Greatest British athlete/sports person?

[snorri]

I'd ban professional sport, isn't professional sport an oxymoron anyway?
As for professional athletes, a drain on the resources, a bunch of play actors the lot of them with their aches, pains and injuries.
Glad I got that off my chest..

 

[rich p]

I'm with you - I find it hard to understand why people can't just race for the country they were born in, or if circumstances change, race for the country they live in. Makes it even harder when they don't even do that.

Mo Farah is far from running under a flag of convenience as has been pointed out earlier. There's a world of difference between pretending to move country as the Kenyans I referred to, those like Kevin Pietersen, and Mo Farah.
He moved here to join his British father, who was born in London, at the age of 8. He was educated and started running in Britain. It would be bizarrely perverse for him to return to Somalia to run.
He's as British as I am with 2 parents of differing nationality.

 

[ComedyPilot]

I'd ban professional sport, isn't professional sport an oxymoron anyway?
As for professional athletes, a drain on the resources, a bunch of play actors the lot of them with their aches, pains and injuries.
Glad I got that off my chest..

Professional sport is one thing - you expect the team to shop for the best talent with the purse available, but nationally subsidised elite level sport should be strictly for UK resident athletes...?

Or come clean and remove gov sponsorship and go pro.

 

[stephec]

Lennox Lewis.

 

[vernon]

I was pretty good in my day

I was pretty bad in my day but the older I get the better I was.

 

[Richard A Thackeray]

Male Athletes;

Alistair Brownlee
Closely followed by his brother
Look, for example, at the 2012 London Olympic 'split' times

Ali;
Swim: 17:04
Bike: 59:08
Run: 29:07

Jonny;
Swim: 17:02
Bike: 59:11
Run: 29:37

And to put that superb performance into perspective,
Yang Sun won the 1500m freestyle swim in 14:31
Mo Farah won the 10,000m in 27:30 (& Mo hadn't swum 1500metres, or rode 43km first!!)

Not forgetting Jonnys immaculate sportsmanship, when he got the time penalty
if that had been a (so-called) professional footballer, he'd have been nose to nose with the Steward, shouting & swearing at him, the team manager would have gone to the press stating how unfair it all was, & how it had cost the win, etc.....
Jonny went on TV, & held his hands up, saying rules are rules

Top man!!! "Chapeau!!"

They also both show up at fell-races & compete on level-terms (if not level ground...), as it's where -away from School- their first forays into competition were
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-15175693

Female;
Jessica Ennis-Hill

 

[Pro Tour Punditry]

You are all nobbers, each and every one of you.

 

[Pro Tour Punditry]

My butler has got medals for being Britain's greatest nobber

According to another thread he's probably lying, anyone who won proper medals would be unassuming and not talk about it.

 

[vernon]

.....anyway who cares, Scotland got a result against Italy this afternoon.

In the freestyle deep fried pizza competition?

 

[Pro Tour Punditry]

.....anyway who cares, Scotland got a result against Italy this afternoon.

Indeed. And Melrose beat Hawick. Forfar grabbed an away draw in injury time against Ayr. Hibs won too. The fitba' team I co-manage won our first game of the season. I managed to not have to bring myself on as a sub. But I'd have scored if I had. I would have. And it would have been the best goal ever scored. Truly.

 

[winjim]

Repeating the men's 5k now on Eurosport. Worth another watch I reckon

 

[screenman]

I bet there's a Somali cycling forum where people are indignantly typing furiously at each other...GREATEST BRITISH ATHLETE....!!! - He's SOMALI - I used to go to school with him....!

He went to the same school as I did.

 

[IDMark2]

You are all nobbers, each and every one of you.

Ah, thank god for that..I had thought I might have been Scottish.

 

[Drago]

W.G.Grace is the greatest British sportsman.

 

[Shut Up Legs]

Mo Farah was born in Somalia..
so he is African..
I was born in Scotland therefore I'm British..

No BNP style agenda just basic facts...
You are where you are born, not adopted...

So does that make my 74 year old father Dutch, just because he was born in The Netherlands, and spent his first 12 years there?