Fifty Plus (50+) - The Greatest Athletic Accomplishments

Watching the Olympics and Michael Phelps brings to mind the greatest athletic accomplishments of all time. Since we've been around longer than others on BF (there's a similar thread going over in the Road Forum), it might be interesting to get some opinions. To make the exercise more challenging, let's limit it to things you actually saw happen (in person or live on TV). So, what's the greatest athletic achievement you ever saw?

I remember Bob Beamon at the 1968 Olympics. He long-jumped 29 feet 2 inches at a time the world record was just over 27 feet. I remember how he out-jumped the measuring system, and they had to measure it by hand.

Floyd Landis' stage 17 in the 2006 TdF would have been in the top ten, but for the circumstances. Lance's #7 in 2005 certainly is up there. Phelps' accomplishments also are near the top.

All my greatest sports moments came on live TV. I grew up near Cleveland in the 60s and 70s, so all the live sports I saw were eminently forgettable

What do you think?

Herschel Walker's 1,616 yards as a freshman in 1980 that carried Georgia to a Mythical National Championship. I watched every home game from the free seats by the railroad tracks on the South end of Sanford Stadium in Athens. The away games that were televised, I watched and the rest I listened to the great Larry Munson call the play by play. Herschel was unlike anything I had seen before or have seen since. Amazing.

December 9th 1970. Vinko Bogataj crashes on takeoff from the ski jump at Obersdorf West Germany and walks away relatively uninjured.

Millions of people across the world know of him as the "Agony of Defeat" on ABC's Wide World of Sports for more than a decade.

Miruts Yifter in Durham at the 1971 US - Pan-Africa Games. A complete unknown, Yifter ran the 5,000 meters at a blistering pace, but miscalculated the lap count and began a furious spring to the finish on lap early. Seems he knew no alphabet but the Ethiopian one and no Western languages, so the prerace and briefing and lap cards meant nothing to him. Everyone in Durham really felt for him, and he instantly became the hero of the games. The Ethiopian Embassy was sufficiently impressed to send down a high powered translater from Washington to make sure he understood all future briefings.

I remember him walking around campus in his white robe, greeting his new fans. Some of my fellow students at Duke were Ethiopian, and were able to talk with him. He was totally positive, and said he would enter the 10,000 the next day and would certainly win. You've got to understand that legends like Steve Prefontaine and Frank Shorter, and Kip Keino were the competition, and that nobody runs a back to back 5,000 and 10,000. Not the reaction one would expect of a former farmer who joined the Ethiopian national team as a walk on and was unknown outside East Africa!

The next day, in incredible heat and humidity, Mirits Yifter smoked everyone, including the whole pack of international middle distance superstars. He went on to an amazing career and nine years later, he had an Olympic gold medal.

Paul

The greatest athletic feats that I ever saw were not record breaking events but significant enough that I still remember them as if they just happened.

1: The Bulls were playing at Cleveland and Micheal Jordan was on solo fast break wth one Cav defender (Ben Poquette) positioned on the foul line. From our seats it was apparent the defender could not have even touched Micheal let alone foul or defend him. TV does not do justice to how more more athletic someone can be over other great athtetes.

2: I was competing in the Decathlon at the Penn Relays in the mid 1970's and due to heavy rains they moved the shot put indoors to a practice facility/field house. A decathlete from Conn. named Ron James picked up a 16 lb rubber shot put, and without taking a step, dunked the shot put through a basketball goal. That was an amazing feat of power from a guy who was about 6' 2".

3: While coaching HS track and field we were in a meet where Dathan Ritzenower (sic) ran a two mile race and missed Steve Prefontaine's record by about 2/10ths of a second. His splits were around 4:21 and 4:20. He was from Michigan and that same day he set all time Ohio records in the 2 mile, and in three different relays where he ran 1 mile, 3/4 mile and 1/2 mile legs.

