15 Best and Most Famous Runners of All Time

Our ranking of the 15 best runners of all time, led by Usain Bolt, Eliud Kipchoge and Paavo Nurmi, with Olympic titles and world records.

Each profile lists event, country, birth date and the medals and records that matter, followed by what made the runner stand out. The list covers sprinters, middle distance runners and marathoners, men and women, from the 1920s to today. Below the ranking you will find the best runner per event, the world records still held by these athletes and the names that just missed the cut.

How We Ranked the Runners

Olympic titles: gold medals at the Games count most, because that is where every runner peaks.
World titles and records: World Championship wins and world records show who dominated between the Games.
Longevity: how many seasons the runner stayed at the top of a deep global field.
Range: success over more than one distance, from the 100 m to the marathon.

Runners from the 1920s are judged against the fields they faced, which is why Paavo Nurmi stands next to Kipchoge and Kipyegon. Jumpers, throwers and combined event athletes belong in a track and field list, so Jackie Joyner-Kersee and Sergey Bubka are not here. The order is our own judgment, not an official one.

The 15 Best Runners at a Glance

#	Runner	Events	Career
1	Usain Bolt	Sprints (100 m, 200 m, 4×100 m)	2002 to 2017
2	Eliud Kipchoge	Marathon (formerly 5000 m)	since 2003
3	Paavo Nurmi	Middle and long distance (1500 m to 10,000 m, cross country)	1920 to 1934
4	Emil Zátopek	Long distance (5000 m, 10,000 m, marathon)	1946 to 1957
5	Carl Lewis	Sprints and long jump (100 m, 200 m, 4×100 m)	1979 to 1997
6	Haile Gebrselassie	Long distance (5000 m, 10,000 m, marathon)	1993 to 2015
7	Kenenisa Bekele	Long distance (5000 m, 10,000 m, cross country, marathon)	since 2001
8	Jesse Owens	Sprints and long jump (100 m, 200 m, 4×100 m)	1933 to 1936
9	Michael Johnson	Sprints (200 m, 400 m)	1990 to 2001
10	Faith Kipyegon	Middle distance (1500 m, mile, 5000 m)	since 2011
11	Florence Griffith Joyner	Sprints (100 m, 200 m, relays)	1984 to 1989
12	Mo Farah	Long distance (5000 m, 10,000 m, marathon)	1996 to 2023
13	Hicham El Guerrouj	Middle distance (1500 m, mile, 5000 m)	1994 to 2004
14	Allyson Felix	Sprints (200 m, 400 m, relays)	2003 to 2022
15	Fanny Blankers-Koen	Sprints and hurdles (100 m, 200 m, 80 m hurdles)	1936 to 1955

#1 Usain Bolt

🏃 Events: Sprints (100 m, 200 m, 4×100 m)
🎂 Born: August 21, 1986, in Sherwood Content, Jamaica
🌍 Country: Jamaica
🏆 Career Highlights: 8× Olympic champion (100 m and 200 m in 2008, 2012, 2016, 4×100 m in 2012 and 2016), 11× world champion, world records in the 100 m (9.58) and 200 m (19.19)

Bolt won the 100 m and the 200 m at three consecutive Olympic Games, in Beijing, London and Rio. No other sprinter has won either event three times. His 9.58 and 19.19, both set at the 2009 World Championships in Berlin, are still the world records.

He added 11 world titles between 2009 and 2015. In 2017 he lost his 2008 relay gold when teammate Nesta Carter’s sample tested positive on retesting. He retired after the 2017 World Championships in London, where he took bronze in his last 100 m.

#2 Eliud Kipchoge

🏃 Events: Marathon (formerly 5000 m)
🎂 Born: November 5, 1984, in Kapsisiywa, Kenya
🌍 Country: Kenya
🏆 Career Highlights: 2× Olympic marathon champion (2016, 2020), Olympic 5000 m silver (2008) and bronze (2004), world 5000 m champion (2003), 5× Berlin Marathon winner, 4× London Marathon winner

Kipchoge won the Olympic marathon in Rio in 2016 and in Tokyo, held in Sapporo, in 2021. He held the marathon world record from 2018 to 2023 and ran his best time of 2:01:09 in Berlin in 2022. He won Berlin five times, more than any other man, and London four times.

