What sports athletes are considered to be the “best” athletes in the world?
Other people might have a different view but the winner of the Olympic (or World Championships) Decathlon has always been considered the best athlete in the world. Each athlete must sprint for 100 meters, long jump, heave a 16-pound shotput, high jump and run 400 meters — all in that very order — on the first day. On the second day the athlete runs a 110 meter hurdle race over 42 inch barriers, hurls the discus, pole vaults, tosses a javelin and, at the end of the contest, races over 1500 meters, virtually a mile. http://www.decathlonusa.org/nature.html http://www.decathlonusa.org/history.html http://www2.jsonline.com/sports/oly/dan801.html Jim Thorpe, the football star and Olympic legend whom Sweden’s King Gustav V called “the greatest athlete in the world” after he won the 1912 Olympic Decathlon, was named, in 1950, by the Associated Press the greatest football player and greatest all-round athlete for the first 50 years of this century.
