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The Greatest Gymnasts at the Olympic Games

Who is the greatest Gymnast of all time based on Olympic Games performances? We have used a weighted total medal count of each male and female Gymnast 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 Gymnast at the Olympic Games is clearly Soviet gymnast Larisa Latynina, with nine gold medals and a total of 18, awarded between 1956–1964. The highest ranked male gymnast is Sawao Kato of Japan with eight gold medals. See the table below to see how other athletes ranked.

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



Top Olympic Games Gymnasts

Here are the top ranked athletes from the sport of Gymnastics 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 Gymnastics at the Olympic Games (including 2021)

rank name country gender Gold Silver Bronze total
medals
rating
1 Larisa Latynina Soviet Union F 9 5 4 18 68
=2 Sawao Kato Japan M 8 3 1 12 55
=2 Nikolai Andrianov Soviet Union M 7 5 3 15 55
4 Boris Shakhlin Soviet Union M 7 4 2 13 52
5 Věra Čáslavská Czechoslovakia F 7 4 0 11 50
6 Viktor Chukarin Soviet Union M 7 3 1 11 49
=7 Akinori Nakayama Japan M 6 2 2 10 42
=7 Takashi Ono Japan M 5 4 4 13 42
9 Vitaly Scherbo Unified Team, Belarus M 6 0 4 10 40
10 Ágnes Keleti Hungary F 5 3 2 10 38
=11 Nadia Comăneci Romania F 5 3 1 9 37
=11 Polina Astakhova Soviet Union F 5 2 3 10 37
13 Mitsuo Tsukahara Japan M 5 1 3 9 35
=14 Yukio Endo Japan M 5 2 0 7 34
=14 Alexei Nemov Russia M 4 2 6 12 34
=16 Anton Heida United States M 5 1 0 6 32
=16 Nellie Kim Soviet Union F 5 1 0 6 32
=16 Ludmilla Tourischeva Soviet Union F 4 3 2 9 32
=19 Zou Kai China M 5 0 1 6 31
=19 Georges Miez Switzerland M 4 3 1 8 31
=21 Olga Korbut Soviet Union F 4 2 0 6 28
=21 Simone Biles United States F 4 1 2 7 28
=23 Vladimir Artemov Soviet Union M 4 1 0 5 26
=23 Valentin Muratov Soviet Union M 4 1 0 5 26
=23 Ecaterina Szabo Romania F 4 1 0 5 26
=26 Li Xiaopeng China M 4 0 1 5 25
=26 Giorgio Zampori Italy M 4 0 1 5 25

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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