In Vienna on October 12, 2019, he ran 1:59:40, the first marathon distance covered in under two hours, in a paced event that did not count as a record. Before the marathon he was a world class track runner who beat Hicham El Guerrouj and Kenenisa Bekele to the 5000 m world title in 2003 at 18. He finished New York in 2025, completing all six major marathons.

#3 Paavo Nurmi

🏃 Events: Middle and long distance (1500 m to 10,000 m, cross country)
🎂 Born: June 13, 1897, in Turku, Finland (died October 2, 1973)
🌍 Country: Finland
🏆 Career Highlights: 9× Olympic champion, 3× Olympic silver, 22 official world records

Nurmi won nine Olympic gold medals at the Games of 1920, 1924 and 1928. In Paris in 1924 alone he won five, including the 1500 m and the 5000 m, which he ran within about an hour of each other. In 1923 he became the first runner to hold the mile, 5000 m and 10,000 m world records at the same time.

He set 22 official world records and ran with a stopwatch in his hand to control his pace, a habit that made him famous. He was suspended before the 1932 Games over his amateur status and stopped running in 1934. He lit the Olympic flame at the 1952 Games in Helsinki and died in Helsinki in 1973.

#4 Emil Zátopek

🏃 Events: Long distance (5000 m, 10,000 m, marathon)
🎂 Born: September 19, 1922, in Kopřivnice, Czechoslovakia (died November 21, 2000)
🌍 Country: Czechoslovakia
🏆 Career Highlights: 4× Olympic champion (10,000 m 1948, 5000 m, 10,000 m and marathon 1952), Olympic 5000 m silver (1948), 3× European champion, first man under 29 minutes for 10,000 m

At the 1952 Games in Helsinki, Zátopek won the 5000 m, the 10,000 m and the marathon within eight days. The marathon was the first he had ever run. Nobody else has won all three at one Olympics.

He trained with long sessions of fast repeated laps and helped make interval training standard for distance runners. In 1954 he became the first man to run 10,000 m in under 29 minutes. After the 1968 Prague Spring he was expelled from the army and the Communist Party for supporting reform. Runner’s World named him the greatest runner of all time in 2013.

#5 Carl Lewis

🏃 Events: Sprints and long jump (100 m, 200 m, 4×100 m)
🎂 Born: July 1, 1961, in Birmingham, Alabama, USA
🌍 Country: United States
🏆 Career Highlights: 9× Olympic champion (4 in 1984, 2 in 1988, 2 in 1992, 1 in 1996), Olympic 200 m silver (1988), 8× world champion

At the 1984 Games in Los Angeles, Lewis won the 100 m, the 200 m, the 4×100 m relay and the long jump, matching what Jesse Owens had done in 1936. He won the 100 m again in 1988 and the long jump four Games in a row, from 1984 to 1996.

He won eight world titles in the 100 m, the relay and the long jump between 1983 and 1991. His nine Olympic golds put him level with Paavo Nurmi. The IOC named him Sportsman of the Century and the IAAF named him World Athlete of the Century. He retired in 1997.

#6 Haile Gebrselassie

🏃 Events: Long distance (5000 m, 10,000 m, marathon)
🎂 Born: April 18, 1973, in Asella, Ethiopia
🌍 Country: Ethiopia
🏆 Career Highlights: 2× Olympic 10,000 m champion (1996, 2000), 4× world 10,000 m champion (1993, 1995, 1997, 1999), 4× world indoor champion, 27 world records, marathon world record 2:03:59 (2008)

Gebrselassie won the Olympic 10,000 m in Atlanta and Sydney and four straight world titles over the distance from 1993 to 1999. Both Olympic finals came down to a sprint against Paul Tergat, and in Sydney he won by nine hundredths of a second.

