Haile Gebrselassie
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 Haile Gebrselassie at #9 and Allyson Felix at #11.
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The case for Haile Gebrselassie
For a decade Gebrselassie was distance running, and then he reinvented himself on the roads. On the track he won the Olympic 10,000m in 1996 and 2000 — the second in one of the greatest races ever, edging Paul Tergat by nine hundredths of a second — and took four consecutive world 10,000m titles from 1993 to 1999. Across his career he set 27 world records at distances from 2000m to the marathon, an astonishing spread of speed and endurance. Moving up to the marathon, he ran 2:03:59 in Berlin in 2008 to become the first man under 2:04. His duels with Tergat and his beaming, arms-pumping finishing sprint made him one of the sport's most beloved figures. Few athletes have owned both the 10,000m and the full marathon at world-record level; Gebrselassie owned everything in between too.
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.