Olympic medalists are some of the most exceptional athletes in the world, showcasing dedication, perseverance, and talent on the global stage. Many continue to excel long after their competitive careers end, venturing into new fields and inspiring future generations.
Gabrielle Douglas
Gabrielle Douglas might never have gotten her start had her older sister not begun first. She taught the three-year-old and before a few years were done, Gabrielle had become a state champion in her native Virginia. She continued to make splashes as she grew older, and she helped the American team take home gold that year. The next Olympics, the 2016 Rio Games, Douglas took home another gold medal. That was the same year she starred in her own TV show, Douglas Family Gold, a reality show that ran for one season.
Jordyn Wieber
Jordyn Wieber won a gold medal in London at the 2012 Games, which became all the more impressive once she disclosed that she had developed a stress fracture which she soldiered through during the team event. She retired from professional gymnastics in 2015, but Wieber couldn’t be kept from the sport. In April 2019, during her senior year of college at the University of Arkansas, she became the first Olympic champion to take on the coaching job for the Arizona Razorbacks.
Summer Sanders
The first memory you may have of Summer Sanders might be when she appeared on TV as the host of a Nickelodeon show Figure It Out, which premiered in 1997. Her start, though, was winning four medals swimming at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. The camera liked her a lot and, with her experience as an Olympic champion, she is the perfect sports commentator. In fact, Sanders was still competing when she began giving commentary for various sporting events, but she’s since retired from competitive swimming.
Dara Torres
Dara Torres has more medals than most Olympians with 12 to her name, four of them gold. That’s more success than most of us can hope for, and she was only cut short when injuries forced her to stop. Torres had to undergo surgery for her knees and stopped competitive swimming. Ever since then, in 2012, she’s pursued modeling as a career, in addition to being a TV correspondent. Torres still swims as a celebrity swimmer for a cancer research-funding charity called Swim Across America.
Allison Schmitt
Allison Schmitt has won eight Olympic medals by swimming for the US team so far, and there’s a chance we’ll see even more medals in the future. In 2008’s Beijing Games, she won only a bronze medal, but in 2012 in London she won five medals. Three were gold and Schmitt helped set a world record in a relay race. Besides international competitions, she was a four-time NCAA swimming champion in the 200 and 500-yard races.
Ryan Lochte
Ryan Lochte has appeared in the media in recent years with several controversies, including one claim from the Brazilian police that the authorities vehemently denied and which cost him his spot on the US Team in the 2016 Rio Olympics. Despite this, he’s a champion swimmer that holds the record in the 200-meter and 400-meter individual medley. All in all, he has 12 Olympic medals to his name, six of them gold. Besides swimming, Lochte appeared on TV in 2019 for Celebrity Big Brother.
Katie Ledecky
American Katie Ledecky currently holds records in several races, the 1500-meter, 800-meter, and 400-meter freestyle. Throughout her career, she’s broken 14 world records, many of them her own, and Ledecky is still young enough to break more before she’s done. Just 15 when she debuted in London 2012, she won a gold medal in the 800-meter freestyle race. The next Olympics, the 2016 Rio Games, Ledecky won four more gold medals. In the voting for Associated Press’s Female Athlete of the Decade, only Simone Biles and Serena Williams came before her.
Larisa Latynina
Larisa Latynina from the Soviet Union was a record-holder until Michael Phelps came along, having won no less than 18 Olympic medals — five of them gold! After achieving victory at the Olympics between 1956 and 1964, she coached for the Soviet team. The Soviet women’s team won gold in 1968, 1972, and 1976 before she retired from coaching. Then, Latynina was an organizer for the 1980 Moscow Games’ gymnastics competition. Today, she lives in a rural estate in Russia.
Chen Ruolon
Chen Ruolon is a powerhouse in the diving world, with five gold medals to her name, but injuries to her neck in 2016 have forced her out of competing for good, it seems. Ruolon has competed in three Olympics, though, and is one of only three Chinese athletes with five gold medals. The 10-meter dive is a serious one with a lot of competition, but she dove ahead of the other contenders and won a pair of gold at each of her Olympic appearances except for her final one.
Gary Hall Jr.
Just like his father and namesake, Gary Hall Jr. became an Olympic swimmer. He won five gold medals in three different Olympic Games, but may best be remembered because he used to warm up like a prizefighter. Completing his look with a robe and boxing shorts, Hall would even start shadow boxing and flexing for his fans. He got fined at the 2004 Games. These warm-ups came in handy when he saved his sister’s life in a shark attack by punching the animal repeatedly until it swam off.
Melissa “Missy” Franklin
American swimmer Melissa “Missy” Franklin won five gold medals and held a few records, some of which have since been broken. She debuted at the young age of 17 at the 2012 London Games, having had to make the tough choice of whether to represent Canada or the U.S., as she’s a citizen of both countries. Franklin won four of her five gold medals in her Olympic debut, snagging one more as part of the 200-meter freestyle relay. She retired from professional swimming in December 2018.
