Who is the greatest athlete?

Clearly the answer is Edward Charles 'Whitey' Ford.

I see Eddy Merckx was mentioned. He'd be my vote.

The winningest bike racer of all time:



They called him "The Cannibal" because of the way he ate up his rivals and spit them out his back wheel.

I love this quote from Monsi in the debate linked above:
"(and before anyone pipes up with 'Lance Armstrong', Armstrong wasn't fit to carry Merckx's amphetamines)"

infrablue, you are right. I thought of Lance Armstrong, but Merckx did much more to be the greatest, and most of it on his own.

I've always been partial to Edwin Moses.

Well, he really didn't do it on his own. Pro cycling is a team sport, and he had some of the best supporting riders, domestiques, on the teams that were assembled around him. His riders would suffer greatly working for him, average riders having to perform at his level, which was above and beyond average. Many would burn out in a few seasons, or would change teams because they couldn't maintain the level of performance that the job demanded of them.

Armstrong was the winningest Tour de France rider ever, winning an unprecedented seven consecutive tours. That is no mean feat. But he did it at the expense of the rest of the pro racing season, ignoring the multitude of other races to concentrate on the Tour. Pro racing is much more than just the Tour. He won few other races, and he sold his sport short by ignoring those other races. Few of his fans know that there are other major national tours in pro bike racing, like the Giro d'Italia and the Ruta a España, and major one day races like Paris-Roubaix, Milan-San Remo, the Tour of Flanders, etc.

still thinking about who i'd pick, but i don't think "greatest sportsman" and "greatest athlete" are necessarily the same person...

John Kruk, or David Wells.

Jim Thorpe gets my vote.

No, wait...David Wells and John Kruk had to stand through 9 innings.

Any of those fat guys wearing a Hawaiin shirt playing on an ESPN poker tournament. World class "athletes."

for greatest athlete, i guess i'd have to say long-jumper Mike Powell.

in '95 he set the record of 29'-4", breaking Bob Beamon's '68 olympic record, who broke Jesse Owens '35 record...

A bit about Moses from wiki...

"That summer, he qualified for the US team for the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal. Though it was his first international meet, Moses won the gold medal and set a world record of 47.64 seconds.

After breaking his own world record the following year, Moses lost to Germany's Harald Schmid on August 26, 1977 in Berlin, his fourth defeat in the 400-meter hurdles. Beginning the next week, when he beat Schmid by 15 meters in Düsseldorf, Moses would not lose again for almost a decade.

By the time American Danny Harris beat Moses in Madrid on June 4, 1987, Moses had won 122 consecutive races, set the world record two more times, won three World Cup titles, won two World Championships, and earned his second Olympic gold medal in Los Angeles, where he was selected to take the Olympic Oath. After losing to Harris, he won 10 more races in a row, then finished third in the final 400-meter race of his career at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul."


He dominated for so long....and continues to contribute...a true olympian...a true American.

He is often overlooked on many of the "Top" lists that I have read.

It is easier to pick the best in individual sports.

Basketball - Michael Jordan
Boxing - Muhammad Ali
Tennis - Rod Laver (not Federer, in my opinion)
Track - Edwin Moses (easy to agree with what 2packs said)

How do you determine the greatest athlete overall?

Variety of Skills? (Jim Thorpe)

Difficulty of the Sport? (Heavyweight Boxing)

As usual, anytime we have a choice and taste plays a role, it is impossible to agree.
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What really bothers me is the choice of "top athlete of the Olympics" usually a 100 meter man. How anyone can pick a 9 second event to be tops is hard to figure out.
Decathlon comes to mind; beating the odds over two days.