25 Most Iconic Athletes in the History of Sports

Must be too complicated for you

heftylefty said:
I would have thought that the person with the most slams would be paired with the person with the most titles. That's all.
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Because it isn't just about Federer most slam titles that is the reason. There's more to Federer achievements, like being an goodwill ambassador, a humanitarian, and everything he contribute/influence the sport that made him a good role model.

Do the knowledge !
 
This ranks really high on the silliest sports list of all time.

Richest. Most accomplished. Most famous. These concepts can measured

Iconic? What does this mean? (Ripe for twisting, bending, adjusting, fudging.)

[Late Greek eikōn, from Greek] : a conventional religious image typically painted on a small wooden panel and used in the devotions of Eastern Christians.
 
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TMF said:
Because it isn't just about Federer most slam titles that is the reason. There's more to Federer achievements, like being an goodwill ambassador, a humanitarian, and everything he contribute/influence the sport that made him a good role model.

Do the knowledge !
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LMAO :lol:

Yeah, do the needful!
 
It makes me feel like voting for Federer as the most unappreciated tennis player of all time.
 
TMF said:
Because it isn't just about Federer most slam titles that is the reason. There's more to Federer achievements, like being an goodwill ambassador, a humanitarian, and everything he contribute/influence the sport that made him a good role model.

Do the knowledge !
Click to expand...

First, unknot your undies!

You posted a wacked list to justify your love of Federer. I get it. I am a Federer fan too. But I am not obsess with the idea that he must be the Greatest of All Time for me to appreciate him. I like the way he plays. I'm a Tommy Haas fan and whether he ever wins a slam does not matter. I don't have to justify why I like him as player.

If you're having trouble taking some heat for an obviously silly list, you may want to reconsider sharing your wisdom with the world. And here's a clue for next time: Any sport list that does not have Borg as Iconic is highly suspect and the composer of such a list does not know the definition of the word "Icon".
 
heftylefty said:
First, unknot your undies!

You posted a wacked list to justify your love of Federer. I get it. I am a Federer fan too. But I am not obsess with the idea that he must be the Greatest of All Time for me to appreciate him. I like the way he plays. I'm a Tommy Haas fan and whether he ever wins a slam does not matter. I don't have to justify why I like him as player.

If you're having trouble taking some heat for an obviously silly list, you may want to reconsider sharing your wisdom with the world. And here's a clue for next time: Any sport list that does not have Borg as Iconic is highly suspect and the composer of such a list does not know the definition of the word "Icon".
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Borg IS iconic. Just because he's not on the short list of 25 doesn't means he's not.

Everyone has his own list of top 25, and no one has the exact same athletes and sequence. You have to be open minded and stop acting like your opinion has all the merit.
 
heftylefty said:
First, unknot your undies!

You posted a wacked list to justify your love of Federer. I get it. I am a Federer fan too. But I am not obsess with the idea that he must be the Greatest of All Time for me to appreciate him. I like the way he plays. I'm a Tommy Haas fan and whether he ever wins a slam does not matter. I don't have to justify why I like him as player.
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+1

It is possible to be a fan of Federer without being an insecure man-child who prays to RF every night.
 
TMF said:
Borg IS iconic. Just because he's not on the short list of 25 doesn't means he's not.

Everyone has his own list of top 25, and no one has the exact same athletes and sequence. You have to be open minded and stop acting like your opinion has all the merit.
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Now you're just projecting. But that does not explain how anyone claiming to have any knowledge of sport keeps Borg off any short list. That's like leaving Albert Einstein off of a list of the 25 greatest thinkers.

Look, I'm not blaming you. Well, at least not totally. You cut and paste a link from a person that doesn't know much about Sport Icons other than he or she thinks Federer is one. And was reason enough for you to post it here. Just own it.
 
The Green Mile said:
Only ones I have heard of are in bold.
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You've never heard of Nadia Comaneci? - the first ever female gymnast to score a perfect 10 - at the '76 Olympics

Sure you can question the fact that the list is way too US-centric, but it doesn't say much for some of you swearing you follow sports not to at least have heard of most of these icons.

