Paavo Nurmi
Fanny Blankers-Koen
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Paavo Nurmi leads 2 of 2 categories. Our all-time ranking places Paavo Nurmi at #3 and Fanny Blankers-Koen at #12.
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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.
The case for Fanny Blankers-Koen
Voted the IAAF Female Athlete of the Twentieth Century, Blankers-Koen produced one of the greatest single Olympics of all time. At the 1948 London Games, a 30-year-old mother of two — mocked in the press as too old to compete — won four gold medals in the 100m, 200m, 80m hurdles and 4x100m relay, the most by any woman at a single Olympics. The tragedy is how much more she might have won: competition rules limited her to four events, yet she simultaneously held world records in the high jump and long jump, and at one point held world records in as many as six different disciplines at once. The Second World War erased what should have been her peak years, from age 22 to 28. That she returned afterward to dominate sprints, hurdles and jumps simultaneously marks her as perhaps the most versatile woman the sport has seen.