Sign up for Insight Alerts highlighting editorchosen studies with the greatest impact on clinical care. Call for Nominations Pediatrics is seeking an Associate. Subscribe and SAVE, give a gift subscription or get help with an existing subscription by clicking the links below each cover image. The salary cap came at great cost too great of a cost many will say. The owners, not surprisingly, argue that was essential, and with some validity. Information, news, tour dates from the Sacramento, CA based musical band CAKE. George Stevens, Director Giant. George Stevens, a filmmaker known as a meticulous craftsman with a brilliant eye for composition and a sensitive touch with actors. Greatest Sports Stars Ever. A deliberately insane undertaking, conceived to generate opinion, sales, web traffic and whatnot. The more you think about the idea of ranking the top sportspeople, across all disciplines and all time, the more bonkers it becomes. But it did make a lot of people very agitated, both in the office and outside, as people defended their pet sports. I did the compiling and most of the writing, with the help of Alpha senior writer Anthony Sharwood. See if you can spot who wrote what. Another game is to accept that, yes, it was compiled with an Australian bias, but see how many Aussies you can honestly take out surprisingly few. One more thing this was done in 2. See Woods, Tigeroriginal introductionThe Alpha team had a lot of fun putting this list together. But we added a bit of science in there, too. Considering the merits of every sports star in the history of the world gets more daunting the more you think about it, so we had to set some rules. To make this uber list, you couldnt simply be great you had to be even better than that. A stars score is affected by how dominant they were, over how long. Life%20Is...Too%20Short-1173385588-player.jpg' alt='Too Short Greatest' title='Too Short Greatest' />How many medals they won, and how big the sport is globally. There are softer categories, such as charisma, and how much impact they had on their sport thank you, Ivan Lendl, and goodnight. The brightest and best on this list are known and loved by people who dont even follow sport that much. By default, we picked no one in action before 1. Greek wrestlers, go ahead, but properly organised sport on a wide scale is a modern luxury. The other rule we set was no animals, no pastimes, so dont go writing in about Phar Lap, or Phil The Power Taylor. But, please, do tell us we got it wrong. Just remember those rulesMuhammad Ali. Now that Alis legend gets polished more with every year, its easy to forget how ill prepared the general public and media were for such a hyperactive, hypertalented smart mouth. His wild behaviour in 1. Sonny Liston was greeted with bemusement the 1. Lewiston, Maine, of all places. Six years later, his comeback fight against Joe Frazier The Fight of the Century at Madison Square Garden, was one of the hottest tickets for any sporting occasion in history. In the intervening years, the heavyweight champion of the world became one of the most loved and loathed people in America the change in his name and religion, banishment from the sport and near imprisonment charted alongside battles for racial equality and the Vietnam War. After 1. 97. 1 came the Rumble in the Jungle, the Thrilla in Manila and other epics, as Ali broadened his global fame and extended his career deep into legend. At his peak, Ali was a spectacularly effective fighter fit as a flea and beautifully proportioned, he could move as fast as a lightweight and make up tactics on the spot, off a base of carefully honed skills and ringcraft. As he aged, he adapted his strategies ingeniously and proved, perhaps too often, how well he could take punishment, and how much he could tolerate pain. From Liston to Frazier and George Foreman, Muhammad Ali operated in the best era of the big men and emerged on top of the pile, several times over. Ali may or may not be The Greatest, but then sportsman is inadequate to describe a man who helped change cultural attitudes, as well as his own sport. He was certainly sports first and greatest trash talker the first to truly take advantage of televisions mass reach and in terms of sheer impact, popularity and entertainment value worldwide remained untouched until Michael Jordan. As a historic figure, no sports star even comes close. Don Bradman. The Don. The King. The greatest cricketer of them all and arguably the greatest Australian, too. Mathematicians have dissected his famous 9. Analysts have pored over that ancient grainy footage and marvelled at a cover drive so pure you could drink it. But what the drooling geeks and boffins think doesnt matter. What matters is what the man in the street thinks, and to him, the Don was the man who lifted a nation. War intervened, and he returned aged almost 4. How many sportsmen have songs written for them How many have a museum dedicated to them And how many sportsmen are their countrys best known individual on the global stage from all walks of life, past or present The Don is as Australian as Uluru, and he was just as hard to remove. He passed 2. 00 a whopping 1. Test cricket, scored 1. Test innings, and 1. Few batsman pass 5. Surprisingly, the Don has knockers, which is proof that people will argue about anything. Best Font'>Best Font. The most common criticism is that he faced just four nations in Test combat. To them, we blow one gigantic raspberry and ask how many nations did baseball legend Babe Ruth face Michael Jordan. The prototype of the modern sportsman. Tiger Woods and Jordan are difficult to separate because theyre such similar creatures, both sporting and corporate, but Jordan did it all first. Here was the man who turned basketball into the worlds street game. Whose influence and fame reached so far into the darkest corners of the world that kids stopped playing their native sports and took up hoops, with a Jordan poster on the wall. Here was a man who became the shoe that made the company that turned Jordan into a man rich beyond sports previous levels of imagination. And the reason this happened The genius and insane competitiveness to become a player so good he seemed to deny physics, to wring gasps of awe from anyone who saw him. And to take a whole franchise on his back and win and win and win. Tiger Woods. If Woods retired tomorrow, with fewer Majors and fewer overall wins than Jack Nicklaus, hed still be the greatest golfer that ever lived. His 1. 4 Majors and 6. Pregnant Games Unblocked on this page. PGA Tour wins dont match Nicklaus 1. Woods makes shots he has to make. Time and time again, when other players would be happy with a nice pay cheque of several hundred thousand, Woods says, Nope, I want wins, not money. I want to entertain. I want you to remember that golf is a sport, a dynamic and even occasionally thrilling event, not a picnic for men who dress like bankers. And Ill take the several hundred million if I really have to. Diego Maradona. Maradona played football out of a dream, a childs fantasy of how football really should be played if only everyone knew how. To the pint sized Argentine, the ball was a best friend his close control was uncanny and no one has ever carried the ball upfield as fast as he did. It never seemed to matter if there were opponents in the way or not he simply went through them without slowing. His first goal against England at the 1. World Cup is still rated the greatest ever and is the perfect example of his skills twisting and turning seasoned internationals with barely a hint of effort, accelerating away and sliding the ball perfectly into the net. Easy. Except its impossible. Maradona won one World Cup but should have won more. He made Napoli something good. But whatever the baggage and debris that comes with being Diego Maradona, it has always been difficult to take your eyes off him. Rod Laver. Whiplash placements on the run viciously sliced volleys, half volleys transformed on the instant into dying drop shots, beaten but admiring opponents Roger Federer No, Laver, the first true artist of the court, who tried everything his imagination could conjure, and pulled most of it off. Music, TV radio, books, film, art, dance photography. 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