In 1954 there wasn't much live TV coverage of sporting events, plus my family didn't have a TV. However, the movie theater showed the Pathé Newsreel every week and I remember seeing Roger Bannister run the first sub-4 minute mile.

The Catch by Willie Mays - 1954 World Series Cleveland Indians v New York Giants. I was born and raised in Cleveland and the Giants swept the series and broke our hearts.

There is a statue at the entrance of SF Giants Stadium of Willie making the catch. The catch, IMHO, is one of the greatest plays ever made and showcased only one of Mays' great talents and showed everyone what is possible in baseball.

Here are a couple of videos of the catch and info on Mays.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maqG-DHmUSA&NR=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8eJTw8m5S8&NR=1

Sounds like we are taking about the greatest feats on a single day or event, rather than a career ... a la Cal Ripken's consecutive game strike or Nolan Ryan's career strikeouts.

Michael Johnson's 19.32 200 meter sprint was incredible.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTjk770KoR0

I watched the Beamon jump in '68 too and will never forget it. Or at least I hope not.

Multiple performances by Carl Lewis were phenomenal. '84 Olympics where he won the 100, 200, 4x100, and the long jump.

And just watching Michael Jordan over the years. The way he willed and carried his team to victory. The 1998 playoff win over Utah, where Jordan late in his career scored 45 and hit the game-winning shot is a great example.

There have been all sorts of great atheletic feats.

A few notable ones come to mind

Lynne Cox being the only person to swim from Alaska to Siberia across the Bering Straits and doing it without a wet suit. That water is so cold that it kills a normal person in minutes. Is she really part seal?

I believe one of Gregg Lemond's Tour victories were more impressive than any one of Lance Armstrong's. Shoot Lemond won one of them with virtually no team support. Armstrong generally had the strongest team in the Tour.

Al Oerter with his 4 consecutive gold medals in discus in the olympics.

Jesse Owens setting 3 or was it 4? world records in one day at Ohio State.

Babe Didrickson won the women's college track championship (a team prize) single handed.

That being said there have been many superb performances at the current olympics. A golden moment is a golden moment and should be cherished.

One of the greatest accomplishments I've seen is Billy Mills winning the 10,000 meters in the 1964 Olympics.

English: Billy Mills winning the 10,000m in the 1964 Olympics: 1stLt William “Billy” Mills, USMCR, wove through a field of lapped runners and passed the race favorite, Ron Clarke of Australia, to win the 10,000 meters race at the 1964 Olympic Games. His victory is described as one of the greatest upsets in Olympic history and he is still the only American to ever win a gold medal in that event.

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

Several years ago Billy was the featured speaker at a run that I attended. He showed the old footage of the race and it still gave me goose bumps!

Jasckie Robinson breaking the baseball color barrier.

How about Bob Mathias? He won the decathalon in the 1948 and 1952 Olympic games. He had to master ten disciplines, against the best in the world, and did it twice!

Watching the Olympics and Michael Phelps brings to mind the greatest athletic accomplishments of all time. Since we've been around longer than others on BF (there's a similar thread going over in the Road Forum), it might be interesting to get some opinions. To make the exercise more challenging, let's limit it to things you actually saw happen (in person or live on TV). So, what's the greatest athletic achievement you ever saw?

I remember Bob Beamon at the 1968 Olympics. He long-jumped 29 feet 2 inches at a time the world record was just over 27 feet. I remember how he out-jumped the measuring system, and they had to measure it by hand.

Floyd Landis' stage 17 in the 2006 TdF would have been in the top ten, but for the circumstances. Lance's #7 in 2005 certainly is up there. Phelps' accomplishments also are near the top.

All my greatest sports moments came on live TV. I grew up near Cleveland in the 60s and 70s, so all the live sports I saw were eminently forgettableWhat do you think?

You may already have been gone when Craig Eiloh held Michael Jordan to 67 points in a playoff game.

Jasckie Robinson breaking the baseball color barrier.

A great accomplishment no doubt. But was it athletic or social?

A great accomplishment no doubt. But was it athletic or social?

