Lin Dan
Carolina Marin
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Lin Dan leads 2 of 2 categories. Our all-time ranking places Lin Dan at #1 and Carolina Marin at #8.
The case for Lin Dan
Widely regarded as the greatest of all time, Lin Dan is the only man to hold all nine major titles at once, completing the so-called Super Grand Slam by 2011. Super Dan won consecutive Olympic golds in Beijing 2008 and London 2012 — the first man to defend the singles crown — and took five World Championships (2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2013) and six All England titles. His left-handed attacking game paired a thunderous jump smash with tactical patience and an unbreakable big-match temperament. The rivalry with Lee Chong Wei, 40 meetings with Lin winning the majority, defined an era; their 2012 Olympic final is routinely called the greatest match ever played. Fierce, charismatic and famously tattooed, he anchored six Thomas Cup-winning Chinese teams before retiring in 2020 after two decades at the very summit of the sport.
The case for Carolina Marin
Carolina Marin shattered Asia's monopoly on women's singles, becoming the first European to win Olympic gold in the discipline at Rio 2016 and the only player, of either sex, to win the World Championship three times in singles (2014, 2015, 2018). The left-handed Spaniard brought an unprecedented ferocity to the women's game — a relentless, aggressive attacking style punctuated by primal on-court screams — and has dominated the European Championships, winning it a record seven times. Two devastating ACL injuries, in 2019 and again during the Paris 2024 semi-final while she was leading, robbed her of likely further Olympic medals and became the great cruelty of her career. Marin single-handedly made badminton a mainstream sport in Spain and inspired a generation far beyond the traditional powerhouses, proving that a European could not merely compete with, but overwhelm, the Asian elite.