Greatest sportsman of all time. Who is it?

[rich p]

C B Fry

CRICKET
He scored 94 first-class centuries, including an unprecedented six consecutive centuries in 1901. No-one else has scored more consecutive hundreds.[3] He captained England in six Test matches in 1912, of which England won four and drew two. In 1921 he was invited to captain England again at the age of 49, but declined

ATHLETICS
In athletics, Fry equalled the then world long jump record of 23 feet 6 1/2 inches (7.17 m) in 1893

FOOTBALL
He achieved his aim of international honours when (along with Southampton's goalkeeper, Jack Robinson) he was picked for England for the match against Ireland on 9 March 1901

RUGBY
Fry also played Rugby union for the Oxford University RFC, Blackheath and the Barbarians

MISCELLANEOUS
According to a Manchester newspaper, Fry was able, from a stationary position on the floor, to leap backwards onto a mantelpiece.

 

[ACS]

How about the last Sharifian Emperor of Morocco, Mulai Ismail (1646-1727). In 1703 he had at least 342 daughters and 525 sons.

 

[Lardyboy]

I think Ali was over-rated, as good as he was. His fame came more from his personality than his talent.

I'm with Joe on this. He played the media very well, but his "phantom punch" which "knocked out" Sonny Liston shows how corrupt boxing was, and still is.

Greatest sportsman/woman? Very difficult to decide as there are so many disciplines required for each one. Let me think about it for a while please.

 

[asterix]

MISCELLANEOUS
According to a Manchester newspaper, Fry was able, from a stationary position on the floor, to leap backwards onto a mantelpiece.

In that case there can be no further discussion..

 

[Flying_Monkey]

In that case there can be no further discussion..

Quite so.

And he could do it after a seriously fine dinner.

 

[tyred]

I would say Juan Manuel Fangio. He was possibly the greatest Grand Prix driver that ever lived (only Michael Schumacher deserves comparison IMO). He started competing at a top level at a much older age than most successful sportsmen, won 5 world championships in 7 years, easily had the measure of all his contemporaries and all of those who raced against him have nothing but admiration for him and are happy to acknowledge he was better than them and he was always extremely modest about his own achievements. He set a record which remained in place for about 50 years until Schumacher bettered it and he win 24 of the 51 grand prixs he started, almost a 50% success rate and record I doubt anyone will ever beat.

 

[User482]

Stop the thread! Bradman isn't ONE of the greatest but demonstrably THE greatest and will almost certainly never be topped.

He was a freak of nature and an abberation and in all probability, we will not see his like again. In cricket, they refer to it as the Bradman Problem; for all the new training, better diets and larger population giving us a vastly increased talent pool, no one has yet got anywhere near his towering achievements. And Bradman was far better at cricket than anyone has ever been at any other measurable sport. The next best player is cricketing history is further behind him than anyone in any other sport. In an obituary for Bradman in Feb 2001, the New York Times, not an organ that features cricket over-much, mathematically converted his cricket average into other sporting measures - Basketball points per game, Baseball hits per innings. Bradman, they concluded, was better than Michael Jordan, Babe Ruth or Ty Cobb.

Taking all factors into consideration, for a current player to be as good as Bradman, they would need to average about 77. No one is yet out of the high 50s. So there we have it. Whenever the question rears its head again, you can say with confidence that the greatest sportsman of all time is and will probably remain, the great Donald Bradman.

+1

Therer aren't many sports where there is universal agreement that one particular player is the best of all time. And as you point out, Bradman wasn't just the best, he was the best plus a huge amount of daylight to the chasing pack of other great cricketers.

Interestingly, his technique was rather unorthodox. Batsmen are taught to place the bat behind the back foot and keep their backlift straight, but Bradman used to place his bat between his feet, and then arc his backlift towards slip.

 

[beancounter]

My vote goes to Mark Allen the 6 time winner of the Ironman World Championship, Kona, Hawaii, 5 of which where consecutive.

He went undefeated in 10 trips to the Nice International Championships (Olympic distance) and from 1988-1990 he put together a winning streak of 20 races.

Over the course of his racing career, which ended in 1996, he maintained a 90% average in top-three finishes.

Not well known outside the world of Triathlon he excelled in 3 different sports and his ability to race at all distances from short to ultra distance must put him in the running for the title.

I'll second Mark Allen.

bc