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le Clos vs Coughlin

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GOAT verdictgoatrank.world
CoughlinWinner
89.4

Coughlin wins: Dominance, Honours, Statistics

le Clos
87.8

le Clos wins: no category outright

Candidates
Locked to Swimming

Shareable URL · /compare/chad-le-clos-vs-natalie-coughlin

Time range

Showing full careers. Pick a window to recalculate the selected period.

Category radar

Verdict

Weighted GOAT score
🇺🇸 Natalie Coughlin
89.4

Coughlin leads in 5 of 5 weighted categories. Twelve Olympic medals, the most by an American woman at the time.

1. Natalie Coughlin
89.4
2. Chad le Clos
87.8

Category breakdown

Season form · Form index per season

Career timeline · Form index per season

Cumulative output season by season — the shape of each career against the other.

GOAT pace tracker

Career stage · GOAT pace

Through season 5 · Form index per season
1. 🇿🇦 Chad le Clos5 seasons played · career day 2,556567.9 major golds
Setting the pace at this stage
2. 🇺🇸 Natalie Coughlin5 seasons played · career day 2,921298.1 major golds
-47.5% vs le Clos at the same stage
Ghost race · career day30100365100018253650
🇿🇦 le Clos0000228.4793.7
🇺🇸 Coughlin0000119.43357.12

Careers are aligned at debut, so a rookie's first 5 seasons are measured against the same window in a legend's career — Yamal against Messi at the same age-stage, a tour rookie against Tiger Woods in 1996.

Metricle ClosActiveCoughlinRetired
Olympic golds13
Olympic medals412
World short course golds17
Commonwealth golds8
200m butterfly best (sec)112.68
World Championship golds6
World records3
100m backstroke best (sec)58.94
Dominance w25%8486
Peak w20%9292
Longevity w20%8888
Honours w20%8892
Statistics w15%8890

Fan vote — data vs the people

GOAT Rank · the data
Coughlin89.4
le Clos87.8
The people
le Clos
Coughlin

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Make your case for le Clos vs Coughlin. The scoring is published in full — if you can point at the pillar or the weight you disagree with, we read it. Read the methodology paper.

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