latynina are the only gymnasts to win the gold medal in individual all-around in consecutive Olympic games. She is also one of only two female gymnasts to defend gold medal in the vault apparatus. Her use of the \"Jarabe tapatío\" as the music for her floor routine and her subsequent marriage in the city made her immensely popular with the Mexican crowd.\n\n\n=== Protest at the 1968 Olympics ===\nČáslavská's wins at the 1968 Olympics were particularly poignant because of the political turmoil in Czechoslovakia. She had publicly voiced her strong opposition to Soviet-style Communism and the Soviet invasion, and had signed Ludvik Vaculík's protest manifesto \"Two Thousand Words\" in the spring of 1968. Consequently, to avoid being arrested, she left the training facility in the town of Šumperk with the help of Zdeněk Zerzáň, chief of Jeseníky Mountain Rescue Service. She spent the weeks leading up to the Olympics hiding in a remote mountain hut at Vřesová studánka, and was only granted permission to travel to Mexico City at the last minute.\nAt the Olympics, where she once again faced Soviet opposition, Čáslavská continued to subtly voice her views. After she appeared to have won the gold medal on floor outright, the judging panel curiously upgraded the preliminary scores of Soviet Larisa Petrik, and declared a tie for the gold instead. All of this occurred on the heels of another very controversial judging decision that cost Čáslavská the gold on beam, instead awarding the title to her Soviet rival Natalia Kuchinskaya. Clearly disheartened and angered by the politics that favored the USSR, she protested during both medal ceremonies by quietly turning her head down and away during the playing of the Soviet national anthem.\n\n\n== Later career ==\nČáslavská was revered by Czech people for her brave demonstration on the world's biggest stage, and she was awarded Czechoslovakia's Sportsperson of the Year award in 1968 (for the fourth and final time). Her federation, however, was none too pleased. For her consistent support of the Czechoslovak democratization movement (the Prague Spring) in 1968, and during the purges which followed the Soviet-led invasion in August 1968, she was deprived of the right to travel abroad and participate in public sport events both in Czechoslovakia and abroad. Čáslavská was effectively forced into retirement, and was considered a persona non grata for many years in her home country.\nCzechoslovak authorities refused to publish her autobiography, and insisted that it be heavily censored when it was released in Japan. She was granted leave to work as a coach in Mexico, but reportedly only when the Mexican government threatened to cease oil exports to Czechoslovakia. After returning from Mexico in the beginning of 1980s, she shared an office with Emil Zátopek where the two former sport stars and present-day outcasts were given meaningless administrative roles. In the late 1980s, following pressure from Juan Antonio Samaranch, the then president of the International Olympic Committee, who had presented her with the Olympic Order, Čáslavská was finally allowed to work as a gymnastics coach and judge in her home country. \nAfter the Velvet Revolution in November 1989 brought an end to communist government in Czechoslovakia, Čáslavská's status improved dramatically. She became President Havel's adviser on sports and social matters and Honorary President of the Czech-Japan Association. Later, after leaving the President's Office, she was elected President of the Czech Olympic Committee. In 1995, she was appointed to the IOC membership committee.\n\n\n== Eponymous skill ==\nČáslavská has one eponymous skill listed in the Code of Points.\n\n\n== Honours ==\nČáslavská received numerous accolades for her contributions to the sport of gymnastics. In addition to the Olympic Order, she was awarded a 1989 Pierre de Coubertin International Fair Play Trophy by UNESCO and was noted at the ceremony for her \"exemplary dignity\". In 1995, she was honored with the Czech Republic's Medal of Merit. She was inducted into the International Women's Sports Hall of Fame in 1991 and the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame in 1998. In 2010, she was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun, 3rd class. She was also presented a 17th-century katana and a ceremonial kimono from the Japanese emperor.\nIn 2014, she was the joint recipient (with AP journalist Iva Drapalova) of the Hanno R. Ellenbogen Citizenship Award, awarded annually by the Prague Society for International Cooperation and Global Panel Foundation, for outstanding civic courage.\nAn inner main belt asteroid (26986) Caslavska is named for her.\n\n\n== Personal life and death ==\n\nShortly before the end of the 1968 Olympics, Čáslavská married runner Josef Odložil, who had been a silver medalist at the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo. The ceremony, which took place at the Mexico City Cathedral, drew a crowd of thousands. They had a daughter, Radka, and a son, Martin. The couple divorced in 1987. In 1993, her son and ex-husband were involved in an altercation, with Martin allegedly punching Josef; he fell to the floor and struck his head, leading to his death after 35 days. Čáslavská became severely depressed and apathetic and was rarely seen in public afterwards. \nFor a while, she was treated at a psychiatric hospital where she even underwent electroshock treatment, before moved into nursing home. Čáslavská eventually overcame her depression (which she had been fighting for about 15 years), cancelled all medication and returned to both social and sports lives, coaching younger gymnasts. After many years of seclusion, when she was barely seen except by her closest friends and family, she had seemed to be regaining her appetite for life. She described her new-found energy as “miraculous” and had recovered enough joie de vivre to delight Mexican spectators, as a guest at a gymnastics event in Acapulco, by demonstrating spontaneously that at 70 she could still do the splits.\nČáslavská was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2015. Her health deteriorated significantly in the summer of 2016, to such an extent that she was taken to a hospital in Prague on 30 August, where she died at the age of 74.\n\n\n== Competition history ==\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of top Olympic gymnastics medalists\nList of top medalists at the World Artistic Gymnastics Championships\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nVěra Čáslavská at World Gymnastics\nVěra Čáslavská at the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame \nVěra Čáslavská at Olympedia \nVěra Čáslavská at Olympics.comVěra Čáslavská at Olympic.org (archived)\nVěra Čáslavská at Olympijskytym.cz (in Czech)"}
