Elisabeta Lipă
Pertti Karppinen
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 Pertti Karppinen at #6.
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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 Pertti Karppinen
Three consecutive Olympic golds in the men's single, at Montreal 1976, Moscow 1980 and Los Angeles 1984. He raced on into 1988. The single is the only Olympic boat in which the result cannot be shared, and doing it three times in a row had been done before, by Ivanov, and has not become ordinary since. Karppinen's case is that narrowness: no eight to lean on, no partner to make the middle thousand easier, three Games as the first boat.