Sport Facts

The American swimmer added five gold medals and a silver to his collection in Rio 2016 to take his Olympic medal haul to a record-breaking total of 28. According to Time Magazine, he’s won more Olympic golds during his career than many countries, including Portugal and Mexico, have won since 1896.

In 1971, Alan Shephard and Edgar Mitchell made history when they became the first people to play sport on the moon. The Apollo 14 astronauts participated in what Mitchell later jokingly described as “the first lunar Olympics”. Shephard hit a golf ball while Mitchell threw a makeshift javelin – it was actually a staff they’d used in one of their scientific experiments.

F1 drivers are well-known to be a superstitious bunch and three-time world champion, Sebastian Vettel is no exception. When driving for Red Bull, he revealed that he usually wears lucky coins tucked into the laces of his boots.

Despite their name and colour, the gold medals presented to winners at the Olympic Games haven’t been made from solid gold since 1912. The modern gold medals are made from sterling silver and feature just small quantities of the precious metal (the Rio 2016 versions were 1.34 percent gold).

The dimples on a golf ball are designed to make it more aerodynamic, allowing it to travel further in the air. There are no official rules about how many dimples a golf ball can have and most feature between 300 and 500.