My approach was just to write out a list of people who could reasonably be considered the best at their particular sport and then throw out anyone from a sport where it seems debatable. Maybe Jordan is the best basketball player ever, but one could also make a reasonable case for LeBron or Wilt or Kareem -- so that rules out basketball. Maybe that's not a particularly good approach, but it's what I came up with. One could also disregard the athletic dominance of the athletes and just select on the basis of heroism or personal sacrifice or something like that, but my guess is if that were done correctly it would be four people none of us have ever heard of, so I decided not to factor in personal qualities one way or the other. So, with that preface and with the caveat that I don't follow most of the world's sports, here's what I am left with.
Tom Brady
Eddie Merckx
Michael Phelps
Babe Ruth
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