I'd bet almost everyone would still know their names. There are TV documentaries to this day on Arnie. Jim was voted by this board as the greatest American distance runner of all time. Prognog, go ahead and ask your employees who Jim Ryun was? I bet you are completely wrong.
Sorry man, but your perception of this is warped. The vast majority of people under 50 don’t know who Jim Ryun is, and if told they wouldn’t care, and they sure as hell wouldn’t consider him “beyond reproach”.
You say something about race every time you post Ray Cyst.
You gave up your ability to play coy, when you decided on your divisive username.
Sorry champ.
Uhhh, wrong, 95% of my posts have nothing to do with race and if you were not fixated on it, you may have realized that I was intimating she was left of because SHE is a SHE, it had nothing to do with race, but not at all surprised that your guilty conscience immediately went there. Thanks for raising your hand and owning it, now we know who you are.
You say something about race every time you post Ray Cyst.
You gave up your ability to play coy, when you decided on your divisive username.
Sorry champ.
Uhhh, wrong, 95% of my posts have nothing to do with race and if you were not fixated on it, you may have realized that I was intimating she was left of because SHE is a SHE, it had nothing to do with race, but not at all surprised that your guilty conscience immediately went there. Thanks for raising your hand and owning it, now we know who you are.
Save your mental gymnastics for someone else. You chose your username - Ray Cyst. It’s not clever. It’s just a signal to everyone else that you aren’t to be taken seriously. You’re a clown.
Lots of GOATs mentioned here. We can debate the criteria all day before we even get into a particular athlete’s accomplishments. I love that every poster seems to be both incredibly passionate about their answers, yet also sees this for the frustrating, futile exercise it is.
In that spirit, I’ll throw out some names (in no particular order) that I don’t think have been mentioned.
1. Herb Elliott: meets the undefeated—or as close to it as you can get—criterion). He’s less famous than Ali or Jordan, but definitely more dominant in his sport during his era
2. Emil Zatopek: dominated the sport and revolutionized (or helped to revolutionize) training by showing that runners need to put in mileage. Everything before him was amateurish shenanigans.
3. Abebe Bikila: the tip of the demographic spear. The original East African champ. The man who conquered Rome two decades after fascist Italy invaded his country. Two Olympic golds, both set in world record times—the first one done barefoot. He is (or should be) an icon for what he achieved and for what he heralded.
You can scrap Brady, because no one outside of the US actually gives a sh*t.
Ali is debatable, and so is Jordan to be honest (Wilt Chamberlain, LeBron).
Forgive me if someone else has mentioned him (I got 2 pages through and stopped looking), but I can't believe this is a running forum - where the mile is placed on such a pedestal - and no one has mentioned El Guerrouj.
Tiger, Gretzky, Phelps, Bolt, Brady. More recent athletes competed and bested more people. As dominant as, say, Paavo Nurmi was, he was competing with maybe 1% the number of people who a modern elite runner faces.
Tiger was the longest-ranked #1 of all time, by far. Jack has 3 more majors and one more green jacket, but Tiger had to beat a far deeper, more international field of golfers to get his victories.
Gretzky's records are mind boggling and many of the major ones will never be broken.
Michael Phelps won 23 Olympic gold medals. He is the most medaled Olympic athlete of all time in any sport.
Usain Bolt needs no introduction here.
Tom Brady 7 Super Bowl wins, plus his last one with a brand new team in his first season there.
There really isn't a baseball GOAT.
phelps only won that many because there are so many similer swim events, imagine if there was a 80m 90m 100m 110m 120m 130m 140m 150m 160m sprints, ofc bolt would have more golds then.
and for bolt, well he's a doper, so ofc he needs no intro
You can scrap Brady, because no one outside of the US actually gives a sh*t.
Ali is debatable, and so is Jordan to be honest (Wilt Chamberlain, LeBron).
Forgive me if someone else has mentioned him (I got 2 pages through and stopped looking), but I can't believe this is a running forum - where the mile is placed on such a pedestal - and no one has mentioned El Guerrouj.
Tom Brady is THE GOAT of NFL QB''s. Wrong if you think it doesn't matter hell yes it does,
The term Goat only applies to 3 people Ali, Jordan and Brady. All other uses of the term GOAT are unwarranted.
Please stop calling every Johnny Come Lately that has a little success the GOAT.
The overuse of the term GOAT is ridiculous.
Maybe USA GOATs, Jordan and Ali internationally, but Brady is the equivalent of a rugby GOAT or Cricket GOAT, certainly the best NFL quarterback ever, but it's a small pool. He's not international. Federer and Nadal are more well-known
As usual, Letsrun posters crank out 8 pages of opinions with defining the term GOAT or setting the context of the debate (GOAT per sport? Or GOAT of all sports combined?). If we, as humans, don't define the terms of our conversations, we are doomed to talk past each other because we are all arguing about slightly different things.
I am not the boss of anyone, but if I were in charge of the GOAT debate, I would make all people use the same criteria (see below) instead of cherry-picking their personal favorite athletes and scraping together their rationale (after the fact) until they get to the answer they want to hear.
The GOAT is the person, in my opinion, who fulfills these criteria better than anyone else in his/her sport:
most skilled/talented (ability)
most Olympic, WC, or "Major" wins and medals (titles)
greatest success across a spectrum of events (range)
biggest domination of his/her competition (dominance)
winning year after year during his/her era (longevity)
reshaping culture of the sport and our society (cross-over impact)
And duh, the GOAT of tennis is not the same as the GOAT of cycling. So obviously there will be a lot more than three people on the final list.
This post was edited 1 minute after it was posted.
Reason provided:
forgot question mark
You can scrap Brady, because no one outside of the US actually gives a sh*t.
Ali is debatable, and so is Jordan to be honest (Wilt Chamberlain, LeBron).
Forgive me if someone else has mentioned him (I got 2 pages through and stopped looking), but I can't believe this is a running forum - where the mile is placed on such a pedestal - and no one has mentioned El Guerrouj.
Tom Brady is THE GOAT of NFL QB''s. Wrong if you think it doesn't matter hell yes it does,
Rivky Carmichael (motocross) was actually called the goat before jordan and brady. His ranch is called the goat farm. They are all copying him. Usain bolt is the goat, jon jones is the goat. Michael phelps is the goat. Wayne gretzky's stats are more ludicrous than jordan and brady, he is the goat.
Yep. The GOAT for sure. Motocross and supercross are two different specialties (think track and road races). Ricky won 10 straight motocross titles in ten years. Never lost a motocross championships. And added 5 supercross titles as well.
But if you are talking about motorsport there is no comparision to Toni Bou. A spanish motorcycle trials rider. He does things on a motorcycle that defy gravity. He has won 16 straight indoor and 16 straight outdoor titles in a row. Since 2007 he has not lost a world championships.
Antoni Bou i Mena (Catalan pronunciation: [ənˈtɔni ˈβɔw]) (born 17 October 1986) is a Spanish professional motorcycle trials rider. He has been the sole outdoor and indoor FIM Trial World Championship champion from 2007 to 20...