{"title": "Wang Meng (speed skater)", "requested": "Wang Meng (speed skater)", "extract": "Wang Meng (Chinese: 王濛; pinyin: Wáng Méng; born April 10, 1985) is a Chinese short track speed skater. She is a four-time Olympic Champion and 2008 and 2009 Overall World Champion. She is the most decorated Chinese Winter Olympic athlete ever with four Olympic gold medals, a silver and a bronze. Wang won gold in the 500 m event, silver in the 1000 m and bronze in the 1500 m event at the 2006 Winter Olympics. She won 500 m and 1000 m gold medals at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics and added a third gold medal in the 3000 m relay with the China team. Wang has also won 18 gold medals at the World Championships. She is one of the most decorated short track speed skaters of all time.\n\n\n== Early life ==\nWang Meng started short track speed skating in 1994, when she was nine. In 1998 she entered Heilongjiang Provincial Sports School, which is affiliated with Harbin Institute of Physical Education. She graduated from Harbin Institute of Physical Education.\n\n\n== 2010 Winter Olympics ==\nWang was considered a strong contender for all short track speed skating events at the 2010 Winter Olympics. She won the gold medal in the 500 m event in which she had previously been dominant and was considered to be the favorite to win. She set three Olympic records in the 500 m heats, while in the finals she led from start to finish accumulating a huge lead ahead of all other competitors. In the 1,500 m race, she failed to finish after having lost her footing and crashing into the barricades. However, she came back to win the 3,000 m relay with the Chinese team and the 1,000 m solo race. She ended up snatching three gold medals, which makes her the most successful Winter Olympian ever for China.\n\n\n== Conflict with the team manager ==\nOn 24 July 2011, Wang Meng had a physical conflict with the team manager Wang Chunlu at the hotel in the Qingdao training camp. In the scuffle her arm was injured and she had to be taken to a hospital. There was a lot of speculation in the media as to what had really happened, but both sides involved provided very different stories, which makes the truth unclear to this day.\nTen days after the incident, on 4 August 2011, Wang Meng was expelled from the national short track speed skating team and the same applied to her teammate Liu Xianwei, who actively supported Wang during those ten days. The team manager, Wang Chunlu, was moved to another position, and Liu Hao became the new team manager.\n\n\n== 2014 Winter Olympics ==\nOn 16 January 2014, Wang collided with a teammate while training in Shanghai for the 2014 Winter Olympics. She broke her ankle, which required surgery and a recovery period of at least six months. She missed the Olympics as a result.\n\n\n== International Competition Podiums ==\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nWang Meng at the International Skating Union (archived former page)\nWang Meng at Olympics.com \nWang Meng at Olympedia \nWang Meng at InterSportStats\nCyber Scoreboard biography at the Wayback Machine (archived 2005-11-22)\nNBCOlympics.com biography at the Wayback Machine (archived 2006-06-17)"}
{"title": "Wang Nan (table tennis)", "requested": "Wang Nan (table tennis)", "extract": "Wang Nan (Chinese: 王楠; pinyin: Wáng Nán; born October 23, 1978, in Fushun, Liaoning) is a female Chinese table tennis player from Liaoning. Wang was ranked world #1 on the ITTF ranking system from January 1999 to November 2002. She is left-handed, and began playing table tennis when she was seven years old. Her particular skills are changing the placement of the ball during rallies and her loop drive, as well as her notable speed. Wang has been the leader of the women's table-tennis team of China after Deng Yaping's retirement. In terms of achievements, she is one of the most successful female table tennis players (alongside Li Xiaoxia, Deng Yaping, Ding Ning, Zhang Yining) having won the gold medal in each of the Table Tennis World Cup, the Table Tennis World Championships, and the Olympic Games.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nWang Nan is married to Guo Bin.\n\n\n== Career performance ==\nIn 1994 Wang Nan won the women's singles titles at the Swedish Open. The nex, Women's World Table Tennis Cup and Olympic Games. From 1997 to 1998 she won the Women's World Table Tennis Cup twice, as well as the American Open and China Open. At the 1998 Asian Games in Bangkok, Wang won the four gold medals on offer (singles, doubles, mixed doubles and women teams). At the end of 1998, she won the ITTF tour finals.\nIn 1999 she won the gold medal at the World Table Tennis Championships and the ITTF tour finals in both singles and doubles. She became world #1 in the same year. In the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney she won two gold medals in singles and doubles. Her excellent success record has resulted in her becoming a Grand-Slam champion.\nHowever, in the 2002 Asian Games in Busan, she lost two finals in the singles and women's teams competitions, winning no gold medals. Many people criticized her attitude and observed that she was inactive and lacking confidence. A lot of rumors claimed that she was going to retire because her skills were depleted and she could not compete on the improving world stage.\nWang Nan attended 2003 World Table Tennis Championships in Paris. This is her fourth time representing China. She won three gold medals in singles, doubles and mixed doubles and of particular interest, she won both singles and doubles championship for the third time in a row, records which are hard to break in the future. Many people didn't expect her success before the competition began; however, the three gold medals proved that she was still one of the top players in the world.\nAt the 2004 Summer Olympics Wang Nan failed to retain her singles crown but went on to win the women's doubles with Zhang Yining.\nFour years later at the 2008 Summer Olympics she made it to the Women's Final yet again, this time losing out to Zhang Yining, 8–11, 13–11, 11–8, 11–8, 11–3. She did, however, win the team gold for the host country.\n\n\n== Performance timelines ==\n\n\n== World Title Events Finals (24–6) ==\n\n\n=== Team (8–0) ===\n\n\n=== Singles (8–4) ===\n\n\n=== Doubles (7–1) ===\n\n\n=== Mixed Doubles (1–1) ===\n\n\n== Other significant finals ==\n\n\n=== ITTF Pro Tour Grand Finals (7–3) ===\n\n\n==== Singles: 4 (2–2) ====\n\n\n==== Doubles: 6 (5–1) ====\n\n\n=== Tournament of Champions (1–1) ===\n\n\n== Pro Tour Titles (37) ==\n\n\n=== Team (3) ===\n\n\n=== Singles (18) ===\n\n\n=== Doubles (16) ===\n\n\n== References ==\n\"Wang Nan, a true world class table tennis champion\" TableTennisMaster.com\n\n\n== External links ==\nWang Nan at World Table Tennis (ITTF)\nWang Nan at Olympics.comWang Nan at Olympic.org (archived)\nWang Nan at Olympedia \nWang Nan at InterSportStats"}
{"title": "Willis Augustus Lee", "requested": "Willis Augustus Lee", "extract": "Willis Augustus \"Ching\" Lee Jr. (May 11, 1888 – August 25, 1945) was a vice admiral of the United States Navy during World War II. Lee commanded the American ships during the second night of the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal (November 14–15, 1942) and turned back a Japanese invasion force headed for the island. The victory ended Japanese attempts to reinforce their troops on Guadalcanal, and thus marked a turning point in both the Guadalcanal campaign and the Pacific War.\nLee was also a skilled sport shooter who won seven medals in the 1920 Olympics shooting events, including five gold medals, tied with teammate Lloyd Spooner for the most anyone had ever received at a single Olympic Games. Their record stood for 60 years. He was the most successful athlete at the 1920 Olympics.\n\n\n== Early life ==\nThe son of Judge Willis Augustus Lee and Susan Arnold, he was known as \"Mose\" Lee to family and friends.\nHe entered the U.S. Naval Academy in 1904. While at the Naval Academy, his Chinese-sounding last name, compounded by his fondness for the Far East, earned him the moniker \"Ching\" Lee. Among his classmates were several future admirals including: Harry A. Badt, Paul H. Bastedo, John R. Beardall, Abel T. Bidwell, Joseph J. Broshek, Arthur S. Carpender, Jules James, Walter K. Kilpatrick, James L. Kauffman, Thomas C. Kinkaid, William R. Munroe, William R. Purnell, Francis W. Rockwell, John F. Shafroth Jr., and Richmond K. Turner.