Philippe Quintais my favorite petanque player, extraordinary tireur!
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Sure but, again not to get further off topic, EPO has very different impacts upon different individuals and because of Lance’s very low natural hematocrit he likely benefited much more than some of his unmasked peers.
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They’re all on drugs.
Let’s just enjoy the spectacle.
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Your right that my personal opinion isn’t relevant (and could be snobbish for all I know) but I suppose I’m mainly saying that NFL is only played in one country and this makes it much harder to argue that a player of such a niche sport could be the GOAT sportsperson.
A variation is played in canada and there are leagues in most european countries and since quite a while.
Cricket isn’t very wide spread either and laughed at in many countries. 
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Who is the greatest all round athlete of all time??
If you averaged power, endurance, speed etc…
Well my GOAT for American Football is Marshall Faulk Running back for the Colts and later the Rams with whom he won one of those MVP thingys.
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Eamon Sullivan? only swimmer to have participated.
Good shout with Bubka, absolutely dominated for years and held the record for years after that. Light years ahead of his time.
Anybody mentioned Sir Steve Redgrave?
For those who don’t follow or care about cricket, the reason the Don is so well respected and considered is this. Total runs scored is subjective in a lot of ways as many batsmen have dominated against crap teams. Lara getting the highest total against us for example. However your average is what marks you as a batsman. I think mine is something like 12 in Sunday league cricket. The Don averaged 99.94 against all test nations and teams at the time over a 20 year period. The next best player is currently 61.87 and that’s astounding although only over one year when he was unstoppable.
He was literally almost twice the player that anybody else has ever tried to be throughout his career.
Tyson against Ali? I think Tyson would have battered him. But again, it’s subjective. The Don was objectively on a different planet.
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I think in order to be considered the Greatest Athlete of All Time, you really have to compete in a sport that is popular and competitive across a wide number of people. Simply for the reason of having a maximum quantity of possible “great competitors”. Some sports I don’t feel can realistically be put in there - American Football is really only played to a competitive level in one country. If it were as popular as Soccer or even Rugby then there likely would have been other talented athletes come through who could change the face of the sport. As it is the limited number of competitors means I can’t justify in my mind including American Footballers as among the greatest ever.
Athletics, particularly running competitions, cycling and swimming have a deep number of strong, competitive athletes from right across the world and is largely available to all, as they are relatively cheap to participate in, so to dominate in those sports is significantly harder in my opinion.
Athletics (Short Distance): Usain Bolt. He’s miles ahead of the competition here. 8 Olympic Gold medals, 11 World Championships. Carl Lewis, Michael Johnson and Jesse Owens have a claim but Bolt is far more dominant than any of them.
Athletics (Middle Distance): Hicham El Guerrouj. Holds the world record at 1500m, 1 mile and 2000m. 2 Olympic Gold medals, 7 World Championships. Holds 7 of the top 10 1500m times. David Rudisha is probably the next best at this distance.
Athletics (Long Distance): Mo Farah. 4 Olympic gold medals, 6 world championships. Between 2011-2017 he was utterly dominant. Kenenisa Bekele, Haile Gabreselassie also greats.
Athletics (Marathon): Eliud Kipchoge. Not close. Only 1 Olympic gold but he has 8 World Marathon Majors. He has ran 15 Marathons and won 13 of them. Holds the World Record of 2:01:39 set at Berlin 2018 and became the first man to run under 2 hours in the Ineos Challenge. Won London and Chicago Marathons four times. Runner up for me would be Paula Radcliffe, who we seem to have forgotten just how dominant she was.
Athletics (Ultra): Killian Jornet. Won UTMB in 2008, 2009 and 2011 as well as wins in Western States and Hardrock 100. Six time Skyrunner series champion. Jim Walmsley and Yiannis Kouros close 2nd and 3rd.
Swimming (Olympic): Michael Phelps obviously. The greatest Olympian of all time with 23 golds. No one else is close really.