Janet Beth Evans
Janet Beth Evans was destined for great things, from the start sticking out from the competition with her unorthodox swimming style. This far-reaching “windmill” style helped her become a champion, despite being short for a swimmer. Evans won two gold medals at each of the 1988 Olympics and 1992 Games, solidifying her place in American swimming history by defeating larger competitors, some of whom were found to use illegal performance enhancers. Since then, Evans helped bring the Olympics back to the U.S., as the 2028 Games will take place in Los Angeles.
Ian Thorpe
Ian Thorpe is allergic to chlorine, so pursuing a career in competitive swimming might not have been what the doctor ordered when he first started off, but his talent was so undeniable once he debuted at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. He’s won five gold medals, the most of any Australian. The great Michael Phelps said Thorpe is a hero of his. Despite retiring from the sport, he remains one of the most popular athletes in the world. Thorpe is also an activist for LGBT rights. Besides his swimming career, he’s an ambassador for Armani.
Natalie Coughlin
Natalie Coughlin was an NCAA swimming champion before she entered the Olympics, and she truly shone at the 2004 Athens Olympics by winning two gold medals for the U.S. She is the first woman to swim the 100-meter backstroke race in under a minute, a feat accomplished at the following Olympics in Beijing. Besides modeling after her swimming career, she became CO2 Coconut Water’s spokeswoman and made TV appearances. Coughlin was a judge on Iron Chef America and competed on Chopped.
Scott Hamilton
Most people can’t even do a backflip, but Scott Hamilton can do one on skates! It’s actually against the rules in competitive skating, so that’s not the reason he’s on this list. Not just an acrobat, his footwork wowed judges at international competitions in the early ’80s. He won his gold at the 1984 Olympics after dominating the competition for years. Since then, he’s skated with Stars On Ice and the like, as well as branching out into charity and writing books.
Peggy Fleming
Peggy Fleming was the Olympic figure skating champion in 1968, two years after she became the world champion. Since then, she’s skated professionally, performing shows. Fleming was also a goodwill ambassador for the United States, having skated in both the Soviet Union and China during the Cold War. She remains one of America’s enduringly popular athletes. There always seems to be a spot for her to commentate in the Winter Games whenever they roll around. Besides skating, she owns a winery with her husband.
Sarah Hughes
Sarah Hughes started skating when she was just three years old, following her father, a college hockey player, onto the ice rink. She’s one of the youngest skating gold medalists, having won ahead of her 17th birthday. Hughes also has the distinction of being the only American woman to win Olympic gold without first winning a world or U.S. title in the sport. Her mother is a breast cancer survivor, and Hughes has said, “I always said that if I can get one person to get a mammogram, I’ve accomplished something.”
Sasha Cohen
Sasha Cohen is the most recent American woman to get an individual Olympic medal after winning silver at the 2006 Games. Actually starting off in gymnastics, by the age of seven Cohen started figure skating. After 2006, she announced she’d be retiring from competitive skating and went into entertainment, skating with Stars on Ice. Cohen didn’t get selected for the U.S. team when she came out of retirement for the 2010 Olympics. Since then, she has pursued her interest in finance and works as an associate at Morgan Stanley.
Meryl Davis
Although she’s not an individual champion in skating, ice dancer Meryl Davis won a gold medal in Sochi 2014 alongside partner Charlie White, improving from silver the previous Games. This was the first time an American team had won the event and it was a big victory for the U.S., solidifying both of their places in history. The pair have skated together since 1997, making them the longest-lasting American dance team. Since they retired competitively in 2017, Davis still performs with him in ice shows.
Charlie White
Charlie White, Meryl Davis’s partner, made history as part of the first American team that won gold in the ice dance competition at an Olympic Games. He’s a former hockey player and ice dancing came naturally to him. While raking up a resumé like that, they performed on ice shows as well. In 2014, the same year he won the gold with Davis, they competed against each other when they appeared on Dancing with the Stars.
Katarina Witt
Katarina Witt is one of the legendary names in figure skating, having won a couple of gold medals at the 1984 and 1988 Olympic Games for East Germany. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, it came out that the secret police had given her cars, accommodations, and traveling perks to keep her from defecting. Now defunct, East Germany’s archives opened up, and Witt found 3,000 pages on her dating from back when she was eight years old. Since then, she’s modeled and had cameo appearances in several movies, such as Jerry Maguire.
Yuna Kim
Yuna Kim has had one of the most remarkable runs in figure skating in recent years, winning gold in 2010 and silver in 2014 in the individual competition. “Queen Yuna,” as she’s been dubbed, elevated her home country, South Korea, to a status hitherto unknown in the skating world and become one of (if not the) most widely recognized South Korean athletes in the world. Although she has retired and didn’t compete in 2018 when the Winter Games came to South Korea, she lit the Olympic cauldron that year. Her many endorsements and TV appearances keep her busy nowadays.
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