Top 5 amazing Andy Murray stats, No. 1: Winning two Olympic gold medals in singles

On Tuesday, Andy Murray announced that the Paris Olympics would be the final tennis tournament of his career, and to celebrate his legacy we’ve been counting down five of his most amazing career stats, one a day, until the tournament starts.

So far, we’ve covered how he became the first British man to win a Grand Slam title in 76 years, how he’s the only tennis player ever to beat each of the Big 3 seven or more times each, how he’s the only player ever to win a Grand Slam title, the Olympics and the ATP Finals in the same year, and how he was the only man to break up the Big 3’s 18-year stranglehold on No. 1.

Today, something no one else—man OR woman—has ever done.

Winning two Olympic gold medals in singles

There’s something Murray has achieved that no other tennis legend has done—not any of the Big 3, not any of the women’s all-time greats like Steffi Graf or Serena Williams, nobody—and that’s winning two Olympic gold medals in singles.

He won them at back-to-back Olympics, too.

And on two different surfaces.

His first singles gold medal came at the London Olympics in 2012, held on the grass courts of Wimbledon. Just a few weeks after a heartbreaking 4-6, 7-5, 6-3, 6-4 loss to Roger Federer in the final of Wimbledon, Murray completely flipped the script at the Olympics—after taking out Novak Djokovic in the semifinals, 7-5, 7-5, he crushed Federer in the gold medal match, 6-2, 6-1, 6-4.

“In a lot of ways the scoreline is irrelevant,” he said after the gold medal match, “but when I look back on the match, it will be one that I’ll look at as the biggest win of my career, for sure.”

His second singles gold medal came at the Rio Olympics in 2016, held on hard courts, and it was much, much tougher.

While he dropped only one set in six matches in London, he dropped three in Rio, including two close calls—he rallied from 3-0 down in the third set to defeat Fabio Fognini in the third round, 6-1, 2-6, 6-3, and then from a break down in the third set to beat Steve Johnson in the quarterfinals, 6-0, 4-6, 7-6 (2).

After a straight-set semifinal win over Kei Nishikori, he edged Juan Martin del Potro in a grueling four-hour 7-5, 4-6, 6-2, 7-5 marathon in the gold medal match to make history.

“It was probably one of the hardest matches I have had to play to win a big final,” he said. “This was tough emotionally and physically. There were lots of ups and downs. This was much harder to win than London four years ago—the final was more straightforward. Tonight anything could have happened.”

And that’s not all—Murray actually has a third Olympic medal in his trophy cabinet, winning the silver medal in mixed doubles at the 2012 London Olympics alongside Laura Robson.

He’ll kick off the final tournament of his career—and his quest for a fourth Olympic medal—on Sunday, as he plays his first-round men’s doubles match with countryman Dan Evans. They'll square off against Japanese team Nishikori and Taro Daniel.