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3. Michael Phelps tied the record for most individual Olympic titles this year (2016) with Leonidas of Rhodes, an ancient Olympic runner,who won 12 crowns in 2nd century BCE. Leonidas was unmatched in his record until Phelps this year.
Leonidas was a very versatile runner and also had an unsurpassed number of victories during the games. According to Philostratus the Athenian, his versatility made all the theories known so far about runners outdated. Since his time in the 2nd century BCE, nobody ever could beat him, until now. Michael Phelps now holds the record for the same number of individual wins, and has a total of 25 gold medals.(1, 2)
4. Tug-of-war and painting were once Olympic events.
During the early 1900s, tug-of-war had many groups of participants called clubs hailing from different countries, sometimes more than one from the same country to win multiple medals. Though it is not considered an athletic sport now, it used to be part of the Olympic athletics programme. So were art competitions. Not just painting, but architecture, sculpture, literature and music were considered Olympic events.(1, 2)
