Top 150 Olympic Athletes: #106 - Tamara Lazakovich

Tamara Lazakovich

USSR

Artistic Gymnastics

Overall Ranks

#21 among Gymnasts

#11 among Soviet Olympians

#8 among Female Gymnasts

#5 among Soviet Female Gymnasts

Olympic Results

1972

Individual All-Around - Bronze

Team - Gold

Floor Exercise - Bronze

Balance Beam - Silver

Total

Events - 6

Gold - 1

Silver - 1

Bronze - 2

Tamara Vasilyevna Lazakovich was born on March 11, 1954 in Gusevo, USSR (currently part of Russia), and was raised in what is now Belarus. She began gymnastics at age 6, and was quickly noticed and taken into training. By the time she was 16 she had made the Soviet national team, and she won 5 medals at the 1971 European Championships.

She was part of a strong Soviet team that went to the 1972 Olympics in Munich. They had won the past 5 Olympic gold medals in the team event, and 1972 was no different. The team had the highest scores in 3 of the 4 portions of the event, falling slightly behind East Germany in the Uneven Bars, but they outscored the East Germans by 3.95 points to win their 6th gold medal in a row as a nation.

In the individual all-around, the top 26 competitors from the team event were selected to compete, with half of their score coming from their performances in the team event, and the rest coming from another round of the same events. Lazakovich qualified in 4th place, behind Karin Janz of East Germany and 2 Soviet teammates, but after Olga Korbut fell twice on the uneven bars, Lazakovich was able to move up and take the bronze medal.

In the individual event finals, the top 6 were taken for each apparatus from the team event to compete for the medals. Lazakovich qualified for 3 finals, just missing out in uneven bars, where she finished 7th. She qualified 3rd in the floor exercise, behind the same two teammates, but Olga Korbut had the best final and moved up to gold over Lyudmila Turishcheva, while Lazakovich held her position for bronze, a medal sweep for the USSR.

In the vault, she was the final qualifier to make the final, and her score in the final was lower than the others, so she remained in 6th. She was the top qualifier in the balance beam, and even improved on her score in the final, but Korbut had another great performance, which pushed her ahead of her teammate, leaving Lazakovich with the silver.

She suddenly retired immediately after the Olympics, and while no official reason was ever given, the rumor is that she tried to defect to West Germany after the Olympics, but was caught, so the Soviets refused to let her compete internationally again. She worked for many years as a gymnastics coach, but she was unhappy with her life, which led to alcoholism, which led to her early death, on November 1, 1992 in Vitebsk, Belarus. She only appeared in the Olympics once, but finished in the top 7 of every one of her events, and won 4 medals. Even though it's a small sample, she still proved herself to be one of the greatest Olympians of all time.

Top 150 Olympic Athletes: #107 - Valarie Allman

Valarie Allman

USA

Athletics

Overall Ranks

#33 among American Olympians

#31 among Track & Field Athletes

#21 among American Track & Field Athletes

#7 among Female Track & Field Athletes

#5 among American Female Track & Field Athletes

Olympic Results

2020

Discus - Gold

2024

Discus - Gold

Total

Events - 2

Gold - 2

Valarie Carolyn Allman was born on February 23, 1995 in Newark, Delaware, and grew up in Hershey, Pennsylvania. While attending Stanford, she participated in the World Junior Championships as a freshman, and took a silver medal in her first major international competition.

Though she had never won a major international competition before competing in the 2020 Olympics, she was considered one of the favorites, as she had been able to beat the other favorites in some recent meets. Her throw of 66.42 meters was the best in the qualifying round, and she opened the final with a throw of 68.98, which stood up for the rest of the day, and she won gold by more than 2 meters.

Before her Olympic win, she had never won a medal at the World Championships, but in the next two years, she won bronze and then silver. This made her the favorite heading into the 2024 Olympics, along with Feng Bin, who had won the 2023 World Championship. She took only 1 throw in qualifying, but it was more than enough, with 69.59 meters beating all others by more than 4 meters.

In the final, she completed 4 throws, each traveling more than 68 meters, a mark no one else reached in the entire competition, meaning that Allman's five throws were the 5 longest of the Olympics. She easily won her second straight gold. 

