Tiger Wood’s heroic and brilliant win on one leg (rather like Ben Hogan’s victories after his horrific car crash) have set sports writers away on naming their 10 best athletes of all time.

Here’s the Wellington Dompost’s Fred Woodcock’s list:

1. Muhammed Ali: ‘widely regarded as the sportsman of the 20th century’
2. Carl Lewis:’the best track and field athlete’
3. Pele: ‘widely regarded as the best footballer of all time’
4. Michael Jordan: ‘highest scoring average in the NBL’
5. Tiger Woods: ‘will undoubtedly eclipse any major records he currently doesn’t have’
6. Mark Spitz: ‘remains the only Olympian to win both a gold medal in every individual event he entered in a given year, and to set a world record in each event’
7. Haile Gebrsellaise: ‘two Olympic gold medals, eight world championships, and 25 word records’
8. Eddie Merckx: ‘the most successful and best all-round cyclist’
9. Don Bradman: ‘regarded as the best batsman to grace the game’
10. Rod Laver: ‘won 11 grand slams, including all four tournaments in the same calendar year twice.’

This seems like a good list to me, although I would dispute some of the placings.

The SMH also published an interesting article by Greg Baum on his 10 best:

Muhammed Ali; Pele; Lance Armstrong; Don Bradman; Jack Nicklaus; Roger Federer; Jesse Owens; Michael Schumacker; Mark Spitz; Michael Jordan.

The lists have five of the same athletes: Ali, Pele, Bradman, Spitz and Michael Jordan.

Baum prefers Federer as his tennis player over Laver. I’d support Laver on this one.

His two grand slams indicate that he was better on all surfaces than Federer, though both players won 80 per cent of all their matches.

Nicklaus over Woods?

I think we should wait until Woods’ career is finished until he is elevated above Nicklaus. This will happen.

Woods wins 28 per cent of the gold tournaments he enters, a phenomenal Bradman-like ratio given the fact that a golfer has to defeat everyone in the tournament, unlike, say, a tennis player who defeats only eight or so opponents to win a tournament.

Nicklaus won 12 per cent of his tournaments.

And to put these statistics into a context, Baum points out that Greg Norman won six per cent of his tournaments.

Jesse Owens over Carl Lewis?

Both were sprinters and long jump champions. Lewis won ten Olympic gold medals between 1984 and 1996. Jesse Owens won four gold medals at the only Olympics he ran at.

My inclination is for Jesse Owens for reasons purely of nostalgia for the Olympics before intensive coaching and drug-taking.

Eddie Merchx or Lance Armstrong?

The issue here seems to be specialisation (seven successive Tour de France’s for Armstrong) against all-round riding (in 1974 Merchx won cycling’s Triple Crown)

Greg Baum also throws up the names of squash’s Jahangir Khan (555 unbeaten matches in a row) and Heather Mackay (unbeaten in a 19-year career).

And Walter Lindrum, also unbeaten in 21 years and one of the few athletes whose extreme skill forced significant changes in the rules of his sport.

And finally, Baum reckons that Bradman is the greatest of the greats.

I would think that it is difficult to go past this assessment. Bradman’s average in Tests of 99.94 is more than 30 runs more than the next best, which includes Michael Hussey whose average is coming down from the 70s to the lower 60s as he plays more Tests.

It would be interesting to hear what readers of The Roar think about these best athletes lists.

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