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Kirsty Coventry

HARARE. — The African with the most Olympic medals is one of the great distance runners from Kenya or Ethiopia, right?

Nope.

It’s a swimmer from Zimbabwe.

Like Michael Phelps, Kirsty Coventry is going to the Olympics for the fifth and final time, and she’s swimming for one more little slice of history in the Rio de Janeiro pool.

Phelps has the all-time Olympic record with his medal haul of 22, but Coventry needs one more podium finish at her last Olympics to be the first female swimmer to win eight individual medals.

It’s not an arbitrary stat. It underlines how Coventry, from a southern African nation with very little Olympic success (apart from hers, that is) has done it all by herself. No help from relay teammates to boost that medal count.

Zimbabwe has won eight medals in total at the Olympics, and seven of them have been provided by Coventry, the two-time gold medalist in the 200-metre backstroke. The country’s only other medal is a women’s field hockey gold won during the boycotted 1980 Games in Moscow.

She’s already Africa’s best at the Olympics. As for the other mark, Coventry is level on seven individual swimming medals with Hungary’s Krisztina Egerszegi. Rio is the last chance to edge ahead of Egerszegi. Coventry is 32, on her way out, knows it, and can make light of it.

Who’s the swimmer to watch at the Rio Games?

“Me!” she responded.

Joking.

“In all seriousness the field of swimmers is so strong right now, it’s crazy,” Coventry wrote in an email exchange. “I remember saying how strong it was in London (in 2012), but Rio will be even more so.”

Of them all, Coventry rates Americans Camille Adams and Katie Ledecky highest.

“Camille Adams … she will get you out of your chairs when she is racing. And then there is Katie Ledecky. She will blow your mind. They are the whole package: hard working, competitive, confident, talented, beautiful and filled with positive energy and kindness.”

Coventry’s been pretty good, too, basically representing her country at the Olympics single-handedly over the last 16 years, and ending up with more Olympic medals than any other African athlete. In the pool, too, not on the running track, normally the most fertile ground for African athletes. — AP.