I wouldn't be surprised if there are more swimming events that Phelps competes in than ancient events as a whole. There were three fighting events: boxing, wrestling, and pankration (a combination of the two, maybe a bit like MMA). Two riding events: chariot and horeseracing. Four different running events (including the race in armor), and the pentathalon. So I think it is a bit unfair to Leonidas.

The one that comes to mind is Phayllos of Kroton, who leapt so far he cleared the pit and broke his leg. As the pit was about fifteen meters long, this is well beyond the 8.9 Mike Powell managed in Barcelona. That being said, the sheer size of this leap has made plenty of people a bit leery, and it does seem to be straining against the limits of the possible, and so there is a bit of a debate over what the long jump was actually like. One possibility is that the weighted [halteres](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halteres_(ancient_Greece)) that the athletes apparently held while jumping was used in some way to add lift or effect the center of gravity, but modern testing hasn't really provided a comparable effect. The simpler explanation is that it was just a triple jump, which makes 15 meters extremely impressive but well within the 18.3 meters that is the current record.

If you want to read more, Leuven has a great little site about the Olympics, I linked Phyllos' page.

EDIT: it is worth noting that event athletics became proffessionalized to an extent during the Hellenistic and Roman periods. There were enough places hosting games that it was possible for a talented athlete to make a comfortable living going from Games to Games and surviving off of the prize money. By contrast the competitors of the classical games were young aristocratic amateurs, so I find it pretty likely that the quality of competition was much higher in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, but authors primarily primarily talked about the classical games.

Other questions: how accurate are the records of Leonidas of Rhodes winning? Could they have been exaggerated? Was it entirely fair (did other athletes let him win for some reason)?

Side question: Do many of the exact records in the ancient olympics still exist? For example: Leonidas ran X event in Y amount of time? And if so, how accurate would these records be?

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