Greatest Female Gymnasts of All Time, Ranked by Medals
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Ranking is weighted by Olympic gold first (the sport's scarcest prize), then total Olympic medals, then era-adjusted World Championship medals, with eponymous Code of Points skills as a tiebreaker. Cultural impact and modern difficulty are excluded because they can't be measured head-to-head.
- Volume leader
Simone Biles
Biles owns 11 Olympic medals (seven gold) and 30 World Championship medals (23 gold) — a combined 41 that Olympics.com records as the most by any gymnast, male or female. She sits first because she leads on volume, difficulty and innovation at once: five elements in the Code of Points carry her name across vault, floor and beam, including the Yurchenko double pike she landed at the 2023 World Championships.
She ranks above Latynina despite trailing on Olympic golds because she did it across three Olympic cycles either side of a withdrawal at Tokyo 2020 and a two-year competitive break, returning at Paris 2024 to add team, all-around and vault golds plus a floor silver. The single number that keeps this placement debatable is her seven Olympic golds — two short of Latynina's nine. She also tops our cross-gender ranking of the best gymnasts in the world.
Country: USA · Olympic: 11 medals, 7 gold · World: 30 medals, 23 gold · Named skills: 5
- Gold-medal record
Larisa Latynina
Latynina is the counterweight to Biles on the one currency that compares cleanly across eras. Her 18 Olympic medals — nine gold, five silver, four bronze — stood as the record across every Olympic sport for 48 years, until Michael Phelps passed her at London 2012. She won the all-around at Melbourne 1956 and Rome 1960.
She ranks second, not first, only because Biles buries her on total medal volume once World Championships are counted. But Latynina reached three World Championships in her entire career versus Biles's ten opportunities, which is why her nine Olympic golds remain the hardest figure on this page to argue with.
Country: Soviet Union · Olympic: 18 medals, 9 gold · World: 14 medals, 9 gold · Won all-around 1956 & 1960
- Consecutive all-around
Vera Caslavska
Caslavska is the most underrated name here. Britannica records seven Olympic golds from 11 medals, and at Mexico City 1968 she won the all-around, vault, uneven bars and floor — four individual titles at a single Games. Only she and Latynina have ever retained the Olympic all-around crown, which is why she edges the higher-medaled Comaneci below.
The context sharpens the achievement: she had signed the Two Thousand Words manifesto before the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, trained in hiding in the mountains before travelling, then turned her head away during the Soviet anthem on the podium. Czechoslovak authorities later ended her career by refusing her permission to travel.
Country: Czechoslovakia · Olympic: 11 medals, 7 gold · World: 8 medals, 4 gold · Won all-around 1964 & 1968
- First perfect 10
Nadia Comaneci
Comaneci scored the first perfect 10 in Olympic gymnastics on the uneven bars at Montreal 1976, aged 14 — the scoreboard displayed 1.00 because it had not been built to show a 10.00. She finished with five Olympic golds from nine medals across 1976 and 1980.
She ranks below Caslavska because she never retained the all-around title, and her four World Championship medals look thin only until you note the Worlds were held every four years until 1979. Her placement rests on Olympic golds and a single skill — the Comaneci salto on bars — rather than career volume.
Country: Romania · Olympic: 9 medals, 5 gold · World: 4 medals, 2 gold · First Olympic perfect 10 (1976)
- 1976 co-star
Nelli Kim
Kim scored two perfect 10s at Montreal 1976 — on vault and floor, the same week Comaneci earned hers on bars — and finished with five Olympic golds from six medals. On raw Olympic golds she matches Comaneci, but ranks a place below because her nine-medal rival owns the historic first-10 milestone and a two-Games span.
Her World Championship record is stronger than Comaneci's, with 11 medals including five golds, reflecting a longer run of major appearances through the late 1970s.