He set 27 world records from 5000 m on the track to the marathon on the road. In Berlin in 2008 he ran the marathon in 2:03:59, breaking his own world record by 27 seconds. He announced his retirement from competitive running in May 2015.

#7 Kenenisa Bekele

🏃 Events: Long distance (5000 m, 10,000 m, cross country, marathon)
🎂 Born: June 13, 1982, near Bekoji, Ethiopia
🌍 Country: Ethiopia
🏆 Career Highlights: 3× Olympic champion (10,000 m 2004, 5000 m and 10,000 m 2008), Olympic 5000 m silver (2004), 5× world champion, 11× world cross country champion, 2× Berlin Marathon winner

Bekele won the 10,000 m in Athens and the 5000 m and 10,000 m double in Beijing. He won four world 10,000 m titles in a row from 2003 to 2009 and set world records of 12:37.35 for 5000 m and 26:17.53 for 10,000 m, which both stood until 2020.

He also won 11 individual world cross country titles, six over the long course and five over the short course. On the road he won Berlin in 2016 and 2019, the second time in 2:01:41, two seconds off the world record. He kept racing past 40 and set a masters best of 2:04:15 when he was second in London in 2024.

#8 Jesse Owens

🏃 Events: Sprints and long jump (100 m, 200 m, 4×100 m)
🎂 Born: September 12, 1913, in Oakville, Alabama, USA (died March 31, 1980)
🌍 Country: United States
🏆 Career Highlights: 4× Olympic champion (100 m, 200 m, 4×100 m, long jump in 1936), 8 NCAA titles

Owens won four gold medals at the 1936 Games in Berlin: the 100 m, the 200 m, the 4×100 m relay and the long jump. Nobody matched that haul in track and field until Carl Lewis in 1984.

A year earlier, at the Big Ten Championships in Ann Arbor on May 25, 1935, he set five world records and tied a sixth within about 45 minutes while nursing a back injury. He won eight NCAA titles for Ohio State. He died in Tucson, Arizona, in 1980.

#9 Michael Johnson

🏃 Events: Sprints (200 m, 400 m)
🎂 Born: September 13, 1967, in Dallas, Texas, USA
🌍 Country: United States
🏆 Career Highlights: 4× Olympic champion (4×400 m 1992, 200 m and 400 m 1996, 400 m 2000), 8× world champion, 200 m world record 19.32 (1996), 400 m world record 43.18 (1999)

In Atlanta in 1996, Johnson became the only man to win the 200 m and the 400 m at the same Olympic Games. His 19.32 in the 200 m final, run in gold spikes, cut more than three tenths off the world record and lasted until 2008.

He won the 400 m again in Sydney in 2000 and eight world titles between 1991 and 1999. His 43.18 in the 400 m in 1999 stood as the world record until 2016. He lost a 2000 relay gold after teammate Antonio Pettigrew admitted doping, and has worked as a BBC pundit since retiring.

#10 Faith Kipyegon

🏃 Events: Middle distance (1500 m, mile, 5000 m)
🎂 Born: January 10, 1994, in Nakuru, Kenya
🌍 Country: Kenya
🏆 Career Highlights: 3× Olympic 1500 m champion (2016, 2020, 2024), Olympic 5000 m silver (2024), 5× world champion, world records in the 1500 m (3:48.68) and mile (4:07.64)

Kipyegon is the only woman to win the Olympic 1500 m three times, in Rio, Tokyo and Paris. She has won four world 1500 m titles (2017, 2022, 2023, 2025) and added the 5000 m world title in 2023.

She holds the world records in the 1500 m, 3:48.68 from Eugene in July 2025, and in the mile, 4:07.64 from Monaco in 2023. She was the first woman under 3:50 for 1500 m. In June 2025 she tried to become the first woman to run a mile in under four minutes at a Nike exhibition in Paris and fell short.

