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July 21[edit]

Back to back Olympic golds[edit]

At the 2016 Rio Olympics, Andy Murray defended the title he had won at the 2012 London Olympics - the men's singles in tennis. How many times has an individual gold medal been similarly defended in exactly the same discipline? (So in judo, only in the same weight class; in swimming, only the same distance; in gymnastics, count Simone Biles' vault title, but not her team gold etc) 2A02:C7D:CD8:3700:647C:B494:D0C4:7AA (talk) 09:29, 21 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

List of multiple Olympic gold medalists may be a good start. Michael Phelps, Usain Bolt and a few more may fit your criteria. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 15:58, 21 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Dawn Fraser of Australia was "the first of only three swimmers in Olympic history (Krisztina Egerszegi of Hungary and Michael Phelps of the United States being the two others) to have won individual gold medals for the same event at three successive Olympics (100 metres freestyle – 1956, 1960, 1964)". - Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:40, 21 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

See List of multiple Olympic gold medalists in one event#Individual events. The record is four consecutive. All four listed athletes were consecutive. For Paul Elvstrøm it can be discussed whether it was the same event when a boat class in the Olympic program was replaced with a similar boat. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:44, 22 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Being an old timer I have to mention that Al Oerter was the first athlete to win a gold medal in the same individual event in four consecutive Olympic Games. MarnetteD|Talk 00:59, 22 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Sonja Henie won three in a row. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:32, 22 July 2019 (UTC)\[reply]

Fairly sure if you're counting two i.e. an initial win and then a defence it's probably quite common. Probably one of the reasons the table linked above doesn't even bother with 2. E.g. Lin Dan was the first in men's singles in badminton, but it's a relatively new sport at the olympics debuting in 1992. Valerie Adams did this in women's shot put although her second gold medal was only awarded after her rival was disqualified about a month later due to failed drug tests from the event. Nil Einne (talk) 14:08, 22 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

"Fairly sure if you're counting two i.e. an initial win and then a defence it's probably quite common" Yes, me too, hence my wondering what the figure is 2A02:C7D:CD8:3700:5982:4AED:C9D2:867B (talk) 18:46, 22 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Well I sort of thought that this was the kind of which while sports statistics being what it is, someone must have compiled it somewhere, it would be very difficult to find given the large number meant most wouldn't bother as it didn't seem significant enough. And sure enough a search didn't find anything. But actually looking at the sources in our article linked above I found [1] which has "Most Gold Medals, Same Event, Individual, Consecutive" on page 24 which includes 2 and suggest there are about 90 depending on how you count until the 2014 Winter Olympics. I admit I thought it would be at least 200. I guess one thing is the individual criteria is strong limiter. (The non individual ones only go to 3.) There are probably several people on the same team each time for many team sports. And even stuff like sailing, rowing and kayaking whether pairs or more, as well as doubles in sports like badminton and table tennis may often have at least one individual who's the same between olympics, not uncommonly both I expect. Nil Einne (talk) 05:58, 23 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately, the pdf link isn't working, I've tried on two very different devices 89.241.134.75 (talk) 21:06, 23 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Apologies, this [2] should work. I generally convert links to be Protocol-relative URLs provided they work on HTTPS, assuming that everything with HTTPS should at least have a redirect from HTTP and everyone would either be using HTTPS or HTTP to access. But in this case I didn't notice it was HTTP and so forgot to check before converting. Well nowadays sometimes I just don't bother with HTTP links and leave them as HTTP since it's gotten to the stage where if I arrived to it on HTTP it's often because it needs to be HTTP. Nil Einne (talk) 10:15, 24 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I know you specified individual, but just wanted to note the astonishing 6 gold medals in consecutive Games won by Aladár Gerevich for team sabre fencing. Even more astonishing as his career straddled the 12 year gap enforced by WWII. He was 50 when he won his last gold - our article has a nice story about how he persuaded his national committee that he wasn't too old. --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 15:55, 22 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I thought the question was about the largest number of times the same gold has been defended. But it's apparently about the total number of times a gold has been defended once. I don't know stats on that but any such stats would have to decide when it is the same event. For this reason I don't expect any official stats. For example, weight limits often change a little so the same weight class by weigth limit does not exist, but there may be a weight class with the same common name. See for example Boxing at the Summer Olympics#Events. I only examined the first table at List of Olympic medalists in boxing. It shows the same winner in Boxing at the 2008 Summer Olympics – Light flyweight (up to 48 kg) and Boxing at the 2012 Summer Olympics – Men's light flyweight (up to 49 kg). Athletes adjust their weight to be right below the upper limit so I guess he did gain 1 kg. Athletes dehydrate before the weighing ("losing as much as 15% of their body weight in water" [3]) and weigh far more at the actual event but that is another discussion. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:42, 24 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]