Ulrich Salchow
Tessa Virtue & Scott Moir
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Dead even across the measured categories. Our all-time ranking places Ulrich Salchow at #4 and Tessa Virtue & Scott Moir at #10.
The case for Ulrich Salchow
The first great champion of organised figure skating, and the only skater whose name is spoken thousands of times a day in every rink on earth. Salchow won ten world titles between 1901 and 1911, still the men's record more than a century later, and nine European championships between 1898 and 1913. He took the Olympic title at the 1908 London Games, where figure skating became the first winter sport ever contested at an Olympics. In 1909 he performed the edge jump that carries his name, a take-off from the back inside edge with no toe assistance, which remains one of the six jumps in the modern repertoire and is the entry point for most skaters' first triple and first quadruple. He was also an administrator of consequence, serving as ISU president from 1925 to 1937 and shaping the rules of the sport he had just finished dominating. Whatever era adjustment one applies, no man has won more world championships.
The case for Tessa Virtue & Scott Moir
The most decorated figure skaters in Olympic history, with five medals across three Games. The Canadians won ice dance gold at Vancouver 2010, the first North American couple ever to take the title and the youngest champions the discipline had produced, then silver in the dance and silver in the team event at Sochi 2014, then gold in both at Pyeongchang 2018. They added three world titles in 2010, 2012 and 2017, three Four Continents titles and eight Canadian championships, having skated together since the ages of seven and nine. Their Pyeongchang free dance to music from Moulin Rouge set a world record and closed a career defined by the deepest partnership the sport has seen, with edges, breathing and body angles matched so precisely that unison effectively became a category of its own. They also survived a mid-career reinvention, moving their training base to Montreal and returning from a two-year competitive break to win everything again.