Basketball is one Olympic event where it’s difficult for an athlete to collect more than one medal. One has to play for a podium-placing team, hope to be selected again four years later, and then hope his or her nation again finishes in the top three. And that’s just for two medals. What more three or four?
Ever since the sport was included in the Olympic calendar in 1936, only 25 basketball players in both men’s and women’s competition have won at least three Olympic basketball medals. Of these 25, only seven have won at least two golds. The player who’s won the most? The United States’ Teresa Edwards, who suited up in five Olympic Games and won an incredible four golds and one bronze.
The five-foot-eleven guard made her Olympic debut in the 1984 Los Angeles Games and led Team USA to the gold. She was also part of the gold-medal-winning team in the 1988 Seoul Games. She claimed her lone bronze in Barcelona in 1992, and won her third gold in Atlanta in 1996, where she led the competitor’s oath. In 2000, at age 36, she was selected to her fifth Olympic team, and helped lead the US to another gold medal, her fourth, in Sydney.
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