#11 Florence Griffith Joyner

🏃 Events: Sprints (100 m, 200 m, relays)
🎂 Born: December 21, 1959, in Los Angeles, California, USA (died September 21, 1998)
🌍 Country: United States
🏆 Career Highlights: 3× Olympic champion (100 m, 200 m, 4×100 m in 1988), 2× Olympic silver (200 m 1984, 4×400 m 1988), world 4×100 m champion (1987), world records in the 100 m (10.49) and 200 m (21.34)

Griffith Joyner set the 100 m world record of 10.49 at the US trials in July 1988 and the 200 m record of 21.34 in the Olympic final in Seoul. Both still stand. In Seoul she won the 100 m, the 200 m and the 4×100 m relay and took silver in the 4×400 m.

Known as Flo-Jo, she was as famous for her long painted nails and one-legged running suits as for her times. She retired abruptly in February 1989. She died in her sleep during an epileptic seizure in 1998, aged 38.

#12 Mo Farah

🏃 Events: Long distance (5000 m, 10,000 m, marathon)
🎂 Born: March 23, 1983, in Gabiley, Somalia
🌍 Country: Great Britain
🏆 Career Highlights: 4× Olympic champion (5000 m and 10,000 m in 2012 and 2016), 6× world champion, Chicago Marathon winner (2018), knighted in 2017

Farah won the 5000 m and 10,000 m double at the 2012 Games in London and again in Rio in 2016. Between those Games he won both events at the 2013 and 2015 World Championships, and he added the 10,000 m world title in 2017.

In 2022 he revealed he was born Hussein Abdi Kahin and was trafficked to the UK as a child under another boy’s name. He moved to the marathon, won Chicago in 2018 in 2:05:11 and retired in 2023.

#13 Hicham El Guerrouj

🏃 Events: Middle distance (1500 m, mile, 5000 m)
🎂 Born: September 14, 1974, in Berkane, Morocco
🌍 Country: Morocco
🏆 Career Highlights: 2× Olympic champion (1500 m and 5000 m 2004), Olympic 1500 m silver (2000), 4× world 1500 m champion (1997, 1999, 2001, 2003), world records in the 1500 m (3:26.00) and mile (3:43.13)

El Guerrouj set the 1500 m world record of 3:26.00 in Rome in 1998 and the mile record of 3:43.13 in Rome in 1999. Both still stand more than 25 years later. He won four straight world 1500 m titles.

The Olympics went wrong for him twice: he fell in the 1996 final and was beaten into silver in 2000. In Athens in 2004 he finally won the 1500 m and then the 5000 m, the first man to do that double since Paavo Nurmi in 1924. He never raced internationally again and announced his retirement in 2006.

#14 Allyson Felix

🏃 Events: Sprints (200 m, 400 m, relays)
🎂 Born: November 18, 1985, in Los Angeles, California, USA
🌍 Country: United States
🏆 Career Highlights: 7× Olympic champion, 11 Olympic medals, 14× world champion, 20 World Championship medals, Olympic 200 m champion (2012), world 400 m champion (2015)

Felix won 11 Olympic medals at five Games from 2004 to 2021, more than any other woman in track and field. Seven are gold: the 200 m in London in 2012 and six relay titles. She also won three world 200 m titles in a row from 2005 to 2009.

With 20 medals, 14 of them gold, she is the most decorated athlete in World Championship history. She won her last Olympic medals in Tokyo after becoming a mother in 2018. She retired in 2022 and in April 2026 announced a comeback aimed at the 2028 Games in Los Angeles.

#15 Fanny Blankers-Koen

🏃 Events: Sprints and hurdles (100 m, 200 m, 80 m hurdles)
🎂 Born: April 26, 1918, in Lage Vuursche, Netherlands (died January 25, 2004)
🌍 Country: Netherlands
🏆 Career Highlights: 4× Olympic champion (100 m, 200 m, 80 m hurdles, 4×100 m in 1948), 5× European champion, 12 world records

Blankers-Koen won four gold medals at the 1948 Games in London as a 30-year-old mother of two, which earned her the nickname the Flying Housewife. She was the most successful athlete of those Games.

