Pertti Karppinen
Emma Twigg
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Pertti Karppinen leads 2 of 4 categories. Our all-time ranking places Pertti Karppinen at #6 and Emma Twigg at #12.
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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.
The case for Emma Twigg
Olympic champion in the women's single at the Tokyo Games, raced in 2021, after years of being close at world level and after earlier Olympic starts that did not produce a medal. The entry is the most recent on the list and the thinnest in metal, which is the right way to treat a one-gold career next to Lipă. It is here because the single is the hardest boat in which to time a peak, and because a list of twelve that stopped in 2016 would pretend the event ended with Rio.