Simone Biles
Larisa Latynina
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Simone Biles leads 3 of 5 categories. Our all-time ranking places Simone Biles at #1 and Larisa Latynina at #2.
The case for Simone Biles
The most decorated gymnast in the sport's history and the only one whose skills forced the rulebook to respond to her. Through Paris 2024 Biles holds 41 Olympic and World Championship medals, 30 of them gold: 11 Olympic medals including seven titles, and a record 30 world medals with a record 23 golds. She won six world all-around titles between 2013 and 2023 plus Olympic all-around golds in 2016 and 2024, and did not lose an all-around competition she completed for over a decade. Five elements bear her name across vault, beam and floor, including the triple-twisting double somersault on floor and the Yurchenko double pike vault, valued at 6.4 and never performed in competition by another woman. Her 2024 return, three years after withdrawing from the Tokyo team final with the twisties, added team, all-around and vault golds at 27 — an age at which almost every predecessor had retired.
The case for Larisa Latynina
For 48 years she held the record for the most Olympic medals won by any athlete in any sport. Latynina took 18 across three Games — nine gold, five silver and four bronze in 1956, 1960 and 1964 — a total not surpassed until Michael Phelps in 2012, and still the record for a gymnast. She won the Olympic all-around in Melbourne in 1956 and again in Rome in 1960, added world all-around titles in 1958 and 1962, and finished with 14 World Championship medals including nine golds. She competed the entire 1958 World Championships while several months pregnant and won the all-around. Her era offered more medal opportunities than today's, but she also faced the strongest gymnastics nation on earth in her own selection trials, and after retiring she coached the Soviet women's team to three consecutive Olympic team titles from 1968 to 1976.