Emil Zatopek
Allyson Felix
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Allyson Felix leads 2 of 2 categories. Our all-time ranking places Emil Zatopek at #5 and Allyson Felix at #11.
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The case for Emil Zatopek
The Czech Locomotive ran with a grimacing, head-rolling style that looked agonised and proved unbeatable. His masterpiece came at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics, where he won the 5000m, the 10,000m and — entering his first ever marathon almost on a whim — the marathon too, a treble at a single Games that will almost certainly never be repeated. He won four Olympic golds and a silver in all, and set 18 world records at distances from 5000m to 30 kilometres. Zatopek pioneered brutal interval training, running hundreds of 400m repetitions in army boots, methods that underpin distance training to this day. He also embodied the sport's conscience, later demoted and punished for supporting the 1968 Prague Spring. For sheer range within distance running — track speed married to marathon endurance in the same fortnight — no one has ever matched his Helsinki fortnight.
The case for Allyson Felix
Felix retired as the most decorated athlete in World Championships history — 20 medals, 14 of them gold — and the most decorated American in Olympic track and field, with 11 Olympic medals including seven golds across five Games from 2004 to 2020. A 200m and 400m specialist who became the sport's greatest relay weapon, she anchored and split for US teams that seemed unbeatable, while also winning individual world titles at both distances. Her longevity was extraordinary: she medalled at global championships in three different decades. Off the track she became an equally important figure, publicly challenging her sponsor over maternity protections after a dangerous pregnancy in 2018 and helping force change across the industry. Judged on sustained excellence and sheer accumulation of championship medals, no woman in the sport's history collected more, and few did so while reshaping its business as profoundly.