Best Athlete

Sorry about omitting hockey. I knew I was forgetting one.

 

Soccer, hockey, or triathletes.

 

That said, however, the best athlete I ever saw was Bo Jackson.

 

Yeah, Ironman competitors are crazy. That video of Julie Moss is pretty tough to watch. Hockey, of course, has the previously mentioned combo of coordination, speed bursts and toughness.
Finding the Best Athlete needs some defining of terms. I can think of a number of qualities that could apply to the greatest athlete: strength, ability to be hit/fall/get back up, agility, fast-twitch speed, extreme physical ability (jumping, etc), intelligence, endurance/ability to push through severe fatigue, ability to handle pressure. Hell, by those measures, you might consider Marines or members of the Army to be the Best Athletes.

 

You just ruled out the Army and Marine Corps.

 

Basketball or soccer require the most overall athleticism (maybe a coin flip) but I think basketball, right now, has attracted the best athletes in the world.

 

Boxers are the best conditioned athletes. Does that make them the best? I don't know.

 

I recall once seeing a science oriented piece on this question that concluded that NBA point guards were the best overall athletes in our professional sport leagues, because they score off the charts in terms of both slow-twitch cardiovascular fitness and fast-twitch explosive muscle fiber abilities. Plus they tend to be freakishly coordinated and have tremendous eye hand coordination to boot. It's the one group that excels in every one of those areas.


However, those findings were confined to those playing the point guard position--not basketball players in general--so by no means should this be construed as an endorsement of Greg Ostertag's athleticism.

 

What do you mean? [/Ostertag]

 

I'll take wreslting (real wrestling) over anything.

 

Yep.

 

It's very close between football and basketball.

Of course, I am measuring this by not how well a football player plays football, but how well a football player plays the other sports.

Many basketball players could play pro football and many football players could play pro basketball. I just don't see the other sports crossing over like that.

Oh, the greatest athlete ever played for the Browns.