Greatest Athlete Of All-Time Is...

Ed Whitlock.

ventolin^3 wrote:

tiger pebble beach '00...

Certainly best golf performance of all time. Tiger's entire 2000 was absurd though. I always wonder exactly what logic he was using in say 06 when he would say he was better than his 2000 self.

In 2000 he literally lead the tour in almost every single statistical category. He was #2 behind Daly but miles ahead of everyone else hitting 70%+ of fairways. Led everything else except sand saves and total birdies (and we all know Tiger tends to play on the harder tracks)

Not sure though how to compare a golfers career to a track athletes. Certainly Tiger is struggling right now in longevity department. He is still probably best golfer now, but certainly isn't Tiger of old and obviously has been 6 years since he won a major.

mellon wrote:

I've said it before and I'll say it again.

Hands down it's The Undertaker.

The guy has been killed (3) times in the ring.

Twice he was buried.

And through all of the that, he's still wrestling.

Who could possibly top that!!!

Anyone who has been killed 2 or fewer times. Getting killed is a very poor performance.

Dr Doctor wrote:Lewis' PR's are not even near the top 20 times of all time and he was on steroids! I could go on, but I think you get the point.

you clearly have no clue about him

go see his 19.75 where he runs with both hands up in the air for last 15m

that was likely 19.6-mid if he'd run flat-out to line & this was his 3rd tier event which he hardly trained for !!!

then tell me which steroid makes you usually dead-fuucking last at 1/2-way in just about every major 100 he ran in his life ???

The reason basketball players get mentioned a lot is because of the diverse areas of athleticism required. To be an elite athlete in basketball you have to be fast, strong and have a great vertical that's three types of athleticism. In the case of a guy like Wilt Chamberlain though, you might be actually talking about the greatest pure athlete ever and as a kicker he was 7'1 barefoot which is just insane. Reports on his vertical jump put him somewhere between 50-54 inches, he got his benchpress up to around 600 pounds at one point (and he's got long arms which makes it more difficult) and he ran a hand-timed 4.4 forty hard dash. I haven't heard of anyone else who's that fast, that strong and can jump that high combined. As for accomplishments well he owns practically half the record book of the NBA and after he retired become a HOF volleyball player when he was well past his physical prime. Some of the best athletes ever have come from basketball and Wilt was the best athlete among them.

The greatest athlete of all time is either Ashton Eaton or some middle weight boxer that I've never heard of cause I dont know jack about boxing.

It may also be a gymnast.

We all know who it is--Bruce Jenner.

He was the world's greatest athlete as a man, and now, he is the world's greatest athlete as a woman.

I didn't read through all this thread, but in my opinion the greatest athlete of all time is Aleksandr Karelin.

I have read trough the thread and am somewhat surprised that no one has mentioned Michael Phelps in swimming. To expand the discussion a bit, how about Bjorn Daehlie in cross country sking, Eric Heiden in speed skating (five olympic golds in 1980), or Vyacheslav Ivanov in rowing (unprecedented golds in single skull in three subsequent olympics 1956, 1960, and 1964)?

50 inch vertical jump? That would put his head over 2 feet above the basket. And he wasn't a HOF volleyball player.

Nice call! A good argument can be made for Charlie, Deon Sanders and/or Bo Jackson , if the standard is combining greatness and versatility.

There were two athletes at the Olympics who were so much better than had ever been imagined that the equipment was not even designed to be able to record their performances - Bob Beamon and Nadia Comaneci.

But if the standard is unique talent, mastery, and competitive dominance of one sport, the greatest athlete of all time is Simone Biles.

It’s nice to see athletes from earlier times getting respect. Chamberlin is arguably the greatest athlete to have played professional basketball, but despite gaudy scoring and rebounding statistics he was not the greatest basketball player. Bill Russell, one of the few guys who was not outmatched physically when they played, (and himself an Olympic Trials qualifier in the high jump) had a little better sense of the team game, so his team usually won.

A couple of old timers who deserve consideration but have not been mentioned:

Bob Mathias

Jesse Owens

Here’s a couple names to add to the Bo/Deon argument

Gayle Sayers

Michael Carter

If we're talking about a global sport involving real athleticism then there is no doubt the best ever is Messi. He's just an all around package. While Ronaldo may actually have more speed and strength he doesn't have the incredible quickness, agility, and sense for the game as much as Messi.

Close calls to them would be:

Maradona

Cruyff

Muller

All just simply astounding athletes and players.

For an athlete with extreme athleticism, strength, and complete domination of a global yet much less popular sport than soccer than look no further than Karelin.

In track, it gets more confusing as doping has played into a lot of the successes of quite a few and with that in mind it doesn't seem anyone can approach the success of Paavo Nurmi.

In other sports, its gotta be Klitschko in boxing, Federer in tennis, Merckx in cycling, and Phelps in swimming.

Ronaldo Nazario ought to be in the discussion. At his (one or two year long) peak he was the best player ever in the world's most popular sport, with freakish balance and coordination coupled to unusual speed and strength.

Primoz Roglic.

Junior World Ski Jump champion, 2007

4th overall 2018 Tour de France

He's 28, and still racing bikes.

Ummm . . . 50" = 4' 2". So that would put the top of his head at 7' 1" + 4' 2" = 11' 3".

Last time I checked the basket is at 10'. So, 11' 3" is 1' 3" above the basket.

Also last time I checked 1' 3" is LESS THAN 2' .

///

Now I know that Wilt did not have a 50" vertical but that is no excuse for TERRIBLE math.

So clearly we're not just looking at the most well rounded athlete, but the best athlete period with whatever it was that athlete did, so those of you who tried to argue for someone being good at sports they weren't playing kinda missed the point.

Greatest of all time has almost certainly got to go to Michael Phelps.

A few of those basketball players I could see the arguments for but I think Phelps has got this spot.

He set his first world record at just 15 years old, also going to his first Olympics just a few months prior and placing fifth (at 15 years old)

In the 2004 Olympics he won multiple gold medals and had already won many many many world records.

In 2008 he did the unthinkable by winning gold in eight out of eight events in the Beijing Olympics, seven of those were world records by the way. Nobody has ever been that good. Ever.

Some of his individual records lasted a very long time (up to 15 years) and he still has two relay records as far as 50m long course pools go which is the main pool size used for almost all international competitions (of course counting the Olympics).

After 2008 he continued breaking world records for a while and raced in his final olympics in 2016, 16 years after his first olympics, and I'm sure most of you don't know much about swimming, but to go to the olympics at over 30 years old for the USA in swimming is quite rare (definitely not unheard of though) and he still won multiple gold medals that final year.

Overall his career ended with 23 olympic gold medals and 28 total olympic medals, unmatched by anybody in any sport ever; he redefined swimming and broke more world records than anybody could ever hope to match while taking the sport to the next level.

I understand some of those accolades are just by nature unachievable for runners and other athletes based on the differences in all those sports, but the way he changed the whole sport while smashing record after record after record in all sorts of different events will forever secure him in my mind as the greatest.

Honestly I understand Michael Jordan or Wilt Chamberlain being in this conversation too, but I (being a serious runner) can't think of anybody within running who has been dominant enough to match the level of Phelps, and this goes for triathlons, pentathlons, decathlons, and all track or field events as well.

also Phelps was clean

Wilt may own half the record book, but Russ owned Wilt.

Sorry, Wilt's not in the conversation.