Michael Phelps not best Olympian ever? So says chief of London Olympics (Lord Sebastian Coe)

Lord Sebastian Coe, two-time British Olympic gold medalist, revered British Olympic long-distance runner, and chief of the London Olympic organizing committee, has said the unthinkable.

Later today, American officials are expected to announce the termination of all diplomatic relations with Great Britain, withdraw embassy staff from London, and issue a new deck of "most wanted" playing cards with Lord Coe as the joker.

For the record, his exact words, as reported by the Associated Press, were: "He is certainly the most successful. That goes without saying.... But whether he is the greatest? In my opinion, probably not."

How could Coe possibly say this? How do you argue with 19 medals – especially when three more are certainly are not out of the realm of possibility here in London. On the all-time Olympic medal table, Phelps is threatening to lap the field.

Imagine you are the best triathlete the world has ever seen. You win gold in every Olympics you enter, and you do it emphatically. You run faster, you cycle faster, and you swim faster than everyone else in the field. You compete, the world gasps, and your competitors are left to suck the fumes of your greatness.

In the end, you will win, what – three gold medals, at the very most? On one very important level, you are equal with Phelps: You are the greatest athlete in the history of your sport. In the great medal argument, however, you are not even a bug on Phelps's windshield.

Coe, it would seem, would be particularly open to this argument as a runner in the 1500 meters – not an event that allows athletes to pile up the Olympic hardware.

Takács was born in Budapest and joined the Hungarian Army. By 1936, he was a world-class pistol shooter, but he was denied a place in the Hungarian shooting team for the 1936 Summer Olympics on the grounds that he was a sergeant, and only commissioned officers were allowed to compete. This prohibition was lifted in Hungary after the Berlin Games, and Takács had expectations of success at the 1940 Summer Olympics, scheduled to be held in Tokyo.

During army training in 1938, his right hand was badly injured (later amputated)when a faulty grenade exploded. Takács was determined to continue his shooting career, and switched to shooting with his left hand. He practised in secret, surprising his countrymen when he won the Hungarian national pistol shooting championship in the spring of 1939. He also was a member of the Hungarian team that won the 1939 ISSF World Shooting Championships in the event. The Olympic Games scheduled for 1940 and 1944 were cancelled due to the Second World War, but Takács surprised the world by winning the gold medal at the 1948 Summer Olympics in London, aged 38, beating the favourite, Argentine Carlos Enrique Díaz Sáenz Valiente, who was the reigning world champion, into second place, and setting a new world record.

not tough enough?

how about total paralysis:

Walt Davis was totally paralyzed by polio when he was nine years old, but he did not give up. He became the Olympic high jump champion in 1952.

Shelly Mann was paralyzed by polio when she was five years old, but she would not give up. She eventually claimed eight different swimming records for the U.S. and won a gold medal at the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, Australia.

I don’t necessarily agree.

I think it’s easy to say “well, swimming has a ton of chances to win medals”. But the other side of the coin is that if you compete for all those medals you are usually going up against people who only compete in 1 or 2 events so you are going to have to have much better endurance to beat them. Sometimes swimming in meets that are 20 minutes apart against people who are fresh.

Also you’re dividing your training between all those different events while they are focusing on one or 2.

It’s hard to compare across events in any case, but I think people who downplay Phelps’ achievement don’t take that into consideration.

"Weren’t Moses and Lewis caught up in steroids scandals?"

Not Moses.

You maye be thinking of the 1988 Olympics where Ben Johnson beat Lewis by a mile in the 100m, but Ben was juicing (duh, someone smokes Lewis, the world record holder). Lewis was given the gold.

Also, I stand corrected in my statement about Oerter being the only person to win the same event 4 times - Lewis and Danish sailor Paul Elvstrøm also have that distinction.

IMHO, Carl Lewis is the greatest Olympian considering his long career in multiple events, winning against fierce competition, setting world records, and last but not least 9 golds - 4 in the same event (plus 1 silver and 0 bronze).