Country: Soviet Union · Olympic: 6 medals, 5 gold · World: 11 medals, 5 gold · First perfect 10s on vault & floor (1976)
- Depth across three Games
Ludmilla Tourischeva
Tourischeva won the Olympic all-around at Munich 1972 and took nine Olympic medals across three Games (1968, 1972, 1976), plus seven world titles. She sits behind Kim on Olympic golds — four to five — but ahead of the gymnasts below on the sheer breadth of a career that overlapped Korbut, Kim and Comaneci without ever being eclipsed.
Her strength is consistency rather than a signature moment: two World all-around titles (1970 and 1974) bracket an era when the Soviet program churned through generational talent.
Country: Soviet Union · Olympic: 9 medals, 4 gold · World: 11 medals, 7 gold · World all-around 1970 & 1974
- World Championship specialist
Svetlana Khorkina
Khorkina held the record for World Championship medals by a woman before Biles: 20 in total, nine of them gold, including three all-around titles. She ranks seventh because her Olympic return is comparatively modest — two golds from seven medals, both on uneven bars, where the Khorkina element is still performed.
She is the clearest case of why this list weights Olympic gold first: on Worlds alone she would rank near the top, but the four-year stage exposed a gap between her and the all-around Olympic champions above her.
Country: Russia · Olympic: 7 medals, 2 gold · World: 20 medals, 9 gold · 3 World all-around titles
- American benchmark
Shannon Miller
Miller took two Olympic golds from seven medals and was the most decorated American gymnast until Biles passed her, with 16 Olympic and World medals combined. She was the first American to win consecutive World all-around titles, in 1993 and 1994.
She anchors the list because her body of work bridges eras — her 1996 team gold with the "Magnificent Seven" reset American gymnastics as a program — even though her two Olympic golds keep her behind the multi-title champions above.
Country: USA · Olympic: 7 medals, 2 gold · World: 9 medals · World all-around 1993 & 1994
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- Simone Biles
- Larisa Latynina
- Vera Caslavska
- Nadia Comaneci
- Nelli Kim
- Ludmilla Tourischeva
- Svetlana Khorkina
- Shannon Miller
Audience ranking
How everyone ranked them
Built from reader rankings using position-based points.
The names above are ranked; this section explains the scoring behind them and the one adjustment most gymnastics rankings skip. Read it before you argue with the order.
How we ranked the gymnasts
Four measures, in this order of weight:
- Olympic gold medals. The scarcest currency in the sport. One Games every four years, a handful of titles available, and a career window that historically lasted two cycles at most. This is why Latynina’s nine golds keep her at No. 2 despite competing 60 years ago.
- Total Olympic medals. Rewards depth across apparatus and the ability to peak on a fixed date.
- World Championship medals, era-adjusted. Weighted lower than Olympic medals, and discounted for how many championships a gymnast could actually enter — see the final section for why that adjustment outweighs any other judgement here.
- Eponymous skills and longevity. A skill in the Code of Points means a gymnast expanded what the sport could do, rather than executing an existing element better than anyone else.
Everything else — degree of difficulty by modern standards, cultural impact, comeback narratives — is excluded. Those arguments are real, but they cannot be measured against each other.
How women’s artistic gymnastics is judged
Women’s artistic gymnastics contests six Olympic titles: team, all-around and one per apparatus (vault, uneven bars, balance beam, floor). That program has been stable since the 1960s, which is what makes Olympic golds comparable across every gymnast here. Scoring, by contrast, is not comparable: the closed 10.0 system that produced Comaneci’s and Kim’s perfect tens in 1976 was replaced in 2006 by open-ended difficulty-plus-execution marks, so a modern score of 15 and a historic 10 describe different things. That break is the reason this list ranks on medals won, never on scores posted.
