Michael Johnson
Jackie Joyner-Kersee
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Michael Johnson leads 2 of 2 categories. Our all-time ranking places Michael Johnson at #7 and Jackie Joyner-Kersee at #8.
The case for Michael Johnson
Johnson ran with a bolt-upright, short-stride style that coaches said should not work and that no one could beat. In 1996 in Atlanta he became the only man to win the 200m and 400m at the same Olympics, and he did it by demolishing the 200m world record with 19.32 — a mark so far ahead of its time it stood for twelve years until Bolt. His 400m record of 43.18, set in 1999, lasted seventeen years. He won four Olympic golds and eight World Championship titles, and was never beaten in a 400m final at a global championship across a decade. Johnson turned the one-lap sprint into a discipline of controlled, even-paced power rather than lung-bursting panic, and his combination of the 200m and 400m in one body — two events with opposing demands — has no real parallel in the sport's history.
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.