Many at home said she should stay with her children rather than compete. She also won five European titles and set or tied 12 world records, the last in 1951. In 1999 the IAAF voted her Female Athlete of the Century.

Best Runner in Each Event

If you want one name per event, these are our picks from the ranking. For how the sport developed, see our guide to the history of running.

Event	Runner	Why
100 m	Usain Bolt	Three Olympic titles and the 9.58 world record
200 m	Usain Bolt	Three Olympic titles and the 19.19 world record
400 m	Michael Johnson	Two Olympic titles and four world titles in the event
Women’s sprints	Florence Griffith Joyner	World records of 10.49 and 21.34, both still standing
1500 m and mile	Hicham El Guerrouj	World records in both events since 1998 and 1999
Women’s 1500 m	Faith Kipyegon	Three Olympic titles and the world record
10,000 m	Kenenisa Bekele	Two Olympic and four world titles, world record from 2005 to 2020
Marathon	Eliud Kipchoge	Two Olympic titles and the first sub two hour marathon distance

World Records Held by These Runners

These world records from the runners above still stood as of 2026.

Event	Runner	Mark
Men’s 100 m	Usain Bolt	9.58 (Berlin, 2009)
Men’s 200 m	Usain Bolt	19.19 (Berlin, 2009)
Men’s 1500 m	Hicham El Guerrouj	3:26.00 (Rome, 1998)
Men’s mile	Hicham El Guerrouj	3:43.13 (Rome, 1999)
Women’s 100 m	Florence Griffith Joyner	10.49 (Indianapolis, 1988)
Women’s 200 m	Florence Griffith Joyner	21.34 (Seoul, 1988)
Women’s 1500 m	Faith Kipyegon	3:48.68 (Eugene, 2025)
Women’s mile	Faith Kipyegon	4:07.64 (Monaco, 2023)

Honorable Mentions

Seven more runners who came close and could make the list on another day.

Edwin Moses: American 400 m hurdler who won Olympic gold in 1976 and 1984 and won 107 consecutive finals between 1977 and 1987.
Sifan Hassan: Dutch runner who won the 5000 m and 10,000 m in Tokyo and the marathon at the 2024 Games in Paris.
Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce: Jamaican sprinter who won Olympic 100 m gold in 2008 and 2012 and is the only sprinter with five world 100 m titles.
Sebastian Coe: British middle distance runner who won the Olympic 1500 m in 1980 and 1984 and was elected president of World Athletics in 2015.
Abebe Bikila: Ethiopian who won the 1960 Olympic marathon in Rome running barefoot and won again in Tokyo in 1964.
Lasse Virén: Finn who won the 5000 m and 10,000 m double at both the 1972 and 1976 Olympics, after falling in the 1972 10,000 m final.
Tirunesh Dibaba: Ethiopian who in 2005 became the first woman to win the world 5000 m and 10,000 m double and repeated it at the 2008 Olympics.

More About Running

FAQ

Who is the best runner of all time?

In our ranking it is Usain Bolt, ahead of Eliud Kipchoge and Paavo Nurmi. Bolt won the Olympic 100 m and 200 m three times each and still holds both world records.

Who are the top 10 greatest runners of all time?

Our top 10 is Usain Bolt, Eliud Kipchoge, Paavo Nurmi, Emil Zátopek, Carl Lewis, Haile Gebrselassie, Kenenisa Bekele, Jesse Owens, Michael Johnson and Faith Kipyegon.

Who is the fastest runner ever?

Usain Bolt, who ran 9.58 for 100 m at the 2009 World Championships in Berlin.

Who is the best female runner of all time?

Faith Kipyegon has the strongest case: three Olympic 1500 m titles and world records in the 1500 m and the mile. Florence Griffith Joyner and Allyson Felix are the main alternatives in the sprints.

Who is the greatest marathon runner of all time?

Eliud Kipchoge. He won two Olympic marathons, held the world record from 2018 to 2023 and in 2019 became the first person to cover the distance in under two hours, in an event that did not count as a record.