In 2025, she won her first World Championship, and also set a new national record with a throw of 73.52 meters in April. Earlier this year, she married Zeb Sion, her longtime coach. She has only competed twice in the Olympics so far, but won both by a big margin, and she only appears to be getting stronger, so she could climb even higher among the ranks of the greatest Olympians of all time.

Top 150 Olympic Athletes: #108 - Aly Raisman

Aly Raisman

USA

Artistic Gymnastics

Overall Ranks

#34 among American Olympians

#22 among Gymnasts

#9 among Female Gymnasts

#2 among American Gymnasts

Olympic Results

2012

Team - Gold

Floor Exercise - Gold

Balance Beam - Bronze

2016

Individual All-Around - Silver

Team - Gold

Floor Exercise - Silver

Total

Events - 10

Gold - 3

Silver - 2

Bronze - 1

Alexandra Rose Raisman was born on May 25, 1994 in Needham, Massachusetts. Her mother had been a gymnast in high school, and got her started in gymnastics almost as soon as she could walk. After her junior year of high school, she was part of the gold medal-winning team at the World Championships, and she completed her senior year online in order to train for the 2012 Olympics.

The first event in London was the Individual All-Around, which allowed a maximum of 2 athletes per country into the final. Jordyn Wieber was the defending world champion and was expected to win, but she finished 3rd among the Americans, and 4th overall in qualifying, so Gabby Douglas and Raisman went to the final. Douglas ended up winning the gold, while Raisman tied for third, but lost the bronze medal in a tiebreaker to Aliya Mustafina of Russia.

Having 3 of the top 4 scores in qualifying gave the USA the best overall score entering the team competition, and they ended up running away with the gold, more than 5 points ahead of Russia. Raisman put up the best overall score in floor exercise and a solid performance in balance beam, as the USA had the best overall score in 3 of the 4 parts.

Raisman qualified for 2 event finals, the balance beam and the floor exercise. In the balance beam, she qualified fifth, and she was the final athlete to compete, and when the scores were announced, she was in 4th, but her coach appealed her difficulty score, and upon review, her score was raised by 0.1, which put her into a tie for 3rd, which she won on a tiebreaker to get the bronze she missed in the all-around.

In the floor exercise, she was the top qualifier by 0.26 points, and even though she went third, she left no doubt that she would win the gold medal. Her routine had the highest difficulty score of any competitor, but she also earned the best execution score, and she ended up winning the gold medal by a margin of 15.6 to 15.2 over the nearest competitor.

She was injured soon after the Olympics, and spent 2 years working her way back to make sure she was ready to compete again at the highest level, and upon her return, it was clear that she was ready, and she immediately made the national team again. The team repeated as world champions in 2015, heading into the 2016 on a high note.

In the 2016 individual all-around, Gabby Douglas missed out on the final even though she was #3 in qualifying, because the two ahead of her were Americans Raisman and Simone Biles. In the final, Biles had the best score in three of the four sections, and Raisman was #2 in the same 3 events, putting those two far ahead of anyone else for the gold and the silver.

In the team event, the Americans were huge favorites due to having the top 3 qualifiers. Raisman was jokingly nicknamed "Grandma" by her teammates, due to her being the oldest on the team at 22. Raisman performed in 3 events in the final, and the USA had the best score in all 4 portions of the event, giving them a runaway gold medal, more than 8 points ahead of Russia.

She only qualified for one event final, the floor exercise, where she was the defending champion. Her final score ended up almost as high as in the previous Olympics, but Biles' difficulty score was so high that she took the gold by almost 0.5, with Raisman taking the silver.

She didn't compete again after the 2016 Olympics, but didn't officially retire until early 2020. Her 6 total Olympic medals are the third most by an American gymnast, and she very nearly had a 7th one. She was a master at the floor exercise, and twice finished among the top 4 in the individual all-around, making her one of the greatest Olympians of all time.

Top 150 Olympic Athletes: #109 - David Rudisha

David Rudisha

Kenya

Athletics

Overall Ranks

#32 among Track & Field Athletes

#25 among Male Track & Field Athletes

#1 among Kenyan Olympians

Olympic Results

2012

800m - Gold

2016

800m - Gold

Total

Events - 2

Gold - 2

David Lekuta Rudisha was born on December 17, 1988 in Kilgoris, Kenya, the son of Daniel Rudisha, who had won a silver medal for Kenya in the 1968 Olympics. Like his father, he chose to run in the middle distance races, though his father favored the 400m, while David became a specialist in the 800m.

