Carl Lewis
Paavo Nurmi
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Paavo Nurmi leads 1 of 2 categories. Our all-time ranking places Carl Lewis at #2 and Paavo Nurmi at #3.
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 Paavo Nurmi
The Flying Finn defined distance running for a generation. Between 1920 and 1928 Nurmi won nine Olympic gold medals and three silvers — twelve in all, still the most any track and field athlete has won at the Games — across distances from 1500m to the 10,000m and cross country. At the 1924 Paris Olympics he won five golds, including the 1500m and 5000m finals barely an hour apart, running each with a stopwatch in his hand to hold an exact pace. Over his career he set 22 official world records at distances from 1500m to 20 kilometres. Nurmi ran with a metronomic, even-paced style that was revolutionary in an age of erratic racing, and his mastery of tempo effectively invented modern pacing. The Finnish state built its athletic identity around him, and the flame at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics was lit by Nurmi himself — the sport's first true international superstar.