Edwin MOSES Unbeatable hurdler

Edwin Moses was a truly remarkable hurdler who completely dominated his event for a decade.
Jaw-dropping debut
Edwin Moses went to college on an academic, not an athletic, scholarship and he used to train using public high school facilities. The 1976 Montreal Games was his first international competition. Yet despite his inexperience, Moses won the 400m hurdles in world record time. His winning margin was eight metres, the largest in the event's history.
Sustained brilliance
Moses missed the 1980 Moscow Games because of the US boycott. However, he returned for the 1984 Los Angeles Games and won a second gold medal. Between September 1977 and June 1987, Moses won 122 consecutive races, including 107 finals in meets that took him to 22 different countries.
Record-breaking career
At the 1988 Seoul Games, Moses won a bronze medal at the age of 33. During his incredible career, Moses broke the world record four times and his final world record of 47.02 survived for nine years before it fell at the 1992 Barcelona Games. Since his retirement from competition, Moses has been active in the struggle against the use of performance-enhancing drugs.

Carl LEWIS King Carl

Carl Lewis, as one of only four Olympic athletes to have won nine Olympic gold medals, is widely recognised as one of the greatest athletes of all time.
Matching Jesse Owens
At the 1984 Los Angeles Games, Lewis emulated his boyhood idol Jesse Owens by winning gold in the 100m, the 200m, the long jump and the 4x100m relay. A superstar was born.
Further Olympic joy
At the 1988 Seoul Games, Lewis defended his 100m title after Ben Johnson was disqualified. He also defended his long jump title and claimed silver in the 200m. Four years later in Barcelona, he won a third gold medal in the long jump, defeating world record holder Mike Powell by just three centimetres. He also anchored the world record-setting US relay team.
One last golden jump
Lewis only just scraped into the US Olympic long jump team for the 1996 Atlanta Games. He then needed all three jumps to qualify for the final. However in the final, he majestically moved into first place with his third jump and stayed there.
Olympic records
His success in the long jump made Carl Lewis one of only three Olympians to win the same individual event four times. He is also one of only four Olympic athletes to win nine gold medals.

That was a great article on Edwin Moses. I’ve seen other TV specials profiling him and he’s always presented himself as classy individual of high integrity (pretty typical of Morehouse grads, except perhaps Samuel L. Jackson).

The dirtiest race in history Olympic 100m fin al, 1988

Exum released more than 30,000 pages of documents which include showing Lewis tested positive for three stimulants found in cold medications: pseudoephedrine, ephedrine and phenylpropanolamine. Lewis's training partners DeLoach and Floyd Heard tested positive for the same combination of drugs, which some experts believe can mask more serious drugs such as anabolic steroids.

I could certainly believe that Lewis used anabolic steroids leading up to important meets. His physique certainly morphed from “athletic” to densely muscled and ripped (can you say Usane Bolt – they don’t have resources for testing in Jamaica, or the will, so doping is rampant).

But, Lewis was essentially a pro track and field athlete from the start. That was his job – train. He never seemed to make unusual shifts in running times or jumping distances, unlike Ben Johnson and Usane Bolt.

Also, back in the 1980’s there was a wide variety of natural products that have been in use for decades or millenniums (e.g. GHB(1) “the date rape drug”, once sold at health food stores – probably the only effective treatment for narcolepsy and fibromyalgia, now called Xyrem, is now SUPER expensive and probably the most restricted drug in the USA, and Ma Huang that contains ephedra 2 is like Sudafed, safely used for 4,000 years).

So, some of the rules and allegations for using banned substances are pure BS since they are common supplements for daily living or specific purposes ("rules for thee and not for me").

1) GHB

GHB was sold in health food stores as a performance-enhancing additive in bodybuilding formulas until the Food and Drug Administration banned it in 1990. It is currently marketed in some European countries as an adjunct to anesthesia. GHB is abused for its ability to produce euphoric and hallucinogenic states and for its alleged function as a growth hormone that releases agents to stimulate muscle growth. GHB became a Schedule I Controlled Substance in March 2000.

2)Ephedra

A sympathetic nerve stimulant resembling adrenaline, its effect on the unstriped muscular fibres is remarkable. It acts promptly in relieving swellings of the mucous membrane. It has valuable antispasmodic properties, acts on the air passages and is of benefit in asthma and hay fever; it is also employed for rheumatism; a 5 to 10 per cent solution has mydriatic properties, prophylactically used for low blood pressure in influenza, pneumonia, etc.

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