Copyright © 2026 OyList. All Rights Reserved.
Share
Items24
1
Giacomo Agostini
Born
Motorcycle racing, Italy. Grand Prix world titles are decided over a season, and in Agostini's era riders could contest more than one engine class. He won 15 world championships, still the record: eight in the 500cc class, including seven in a row with MV Agusta from 1966 to 1972, and seven straight in the 350cc class from 1968 to 1974, along with 122 Grand Prix wins.
More about Giacomo Agostini2
Sergey Bubka
Born
Athletics, Soviet Union and Ukraine. The World Athletics Championships began in 1983 and were held every four years until 1991, then every two. Bubka won the pole vault at the first six, from 1983 to 1997, a run across 14 years and a change of nationality when the Soviet Union broke up. He also broke the world record 35 times indoors and out.
More about Sergey Bubka3
Phil Taylor (darts player)
Born
Darts, England. Darts has held an annual world championship since 1978, split into two rival versions since the 1993 breakaway that formed what is now the Professional Darts Corporation. Taylor won a record 16 world titles, two in the original BDO championship and 14 in the PDC version, starting as a 125-1 outsider in 1990 and taking his last in 2013.
More about Phil Taylor (darts player)4
Paula Newby-Fraser
Triathlon, Zimbabwe and United States. The Ironman World Championship in Kona, Hawaii, is a single race held once a year: a 3.8 kilometre swim, 180 kilometre ride and full marathon. Newby-Fraser won it eight times between 1986 and 1996, more than any other athlete, man or woman, and held the women's course record for years.
More about Paula Newby-Fraser5
Jansher Khan
Born
Squash, Pakistan. Squash's World Open is an annual knockout tournament for the leading professionals. Jansher Khan won it eight times between 1987 and 1996, still the men's record, ending the era of his compatriot Jahangir Khan, and he was world number one for most of that decade with a patient, retrieving game.
More about Jansher Khan6
Stephen Hendry
Born
Snooker, Scotland. The World Snooker Championship is held every spring at the Crucible in Sheffield, a 17-day knockout with the longest matches in the sport. Hendry won it seven times between 1990 and 1999, five of them in a row from 1992 to 1996, and became its youngest champion at 21, a record that has stood ever since.
More about Stephen Hendry7
Michael Schumacher
Born
Formula One, Germany. The Formula One World Championship is decided over a season of around 16 to 24 races, so a title rewards consistency across a year rather than one event. Schumacher won seven, in 1994 and 1995 with Benetton and five in a row with Ferrari from 2000 to 2004, a record later equalled by Lewis Hamilton, and in 2002 he finished on the podium in every race.
More about Michael Schumacher8
Ole Einar Bjørndalen
Biathlon, Norway. The Biathlon World Championships are held every winter except in Olympic years, with several individual and relay races at each. Bjørndalen won 45 medals there between 1997 and 2013, 20 of them gold, the most in the sport's history, to go with his six overall World Cup titles and 95 World Cup race wins.
More about Ole Einar Bjørndalen9
Kenenisa Bekele
Born
Athletics, Ethiopia. Bekele has world titles in two different championships. On the track, at the World Athletics Championships held every two years, he won the 10,000 metres four times in a row from 2003 to 2009 and in 2009 became the first man to win the 5,000 and 10,000 at the same championships. At the annual World Cross Country Championships he won 11 titles, six over the long course and five over the short.
More about Kenenisa Bekele10
Sébastien Loeb
Born
Rallying, France. The World Rally Championship is decided over a season of rallies on gravel, tarmac, snow and ice, so a title needs a driver who is quick on every surface. Loeb won nine in a row with Citroën and co-driver Daniel Elena from 2004 to 2012, a record of consecutive titles, and his nine-title total was equalled only in 2025 by Sébastien Ogier.
More about Sébastien Loeb11
Allyson Felix
Born
Athletics, United States. Felix won 20 medals at the World Athletics Championships, held every two years, between 2005 and 2019, more than any other athlete, 14 of them gold. Her individual titles came in the 200 metres in 2005, 2007 and 2009 and the 400 metres in 2015, and the rest in relays, with her last gold coming in the mixed 4x400 metres in 2019, the year after she had become a mother.
More about Allyson Felix12
Michael Phelps
Born
Swimming, United States. The World Aquatics Championships were held every two years in Phelps's era, with many events per swimmer. He won 33 medals there between 2001 and 2011, 26 of them gold, and set world records at the championships repeatedly, including seven golds at Melbourne in 2007, a year before his eight golds at the Beijing Olympics.