\nFollowing graduation, Lee joined the academy's rifle team three times. First, during his final summer training stint on the USS Nevada he was called back to Annapolis to participate on the rifle team. He was assigned to the battleship Idaho from October 1908 to May 1909, before returning to the naval academy and rejoining the rifle team. From November 1909 until May 1910, Lee served aboard the protected cruiser New Orleans, and then transferred to the gunboat Helena. Upon being detached back to the United States, Lee re-joined the academy shooting team a third time. In July 1913, Lee re-joined Idaho, and in April 1914 he transferred to the battleship New Hampshire to participate in the occupation of Veracruz.\nDuring World War I, Lee served on the destroyers O'Brien and Lea.\n\n\n== 1920 Olympics ==\n\nLee participated in 14 events at the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp. He won 7 medals (5 gold, 1 silver, and 1 bronze), all in team events. His teammates for the various events were Dennis Fenton, Lawrence Nuesslein, Arthur Rothrock, Oliver Schriver, Morris Fisher, Carl Osburn, Lloyd Spooner, and Joseph Jackson.\nLee and Spooner ended the 1920 Olympics with 7 medals each, the most anyone had ever received in a single year's games. Boris Shakhlin was the next person to reach 7, in 1960. It would not be until Alexander Dityatin in the 1980 games that anyone would beat the record.\n\n\n== Interwar years ==\nLee attended the Naval War College in the late 1920s, and was promoted to the rank of captain in 1936.\nDuring the 1930s and early 1940s, Lee was several times assigned to the Fleet Training Division, commanded the light cruiser Concord, and served on the staff of Commander, Cruisers, Battle Force. In early 1942, following his promotion to the rank of rear admiral, Lee became Assistant Chief of Staff to the Commander in Chief of U.S. Fleet.\n\n\n== World War II ==\nLee's specialty in life was gunnery. At the age of 19 in 1907 \"he became the only American to win both the US National High Power Rifle and Pistol championships in the same year.\" In 1914 during the Veracruz campaign in Mexico he drew the fire of three enemy snipers, thereby exposing their positions and then shot them at long range. He understood the powerful guns of a battleship as an extension of the law of ballistics and adapted his expertise to the new age of technology. When Admiral Lee engaged the Japanese Vice Admiral Nobutake Kondō's battleship Kirishima on the evening of November 14, 1942, in the waters off Guadalcanal, he became naval history's first battleship commander to conduct a \"gunfight\" primarily by radar remote control.\n\n\n=== Naval Battle of Guadalcanal ===\n\nIn August 1942, Rear Admiral Lee was sent to the Pacific to command Battleship Division Six, consisting of the battleships Washington and South Dakota. Flying his flag in Washington, Lee engaged an Imperial Japanese Navy surface fleet under the command of Vice Admiral Kondō during the second night of the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal on the night of November 14–15, 1942. While riding in the battleship Washington, which served as his flagship during this sea fight, Lee's battleship decisively shelled the battleship Kirishima into a wreck, resulting in her scuttling shortly afterwards. She sank into Ironbottom Sound with 300 Imperial Japanese Navy sailors still aboard, leaving Admiral Lee's flagship Washington the only American battleship during World War II to sink an enemy battleship in a \"one on one\" gunfight.\nLee, who \"knew more about radar than the radar operators,\" used the SG radar installed aboard Washington to skillfully maneuver his ships during the night.\n\nTo Willis Lee went many accolades. \"Audacious planning and execution\" marked his operations, commented Halsey... Unlike Callaghan, Lee never allowed the action to degenerate into a nautical brawl, because he formulated a workable plan and adhered to it, even after every ship in his task force except Washington was sunk or forced to retire. Lee was never more incisive than in his own evaluation of his success: \"We realized then and it should not be forgotten now, that our entire superiority was due almost entirely to our possession of radar. Certainly we have no edge on the Japs in experience, skill, training, or performance of personnel.\"\n\n\n=== After Guadalcanal ===\nLee was awarded the Navy Cross for his actions at the battle, promoted to vice admiral in 1944 and placed in charge of the Pacific Fleet's fast battleships, as Commander, Battleships, Pacific Fleet (ComBatPac).\nIn May 1945, he was sent to the Atlantic to command a special unit researching defenses against the threat of Japanese kamikaze aircraft, the Composite Task Force, U.S. Atlantic Fleet. While serving in that position on August 25, 1945, Vice Admiral Lee died suddenly after suffering a heart attack, ten days after the surrender of Japan. He collapsed and died in a motor launch that was ferrying him out to his flagship, the gunnery training ship USS Wyoming (AG-17), in the harbor of Portland, Maine. Lee was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.\n\n\n== Family ==\nWillis Lee Jr. was a distant relative of Confederate General Robert E. Lee and the third Attorney General of the United States, Charles Lee. He married Mabelle Allen Elspeth (1894–1949) on July 14, 1919. They had no children. Willis' father, Judge Willis Augustus Lee Sr., was one of fourteen children of Nathaniel Wiley Lee (aka Nat Lee, founder of Natlee, Kentucky) and Frances Abbott, of Owen County, Kentucky. While in the Pacific theater, Lee unofficially adopted two Korean children in Vietnam after the children's family requested that Lee take the children to the United States.\nHis great-grandparents were early Kentucky settlers, Joseph R. Lee and Mary Wiley. His grandfather Nathaniel W. Lee operated a distillery at his namesake village of Natlee. In 1893, Nat Lee's sour mash whiskey was taken to the Chicago World's Fair where it won the Gold Medal over 5000 other entries.\n\n\n== Namesakes ==\nThe Mitscher-class destroyer USS Willis A. Lee (DD-929), redesignated before commissioning as a destroyer leader (DL-4), was named for him.\n\n\n== Awards and decorations ==\nBelow is the ribbon bar of Vice Admiral Willis Augustus Lee:\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n=== Citations ===\n\n\n=== Bibliography ===\n\nHornfischer, James D. (2011). Neptune's Inferno: The US Navy at Guadalcanal. New York City: Bantam Books. ISBN 978-0-553-80670-0.\n\n\n== Further reading ==\nStillwell, Paul (2021). Battleship Commander: The Life of Vice Admiral Willis A. Lee Jr (Hardcover). Annapolis: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 9781682475935. See online book review"}
