I've always thought there were too many medals in the swimming pool at the Olympics and that if swimming was a new sport being admitted there's no way there would be so many allowed, but its tradition now and I don't see it changing. In the modern summer olympics the list of most medal winners are dominated by swimmers, and then gymnastics. There's a core set of physiological advantages that are common between the strokes and much of the training training mutually benefits them all. These factors, coupled with the extremely low impact nature of swimming, means the sport is perfect for multi-medal achievements.
Some of this is true for gymnastics as well, but the difference here, in my opinion, is that gymnastics is so physically gruelling the careers don't tend to be as long. For example you can compare Simone Biles, who is widely regarded as the greatest gymnast ever, with Michael Phelps. This is Biles' 3rd olympics and has so far won 8 medals (admittedly she probably missed out on 2 or 3 at Tokyo) whereas Phelps won 28 in 4 Olympics. Phelps tally is made up of 16 individual medals and 12 relay medals. To be eligible for so many relay medals on their own over 4 Olympics is fairly extraordinary in and of itself (in comparison Gymnasts are eligible for only 1). Ultimately its impossible for anyone to top Phelps other than another swimmer (a female gymnast would have to compete in 5 Olympics and win a model in every individual piece plus the all round and the team to beat him).
For me Carl Lewis is the greatest OIympian ever, over 3 games he competed in just about every event he could (100m/200m/4x100m/long jump) and only came away with 10 medals. To win more than that would have been virtually impossible.
I'm not advocating for reducing medals in the pool, mostly for excitement, entertainment and tradition reasons, but I think its undeniable medal counts in the pool are vastly inflated.
