Elisabeta Lipă
Hamish Bond
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Elisabeta Lipă leads 4 of 4 categories. Our all-time ranking places Elisabeta Lipă at #2 and Hamish Bond at #8.
Head-to-head FAQ
Who leads more shared metrics?
How do the published ranks compare?
Are these live stats?
The case for Elisabeta Lipă
Five Olympic golds and eight Olympic medals across six Games, from Los Angeles 1984 to Athens 2004. She raced in more than one boat class as Romanian women's rowing rebuilt itself around a small group of athletes who simply kept qualifying. The five golds match Redgrave's. The eight medals do not: nobody in the sport has a longer Olympic medal list. A ranking that only counts men's sweep rowing misses the most decorated career the regatta has produced.
The case for Hamish Bond
With Eric Murray he won the men's coxless pair at London 2012 and Rio 2016, after world titles in 2009, 2010, 2011, 2013, 2014 and 2015. The pair became the example of a boat other countries tried to copy and could not catch on the day. Bond then moved to the eight and won a third Olympic gold in Tokyo. Murray's Olympic tally is the two pair golds. The ranking uses Bond's name because the third gold is his; the achievement the sport actually remembers is the pair.