Michael Phelps ranked the best athlete of the 21st Century by ESPN

Is Michael Phelps the greatest athlete of the 21st Century?


  • Total voters
    100

O.G.B

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It said 70,000 ESPN readers were the voters..

So basically a simple popularity contest from non-analysts Cacs with no actual criteria?

Fixed! :unimpressed:

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RennisDeynolds

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All I’m gonna say is Michael Phelps had nikkas watching swimming like it was game 7 of the finals. He made that sport prime time. Before then nobody gave a damn about the swimming events. Now they do them shyts in football stadiums.

Don’t think he clears Tiger though. He got EVERYBODY in golf paid.

Preach. Most decorated Olympian, he was killing every different event
 

Mike18jj

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I saw all 100 names and the list doesn't even make a lick of sense based on any metric you can think of. ESPN doesn't make sense 99 % of the time these days so this list is a reflection of that.
 

Malcolmxxx_23

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Nobody beating tiger early 99-08 run

No athlete is close to that level of dominance
 

Professor Emeritus

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Phelps is the most decorated Olympian ever by a huge margin, had the best Olympic year ever and arguably the 2nd-best Olympic year ever too, won a gold medal at just 15 and was still winning gold medals at 31, and set 39 world records covering 5 different individual events and 3 different relays.

"If" you consider swimming to be a legitimate sport to be considered the best athlete of the 21st century, then Phelps has a very good case. The main knock against him is that swimming is a partial-niche sport, where not everyone has a real shot to compete because only a small % of people get the chance to swim well from a young age.

On the other hand, you could argue that almost every sport is kind of a niche sport other than soccer and track and field (NFL is almost entirely Americans, dominant NBA players are almost entirely the 0.1% of the population over 6'5", tennis is almost only rich kids, gymnastics is short people with tiger moms, etc.). And even in track and field, there are a pretty limited # of countries you can be from and have any chance of being the best.




Phelps is great but he does it every 4 years while Serena, Bron, Tom etc.. did it every year

This is false. There is a swimming season every year and a major international swimming championship (either the Olympics, the World Championships, or the Pan-Pacific Championships) every single year. From 2001 to 2009, Phelps set a new world record every single year except 2005. He won American Swimmer of the Year 11 times (2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2012, 2015, 2016) and International Swimmer of the Year 8 times (2003, 2004, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2012, 2016). No other male swimmer has ever won more than 4 times, and only one woman has won more than 3. He's won 54 international medals including 43 gold medals OUTSIDE of the Olympics. The fact that you only watch swimming in Olympic years doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.
 
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