{"title": "Wu Minxia", "requested": "Wu Minxia", "extract": "Wu Minxia (Chinese: 吴敏霞; pinyin: Wú Mǐnxiá; born 10 November 1985) is a retired Chinese diver, specializing in the 1 metre and 3 metre springboard, and synchronized 3 metre springboard events. Entering her first major championship in 2001, Wu represented China at every Asian Games, Olympic Games and FINA World Aquatics Championships through 2016. She is an eight-time world champion, and a five-time Olympic and Asian champion, making her one of the most decorated divers in history.\n\n\n== Career ==\nWu began her competitive career at the 2001 World Aquatics Championships, partnering with Guo Jingjing to win the 3 metre women's synchronized springboard. She would go on to retain the title with Guo on another three occasions, missing out in 2005 when Guo partnered with Li Ting to win in Montreal. Wu also won the same event with Guo at the 2002 Asian Games.\nWu represented China at the 2004 Summer Olympics, earning a gold medal in the 3 metre women's synchronized springboard along with Guo Jingjing before winning a silver medal in the 3 metre women's springboard, coming in second place behind Guo. At the 2008 Summer Olympics, Wu earned a gold medal in the 3 metre women's synchronized springboard along with Guo before winning a bronze medal in the 3 metre women's springboard, coming in third place behind Guo and Russian Julia Pakhalina. After Guo's retirement, she participated in synchronized events with He Zi.\nThe new partnership allowed her to retain the 3 metre synchro title at the 2011 World Aquatics Championships. It was at the same championships in her hometown where she won her only other world championship title, in the 3 metre springboard. At the 2012 Summer Olympics, Wu earned a gold medal in the 3 metre women's synchronized springboard along with He, becoming the first woman to win gold medal in a diving event in three consecutive Olympic Games. She also won a gold medal in the 3 metre springboard event. After the 3 metre springboard competition, it was revealed that her parents withheld information that her grandmother died a year before, and that her mother had cancer. Her father said he misled her to keep her focused on training. The news drew criticism in China.\nBy winning the 3m synchronized springboard event at the 2013 and 2015 World Championships with new partner Shi Tingmao, Wu became the first person to win seven gold medals in the event. At the 2014 Asian Games and the 2016 Summer Olympics, Wu earned a gold medal in the 3 metre women's synchronized springboard along with Shi.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nOn 12 May 2017, Wu accepted a marriage proposal husband Zhang Xiaocheng. The couple were married on 17 May, with the wedding ceremony being held in Fuping, Shaanxi. Their daughter was born on 19 December 2018, and son was born on 7 February 2022.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\n\n\n== References =="}
{"title": "Yana Klochkova", "requested": "Yana Klochkova", "extract": "Yana Oleksandrivna Klochkova (Ukrainian: Яна Олександрівна Клочкова; born 7 August 1982) is a Ukrainian swimmer, who has won five Olympic medals in her career, with four of them being gold. She is Merited Master of Sports (1998), Hero of Ukraine (2004). Klochkova was the most awarded Olympian from Ukraine until in 2024 fencer Olga Kharlan overtook her.\nYana Klochkova set 50 Ukrainian records in 25- and 50-meter swimming pools at distances of 100, 200, 400 meters with integrated swimming; 200, 400 and 800 meters freestyle; 100 and 200 meters on the back; 200 meters butterfly and relay swimming. At the Olympic Games in Sydney, she set a world record in a 400-meter medley swimming and a European record in a 200-meter medley swimming.\n\n\n== Biography ==\nKlochkova was born on 7 August 1982 in the city of Simferopol (situated in Crimea). She moved from there to Kharkiv, then to Kyiv.\nSports Society — \"Dynamo\", Major of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine.\nCoaches⁣ — Honored Trainer of Ukraine, Honored Worker of Physical Culture of Ukraine Nina Kozhukh and Honored Trainer of the USSR, Honored Worker of Physical Culture of Ukraine Alexander Kozhukh.\nIn the 2006 Ukrainian local elections Klochkova was elected to the Kharkiv City Council joining the faction of and became a member of the Party of Regions.\nShe retired in 2009 at the age of 26.\nKlochkova has a son named Oleksandr born 21 June 2010. The father is Georgian athlete and businessman Nodarovich Rostoshvili. The relationship between Rostoshvili and Klochkova lasted 18 months and Rostoshvili moved back to Georgia before their son was born and Klochkova raised her son alone.\nFollowing the Russian invasion and unilaterally annexation of Crimea in 2014 Klochkova publicly continued to visit Crimea while living in Kyiv. When questioned about this she stated that the peninsula is her home and her parents continued to live there.\nIn 2021 Klochkova complained that she had not been invited to the celebration of the 30th anniversary of Ukrainian independence. She stated that it was important to have Olympic champions present on such celebrations since \"These are the people who represent our country abroad, play the anthem of our country, raise the flag.\" At the time her son Oleksandr lived permanently with his grandparents in Crimea and she speculated that that could have been a reason not to invite her. According to then Ukraine's Youth and Sport Minister Vadym Gutzeit the Ukrainian Swimming Federation had tried to contact Klochkova, but she had not responded. On 16 September 2021 Klochkova organised a swimming cross of the Dnipro river in Kyiv in honor of swimming day and the 30th anniversary of Ukrainian independence.\nIn 2022, Klochkova left Kyiv to live in Crimea. According to the Ukrainian news website Obozrevatel she lives with her son in Gurzuf. Klochkova has never publicly made a statement on the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.\n\n\n=== Farewell to the track ===\nIn January 2008, Klochkova announced her retirement from sports.\nOn 24 March 2009 in the Olympic swimming pool \"Aquarena\" in Kharkiv, during the first stage of the Ukrainian Swimming Cup, with completely filled stands, Yana Klochkova's official \"parting with water\" took place. Officials (Kharkiv Mayor Mykhailo Dobkin, Vice Governor Sergei Storozhenko, Head of the Ukrainian Swimming Federation Oleg Dyomin, two-time Olympic champion volleyball player Yuriy Poyarkov and many others) spoke about the swimmers, followed by the presentation of flowers and gifts from everyone. Klochkova, nicknamed \"the goldfish\" in Ukraine, was symbolically presented with an aquarium with a live goldfish.\nIn 2011, Yana Klochkova headed the Kyiv branch of the National Olympic Committee of Ukraine, but in 2012, without waiting for support for her initiatives from the executive committee of the Olympic Committee, she left this post.\n\n\n== Awards ==\nHer gold medals came in the 200 meter individual medley and the 400 meter individual medley at the 2000 and 2004 Summer Olympics; her silver medal came in the 800 meter freestyle at the 2000 Summer Olympics. She has also won ten titles at swimming's world championships, nineteen European championship titles. She currently holds the short-course world record in the 400 meter individual medley. Her 400 m individual medley world record was broken by American Katie Hoff at the 2007 World Championships in Melbourne.\nOn 28 July 2001, she won a silver medal by defeating Qi Hui of China in the women's 200-meter individual medley at the 2001 World Aquatics Championships in Fukuoka, Japan. The same year, she won gold medal for 400-meter individual medley at the same event and on two days later won another gold in the 400-meter freestyle. In 2003, she won four golds at the Summer Universiade in South Korea. In 2004, she was named by Swimming World magazine as the World Female Swimmer of the Year and the same year was awarded Hero of Ukraine medal by President Leonid Kuchma.