Swimming (Long Distance): Martin Strel. Holds the World Record for swimming the Danube, Mississippi, Yangtze and Amazon Rivers.
Cycling (Velodrome): Chris Hoy. 6 time Olympic champion, 11 time world champion. Was the driving force behind Great Britain becoming the premier Velodrome cycling nation and ushered in a period of almost total domination.
Cycling (Road): Eddie Merckx. 11 Grand Tour wins including 5 Tour de France. Never placed outside the top 10 in a Grand Tour. Lance Armstrong would have to be second. Marianne Vos also worth a shout here. This category is harder to rank as finding someone who isn’t doping is difficult and even those not caught carry around a suspicion. I wouldn’t include any of them as serious contenders for the “title” of GOAT for that reason.
Triathlon: Jan Frodeno. Olympic gold in 2008, 3x Iron Man World Champion, 2x Ironman 70.3 World Champion, Iron-Distance record holder. Lots of amazing athletes in this field. Ali Brownlee is a double Olympic champion and Mark Allen dominated Iron Man competitions between 1989-1995.
For me, the greatest is Eliud Kipchoge but that’s just personal taste.
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Sebastian Coe!
Yes you’re right. I do wonder if Merckx has a similar threshold of amphetamines though? But he is most likely the greatest regardless.
Stop saying Joshua. He’s gash. Fury will wipe the floor with him.
Tyson is the most fearsome puncher to ever come along IMO, and even in today’s game he’d win several titles. If Fury got clipped by prime Tyson the same way Wilder clipped him, he wouldn’t have beaten the ten count.
He was a brawler, but boxing is about finesse as well as that battling ability. He was world champion and fair dues. I never thought of him in that top class tier.
We differ (again!)
I truly hope that Joshua knocks Fury out in the first round, or gives him such a trimming in the first three or four that his reputation is embedded in the history of the sport. Tyson wasn’t always able to punch his way to victory. Fearsome as he was he lacked that bit of guile.
He didn’t need guile to beat his peers at the time. Tyson’s only real rival was himself.
Joshua is a shitty boxer and fury is going to expose him badly. Losing to fatty Ruiz wasn’t an accident, it just showed how limited a fighter Joshua is. If Fury shows up in the same shape as his second Wilder fight, Joshua doesn’t stand a chance.
I don’t think Tyson does what he has done of his career (sure, it could’ve/should’ve been more) only with streetfighting. That’s a bit underrating him. To put Wilder in his company is an insult to Tyson in my opinion, regardless where we rank Mike.
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I’ll start with swimming. If you’re the best hammer thrower or javelin chucker in the world, you’re only winning one gold medal. If you’re the fastest swimmer, you can win a bucket full at every olympics so I’d judge swimming medals a little lower overall.
I remember watching Steve Cram win everything back in that day but all his records will be and were broken. All track and field records are broken over time. Bolt’s record will not endure just like Roger Banister’s didn’t. The beauty of track and field is that ultimately, you’re only competing against the clock or the tape. Unless of course you’re Mary Decker Slaney against Zola Bud. If somebody ran the 100m tomorrow in 8 seconds (which will happen) then that would be almost magic. Throwing the shotput 50m would be the same. People get faster and stronger over time (thanks Darwin) but how do you judge skill? Was Pele better than Suarez? Messi vs Maradona? Always subjective. I refer to Sir Don Bradman’s 99.94 average.
Did he need the guile? He was by far the most vicious and ferocious boxer I’ve ever seen in his day. I guess the beauty of football is that the strongest or fastest isn’t the best. Kicking the ball the hardest is not a yardstick for judging a quality footballer. Rory Delap would be a multiple gold medal winner in a different reality where throwing a football was an Olympic sport.
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He was vicious and ferocious, but tactical boxers like Lewis and Holyfield out thought him.
I genuinely don’t see him in the highest echelons of the sport.