who s the greatest?

[wesw]

jim brown , lacrosse legend, is about to be interviewed on Fox Business, and it got me to wondering....

who is the all-time greatest athlete?

I have my fav all picked out, and it isn t the obvious choice...

I ll save mine.

who are your choices?

[wesw]

fine. I ll go first.

jim Thorpe.

and I am unanimous in that!

[oldr_n_wsr]

I always thought Bo Jackson was one of the greatest. Playing both football and baseball at the pro level. But his careers were cut short by a hip injury (ended up requiring an artificial hip).
Bruce Jenner was another.

[wesw]

yeah, bo was definitely a contender....

[wesw]

I was gonna list the different sports he played at a high level for a long time.

I went to Wikipedia for accuracy.

even I had forgotten the extent of his skill and achievement.

I highly recommend the wiki page.

[oldr_n_wsr]

From what I heard/saw, he's an accomplished bow hunter also.
didn't check wiki yet

[Bicycle Bill]

Anyone who gets paid hundreds of millions of dollars to bounce a basketball, throw a football, or hit a baseball with a bat is not an athlete.  They may be athletic, but as long as they are doing it, on demand, for such an obscene amount of money they are no better than a prostitute.  The only difference is that instead of charging one person at a time a fee for lying on their backs in a dark room going, "oh baby, yeah baby, right there baby", they ply their trade in a vast stadium in front of tens of thousands of people — all of whom have paid significant amounts of money.  And then, after even a moderately successful performance, they go into the "oh baby, yeah baby" routine too.

So if I had to name the greatest athlete in (known) history, it would be Mildred Ella Didrikson Zaharias.
Otherwise referred to as "Babe" Didrikson.

-"BB"-

[Lord Jim]

The only difference is that instead of charging one person at a time a fee for lying on their backs in a dark room going, "oh baby, yeah baby, right there baby"

That sounds like the voice of experience Bill...

[wesw]

sounds like he never read The Jim Thorpe Story....

it was right around the corner from the aasimov books, I don t know how he missed it.

[Lord Jim]

It's difficult to compare athletes of different eras, but for all-round athletic achievement, it's tough to think of anyone better than a guy who won Olympic gold medals in the Pentathlon and Decathlon, and excelled at college and pro football, (where he played four positions: running back, defensive back, placekicker and punter) pro baseball, and pro basketball...

Jim Thorpe:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Thorpe

ETA:

(I was in the process of researching Thorpe while wes posted; I didn't get the idea from him.... )

[Bicycle Bill]

The only difference is that instead of charging one person at a time a fee for lying on their backs in a dark room going, "oh baby, yeah baby, right there baby"

That sounds like the voice of experience Bill...

LJ, only once in my life did I meet with a 'woman of negotiable virtue'.  I was on a three-day casino junket flight to Elko, NV (where brothels are legal) so I figured "what the hey?" and went to check one out.  Place I chose looked like a regular bar; there was nothing on the outside to indicate otherwise.

(actual place, btw; no longer exists however)

It was still daytime (middle afternoon), so I walked in and sat down at the bar and had a beer; the bartender asked if I just wanted a drink or if I was looking for anything special (nudge-nudge, wink-wink).  I explained that I was curious about the place and he called over a lady (who appeared to be around 30-something) who sat with me for a few minutes while I finished my beer and then offered me a walk-through/tour of the place.  I accepted and we went from the bar into the back area; she escorted me through and showed me the jacuzzi room, the sauna, and a couple of other larger party spaces; then we ended in a hallway with a couple of smaller, private rooms and entered her own workspace, where she made it clear that she was "open for business" and I was free to negotiate from a list of 'services' and eventually strike a deal.  However, when I found out what the "suggested retail price" was for some of the services (remember this was back in the mid-1990s, and even then just the 'basics' would have destroyed a C-note), I decided that I would not be able to reach a satisfactory bargain, thanked her for her time, and ended up buying a hat on the way out.

I still have the hat.......

-"BB"-

[rubato]

For a one or two-sport athlete I would nominate Eric Heiden.

ALL of the gold medals in speed skating in the olympics. No athlete in any discipline has ever equalled.
3 world championships in overall skating
3 world championships in sprints

Went on to get an MD and residency in Orthopedic surgery.

Nice guy, not an asshole.

yrs,
rubato

[Long Run]

Bruce Jenner was another.

Jenner barely makes the top 10 decathlete of all time list, but his marketing savvy made his excellence seem bigger than it was.

And Jim is right, it is almost pointless to try to compare different eras. Jim Thorpe dominated a couple of sports and excelled at a few others in his time, but if he were to have come along 50+ years later, he would be a good athlete in one sport, not dominant, and would have stopped playing the other sports in high school. He was a modern day athlete in a time where there were far fewer athletes and very few athletes that could compete today. In that he is like Babe Ruth, Babe Zaharias and other icons of that day who were ahead of their time, but would just be another good athlete now.