Yuzuru Hanyu
Ulrich Salchow
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 Yuzuru Hanyu at #1 and Ulrich Salchow at #4.
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 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.