When he was 21 years old, he broke the world record in the 800m, which had been held by Wilson Kipketer, a Kenyan-born Danish runner, for 13 years, and then broke it again a week later. He went on to win the Kenyan Olympic trials in 2012, earning himself his first shot at the Olympics.

At the Olympics, he won what is considered the greatest 800m race of all time. Rudisha led the entire way, and by the end he had set a new world record of 1:40.91, the first, and so far only, time in history that a runner had gotten under 1:41. All three medalists beat the old Olympic record, 3 runners set new national records, and 7 of the 8 finalists set new personal best times. All 8 finalists ran faster than the previous 3 gold medal times.

Rudisha sat out most of 2013 with an injury, but came back mostly healthy in 2014, and by 2015 he had won the World Championship in the 800m. He qualified again for the Olympics, but this time his teammate, Alfred Kipketer, led most of the race, with Rudisha staying close behind. Just before the final curve, Rudisha pulled ahead, then sprinted for the finish, winning by nearly half a second to successfully defend his gold medal, becoming the first to achieve that since 1964.

He was very unlucky over the next several years. He was in a car crash in 2019, then was injured in training in 2021, forcing him to miss the Olympics, then was in a plane crash in 2022, where he was one of only 5 survivors. He has since retired from competitive racing. Though he only ran two races in the Olympics, his world record time from 2012 still stands, and he has held the world record continuously for the past 16 years, and has the three fastest times of all time, all of which helps to make him one of the greatest Olympians of all time.

Top 150 Olympic Athletes: #110 - Agnes Keleti

Agnes Keleti

Hungary

Artistic Gymnastics

Overall Ranks

#23 among Gymnasts

#10 among Female Gymnasts

#5 among Hungarian Olympians

#1 among Hungarian Gymnasts

Olympic Results

1952

Team - Silver

Team Portable Apparatus - Bronze

Floor Exercise - Gold

Uneven Bars - Bronze

1956

Individual All-Around - Silver

Team - Silver

Team Portable Apparatus - Gold

Floor Exercise - Gold

Uneven Bars - Gold

Balance Beam - Gold

Total

Events - 14

Gold - 5

Silver - 3

Bronze - 2

Agnes Edit Klein was born on January 9, 1921 in Budapest, Hungary, and began training in gymnastics at the age of 4. By age 16, she was the Hungarian National Champion, and was expected to compete in the 1940 Olympics, but those and the 1944 Olympics were not held due to World War II. Also as a result of the war, Agnes changed her surname to Keleti in order to sound less Jewish, and she lost her father in the Auschwitz concentration camp.

After the war, she returned to competition, and qualified for the 1948 Olympics, but was injured shortly before the games started and was forced to sit out again. By the time 1952 came around, Keleti was already 31 years old, far older than most Olympic gymnasts, but she still made the team and went to Helsinki to finally make her Olympic debut.

In her first Olympics, Keleti won her best event, the floor exercise, which gave her her first gold medal, and she also finished in bronze position in the uneven bars, giving her a pair of individual medals. She also came in 4th in the balance beam, all of which combined to put her in 6th place in the individual all-around, with her poor score in the vault dragging her down.

In the team all-around event, the Soviet Union won in their first ever Olympic appearance as a nation, and they would never lose the event in an Olympics in which they participated. Hungary, led by Keleti and Margit Korondi, won the silver medal. They had the best overall score in the floor exercise, and were #2 in the other 3 events, behind the USSR in each.

The final event that year was the team portable apparatus, which is similar to what is known as rhythmic gymnastics today, with the full team dancing around with ribbons, balls, hoops, etc. The Hungarian team performed well, finishing with the bronze medal, giving Keleti 4 total medals at her first Olympics.

Though she was already beyond the normal age for a gymnast, Keleti continued to compete, and again made the team for the 1956 Olympics. This time, she won gold in 3 individual events, the floor exercise, uneven bars, and balance beam, but finished 23rd in the vault, always her worst event, which meant that she finished with the silver medal in the individual all-around, even though she was the best in 3 of the 4 events.

