Simone Biles
Svetlana Khorkina
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Simone Biles leads 5 of 5 categories. Our all-time ranking places Simone Biles at #1 and Svetlana Khorkina at #10.
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 Svetlana Khorkina
The most successful uneven bars gymnast in history and the last great stylist of the 10.0 era. Khorkina won three world all-around titles — 1997, 2001 and 2003 — a record for a woman until Biles, and took 20 World Championship medals including nine golds. Her two Olympic titles both came on uneven bars, in Atlanta in 1996 and Sydney in 2000, and she finished with seven Olympic medals. At 1.65 metres she was far taller than the sport's template, which made her a liability on vault and beam but gave her uneven bars work an amplitude nobody could copy; several elements in the Code of Points carry her name. Her career also captured the era's controversies, from the miscalibrated vaulting horse that wrecked the 2000 Olympic all-around final to her outspoken and often bitter public criticism of the judging that denied her the one title she wanted most.