Photo by PxHere, CC by 1.0
The Winter Olympics rarely gets the attention its summer counterpart attracts, but it features some elite athletes as well.
Thousands of Olympians have participated in the competition since its inaugural edition in 1924, but only a handful of them managed to become immortal in the history of sports with their astonishing medal counts.
We’ve taken a look back at the greatest athletes to have competed at the Winter Olympics. Here are the top six athletes who braved freezing conditions to enjoy the most success in Winter Olympics history.
6) Raisa Smetanina – Soviet Union/Unified Team (10)
Raisa Smetanina made her Winter Olympics debut in Innsbruck, Austria, in 1973 at the age of 23.
The Cross Country Skier picked up three medals, which tied her with Germany’s Rosi Mittermaier for the most successful athlete of the Games that year, winning gold in the 10km and 4x5km relay, and she then claimed silver in the 5km discipline.
She returned four years later to add a further gold to her tally in the 5km event while also picking up silver in the relay.
Smetanina collected four more medals over the following two events in 1984 and 1988, taking home three silver and one bronze.
At her final Games in 1992, Smetanina, who was 39, earned one last medal as she helped her nation to gold in the relay event.
That final gold medal moved her to 10 overall and saw her become the first woman in history to reach that tally, while also becoming the oldest woman to win Winter Olympic gold at the time.
5) Arianna Fontana – Italy (11 Medals)
Fontana owns 11 Olympic medals, including back-to-back golds in the 500m short track at Pyeongchang 2018 and Beijing 2022.
After the 2022 Games, Fontana became the most decorated short track speed skater in Olympic history. She also surpassed Stefania Belmondo to become Italy’s most successful female athlete at the Winter Olympics.
Fontana’s first Olympic medal came in the 2006 edition, when she won bronze in the 3000m relay. It was the first medal Italy had ever won in short track speed skating. She was only 15 years old at that time!
Fontana hit another milestone during her second Winter Olympics campaign in 2010. She won the 500m bronze medal and became the first solo medal winner in short track for Italy.
In the 2014 edition, Fontana had won three bronze medals at first, but one of those got upgraded to silver after Elise Christie was disqualified from the 500m event.
Fontana was the flag bearer for Italy in the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, and she made the campaign even more memorable by winning her first gold. She also bagged a bronze and a silver.
In 2022, Fontana defended her 500m gold and flew back home with two more silvers. Her current medal tally features a pair of golds, four silvers, and five bronzes.
4) Bjorn Daehlie – Norway (12)
Bjorn Daehlie earns a spot on this list after winning 12 medals, including eight gold, in Cross Country Skiing.
The Norwegian picked up a total of 29 medals across the Winter Olympics and World Championships between 1991 and 1999.
He was part of the Olympic team in 1988 but didn’t compete and was taken to Calgary, Canada, to learn from the senior members of the squad.
Daehlie’s debut came in 1992 in Albertville, France, when he sealed four medals, including three gold.
Four years later, he backed that up with two further gold medals and two silver before signing off in 1998.
Daehlie became one of the most successful Cross Country Skiiers when picking up three golds and one silver in his final Olympic campaign.
3) Ireen Wust – Netherlands (13)
Ireen Wust made her Olympic debut in 2006, and she left Turin with four medals – one gold and three bronze. The speed skater has consistently delivered over the following years and appeared in her final Winter Olympic campaign in 2022.
Despite announcing that she would retire after Beijing 2022, Wust was still at the top of her game when she decided to hang up her skates, and became the first woman to win individual gold at five different Olympics by retaining her 1500m title.
Wust set an Olympic record of one minute 53.28 seconds to win the 1500m gold in Beijing. She also won a bronze in Team Pursuit to sign off with 13 Winter Olympic medals.
2) Ole Einar Bjorndalen – Norway (13)
Ole Einar Bjorndalen sits second on the list of multiple medalists at the Winter Olympic Games and rightly gets second place on this list too.
Often referred to by the nickname the “King of Biathlon”, Bjorndalen boasts 13 medals – eight gold, four silver and one bronze.
He left empty-handed when debuting at the Games in 1994 but picked up one gold and one silver in 1998.
His biggest haul came in Salt Lake City four years later when he picked up gold in each of the four events that he entered.
Bjorndalen competed across six different Games before eventually calling time on his career after he was omitted for Norway’s squad for the 2018 edition in Pyeongchang.
Even though he won the same amount of Olympic medals as Wust, Bjorndalen gets the edge because of his superior gold medal count. He won eight gold medals, while Wust won six.
1) Marit Bjorgen – Norway (15)
Marit Bjorgen tops the standings for most medals won by any athlete in the history of the Winter Olympics.
The Norwegian picked up 15 between 2002 and 2018, including eight gold, four silver and three bronze.
She won 10 medals across two editions of the Games in 2010 and 2018 as she asserted her dominance in the Cross Country Skiing ranks.
Bjorgen is ranked first in the all-time Cross Country World Cup rankings, winning 114 individual events, while she is the most successful sprinter in World Cup history with 29 victories.
After an illustrious career on the snow, Bjorgen announced her retirement Cross Country Skiing in April 2018, although she did return to competition with long-distance cross country ski squad Team Ragde Eiendom in May 2020.
