PARIS, July 24 (Xinhua) -- The Paris Olympic Games are ready to get underway and while most competitors would consider winning one medal of any color a lifetime achievement, there are others for whom winning medals was a regular habit.
There are the athletes with the best collections of gold, silver and bronze in history.
It's unlikely that anyone will ever match the medal haul of legendary American swimmer Michael Phelps, who over the course of four different Games between 2004-2016 amassed the incredible total of 28 Olympic medals, including 23 golds, three silver and two bronze medals.
Second place in the role of Olympic honor goes to Soviet gymnast, Larisa Latynina, who in a career spelling three Games between 1956 and 1964 won 14 individual and four team medals for a total of 18.
No gymnast in history can match her nine gold medals, while Latynina, who is now 89, also claimed five silver and four bronze medals.
Nikolai Andrianov, another Soviet era gymnast is third in the list with seven golds, five silver and three bronze medals, and had been the most garlanded man until the arrival of Phelps on the scene.
Andrianov won his medals at Munich 1972, Montreal 1976 and on home soil in Moscow four years later, although he tragically died of Multiple system atrophy (MSA), a rare neurodegenerative disorder, aged 58.
We have to go back 100 years for the fourth athlete on the list, with the "Flying Finn" - the distance runner Paavo Nurmi, who won an incredible nine golds and three silver medals.
It's almost unthinkable now to think of a distance runner winning five gold medals at the same Olympics, but Nurmi did just that 100 years ago in Paris, although he was also helped by the existence of some events which don't exist in today's Games.
In the space of four astonishing days, Nurmi won the 1500m, the 5,000m, the 3,000m team event and the two cross-country events.
Fifth in the list is a canoeist Birgit Fischer, whose Olympic career spanned 24 years, bringing home 12 medals including eight golds and four silver medals.
Fischer represented East Germany when she won a gold medal in Moscow and two golds and a silver in Seoul in 1988.
Following German unification Fischer won a further five gold medals and three more silver medals in Barcelona, Atlanta and Sydney, before ending her career with silver at Athens 2004 at the age of 42.
Just to show that canoeing goes in the family, her brother Frank won nine medals in World Championships and her niece Fanny won gold in Beijing in 2008. ■