Just as in the previous Olympics, the USSR took the gold medal in the team event, but this time Hungary made it really close, losing by just over a point, with Keleti contributing the highest score. After that, the team portable apparatus event was held for the final time, and this time Hungary was able to take the gold, just ahead of Sweden, who had won 4 years earlier. This gave Keleti 4 golds and 2 silvers at age 35, making her the oldest female gymnast ever to win gold.

Just before the 1956 Olympics, the USSR invaded Hungary, and as a result, Keleti decided not to return from Melbourne. The next year, she emigrated to Israel, where she competed for a couple more years before retiring and becoming a coach for the next 30+ years. She eventually returned to Hungary in 2015. 

In 2019, she became the oldest living Olympic champion, then celebrated her 100th birthday in 2021. In 2023, she became the oldest Olympic champion in history, and she finally passed away on January 2, 2025 in her hometown of Budapest, just a week short of her 104th birthday. Even though she got a late start to her Olympic career, she was amazing when she finally competed, winning 5 golds and 10 total medals, and she is definitely one of the greatest Olympians of all time.

Top 150 Olympic Athletes: #111 - Marianne Vos

Marianne Vos

Netherlands

Road/Track Cycling

Overall Ranks

#5 among Road Cyclists

#2 among Dutch Olympians

#1 among Dutch Cyclists

#1 among Female Cyclists

Olympic Results

2008

Points Race - Gold

2012

Road Race - Gold

2024

Road Race - Silver

Total

Events - 8

Gold - 2

Silver - 1

Marianne Vos was born on May 13, 1987 in 's-Hertogenbosch, the Netherlands, and began racing bicycles when she was 6 years old, tagging along with her older brother. She was allowed to train with her brother's team, but was not allowed to compete because she was too young at the time, but as soon as she turned 8, she joined the races as well, and when she was 15, she won her first national championship.

She is primarily a road cyclist, but in 2008 she qualified for the Beijing Olympics in both road and track cycling. In the road race, two dozen riders remained together until the last lap, when 5 riders broke away from the pack. Vos remained with the main pack, and was the first of the pursuers to cross the finish line, getting her a 6th place finish. The individual time trial was next, held on the same course as the road race, but consisting of a single timed lap by each rider. Vos finished near the middle of the 25 riders, just over 2 minutes behind the gold medal time. 

Next, she competed in the track cycling points race, where she was the current world champion. The race consists of 100 laps of the track, with every 10th lap being a sprint, where the first 4 finishers are awarded points, and the racer with the most points at the end winning gold. She won the first sprint, and by the halfway point was solidly in the lead. She held back during the 6th sprint lap, then took advantage of her tired opponents to take off ahead of the field, lapping everyone, which earned her 20 points, which was equivalent to winning 4 sprints. After that, she only needed to finish the race to earn gold.

She fractured her collarbone during a race in May 2012, two months before the Olympics, and took over a month off to recover, then competed in the Dutch Olympic trials to make the road racing team. She had been the runner-up at the last 5 world championships in road racing, but was considered the favorite in London.

The pack all stayed together through the first 100km of the race, but with 40km to go, a Russian rider attempted to break away from the pack. Vos and two other riders followed, creating a breakaway pack of 4 riders. The American punctured a tire soon afterward, and the three leaders were left to compete for the medals. As the finish closed in, Vos and Lizzie Armitstead of Great Britain pulled slightly ahead and sprinted for the finish, with Vos winning by a nose, and the majority of the racers coming across the line 27 seconds later. Vos now had a gold medal in each of her cycling disciplines.

She competed in the time trial a few days later, but finished in the middle of the pack, just like 4 years earlier. She took some time off in 2015 and 2016, but returned to compete in the 2016 Olympic road race, but this time, she fell behind the first two packs of riders, and ended up finishing 9th, more than a minute behind the winner.

She competed again in 2020, which saw 5 riders break away from the pack only 2 km into the race, which was rare. Vos stayed with the main pack, which eventually fell more than 10 minutes behind the leaders. With 40km left, a rider from Austria broke away from the leaders and built a huge lead, while Vos and the rest of the pack caught up with the others breakaway riders. In the end, Vos ended up in 5th place, her 4th straight top 10 finish in the event in the Olympics.

