Kenenisa Bekele
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 Kenenisa Bekele at #10 and Allyson Felix at #11.
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The case for Kenenisa Bekele
Bekele has a claim as the most complete distance runner ever measured. His world records of 12:37.35 for 5000m (2004) and 26:17.53 for 10,000m (2005) stood for roughly fifteen years, only falling in the super-shoe era. He won three Olympic golds — the 10,000m in 2004 and both the 5000m and 10,000m in 2008 — and five world track titles. On the country, he was untouchable: eleven World Cross Country titles between 2002 and 2008, winning the long and short course double in five straight years, a stretch of dominance over the sport's hardest terrain that no one else approaches. Late in his career he ran 2:01:41 in Berlin, at the time the second-fastest marathon in history, two seconds off the world record. Track, cross country and roads — Bekele reached the summit of all three, which almost no distance runner has done.
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.