Greatest Athlete of all time? (Page 2)

Well largely because I don't consider driving a car to be all that athletic of an endeavor.  Certainly not remotely athletic enough for one to be considered the "greatest athlete of all time".

Putin: He swam the English channel with his hands tied back. He wrestled a grizzly bear blindfolded.

I almost put in the caveat of "except the shirtless bareback horse riding Putin"

You're being a little closed minded.

Earnhardt drove a car for a living.  Do you know what he did off the track?

I'll get to my point......Jimmie Johnson is among the best NASCAR drivers of all time (by looking at the statistics).  He will be in the NASCAR Hall of Fame one day.  Did you know that JJ (and Kasey Kahne as well) ran a sub 1:30 half marathon this past Sunday morning in Daytona?  Did you also know that he is a triathlete currently in training for a half ironman?  Did you know that he was a competitive swimmer in his youth?

In summary, what a driver does off the track may make him a better athlete than was he does behind the wheel.

Yea, and?????  I'm pretty sure that Dale is being considered for his endeavors ON the track, not off.  

Did you know that a 1:30 half marathon is lucky to put you on the podium for your AG in a low competitive race?  Hardly in the realm of greatest of all time.

Also, I have completed 3 HIM and was a competitive HS track runner... should I also be in the running for greatest athlete of all time?

All I'm saying is that driving a car is not a sport.  Sure at the NASCAR level you need to be in good shape and such, but you in no way, shape, or form need to be on the level of (nor considered as) the greatest athlete of all time.

Yup.

Contenders on my list (in no particular order):

PNF:  Look at that stats; 21 Ironman victories 81% of what she entered, she won!  And 8 World Championships.  Domination!

Michael Jordan:  You have to be a great athlete to play in the NBA.  You have to be amazing to dominate your sport.  But you have to be one of the greatest of all time to change the way the game is played.

Bjørn Daehlie:  Cross country skiing is TOUGH.  You have to be an amazing athlete.  But to win 12 Olympic medals and 9 World Championships?  Yeah, that makes the list.

Ashton Eaton and/or Roman Sebrle:  The only two men to break 9,000 points in Decathlon.  That pretty much defines, "greatest athlete".

Jim Brown:  Speed, strength, endurance, durability.  Nothing and no one in football had ever seen anything like it.  He dominated and changed the game.

Kenensia Bekele:  Arguably the greatest distance runner of all time;  3 Olympic golds, 5 World Championships, 11 Cross-Country World Championships, 8 years as #1 and holding the world record.

Carl Lewis:  10 Olympic golds and 10 World Championships, in multiple track & field sports.  I think that would qualify.

Michael Phelps:  Incredible athlete, 22 Olympic medals... 'nuf said.

I didn't include any cyclists because who knows how many and who doped.  Most of the above list could be considered "clean".   Of the ESPN list, I would guess it would come down to Phelps vs Lewis.  Tough to say which would be considered the better "athlete".  Tough choice.  With my list above, I just think PNF runs away with it.  Let's face it; IRONMAN athlete who dominated for that long.  IMHO - there's your world's greatest athlete right there.

How about this:

-Most Navy SEALS, Delta Force Operators, SAS, SBS, etc.  

Except for the fact that they practice blood doping, they are some of the most incredible athletes the world has never heard about...

Well said. 

A 1:30 half marathon is about 2 min faster than my PR.  Why am I not on the list?

Sheila is the bomb.  I took one of her workshops (which was amazing) and the price included her new book.  It hadn't made it to press the day of the workshop so we were told the book would be mailed to us.

A few weeks later I get a personal email from her offering to drop the book off in mailbox instead of mailing it as she would be in my neck of the woods and I'd get it faster.  I had to text my husband to tell him an Olympian was going to be at the house 

Talk about a sweet and down to earth person.  She gets my vote!

Cyclist - What about Eddy Merckx? No evidence he doped. 5 TDF victories; 5 victories in Italy as well. Held the hour record for 12 years on a standard steel bike.

While Phelps is no doubt a tremendous athlete, he was aided in his tremendous medal count by the fact that swimming has multiple strokes per distance. How many medals would Carl Lewis have is there was a 100m final in hopping, backwards, normal, sideways, and tied hands.

One interesting event is the BBC's Superstars program, which has Olympic athletes competing against each other in a wide multitude of sports. Athletes may not take it quite as seriously, but seeing which discipline the winners come from is telling. This year, the Super Heavyweight boxer Anthony Joshua won, edging out a swimmer, and Alistair Brownlee. Not sure I would have guessed the heavyweight to win.

Really?  He tested positive 3 4X for PEDs when there was no organized testing.  

He got kicked out of a Giro d'Italia (which leading for 16 stages in '69), after winning Lombardia in '73, at Fleche Wallone in '75, then in '77 for amphetamines...

4X in 8 years.

ETA more backup...

I'm not a fan of Pele, he was a bit before my time.  But I think he's got to be the winner here.

Football is almost exclusively a US sport. Basketball until recently wasn't really played much outside of the US. Hockey still is mostly North America, and the northern and eastern European countries. Baseball is big in some Latin countries, the US, and Japan.  But soccer is everywhere. It's the world's biggest sport, played by hundreds of millions of people in every single country in the world. You don't need a pool or a golf course or a million dollar car to participate.  

Apparently Pele is the greatest soccer player ever.  I never saw him play and youtube clips of him are not all that impressive, but I'll defer to the experts that claim he's the best. The talent pool for soccer is so much greater than any other sport, and you got this one man who sits head and shoulders above all other soccer players in history. I'd say that makes him the greatest athlete by default.

Of course, had ESPN actually included the greatest running back in NFL history on their list, then I take back everything I just said and my vote goes to Sweetness.

Wayne Gretzky should be on this list.

Also Ron Jeremy

I read that wiki page above.  That is really interesting.  It looks like there was no running of any significant distance which would've favored the Mo Farah or the Brownlees.  I also don't know how long the swim was, but I assume it was short.  

I'll bring it up again...  PNF...  PAULA NEWBY-FRASER!

Can someone tell me why she's not the greatest athlete of all time?

First:  The Olympics didn't even adopt triathlon until 2000, late in PNF's career (2 years before her retirement) when she was 38 years old.

Second:  I would argue that going 8:50:28 over 140.6 miles makes you a better athlete than going 1:58:28 (Emma Snowsill) over 32 miles.  And doing it consequtively and successfully over 12 YEARS!

Third:  PNF was winning her final Ironman races at age 40!

Fourth:  PNF's fastest Ironman win was at a 3.77 min/mi pace.  Emma Snowsill's Olympic Record was at a 3.70 min/mi pace.  PRACTICALLY THE SAME, but PNF did it over 140.6 miles!  If she raced her Ironman pace in the Olympics, her time would've been a mere 2min 15sec off of of Snowsill and won her an 8th place finish.  But of course, that would've been racing at her Ironman pace.  A PNF at 19 years old (or even 34 for that matter) in that Olympics would've SMOKED the competition and she would've won several gold medals.

.

So I'm still pressed to see who could honestly be considered a better "athlete" than PNF and why?

Chrissie Wellington is undefeated at the 140.6 distance.  PNF is not.

I would like to throw in a couple runners in the mix...

- Steve Prefontaine

- Roger Bannister

- Usain Bolt 

I, too, am undefeated at the 140.6 distance.

Wait...

It's not me?