No mention of Tennis players? They essentially sprint around 3 miles per 5 set match, and at least one decathlete thinks it is the sport that requires the most athleticism after the decathlon.
When watching a tennis match, particularly on television it can look easy, but the amount of effort the top tennis athletes use to move, react, and plan all at the same time is enormous. It requires speed, hand-eye coordination, strength and mental acuity, especially when you consider that they don’t get help from team mates or coaches during matches.
Rafael Nadal, with the way he chases every ball and returns it with interest, should be considered in the conversation of the most athletic, and there are certainly others, past and present, as well who should be in contention for that designation, like Martina Narvatalova who played for a long duration against a large contingent of skilled players.
Tennis players have excellent endurance, speed, agility, and hand/eye coordination – great reflexes too. People question their strength. Certainly, pro tennis players aren’t wimps, but I would need to see a tennis player excel across different sports to consider him to be among the greatest of great athletes. That’s why starting with a decathlete is a logical place to start, though if you take someone who has excelled in various other sports, that’s also probably a good indicator of well-rounded athleticism
Good point. Shaq’s shooting alone removes him from any “most athletic” discussion.
The problem with decathletes, who are obviously amazing athletes, is that they are jacks of all trades, masters of none. Also, none of their skills involve unusual hand-to-eye coordination.
There really isn’t any definitive answer to “most athletic” but it’s interesting to read the different perspectives.
Fun fact: back when the Olympic pentathlon was running and jumping and throwing stuff, decathlete Robert LeGendre – who also went in for college baseball and college football, you understand – earned a medal in it for the United States by setting a new long-jump world record, easy as earning two doctorates.
“Most athletic” as opposed to the “fastest”, or “strongest”, or “most dextrous,” etc. OK, I nominate Jackie Chan. A stuntman with gymnastics as his background. But with a little practice he can execute a variety of martial arts disciplines.
I’m guessing an athlete who out-grappled every challenger at the ancient Olympics would’ve gotten a statue in his honor.
(Which kind of goes back to what icon was saying: in pretty much all of the ‘combat’ sports, you need the strength and the stamina to compete in a contest of speed and coordination, plus the brains to plan and react for the win, right? I mean, yeah, full marks to Muhammad Ali for being good at the event of “boxing” – but he needed fast footwork and power punches, and he needed to be a quick-thinking tactician after getting hit in the face; he needed to keep feinting with that left jab if he wanted to connect with that right cross, sure as he needed to block what he couldn’t dodge by cleverly anticipating it; and so on, right?)
Most Greek athletes only did one event, at least in the gymnikos agon (the athletics, rather than the hippikos agon for house-related events such as chariot racing, and the mousikon agon, for artistic events).
MMA isn’t normally done naked. Also the Greeks didn’t have rounds and had quite a high death rate. Arrachaion, for example, died while winning his third Olympic title.
They were distinct events at the Olympics, and the pankration was a mixture of both. The wrestling was also included in the Pentathlon, along with the sprint, long jump, javelin and discus.
The normal reward for an Olympic victor was a free meal a day for life in his city’s Prytaneum, although not all cities did that. And, of course, the laurels of victory which were the main prize.
There was also a circuit of professional games with big prizes in cash or equivalent, as well as the four main festivals of the Olympics, the Pythian games and the Nemean and Isthmian games.
While Gretzky is the undisputed greatest of all time (thus far) at hockey, I don’t think that the greatest athlete overall is going to be the G.o.A.T. in any one sport. To my eye, someone who’s Really Darned Good in many different sports is greater overall than someone who’s The Greatest in one sport.
I don’t really agree that a cross-discipline ability is a major measure because it’s basically a choice, not an insurmountable barrier. There are scientific studies declaring this and that athlete to have the most ideal physique or metabolism, etc. for this one sport. One sport. That’s a heavy qualification. But the objectivity in measurement is there. Athletes assessed as having such qualities I know include Nick Faldo, Stephen Regrave, Lamar Gant, and Chiyonofuji. Sorry, I can’t provide cites to those individual studies just yet.
But then, the decision to go into sports at all is also basically a choice. Maybe the person with the best athletic body of all time just decided to go into accounting instead, because sports are a waste of time. A person’s choices are absolutely part of what makes them athletic, and so why shouldn’t we favor someone who decided to excel at multiple things rather than someone who decided to excel only at one?
Further, we’re not looking here for the best footballer, or the best sprinter, or the best gymnast, or the best jai-alaist. Each of those activities has its own set of skills and talents, but we recognize that at some level, the skills and talents for those activities are all related, and we call the common thread of all of them “athleticism”. And if athleticism is the common thread in all of those activities, then the title of “most athletic” (as opposed to “best footballer” or whatever) must go to someone who covers a spread of athleticism.
Heh. Well, that’s the point of being a decathlon champ, isn’t it? Take the guys who win Olympic gold heaving a shotput: they’re big, they’re beefy, they’re barrel-chested types who look like weightlifters and specialize in upper-body strength. They’re not built for distance running, is my point; those guys tend to be comparatively lean.
So a decathlon champ – well, he’s not going to be as powerfully-built as a dedicated strongman, and he’s not going to be a willowy marathoner either; he’s going to be some kind of in-betweener, right? (And women who bring home Olympic gold in the heptathlon: are they as short as the gold-medal gymnasts, or as tall as the gold-medal basketball players? Or are they in-betweeners even in height, even leaving aside that they’re also nimble hurdlers who can heave a shotput?)
I’d add this: even if we suppose that a single sport athlete is extremely athletic, it’s impossible to know this for sure. It seems illogical to argue that someone is the most athletic when there just isn’t enough evidence to support it. And it seems perfectly logical to submit that a person who has succeeded across a number of different athletic disciplines and competitions is going to be demonstrably more athletic than someone who competes in only one sport.
Start with physiology. The best example is not with humans but with a horse, Secretariat. His heart gave him a v-8 engine that kept accelerating long after his rivals, with their 4-cylinder in-line hearts, have topped off on the third stretch. Secretariat was accelerating even as he was crossing the finish line.
Lots of ways to explain why some humans appear unbeatable in their chosen sport. With Lamar Gant, he was perfect for the dead lift. Short overall, but with long legs in relation to his body, giving him more lifting leverage. Also he had unusually long arms, that reached to his knees. In doing a dead lift, the weights rose barely 15 inches off the floor.
Why? If Jim Thorpe had access to all the modern training and conditioning techniques (including steroids etc.), why couldn’t he have been just as dominant today as he was back then? Lebron’s physical ability today compared to Jim Thorpe is largely a result of environment, or do you think mankind evolved over the last hundred years?