Steve Redgrave
Vyacheslav Ivanov
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Steve Redgrave leads 4 of 4 categories. Our all-time ranking places Steve Redgrave at #1 and Vyacheslav Ivanov at #7.
Head-to-head FAQ
Who leads more shared metrics?
How do the published ranks compare?
Are these live stats?
The case for Steve Redgrave
Five Olympic golds in five Games: the coxed four in 1984, the coxless pair in 1988, 1992 and 1996, and the coxless four in 2000. He also won an Olympic bronze in the coxed pair in 1988, six Olympic medals in all, and nine World Championship golds. No other man has won an Olympic rowing gold at five Games. The partners changed, from Andy Holmes to Matthew Pinsent to the Sydney four, which is the right way to read the record: the constant was the standard he required of the boat, including after a diabetes diagnosis on the way to Sydney.
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.