Michael Phelps has broken a 2,000-year-old Olympic record by outperforming the 12 singular titles won by Leonidas of Rhodes. Who was this competitor whose record has taken two centuries to beat, asks Jon Kelly?
Phelps has an aggregate of 22 Olympic gold decorations, however nine of these have come in transfers - as far as individual titles he has just barely passed the best competitor of the antiquated world.
Leonidas of Rhodes contended in four progressive Olympiads in 164BC, 160BC, 156BC and 152BC and in each of these he won three distinctive foot races.
A competitor who won three occasions at a solitary Olympics was known as a triastes, or tripler. There were just seven triastes and Leonidas is the just a single known to have accomplished the respect more than once. Amazingly, he was 36 when he did it on the fourth event - five years more seasoned than Phelps is today.
The three occasions at which he triumphed were the stadion, a run of about 200m; the diaulos, which was double the separation of the stadion; and the more drawn out hoplitodromos, or race in protection.
Not at all like most races, which were keep running naked, the race in defensive layer expected contenders to wear overwhelming fight equip, perhaps including a protective cap, a breastplate, shin reinforcement and a shield produced using bronze and wood.
"To run every one of these occasions consistently was a significant accomplishment," says Judith Swaddling, senior custodian at The British Museum.
"He got through the qualification amongst sprinters and continuance competitors," says Paul Cartledge, educator of works of art at the University of Cambridge. The race in protection had not beforehand been viewed as reasonable for sprinters (the Olympiads had just been going for a couple of hundreds of years).
"They were running in shield, the temperature would be 40C. The conditions were fabulously unpalatable, requiring totally extraordinary muscles and gymnastic aptitudes."
There is next to no true to life data about Leonidas, says Cartledge, and no pictures of him survive. Be that as it may, his name - got from the Greek word for lion - recommends he was a man of refinement. "He's most likely a noble, presumably affluent, most likely from an athletic family," Cartledge says.
