Yes, more challenging. To have the anaerobic capacity and fast twitch muscle fibers to win 100m and an 800m race, not to mention 10,000 is infinitely more rare than winning freestyle than broad. How many men have won at the 100 and 200 even? 2? Has anyone ever won the 100 and 800? Or even the 100 and 400? It takes an entirely different composition of muscles and aerobic systems. It's not even something you can train or work on past a certain point.
It's a lot more impressive than Phelps. Half his golds weren't from team relays and he won at vastly different distances. He also didn't get a few extra medals from some dumb-ass event where you skate forwards and then skate backwards and then skate with some artificially goofy motion that is slower and less efficient and that nobody would ever use in the real world.
Not a fan of swimming, eh? ;-)
I bet Usain Bolt would have a pretty good shot at winning the backwards 100m dash. That would make him a true champion!
That's a good point, but I have a soft spot in the sports that've always been sports in some form or another - running, jumping, swimming, fighting/wrestling. Yeah, there are some rules and structure, but there's something to be said about being the best human on the planet at something humans have been doing for millenia.
I was about to make a similar point about the relative competition level in golf. When Nicklaus was in his prime golf was still very much a sport only available to rich, white dudes. This was somewhat less true when Tiger played, and less true now, although it still isn’t exactly a sport of the people. But the number of golf courses in the US and the number of people who had access to them was much, much smaller when Jack was learning the sport as compared to Tiger, as compared to now.
For a while, Nicklaus went by the nicknames "Ohio Fats" and "Fat Jack." Of course, he had polio as a kid, and overcoming that is a victory that is hard to dimensionalize, even if it has nothing to do with athleticism.
90.9% of soccer players don't even use any hand-eye coordination, c'mon.
I know next to nothing about speed skating, but the fact that this has actually been done makes me think it’s nowhere near as unlikely as winning both the 100 and 10K in track and field.
Well everyone everywhere runs. Most people in the world never even get on skates.
FWIW, that was a colossal mis-step by the professional golf world and likely inflated Tiger's win-rate. Yes, courses became more difficult due to increased length but Tiger was longer than almost everyone so he wasn't hurt as much as the guys with less power. The deck was stacked against the rest of the tour.
There were some substance abuse rumors around Duval too.
By that standard, Katie Ledecky should be in the mix, with multiple Olympic and World Championship gold medals at each of 200, 400, 800 and 1500.
Right, but whether it was a misstep or not, it doesn’t negate the advantage he had in this discussion, imo. It spoke to his dominance. And it drove guys to catch up through physical conditioning. There was a correction period for a bit, but eventually it raised the bar. I think that speaks to his impact, others might disagree.
Overhead squat is not an official power lifting lift. That is part of olympic lifting.
Would Robinson or Roy Jones have beaten Joe Louis, Ali, or Vitaly if they got in the ring together? Or are they only the best relative to their weight class?
What that guy did and who he is is unbelievably remarkable. Never mind the different distances, just to execute five races in a row that were good enough to win the Olympics is incredibly difficult (even if you’re so much better than everyone else that you don’t NEED a perfect race to win, which Heiden was in every distance except the 500m).
Oh, no. Not at all. I believe Robinson went as high as light heavyweight and lost to Joey Maxim, who was a middling fighter historically.
It's pretty likely a cheetah could, but good luck finding a jockey willing to risk becoming a cheetah's dinner to help him prove it.
Going back to the OP, I think that part of the reason this thread has turned a bit circular is the bolded aspect, and even that leaves out the criteria that others have brought up, namely: All-around athleticism vs unique skill sets.
With that criteria in mind, why Jordan over Bill Russell? Russell was not only the best player of his era and the greatest winner in American sports history (also including two NCAA titles and an Olympic gold), but was also active in the civil rights movement. He was the first black head coach / manager in any of the major sports leagues. I'm surprised he isn't getting more love in this thread.
Probably the same reason I chose Jordan. Because he's regarded by most as the greatest basketball player off all time and probably the most recognizable figure in his sport and maybe all sports. I don't personally rate him as the greatest but I tend to think most do.
That's how I look at it too, but would put in the distinction that the four people should either represent different eras of American sports history or they should be linked to major points in sports history. For example, from your list Gretzky and Jordan overlap. If I were to have a monument built it would probably be something like the following:
Ruth to me is a lot like WIlt Chamberlain. He was the first prototype of what became the dominant type of player in the sport for 50 years, and may have been the best ever. That does not happen that often. Do we really think Elgin Baylor, Cousy, Unitas, would stack up head to head with their successors? Ruth and Wilt maybe, even probably.
I didn't realize that Wilt had challenged Ali to a fight only to back out during the press tour.
As much as I agree Jordan is probably the greatest basketball player of all time, I have to disagree with the bolded. The NBA playoffs were on tape delay before Magic and Bird came along. I would strongly suggest they "did more for basketball" than Jordan.
I'd rather watch bird and magic but people tuned in to Jordan just to watch Jordan. He had no arch nemesis really and still got ratings. His shoe sales promoted nba and paved new roads for advertisement
This is a very interesting question, how you measure this sort of thing. 538 hit on something with this study of Serena Williams. I realize that all they have is one hammer (Elo ratings) and everything looks like a nail, but one fascinating aspect of Elo ratings is how era-independent it is. It can't assess qualitative elements of the sport itself - how fast pitchers are throwing, how hard batters are hitting, how good basketball players are at shooting when controlling for distance and close-outs etc. But in terms of how competitive a field was at the time, it's a very interesting window to it, once you know how everything is calculated.
This is where I'm at with it. I still try to make arguments with everyone that bird was better and am quick to forward the bird shutting down Jordan videos to the MJ lovers. But I know the masses don't agree. Bird fans were Celtic fans and Magic fans were Laker fans. Both teams have long tradition and followings. People followed Jordan and nobody followed the bulls before him or after.
Jordan sold shoes...and put up insane numbers...and carried his team to 6 championships.
Kevin Malone has been quoted as saying that he thought that Brady could have been one of the best catchers ever if he had stuck with baseball.
