Just saw this thread and gave it a skim only. I'll just add that inter-sports comparisons like this are inherently silly and, as something of a contradiction, that I'll put
Carl Lewis' Olympic dominance in the long jump (along with the rest of his golden resume!) up there with Bolt's in the 100m/200m. As someone has already pointed out the 100m/200m two-peat is a relatively common feat in T&F compared to its rarer 200m/400m counterpart (which makes Michael Johnson's near consecutive 2-peats even more remarkable), not to mention that Bolt, unlike his illustrious predecessors in Owens and Lewis, never gave the long jump a go to begin with. And get this: before or after Lewis nobody, not even Beamon (alas Owens did not get a chance to repeat in '40 and '44), ever won the Olympic long jump twice, let alone a mind-boggling four times in a row, while both the 100m (yes I know Lewis' '88 gold is a bit iffy) and the 400m had seen repeat champs before Bolt. In my book Lewis, Phelps and Bolt are co-Olympic GOATs, each with a unique set of achievements that set them apart from the rest.
On to tennis:
I used to buy into the chestnut about clay being the most physically demanding surface myself, but not anymore. Or at least I no longer buy that the FO is the most grueling of the 4 majors. Yes, as the least serve-friendly surface/major clay/RG demands more baseline rallies, but it's also the least stressful on the lower part of your body which should facilitate longevity and possibly offset the aforementioned stress from all that extra running. And as the slowest surface/Slam it also gives relatively lumbering giants like Gomez, A. Medvedev, Norman, Verkerk and Soderling more time to set up for shots, a luxury missing from the other three Slams.
So what's the correct choice? I say it's the USO, and yes I'm for real. The proof, to paraphrase another chestnut, is already in the pudding: we've got Rafa/Evert as the King/Queen of RG, Novak/Court at the AO, Fed/Pete/Navratilova at Wimbledon and... who at the USO? Guess you could go all the way back to Tilden, but no one among the more recent guys/gals stands out, at least not to the same extent as at the other majors. But how come? DecoTurf, supposedly faster than Rebound Ace/Plexicushion, should be more conducive to attacking tennis which in turn should have led to more consistent dominance, but that's not what we actually have so far. Then maybe it's the higher bounce? Not when you peruse the resumes of such dirtballers as Muster, Moya, Costa, Berasategui, etc. Then what?
The answer, I think, is none other than the USO's physical demands, more precisely its late schedule which places it smack at the end of the long outdoor HC season. By then there's enough wear and tear across the board to make flashes in the pan less likely, while momentum players like Rafa and Guga tend to succeed more than you might expect from their surface-specific records. That I say more than anything is why it's been historically so hard to dominate the USO as much as the other three majors, and also what makes, respectively and arguably, Jimbo's insane consistency, Pistol's record # of finals and Fed's 5-peat at the event their single (mid-term) greatest achievement.
So it's not quite as simple as HC > clay or even the USO > the rest in terms of physical demands, but then reality never is. And that concludes yet another NonP (mini-)dissertation.
