When we talk about some of history's greatest athletes, we usually look at winners. But there's really something to be said for those underdogs who never won, and why they are in some ways better athletes overall then the people that beat them.

Like Oksana Chusovitina, the multi-national Olympic gymnast only won one gold medal in her first Olympics, but came back for six more and managed to get a silver medal in Beijing. That's not a lot of winning, but that's quite a few Olympics, seven overall, and it's quite amazing that a gymnast at age 33 could get silver. Fellow gymnast Yordan Yovchev, a Bulgarian, was active at the same time as her until recently, and went to six Olympics and got a bunch of bronzes and a silver. If I were Bulgarian, I'd be insisting that someone made a movie about him.

I'm a bit biased toward swimmers, so I could single out German swimmer Franziska van Almsick, since she has the record for being the most decorated Olympian to never win gold, but she onnly stuck around for four Olympics, which isn't unheard of for a swimmer.

However, the most amazing example of an athlete that never won has got to be Merlene Ottey. She was a Jamaican-born Slovene sprinter who raced in seven Olympics and won three silvers and six bronzes. That's an awful lot of medals without any gold. Imagine what it must have took to come back time after time and get onto the podium, consistently pushing some unfortunate athlete who worked their whole life to compete on the highest level into fourth place. I think that's a pretty great achievement. Someone should give her a medal.