Michael Phelps has taken his tally of medals in Olympics to 25 with 21 gold medals. (Source: AP) Michael Phelps has taken his tally of medals in Olympics to 25 with 21 gold medals. (Source: AP)

Michael Phelps won an individual and a team gold medal on day four of the Rio 2016 Olympics which took his tally of the yellow metal to a staggering 21 with a combined 25 medals won across the five Olympic Games he’s been part of. And with the 21 gold medals in his bag, he’s won more medals alone than 174 countries have! Basically an individual has won more medals in five editions of the Olympics than other countries have in around 31 Games.

Some of the countries he’s gone past in the process include Austria (19 gold medals), Argentina (18), Jamaica (17), Iran (15), Czech Republic (14), Mexico (13) and more than double that of India (9).

No athlete has won more medals than Phelps has and to add to his impressive feat, only around ten countries have won more gold medals since he won his first gold in the 2004 Athens Olympics.

At just these Rio Olympics, he has won three gold medals in 4 X 100m freestyle relay, 200m butterfly and 4 X 200m freestyle relay with only Katinka Hosszu of Hungary winning as many gold medals as him. If he were a nation at these Games, he would be ninth in the standings.

On day four of the Olympics, he won the 4 X 200m relay and the 200m butterfly within a matter of hours – something that took India 28 years (from hockey gold in 1980 to Abhinav Bindra’s individual gold medal in 2008). While this is an embarrassing statistic, it also highlights Phelps’ brilliance.

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