Pertti Karppinen
Hamish Bond
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Pertti Karppinen leads 1 of 4 categories. Our all-time ranking places Pertti Karppinen at #6 and Hamish Bond at #8.
Head-to-head FAQ
Who leads more shared metrics?
How do the published ranks compare?
Are these live stats?
The case for Pertti Karppinen
Three consecutive Olympic golds in the men's single, at Montreal 1976, Moscow 1980 and Los Angeles 1984. He raced on into 1988. The single is the only Olympic boat in which the result cannot be shared, and doing it three times in a row had been done before, by Ivanov, and has not become ordinary since. Karppinen's case is that narrowness: no eight to lean on, no partner to make the middle thousand easier, three Games as the first boat.
The case for Hamish Bond
With Eric Murray he won the men's coxless pair at London 2012 and Rio 2016, after world titles in 2009, 2010, 2011, 2013, 2014 and 2015. The pair became the example of a boat other countries tried to copy and could not catch on the day. Bond then moved to the eight and won a third Olympic gold in Tokyo. Murray's Olympic tally is the two pair golds. The ranking uses Bond's name because the third gold is his; the achievement the sport actually remembers is the pair.