WRT shooting sports, yesteryear’s champions could hold their own against today’s champions assuming they were using identical equipment. Today’s target arms are better than the ones from even thirty years ago. Enough better, in fact, to give the win to a shooter where an opponent of equal skill is using the older equipment.
Good call- horse racing’s biggest records are of pretty long standing.
But isn’t that pure luck moreso than what the OP is asking?
I know nothing of horse racing, but it’s not like a horse has the analytic and competitive mind that a human does. Bill Russel may have been too skinny to play in the NBA today, but who says that he couldn’t use the skill he did have and overcome that and still be one of the best?
Having a prize horse it seems is just luck of the gene pool
To even suggest that Pele is “overrated” is pretty preposterous. His international career has him with 77 goals in 92 official appearances, 37% of his teams’ goals, according to Wikipedia. Brazil won 3 of the 4 World Cups that he played in for them.
This crossed my mind, but I’m not sure. Even some of the greats who have competed in the modern era (Walter Ray Williams, Jr., Pete Weber) have had difficulty keeping up with the the game as it is today. The equipment of today would be a tremendous advantage for Dick, but he never had to make the kind of rapid physical and mental adjustments that come with today’s oil patterns and the way synthetic lanes break down over the course of a squad with all of today’s high-rev players.
I think he deserves consideration on this list, and I think that Dick in his prime would certainly be competitive today, but I’m just not sure he’d be dominating.
How about showjumping? Carriage driving? Motorsport? Lewis Hamilton vs Jackie Stewart or Fangio in their primes?
Boxing, 1965? Muhammed Ali.
I’d bet on him today.
I don’t think so. There’s no reason they couldn’t learn/use modern systems if they wanted, but bidding is all about communication. Old school Goren bidding, as long as both partners use it well, can compete with modern SAYC, Precision, or other systems.
No at all preposterous. Pele is 8th all time in international scoring rate. You can discount some for lousy competition, but that’d only bump him up to 4th. His domestic scoring rate is highly inflated by staying in Brazil and playing inferior competition. Pele had nothing to do with the '62 win. He scored 1 goal and was injured for almost the entire tournament.
Now, he’s probably at worst the third best player of all time. I’d probably have him at 1 or 2, but his legend is so over the top that it’s not that hard to overrate him.
I know a lot of fans dont like Klitschko, but I feel he is a very underrated and put upon boxer because he’s a colorless Ukrainian. I feel he could go 12 rounds with his larger reach ands by-the-book technique with the smoke-and-mirrors Ali, and outsmart him just enough to get a decision.
Chess, and poker players from 50 years ago absolutely would have competed in 2015----providing todays heroes didn’t have their predecessors strategies handy.
Auto racers, without a doubt, put them behind the wheel of a 2015 car and give them some lap time, they could compete.
Wilt Chamberlain was a freak of nature who would have been a multiple time All-Star in todays NBA.
A lot of baseball players from 1965 would have done well in 2015, now that steroids have been drummed from the game. Harmon Killebrew, Mickey Mantle, Richie Allen are all examples of many, many players given some of the training available today would have been at least serviceable, if not All-Stars, today.
I do agree most of the 1965 NFL, NBA, and NHL crew would have problems if dropped off a time machine in to 2015 and asked to compete.
What about something like dancing? Would a world class salsa dancer from the 60’s be able to compete in a championship today?
I’d take that bet in a heartbeat. Klitschko’s 40 pounds heavier than 1965 model Ali. That’s the same gap between a lightweight and a light heavyweight. That’s a difference of six weight classes. I doubt Ali would last the distance to be honest.
In a wheelchair, with Parkinson’s? I do think that’s stretching it. I’m pretty sure either of the Klitschkos could take him. 
Either of them in their prime against Joe Louis or Rocky Marciano in theirs? I’ll go with the earlier model years.
While I agree with a lot of that, (try watching the 1990 final, Voller blatantly elbowing Maradona, a dive for the German penalty and a blatant foul by Mattheus(?) in the box that wasn’t given. A stitch up from start to finish. Maradona, (supported by Caniggia, who was ruled out of the final after an inexplicitly daft handball on the half-way line) was the star of an otherwise fairly average team.)
The problem I have is “the much more physical game of the 1970’s and 1980’s”.
Pele was kicked off the park by the Portuguese in 1966. Have a look at Chile v Italy in 1962. Or Racing Club v Celtic (1967), Estudiantes v Man. U. (1968), and, probably the most infamous of all, Estudiantes v Milan (1969).
Interestingly, in each of the three finals that Argentina-Germany have played, IMO the better team of the tournament won, the better team on the day was the loser.
Well thats my point. The physicality of the later decades was in response to the Brazilian game and Pele was susceptible to that. Ruthless physical contact was already becoming the norm by 1970, its relative absense in the WC of that year was the aberration. And players like Pele were susciptble as was shown in 1966.
Also by Bertie Vogts in the 1974 Final.
Down at the club it can, yeah - prob up to regional level with a very good pair. Certainly some strong players here contest regional events playing an acol system. The thread’s about world champions, though, and the expert bridge level is just a different game. Not really serious to suggest a Goren bidding system would have any play there.
For true billiards (i.e. English billiards) there could be a case that the champions of 50 years ago may be better today as it’s a far more niche sport now than it was. Fred Davis whose prime was in 1940s was able to win the billiards World Championship in 1980 at 67 and get to the final in 1983 at 70.
That said in snooker which uses the same equipment, the top players do things now that no player could’ve done 50 years ago. This is partly due to the players just being better, but it is also due to the fact the cues, tables and balls nowdays allow for the kind of highly accurate play that would’ve been impossible 50 years ago (or even in 1983).
If you brought Pele in a time machine from his 1970 heyday he would not be able to hold his own against the soccer stars of today. The players are faster and more physically fit than they were in 1970, the skill level is higher, but most importantly the game is also different.
If you take David Beckham, whose off-pitch fame IMO overshadows the fact he probably was the best player in the World for a very short-period at around the turn of the millennium (that and the fact he was actually fairly niche player when playing in his best position), could not have existed in the 1960s. This is as the mixture of curl, speed and accuracy that he was able to impart to his crosses/long passes/corners/free-kicks and shots which was his trademark was impossible to do with the heavy balls in the 1960s. Now days being able to do Beckhamesque things with the ball is pretty much a requirement of being a World-class attacking player.
IMO the two best players in the World are currently Cristiano Ronaldo and Messi (this is probably one of the least controversial opinions in World sports). IMO they are also the two best players of all-time. I would also rate Maradona, Best and Zidane above Pele.
I’m currently re-learning bridge (still on plain ACOL) and my current partner has played in tournaments using an ordinary bidding system against world-class players and sometimes came ahead of them and other times did not. Many years ago, I was working in Manchester and occasionally played against the Hackett twins. They wiped the floor with me not because of their advanced bidding systems but because they were so in tune with each other and their ability to place cards, plus my poor play.
In golf, A 59 yr old Tom Watson nearly won the 2009 British Open. Lost in a playoff to Stewart Cink.