Mark Spitz
Caeleb Dressel
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Mark Spitz leads 3 of 4 categories. Our all-time ranking places Mark Spitz at #3 and Caeleb Dressel at #6.
The case for Mark Spitz
For 36 years the standard by which all Olympic swimmers were judged. At the Munich 1972 Games, Spitz won seven gold medals in seven events, every single one in world-record time, a perfect performance not surpassed until Phelps in 2008. Across two Olympics he collected nine golds and 11 medals in total, and over his career he set 33 world records in freestyle and butterfly. He retired at just 22, at his peak, before the World Championships even existed (the first were held in 1973), which is why his title tally sits outside that column. His combination of sprint speed and butterfly power, and the sheer perfection of Munich, keeps him among the immortals despite his short career.
The case for Caeleb Dressel
The sprint-butterfly heir to Phelps and one of the most explosive swimmers ever. Dressel won eight Olympic gold medals through Paris 2024, including a five-gold haul at Tokyo 2020 across the 50m and 100m freestyle, 100m butterfly and both American relays. He holds the 100m butterfly world record (49.45) and has been part of numerous world-record relays. At the 2017 Budapest World Championships he matched a single-meet record with seven gold medals, and across his career he has accumulated around 15 world-championship titles. Renowned for enormous power, a ferocious start and underwater speed, Dressel is the defining sprinter of the textile-suit era, though a mental-health break and a tougher Paris meet showed the toll of racing at the extreme.