Yuzuru Hanyu
Evgeni Plushenko
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Evgeni Plushenko leads 4 of 5 categories. Our all-time ranking places Yuzuru Hanyu at #1 and Evgeni Plushenko at #12.
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The case for Yuzuru Hanyu
The most complete skater of the quadruple era, and the first man in 66 years to defend an Olympic title. Hanyu won gold at Sochi 2014 and Pyeongchang 2018, the first back-to-back men's champion since Dick Button in 1952, and did it in the deepest and most technically inflated field the sport has ever staged. He set 19 world records under the ISU Judging System, more than any skater in any discipline: the first short program over 100 points, 101.45 at Sochi; the first free skate over 200 and first total over 300, 322.40 at the 2015 NHK Trophy; then 330.43 at the 2015 Grand Prix Final. Four consecutive Grand Prix Final titles from 2013 to 2016, two world championships and six Japanese national titles sit alongside a 2020 Four Continents win that completed the Super Slam, every major junior and senior title, a first for a male single skater. He turned professional in 2022 and immediately sold out solo productions at the Tokyo Dome.
The case for Evgeni Plushenko
The last great champion of the 6.0 system and the first to master the one that replaced it. Plushenko won four Olympic medals across four Games: silver at Salt Lake City 2002, gold at Turin 2006, silver at Vancouver 2010 and team gold at Sochi 2014. He added three world titles, seven European championships, four Grand Prix Finals and ten Russian national titles, a haul no male skater of the modern era approaches. He was the first to land a quadruple toe loop, triple toe loop, triple loop combination, in 1999, pushing the era's technical ceiling while retaining the flexibility for a Biellmann spin that almost no man had attempted. His long rivalry with Alexei Yagudin, settled when Yagudin swept Salt Lake City with a free skate that drew perfect 6.0s, produced the most-watched men's competition in Russian skating history. A career shadowed by more than a dozen operations on his back and knees ended at Sochi, where he withdrew from the individual event minutes before he was due to skate.