Oh, Comaneci was Roumanian when she achieved the feat - and she was also later named among the iconic athletes of the century by Laureus.
 
reaper said:
The author of this list may have never heard of Sachin Tendulkar. Anyone who has knows he was the definitive icon to a billion people for a quarter of a century since 1990. In tennis terms he may not have been the greatest player, but McEnroe was a truly iconic sportsman.
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and yes, reaper, the omission of Tendulkar is a glaring one.
 
The list should include only names that are known by people who do not follow sports, or who do not follow the sport from which a name is chosen.

I asked me wife which of these names she recognizes. She got perhaps 15 or 20. But when I asked her what sport they played, she was down to around 15.

She does not follow sports. She has no interest in sports.

She could tell me immediately about these people:

Jack Nicklaus
Arnold Palmer
Joe Montana
Jesse Owens

She had no idea who these people are:

Babe Didrikson Zaharias
Deion Sanders
Jackie Joyner-Kersee
Dan Gable

And she could not place Bo Jackson, in spite of the huge ad campaign in the US with the phrase "Bo Knows".

She recognized the name "Wayne Gretzky" but could not remember what sport he played.

To be an icon someone needs to be so famous that the name is immediately recognized and a picture in the mind appears about that person doing something in the sport.

It needs to connect to people who do not care about sports.
 
^^^

What he said.

Which is why someone like Mike Tyson could be in the list. But then the list is confusing anyway and doesn't seem to adhere to its own criteria. "Iconic" should refer to the sportsmen/athletes who are known even by the layperson.

As for your wife knowing Arnold Palmer, I'd suggest that's a generational thing. Most people I know won't have a clue who Arnold Palmer is.
 
Backspin1183 said:
No Maradona? No Don Bradman? They deserve to be on the list even if it comes at the expense of RF.
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I don't follow football. I had not heard of either. I've heard of Pele, which is why I think he belongs near the top of the list.

The other iconic name to me is Beckham.

That's my point.

I can name any number of NFL players simply because I am American. The people going on such a list should be so famous that even people who either hate the sport or are totally ignorant about it should know them.

I don't like hockey, but I know more about it than football. So I recognize Gretzky, Bobby Orr. I have no interest in track and field, but I know Carl Lewis.

So if we are talking about icons, we should not be talking about top athletes in any sport we follow closely. We have to much knowledge to judge.
 
I wonder how many have heard of Ben Johnson.

Perhaps we need a list of the 25 most infamous athletes.

Sugar Ray Robinson is arguably the pound-for-pound greatest boxer, but is he iconic?

Most folks I know have heard of Ali or Tyson, but not SRR. Ray Leonard, Duran, Hagler, Roy Jones are not as well known. I struggle to place Mayweather Jr. and Pacquaio.

From the last 30 years, I'd suggest that the three most iconic sports figures are Jordan, Woods and Federer.
 
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pame said:
You've never heard of Nadia Comaneci? - the first ever female gymnast to score a perfect 10 - at the '76 Olympics

Sure you can question the fact that the list is way too US-centric, but it doesn't say much for some of you swearing you follow sports not to at least have heard of most of these icons.

Oh, Comaneci was Roumanian when she achieved the feat - and she was also later named among the iconic athletes of the century by Laureus.
Click to expand...

Nadia Comaneci is not the first person I would worry about someone not really recognizing. I had an idea, but I wasn't 100% sure that she was a gymnast.

Now, if you don't recognize Wayne Gretzky then I think that's a bit of a bigger deal, but maybe that's just the Canadian in me talking.

That said, if the list was UK centric or something, I'd probably be in the same boat as some of these other people not recognizing the names. You (not you specifically) don't realize how differences in country of origin and/or surrounding areas can affect these things sometimes.

