LORD SEBASTIAN COE
I’ve gotta agree with him. Same goes for speed skaters in winter.
Totally ignorant a-hole, BUT media loves this stuff.
Anytbing critical of America or American values. Anything and anyone who wishes to go negative gets a megaphone.
He has a little bit of a point, actually. Both Phelps and Trey Hardee train here at UT, and if Phelps claimed he was a better athlete than Hardee, there would be a lot of raised eyebrows. But he hasn’t, so there is no need to try and take anything away from his amazing success.
Is it most medals? Is it by how much you beat your competitors? Is it the personal obstacles you overcame to become a champion?
I am sure there's other definitions out there, I just threw a few out there as a devils advocate.
Having said that.... Lord Coe is quite the doosh. Which, I don't believe, needs further defining.
He's right about swimmers having much greater opportunity to run up the medal count. Of course, he wouldn't bring it up if Phelps were a Brit.
Best Olympian is WAY too open to interpretation. Sheer number of medals may not be the best criterion. Nadia Comeneche (sp?) may not have won the most medals, but she was the first to score a perfect 10.0. That means a lot. Or, you can maintain margin of victory is important. Or breaking world records in categories that involve speed (track, swimming) or weight (weight-lifting).
I would also maintain that a pile of medals for swimming wouldn’t mean as much as a handful of medals for sports that require a variety of abilities such as a decathalon.
Finally, sports change over time, and we can’t really compare eras in some of these sports. I think it is foolish to ask who the greatest Olympian is/was. It is like asking who the greatest U.S. pro athlete was: Babe Ruth or Michael Jordan or Secretariat?
“Greatest” SWIMMER- Yes. Athlete, NO. Decathlon winners are the best ATHLETES. Bob Mathias won 2 at age 17 and 21
I have to agree with him. If you have many variations of your main sport, you are bound to win more medals.
Swimmers, sprinters, distance-runners, etc... are specialists.
The decathlon winner is the best athlete at the Olympics (imho).
Jim Thorpe won the Decathlon (10 events) AND the Pentathlon (5 events). You can make a pretty strong argument that Thorpe was the greatest Olympic athlete ever.
this LORD SEBASTIAN COE is the rotten side of the David Allen Coe family.
If you are making a list of best Olympians ever, Aleksandr Karelin has to be on that list. That guy was simply untouchable in Greco when at his peak. Even out of his prime he only lost the gold medal match in 2000 to Rulon Gardner based on a new and unpopular rule that was done away with shortly after the Sydney Olympics.
He probably isn’t. The problem with trying to rate Olympians is all the sports are so different, not just in athleticism but also opportunity. There’s a million swimming events, including team and individual competitions, so a very good swimmer can get a ton of medals. There’s only a handful of distance running events, a guy could be the best ever in that field and come out with only a few medals. Really if you want to do any judging you need to look at percentages, what percentage of the possible medals did the guy win. Of course even then you have to deal with the different disciplines. I could make a case that the best athlete on the planet today plays water polo, I don’t know who it would be because I don’t follow the sport, but I understand the incredible demands the sport places on a body, just think about treading water for 2 hours, now think about doing other stuff WHILE treading water for 2 hours. So the best Olympian ever was probably in the that sport, and nobody’s heard of them, and they’re probably an accountant now.
Coe did make one less controversial statement.
‘‘This is the global pub game,’’ he said. ‘‘Who is the greatest Olympian of all time? I could go around this whole room, we’d all come up with different interpretations on that."
I can agree with him on this. To me, the word "Olympian" carries more than just athleticism, but also contributions to the games. I'd have to cast a ballot for Larisa Latynina, who, after winning 18 medals, went on to coach the Soviet gymnastics team, establishing it as the dominant team for at least two decades. YMMV...
Great! So in Lord Coe’s opinion what is the greatest guitar solo of all time? How about the greatest chase scene in the movies? The great thing about opinions is that everybody has them and his are intrinsically no better than anyone else’s.
Phelps is also a pompous drug abuser. He was banned from competing after the last Olympics, when photos came out, costing him an endorsement deal?
I guess we know who wants a date with Phelps, just look at those who attack Coe. /s
No one does better sour grapes than the Brits, lol!
The question is silly and unanswerable. It’s similar to, “Who is the greatest guitarist?”
How do you compare Andres Segovia and Jeff Beck?
You don’t. There is greatness, and simply identifying that is sufficient.