sportsbarPhelps v Bolt - who will history remember?
August 18th 2008 07:00
Greatest Sporting Moment of all time?
Well the Beijing Olympics are halfway over, but it is hard to imagine them being remembered for anything other than two people
Michael Phelps will be forever remembered, without doubt. The number 8 will be synonymous with his name.
But has he been overshadowed by the most incredible performance my eyes have ever seen?
Ussain Bolt’s run will be one of the enduring and everlasting moments in the Games history. His antics before the race, so laid back, playing with the camera while all the other sprinters were so focused… And then to run the way he did, with arms outreached and 20metres still to run… to break the World Record and to have pulled up well short to enjoy the moment… it is one of the single greatest things I have ever seen.
What Bolt did looked so natural and yet was so inhuman it defies belief. No one has dominated a final like that, not even the grates like Jesse Owens was that far in front.
It will be forever etched in my mind, far in front of Phelps 8 Gold…
Now, what Phelps did, took incredible stamina and determination, of that there is no doubt. But for sheer theatre- Bolt wins for me hands down.
It is funny to think though that Phelps was .02 seconds away from winning 6 gold and 2 silver… The relay came down to .01 and then I still have no idea how he won that Butterfly event. Even in Super-Doper Mega Extreme Slow motion, I still don’t know how he won that by .01 – funny how fickle sport can be, he was millimeters from winning ‘only’ 6… Perhaps it was fate, I don’t know, but sport is definitely a strange creature.
But it got me thinking, what sporting events match up to Phelps 8 Gold Medals and Bolt’s Bolt?
I’m talking on a world stage, so I am going to skip Bradman (as much as it kills me) and also I would love to put the MAN UTD comeback in the 1999 European Champions League Final, but probably not a world sporting phenomenon… even though it had all the ingredients…
I would have to put up Ali v Forman and the Rope-a-dope… Ali comes back from sporting obscurity and beats all the odds to reclaim his title. It is the original irresistible force meeting the immovable object…And it confirmed Ali as a World Icon, a legend – the Greatest
Michael Johnson 100 and 200 double
Torvill and Dean’s perfect Ice Skating routine At the 1984 Winter Olympics the pair became the highest scoring figure skaters of all time (for a single programme) receiving 12 perfect 6.0s, including artistic impression scores of 6.0 from every judge.
Nadia Comaneci, the 14-year-old Romanian, arched in midair for an instant on her dismount from the uneven parallel bars, then the feet supporting her 4-foot-11, 86-pound body landed softly on the mat.
The silence was shattered by an explosion of cheering and applause that, after a few seconds, turned to consternation. Flashing on the electronic scoreboard was 1.00.
It took a moment for the 18,000 spectators at the Forum to realize that Comaneci had, in effect, outperformed modern technology.
What she had achieved at the Montreal Summer Games on July 18, 1976, was a perfect 10, the first in Olympic history. It registered as 1.00 because the scoreboards were limited to three figures, the maximum being 9.99.
"I knew my routine was flawless," Comaneci said later. "I had performed it many times before in practice the same way."
Miracle on Ice - hockey between USA and Russia was massive simply because of the context.
Rag tag assembly of mostly teenaged amateurs, barely together a few months and playing a sport invented and perfected elsewhere, take on the most polished, professional and seemingly unbeatable team in the history of international hockey and win; producing the greatest upset in the pantheon of sport in a time of international political tension smack dab in the middle of a Cold War that defined the parameters of the century. What makes the ultimate upset even more unbelievable is the fact that the same two teams played only a week earlier in an exhibition match and the Soviet Union cruised to a 10-1 victory, setting the stage for the expected American embarrassment that never came.
I Mentioned him before Jesse Owens marched into Adolph Hitler's great Berlin arena and spit in the face of the Third Reich's claims of Aryan superiority by setting three world records and one Olympic record, earning four track and field gold medals in the same Summer Olympiad, a performance that would remain unmatched for 48 years. In front of the visibly infuriated German dictator and a stunned international audience, Owens won the 100 meters in an Olympic-record 10.3 seconds, the long jump, setting an Olympic record of 26-53/8 and the 200 meters in an Olympic-record 20.7 seconds. Owens won his fourth gold medal, leading off the 4x100-meter relay that would set a world record at 39.8 seconds.
Roger Bannister – first man to break the 4minute mile! - it was thought that not only was it impossible, but any man who attempted to break it would die.
Tiger Woods wins the major on one leg – enough said.
Maradonna's hand of God followed by one of the greatest goals scored on the World stage...
I had to add it, but not for a single moment -
Lance Armstrong - 7 Tour de Frances... But for a single moment? When he narrowly avoided a crash and went cross country on the grass and somehow managed to keep his bike upright... but that one was just for me...
Well the Beijing Olympics are halfway over, but it is hard to imagine them being remembered for anything other than two people
Michael Phelps will be forever remembered, without doubt. The number 8 will be synonymous with his name.
