British Greatest of All Time Sportsperson

[konatime]

Yes, agreed on the Fogarty debate...

As for Daley Thompson, I always felt the decathlon was not being quite good enough at ten events... (place tin hat firmly on head!)

His 10.4 something hundred metre sprint in the early eighties was good enough to qualify for the olympic sprint final of that era. I think the fact that the ten events take place over 2 days and what that actually means is often not properly understood/evaluated.

'So you're the shot putt champion of the world' (irony alert)...whats your pole-vaulting like mucka....whistle-whistle

 

[kaiser]

Daley Thompson..... responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Spectrum keyboards.

 

[clockworkgazz]

interesting that there is no mention of footballers but retrobike is not a bastion of support for the beautiful game if past threads are anything to go on.

I nominate King Kenny who surprisingly was shopping in a local supermarket in the south side of glasgow this afternoon

 

[makster]

Sir Bobby Charlton.
Amazing with both feet. Strong as an ox and a proper gent to go with it!
Oh, and a World and European Cup winner.
King who???

 

[kaiser]

Sir Bobby Charlton.
Amazing with both feet. Strong as an ox and a proper gent to go with it!
Oh, and a World and European Cup winner.
King who???

Think Charlton was playing in this game :?


http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=44666

 

[clockworkgazz]

Sir Bobby Charlton.
Amazing with both feet. Strong as an ox and a proper gent to go with it!
Oh, and a World and European Cup winner.
King who???

yeah he was pretty good but he was a pretty poor manager (one season) and that comb over man :shock:

compare and contrast

 

[konatime]

Sir Bobby Charlton.
Amazing with both feet. Strong as an ox and a proper gent to go with it!
Oh, and a World and European Cup winner.
King who???

Good shout, even being blue i cannot deny Charltons prowess on a park, justabout seen him live....he trumped Best & Bell truth be told..if he'd have had a feather-cut and footage of his play was accompanied by suitable soundtrack then we'd have possibly seen him in a different light. Both the goals (that ultimately would have won the match on thier jacks) in the '68 ECF were dipatched without him facing the sticks, the goalkeeper was left with little need to dive else he liked his knees muddy. Two goals that Pele would have been well proud of. Leading goalscorer of all time for Trafford & England without getting booked...be hard to trump that in a rush.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LCiMXU_ ... re=related

That said...Cantona was more influential to the team...he give a lot of them nippers the believe they could lift a title and when they did the floodgates opened.

Everybody forgets about Niall Quinn...he was the first (the all important one) to give his testimonial monies to charity, once it was seen to be done they all started following suit and Giggs i remember was splashed across the Evening News like some all conquering hero. The seen & the unseen.

 

[yagamuffin]

Hard to argue with yer choice ed but for consideration I'll put forward Chrissie Wellington. 3 time(consecutive) World Ironman champion and, she is destroying the record books. Vastly underrated and probably one of the best current athletes in Britain has at the moment. Has the potential to be the greatest ever Iron distance racer of all time.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrissie_Wellington

I just read her Wiki page. Hard to think of anyone else that even comes close. Possibly the closest real life gets to cartoon "super heroes"!

 

[Dr S]

You cannot include a bloke in a car or on a motorbike as a "sportsman" as nice as they might be. We will have the Crafty Cockney next!

Rubbish. As Hemmingway once wrote...'There are only three true sports; Motor Racing, Bull fighting and Mountaineering. All other 'sports' are mere games by comparison'.

Us Brits have dominated the world of motor racing since the dawn of the car.. Seagrave, Campbell, Barnato, Moss, Surtees, Hill, Clark, Bell, Mansell, McRae, Hamilton to name but a few. Thats before we start on the engineers- Bentley, Chapman, Tyrell, Cooper, Barnard, Brawn etc etc.

We have consistantly provided the best drivers, designers and engineers the world has ever seen. Look at F1 today, almost every team is based in England. Even Ferrari design their cars here in the UK now.
It's probably the only thing we are still good at. To dismiss such achievement is very foolish.

 

[yagamuffin]

You cannot include a bloke in a car or on a motorbike as a "sportsman" as nice as they might be. We will have the Crafty Cockney next!

Rubbish. As Hemmingway once wrote...'There are only three true sports; Motor Racing, Bull fighting and Mountaineering. All other 'sports' are mere games by comparison'.

Us Brits have dominated the world of motor racing since the dawn of the car.. Seagrave, Campbell, Barnato, Moss, Surtees, Hill, Clark, Bell, Mansell, McRae, Hamilton to name but a few. Thats before we start on the engineers- Bentley, Chapman, Tyrell, Cooper, Barnard, Brawn etc etc.

We have consistantly provided the best drivers, designers and engineers the world has ever seen. Look at F1 today, almost every team is based in England. Even Ferrari design their cars here in the UK now.
It's probably the only thing we are still good at. To dismiss such achievement is very foolish.

We are also the best at darts (with the Dutch a close second) it doesn't make it a sport. Not in the truest sense of the word, where men and women use not only great tactical thinking but also great physical strength and endurance to become the greatest.

It's always difficult when this question pops up. It's hard to pick anyone from team sports as although greatness does shine through, the bad days do not. Ryan Giggs is a great player, probably the greatest ever Premiership player but if he has a bad day we don't notice. Someone like Roger Federer though, he has a bad day and he is out of the competition.

Still though, although being surprised that I appear to be the first to mention Federer in three pages I will stick with Wellington.