\n\n\n== Titles ==\nYana Klochkova's titles include:\n\n\n=== Olympic Champion ===\n2000, Sydney: 200 m individual medley\n2000, Sydney: 400 m individual medley\n2004, Athens: 200 m individual medley\n2004, Athens: 400 m individual medley\n\n\n=== World Champion, Long Course ===\n2001, Fukuoka: 400 m freestyle\n2001, Fukuoka: 400 m individual medley\n2003, Barcelona: 200 m individual medley\n2003, Barcelona: 400 m individual medley\n\n\n=== World Champion, Short Course ===\n1999, Hong Kong: 400 m individual medley\n2000, Athens: 200 m individual medley\n2000, Athens: 400 m individual medley\n2002, Moscow: 400 m freestyle\n2002, Moscow: 200 m individual medley\n2002, Moscow: 400 m individual medley\n\n\n=== European Champion, Long Course ===\n1999, Istanbul: 200 m individual medley\n1999, Istanbul: 400 m individual medley\n2000, Helsinki: 400 m freestyle\n2000, Helsinki: 200 m individual medley\n2000, Helsinki: 400 m individual medley\n2002, Berlin: 400 m freestyle\n2002, Berlin: 200 m individual medley\n2002, Berlin: 400 m individual medley\n2004, Madrid: 200 m individual medley\n2004, Madrid: 400 m individual medley\n\n\n=== European Champion, Short Course ===\n1999, Lisbon: 400 m freestyle\n1999, Lisbon: 800 m freestyle\n1999, Lisbon: 200 m individual medley\n1999, Lisbon: 400 m individual medley\n2000, Valencia: 200 m individual medley\n2000, Valencia: 400 m individual medley\n2001, Antwerp: 200 m individual medley\n2002, Riesa: 200 m individual medley\n2002, Riesa: 400 m individual medley\n\n\n=== Universiade Champion, Long Course ===\n2003, Daegu: 200 m freestyle\n2003, Daegu: 200 m butterfly\n2003, Daegu: 200 m individual medley\n2003, Daegu: 400 m individual medley\n2007, Bangkok: 400 m individual medley\n\n\n=== Honorary titles ===\n\"Person of the Year 2000\" in the nomination \"Sportsman of the Year\".\n\"Person of the Year 2003\" in the nomination \"Sportsman of the Year\".\nHonorary Citizen of Kharkiv and Donetsk.\n\n\n== International championships (50 m) ==\n\na  Klochkova qualified from the heats, but scratched the semi-finals\n\n\n== See also ==\nWorld record progression 400 metres medley\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of top Olympic gold medalists in swimming\nList of individual gold medalists in swimming at the Olympics and World Aquatics Championships (women)\nList of European Aquatics Championships medalists in swimming (women)\nList of European Short Course Swimming Championships medalists (women)\nList of World Aquatics Championships medalists in swimming (women)\n\n\n== Notes ==\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nYana Klochkova  at World Aquatics \nYana Klochkova at the International Swimming Hall of Fame \nYana Klochkova at Swimrankings.net \nYana Klochkova at Olympics.com \nYana Klochkova at Olympedia"}
{"title": "Yevgeny Grishin (speed skater)", "requested": "Yevgeny Grishin (speed skater)", "extract": "Yevgeny Romanovich Grishin (Russian: Евгений Романович Гришин; 23 March 1931 – 9 July 2005) was a Soviet and Russian speedskater. Grishin trained for the largest part of his speedskating career at CSKA Moscow. A four-time Olympian (1956, 1960, 1964, 1968), he became European Champion in 1956, and won Olympic gold in the 500 meter and 1500 meter events in both 1956 and 1960 Winter Olympics (sharing the 1500 meter victories with respectively Yuri Mikhaylov and Roald Aas), competing for the USSR team. Along with his compatriot Lidiya Skoblikova, he was the most successful athlete at the 1960 Winter Olympics.\nGrishin was the first to break the 40 second barrier on the 500 m, skating 39.6 in an unofficial test race in Squaw Valley in 1960, just after the Winter Olympic Games at the same location. Three years later, on 27–28 January 1963, he set officially ratified world records 39.6 and 39.5 at the Medeu track. He also won 2 bronze medals in the World Championships, in 1954 and 1956.\nHe had 12 single distance wins in his 14 starts in allround championships. Over the course of his career Grishin set seven world records; the 1:22.8 time of the 1000 m lasted 12 years.\n\n\n== World records ==\nOver the course of his career, Grishin skated seven world records:\n\nSource: SpeedSkatingStats.com\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nYevgeny Grishin at SpeedSkatingStats.com\nLegends of Soviet Sport: Yevgeny Grishin"}
{"title": "Yukio Endō", "requested": "Yukio Endō", "extract": "Yukio Endō (遠藤 幸雄, Endō Yukio; January 18, 1937 – March 25, 2009)  was a Japanese artistic gymnast, Olympic champion and world champion.  He was part of the first Japanese team that succeeded to win gold medals in the team event at the Summer Olympics (1960) and World Championships (1962). In 1964 he won the first individual all-around Olympic gold medal for Japan. He was the flag bearer at the 1968 Summer Olympics.\n\n\n== Early life ==\nEndō was born into a family of pharmacists. His mother died from tuberculosis when he was a nine-year-old student at Hiroomote Elementary School. He studied at Kubota Junior High School and Akita Technical High School, after which he studied at the Tokyo University of Education (now the University of Tsukuba), graduating in 1959. He later worked as assistant instructor of physical education at Nihon University.\n\n\n== Career ==\nEndō won gold medals with the Japanese team in three Olympics, in 1960, 1964 and 1968. At the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, he also received two individual gold medals, in parallel bars, and in individual all-around.\nEndō received six individual medals at the 1962 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships, including a gold medal in floor exercise, and Japan also won the team competition.\n\nHe received two individual silver medals at the 1966 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships, and Japan won the team competition.\nEndō was a four-time Japanese all-around champion.\nHe retired after the 1968 Olympics to become a gymnastics coach and eventually professor at Nihon University. He also coached the national team at the 1972 Olympics, acted as director of the Japanese Olympic Committee and was twice appointed as vice-president of the Japan Gymnastic Association. In 1996, he received the Japanese Emperor's Medal, and in 1999 he was inducted into the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame.\nEndō died of esophageal cancer on March 25, 2009.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nYukio Endō at World Gymnastics\nYukio Endō at the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame\nYukio Endō at Olympics.com\nYukio Endō at Olympedia\nYukio Endō at InterSportStats"}
{"title": "Yvonne van Gennip", "requested": "Yvonne van Gennip", "extract": "Yvonne Maria Therèse van Gennip (born 1 May 1964) is one of the most successful female Dutch all-round speed skaters. Her main success dates from the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, where she unexpectedly won three gold medals. She was the most successful athlete at the 1988 Winter Olympics, along with Matti Nykänen of Finland.\nAfter she had injured her foot, and had surgery less than two months before the games, the East German women were heavily favoured to win the distances over 500 meters. But Van Gennip smashed the world record by almost five seconds to win the 3000 metres, beat her personal record by almost 4 seconds to win the 1500 metres, and was almost seven seconds faster than her own world record time to win the 5000 metres as well.\nVan Gennip participated in the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo and in the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville as well, but did not win a medal. She won a silver medal in the 1988 World Speed Skating Championships, and bronze medals in the 1987 and 1989 World Championships.\n\n\n== Early life ==\nVan Gennip was born on 1 May 1964 in Haarlem, the daughter of Johannes Gerardus van Gennip (22 April 1922 – 30 September 1999) and Reina Elisabeth Mettes (20 May 1924 – 15 March 2013).\nShe married bank director Gert van Kuijk on 15 August 2002 in Zandvoort, the couple divorced in 2009. Since 2010 she has been in a relationship with Jaap de Groot, lead editor for sports for De Telegraaf.\n\n\n== Records ==\n\n\n=== Personal records ===\n\n\n=== World records ===\n\n\n== Achievements ==\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists at a single Games\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nYvonne van Gennip at Olympics.com \nYvonne van Gennip at Olympedia"}
