Larissa Latynina 18 Olympic medals
Larissa Latynina 18 Olympic medals,Larisa Semyonovna Latynina (Russian: Лари́са Семёновна Латы́нина; born December 27, 1934 in Kherson, Ukrainian SSR) is a Russian-Ukrainian and former Soviet gymnast who was the only female athlete to win nine Olympic gold medals. She holds 18 total medals, more Olympic medals than any other competitor in any sport, and was responsible for establishing the Soviet Union as the dominant force in gymnastics.[1] She also holds the record for most individual medals (14 outside of team events) in Olympic history.At the 1956 Summer Olympics, she competed with Ágnes Keleti of Hungary to become the most successful gymnast of the Olympics. Latynina beat Keleti in the all-around event, and the Soviet team also won the team event. In the event finals, Latynina won gold medals on the floor (shared with Keleti) and vault, a silver medal on the uneven bars, and a bronze medal in the now discontinued team event with portable apparatus. Keleti also won six medals: four golds and two silvers.
After a very successful World Championships in 1958 (winning five out of six titles despite competing whilst four months pregnant), Latynina was the favorite for the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome.[2] 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 also successfully defended her floor title, took silver medals in the balance beam and uneven bars events, and bronze in the vault competition.
Latynina 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 did however add 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 fourth. Her nine gold medals makes her second on the list of most Olympic gold medalists together with Mark Spitz, Carl Lewis and Paavo Nurmi, only behind Michael Phelps, who has 14; she held the distinction of having more Olympic gold medals (either individually or with a team) than anybody ever, from 1964 to 2008, until Michael Phelps beat her record. She is the only woman to have won nine gold medals.[3] 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 2 Olympiads and the only woman who has won an individual event (Floor Exercise) in more than 2 Olympiads (1956, 1960, and 1964 for both of those accomplishments), one of only three women who have won every individual event at either the world or olympic level in every individual event, and she holds many other such distinguishing records.
1989: Olympic Order (silver), International Olympic Committee
1998: Inducted into the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame[4]
source: wikipedia
