Meet five Olympians who left their mark on the world…literally

Picture this. You train for years, perfecting your chosen sport, dedicating your life to the sole goal of winning a medal at the Olympic Games. The hard work and dedication you displayed day in day out pays off, and you achieve the unthinkable, winning an Olympic gold medal.

People celebrate in their homes, at public gatherings and on the streets. You become a national hero overnight, earning the praise and admiration of your fellow citizens. You meet the leader of your nation, pose for photos at sports clubs across the nation, and embark on a whirlwind press tour.

While the initial excitement of your remarkable victory subsides, the intangible mark you left on the public continues to live on. As you return to training for another four years, or retire from elite sports, people across the nation think of unique ways to honour your legacy.

You might receive offers for a lifetime supply of free chicken inasal, or be rewarded with a pair of pet ducks. Perhaps you’ll have a national holiday declared in your honour, or a statue erected to celebrate your victory.

No matter what you receive, it will be an honour as unique as your accomplishment.

With that in mind, Olympics.com looks at five athletes whose sporting achievements at the Olympic Games have transcended the five rings, and quite literally redefined the natural world.

Roger Federer has a parasitoid wasp species named after him

Roger Federer needs very little introduction. The tennis ace from Basel, Switzerland is known around the world for his exploits on the tennis court, where he recorded a total of 1,251 wins during his storied career.

His success extended to the Olympics, where he recorded a total of 20 wins across four editions of the Games in both singles and doubles events, including a gold medal in the men’s doubles event at the Olympic Games Beijing 2008.

Federer retired in 2022, after being named Swiss Sportsman of the Year seven times, ITF Player of the Year five times and Arthur Ashe Humanitarian of Year two times. He was also awarded Sportsman of the Year at the Laureus World Sports Awards on five occasions.

Federer was awarded an honorary doctorate degree by the University of Basel Faculty of Medicine, named number on the list of 100 Most Influential People of 2018 by Time Magazine, and celebrated with Swiss stamps and coins.

However, the true lasting power of his legacy was demonstrated by the recent naming of a newly discovered parasitoid wasp species in his honour. The species was discovered by a team of insect scientists from Chulalongkorn University in Thailand, who also discovered a second new species that they named after Spanish tennis great Rafael Nadal.

"T. rogerfedereri and T. rafaelnadali are parasitoid wasps, whose larvae devour their hosts from the inside," said study leader Buntika Areekul Butcher in a press release published by Phys.org. "As their names proclaim, they honour the tennis greats Roger Federer and Raphael Nadal, who although competitors on the court have been on the same doubles team too.”

Both species were identified at national parks in Thailand, meaning Federer will need to travel if he wants to meet his namesake in-person.

Iwasaki Kyoto: Japanese swimmer with an asteroid bearing her name

It’s not every day that a newly discovered wasp is named after an Olympic athlete. While that’s an exceptional honour, it’s even tougher to immortalise an athlete’s performance when it was truly out of this world. Nonetheless, Japanese astronomer Akiyama Makio came up with a creative solution in 1998.

With his eyes focused on the heavens, he spied an undiscovered asteroid within the asteroid belt located between Mars and Jupiter. It was promptly named 35441 Kyoko.

If the name Kyoko rings a bell for fans of the Olympic Games, that might be due to Olympic champion Iwasaki Kyoto.

The Japanese swimmer was only 14 years and six days old when she won a gold medal in the women’s 200m breaststroke at the Olympic Games Barcelona 1992, making her the youngest swimmer to have won gold at the Olympic Games - a title she still retains.

While Kyoto was unable to reproduce her sensational victory at the Olympic Games Atlanta 1996, her incredible achievement in Barcelona was forever etched into the heavens thanks to Akiyama.

Abebe Bikila: Ethiopian marathon master with a spider named in his honour

The image of a barefooted Abebe Bikila sprinting down the torch-lit streets of Rome during the Olympic Games Rome 1960 remains one of the most enduring images of the Olympic Games.

Generally regarded as one of the greatest marathoners in history, Bikila announced his arrival on the global scene with his victory at Rome 1960. He went on to win 11 more marathons, including a dominant victory at the Olympic Games Tokyo 1964, during a career that lasted approximately nine years.

His exploits were followed eagerly by Ethiopians during his lifetime, with Bikila celebrated as both a national hero and a trailblazer in the African nation.

A tragic car crash permanently sidelined Bikila from distance running in 1969. Confined to a wheelchair, the Ethiopian marathoner competed in para sport competitions, including the storied Stoke Mandeville Games, in the years following his accident until his death in 1973.

Bikila was given a state funeral in his native Ethiopia, and a stadium named in his honour.

In the unlikely event that the name Abebe Bikila is lost to history, he will also live on as the namesake of a small cellar spider native to Ethiopia: Pholcus bikilai.

Tina Maze: Slovenia's star skier lends her name to another arachnoid

Bikila isn’t the only Olympian to lend his name to a species of spider, Slovenia’s Tina Maze was also given this unique honour by a Slovenian biologist in 2015.

Inspired by his colleagues at the Scientific Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, biologist Matjaž Gregorič travelled to Madagascar to study newly discovered species of bark spiders. It was on this trip that he made a discovery of his own.

"I would stare at spiders for hours on end in an effort to find out how they weave their webs and how they hunt,” Gregorič said in an interview with MMC RTV SLO in 2015. “I also realised that many of the species I found while studying C. darwini were still unidentified.

“I asked my colleagues about these spiders, and I received some material from an American museum containing a South African spider now known as C. tinamaze,” he concluded.

While Caerostris tinamaze thrived in a tropical rainforest environment, Slovenian skier Maze preferred the icy slopes of alpine skiing. She made a name for herself in the giant slalom, winning 14 world cup races during her career.

Maze officially retired from ski racing in 2017, after claiming two gold medals at the Olympic Games Sochi 2014, including a downhill victory she famously shared with Switzerland's Dominique Gisin after the pair posted identical times over the challenging course.

Caerostris tinamaze continues to spin its webs in her honour.

Pierre de Coubertin: founder of the Modern Olympic Games immortalised in space

Yes, even the founder of the modern Olympic Games, and co-founder of the International Olympic Committee, was given the unique honour of having an asteroid named after him.

In 1976, Soviet astronomer Nikolai Stepanovich Chernykh discovered a new asteroid and decided to name it after the founder of the Frenchman in connection with the Olympic Games Moscow 1980.

While Chernykh might have been more inspired by the full legacy of Coubertin’s work to revive the Olympic Games, it’s worth noting that the French IOC member won an Olympic gold medal as well.

Baron Pierre de Coubertin entered the literature competition at the Olympic Games Stockholm 1912 as a representative of Germany under the dual pseudonym Georges Hohrod et M. Eschbach.

The jury ultimately awarded the gold medal to his entry titled, “Ode to Sport,” making him an Olympic gold medalist. He died decades before Chernykh decided to create his own galactic ode to sport, but Pierre de Coubertin’s legacy lives on through the Olympic Games.