Some thoughts...
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If we're talking outside of the major sports, I'd have to think that Lance Armstrong would have to rank amongst the top. He may participate again (despite saying that he's retiring), as I recently heard that Sherryl Crow has been urging him to keep pushing.
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I was thinking about a list for some of the greatest "
Female Athletes", and I think it would go like this.
Babe Didrikson Zaharias (1911-1956) - What did she do? She won 3 Olympic medals. Not only that, but she also won 31 LPGA titles!!! And here's a list of some of the other things she did.
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AAU All-American high school basketball player
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In 1932, she single-handedly won the AAU team track and field championship (finishing 5 of the 8 events she had entered)
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'32 Summer Olympics she won 2 gold medals (she broke 2 records that were both hers), and would have won a 3rd had they not ruled her technique in the high jump ineligible (she finished with a silver)
Sidenote: She's from Beaumont, Texas... to which the
dUck may know a thing or two about her.
Martina Navratalova (1956- ) - What did she do? She won 167 singles titles!!! She won 18 Grand Slam events (tied with arch-nemesis Chris Evert... whom she held the head-to-head edge at 43-37 in for victories). As far as I know, Navratalova was playing in the tour last year in Doubles... AMAZING!!! I know that Steffi Graf has more Gland Slam titles (22 total), but she didn't have to go up against Chris Evert every other game. You could argue Graf (or Evert for that matter) over Navratalova, but I don't see it.
Sidenote: Did you know that in '88, Steffi Graf won all 4 majors as well as an Olympic gold.
Nadia Comaneci (1961- ) - What did she do? At the '76 Olympics, she scored 7 10s (absolute perfection) in the "uneven bars" in the compulsory round. She'd go on to win 3 gold, 5 medals in total, and another 2 golds in '80, taking her total medal count up to 5 gold, 3 silver, and 1 bronze.
I was also considering Jackie Joyner-Kersee (track-and-field), Steffi Graf (tennis), Chris Evert (tennis), Cheryll Miller (basketball), Sonja Henie (figure skating), Tracy Caulkins (swimming), amongst a host of others.
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GrandMaster
Talking of great sportsmen, how come nobody has mentioned Pele, the greatest football (soccer to Americans) player?
Most certainly the greatest soccer player of All-Time. He scored 1,280 goals in 1,360 games (which is 2nd All-Time next to another Brazilian by the name of Arthur Friedenreich with 1,329). He set the records for international goals at 97.
Here's a quote from a biography on him:
"
He scored an average of a goal in every international game he played--the equivalent of a baseball player's hitting a home run in every World Series game over 15 years."
Well, isn't that something.
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suzecat
Wayne Gretzky. Just whisper the name and people pay attention.
Most hockey fans and non-hockey fans (heck, isn't that pretty much the world) would pick Gretzky as the greatest in hockey (and maybe in all sports). I would have taken Gretzky in a heartbeat up until a couple of years agok, and I would have probably selected him as being the greatest in all of sports pre-Jordan era (oddly enough, I have a friend who lives in Vegas, and he's seen them hanging-out at the casinos on more than one occasion... gold buddies as well... with Lemieux). Now, I'm not so sure anymore. I don't have a problem with his being the greatest, but there's a compelling argument that a Bobby Orr or a Mario Lemieux are/were just as good.
Both players have suffered from too many injuries that hurt there careers. With Orr, it was the knees, and he was done, when most players are at their peak. Orr had jets, a booming shot, smarts on par with Gretzky and Lemieux, a winning attitude, grace (but he was tough), and not mentioned enough, was that he was exceptionally gifted defensively.
With Lemieux, people always think of his size as being to his advantage, but I think it may have hurt him (like it's hurting Eric Lindros... who should have been the next one... not Sidney Crosby). But his hands and vision are just as great as Gretzky's. They can read plays before they happen. Lemieux used to be quite fast (quick no... but long-stride fast), sneaky like Gretzky, and again, like Gretzky, he slow the game down to a crawl and do wonderful things. Also note, that Lemieux played a great portion of his career in an era that was depressed of goal scoring. Only this year, after roughly 10-years, has scoring been up. Lucky for Sidney Crosby (who's going to be something special).
There's no downside to Gretzky really, but he DID come at a time where goals were scored in bucket loads by the period (never mind the game total). Believe you me, he used to come into the ******** Arena, and destroy my beloved
Jets (no more hints about my origins). I know what he could do. Watching the Oilers at that time, it was disappointing if they didn't score at LEAST 6 goals in a game (the league on team-per-team basis could barely muster up more than 2 goals per game... yuck!). But my point is that he played when there were so many players registering 100 points per season.
Had Gretzky played the majority of his career (and at his peak) in the '90s until now (like Lemieux), there's no way he EVER would reached beyond the 200 points in year (he did that 4 times), ditto with his 92 goals. Believe you me, '80s hockey was awesome. The '90s for the most part was garbage. Glad to see it's changing.
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Football:
Joe Montana: too bad he's doing so much TV work now.
Jerry Rice: amazing wide receiver; less amazing dancer.
Those are the two who're at the top of my list of receivers and quarterbacks. I'm not actually from the Bay Area, but I happen to like their teams. I remember seeing Montana at the end of his career with
Kansas City, and there was this
Monday Night Football game against
Denver in '94. The
Chiefs made a wonderful comeback, and won the game with 8 seconds left to beat the
Broncos (who were a GREAT team at that time). I've seen quite a few NFL games, and that ranks RIGHT at the top of them.
I don't think there are too many athletes who've trained harder than Jerry Rice. He's still in amazing shape, and even in a reduced role, could still have played this year. He's far from what he was 10-years ago, but will always have great hands.
Great stuff
Steed
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But it was the one team I wanted to play for even in Little League... and I had gotten my wish only for it to be spoiled by a pair of glasses... then I moved to Hong Kong before I got a chance to play high school soccer or football... the only real remaining hope of being a star athlete was to get to the Olympics one way or another as a Hong Kong representative - sadly, that would also never come true even though I was a HK champ in many disciplines.
:notworthy I guess 
Great stuff! 
