20.2 How good are the best swimmers across multiple events?

A few swimmers compete at the top level in more than one event. The outstanding example in this dataset is Katinka Hosszu, whose best time is amongst the top 200 in 14 events. Figure 20.7 shows her results as purple dots on top of letter-value boxplots (Hofmann et al. (2017)) for the 200 best times in the 17 events for women. The events have been sorted by stroke and ordered by distance. Each plot has its own time scale.

Figure 20.7: Katinka Hosszu’s best times by event (in purple) compared with the 200 best in each event

Given that she is good at so many events, it is perhaps not surprising that she is the best overall in the two medley events. Her ‘weakest’ stroke is the breaststroke, the only events where she is not in the top 200.

The most versatile male swimmer in the dataset, Michael Phelps, is also strong in the two medley events, as can be seen in Figure 20.8. He is amongst the best in 10 of the 17 individual events for men.

Figure 20.8: Michael Phelps’s best times by event (in green) compared with the 200 best in each event