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The Greatest Rower at the Olympic Games

Who is the greatest rower of all time based on Olympic Games performances? We have used a weighted total medal count of each male and female rower from all modern Olympic Games to rank their overall performance, using data from all Olympics including the Tokyo 2020 Games.

The best all-time performing rower at the Olympic Games is Romanian Elisabeta Lipă who won eight medals (5 of them gold) between 1984–2000. The highest ranked male is British rower Steve Redgrave also with five gold medals. See the table below to see how other athletes have ranked.

See also the best athlete from each sport, and the best overall.



Top Olympic Games Rowers

Here are the top ranked athletes from the sport of Rowing for performances at all Olympiads, using the Topend Sports Weighted Ranking System to order the athletes, awarding points for both gold (6 points) and other medals (silver 2 pts, bronze 1 pt).

Table: The Top Ranked Athletes from Rowing at the Olympic Games (including 2021)

rank name country gender Gold Silver Bronze total
medals
rating
1 Elisabeta Lipă  Romania F 5 2 1 8 35
=2 Georgeta Damian Romania F 5 0 1 6 31
=2 Steve Redgrave Great Britain M 5 0 1 6 31
4 Doina Ignat Romania F 4 1 1 6 27
=5 Kathrin Boron Germany F 4 0 1 5 25
=5 Viorica Susanu Romania F 4 0 1 5 25
7 Matthew Pinsent Great Britain M 4 0 0 4 24

notes: initial data from wikipedia of multiple Olympic gold medalists (with at least 4 gold medals, including results from 2021). For the ranking order, we have used the Topend Sports Weighted Ranking System.



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Olympics Extra

The next Olympics will be in Paris 2024, followed by the Winter edition in Milan-Cortina 2026. Check out the list of Olympic Games sports, as well as discontinued and demonstration sports.

Major Events Extra

The largest sporting event in the world is the Olympic Games, but there are many other multi-sport games. In terms of single sport events, nothing beats the FIFA World Cup. To see what's coming up, check out the calendar of major sporting events.

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