Maybe not as a pure athlete but we are underestimating F1 drivers in terms of impact globally, Michael Schumacher is known more worldwide than the Big 3 and F1 is more popular than Tennis. F1 drivers drive at speeds close to 370+, the highest speed records during a race is almost 380. The reflexes of F1 drivers is arguably quicker than Tennis players, so I of course Schumacher is more influential than Nadal.
Michael is a guy from the 1990s who raced till mid-late 2000s, this is a career that paralleled with Sampras/Agassi, now compare Michael with Pete/Andre and see who is bigger, there is your answer.
Again color moi skeptical as someone who's lived more than a decade on each side of the Pacific. The only 3 auto racers I could name without looking are Schumacher (though I struggle with the spelling), Senna and NASCAR's Jeff Gordon (K, U can throw in Danica Patrick if U insist), and that's only cuz I see the 1st 2 mentioned in sports forums like TTW and as a kid I was bombarded with TV ads featuring the latter. If I didn't care for sports or live in the US I wouldn't have a clue about even these 3.
And Google Trends confirms my impression:
As U can see Mike has usually trailed even Novak except for the brief spike in late '13/early '14 when he had that skiing accident, much like
Tiger dwarfed all 4 during his infidelity scandal. (BTW that latter episode is yet another illustration of what a sh!tty species we humans are, but let's not get sidetracked.) Obviously even this is an incomplete global picture as there's scant data from much of Asia and Africa - I've said this before but Google can't hope to compete with
Naver in South Korea, to name but one major market - but do U really expect F1 to outpace tennis in China, Iran or Egypt?
Obviously I'm biased as a tennis fan, but it does seem to moi that you're understating this sport's global impact while overstating F1's. Which brings us to....
From an athletic perspective we can perhaps rate 1 sport over another, we shouldn't do it, this will anger a lot of people but it is what it is.
For example Cricket is followed by Billions, there are more fans of cricket than there is of Tennis or Cycle Racing, but we know for a fact that cricket doesn't required players to be as fit as Tennis or Cycle Racing. The lowest recorded resting heart rate for a cyclist is Miguel Indurain which is something like 28 beats per minute, this is lower than any athlete ever, even Lance Armstrong is at 32 BPM which is lower than any tennis player's and definetly much lower than any cricketer's. Virat Kohli is the fittest cricketer of all time, I don't think he is under 35, he might be around 40. Among tennis players Murray was recorded at 37, not sure where Big 3 are, they too must be around the same range. Michael Phelps has been recorded at 38. Bolt and Lance Armsrong both have been recorded at 32. Going under 35 is not possible for a cricketer but it is possible for a cyclist, that means cycling requires more endurance and they are fitter than cricketers who have fat around their bellies.
This clown ( His name is Rohit Sharma ) is one of the best batsmen in the world of Cricket and one of the leading cricketers of the last 12 years. He can get away with such an unhealthy lifestyle but can a tennis player get away with it ? Surely no .... Can a Cyclist or a 100M sprinter get away with it ? Absolutely no, never ever.
1st off, I was gonna point this out in that thread of yours but U really shouldn't put too much stock in those online sports rankings by supposed worldwide popularity. Pretty much all of 'em are hack jobs that simply look at where a sport is popular, add up the population and leave it at that. I mean
the ICC itself estimates that about 300 million fans actively follow the sport worldwide, and yet these geniuses would have U believe that # is closer to 2
billion, or more than 6 times the official estimate or double the 1B total of both casual and serious fans. It really doesn't even pass the laugh test.
2nd, these parameters are too narrow. It's actually
not so clear that lower heart rate = superior fitness/athleticism, and I'm also not sure why BPM, endurance or sprint time should be so valued over timing or hand-eye coordination when major sports like cricket, baseball and tennis place greater emphasis on the latter. Are even unquestionable ATGs like Karelin or
Naim Süleymanoğlu to be counted out simply because their BPM wouldn't fall under 40 or they couldn't run 100m under 11 sec?
And 3rd, Sharma doesn't actually look that clownish to moi. U should peruse some old pictures of Babe Ruth and ask yourself how this guy is still widely considered the GOAT in baseball.
The voters there were people from the internet meaning to a big extent clueless fanboys. Among most experts and ex-players Pele is still the best of all times. Way more titles, way better longevity and way more versatile player than Diego, only peak level is remotely debatable.
It'll be interesting to see how Pele's own death (gawd forbid) compares in terms of media coverage with Maradona's which was indeed
worldwide news but fell off the radar pretty quick. Of course some of that has to do with the world's preoccupation with the biggest pandemic in a century, but I'm actually not so sure that hurt the news coverage if at all cuz many of us were still in semi-lockdown mode.
To underscore this point further here's how Maradona fares against this century's biggest newsmakers I could confirm/think of:
(FYI
Mandela's own passing was roughly in the same range as Maradona's, and
Tiger's scandal, perhaps even more lamentably, was bigger news.)
Not much of a contest, really, especially when U factor in more limited internet access in the aughts. In the wake of Diego's death I'd tell his biggest fans, including a few older ones who should've known better, that politics and sports take a back seat to pop culture at large, but mostly to no avail. (Obama and Trump are historic exceptions to the rule for obvious reasons.
GWB and
Biden, save for the latter's Trump-assisted boost, have been more in line with traditional POTUSes.) And unsurprisingly all of 'em were men, so my efforts were bound to fail.
Too many to choose from. Messi, C. Ronaldo, Puskas, Garrincha, Cruyff, and especially Ronaldo Nazario. Actually, potential wise Fenomeno was the only one who could have been anywhere on par with Pele hadn’t it been for his injuries and for a better work ethic. As things stand, gun to my head I would put Messi and Cristiano as 2 and 3, no order between them.
Don't tell this to
@Sudacafan, LOL.
