Michael Phelps
American swimmer (born 1985)
Michael Fred Phelps II (born June 30, 1985) is an American former competitive swimmer. He won more Olympic medals than any other athlete, a total of 28 medals across four Olympic Games. Phelps also holds the all-time records for Olympic gold medals (23), Olympic gold medals in individual events (13), and Olympic medals in individual events (16). At the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Phelps tied the record of eight medals of any color at a single Games, held by gymnast Alexander Dityatin, by winning six gold and two bronze medals. Four years later, when he won eight gold medals at the 2008 Beijing Games, he broke fellow American swimmer Mark Spitz's 1972 record of seven first-place finishes at any single Olympic Games. At the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, Phelps won four gold and two silver medals, and at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, he won five gold medals and one silver. This made him the most successful athlete of the Games for the fourth Olympics in a row.
Phelps is a former long course world record holder in the 200-meter freestyle, 100-meter butterfly, 200-meter butterfly, 200-meter individual medley, and 400-meter individual medley. He has won 82 medals in major international long course competitions, of which 65 were gold, 14 silver, and three bronze, spanning the Olympics, the World Championships, and the Pan Pacific Championships. Phelps's international titles and record-breaking performances have earned him the World Swimmer of the Year Award eight times and American Swimmer of the Year Award eleven times, as well as the FINA Swimmer of the Year Award in 2012 and 2016.
The public source identifies “Michael Phelps” as american swimmer (born 1985). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Michael, Phelps and American.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q39562. VIAF identifies the subject as 35558355. The Library of Congress control number is n2004111640. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1985, 2004, 2008 and 1972.
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This entry incorporates text from “Michael Phelps” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.