She raced in her 5th Olympics in 2024, again just in the road race. With 22 km remaining, she was one of 3 riders to break away from the pack, one of which dropped back to the pack at the next big climb. Two other riders caught up soon afterward, and the four remained together until 3 km remained, at which point Kristen Faulkner of the USA pulled away from the others, who were unable to match pace, leaving 3 riders to fight for 2 medals. All three were even at the final sprint, but Vos was ahead by a tire at the finish, giving her a silver medal.

Vos is still actively competing in cycling events, and given her history of always finishing near the top in road races, there is no reason to believe that she won't continue to compete for Olympic medals, but what she has done so far has already made her one of the greatest Olympians of all time.

Top 150 Olympic Athletes: #112 - Iolanda Balas

Iolanda Balas

Romania

Athletics

Overall Ranks

#33 among Track & Field Athletes

#8 among Female Track & Field Athletes

#1 among Romanian Olympians

Olympic Results

1960

High Jump - Gold

1964

High Jump - Gold

Total

Events - 3

Gold - 2

Iolanda Balas was born on December 12, 1936 in Timisoara, Romania, to Hungarian parents. Her father served in the Hungarian army during World War II and was captured by the Soviets, who eventually returned him to Hungary, where he was forced to stay. Balas and her mother tried to return to Hungary to reunite the family after the war, but were not allowed to leave by the Romanian government.

She began jumping at age 13, and by 1955, when she was 18 years old, she had set the world record with a jump of 1.75 meters (5'9"). She went to the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne as the favorite as a result, and easily cleared both heights in qualifying, along with 17 others jumpers. She was one of 6 jumpers to clear 1.64 meters without missing a jump, and one of 10 to clear the height eventually.

Only 7 jumpers were able to succeed at 1.67 meters, with 4 doing it on the first try, while Balas needed a second attempt. and 2 others made in on the third and final try. When the bar went up to 1.7 meters, only Millie McDaniel of the USA was successful, giving her the gold medal. She then had the bar raised to 1.76 meters, which she cleared on her second attempt to break Balas' world record. Because she had missed a jump on the previous height, Balas was awarded 5th place behind the jumpers who didn't need an extra attempt.

Balas took the world record back in 1958, becoming the first woman to reach 1.8 meters, and she was once again the favorite in 1960 in Rome. She was the last to start jumping that year, waiting until the bar was at 1.6 meters to take her first attempt, which she made easily. 15 jumpers cleared 1.65 meters to advance to the final round, but only 6 had made it without a miss.

The entire field cleared 1.65 again in the final, but 10 jumpers were unable to get to 1.68, leaving 5 jumpers, none of whom had missed yet. Three jumpers were successful on the first jump at 1.71, with another making it on her final attempt, but at 1.73, only Balas was successful, and she had her first gold, but she didn't stop there, going over at 1.77, then 1.81, and then 1.85, before failing at 1.87. Her new Olympic record jump was about 6'1", 6 inches higher than any other jumper in the competition.

The next year, she set another new world record of 1.91 meters (6'3"), which would not be broken for 10 years. She had a torn ankle tendon when the 1964 Olympics came around, but competed anyway. At that point she hadn't lost a single competition in 8 years, since her failure in her first Olympics, but she was seen as possibly vulnerable due to the injury.

15 jumpers cleared 1.68 meters to qualify for the final, but 3 dropped when attempting that height again in the final. One more was lost at 1.71, but the field really narrowed at 1.74, with 7 missing at that height. Balas skipped that height to nurse her injury, but made it over 1.76 on her first jump, along with Michele Mason Brown of Australia, with one other jumper making it on the final attempt. 

All 3 were successful again at 1.78, but the Soviet challenger dropped off at 1.8. At 1.82, Mason-Brown was unable to clear, giving Balas a second straight gold medal, but she kept going despite her injury, clearing both 1.86 and 1.90 on the first try, setting a new Olympic record. She then attempted to break her world record by jumping 1.92, but missed on all 3 attempts. She had again beaten all of her competition by a big margin.

She sat out for the next few years due to injury before officially retiring in 1967, at which point she married her coach, Ioan Soter, and became a physical education teacher. If she had performed up to her potential in her first Olympics, she would have been much higher on this list, but as it stands, her two dominant gold medal wins still make her one of the greatest Olympians of all time.