The all-time list at a glance
| Gymnast | Country | Olympic golds | Total Olympic medals | World medals | Signature skill or feat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Simone Biles | USA | 7 | 11 | 30 (23 gold) | Biles II on vault; Yurchenko double pike |
| Larisa Latynina | Soviet Union | 9 | 18 | 14 (9 gold) | Nine Olympic titles, 1956–64 |
| Vera Caslavska | Czechoslovakia | 7 | 11 | 8 (4 gold) | Four individual golds at one Games, 1968 |
| Nadia Comaneci | Romania | 5 | 9 | 4 (2 gold) | First Olympic perfect 10, 1976 |
| Nelli Kim | Soviet Union | 5 | 6 | 11 (5 gold) | First perfect 10s on vault and floor, 1976 |
| Ludmilla Tourischeva | Soviet Union | 4 | 9 | 11 (7 gold) | World all-around 1970 and 1974 |
| Svetlana Khorkina | Russia | 2 | 7 | 20 (9 gold) | Khorkina on bars; three world all-around titles |
| Shannon Miller | USA | 2 | 7 | 9 | Consecutive world all-around, 1993 and 1994 |
If you want the same argument run across both genders, our ranking of the best gymnasts in the world covers the men’s side too, and our look at the most popular Olympic sports explains why gymnastics carries the viewing figures it does.
Why raw medal counts mislead
Most rankings skip the adjustment that matters most. The World Championships were held every four years until 1979, every two years from then, and almost annually from 1991. Latynina reached three World Championships in her entire career (1954, 1958, 1962). Biles has had the chance to compete at ten.
That is not a knock on Biles, who converted those chances at a rate nobody else has. It is a warning against arithmetic that treats 30 world medals and 14 world medals as a four-fold gap in achievement. Adjust for available events and Latynina’s 14 from three championships, and Comaneci’s four from a single cycle, look very different.
The Olympic program has been far more stable, offering the same six titles since the 1960s. Olympic golds are the one number that compares cleanly across all eight gymnasts here — and by that measure, Latynina’s nine remain untouched.
Frequently asked questions
How does a gymnastics skill get named after a gymnast?+
The gymnast has to submit the element to the International Gymnastics Federation before a designated competition, then perform it successfully at a World Championships or the Olympic Games. Once the judges credit it, the skill enters the Code of Points under the gymnast's surname. It is a competition record, not an honorific, which is why a skill can be named after a gymnast who never won a major title.
Why can't gymnasts score a perfect 10 any more?+
The FIG replaced the 10.0 ceiling with open-ended scoring in 2006. Routines now carry a difficulty score built from the value of the elements performed, added to an execution score out of 10. A modern elite routine can total 15 or higher. Nadia Comaneci's 1976 tens and the marks awarded to Nelli Kim the same week were possible only under the closed system that ran until then.
Why aren't Olga Korbut and Mary Lou Retton in the top eight?+
Both fall short on the medal criteria used here. Korbut won four Olympic golds from six medals across 1972 and 1976, which places her close but behind Nelli Kim and Ludmilla Tourischeva from the same programme. Retton took the 1984 all-around and four other medals at a single Games that the Soviet bloc boycotted, leaving her without the head-to-head record the gymnasts above her have.
Is Simone Biles the most decorated American gymnast?+
Yes. Biles is American, and her 41 combined Olympic and World Championship medals make her the most decorated gymnast of any nationality. Shannon Miller held the American record before her — seven Olympic medals and 16 including Worlds — and is still the benchmark for the pre-Biles generation. That is why Miller appears on this list while Biles ranks first: the two are separated by roughly two decades and an enormous medal gap.
Who is the oldest woman to compete in Olympic gymnastics?+
Oksana Chusovitina, who represented the Soviet Union, Germany and Uzbekistan across eight Olympic Games between 1992 and 2020, competing in Tokyo at 46. She never approached the medal counts on this list after her 1992 team gold and 2008 vault silver, but no gymnast of any gender has matched her competitive lifespan across the sport's modern era.
Why aren't rhythmic gymnasts on this list?+
This ranking covers women's artistic gymnastics only — vault, uneven bars, balance beam and floor. Rhythmic gymnastics is a separate FIG discipline with its own apparatus, its own world championships and its own record holders, led by Yevgeniya Kanayeva and Dina Averina. Mixing the two would compare medals won in unrelated events with different judging and different demands.
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