Michael Phelps
Kosuke Kitajima
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Michael Phelps leads 4 of 4 categories. Our all-time ranking places Michael Phelps at #1 and Kosuke Kitajima at #8.
The case for Michael Phelps
The most decorated Olympian in history across all sports. Phelps won 28 Olympic medals, 23 of them gold, over five Games from Sydney 2000 to Rio 2016, including a still-unmatched eight golds at Beijing 2008 that broke Mark Spitz's 1972 record of seven. He set 39 world records and claimed 26 world-championship titles. His range was staggering: Olympic gold in the 100m and 200m butterfly, the 200m and 400m individual medley, the 200m freestyle and a stack of relays. Coached by Bob Bowman, Phelps combined a huge wingspan, relentless training volume and famous racing nerve, touching out Milorad Cavic by 0.01 seconds in Beijing. No swimmer has matched his blend of longevity, versatility and championship hardware, and none is close on career gold medals.
The case for Kosuke Kitajima
The greatest breaststroker of his era and a Japanese national icon. Kitajima achieved a feat no other man has managed, winning both the 100m and 200m breaststroke at two consecutive Olympics, Athens 2004 and Beijing 2008, a breaststroke double-double, for four individual golds and seven Olympic medals overall. He set multiple world records in the 100m and 200m breaststroke and won world-championship titles across the 2000s. Famous for his aggressive, powerful pull-out and racing intensity, Kitajima's Athens victory came amid a controversy over an illegal underwater dolphin kick that helped prompt the 2005 rule change legalising a single kick in the pull-down. He defined breaststroke for a decade before Adam Peaty raised the event to another level.