Nikolai Andrianov
Nadia Comaneci
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Nikolai Andrianov leads 3 of 3 categories. Our all-time ranking places Nikolai Andrianov at #5 and Nadia Comaneci at #7.
The case for Nikolai Andrianov
The most decorated male gymnast in Olympic history, with 15 medals across three Games — seven gold, five silver and three bronze between 1972, 1976 and 1980 — a total that stood as the record for any male Olympian in any sport until Michael Phelps. Montreal 1976 was his masterpiece: he won the all-around, floor, rings and vault, taking four golds at a single Games in an era when Japan owned the men's team title. He added the world all-around crown in Strasbourg in 1978 and finished with 12 World Championship medals. Andrianov was the first great male all-arounder of the television age, technically complete across all six apparatus at a time when the Soviet system generally produced specialists, and he combined the vaulting power of a tumbler with the shoulder strength required for rings — a combination that remains rare. He later coached in Japan, where his influence fed directly into the country's subsequent revival.
The case for Nadia Comaneci
The most famous single moment in gymnastics belongs to her. On 18 July 1976 in Montreal, aged 14, she scored the first perfect 10.00 in Olympic gymnastics history on the uneven bars; the scoreboard, built to display three digits, showed 1.00 because nobody had programmed it for the possibility. She recorded seven perfect tens at those Games and won the all-around, beam and uneven bars, becoming the youngest Olympic all-around champion ever — a record permanently protected by the age minimum introduced in 1997. In Moscow in 1980 she added beam and floor golds and a disputed all-around silver, finishing with nine Olympic medals, five of them gold. She also won the world beam title in 1978 and a world team gold with Romania in 1979, competing the beam final from a hospital bed with an infected hand. Her Montreal routines redefined what precision on the apparatus looked like.