Georgeta Damian
Kathrin Boron
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Dead even across the measured categories. Our all-time ranking places Georgeta Damian at #3 and Kathrin Boron at #5.
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The case for Georgeta Damian
Five Olympic golds in three Games. In Sydney she won the women's pair and the eight. In Athens she won the double and the eight. In Beijing she won the eight again. The career is shorter than Lipă's and just as heavy in gold. It is also a reminder that rowing medals are boat results: Damian's five golds include races she could not have won as a single athlete, and races the Romanian eight kept winning after the rest of the sport had started to plan against them.
The case for Kathrin Boron
Four Olympic golds in German sculling, across the double and the quad, from Barcelona 1992 to Athens 2004. Where Redgrave and Pinsent owned sweep boats, Boron owned the two-oar side of the regatta through the same years. The career sits inside the German programme that followed unification, and it is the women's sculling counterpart to Pinsent's four-for-four. Count golds and Games and she belongs in this group. Count only British pairs and she disappears, which is a bad way to rank the sport.