The on court heroics of basketball wouldn't be possible if traveling wasn't allowed.It's all about the "show", the NASCAR of stick & ball sports. Jordan was a tremendous athlete though. He was the NBA in his era, he received the benefit of doubt from the officials. I have a tough time putting him on the list.

https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images...x_400x400.jpeg

http://www.chicagonow.com/through-an...ael-Jordan.jpg


http://www.jimpoz.com/quotes/speakers/bryant.jpg


http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-C0WudaiBtB...0/IMG_0005.jpg

Mount rushmore
 

Fyi, you would be 100% correct by placing Secretariat on that list. What SEC accomplished in the Triple Crown, racings greatest stage, was unprecedented and will never be repeated again. To place his 3 TC wins in perspective, if you put all 3 races together, he would have beat American Pharoah by 57 lengths or 456 yards (1.5 football fields!!!). In fact, when ESPN completed a poll of the greatest 100 athletic accomplishments, Secretariat's Belmont Stakes run was ranked 2nd, only behind Chamberlain's 100 point game. No horse has ever come within 9 lengths of his 1.5 mile dirt track Belmont Stakes record....talk about dominance and separating yourself from your peers. In his Kentucky Derby win he ran each quarter mile fraction faster than the preceding one, accelerating the entire 1.25 mile race, also unprecedented in race horse history. As a final nail in the coffin, he still holds the fastest times for ALL 3 Triple Crown races, covering over 150 years, over 4,000 race horses and approximately 450 races! Bottom line is Secretariat stretched the physical limits of what the standard thoroughbred race horse should be able to accomplish and THAT is what truly defines superiority in sports. It's not just that he won great races, it was the manner in which he won them. As a side note, his iconic stature is likewise monumemtal, and if you are old enough to have been around in 1973, he was the most significant sports personality in the world, even appearing on the front cover of 3 major periodicals in the same week (Time, Newsweek & Sports Illustrated).

That said, my top 4 sports icons are: Ruth, Ali, Jordan and Secretariat. All 4 have the perfect combination of incredible feats for their respective sports, coupled with an "unearthly" stature versus their peers. Whether an animal should be considered an Athlete will always be open for discussion, but for my money, Big Red's unprecedented performances have earned him the right to join this iconic list. If ESPN can classify him as an athlete, that's good enough for me.

Regards,
JoeT

How's this one?
 

Jim Thorpe (may be best athlete of 1st half of 20th century).
Bo Jackson (may be best athlete of 2nd half of 20th century).
Abby Wambach (one of leading female athletes of recent history, inspired millions of girls, and, since LGBT was mentioned in an earlier post, is openly married in a same sex relationship).
Secretariat (sheer dominance that's hard to compare others to).

Also considered Pele, Ali, Jim Brown, Tiger, Wilt, Kareem, Serena, Gretzky, Ruth, Cobb, Aaron, Unitas, Montana, Tyson, MJ, Oscar, Owens, Lewis, Phelps, Jenner, and probably several others.

I thought about Secretariat, but there is someone else who blows him away. As great as the Belmont, setting a world record on the final leg of the triple crown, it pales in comparison to what Jesse Owens did at the 1935 Big Ten Championships. In 45 minutes, he set 3 world records and tied a fourth. That was the greatest feat in sports history. If I were to include someone on this list for a short career vs. those others with decades of accomplishments, it would be Owens. We all know what he did at the Olympics, winning 4 gold medals in the face of Hitler and the Nazis, but that was only his second best achievement. He would be more deserving than Secretariat in my opinion.

I know the history of Owens and love the Berlin story, but Owens isn't the measure by which all sprinters gauge themselves. Records are typically meant to be broken...especially timed events. Secretariat lives on, and Owens has been passed by long ago.

Mount Rushmore
 

You make valid points except for one big difference between what Owens accomplished versus Secretariat. Jessie Owens records have been long shattered while Secretariat's amazing feats have withstood the test of time. Yes, even in lieu of all the progressive training, technology and track enhancements over the past 42 years, no horse can come close to his most hallowed records. That is why SEC stands tall above the rest. In 1973, he set 6 track records, 2 official world records and 2 "unofficial" world records "pulling up" 1/8 mile AFTER the wire. 3 track records still stand, as well as 3 of those 4 world records holding firm. The only world record not holding up was his 9 furlong peformance in the Marlboro Cup, surpassed by only a single horse by 1/5 of a second! His world class combination of sheer speed and staying power (sprinter & distance running) is unparalled in thoroughbred race horsing history. Even the immortal Babe Ruth has seen most of his legendary records fall, yet no horse can even come close to what Secretariat accomplished. Remember how Babe Ruth amazingly out homered most TEAMS in the early 1920s? Well consider the great American Pharoah being crushed by 57 lengths in the combined 3 Triple Crown races....that says it all!

Saw this in a current auction

Going outside the idea of influence outside of sports, and running with the current theme of dominance in a sport.