{"title": "Zhang Yining", "requested": "Zhang Yining", "extract": "Zhang Yining (Chinese: 张怡宁; pinyin: Zhāng Yíníng; born 5 October 1981) is a Chinese table tennis player who retired in 2009. She is considered one of the greatest female players in the sport's history. In terms of achievements, she is one of the most successful female table tennis players (alongside Ding Ning, Deng Yaping, Wang Nan, Li Xiaoxia) having won the gold medal in each of the Table Tennis World Cup, the Table Tennis World Championships, and the Olympic Games. She is also the first player overall, and the first female, to have completed a Double Grand Slam.\n\n\n== History ==\nZhang Yining held the ITTF #1 ranking continuously from 2003 to 2009, except two months in 2008, remaining as a dominant figure in women's table tennis, with four Olympic gold medals, ten World Championships, and four World Cup wins. During the 2008 Beijing Olympics, she was often referred to by commentators as \"The Yellow Beast\", denoting her dominance in the sport. She uses a specially made Zhang Yining ZLC for her blade made by butterfly, and tenergy 05 for forehand and tenergy 64 for her backhand.\nZhang is a graduate from Beijing Shichahai Sports School, where Li Jiawei of Singapore studied as well.\nZhang was married in October 2009 and has not been present in table tennis tournaments since then. She announced her retirement from international play in 2011 and she went to the United States to study at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and learn to better speak English. This makes her one of few players to retire whilst holding both the World and Olympic titles for singles and team event in table tennis. Zhang also said she would like to introduce to Americans the sport of table tennis.\nSince 2010, Zhang serves as the assistant president of the China Table Tennis College in Shanghai.\n\n\n== Successes ==\n45th World Table Tennis Championships (1999) Women's Single Silver\n45th World Table Tennis Championships (2000) Women's Team Gold\n5th ITTF Pro Tour Grand Finals (2000) Women's Single Gold\n5th Table Tennis World Cup (2001) Women's Single Gold\n46th World Table Tennis Championships (2001) Women's Team Gold\n6th Table Tennis World Cup (2002) Women's Single Gold\n7th ITTF Pro Tour Grand Finals (2002) Women's Single Gold\n47th World Table Tennis Championships (2003) Women's Single Silver, women's Double Gold\n47th World Table Tennis Championships (2004) Women's Team Gold\nGames of the 28th Olympiad (2004) Table Tennis Women's Single Gold, women's Double Gold\n8th Table Tennis World Cup (2004) Women's Single Gold\n48th World Table Tennis Championships (2005) Women's Single Gold, women's Double Gold\n10thNational Games of China (2005) Women's Team Gold, women's Single Gold\n9th Table Tennis World Cup (2005) Women's Single Gold\n10th ITTF Pro Tour Grand Finals (2005) Women's Single Gold\n48th World Table Tennis Championships (2006) Women's Team Gold\n11th ITTF Pro Tour Grand Finals (2006) Women's Single Gold\n49th World Table Tennis Championships (2007)  Women's Double Gold\n11th Table Tennis World Cup (2007) Women's Team Gold\n49th World Table Tennis Championships (2008) Women's Team Gold\nGames of the 29th Olympiad (2008) Table Tennis Women's Single Gold, women's Team Gold\n50th World Table Tennis Championships (2009) Women's Single Gold\n\n\n== Olympic record ==\n\n\n=== 2008 Summer Olympics Women's Table Tennis Singles results ===\nZhang participated in the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, winning gold in both the women's singles and women's team competition. Zhang successfully defended her singles Olympic gold medal, defeating compatriot Wang Nan in the finals 8-11, 13–11, 11–8, 11–8, 11–3.\nShe was also the women's doubles gold medal winner at the 2004 Summer Olympics.\nThe following table shows the scores of the women's singles table tennis matches that Zhang Yining played during the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games:\n\nClick here to see further details regarding the 2008 Summer Olympics Table Tennis competition results.\n\n\n=== 2008 Summer Olympics opening ceremony ===\nAt the opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, Zhang took the Olympic Oath on behalf of all competitors at the Games.\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\nZhang Yining world ranking record at the ITTF\nITTF Stats for Zhang Yining"}
{"title": "Zou Kai", "requested": "Zou Kai", "extract": "Zou Kai (Chinese: 邹凯; pinyin: Zōu Kǎi; born February 25, 1988, in Luzhou, Sichuan) is a five-time Olympic and five-time World champion Chinese gymnast, specializing in floor exercise and the horizontal bar.\nZou won his first three Olympic gold medals at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, resulting in a nomination for the Laureus World Sports Award for Breakthrough of the Year in 2009. He later won two additional gold medals at the 2012 Olympic Games in London.\nAs of 2024, Zou's total of five gold medals and one bronze ties him for the record of second most Olympic gold medals won by any Chinese athlete in Olympic history, behind Ma Long, and ties him for the record of third most medals won overall by a Chinese athlete, behind Zhang Yufei (ten medals), Wu Minxia, and Huang Xuechen (seven medals each).\n\n\n== Gymnastics career ==\n\n\n=== World Championships debut ===\nZou made his debut at the 2006 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Aarhus, helping the Chinese Team win gold, and placing sixth at the individual floor exercise final.\nAt the 2007 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Stuttgart, Zou achieved the same results, winning the team competition and again placing sixth on floor.\n\n\n=== 2006 Asian Games ===\nZou participated in the 2006 Asian Games in Doha, winning gold in the floor exercise and silver in the horizontal bar individual events, as well as a gold medal as part of the Chinese team.\n\n\n=== 2008 Summer Olympics ===\nOn his Olympic debut at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, Zou contributed to the team's gold and also won unexpected individual gold medals on floor exercise and the horizontal bar scoring 16.050 and 16.200 respectively.\nZou was the second Chinese Olympian to receive three gold medals at a single Olympic Games, following Li Ning who first achieved the feat at the 1984 Summer Olympics, and was the most successful Chinese athlete at the Beijing Olympics, with the most gold medal wins.\n\n\n=== 2009 World Championships ===\nDuring the 2009 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in London, Zou won a gold medal in the individual horizontal bar event and also won a silver medal in the floor exercise individual event.\n\n\n=== 2011 World Championships ===\nAfter being left out of the Chinese Gymnastic Team at both the 2010 World Championships in Rotterdam and 2010 Asian Games in Guangzhou due to weaknesses in the apparatuses he did not specialize in, Zou again won two gold and one silver medals at the 2011 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Tokyo, matching his feat back in 2009.