SAN GABRIEL, Calif.—Only two athletes in history have won medals in six consecutive Olympic Games.
Only two.
Let me put this in perspective. There are about 13,000 Olympians, both summer, and winter, during each four-year cycle. Since 1896, when the modern Games began, there have been 184,869 Olympians. So we’re talking about something that happens .001 percent of the time, which is just one click above…never.
The first athlete is Armin Zöggeler, a carabinieri from the Tyrolean Alps who has won two gold medals, one silver medal, and three bronzes during 1994 through 2014 Winter Games. Armin’s nickname is “Ice Blood,” and you’ll see why if you watch his 2002 Salt Lake City luge run on YouTube. Luge is one of those sports that require constant daily training, constant care of your equipment, and such fine-tuning that the winners and losers are judged by thousandths of a second. It’s the most precisely timed sport in the world.
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The Italians feel so strongly about Armin Zöggeler’s six-medals-in-six-Olympics feat that they’ve asked him to carry the national flag in opening and closing ceremonies three times. He was only able to accept twice because the other time would have interfered with his training runs.
The other six-in-six Olympian is a woman from Southern California. She should have been asked to carry the flag at the closing ceremonies in Rio. I have nothing but respect for Simone Biles and her five medals in gymnastics, but this sixth medal in six Olympic Games was not only a once-in-a-century achievement, it was also accomplished by a 37-year-old woman who was fighting injuries, who was struggling against decades of sexism in her sport’s Olympic organization, who has to train by herself while raising a 3-year-old son, and who had to learn a whole new sport halfway through her medal run because the Olympics decided only men could compete in her preferred event.
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It would have been a phenomenal milestone simply for her to compete in six Olympics, but 130 other people have done that. Most of those six-time athletes came from smaller countries where it was easy to qualify. Not so for our American champion. She had to re-qualify each time for one of only two American slots in a sport where a single mistake can mean the difference between winning and fifth place, and then she had to earn her medals in the most competitive sport in the world—more nations compete in her event than in any other sport.
Wouldn’t it have been fitting to follow the tradition established in many past Olympics in which a very senior athlete with a long record of victory is honored by being asked to carry the flag? That’s what was done at the opening ceremonies when Michael Phelps carried the American flag to show respect for his earth-shattering records in swimming. That’s what Great Britain was doing when it had 36-year-old field-hockey captain Kate Richardson-Walsh carry the Union Jack. That was the idea behind 40-year-old volleyball player Sergey Tetyukhin hoisting the colors for Russia. That was why Germany handed its flag to Timo Boll, a 35-year-old table-tennis player.