But has he been overshadowed by the most incredible performance my eyes have ever seen?
Ussain Bolt’s run will be one of the enduring and everlasting moments in the Games history. His antics before the race, so laid back, playing with the camera while all the other sprinters were so focused… And then to run the way he did, with arms outreached and 20metres still to run… to break the World Record and to have pulled up well short to enjoy the moment… it is one of the single greatest things I have ever seen.
What Bolt did looked so natural and yet was so inhuman it defies belief. No one has dominated a final like that, not even the grates like Jesse Owens was that far in front.
It will be forever etched in my mind, far in front of Phelps 8 Gold…
Now, what Phelps did, took incredible stamina and determination, of that there is no doubt. But for sheer theatre- Bolt wins for me hands down.
It is funny to think though that Phelps was .02 seconds away from winning 6 gold and 2 silver… The relay came down to .01 and then I still have no idea how he won that Butterfly event. Even in Super-Doper Mega Extreme Slow motion, I still don’t know how he won that by .01 – funny how fickle sport can be, he was millimeters from winning ‘only’ 6… Perhaps it was fate, I don’t know, but sport is definitely a strange creature.
How does he win this?
But it got me thinking, what sporting events match up to Phelps 8 Gold Medals and Bolt’s Bolt?
I’m talking on a world stage, so I am going to skip Bradman (as much as it kills me) and also I would love to put the MAN UTD comeback in the 1999 European Champions League Final, but probably not a world sporting phenomenon… even though it had all the ingredients…
I would have to put up Ali v Forman and the Rope-a-dope… Ali comes back from sporting obscurity and beats all the odds to reclaim his title. It is the original irresistible force meeting the immovable object…And it confirmed Ali as a World Icon, a legend – the Greatest
Michael Johnson 100 and 200 double
Torvill and Dean’s perfect Ice Skating routine At the 1984 Winter Olympics the pair became the highest scoring figure skaters of all time (for a single programme) receiving 12 perfect 6.0s, including artistic impression scores of 6.0 from every judge.
Nadia Comaneci, the 14-year-old Romanian, arched in midair for an instant on her dismount from the uneven parallel bars, then the feet supporting her 4-foot-11, 86-pound body landed softly on the mat.
The silence was shattered by an explosion of cheering and applause that, after a few seconds, turned to consternation. Flashing on the electronic scoreboard was 1.00.
It took a moment for the 18,000 spectators at the Forum to realize that Comaneci had, in effect, outperformed modern technology.
What she had achieved at the Montreal Summer Games on July 18, 1976, was a perfect 10, the first in Olympic history. It registered as 1.00 because the scoreboards were limited to three figures, the maximum being 9.99.
"I knew my routine was flawless," Comaneci said later. "I had performed it many times before in practice the same way."
Miracle on Ice - hockey between USA and Russia was massive simply because of the context.
Rag tag assembly of mostly teenaged amateurs, barely together a few months and playing a sport invented and perfected elsewhere, take on the most polished, professional and seemingly unbeatable team in the history of international hockey and win; producing the greatest upset in the pantheon of sport in a time of international political tension smack dab in the middle of a Cold War that defined the parameters of the century. What makes the ultimate upset even more unbelievable is the fact that the same two teams played only a week earlier in an exhibition match and the Soviet Union cruised to a 10-1 victory, setting the stage for the expected American embarrassment that never came.
I Mentioned him before Jesse Owens marched into Adolph Hitler's great Berlin arena and spit in the face of the Third Reich's claims of Aryan superiority by setting three world records and one Olympic record, earning four track and field gold medals in the same Summer Olympiad, a performance that would remain unmatched for 48 years. In front of the visibly infuriated German dictator and a stunned international audience, Owens won the 100 meters in an Olympic-record 10.3 seconds, the long jump, setting an Olympic record of 26-53/8 and the 200 meters in an Olympic-record 20.7 seconds. Owens won his fourth gold medal, leading off the 4x100-meter relay that would set a world record at 39.8 seconds.
Roger Bannister – first man to break the 4minute mile! - it was thought that not only was it impossible, but any man who attempted to break it would die.
Tiger Woods wins the major on one leg – enough said.
Maradonna's hand of God followed by one of the greatest goals scored on the World stage...
I had to add it, but not for a single moment -
Lance Armstrong - 7 Tour de Frances... But for a single moment? When he narrowly avoided a crash and went cross country on the grass and somehow managed to keep his bike upright... but that one was just for me...
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I hope it doesn't overshadow the Games...
That photo of Bolt crossing the line (above) will be one i never forget... it is absolute domination...(and over one of the fastest fields in history no less...)
I think I like Bolt's because man has run since the beginning of time, hence why records are so hard to break now... swimming seems to be decades behind...
It is the most natural of sports and that moment was simply breath-taking. One of those moments where those who saw it will look back and remember exactly where they were and what they were doing...