\n\n\n=== 2012 Summer Olympics ===\nAt the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, Zou led the team to win gold and later successfully defended his Olympic title at the floor exercise, winning gold again, only the second to do so in the men's floor exercise following Soviet Gymnast Nikolai Andrianov who won the event in 1972 and 1976. He was unable to defend his title in the horizontal bar, however, finishing less than two tenths of a point behind the lead, eventually winning a bronze medal in the event. The last gymnast to successfully defend his Olympic title on the horizontal bar was Mitsuo Tsukahara, who won the event in 1972 and 1976, at the same Olympics as Andrianov.\nWith a total of five Olympic gold medals, Zou holds the record for most golds won by any Chinese athlete in Olympic history, and by adding a bronze medal to the tally, he tied the record for most medals overall, with six.\n\n\n=== 2014 Asian Games ===\nZou participated in the 2014 Asian Games in Incheon, winning gold in both the floor exercise and horizontal bar individual events, as well as a bronze medal as part of the Chinese team.\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nZou, a Sichuan native, auctioned off one of his Olympic gold medals in 2008, donating all proceeds to fund relief efforts in the aftermath of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. Out of the three gold medals he'd earned at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, he chose the medal won for his floor exercise routine for its special significance since only two other Chinese gymnasts had ever won it, Li Ning and Li Xiaoshuang.\n\n\n== See also ==\n\nChina at the 2008 Summer Olympics\nChina at the 2012 Summer Olympics\nList of Olympic medalists in gymnastics (men)\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists at a single Games\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nZou Kai at World Gymnastics\nZou Kai at Olympics.com\nZou Kai at Olympedia\nZou Kai at InterSportStats"}
{"title": "Ágnes Keleti", "requested": "Ágnes Keleti", "extract": "Ágnes Keleti (née Klein; Hebrew: אגנס קלט; 9 January 1921 – 2 January 2025) was a Hungarian and Israeli artistic gymnast and coach, who won multiple Olympic medals. She was the oldest living Olympic champion and medallist, reaching her 100th birthday on 9 January 2021. While representing Hungary at the Summer Olympics, she won 10 Olympic medals including five gold medals, three silver medals, and two bronze medals, and is considered to be one of the most successful Jewish Olympic athletes of all time. Keleti earned more Olympic medals than any other individual with Israeli citizenship, and more Olympic medals than any other Jew, except Mark Spitz. She was the most successful athlete at the 1956 Summer Olympics.\nIn 1957, Keleti immigrated to Israel, where she worked as a coach, eventually returning to her native Hungary in 2015 at the age of 94. In 2017, she was awarded the Israel Prize in sports.\n\n\n== Biography ==\nAgnes Klein (later Keleti) was born in Budapest, Hungary. She began to train in gymnastics at the age of 4, and by 16 was the Hungarian National Champion in gymnastics. Over the course of her career, between 1937 and 1956, she won the Championships title ten times. She changed her surname to Keleti to make it more Hungarian-sounding.\nKeleti was considered a top prospect for the Hungarian team at the 1940 Olympics, but the escalation of World War II cancelled both the 1940 and the 1944 Games. She was expelled from her gymnastics club in 1941 for being a Jew. Because she had heard a rumour married women were not taken to labour camps, she hastily married István Sárkány in 1944. Sárkány was a Hungarian gymnast of the 1930s who achieved national titles and took part in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Keleti survived the war by purchasing and using an identity paper of a Christian girl and working as a maid in a small village in the Hungarian countryside. Her mother and sister went into hiding and were saved using Swiss protection papers issued by diplomat Carl Lutz and possibly also by Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg. Her father and other relatives were murdered by the Nazis by gassing in the Auschwitz concentration camp.  In the winter of 1944–45, during the Siege of Budapest by Soviet forces near the end of World War II, Keleti would collect bodies of those who had died and place them in a mass grave each morning.\nAfter the war, Keleti played the cello professionally and resumed training. In 1946, she won her first Hungarian championship. In 1947, she won the Central European gymnastics title. She qualified for the 1948 Summer Olympics, but missed the competition due to tearing a ligament in her ankle. She is listed on the Official List of Gymnastic Participants as Ágnes Sárkány. At the World University Games of 1949 she won four gold, one silver, and one bronze medal. She divorced her husband István Sárkány in 1950.\nKeleti continued training and competed at the Olympics for the first time at the age of 31 at the 1952 Games in Helsinki. She earned four medals: gold in the floor exercise, silver in the team competition, and bronze in the team portable apparatus event and the uneven bars. Keleti continued on to the 1954 World Championships, where she won on the uneven bars, becoming world champion. At the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne, Keleti won six medals including gold medals in three of the four individual event finals: floor, bars, and balance beam, and placed second in the all-around. She was the most successful athlete at these games. The Hungarian team placed first in the portable apparatus event and second in the team competition. At the age of 35, Keleti became the oldest female gymnast ever to win gold. The Soviet Union invaded Hungary during the 1956 Olympics. Keleti, along with 44 other athletes from the Hungarian delegation, decided to remain in Australia and received political asylum. She became a coach for Australian gymnasts.\nKeleti immigrated to Israel in 1957, competing in the 1957 Maccabiah Games, and she was able to send for her mother and sister. In 1959, she married Hungarian physical education teacher Robert Biro whom she met in Israel, and they had two sons, Daniel and Rafael.  Following her retirement from competition, Keleti worked as a physical education instructor at Tel Aviv University, and for 34 years at the Wingate Institute for Sports in Netanya.\n\n Keleti also coached and worked with Israel's national gymnastics team well into the 1990s. From 1990 onward, she gradually spent more time in her homeland of Hungary, ultimately settling in her native Budapest in 2015. \nKeleti became the oldest Hungarian Olympic champion when Sándor Tarics died on 21 May 2016. She became the oldest living Olympic champion when Lydia Wideman died on 13 April 2019. She celebrated her 100th birthday in January 2021. She became the longest-lived Olympic champion ever on 7 August 2023, breaking the record previously held by Tarics.\nKeleti died in Budapest on 2 January 2025, a week before her 104th birthday, after being hospitalised with pneumonia in the previous week.\n\n\n== Awards and honours ==\nKeleti was inducted into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in 1981, the Hungarian Sports Hall of Fame in 1991, the International Women's Sports Hall of Fame in 2001, and the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame in 2002.