If he hadn't been an excellent athlete, would it have worked?

I guess a bit of both.

Dan Gable. What a man and wow just wow what a wrestler, I rate him the best ever. His 1972 Olympic performance was simply incredible.

There's probably not a lot of Tiger Woods fans on this forum, but after listening to a M Phelps interview the other night I realized the one thing that Tiger, Phelps and Lance have in common is the fear of coming in second. Phelps said in the interview that he could not stand to lose. Lance was always the same way. He always said that he would not enter a race unless he was planning on winning. You can see that same focus in Tiger Woods face at every Tourney. I'm not sure that any other athelete has dominated their sport the way these three guys have and it's mostly has to do with their heart.

All my greatest sports moments came on live TV. I grew up near Cleveland in the 60s and 70s, so all the live sports I saw were eminently forgettable

What do you think?

With television, there are so many great sports moments, that it makes it difficult to separate out the best.

Yet, the Olympics, and TV commentary add a depth to provide a true depth of character that many athletes share, sportsmanship. There are a few that show the not so bright-side, yet most exhibit the desire to particiapte and finish what they started when they made the decision to compete and represent their country in the games we cal the Olympics. That is the great moment repeated every 4 years.

My favorite memories of "O" sports include, Cassius Clay Jr. (aka Mohammad Ali) boxing for gold, and the British ski jumper, Eddie the Eagle.

At the 1989 Tour de France (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tour_de_France), with 37 shotgun pellets remaining in his body (including two in the lining of hisheart), LeMond was hoping only to finish in the top 20. Heading into the final stage, however, an individual time trial (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individual_time_trial) finishing in Paris, LeMond was in second place overall. He was 50 seconds behind Laurent Fignon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurent_Fignon), who had won the Tour in 1983 and 1984.

Lemond beat Fignon by 58 seconds and won the tour.

It was amazing.

Not the greatest moment, but a great story about not getting down and hanging in there when everything seems to be going to hell in a rowboat. I like the next to last paragraph the best. Packer fans may not want to read this.

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/football/giants/2008/01/21/2008-01-21_lawrence_tynes_kick_is_a_snap.html

Another good one was the 1980 "Miracle on Ice," in which the USA shocked the Soviet Union 4-3 at the Olympic Winter Games in Lake Placid, New York. This was before the US pro's were were allowed to participate in "amateur" sports.

An athletic event I watched personally was at college. It had nothing to do with an event or game, but was on the basketball court before practice. We had a track All-American at the college that was a great athelete as would be expected. I guess he was about 6' tall and slender. During a 3 on 3 game before practice started I dunked the ball. Someone said something to him about that since he long jumped and high jumped in track. He said that was nothing - watch this. After our game he came on the floor to show us a stunt. He ran to the backboard like the was shooting a lay-up (no ball), jumped and put his foot on the rim.

I was shocked. Do it again. He did as I watched closer. He would "kick" the rim, which is 10' high with the bottom of his shoe. He would twist a little and land on both feet. There was a reason he made NAIA All-American. He should have been in a Division 1 program.

In 1967 I watched Robert "Rocket" Medlock of Lubbock Dunbar (Texas) as he ran a 9.0 seconds - 100 yard dash at a very large high school track meet. It eclipsed what was then Bob Hayes' 9.1 Olympic record. This was a hand-timed race.

Dunbar was a black school and Texas was still two years away from completely integrating the Prairie View Interscholastic League (all-black) into the University Interscholastic League (state-wide). I don't think anyone was about to allow the fastest-man-in-the-world title to belong to some kid from the east side of Lubbock.

The Monday following the track meet his 9.0 was ruled to have been "wind-aided" and corrected to 9.2 seconds. I always wondered if he got robbed.

Michael Johnson's 19.32 200 meter sprint was incredible.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTjk770KoR0



When I wrote this, I hadn't heard about Bolt's performance, as I've been staying away from sports reports until I can watch the evening Olympics coverage. I really thought Johnson's record would stand for another 10-20 years. No one had even been close to it.