More about Michael Phelps13
Marit Bjørgen
Born
Cross-country skiing, Norway. The Nordic World Ski Championships are held every two years, in the winters between Olympics, with races from sprints to 30 kilometres and relays. Bjørgen won 18 world titles there between 2003 and 2017, the most by any cross-country skier, covering every distance and both classic and freestyle techniques, alongside her record 114 individual World Cup wins.
More about Marit Bjørgen14
Lin Dan
Born
Badminton, China. The BWF World Championships are held most years outside the Olympics. Lin Dan won the men's singles five times, in 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011 and 2013, a record, and is the only man to complete the "Super Grand Slam" of all nine major titles in the sport, including two Olympic golds.
More about Lin Dan15
Teddy Riner
Judo, France. The World Judo Championships are held almost every year, with separate weight classes and an occasional openweight event. Riner has won 12 world titles, more than any other judoka: nine in the heavyweight division from 2007 onwards, two in the openweight and one in the men's team event, alongside his Olympic golds.
More about Teddy Riner16
Marianne Vos
Born
Cycling, Netherlands. Cycling holds separate annual world championships for each discipline, usually as one-day races. Vos has won 15 world titles across four of them, cyclo-cross, road, track and gravel, and became world champion in both cyclo-cross and road racing at 19, a spread across disciplines that sets her apart even among cycling's greatest champions.
More about Marianne Vos17
Peter Sagan
Road cycling, Slovakia. The men's road world championship is a single one-day race held each September on a different course, which makes repeat wins rare. Sagan won it three years running, in Richmond in 2015, Doha in 2016 and Bergen in 2017, the first man ever to do so, on courses ranging from a hilly city circuit to a flat desert route.
More about Peter Sagan18
Usain Bolt
Born
Athletics, Jamaica. Bolt won 11 world titles between 2009 and 2015, the most by a man at the biennial World Athletics Championships, including the 100 and 200 metres world records of 9.58 and 19.19 seconds, both set in Berlin in 2009. His only miss in that run was a false start in the 2011 100 metres final, after which he won the 200 metres and relay at the same championships.
More about Usain Bolt19
Kōhei Uchimura
Born
Artistic gymnastics, Japan. The Artistic Gymnastics World Championships are held in most non-Olympic years. Uchimura won the men's all-around, the event that tests all six apparatus, at six consecutive championships from 2009 to 2015, with Olympic all-around golds in 2012 and 2016 as well, an unbroken eight-year run at the top of the sport's hardest individual event.
More about Kōhei Uchimura20
Stephanie Gilmore
Surfing, Australia. Surfing's world title is decided over a season-long tour of contests, with a one-day final event since 2021. Gilmore won eight women's world titles, the record, including the title in her debut season in 2007, unique on the tour, and four in a row from 2007 to 2010; her eighth came in 2022 through the new final-day format.
More about Stephanie Gilmore21
Lewis Hamilton
Born
Formula One, Britain. Hamilton's seven world championships, in 2008 with McLaren and six with Mercedes between 2014 and 2020, equal Michael Schumacher's record, and he holds the records for race wins and pole positions. Because Formula One titles are decided over a season, his sustained run with Mercedes, through rule changes and against team-mates such as Nico Rosberg, is as much part of the record as any single race.
More about Lewis Hamilton22
Simone Biles
Born
Artistic gymnastics, United States. The World Championships are held in most non-Olympic years. Biles has won 30 medals there, 23 of them gold, the most of any gymnast, including six world all-around titles between 2013 and 2023 and at least one world medal on every apparatus, and several of the skills she first performed at those championships now carry her name in the code of points.
More about Simone Biles23
Katie Ledecky
Born
Swimming, United States. The World Aquatics Championships have become almost annual in recent years, which helps explain big totals, but Ledecky's record stands out within a single event: in 2025 she won the 800 metres freestyle for a seventh time, the first swimmer, man or woman, to win seven world titles in the same event. She first won it in 2013 at 16, giving her more than a decade at the top of distance swimming.
More about Katie Ledecky24
Armand Duplantis
Athletics, Sweden. Duplantis is one of very few athletes to win world titles at youth, junior and senior level, and won the senior pole vault at the World Athletics Championships in 2022, 2023 and 2025, as well as world indoor titles. At the 2025 championships in Tokyo he cleared a world record 6.30 metres, the clearest sign that he now competes mainly against his own record, as Sergey Bubka once did.
More about Armand Duplantis
