For cricket if it was best of all time then Don Bradman tops the best batsman and Shane Warne as a bowler. I could never have 2 convicts in my 5 though.
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George Best
Muhammed Ali
John McEnroe
Daley Thompson
Anna Kournikova
For cricket if it was best of all time then Don Bradman tops the best batsman and Shane Warne as a bowler. I could never have 2 convicts in my 5 though.
Ali.
C B Fry
Daley Thompson
Martina Navratilova
Tiger Woods
It's an impossible question really. I tried to be as dispassionate as possible rather than just go for favourites - I'd only call one of them a favourite of mine and there's one there I don't like much at all.
Muhammed Ali by a country mile. Boxing and his Vietnam stance.
George Best, despite the flaws.
Ian Woosnam, 5' 4", world number one for ages.
Sebastian Coe, despite being a Tory, when he accelerated off the final bend...
Jesse Owens, take that Adolf.
Willie Boland
Kelly Sotherton
Ali
Jesse Owens
CB Fry
Messi
Hughie Ferguson
Fictional... William Wilson by a mile
Bugger I forgot Roy of the Rovers
I guess a lot of this depends on your age. Muhammed Ali and Pele will be on most older people's lists, but younger folks will choose Messi or Tyson, perhaps. Ali has to be the greatest boxer. Footballer? Well, take your choice from a long list. Gareth Edwards is considered by many (older) people to be the greatest ever rugby player, but young people will close Lomu, or someone similar. It's all subjective. But Chris Pike has got to be in there somewhere.
If we're talking fictional, what about Alf Tupper who won fifty gold medals on a diet of fish and chips? Robert Redford was pretty good in The Natural as well.
George Best
Pele
Les Kellert
Nathan Blake
Ali
Geoff Boycott on the bench.
Ronnie
Diego
Tyson
Bolt
Lomu
Kim Jong-un x5
Hasn't he gone round St Andrew's in 58, run 100m in 8.9secs, got an 8-darter for 501, won the British F1 driving backwards and was the only boxer to beat Calzaghe?
What sticks out like a sore thumb is the scarcity of women on the list. Possibly because to men they don't achieve hero status in a way that Ali, Bolt, Owens etc have. Certainly we admire the achievements of people like Navratilova, Jess Ennis, Serena Williams etc but not enough for us to include them on our all-time favourites list it seems.
William Wilson starred in about five different eras, when I was religiously following his exploits in the 60s he was about 120 years old then. Tupper got to meetings on his motorbike and sidebath after a day’s welding, Wilson ran a couple of hundred miles to get to a venue without eating, the man was and still is a marvel, Alf is no doubt long retired.