Gotta put Bolt's performance in these Olympics right there with the most amazing performances ever.

Miruts Yifter in Durham at the 1971 US - Pan-Africa Games. ...
The next day, in incredible heat and humidity, Mirits Yifter smoked everyone, including the whole pack of international middle distance superstars. He went on to an amazing career and nine years later, he had an Olympic gold medal.
Wow. Great story.

Interesting how many running stories made this topic.

Not a very popular sport but Rulon Gardner beating Alexander Karelin of Russia in the Greco-Roman wrestling competition of the 2000 Olympics was the most memorable athletic accomplishment I can remember, and I remember very well Beamon's jump, Carl Lewis and Edwin Moses amazing decade long dominance, and Michael Jordan.

Gardner was a true underdog, looked like a chubby kid compared to Karelin's chiseled body, and Karelin ("The Russian Bear") was on a 1987-2000 undefeated streak.

For me, it had to be watching Jim Hall win the 1965 12 Hours of Sebring in his Chapparal.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/157/435646188_d069e6f31d.jpg?v=0

As far as this Olympics, I don't know if it is the greatest, but I really enjoyed the 1/4 finals of the BMX racing. Lots of good racing and surprises. I hope I can catch the semi-finals and the final.

Ned Overend has got to rank right up there with some of the greatest athlete's, plus he's still going, and he's a 50+'er, which makes it even better!!
http://www.cyclingnews.com/riders/2005/interviews/?id=ned_overend05

Isane Bolt - 2008 Olympics

Isane Bolt - 2008 Olympics

On the news this AM they reported that Usain's father attributed his speed to a special kind of yam that grows near their hometown. I hope this does not turn out simular to the mid- 90's Chinese women's distance runners who were breaking records left and right. When questioned about the use of performance enhancers the coach said "no, the teams eats a special turtle soup that comes from a turtle found only in China":D

Usain's father attributed his speed to a special kind of yam that grows near their hometown.

Yams are high in Vitamin C, dietary fiber, Vitamin B6, potassium, and manganese; while being low in saturated fat and sodium. Vitamin C, dietary fiber and Vitamin B6 may all promote good health[4] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yam_(vegetable)#cite_note-3). Furthermore, a product that is high in potassium and low in sodium is likely to produce a good potassium-sodium balance in the human body, and so protect against osteoporosis and heart disease[5] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yam_(vegetable)#cite_note-4). Having a low level of saturated fat is also helpful for protection against heart disease[6] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yam_(vegetable)#cite_note-5).
Yam products generally have a lower Glycemic Index (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycemic_Index) than potato products[7] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yam_(vegetable)#cite_note-6), which means that they will provide a more sustained form of energy, and give better protection against obesity and diabetes[8] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yam_(vegetable)#cite_note-7).

Wow... the ultimate cycling food. I still think Bolt was drinking rocket fuel

Isane Bolt - 2008 Olympics

Check out this post (http://grg51.typepad.com/steroid_nation/2008/08/victor-conte-i.html) from Steroid Nation, which is one of the blogs I read regularly. It's hard to know what to make of Victor Conte - he's obviously a convicted felon of dubious credibility, but he know more about doping in sport than almost anyone.

Yams are high in Vitamin C, dietary fiber, Vitamin B6, potassium, and manganese; while being low in saturated fat and sodium. Vitamin C, dietary fiber and Vitamin B6 may all promote good health[4] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yam_(vegetable)#cite_note-3). Furthermore, a product that is high in potassium and low in sodium is likely to produce a good potassium-sodium balance in the human body, and so protect against osteoporosis and heart disease[5] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yam_(vegetable)#cite_note-4). Having a low level of saturated fat is also helpful for protection against heart disease[6] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yam_(vegetable)#cite_note-5).
Yam products generally have a lower Glycemic Index (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycemic_Index) than potato products[7] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yam_(vegetable)#cite_note-6), which means that they will provide a more sustained form of energy, and give better protection against obesity and diabetes[8] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yam_(vegetable)#cite_note-7).

