Chris Boardman's Greatest Olympians
Saturday, 16 August 2008
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1 Sir Steve Redgrave (GB)
Winning a gold medal in five Games is just amazing. It's not just having your
best form once, it's having it over a period of 16 years
Gold 5 Bronze 1 Total 6
1984 Gold (Coxed four)
1988 Gold (Coxless pair) Bronze (Coxed pair)
1992 Gold (Coxless pair)
1996 Gold (Coxless pair)
2000 Gold (Coxless four)
2 Michael Phelps (US)
Second spot is just about his – but he needs more than this to absolutely
confirm his second position.
Gold 12 Bronze 2 Total 14
2004 6 Golds (400m individual medley, 100m butterfly, 200m butterfly, 200m
IM, 4x200m free relay, 4x100m medley relay. 2 Bronze (4x100m free relay,
200m free).
2008 6 Golds (400m IM, 4x100m free relay, 200m free, 200m butterfly, 4x200m
freestyle, 200m I M) (not including last night)
3 Carl Lewis (US)
You've got to put Lewis up here, haven't you ? It's like Redgrave – it's the
longevity thing again.
Gold 9 Silver 1 Total 10
1984 4 Golds (100m, 200m, long jump, 4x100m relay)
1988 2 Golds (100m, long jump) 1 Silver (200m)
1992 2 Golds (4x100m relay, long jump)
1996 1 Gold (long jump)
4 Mark Spitz (US)
The swimmer was one of my first big icons as a multi-medallist. He showed it
could be done.
Gold 9 Silver 1 Bronze 1 Total 11
1968 2 Golds (4x100m free, 4x200m free) 1 Silver (100m butterfly) 1 Bronze
(100m free)
1972 7 Golds (100m free, 200m free, 100m butterfly, 200m butterfly, 4x100m
free relay, 4x200m free relay, 4x100m medley relay)
5 A British cyclist
Ask me again in a few years, and I think it could well be a British cyclist.
Contenders? Nicole Cooke 2008 Gold (women's road race).Chris Hoy 2008 Gold
(men's team sprint), 2004 Gold (1km time trial), Bradley Wiggins 2004 Gold
(4km individual pursuit) Silver (Team pursuit) Bronze (Madison).
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Yes Norman is right. Part of a team. Seriously though, rowing is such an elitist sport, how many people even know what it is, how many countries participate, no more than a handful surely.
In this country alone the only ones I have ever known to have done it are a few that whent to public school.
Definately a sport that could be dropped for a much more representative. No, Redgrave doesn't even figure.
Posted by dan | 19.08.08, 00:31 GMT
Purely on his criteria how could he possible place Redgrave above Carl Lewis? Makes no sense.
Posted by dan | 19.08.08, 00:22 GMT
Wow, had never heard of the guy before and didn't realize rowing was an Olympic sport. For that reason, I have absolutely no opinion on how it ranks! Would be interesting to look at the margin of victory. While a couple of races were close, for some of these races, Phelps looked like he was in a completely different race than the other swimmers.
Posted by Dave | 18.08.08, 03:53 GMT
Norman mate, you don't know what you are talking about, as you only need to make a cursory scan of this article to realise that Steve Redgrave won 3 golds in 3 different Olympics in a pair.
It all depends whether you want to just look at medals counts or delve a little deeper into what the medals won actually stood for. Redgrave is the only one on this list to have been successful in a true endurance event - all the rest have been successful in more sprint oriented events, and he lasted one Olympics longer than any of them.
I think Phelps is a great Olympian, but to claim the honour of the best I would like to see him dominate at one further Olympics. Your best argument could be made with Carl Lewis as he dominated so many events for so long, and won more medals than Regrave in the process. As I said, it all depends whether you want to just count medals or consider the background to these achievements. And why is a 'single effort' inherently of more value than a team effort gold?
Posted by Heja Sverige | 16.08.08, 19:56 GMT
I do not want to belittle Steve Redgrave's achievement. But his olympic golds haul were achieved as a member of a team, and with a good teams and collective effort he was able get the golds on a 16 year span. Hence ge was able to last that long. He never rowed in single or a pair and won any golds in Olympic events.
Phelps, Lewis and Spitz's haul of golds were both single effort and team effort golds. That makes them superior as Olympic greats.
Hence Phelps haul of 13 golds makes him the greatest Olympian ever. Redgrave 's position should be below Phelps and Lewis.
Posted by norman | 16.08.08, 16:56 GMT
Marion Jones!
Posted by Nick Davey | 16.08.08, 13:56 GMT
wot abot Mei Tai Long Wang from Chinese Taipei
Posted by StekenVag | 16.08.08, 11:53 GMT
Surely Michael Johnson has to be in there?!
Posted by dave | 16.08.08, 11:08 GMT
And Flo Jo
Posted by andy | 16.08.08, 11:05 GMT
what about Ben Johnson?
Posted by Dale E Male | 16.08.08, 10:10 GMT