\nIn 1982, she was awarded the Herzl Prize for sports.\nKeleti was named in Hungary's 12 \"Athletes of the Nation\" in 2004\nAsteroid 265594 Keletiágnes, discovered by Krisztián Sárneczky in 2005, was named in her honour. The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on 12 July 2014 (M.P.C. 89086).\nIn 2017, she was announced laureate of the Israel Prize in the field of sports.\n\n\n== Competitive results ==\n\n\n== See also ==\nList of Soviet and Eastern Bloc defectors\nList of Jews in sports\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists\nList of multiple Olympic gold medalists at a single Games\nList of Olympic female artistic gymnasts for Hungary\nList of Olympic medal leaders in women's gymnastics\nList of multiple Summer Olympic medalists\n\n\n== References ==\n \n\n\n== External links ==\nÁgnes Keleti at IMDb\nÁgnes Keleti at World Gymnastics\nÁgnes Keleti at the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame\nÁgnes Keleti at Olympics.com \nÁgnes Keleti at Olympedia \nÁgnes Keleti at Magyar Olimpiai Bizottság (in Hungarian) (in English) \nList of competitive results at gymn-forum.net\n\"The Forgotten Olympians\" at the Wayback Machine (archived 8 September 2004)"}
{"title": "Áron Szilágyi", "requested": "Áron Szilágyi", "extract": "Áron Szilágyi (Hungarian: [ˈaːron ˈsilaːɟi]; born 14 January 1990) is a Hungarian right-handed sabre fencer. A five-time Olympian, Szilágyi is a three-time individual Olympic champion, 2021 team Olympic bronze medalist, and 2024 team Olympic silver medalist.\nSzilágyi competed in the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, the 2012 London Olympic Games, the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games, and the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games. In Tokyo, Szilágyi became the only male fencer in history to win three individual Olympic gold medals.\nSzilágyi is also a 2018 team European champion, 2015 individual European champion, 2007 team world champion, and 2022 individual world champion.\nSzilágyi has served as the president of the Vasas Sport Club Fencing Division since 2020.\n\n\n== Career ==\n\nSzilágyi began fencing at age nine at Vasas SC in Budapest, which remains his club as of 2015. His first coach was György Gerevich, whom he considers as his personal hero alongside György's father, seven-time Olympic champion Aladár Gerevich.\nWhile he was still a cadet, Szilágyi joined the senior Hungarian team for the 2007 World Fencing Championships in Saint-Petersburg. Hungary won their first gold medal in men's sabre since 1998 after defeating France 45–43. For this performance, Tamás Decsi, Balázs Lontay, Zsolt Nemcsik and Áron Szilágyi were named Hungarian team of the year.\nHe competed in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, finishing 15th in the individual event and 7th in the team event. He earned team bronze in the 2009 World Fencing Championships in Antalya, and placed third in the individual event of the 2011 European Fencing Championships in Sheffield.\nThe only Hungarian to qualify to the men's sabre event of the 2012 Summer Olympics, he was seeded no.5. In the table of 16 he defeated 2008 Olympic champion Zhong Man of China, then overcame Germany's Max Hartung and Russia's Nikolay Kovalev to reach the final. After taking an early 7–0 lead over Italy's Diego Occhiuzzi, Szilágyi closed the match on 15–8 to win Hungary's first gold medal in the London games.\nSzilágyi featured on the official poster and video campaign of the 2013 World Fencing Championships held in his home city, Budapest. He was defeated in the semi-finals by Nikolay Kovalev and took the bronze medal. In the team event, Hungary was eliminated in the table of 8 by Romania and finished 7th after the ranking matches. Szilágyi finished the season world no.2, a career best as of 2015.\nIn the 2014–15 season Szilágyi claimed his first continental title in Montreux, after prevailing over Max Hartung despite a right-ankle injury. Hartung took his revenge in the 2015 World Fencing Championships by defeating Szilágyi in the quarter-finals of the individual event.\nAfter the competition Szilágyi announced that he would prepare for the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro with András Decsi, Singapore's national coach and elder brother to Szilágyi's teammate Tamás. He won his second gold medal at the 2016 Olympics, defeating Daryl Homer 15–8 in the final.\nAt the 2020 Summer Olympics, Szilágyi won his third gold medal, defeating Luigi Samele 15–7 in the final.\nHe won the gold medal in the men's sabre event at the 2022 World Fencing Championships held in Cairo, Egypt.\nIn January 2024, he received the World Fair Play Award due to his exemplary action in the final of the Gerevich-Kovács-Kárpáti Men's Sabre World Cup in Budapest in March, 2023.\nAt the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, Szilágyi was defeated in the first round by Fares Arfa of Canada, his first Olympic defeat since 2008.\n\n\n== Medal record ==\n\n\n=== Olympic Games ===\n\n\n=== World Championships ===\n\n\n=== European Championship ===\n\n\n=== Grand Prix ===\n\n\n=== World Cup ===\n\n\n== Personal life ==\nSzilágyi studied international relations at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. Beside his degree in international relations, he also holds a degree in psychology from Károli Gáspár University. He speaks three languages: Hungarian, English and French. His interests include psychology, travel, coffee and fine wines.\nIn 2017, he married his long-time girlfriend, Betti. Their son, Leó was born in 2023.\n\n\n== Societal engagement ==\n\nOn 13 February 2013, Szilágyi presented the Bálint Balassi Memorial Sword, an international literary prize founded by Hungary, to French literary translator Jean-Luc Moreau at the Gellért Hotel. In spring 2013, he became a financial education ambassador of TakarékPont, a Hungarian financial service provider.\nIn 2006, when the New Europe Foundation of MOL was launched, he was one of the first to win the support of the MOL Talent Support Programme. From 2013 until 2022, he was a Member of the Athletes' Commission of the International Fencing Federation, while from 2017 to 2019 he served as President of the commission. Since 2017, he has been a goodwill ambassador of the New Europe Foundation, participating in the foundation's charity programmes for young people.\nIn 2021, he accepted the invitation to become Social Chairman of the Forum for the Protection of Interests of Hungarian Elite Athletes.\nSince 2021, he has been a Member of the Athletes' Commission of the Hungarian Olympic Committee.\n\n\n== Awards ==\nHungarian Sportsman of the Year: 2016, 2021\nHungarian Junior fencer of the Year: 2006, 2009\nJunior Príma award (2010)\nHungarian Fencer of the Year (7): 2011, 2012, 2016, 2018, 2020, 2021, 2022\nHonorary Citizen of Budapest (2012)\nFIE Fair Play Award: 2019\nOrders and special awards\n Officer's Cross of the Hungarian Order of Merit (2012)\n Commander's Cross of the Hungarian Order of Merit (2016)\n Grand Cross of the Hungarian Order of Merit (2021)\n Hungarian Order of Saint Stephen (2023)\n\n\n== References ==\n\n\n== External links ==\n\nÁron Szilágyi at the International Fencing Federation \nÁron Szilágyi at the European Fencing Confederation (archive)  (archive)\nÁron Szilágyi at Olympedia \nÁron Szilágyi at Olympics.com \nÁron Szilágyi at Magyar Olimpiai Bizottság (in Hungarian) (in English) \nProfile at MOL Csapat at the Wayback Machine (archived 5 March 2016) (in Hungarian)"}