In the late 70’s and early 80’s, middle distance runners Sebastian Coe and Steve Ovett had an epic rivalry, highlighted by Coe breaking Ovett’s world record in the mile, with Ovett taking back the record a week later, only to see Coe break it again in 2 days time (3 wr’s in 9 days!).
No animosity (they trained together and were close friends), but Rafer Johnson vs. C. K. Yang in the decathlon in the 1960 Olympics. Yang won seven of the ten events; Johnson won the other three, and by large enough margins to get the gold medal.
Wow, I never even considered boxing in my OP. :smack:
Guess that tells you how far off the radar screen boxing is in my world.
Great examples from everyone. exactly what was looking for. Even the outside the box rivalry of Alydar/Affirmed. Were there any jockeys that were big (and bitter?) rivals.
In the world of surfing, Kelly Slater and Andy irons were certainly archrivals… though they SEEMED to like each other, when not trying to beat each other.
In NASCAR, Richard petty and David Pearson finished 1-2 quite a lot. And Jeff Gordon has been a heated rival of both Dale Earnhardt Senior AND Junior.
Back to golf… Ben Hogan and Sam Snead may deserve a mention.
Fischer - Kasparov (chess) I think they were kind of rivals or am I making that up?
Although they were members of teams, I always thought Dwight Evans and Dennis Eckersley had a pretty intense personal rivalry back in the late 80’s - early 90’s. They were former teammates and every single Eck vs. Dewey at bat was like its own mini-drama, complete with intense stare-downs. Maybe they thought there could be only one D.E.
Fischer-Spassky was the rivalry that the musical CHESS was about; Fischer had retired to pursue other interests by the time Kasparov came on the scene.
Kasparov’s main rival while he was up-and-coming was Anatoly Karpov.
Indeed, Fischer and Kasparov never played each other, which makes NPR’s headline for their interview with Kasparov following Fischer’s death a bit disingenuous.