Carl Lewis
Jackie Joyner-Kersee
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Carl Lewis leads 3 of 3 categories. Our all-time ranking places Carl Lewis at #2 and Jackie Joyner-Kersee at #8.
The case for Carl Lewis
Voted Sportsman of the Century by the IOC, Lewis bridged sprinting and jumping like no one before or since. He won nine Olympic golds across four Games from 1984 to 1996, including the long jump at all four — a twelve-year reign in a single event — plus the 100m, 200m and sprint relays. His long-jump dominance was almost absurd: he went unbeaten in the event for a decade, winning 65 consecutive competitions between 1981 and 1991 before Mike Powell finally beat him with a world record. He added eight World Championship golds and a 100m world record of 9.86 in 1991. The knock on Lewis is that many of his sprint titles came in a doping-riddled era and that he never broke the long-jump world record himself, but his combination of range, longevity and championship temperament — he rarely lost when a medal was on the line — puts him second on nearly every serious list.
The case for Jackie Joyner-Kersee
Widely called the greatest female athlete of the twentieth century, Joyner-Kersee dominated the most demanding event in the sport. Her heptathlon world record of 7,291 points, set at the 1988 Seoul Olympics, still stands nearly four decades later and remains one of the most durable marks in athletics. She won three Olympic golds — heptathlon in 1988 and 1992, long jump in 1988 — plus a silver and two bronzes across four Games, and added four World Championship titles. She was simultaneously a world-class long jumper, with a best of 7.49m that ranks among the finest ever, and a sub-13-second hurdler, a range of abilities almost no one else has combined. Battling asthma throughout her career, she set the standard for the multi-event athlete: fast enough to sprint, strong enough to throw, springy enough to jump, and tough enough to do all seven over two exhausting days.