RIO DE JANEIRO - The 31st Summer Olympics starts on August 5 in Rio de Janeiro. Here is AFP Sport's second set of five legends of the Games:
Australian swimming champion Dawn Fraser (C- without cap) took gold in the women's 100m freestyle at the Tokyo Games in 1964, becoming the first Olympic swimmer to win the same event three times
- Laszlo Papp, Hungarian boxing great
Papp tangled with Hungary's Communist authorities as well as opponents in the ring in a career which made him the first boxer to win three Olympic gold medals. The fluid, hard-hitting southpaw, known for his devastating left hook, totted up an astonishing 301 amateur wins against just 12 losses, with 55 of his victories ending in first-round knock-outs. His Olympic career was equally as fearsome: in 13 bouts spread across London 1948, Helsinki 1952 and Melbourne 1956, Papp lost only one round -- in the 1956 final, which he won 2-1 against America's Jose Torres. That third and final title came at a highly emotional time for Hungary, as it coincided with the brutal crushing of an uprising against the Soviet-backed regime. Budapest-born Papp turned professional at 31 in 1957 but had to train in Vienna to become the first professional boxer from the Soviet bloc. In 1965, he was denied a shot at reigning middleweight world champion Joey Giardello in the United States when the Hungarian Communist authorities revoked his passport, concerned about the sensitivities of a boxer from the Soviet bloc fighting for money in the focal point of the capitalist world. "This is my one big regret in life," Papp said later. He retired undefeated as a professional and as European middleweight champion and was later awarded an honorary world title by the World Boxing Council, who also named him the best amateur and professional fighter of all time.
- Dawn Fraser, the Australian rebel
The Australian swimmer made her mark in the 100m freestyle, taking gold in the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, and then in Rome in 1960 and Tokyo in 1964. In doing so, she became the first woman to defend an Olympic swimming title and the first Olympic swimmer of either sex to win the same event three times. Fraser also won gold in the 4x100m freestyle relay in 1956 and earned silver medals in four other events over the Games in which she competed. However, her career was also defined by clashes with Australia's swimming authorities. After the Rome Olympics, she was handed a two-year ban after a number of minor offences, including not wearing the team tracksuit to receive her medal. At Tokyo, she defied team orders by marching in the ceremony, wore an unofficial swimsuit while competing and finally she was caught stealing souvenir flags near the Imperial Palace -- crimes which earned her a whopping 10-year ban, prompting her retirement. Fraser, from a working-class suburb of Sydney, remains one of Australia's most outspoken sports heroes, and recently courted controversy when she told misbehaving tennis stars Nick Kyrgios and Bernard Tomic "to go back to where their parents came from", comments for which she later apologised.
- Larisa Latynina, Soviet medal machine
Ukrainian-born Latynina competed in the 1958 world gymnastics while four months pregnant -- and took home five gold medals. It was the sort of determination that was to bring her 18 Olympic medals, a record which stood for nearly half a century until it was broken in 2012 by American swimmer Michael Phelps. Latynina finished her Olympic career with nine gold medals, five silver and four bronze, becoming gymnastics' inaugural superstar. "She was our first legend," Bela Karolyi, the coach of Romania's Nadia Comaneci, said of Latynina. "When she stepped out on the floor, all eyes were on her. She demanded attention and respect." At her first Games in 1956, Latynina won the vault and floor exercises en route to a hard-fought all-round title, as well as gold in the team event. She defended her all-round title in 1960, and again took gold in the floor exercises and team event. At Tokyo in 1964, when she was 29, Latynina won her third straight floor and team titles. Despite her unprecedented medal haul, Latynina's achievements were later overshadowed in Olympic history by the exploits of Soviet gymnast Olga Korbut and Comaneci, but she came to public attention again as Phelps zeroed in on her record in London.
- Mark Spitz, damp squib to record-breaker
The brash American boasted he would win six gold medals at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics but he ended up with two relay titles, plus an individual silver and bronze, in what he called "the worst meet of my life". Perhaps it was the motivation he needed, because four years later in Munich, Spitz stunned the world by winning an unprecedented seven gold medals at the same Games -- winning every event he entered, and setting a world record each time. Spitz's seven-title haul remained unmatched until Michael Phelps swam to eight gold medals in Beijing in 2008. The mustachioed Spitz did the 100m and 200m double in both freestyle and the butterfly, together with three relay titles -- and promptly retired. The abrasive Spitz's success wasn't universally popular among his rival swimmers: "It could have happened to a nicer guy," remarked one. Lucrative endorsements and business deals were to follow, until Spitz made a shortlived comeback attempt aged 41, nearly two decades after Munich, in time for the 1992 Olympics. After Phelps broke his gold-medal record in Beijing, Spitz was unstinting in his praise. "He is the single greatest Olympic athlete of all time now... I always wondered what my feelings would be. I feel a tremendous load off my back."
- Teofilo Stevenson, the Cuban Ali
Stevenson resisted the lure of professional boxing -- including a lucrative fight with Muhammad Ali -- to remain resolutely amateur throughout his career, earning the devotion of his fellow Cubans. "What is a million dollars worth compared to the love of eight million Cubans?" he once said. Stevenson was crowned Olympic heavyweight champion three times in 1972, 1976 and 1980, one of only three fighters to win three Olympic gold medals, and the first after Hungary's Laszlo Papp 24 years earlier. In a 1988 Boxing Illustrated poll, the towering but graceful Stevenson, with a thundering right hand -- and a striking resemblance to Ali -- was selected as the greatest Olympic boxer of all time. In 1974, two years after his first Olympic victory, promoters Bob Arum and Don King both tried to lure the 22-year-old to fight the then fading Ali, a match that many observers believe the Cuban would have won. Instead Ali fought George Foreman in Kinshasa, Zaire, in the famous Rumble in the Jungle. Stevenson only ever lost one round at the Olympics, in his third and last final against the Soviet Union's Piotr Zaev in 1980. He also won three world amateur titles and would have been a good bet for a fourth Olympic gold medal, but Fidel Castro's Cuba boycotted both the 1984 and 1988 Olympics in Los Angeles and Seoul. Stevenson, described by his friend Ali as "one of the great boxing champions", retired aged 36 to a modest home in Havana. He died in 2012, at the age of 60, after a heart attack.