Swimmers Who Will Compete In Their 5th or 6th Olympics This Summer (original) (raw)
How many swimmers have competed in 5 or 6 Olympics? And how many are qualified for their 5th or 6th Olympics in Tokyo?
Competing in 5 Olympics is a feat for recent swimmers. In fact, no swimmers competed in more than 4 Olympic Games until 2004. That is when Brazilian Rogerio Romero, Dane Mette Jacobsen, and Britain’s Alison Sheppard made their 5th Olympic appearances.
Since then, 16 swimmers have appeared in 5 Olympics, including legends like Americans Michael Phelps and Dara Torres, Zimbabwean Kirsty Coventry, Brit Mark Foster, and Greek Spyros Gianniotis.
Three swimmers have gone beyond, as they have competed in 6 Olympics: Turkish Derya Buyukuncu, and Swedes Lars Frölander and Therese Alshammar.
In fact, Alshammar hoped to become the first swimmer to ever race in 7 Olympic Games this year, but she did not manage to qualify.
Alshammar could not make it, but there is a plenty of swimmers who will be competing at their 5th or 6th Olympics in Tokyo. Instagram’s Swimming Stats page has published the list of these 11 swimmers.
Tunisian Oussama Mellouli is one of those who have raced in 5 Olympics. Recently, he qualified for the 10 km open water race, and he will become only the fourth swimmer in Olympic history to compete in 6 Olympics.
Argentinian Cecilia Biagioli is also qualified for the 10 km in Tokyo and she will race her 5th Olympic Games. Had she competed in Rio, in 2016, she also would be going to her 6th Olympics.
There are some swimmers who have won Olympic medals on this list: Mellouli, Hungarian Katinka Hosszu and Laszlo Cseh, Denmark’s Jeanette Ottesen, and Italian Federica Pellegrini.
Curiously, only Pellegrini has qualified to swim the same event for the 5th time, the women’s 200 freestyle and 4×100 medley relay.
Pellegrini and Cseh are the only swimmers who won medals at the 2004 Olympics in Athens who will be competing this year. If they win medals in Tokyo, they will have won Olympic medals 17 years apart, which will place them only behind American Dara Torres, who won medals in 1984 and 2008 – 24 years apart. Will they be able to accomplish this amazing feat?