Quote:
Originally Posted by troutman
My problem with the claim is that there are so many medals awarded in swimming, for numerous strokes and distances. Call him the best Olympic swimmer of all time. It is apples and oranges to call him the greatest Olympic athlete.
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in fact how can you legitimately declare anybody the greatest Olympic athelete at all, no matter how good they are at their sport. There's 400 events in 35 sports and they're all so insanely different, how can you make the argument that one individual is better than everyone else who ever participated in the history of the Games.
how much work goes into being a decathlete, all for one measly medal every 4 years. I can easily call Phelps the greatest human to ever jump into water and wave his limbs around, but no way am I going to try to measure that against all the other sports on land.