Who Has Won The Most Paralympic Medals

You must have heard about the athletes with the most Olympic medals in the world. If we were to look at the list, most of them were from the gymnastics category and this is of no surprise since a lot of the categories in gymnastics are being contested in the Olympics.

However, the same thing can't be said about the Paralympics as the situation is completely different. Another thing is that it is completely normal for a Paralympic athlete to win multiple medals in different types of sports that are being contested. In fact, there are even some of them that won medals for both versions of the Paralympics for Summer and Winter.

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Here we would like to share with you the top 7 Paralympic athletes that have won the most Paralympic medals. This list will include both the Summer and Winter Paralympics. Unlike the Olympics, this one will comprise different categories of sports.

7. Roberto Marson

26 medals: 16 Gold, 7 Silver, 3 Bronze

Roberto Marson is an Italian multi-sport athlete that competed in the Summer Paralympics four times and has won a total of 26 Paralympic medals. He lost his leg when a pine tree fell on his back when it was being cut down.

Roberto Marson played three types of sports: trekking, wheelchair, and swimming. He sadly passed away in 2011 and in 2012 his name was chosen to be in the International Paralympian Hall of Fame.

6. Ragnhild Myklebust

27 medals: 22 Gold, 3 Silver, 2 Bronze

Competing for a few disciplines in the Winter Paralympics, he only started to contend in the Paralympics when she was in his 40s as a Norwegian skite athlete. She has won several medals for short, intermediate, and far distances in the ski sports category.

Aside from that, he also competed in the biathlon event as well as ice skating. She is a polio survivor and was considered the most successful Paralympic athlete of all time.

5. Jonas Jacobsson

27 medals: 17 Gold, 2 Silver, 8 Bronze

This Swedish shooting star, Jonas Jacobsson has won 27 medals in the Paralympics of which 17 of them were gold. He has competed in the Paralympics event since he was only 15 years old and had won 9 gold consecutively with the last one being won in London 2012.

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Jonas Jacobsson was born with paraplegia and competed in the wheelchair basketball event for Sweden in the Seoul Paralympics in 1988. He came in sixth place in the event but this Swedish player came back stronger before retiring from the shooting competition in 2017.

4. Béatrice Hess

37 medals: 28 gold, 6 Silver, 3 Bronze

Béatrice Hess is a French Paralympic swimmer and the French L'Humanité paper has acknowledged her as one of the best swimmers in the world. This matter can be clearly seen from the achievements that she has made in the Paralympics which is to be proud of aside from breaking several world records.

She competed in the Paralympics between 1984 and 2004 playing in the S5 classification. She was diagnosed with cerebral palsy but this did not stop her from breaking 9 world records in the Sydney Paralympics 2000.

3. Heinz Frei

41 medals: 19 Gold, 9 Silver, 13 Bronze

Heinz Frei is a wheelchair athlete from Switzerland and along with his career in racing, he has won the wheelchair London Marathon 3 times. Not just that but he is also the record holder for both the full marathon and half marathon in the wheelchair race.

He competed in the racing sport in the forever Summer Paralympics from 1984 until 2008. In the Summer Paralympics of 2008, 2012, and 2016, he competed in the bicycle event. In the Winter Paralympics, he also got involved in ski sports in 1986 and 2006 and biathlon in 1994.

2. Jessica Long

41 medals: 29 Gold, 8 Silver, 4 Bronze

Jessica Long is one of the Paralympic athletes on this list that still remains active in competing and it is not impossible for her to top the list in the future especially since she is still young. At only 12 years old, she had become the youngest participant in the US Paralympics and made her international debut at the Athens Paralympics 2004 by winning 3 gold.

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She was born in Russia and has become adopted by a family from the US when she was 13 months old. In 2013, she came back to Russia where she met her biological parents during the Sochi Winter Paralympics 2014. She was assigned to become the reporter for NBC involving the sporting event.

1. Tischa Zorn

55 medals: 41 Gold, 9 Silver, 5 Bronze

This American swimmer is the most successful Paralympics athlete in history winning 55 medals in the Paralympics and 41 of them were gold medals. She was blind since birth and managed to sweep 12 gold from 12 events in Seoul in 1988. She was the first blind athlete to receive the NCAA Division 1 scholarship and made her first appearance in the Paralympics in 1980.

Trischa Zorn brought the American flag when she was 41 years old in the closing ceremony of the Athens Paralympics 2004 after winning bronze, her last medal. She was heavily respected among the American swimmer and as a sign of gratitude the Trischa L. Zorn Awards was created to be given to other Paralympics swimmers or the best team of the year.

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