Boris Shakhlin
Rebeca Andrade
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The verdict
Boris Shakhlin leads 3 of 3 categories. Our all-time ranking places Boris Shakhlin at #9 and Rebeca Andrade at #12.
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The case for Boris Shakhlin
Known as the Man of Iron for a competitive composure that never visibly broke, Shakhlin won 13 Olympic medals across 1956, 1960 and 1964 — seven gold, four silver and two bronze — the second-highest total by any male gymnast. Rome 1960 was his defining Games: he won the all-around, pommel horse, vault and parallel bars, four golds in a single Olympics, and he added the world all-around title in Moscow in 1958 to complete the set. He also collected ten World Championship medals in an era when the Soviet men's team was so deep that selection was harder than the competition itself. Shakhlin's specialism was the apparatus that punish nerve rather than power — pommel horse above all, where he won Olympic gold in 1960 and again in 1964 at the age of 32. His duel with Japan's rising generation defined men's gymnastics through the late 1950s and early 1960s.
The case for Rebeca Andrade
The best gymnast Latin America has produced and the only woman to beat Simone Biles in a major all-around final in a decade, taking the world title in Liverpool in 2022 while Biles was on hiatus. Andrade won Brazil's first Olympic gymnastics gold on vault in Tokyo in 2021 along with all-around silver, then returned in Paris in 2024 to win floor exercise ahead of Biles, with silver in the all-around and on vault and bronze with the Brazilian team — six Olympic medals in total, making her the most decorated Olympian in Brazilian history across all sports. She did it after three separate anterior cruciate ligament reconstructions, an injury history that ended most careers before hers began. Her Paris floor gold produced the image of the Games, with Biles and Jordan Chiles bowing to her on the podium, and she has become the single biggest driver of gymnastics participation in South America.