Eddy Merckx - 525 pro cycling victories, far more than anyone else. And not just in little races, 11 wins came in the big tours, 26 in major races, and 4 world championships 1 amateur and 3 pro. Many wins were by huge margins.

Beryl Burton - British time trial specialist, she won seven world championships, 90 British titles, and set a 12 hour record that remained better than the mens record for 2 years. And won the best all-round competition in the UK every year from 1959-1983.

Steve B

Babe Ruth
Jackie Robinson
Jim Brown
Michael Jordan

Babe Ruth, Jim Thorpe, Bobby Jones, George Vezina Pre-World War II

Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky, Jim Brown, Ted Williams Post-World War II

Babe Ruth
Michael Jordan
Wayne Gretzky
Tiger Woods

Honorable mention
Muhammad Ali
Tom Brady

Any thoughts...

I would put Pele over Tiger Woods, more important sport.

I had to Google Pele to confirm my suspicion that he was a soccer guy. I'd be willing to bet a lot of other "sports guys" would also not be overly familiar with him. Tiger on the other hand...

That would surprise me but I may be showing my age.

Alexander Joy Cartwright…with apologies to Abner

James Naismith

Walter Camp

James Creighton

These 4 gentlemen created or were credited with being the first to create the respective 4 sports. Without them it is fair to say that baseball football, basketball, and hockey may not have had the platforms for all the sports names to have shown their collective talents.

3 men and 1 woman

Ruth - larger than life while living and maybe even more so in death.
Jackie Robinson - amazing player and bigger influence on sport than anyone else.
Gretzky - I think he was the greatest player at his sport than any other person in history.
Serena Williams - arguably the greatest female athlete of all time.

So many other worthy options out there of course!

Bill

Ruth
Jordan
Gretzky
Brady

Babe Ruth
Gretsky
Pele
Herb Brooks

Nicklaus
Ruth
Brady
Serena

Next
Jordan
Gretzky
Ali
Tiger

I am sure I have commented on this thread before, but here are my thoughts today:

Ruth
Brady
Gretzky
Jordan

Great thread.

My choices are: Wagner, Thorpe, Staubach, Pele

All represent excellence and were great ambassadors for sport.

Babe Ruth
Babe Didrickson
Babe Parilli
Babe Dye

Am I doing this wrong?

I don’t remember commenting before (forgive me if I did) but my choices would be:

Babe Ruth—Saved baseball after the black Sox scandal and was the biggest celebrity in America in his day.
Jesse Owen’s—Great runner who embarrassed Hitler in the 1936 Olympics
Jim Brown—Greatest football player ever who did and still does some amazing work with the gangs in Los Angeles
Larry Bird/Magic Johnson together—Two all time greats whose rivalry saved the NBA.

Jackie Robinson
Ali
Jordan
Woods

Arnold Palmer
Lou Gehrig
Richard Petty
Walter Payton

Michael Jordan

Honus Wagner

Muhammad Ali

Wayne Gretzky



(although I like Palmer, Petty, and Gehrig)

Mt. Rushmore
 

I'll go with players, not coaches or inventors. In no particular order:

1) Babe Ruth

2) Jesse Owens

3) Wilt Chamberlain

4) Muhammad Ali

I'll never get all the Jordan love. Bird/Magic did more to renew interest in
the NBA- and I can't wait until fans find out why Jordan magically
disappeared from the sport for, what, a season and a half? Then there won't
even be an argument:) Trent King

Ruth - greatest baseball player and loved worldwide
Ali - greatest boxer and loved worldwide
Pele - greatest soccer player and loved worldwide
Gretzky - greatest hockey player and very popular among hockey playing parts of the world

Rushmore
 

Mark- hard to argue with your 4 as well. This is a tough ask! Trent King

I'm not a huge hockey fan but this list should start and end with Wayne Gretzky. He is the single most dominate player in major sports history and there simply isn't a close second. Opinions vary but statistics do not lie.

You could go with four different babes...
Fatima Diame
Allison Stokke
Anna Kournikova
Alex Morgan

My God, that's hard to outdo!

Ruth, Gretzky, Jordan, Ali

Same.

Ruth, Jordan, Ali, Gretzky
.ps...
I honestly didn't read the choices right above.

In trying to keep with the theme of the OP, here are my elections: Branch Rickey, Joe Louis, Lou Gehrig, Moses Walker and Candy Cummings.

Honorable Mention: Bobby Moore and George Mikan.

Gordie Howe-Howe could chisel his own with those meat hooks he had!
Babe Ruth
Johnny Unitas
Wilt Chamberlain

I believe it's still the case that he has more assists than anyone else has points. Jagr I think came close to ending that but fell short.

Gretzky remains the only player that I have seen in my lifetime that looked like he was playing an entirely different sport than the other players.

Jordan felt that way to me. As a Jazz fan, it just seemed like if there was a shot that mattered he was going to hit it.

Michael Jordan - because he was the greatest competitor I've ever seen and he transcended sport with Nike in a way that created a new type of athlete-entrepreneur.

