Michael Phelps won most of his Olympic medals in swimming.
Phelps competed as a swimmer at five Olympic Games, from Sydney 2000 through Rio de Janeiro 2016. He won 28 Olympic medals in total: 23 gold, three silver and two bronze, making him the most decorated Olympian in history.
His medals came across several swimming disciplines, including butterfly, individual medley, freestyle and backstroke. His greatest single-Games haul came at Beijing 2008, where he won eight gold medals and surpassed Mark Spitz’s previous record of seven golds at one Olympics.
The common mix-up is that Phelps’s medals came from many different events, but they were all within the sport of swimming. He was not a diver or water-polo player; even relay medals count as swimming medals because the events are contested in the pool.