For example, I had no idea who Tendulkar (sp?) was until I was going through youtube 3-4 years ago and the top comment was "Roger Federer is the Sachin Tendulkar of tennis." And someone that's a diehard cricket fan would take that as a heinous offense that I only knew of him since 3 or 4 years ago, but we barely know cricket exists over here. The recent World Cup was telecast though, but I didn't watch ANY of it.
 
Nathaniel_Near said:
^^^
As for your wife knowing Arnold Palmer, I'd suggest that's a generational thing. Most people I know won't have a clue who Arnold Palmer is.
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Absolutely true. My parents loved watching golf, so I know a ton of names and can see their faces in my mind, also the way they played.

Some sort of cultural bias is unavoidable. You can see how utterly ignorant I am about football (soccer). I never played it, and to me it looks like a bunch of people running around without a plan. Then someone scores, always when I am getting something to eat or drink, or finally go to the bathroom. ;)

But even though I loathe most of what the NFL stands for (extreme violence and damage to the brain) I still watched a lot of games. I understand what is going on. In my mind it seems as though Namath has to be an icon, but perhaps most people in other countries have no idea who he is.

As for "generational", that's always a problem. I feel like saying what AngieB says, "Kids these days..." ;)

It's what happens when you remember farther back. Laver was the first man I saw on TV who was a champion, so I can't imagine anyone not knowing how Laver is. For me watching Connors beat Rosewall was a lot like Fed fans seeing Novak beat Fed at W.

By the way, speaking of icons, how does Billie Jean King not get on that list? Again, maybe that is generational too.
 
Gary Duane said:
The list should include only names that are known by people who do not follow sports, or who do not follow the sport from which a name is chosen.

I asked me wife which of these names she recognizes. She got perhaps 15 or 20. But when I asked her what sport they played, she was down to around 15.

She does not follow sports. She has no interest in sports.

She could tell me immediately about these people:

Jack Nicklaus
Arnold Palmer
Joe Montana
Jesse Owens

She had no idea who these people are:

Babe Didrikson Zaharias
Deion Sanders
Jackie Joyner-Kersee
Dan Gable

And she could not place Bo Jackson, in spite of the huge ad campaign in the US with the phrase "Bo Knows".

She recognized the name "Wayne Gretzky" but could not remember what sport he played.

To be an icon someone needs to be so famous that the name is immediately recognized and a picture in the mind appears about that person doing something in the sport.

It needs to connect to people who do not care about sports.
Click to expand...

Yeah. I agree. I also don't know any of the bottom 4 with the exception of Deion Sanders. I've heard of Joyner-Kersee, but I have no idea who the other 2 are. And I'm a bit surprised your wife recognized Jesse Owens tbh.

He's not the most popular IMO. A track star from the early-mid 1900's.
 
Who was/has been the most iconic out of Federer and Borg? Jesse Owens is known by many and it's not hard to understand why, given what he symbolised in the face of ****(another censored word.. just like men@ce, huh) Germany at the Berlin Olympics. I'd have to ask around, but have the feeling the majority of people I know would know who Jesse Owens was. It's impressive, because it means that his iconic power has arguably lasted about 80 years and transcends generations/eras.
 
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Steve0904 said:
Nadia Comaneci is not the first person I would worry about someone not really recognizing. I had an idea, but I wasn't 100% sure that she was a gymnast.
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I'll bet you are fairly young, Steve. This is another generational thing.

At the time she won all we heard about is "Perfect 10". The hype was unbelievable. It was everywhere, and most likely that was pretty much world-wide because of what the Olympics symbolizes.

If you type perfect 10 in Google, you will see list of perfect 10~ lists. One is of gymnastics, and that brings you immediately to this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_10_(gymnastics)

The thing about icons is that it's not about who is the greatest at anything. It is name recognition, and history plays a huge part in that.
 
Gary Duane said:
Absolutely true. My parents loved watching golf, so I know a ton of names and can see their faces in my mind, also the way they played.