Serena Williams - because she is the greatest tennis player of all time and the other half of humanity needs representation. 23 majors, 14 doubles majors, 3 or 4 gold medals.

Wayne Gretzky - because anyone legitimately called "The Great One" makes the cut. Getting to sit in the corporate seats handed down from my mom's Eastern European boss was about the best thing in my teenage years. Go Kings Go!

Alex Honnold - because he accomplished the greatest athletic achievement in human history. Period.

EDDY MERCKX
The cycling GOAT. Remove all of his success at the Tour de France and he would still be the cycling GOAT!!


ISAAC BURNS MURPHY
More than a century before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in major league baseball, black athletes were dominating America's first national sport. The sport was horse racing and the greatest jockeys were slaves and the sons of slaves. Isaac Burns Murphy was the greatest of them all.

He won 628 of his 1,412 starts—a 44% victory rate which has never been equaled, and a record about which Hall of Fame jockey Eddie Arcaro said: "There is no chance that his record of winning will ever be surpassed.”

He rode in eleven Kentucky Derbies, winning three times. He was the first jockey to win three Kentucky Derbys. Murphy is the only jockey to have won the Kentucky Derby, the Kentucky Oaks, and the Clark Handicap in the same year (1884).


ONOMASTOS OF SMYRNA
Onomastos of Smyrna was the first ever Olympic champion in boxing and also wrote the rules of Ancient Greek boxing as well. He also holds a record which remains remarkable even today. After hundreds of ancient and modern Olympiads, he’s still the boxer with the most Olympic boxing titles (4) to his name. Laslzo Papp, the world’s greatest amateur boxer of the twentieth century, came close to Onomastos’ record—but he stopped at three Olympic victories before becoming a professional boxer.


MARTIN STREL
Martin Strel is a Slovenian long-distance swimmer. He is one of the most elite endurance athletes, best known for swimming the entire length of various rivers. Strel holds successive Guinness World Records for swimming the Danube, the Mississippi, the Yangtze and the Amazon. He's been attacked by piranhas and dodged dead bodies on the most grueling swims ever completed. His athletic accomplishments are too impressive to make sense of.

Strel's first two river swims were the Krka river (65 miles) in 28 hours in 1992, and the Kolpa river (39 miles) in 16 hours in 1993.

In 2000, he swam the length of the Danube, covering 1,878 miles in 58 days, setting a world record and providing a taste of things to come.

Two years later, he broke his own record on the Mississippi, swimming from northern Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico (2,360 miles) in 68 days. He spent about 12 hours in the water each day.

In 2003, he swam the entire Paraná River (2,484 miles) in Argentina in 24 days. He swam from dawn to dust and averaged over 49 miles per day.

In 2004, he took on the toxic waters of the Yangtze, covering 2,488 miles in 50 days, passing several floating corpses along the way. The Yangtze provided a useful tune-up for his greatest swim of all, the Amazon.

In 2007, he swam from Peru to the South Atlantic (3,278 miles) in 68 days. The Amazon is home to one-third of the animal species in the world and Strel encountered most of them up close. He avoided the candiru. He managed to swim past crocodiles that lined the shores in shallow waters. He escaped bull sharks. Strel wasn’t able to dodge all the predators, however. He brought home a souvenir he’ll never lose; an eight-inch gash across his back where piranhas bit through his wet suit. It is a half-inch deep. He didn’t bother to get it stitched.

Strel was 52 years old when he finished his Amazon swim !!!

Ruth
Orr
Ali
Brady


If I liked Basketball I'd swap out Jordon for Ali - but I don't :-)

Great stuff and great learning

Thanks for sharing

Ruth
Brady
Jordan
Gretzky

To see Strel, your first reaction is not going to be, there is perhaps the most remarkable endurance athlete ever to live.

https://unofficialnetworks.com/2016/...-best-athlete/

My Mount Rushmore
 

Wayne Gretzky (did things never seen before OR after him)

Babe Ruth (did things never seen before OR after him)

Wilt Chamberlain (did things never seen before OR after him)

The numbers on these three are phenomenal. Unmatched. Then, and since then.

Mine is based on the exciting entertainment value felt by younger sports fans. The players we were glued to the TV watching every time they touched the ball or puck.

1. Wayne Gretzky - DUH!!!!!!!! What's that quote? He was better in his sport than anyone else was in theirs.
2. Reggie Jackson - every single one of his at bats was a magical moment of great expectations. You could not wait for him to step into the batter's box for another chance of knocking the ball into oblivion!!
3. 'Dr. J.'/Dominique Wilkens - man oh man did both of these uber-coordinated freaks of nature attack the court!! Completely mesmerizing.
4. Mark Gastineau - whether you rooted for him or against him, your level of involvement was the same, one-hundred-freaking-percent!!

Naming an all-sport Mt. Rushmore is a near-impossible task, but I align the closest with Glyn's post. And spelling "Didrikson" correctly is nearly as impossible! :rolleyes: