Elisabeta Lipă
Vyacheslav Ivanov
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 Vyacheslav Ivanov at #7.
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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 Vyacheslav Ivanov
The first man to win three consecutive Olympic single-scull golds, in 1956, 1960 and 1964. World Championships were not there for the start of the run. The achievement is the Olympic one, and it is the template Karppinen later matched. Ivanov sits just behind him here because the later streak came against a deeper international field and a settled 2,000-metre championship. That is a judgement about eras, and it is open to the opposite reading: Ivanov did it first.