Some sort of cultural bias is unavoidable. You can see how utterly ignorant I am about football (soccer). I never played it, and to me it looks like a bunch of people running around without a plan. Then someone scores, always when I am getting something to eat or drink, or finally go to the bathroom. ;)

But even though I loathe most of what the NFL stands for (extreme violence and damage to the brain) I still watched a lot of games. I understand what is going on. In my mind it seems as though Namath has to be an icon, but perhaps most people in other countries have no idea who he is.

As for "generational", that's always a problem. I feel like saying what AngieB says, "Kids these days..." ;)

It's what happens when you remember farther back. Laver was the first man I saw on TV who was a champion, so I can't imagine anyone not knowing how Laver is. For me watching Connors beat Rosewall was a lot like Fed fans seeing Novak beat Fed at W.

By the way, speaking of icons, how does Billie Jean King not get on that list? Again, maybe that is generational too.
Click to expand...

Didn't get to see Gary Player, but have read about him and watched him in hindsight. He's one of the most interesting and inspirational guys in sports that I can think of. His interviews are simply brilliant and he's so incredibly fit even in his 70s.

I've almost always known who Nadia Comaneci is due to her "Perfect 1.00" due to them not having the ability to display her score properly. That was an iconic moment in sporting history—as was Ben Johnson's failed drugs test and Ali's Rumble in the Jungle.
 
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Steve0904 said:
He's not the most popular IMO. A track star from the early-mid 1900's.
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It's not about popularity. It's about history. Sometimes history and sports overlap. That's what makes Jackie Robinson important. He was the first to break the color barrier in baseball. Hitler didn't want Owens to run, which is an understatement.

Ali is also hugely linked to the Civil Rights movement in the US, which makes his life about far more than boxing.

BJK is directly linked to feminism. So her life far transcends tennis.

Babe Didrikson Zaharias is a fascinating woman. Yes, she is American, and she was way before my time, but she was far more than just a woman athlete.

It seems that politics, social change history are unusually linked to sports in the US. But that might be my own ethnocentrism raising its ugly head. ;)
 
Man of steel said:
You could make a list of different sports and then choose the iconic figures of each sport. That seems like the best idea
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It would be fair to do this.... to a point.

There are people here who lived through the careers of Borg and Federer (and others).

Which one had the greater field of influence and which one is more iconic overall. Why?
 
Man of steel said:
You could make a list of different sports and then choose the iconic figures of each sport. That seems like the best idea
Click to expand...

Sounds good!

Tennis Icons:
Laver
Borg
Mac/Connors
Billie Jean King
Graf

Basketball:
Jordan
Magic
LeBron
Bird
Dr.J

Track & Field:
Jesse Owens
Roger Bannister
Abebe Bikila
 
TMF said:
While it can be hard to pick the greatest athletes of all time, if you narrow your criteria the task becomes a little simpler. Factors that influenced our particular list include the athlete’s accomplishment in their particular sports, the number of years they were considered its best player, and their impact not only in their own sports but on the world in general. Here are the 25 most iconic athletes in the history of sports.



Two tennis stars made the top 25 list.

1. Michael Jordan
2. Roger Federer
3. Tiger Woods
4. Deion Sanders
5. Jackie Joyner-Kersee
6. Michael Phelps
7. Bo Jackson
8. Cheryl Miller
9. Martina Navratilova
10. Carl Lewis
11. Wayne Gretzky
12. Nadia Comaneci
13. Bruce Lee
14. Dan Gable
15. Bobby Orr
16. Muhammad Ali
17. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
18. Jim Brown
19. Pele
20. Willie Mays
21. Sugar Ray Robinson
22. Jackie Robinson
23. Babe Didrikson Zaharias
24. Babe Ruth
25. Jim Thorpe
Click to expand...

The bold are the ones I can recognize immediately. Besides Bruce Lee of course. :lol: Carl Lewis is somewhere in the middle. Might take me a few seconds, and a question like "He was a track star wasn't he?" Same for Comaneci.

