Simone Biles
Vitaly Scherbo
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 Vitaly Scherbo at #6.
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 Vitaly Scherbo
In eight days in Barcelona in 1992 he won six Olympic gold medals — team, all-around, pommel horse, rings, vault and parallel bars — the most ever won by a gymnast at a single Games and a haul no athlete in any sport had matched at a Summer Olympics since Mark Spitz. Competing for the Unified Team as the Soviet Union dissolved around him, he was so far ahead of the field that he won four apparatus finals on a single day. He added the world all-around title in Birmingham in 1993 and finished with a record 12 World Championship golds among 23 world medals. Atlanta 1996 came after a car accident that seriously injured his wife and derailed his training; he still returned to win four bronze medals, taking his Olympic total to 10. His peak was short and his consistency never matched Uchimura's, but no male gymnast has ever compressed so much dominance into so little time.