Every field of endeavour has produced people whose stellar performance has endeared them to the hearts of the people. People who will always stand as a reference and a motivating factor in such fields. Legends in whatever field are not ordinary affairs. They grace the stage at some point, and even after they retire or depart eternally, their memory lives on. In this series, the first part will highlight some Legends of the sporting world.
Mohammad Ali
(USA, Boxing)
Muhammad
Ali is generally regarded as the most famous boxer of all time and one of the
most famous athletes who ever lived, regardless of the sport. Some say that
Sugar Ray Robinson is the greatest boxer, regardless of weight class, who ever
lived. And even Mohammed Ali himself would agree with such a
statement, since he was a big fan of Sugar. Ali invented the "Fly
like a butterfly and sting like a bee" tactical scheme, later adopted by
many boxers around the world.
Ali doesn't have more defence titles than Joe Louis; he didn't retire undefeated like Rocky Marciano; he didn't hold a title as long as Wladimir Klitschko, and he certainly didn't earn as much. When it comes to money, as much as Oscar De La Hoya and Floyd Mayweather have made in the modern age of sports, when it comes to legacy, no one can ever touch Ali.
Ali
was more than just a name; he gave the boxing ring a boost that brought
millions of fans from all over the world. Mohammad Ali was known for his quick
and sudden reactions and was named the most agile boxer in the history of the
world. In the legends of the sporting
world, Ali is in the front row.
He
said of himself best of all: "I flutter like a butterfly, I sting like a
bee." I saw many great heavyweights-world champions: Joe Louis, Rocky
Marciano, Joe Frazier, I saw the legendary boxers of other weight categories:
"Sugar" Ray Robinson, Marcel Cerdan, Rocky Graziano, Roy Jones, but
you never know who I saw. They all paled in front of Ali. I would like to say
this: Anna Pavlova was in ballet, while Muhammad Ali was in boxing.
His
colourful personality and fight against racism and injustice have given him
hero status and inspired many of his fellow African Americans to rise up and
fight for their rights in an era of change.
There
is no doubt that there have been many great boxers in history, from ancient
times to the present day, and because of the many weight classes, it is really
difficult to compare their skills and career peaks. However, there is only one
boxer who has managed to become more than a sport in itself, and we all agree
that that person is Muhammad Ali.
Pele
(Brazil, football)
Pele,
real name Edson Arantes Nascimento, dubbed the "Emperor of Soccer",
is arguably the greatest footballer of all time. No footballer has equalled his
three World Cup trophies. His World Cup victories weren’t by mere
participation; he made a difference in all, even at the club level.
Pele
stands out in the legends of the sporting world, it's not just that he scored
more than a thousand goals in his sporting career. And it's not that he turned
the game into art. And it's not about his genius talent, which was struck by
the whole world as soon as he saw him, a 16-year-old boy, on the Brazilian
national team. And the point is, all this put together, plus something
that defies description but is absolutely obvious. Pele didn’t invent football,
but he refined it by making it more beautiful.
Michael Jordan (Basketball,
USA)
Michael "Air" Jordan is
arguably the most famous athlete of the last twenty years and one of the most
famous pop icons of the nineties. He inspired athletes not only in his own
sport but in other fields as well. Jordan averaged 32 points per game, which
has not yet been repeated by any other NBA player. Although Michael Jordan is
no longer playing or coaching, he still has countless fans and is a role model
for all professional basketball players.
Give
it to Jordan in the legends of the sporting world. During his amazing career,
he won six National Basketball Association (NBA) titles with the Chicago Bulls
and six NBA Player of the Year awards in every final. He was selected to play
in the NBA regular season five times.
He
also played fourteen times in the All-Star Games of the National Basketball
Association (NBA All-Star Games). Jordan won two Olympic gold medals with Team
USA, but most importantly, he is the man who popularized the NBA around the
world in the late 1980s and 1990s. Jordan became the first basketball player.
Although
it sounds like an exaggeration, Michael Jordan is the only basketball player in
history whose name has come to mean more than the sport itself, and this fact
can be confirmed by any basketball fan. In 1999, he was named the greatest
North American athlete of the 20th century by ESPN. His name has been placed at
the head of other sports titans, such as Muhammad Ali, Jim Thorpe, and Babe
Ruth.
It's
not about statistics, although he has them very, very much. You just had to
watch it in the game-and everything became clear. His vision of the court, his
passing and three-point shots, his ability to ignite the team, possession of
the ball, the way he literally hovered, hovered in the air—it defies any
description.
The
game of basketball has produced great players, but Michael Jordan stands apart.
Some great players featured in the sport, but Air Jordan did something so
incomprehensible, even to this date, that some players are still doing catch-up
games. His airship hovered over them, playing a completely different game.
Jesse Owens
(USA, Athletics)
Jesse
Owens shattered skin-color stereotypes with his athletic feats. In 1936, at the
Summer Olympics in Berlin, he won four gold medals: in the 100m and 200m, in
the 4x100m relay, and in the long jump. Hitler was so upset that
"black" overshadowed the results of the "master race" that
he refused to give him a gold medal. Owens set world records in the 100 meters
(10.2 seconds), 200 meters (20.3 seconds), and long jump (8 m 12 cm). Owens’s
feats earned in the days when everything to skin colour determines placement in
the community of legends of the sporting world.