All in all, it's a bad list even for a North American centric view. Deion Sanders played 2 professional sports, football and baseball, but I wouldn't put him on a list of "icons", certainly not at #4. And I only know Cheryl Miller because she's Reggie's sister and I recently watched a documentary with her in it. She shouldn't come anywhere near this list with a 1000 foot pole. And the ones I haven't bolded I wouldn't immediately recognize so like Gary says, they shouldn't be on this list IMO.

And the bottom half of the list is a bit hit and miss. Personally, I wouldn't put Kareem Abdul Jabbar on it ever. And I wouldn't put Jim Brown on it either. At least put a QB on it. Like Montana or Brady. And I don't think I'd put Willie Mays or Sugar Ray Robinson on it either.

It's only a list yes, but my overall point is that if people want to "complain" about it (which they would probably do anyway) they reserve that right because the NA centric "excuse" doesn't fly here IMO, and I'm saying that as a Canadian (i.e someone who lives close enough to the States to know most of the people on the list). Even as a North American myself, this list is bad.
 
Good point with Roger Bannister. Who doesn't know about him being the first to break the 4 minute barrier for the mile?? Well, maybe more than I realise.


****​

One of the most iconic sports images ever...
article-1303860-037015940000044D-145_468x362.jpg

​
...and its variants.


****​

Also, for good or for bad, Lance Armstrong should be mentioned.
 
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Nathaniel_Near said:
Good point with Roger Bannister. Who doesn't know about him being the first to break the 4 minute barrier for the mile?? Well, maybe more than I realise.
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I didn't. But I would immediately recognize the name of Mark Spitz. By the way, everyone born in my parents' time would recognize Johnny Weissmuller. He was Tarzan in the movies. ;)

The thing about Jesse Owens is that he ran in 1936, so we are judging his fame 79 years later. I wonder which of the names on this list will still be recognized almost 80 years later!
 
Gary Duane said:
I don't follow football. I had not heard of either. I've heard of Pele, which is why I think he belongs near the top of the list.

The other iconic name to me is Beckham.

That's my point.

I can name any number of NFL players simply because I am American. The people going on such a list should be so famous that even people who either hate the sport or are totally ignorant about it should know them.

I don't like hockey, but I know more about it than football. So I recognize Gretzky, Bobby Orr. I have no interest in track and field, but I know Carl Lewis.

So if we are talking about icons, we should not be talking about top athletes in any sport we follow closely. We have to much knowledge to judge.
Click to expand...

Football (soccer for Americans) is the most popular sport in the world by far. And Maradona was voted to be the best player of the 20th century by fans on an internet poll by FIFA. A list of 25 most iconic players of the world without Maradona shows ignorance.

Beckham may be very famous but I wouldn't call him iconic in sporting terms. Not sure he was the best player in England even during his playing days.

I wouldn't dare to come up with a list of 25 most iconic athletes in the history of sports. Not without doing a lot of research first.

I don't think the most famous are the most iconic either. Almost all my friends and people I know know who C Ronaldo or Messi is but not everyone knows who Federer is. There's a reason why the two most must popular tennis players of the world, Nadal and Federer have a lot less following on social media than a Ronaldo or Messi or even a Gareth Bale. But it doesn't make them any less iconic than them. They are just more famous. That's all.
 
Anyway, iconic refers to more than just winning. It about popularity and symbolism.

Maradona, Gretzky, Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, Muhammad Ali, Babe Ruth are more than just great players loved by sports fans for their skills. Their were widely known for their personalities.
 
Why 25? Too many. The world doesn't have so many iconic sportsmen that majority can recognize.

It should be 5 only. In no particular order.
1. Muhammad Ali.
2. Michael Schumacher.
3. Pele.
4. Maradona.
5. Michael Jordan.

I'm sure there are at least 70% of grown up men (>40 years old) in any major cities in the world could recognize all of above names. That's iconic to me.

If we open up to 10.

6. Federer
7. Messi.
8. Tiger Woods.
9. Mike Tyson.
10. Lance Amstrong.

More than 50% grown up men in any major cities in the world could recognize all of these names.
 
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