Wang Nan
Timo Boll
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Wang Nan leads 4 of 4 categories. Our all-time ranking places Wang Nan at #5 and Timo Boll at #12.
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The case for Wang Nan
Wang Nan collected one of the largest trophy hauls in the sport's history, amassing more than twenty world championship titles across singles, doubles and team events. She won four Olympic gold medals between 2000 and 2008, took World Championship singles titles in 1999, 2001 and 2003, and won multiple World Cups to complete a career Grand Slam. A left-handed attacker with superb consistency and doubles instincts, she anchored China's women's team through a golden decade and formed legendary doubles partnerships. Her longevity was exceptional: she reached the Beijing 2008 singles final on home soil near the end of her career. Few players, male or female, have accumulated silverware on her scale, and her collective record remains staggering.
The case for Timo Boll
The greatest European player since Waldner, Timo Boll carried the continent's hopes for over two decades with elegant, spin-rich all-court play. He reached world number one on multiple occasions, the first European to do so in years, and won a record number of European Championship singles titles along with two World Cup crowns in 2002 and 2005. Against the Chinese wall he could never quite claim a World Championship or Olympic singles title, the defining absence in his record, but he pushed the very best to the limit and won Olympic team medals for Germany across four Games. Admired for his sportsmanship and longevity, competing at the top past age 40, he was the standard-bearer for non-Chinese table tennis in the modern era.