Wow... the ultimate cycling food. I still think Bolt was drinking rocket fuel

It did look as if he was being pushed from behind in the later part of his races.:D

Check out this post (http://grg51.typepad.com/steroid_nation/2008/08/victor-conte-i.html) from Steroid Nation

Crap... I thought it was the yams. That is some scary stuff. When will this doping/steroids stop

If you read the comments on that page, one claims that Bolt has been subjected to 11 drug tests and has passed them all. For whatever that means.

I've gotta go with Beamon. To best a world record by two feet is unbelievable.

Beamon's jump is still the 2nd longest in history. And it has been 40 years since he made it.

Although most consider Carl Lewis' 8.87 meter jump to have been tougher, as Beamon did his at high altitude, which helps in the long jump.

No one has come within 5" of Beamon's jump since 1991.

Here's two:

Czech distnce runner Emil Zatopek winning the 5K, 10K, and marathon at the Helsinki Olympics (1952?). A few others have tried this, but all failed.

Diegpo Maradona in the World Cup semifinals against England in Mexico City (1982?). He's best known for the famous "Hand of God" play, but better was his second (and winning) score for Argentina with time winding down; he dribbled the ball all the way down the field, faking out all the English defenders in front of him, and smacked it into the corner of the English goal. Incredible footwork, and (if you ever see the video), he never takes his eyes off the field and defenders (absolute perfect control of the ball!).

I once saw a some still photos of Beamon's jump and at his highest the soles of his feet were over 6 feet off of the ground! But you're right, it was in Mexico City at a high altitude. I'm an old track guy so this has always interested me.

Eric Heidens 5 gold medal performance in 1980. And maybe more impressive, not falling prey to commercial endorsements afterwards. We will see how Phelps fares.

Heiden has a new book out on training and health. Good read.

If parachuting is a sport....There was a guy in the sixties that jumped out of a hot air balloon at 140,000 feet(twice the height that the highest airplanes fly then),freefell for 8 minutes,broke the sound barrier(the only person EVER to do that WITHOUT an airplane)reached speeds of more than 750MPH and survived to tell about it.Amazing what some people will do for science.

If that's not enough,the same guy rode a rocket sled on tracks that endured 50g's on take off and stopping and survived.There was so much g force on stopping that his internal organs were bruised and he was blind for a few days because his eyes filled up with blood.

That makes the Olympics look like kids playing at the park.

Screwed up my first post (I wasn't around at the 1952 Olympics), so the most impressive live sports achievement was probably in 1976 when the junior college I went to in Southern California had a track meet with Santa Monica College, and Houston McTear was their top sprinter. Man, that dude was FAST!!!!!

Terry Fox, 1980 Marathon of Hope. Fox had lost his leg to cancer and at 18 years old resolved to raise money for cancer by running across Canada. He ran a marathon every day for 143 days on one leg before he was forced to stop due to a recurance of his cancer. He passed away a year later, but millions of $ have been raised in his name since then.

Secretariat At 3 years old won 1973)
Kentucky Derby (new track record), Preakness Stakes (new track record), Belmont Stakes (new WORLD record), Bay Shore Stakes, Gotham Stakes (tied track record), Arlington Invitational, Marlboro Cup (new WORLD record), Man O'War Stakes (new course record), Canadian International. He still to this day holds the track record for the Kentucky Derby and the Belmont Stakes.
http://www.best-horse-photos.com/images/Secretariat%20Horse%20Photo.jpg

Terry Fox, 1980 Marathon of Hope. Fox had lost his leg to cancer and at 18 years old resolved to raise money for cancer by running across Canada. He ran a marathon every day for 143 days on one leg before he was forced to stop due to a recurance of his cancer. He passed away a year later, but millions of $ have been raised in his name since then.

WOW! What an inspiration.