After reading an article on VeloNews. I thought I’d steal the idea and bring it here as a possible new thread.
Who do you think are the top 5 athletes in the world, past and or present?
It can be argued now that Tadej Pogacar from Slovenia is now one of the top 5.
Other top 5 or potential top 5 from my memory:
Michael Jordan
Usain Bolt
Muhammad Ali
Barry Sanders
Lionel Messi
I’m sure that y’all can add to this, and give reasons why. IMO Pogacar deserves to be in the conversation. It doesn’t hurt that he comes across and personable and genuine.
I’ll have to give some of the rest a bit of thought, but I have been really enjoying watching Pogacar in the tour this year, and yes, you’re correct, he is making a top 5 case for himself.
Some others way up there. Depends what you mean by greatest athlete. GOAT of their sport? Multiple sport? Domination in one or more areas of one or more sports for a while? Insanely talented and would have been one of the best in ANY sport they tried? World records? Gold medals? Only US-centric sports? Pro? Olympic?
For consideration:
Jim Thorpe
Carl Lewis or Usain or Michael Johnson (probably Usain with his domination and records)
Flo-Jo or Allyson Felix
A decathlete (Ashton Eaton)?
Aleksander Karelin - undefeated wrestler for 13 seasons
Simone Biles
Michael Phelps
Ric Flair
Bo Jackson (pre injury)
Michael Jordan
Serena Williams or Djokavic or Nadal or Federer or even Bjorn Borg (quit too early then comeback failed as tech changed)
Sergey Bubka - the great sandbagging pole vaulter.
He set 35 world records between 1984 and 1994, by raising the bar by 1 cm each time to maximize sponsor payouts. Sure, he was a great pole vaulter who revolutionized the sport… but he elevated sandbagging to an artform, inspiring hundreds of millions of workers worldwide.
Seriously, among the great athletes listed above, I would add Mike Conley’s dad, who was an Olympic long jumper, and also took off from behind the foul line in a slam dunk contest, at just 6-1.
I started thinking about Olympic athletes and Michael Phelps came to mind not only because of his dominance, but because he did it with different strokes over different distances.
Hard to compare athletes in different sports, so I would tend to look at multi sport athletes like Thorpe or Bo Jackson.
Im a little biased, but Alex Smith was able to overcome something pretty horrific and then retire on his own terms. However, Michael Phelps also overcame some personal struggles to accomplish some pretty awesome feats.
Jim Brown. Arguably the best running back of all time. Plus, he was an All-American lacrosse player. Some people have argued that lacrosse was his best sport.
No big surprise that Pogacar won the Tour. This years Tour was not all that dramatic with few surprises. But I loved watching it and was able to get my wife (who used to be a very active cyclist and big Tour fan) interested as well.
My single takeaway from this year’s tour, is that (in retirement) I’d love to rent a Sprinter Van, and chase the Tour from town to town, summit to summit for a couple of weeks. I may have made a bit of progress getting my wife to the point where she’ll accompany me, and I do still have the Vuelta left for a tiny bit more salesmanship.
We were lucky enough to see 2021’s Stage 9 in person. The bike racing you see is the shortest duration but still amazing. The caravan that starts three hours ahead of the riders is a hoot.
We were set up on a hill between two small towns in the Languedoc region. The day before we’d been out on a ride over about 6 or 7 miles of their route and saw a lot of the final prep - signage and padding on concrete near tight turns and road furniture. I’ve got a photo of my wife with a TdF van behind her. There were several people we talked to who were doing exactly what you want to do. It did seem like fun. As soon as the road opened back up they were out of there, heading on toward Toulouse.
Coolest part: there’s no other major sporting event where you are as close to the action as illustrated by the photo I took.
Cycling is one of the most fan friendly sports, at least prior to a race and after one. During the race, at least for point to point races you only see the riders for a very short period of time. Circuit races you see them many times for short periods, but before and after riders are generally easy to approach, you can see their equipment, most like to chat some.
As for Pogacar this year, he was himself. He seemed to be pretty cheerful, and very generous to his rivals, and the peloton as a whole. He may seemingly win at will, but he doesn’t seem to do it to be a dick, but because he’s having fun.
Anyway, there’s a reason I enjoy cycling. We too have a dream to go see big races in Europe. Our dreams, mine especially, are to see Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix, in the rain.