And
this, mind you, in 1935-1936, on a cinder track that is very slow by today's
standards, in spikes that are heavy by modern standards, without special
nutrition and special training methods that are available today to completely
ordinary sprinters. Not to mention the fact that at that time, chronometers
were much less accurate than they are today. If Jesse Owens were alive and
young today, all other sprinters, including Usain Bolt, would be playing a
catch-up game.
Babe Ruth
(USA, Baseball)
Babe Ruth’s name is synonymous with
baseball. In most cases, the greatest athletes in these two sports are only
popular in the United States. However, there are a few exceptions, and Babe
Ruth is the most famous of them.
Despite
all the records he's broken and the titles he's won as a baseball player, the
Bambino's legacy and glory transcend the sport itself. Babe Ruth was arguably
the first true legend and superstar in the history of any sport, and his name
became popular through movies, candy bars, stamps, and, of course,
baseball-related memorabilia.
As
a result, Ruth has been named the greatest baseball player in history in the
vast majority of studies and polls, the most significant of which was conducted
by The Sporting News in 1998, as a result of which he was ranked first in the
list of the 100 greatest baseball players. The following year, he was included
in the Associated Press' "100 Greatest Athletes of the Century" list
and named the greatest North American athlete of the 20th century.
Usain Bolt
(Athletics, Jamaica)
Usain Bolt, track and field (sprinting).
The Jamaican runner has been named the fastest man in the world and has a long
track record of numerous honours. With all due respect to mythical running
legends like Jesse Owens, Carl Lewis, and Emil Zatopek, among others, Usain
Bolt is the absolute "God of Running" and the fastest man in human
history.
He became the first person to achieve a "twice double victory" by winning the 100m and 200m events at two consecutive Olympic Games. In addition, he recently became the first person to break the ten-second barrier in an indoor 100m. He won his last victory, setting a new world record by covering the distance in just 9.98 seconds.
Tom Brady
(USA, American Football)
He is the star of the NFL professional
games and the best player on the American national team. Brady's hard work and
motivation for advancement led him to be selected for the MLB when he was still
very young, but he turned down the offer and chose to stay in college football.
Brady is a player who carefully plans every move and knows what to look for in
every moment of the game.
Michael Phelps
(USA, swimming)
Michael Phelps is, without a doubt, the
most decorated and most successful Olympian in the history of the modern Games.
It is unlikely that years of swimming will allow them to experience other
monsters like Michael Phelps. He set a strange record at the 2008 Beijing
Olympics, winning all eight gold medals in various swimming disciplines. At the
age of 26, Phelps had the opportunity to become a swimming legend.
At
the age of 27 and in only three different Olympic Games, he won 22 medals. 18
of which are gold. He won twenty-seven more gold medals at the World
Championships and broke thirty-nine world records, more than any other swimmer
in the history of the sport. In total, he has seventy-seven medals received in
major international competitions, sixty-one of them gold. Michael Phelps is
arguably the most successful individual athlete of the last fifty years.
Michael Schumacher
(Germany, Motorsport)
With all due respect to the great NASCAR,
WRC, and Moto GP champions of the past decades, Formula 1 is one of the three
most popular and highest-paid individual sports in the world, along with tennis
and golf. For this reason, the king of Formula 1, Michael Schumacher, receives
a nod as the greatest driver of all time. During his distinguished career, he
broke many records in the world's most popular motor racing.
He
holds records for winning the most world championships with seven victories,
and the most racing victories with ninety-one victories. He also broke the
record for the fastest seventy-seven laps. He also holds the record for taking
the most pole positions with sixty-eight pole positions. He was twice named
Laureus World Athlete of the Year and is the second richest athlete of all
time, behind only Michael Jordan. His alleged estate is valued at $850 million.
Wayne Gretzky
(USA, ice hockey)
Wayne Gretzky is not only the greatest
hockey player of all time but also the face of one of the four biggest sports
in the United States. Over three decades, he played twenty seasons in the
National Hockey League, won four Stanley Cups, and set an astounding number of
different NHL records (61 total), more than any other athlete on any team.
Sport in history. He has been named the greatest hockey player in history in
every poll and official ranking there has ever been.
He owns 61 NHL records (he shares some with other hockey players). Gretzky is the only player in the history of the NHL who managed to score over 200 points in a season in the "pass + goal" system. And he did it not once, not twice, not three, but four times (nowadays, any striker who scores 100 points in a season is considered outstanding).
Gretzky
won the Stanley Cup four times, won the Art Ross Cup ten times for the most
points scored in a season, and won the Hart Cup nine times as the "most
valuable player." Finally, Gretzky never fought and kept exceptionally
well, both on and off the ice. No wonder he got the nickname "The Great
One," which in Russian should be translated into one word: "Great."
Sergei Bubka (Pole Vault,
Ukraine)
A six-time world champion in the pole
vault, he improved the world record 35 times and brought it to 6 m 14 cm in
July 1994, and no one even came close to this result. Not to mention the fact
that a height of 6 meters was considered by experts to be the maximum possible.
And
one more thing: No one has ever won against Bubka. He, they say, could not take
the ordered height three times (which, by the way, happened to him at the
Olympic Games in Barcelona). But no one jumped over him. Bubka competed, like
Nurmi, with himself. There were no competitors.
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