To me, best athlete isn’t always the person who won. There’s sportsmanship, dedication and perseverance.
If those are in the mix, I would go for John Stephen Akwhari, last place finisher in the men’s marathon in 1968, in Mexico City.
First thought is Jim Thorpe, on reading the thread my thought is Jim Thorpe.
Tatyana McFadden has to be in the discussion. She’s a wheelchair racer who’s won 17 Paralympic medals, in both Summer and Winter Games. In 2013, she became the first person - wheelchair or able-bodied, male or female - to win the Boston, New York, Chicago, and London Marathons in the same year. That same year, she won gold in every event - from 100 meters to 5,000 meters - at the IPC Athletics World Championships. She set course records for the Chicago Marathon, and twice for the London Marathon.
If ability, endurance, and sheer grit count towards “greatest athlete”, then I have to throw in the Catalan ultramarathoner, skiier, and climber Kilian Jornet. Jornet holds the records for fastest ascent and descent of the Matterhorn, Mont Blanc, Denali, and Everest. In February of this year, he set a world record for 24 hour uphill skiing. He’s won the Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc three times (and finished second once), finished first and third at Western States Endurance Run, and won the Hardrock 100 four consecutive years from 2014 to 2017; these are all 100-mile mountain ultramarathons, if you’re not familiar with them.
But what really put him into contention for title of “Greatest Athlete”, in my mind, was his 2017 Hardrock 100 race. At mile 14, he fell in snow and dislocated his shoulder. After banging it back into place on a boulder, he fashioned a makeshift sling out of his marathon vest, and ran on. At the Ouray aid station at mile 57, he had the arm taped to his body, and won the race in that condition. That is to say, he won the race *running 86 miles with a dislocated shoulder.
*
Amazing. Simply amazing.
I don’t know if that makes him the best athlete ever, but it surely makes him an all-time badass mofo.
This was my thought when I read the thread title. I mean, if we’re going for best athlete ever, it very well could’ve been some desert nomad that lived in the seventh century BCE. Or an Italian priest in the 1400s.
Best athlete ever? To quote Kip Dynamite: “Napoleon, like anyone can even know that.”
In the 1935 Big Ten track and field championships Jesse Owens set three world records outright and tied another over the span of 45 minutes. Then the next year he became the first to win four gold medals in one Olympics, all in front of Der Fuhrer.
He surely belongs in the discussion.
For single sport domination, Alexandr Karelin is the greatest ever in his sport (Greco-Roman wrestling). Three Olympic gold, one silver, nine world championships, two World Cups, his final record upon retirement was 887-2. Both his losses were 0-1, and he went six years in international competition without giving up a single point.
Regards,
Shodan
I used to think Bo, hands down. My current pick however, i know will garner no support amongst the Doper crowd. And that pick is Lebron James. I almost think justifying this pick is a waste of my time but as far back as middle school, the dude was a man among boys. I have never seen the combination of sheer strength, finesse, vision, work ethic and pure athleticism in one athlete before. Dude looked 35 in HS. And he never stopped working to improve his game even this far into his career in the NBA. He singlehandedly willed an
otherwise mediocre team to an NBA championship. Nobody, not Jordan, not Kobe and not even Wilt singlehandedly took their team to a chamionship trophy. They all played with at least one fellow hall-of-famer on their championship runs. Lebron had Dwayne Wade with him for his two championships with the Miami Heat but his Championship with Cleveland a few years later was a truly stunning showcase of all his talents on full display with a team of nobodies as his supporting cast.
Mine as well.
And it’s more complicated than that. I remember seeing an interview with Catelyn Jenner long before she became Catelyn when she said she had to drop her amateur status the second she won in 76 because that was the only opportunity to earn a living off of a lifetime of hard work. Situations have changed now. You can earn a living as a track athlete and be able to still train full time. How many decathletes could not even attempt to win multiple times?’
Love Karelin for single sport dominance. Here’s a guy who didn’t ramp up and peak for the Olympics, then lay off for a year or two before coming back. His whole career was basically one big peak.
It’s also an issue that today’s athletes benefit far more from specialization, so the sports polymath is less common. Under those conditions, I support the pick of LeBron, dude is a seriously gifted athlete, and has been for his entire career. No doubt he could have had a career in other sports if he chose to.
I guess the US is the only country where one of the best male athletes is now female.
Gretzky for hockey is very dominant. He has around 2900 career points and the next closest guy, Jagr, is around 1900 points and he played 10 more seasons than Gretzky.
There is something to be said for Babe Ruth. He was a great pitcher and then the greatest hitter in baseball history. But Thorpe did everything well in any sport it seems like and was great at several.
What I find incredible is that if Gretzky had never scored a goal he would still be the all-time leading scorer in NHL history. It is often said that some records are “unbreakable”, but are merely a product of long-term production over an extended career. That one, like Cy Young’s win record in baseball, is pretty much unbreakable even if another great player plays for 25 years.
BTW Jaromir Jagr is still playing at age 47 in the Czech league. Gretzky retired at 38 and he was still playing well, 62 points in 70 games. I saw a rare event , a game where Gretzky was ejected.
please delete , duplicate post.
A story about Thorpe, at the 1912 Olympics, that I had forgotten about:
Just before he was to compete in the decathalon, he discovered that someone had stolen his cleats. He found a mismatched pair of cleats (including, apparently, one that he pulled out of a trash can), wore those, and not only won the gold medal, but posted a record score that stood for nearly 20 years.
This picture of Thorpe from the games appears to show the mismatched cleats: File:Jim Thorpe, 1912 Summer Olympics.jpg - Wikipedia
If you want to talk about a single sport how about Al Oerter? He won Olympic gold in the discus in 1956, 1960, 1964 and 1968.
Kind of like Carl Lewis winning Olympic gold in the long jump four times, only with the part about also killing it in the 100-meter dash.
My pick is Gretzky also. I don’t have a cite, but i read somewhere once that Gretzky said he “passed the puck to where his teammate was gonna be”, and a teammate said “Wayne knew where I was gonna be before I did.”