Karl Schäfer
Nathan Chen
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Karl Schäfer leads 3 of 4 categories. Our all-time ranking places Karl Schäfer at #7 and Nathan Chen at #9.
The case for Karl Schäfer
The most decorated men's skater of the 1930s and the technical bridge between compulsory figures and free skating. The Viennese won seven consecutive world titles from 1930 to 1936, eight consecutive European championships from 1929, and Olympic gold at Lake Placid 1932 and Garmisch-Partenkirchen 1936, a men's Olympic double matched since only by Dick Button and Yuzuru Hanyu. He was exceptional at both halves of a sport that then split its marks between geometry and performance: a meticulous tracer of figures who also pushed free skating forward, credited with the one-foot Axel and with refining spin positions that became standard vocabulary. He was a national-class swimmer as well, and after retiring he coached and choreographed across Europe and the United States. Schäfer competed in the last era when compulsory figures could decide a championship outright, and his ability to win both phases is why his record survived the sport's eventual decision to abolish figures altogether.
The case for Nathan Chen
The skater who solved the quadruple era arithmetically. Chen won Olympic gold at Beijing 2022 with a world-record short program of 113.97, took three world titles in 2018, 2019 and 2021, six consecutive United States championships from 2017, and three straight Grand Prix Finals. He did not lose a completed competition between the 2018 World Championships and his Olympic title, a four-year run through the deepest men's field ever assembled. His signature was volume and repeatability rather than a single trick: after a disastrous short program at Pyeongchang 2018 he answered with a free skate carrying six quadruple attempts, the most technically loaded program skated to that point, and climbed from seventeenth to fifth. His 335.30 at the 2019 Grand Prix Final in Turin, built on 110.38 and a free skate of 224.92, set the world-record total under the ISU Judging System. He did much of it while enrolled at Yale, commuting between New Haven and California to train.