Is Bolt the greatest athlete of all time, in any sport?

He is definitely in the discussion. I would say, however, that Bo Jackson is the greatest athlete of all time. In my opinion.

Thorpe competed against zero black people. Kind of like saying Ty Coob was the best baseball player. Totally discounting a large sect of society.

Bo Jackson would have annual aged Thorpe at just about anything. Dude ran 1000 yards in 8 games without an NFL training camp and holds the record for runs of 90 yards or more ( second is 2). Only played like an equivalent of 2.5 years.

He's not the greatest at diving, for sure. As someone else pointed out, skinny people like many Chinese are better at that for not splashing. I can't see Bolt not splashing.

swimmer wrote:

nah. phelps is better at swimming than he is at running. but there are more important things than being able to run or swim fast.

Can't compare swimming to sprinting. Swimming is so much easier on the body than sprinting, in swimming they have all kinds of made up events that are basicly the same physiologicly.

Hell, I even go as far as to state that it's easier to win 4 golds in swimming than it is to win 2 medals in sprinting

This guy is the greatest athlete

https://www.flickr.com/photos/20224045@N00/9907956724

Black Lives Matter wrote:

This guy is the greatest athlete

https://www.flickr.com/photos/20224045@N00/9907956724

Didn't see that coming

Bolt is only the best athlete every four years. In other years, most people don't give a crap about olympics sports. After the olympics, people will turn their attention back to soccer, tennis, golf, etc.

why?no wrote:

a great athlete is versatile. bolt can just run fast for a few seconds. what else can he do?

Why is versatility a more valued athletic skill than speed? Serious question. What makes it better? Don't we bash triathletes for being mediocre at three sports?

swimmer wrote:

nah. phelps is better at swimming than he is at running. but there are more important things than being able to run or swim fast.

Nowhere near, Phelps doesn't even have the freestyle world records, which is the king event.

It's easy to recover from swims and most of his medals are relays, in which he wasn't even the quickest of quartet.

I would destroy him at Table Tennis. It wouldn't even be close.

No, I'm a distance runner

Haille Gebresallie, Kennesia Bekele, Jim Ryun, Jim Peters, the guy who beat Bekele and El G in 5K., El G, Daniel Komen,

Wilt is the GOAT.

Jim Thorpe

ck3237 wrote:

No, I'm a distance runner

Haille Gebresallie, Kennesia Bekele, Jim Ryun, Jim Peters, the guy who beat Bekele and El G in 5K., El G, Daniel Komen,

Horses for courses, but Ryun and Peters aren't in that performance bracket (as long as Ventolin isn't listening)

He's in the discussion, along with Jordan, Gretzky, Jim Brown -- people who are just head & shoulders above others in their sport. Big a T&F fan as I am, I can't think of any other T&F athletes who were just so much better than their competitors, especially not over a such long period. Maybe Nurmi.

Other people have brought up Bo Jackson, who was amazing but had his career(s) cut way too short to put him in the discussion.

Tom Brady should be in the convo

hehe

Seriously, Ashton Eaton has to be in the convo.

1955 wrote:

He's in the discussion, along with Jordan, Gretzky, Jim Brown -- people who are just head & shoulders above others in their sport. Big a T&F fan as I am, I can't think of any other T&F athletes who were just so much better than their competitors, especially not over a such long period. Maybe Nurmi.

Other people have brought up Bo Jackson, who was amazing but had his career(s) cut way too short to put him in the discussion.

I don't think it clear that Bolt is the greatest athlete of all time? He' certainly one of the greatest.

We need to define "athlete". Is the magnitude of athleticism required in sprinting (100m) anymore a display of athleticism than the athleticism required to dominate others at 10000M?

Is the best golfer in the world using superior athleticism to dominate golf?

Is the best marathoner in the world using superior athleticism to dominate marathoning?

Is the marathoner anymore athletic than the golfer in dominating his sport?

Is Bolt more athletic than Farah?

Phelps = Overrated wrote:

swimmer wrote:

nah. phelps is better at swimming than he is at running. but there are more important things than being able to run or swim fast.

Nowhere near, Phelps doesn't even have the freestyle world records, which is the king event.

It's easy to recover from swims and most of his medals are relays, in which he wasn't even the quickest of quartet.

MOST?? Phelps has 23 golds. 10 are relays. That's still 13 individual golds. He has 28 total medals, 12 are relays.

Bolt doesn't even have the most golds among track athletes. Carl Lewis has 9 golds and 10 total. He won 4 different events, he won the same event 4x. Bolt will end with 9 golds, 9 totals winning 3 different events and never the same 4x.

Phelps would blow Bolt away in the mile as well. So there's that too

OJ's friend wrote:

OJ SImpson is the greatest.

Throwing, catching, running, hiding, stabbing, evading, riding in a car, robbing, banging, , wearing gloves, acting, being on tv, a bunch of stuff

LOL. IDK if there are any MMA or TTHS fans here, but I just read this post in Tommy Toe Hold's Nick Diaz voice for some reason. Spit beer all over my keyboard.