Michael Phelps won 13 Olympic gold medals in individual events.
That total is separate from his 23 Olympic gold medals overall, because the larger figure includes relay victories. Phelps earned his 13 individual golds across four Olympic Games: Athens 2004, Beijing 2008, London 2012, and Rio 2016. His first Olympic appearance was Sydney 2000, where he did not win a medal.
The total reached 13 in Rio, when Phelps won the 200-metre butterfly and 200-metre individual medley. His individual titles also included the 400-metre individual medley, 100-metre butterfly, and 200-metre freestyle. In 2008, he won eight gold medals in total, with five coming in individual events and three in relays.
The most common mix-up is answering 23, which is Phelps’s career total for Olympic golds, or 28, which is his total number of Olympic medals. The number 13 refers only to gold medals won in events where he competed as an individual. It was an Olympic record and surpassed Leonidas of Rhodes’s ancient record of 12 individual titles.