Who ya got? I'll throw out Steven Redgrave. All well and good to be Mike Phelps and win 8 golds in one Olympics. Come back to me in 20 years time if he's winning Golds, then we'll talk. Redgrave remained the very best in his sport - Rowing - from LA in 1984 to Sydney in 2000, winning Gold in every Olympics. 5 games, 5 Gold medals, top of his sport for TWO decades. He only rowed one event each time. Like I said....who ya got?
Greatest OLYMPIAN, not greatest multi millionaire with inordinate number of shoe and product sponsorship
I'll say Jim Thorpe. The guy was one of the greatest athletes this country has ever seen. He won Golds in the Pentathlon and Decathlon and was easily the worlds best athlete in his day.
Yep - good call. Any Decathlete deserves to be up there. Daley Thompson for example. Roman Schebrele.
Carl Lewis is the first olympian who comes to mind for he. He was dominate for a long time and in multiple events. Sprinting and long jump. Takes a freakish athlete to pull that off.
phelps has to be ahead of this guy......he had multiple events....some the same day.....only hours of rest in between.....and still dominated the best in the world..... gotta go with phelps
I think it'll be interesting to see how Phelps does in the next Olympics. If he does well (we'll say 3 or 4 Golds?) then he has to go down as the greatest IMO.
alexander karelin-- russian wrestler ruled his division for a very long time. Gold 1988 Seoul Super heavyweight Gold 1992 Barcelona Super heavyweight Gold 1996 Atlanta Super heavyweight Silver 2000 Sydney 97 - 130 kg
End thread. Seriously though.... i got a few: Felix Savon, and Teofilo Stevenson, both were 3 time gold medalists in the Heavyweight division for Cuba. (boxing) Carl Lewis, kinda obvious...9 gold medals in Track and Field with 4 consecutive golds in the long jump in 4 different olympics.
just to throw another name out there for conversation sake (since i believe it is Phelps); Kurt Angle won his Olympic Gold medal in wrestling with a broken neck.
Can we give winter olympic people? If so, Bonnie Blair was awesome. I always remember her blowing everyone away
Carl Lewis I think has to be in the discussion. What he was able to acocmplish over a long period of time and stay away from the huge Track and Field scandals shows how taleneted he really was. I tend to think that Phelps HAS to be in the discussion. the guy has 14 gold medals and 16 medals overall while swimming in three Olympics so far. Once he gets to London. it will be his fourth games and he will most likely add even more hardware to his already impressive resume. Karelin is a GREAT call by Luciano. It is unfortunate that wrestling is not popular in the states. Rulon Gardner beating Karelin is right up there with the U.S. Hockey teams upset of the Soviet Union, if not larger. Karelin hadn't lost in like a decade or something like that (not just the Olympics...but everywhere) and Rulon beat him for the Gold. Jackie Joyner-Kersee was an excellent athlete who won gold at multiple Olympics as well and still holds the World Record in the Heptathlon. And personally, anyone who can run a marathon, let alone do it right around two hours needs to be in consideration.
Yes, but it was one gold medal from one games. Impressive story. Great story in fact, but he doesn't hold a candle to some of the others that have been mentioned.
84-00' is 16 years but who's counting? just bustin ya boom.....gotta agree....what he did was awesome, I aint gunna argue that
Larissa Latynina from the Soviet Union, Gymnastics. Should be the no.1 best Olympian ever, she did won 18 medals with 9 gold from 1954 to 1965.
London will be Phelps' 3rd games dude. He would have been 11 in 1996. Too young even to be a Chinese gymnast.
Phelps undoubtedly just had the greatest single game of any Olympian but the thing is he is only 23. He has said he will compete until he is 30 which means he has at least one, and if he pushes it to 31 years of age, 2 more games. Depending on what he does with that its going to be VERY interesting to see what kind of total gold count he ends up with. Right now I think you can make a valid argument for others who stayed on top of their sport for longer periods of time but what if Phelps ends up breaking the 20 gold mark? He has a chance to go down as the no doubt, no debate, greatest olympian of all time. How much fun would that be to watch?
2000,2004, 2008. I didnt realize he competed in Sydney in '00, but I guess he came in 5th in the 200M Butterfly. And we all know what he did in Athens and now Beijing.
Yeah, I also would like to mention her. She has won gold medals over a span of 24 years (1980, 1988, 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004). She didn't attend the games in 1984 because of the boycott. Here is an overview of her impressive run. However, she was running in different boat classes and she was mainly successful in K-2 and K-4. Still impressive.
if medals won is the determining factor, i agree, but even still Angle's name bares mentioning. and compared to those competing in non-contact sports, it vaults him above most people with more medals in my book. pick your favorite Olympian in any sport, now add a broken neck to his or her life at the time they are training for whatever sport they are in, and they ain't winning gold, if they manage to compete at that level at all.
talk about homerism what bolt did was more impressive to most non-americans than what phelps did 3 golds 3 world records in arguably the most anticipated events yes phelps had his records but how many records were broken in the "special" pool with the "special suits" I think 9 records were broken not including Phelps
phelps won 8 gold medals swimming every stroke, against people who train their entire lives mastering a singe stroke. the records when talking about phelps are secondary to the amount of events he won. Bolt was impressive do not get me wrong but what phelps did was incredible.
Phelps has my vote at this time. 6 gold and 2 bronze in 2004 and then 8 gold this year and he has 2012 in his sights. That rowing guy you mentioned has a nice streak though. Gotta give him props
Phelps How you can judge the greatest Olympian while dismissing the number of world records and total gold medals?
track and field is so tainted now, with doping always in the back of everyone's mind. so when a guy blows away the existing records like Bolt did, anyone familiar with the word BALCO, or the name Marion Jones (or the host of other sprinters who have been caught taking performance enhacing drugs for that matter) pretty much assumes he is juicing, but has found the next designer version that is, as yet undetectable. doesn't make it true, but on two different nights, with two different crowds, i heard the same thing from people.
And if you listened to the reporters who commented on the track in Beijing, it was one of the fastest tracks ever built. How many people set world records and or personal best times on that track? Not to mention those "special shoes." There was nothing special about the pool in Beijing. Same length as every other Olympic sized pool and indoors where other elements can't help/hinder (unlike track and field which has different surfaces/elements to deal with). Bolt was simply amazing, but his three gold medals and three world records do not hold a candle to Phelp's 8 gold medals and 7 world records. And that was just in these games. Factor in what he did in Athens and Bolt's 3 gold medals look downright laughable to Phelps' 14.
I agree he did not participate in the ATLANTA games. However he DID participate in Sydney in 2000. Which means once he hits the London games in 2012, he will have competed in four Olympics at the age of 27 with an outside shot of finishing his career with 20 Gold Medals.
That's my vote. People talk about all the "hardships" and "adversity" that today's athletes go through sometimes. I want to see any single one of them walk into the cauldron he did, in the time he did and do what he did. All of today's athletes would fold up like a tent.
Yeah, because swimmers don't dope? You are foolish if you think only track athletes do. Every country dopes, and every country has access to untracable enhancers. Did Phelps dope? Not until proven otherwise. You should hold the same true for Bolt.
He has more opportunities given that swimming has a million events though. An athlete in any sport, by virtue of doing a different one, doesnt have the chance to do what he did. He's obviously at/near the top of the list. But I dont know if he deserves the title of greatest ever based on metals alone.
Actually I heard the pool was 3 meters deep instead of 2 which reduced the splash or something like that
