Olympic Games athlete

The youngest Olympic athlete ever to win a medal is Dimitrios Loundras of Greece, who was 10 years and 218 days old when he won a bronze medal in team gymnastics at the first Summer Olympics, held in 1896 in Athens. Loundras was part of a team of 14 gymnasts who competed in a variety of events, including parallel bars, pommel horse, and horizontal bar. The team finished third overall, behind Germany and Switzerland.

Forrest Smithson, an American theology student, won the 1908 Olympic 110 metre hurdles final whilst carrying a Bible in his left hand. He did this as a protest against holding the competition on a Sunday.

Queenie Newall, was an English archer who won the gold medal at the 1908 Summer Olympics in London. She was 53 years old at the time, still the oldest female gold medal winner at the Olympic Games.

Queenie Newall

The oldest person to win an Olympic gold was Oscar Swahn, a Swedish shooter who won his medal at the 1912 Stockholm games aged 64.

Francisco Lazaro collapsed with sunstroke and heart trouble toward the end of the 1912 Olympic marathon and died. Lazaro was one of only two athletes to die as a result of Olympic competition. (Danish cyclist Knut Jensen who died while participating in the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome was the other.)

Edward Frank Gillett (July 23, 1874 – May 1, 1927) competed in the 1928 Amsterdam Summer Olympics the year after he died. Gillett was a British artist and illustrator. He passed away in 1927, but two of his works were in the art competition in the 1928 Summer Olympics.

Poland's Stella Walsh (Stanislawa Walasiewicz)-won the women's 100-meter race at the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles, becoming the first woman to break the 12-second barrier. When she was killed in 1980 as an innocent victim in a robbery attempt, an autopsy declared her to be a male.

When American Jesse Owens won the 200-metres at the Berlin Olympics in 1936, his teammate, Mack Robinson, finished second. Mack's little brother, Jackie, later would break the color barrier in major-league baseball.

Marjorie Gestring won the gold medal in 3-meter springboard diving at the Summer Olympics in Berlin on October 30, 1936. She was aged 13 years and 268 days at the time, making her the youngest person ever to win an Olympic gold medal.

The American Olympic Champion Marjorie Gestring

In 1948 Englishman John Copley submitted an engraving entitled Polo Players to the art competitions of the 1948 Summer Olympic Games in London. He won the silver medal in the Mixed Painting, Engravings And Etchings category, finishing second behind French artist Albert Decaris. At the time of the competition Copley was 73 years of age, making him the oldest ever Olympic medal winner.

The arts competitions are no longer recognized by the International Olympic Committee and, when only considering the sporting competitions, 72 year old Swedish shooter Oscar Swahn is recorded as the oldest medal winner.

At the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome, Abebe Bikila becomes the first sub-Saharan African to win a gold medal, winning the marathon in bare feet.

The first athlete to be disqualified at the Olympics for drug use was a Swedish pentathlete Hans-Gunnar Liljenwall (born July 9, 1941) who drank two beers before his shooting event at the 1968 Summer Olympics to calm his nerves. His disqualification followed the introduction of anti-doping regulations by the International Olympic Committee the previous year.

At the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City, two American track and field athletes, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, who finished first and third in the 200 metres, performed the Black Power salute on the victory stand. They were also shoeless during the protest to represent black poverty. The second-place finisher, Peter Norman of Australia, wore an Olympic Project for Human Rights badge in support of Smith and Carlos.

When Greek athlete Konstantinos Kenteris won gold at the 2000 Olympics for the 200-metre dash, he was the first Greek runner to win an Olympic sprint since Dionysius of Alexandria in 269 AD.

With his victory in the 4×100 m medley relay at the Beijing Summer Olympics on August 17 2008, Michael Phelps set the records for the most gold medals won by an individual in a single Olympics (8) as well as total career gold medals (14) in modern Olympic history.

Phelps holds one of his gold medals on the podium with Ryan Lochte and László Cseh

The first gold medal for an independent sportsman was awarded to Kuwaiti Fehaid Al-Deehani at the 2016 Rio Olympics.

Only five Olympians have ever won more than eight gold medals. Four of them have nine golds each. Michael Phelps is the fifth, with an incredible 23.

Only five athletes--three women and two men--have ever won a medal at both the Winter and Summer Olympic Games. Eddie Eagan, the first to do it, is still the only athlete to win gold in both. Egan won the light-heavyweight boxing at the Antwerp Olympic Games in 1920 and was a member of the U.S. bobsled team for the 1932 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, which took first place.

U.S. Olympic medalists are taxed on their cash prizes.