Greatest Ever Sportsman?

[Marc Meakin]

There are almost as many cases of brain damage caused by heading a football, back in the day when they were leather

[JimBentley]

I've seen many a stoppage caused by a good body shot

But that's a stoppage, not a knockout, they're completely different things! I'm not making any kind of value judgement on boxing here, I quite enjoy watching it, but let's not pretend it doesn't engender risks for the participants, most often manifested as loss of cognitive function.

There are almost as many cases of brain damage caused by heading a football, back in the day when they were leather

Yes, possibly (although I would argue with "almost as many", I don't think the numbers are remotely comparable), but it wasn't recognised until long after the leather balls were phased out, so I'm not sure what could have been done about it. Boxing on the other hand has always been recognised as being potentially harmful to the fighters, right back to the bare-knuckle days.

[Marc Meakin]

I think boxers know the risks before taking up the sport as do Motor sport drivers/riders.
By all means do anything necessary to make its as safe as possible but banning the sport will drive it underground

[Gavin Chipper]

I think boxers know the risks before taking up the sport as do Motor sport drivers/riders.
By all means do anything necessary to make its as safe as possible but banning the sport will drive it underground

I think there's a difference between a sport where there is a risk of injury and a sport where the actual aim is to injure your opponent.

[Marc Meakin]

That includes all combat sport then .

[Paul Worsley]

I concur again with Bradman.

I find this weird. I don't think I could say who the greatest ever sportsman would be, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't choose a cricketer. Cricket doesn't test athletic abilities in any meaningful way and one person's influence over the team performance is only ever going to be limited at best. So I can't understand why anybody would choose a cricketer as "greatest ever sportsman". I mean, it's barely even a sport. Mike Gatting used to play it when he was basically just a barrel of lard and didn't do too badly, that's got to say something.

One way to quantify how great someone was is to look at how much better they were than the guy who is considered to be the second best. When you do this you see that Bradman was extraordinary. Several cricketers achieved batting averages ranging from 59-61, but Bradman stands out alone at 99.9. I'm not a cricket fan, but I don't know of anyone who has dominated his/her sport as much as Don Bradman, and he is certainly a contender for Greatest Ever Sportsman.

[Marc Meakin]

Jahangir Khan and Joe Davis spring to mind

[Gavin Chipper]

On Donald Bradman, you'd think at least one person on the internet would have retrospectively given him the name "Donaldo". But a Google search of +Donaldo Bradman came up with zero matches. (The plus is so it has to include the term and not just the similar "Donald". There is no requirement for the name to appear consecutively in that order.)

[Paul Worsley]

Similarly, +Donald Bradass came up with nothing.

[Ian Volante]

He's already known as The Don.

[Marc Meakin]

If the criteria for greatest ever sportsman is to be so dominant in his sport then Duplantis must be up there.
He's just broken the world record for the 11th time

[Fred Mumford]

Easier for a pole vaulter to do that than for most other events though. If Bob Beamon could have worked up to 8.90m in 1cm increments he'd have broken the world record over 50 times.

[Gavin Chipper]

Plus no-one does the pole vault. Sergey Bubka did a similar thing with the event in the 80s/90s.

[Gavin Chipper]

(although Ronnie is an incredibly capable runner).

Yeah, top 200 in the South of England is quality, given the high standard.

Looking at his Power of 10 profile his best time seems to be 34:54 for 10k. That puts him at the level of OK club runner. Faster than me (by about 1:42) but there are several people in most local athletics clubs faster than that.

He may have come in the top 200 in a south of England race but he was never anywhere near the top 200 of all south of England runners.

(Sorry for waiting over 15 years to reply.)

[Marc Meakin]

Plus no-one does the pole vault. Sergey Bubka did a similar thing with the event in the 80s/90s.

In comparison to other sports maybe but there are still a lot of competitors.
Jahangir Khan in ssquash is a better comparison.
Though Joe Davis in snooker is the best example of a world champ with limited competition