Ronnie The GOAT O'Sullivan picks his 5 best sportsmen of all time

AO13

AO13

Hall of Fame
It seems that Rafans can't get peace these days. I wonder which articles about how bad of a man Ronnie O'Sullivan is will @clayqueen post now.

www.eurosport.com

'I like winners' - O'Sullivan puts Djokovic, Federer and Tiger on his greatest list

Ronnie O’Sullivan has revealed his top sports stars of all time, after former footballer Jamie Carragher namechecked him on his list.
www.eurosport.com www.eurosport.com

He [O'Sullivan] was asked for his views on his favourite sports stars, and picked greats from tennis, golf, F1 and boxing.

Formula 1 legend Ayrton Senna was the first name to cross his lips, followed by boxing icon Muhammad Ali. A pause followed, before the seven-time world champion reeled off greats from the world of tennis and golf.

“[Novak] Djokovic, [Roger] Federer, Tiger Woods" O'Sullivan said. “They would be the top ones there.” Expanding on his reasoning, O’Sullivan said: “I like winners. I don’t have much time for people that don’t win. I won’t say losers, but I do love a winner.”

I agree with O'Sullivan lists, but I'd change just one bit - his airness Michael Jordan instead of Senna.
 
Kralingen said:
Perhaps he values year-round dominance and weeks/year-end #1s more than individual Slams. Honestly have no problem with that line of thinking, in many ways I agree with it.
Click to expand...

Exactly.

Like I said, Nadal's resume is too clay oriented. He is the clay God.

But he is not the greatest ever. One/two slams doesn't make up for his many flaws in other departments.

@thepaint19

How's that life under a rock going?
 
AO13 said:
Exactly.

Like I said, Nadal's resume is too clay oriented. He is the clay God.

But he is not the greatest ever. One/two slams doesn't make up for his many flaws in other departments.

@thepaint19

How's that life under a rock going?
Click to expand...
I bet a large majority of the world has never heard of him/her.
You are odd for knowing who it is.
 
AO13 said:
It seems that Rafans can't get peace these days. I wonder which articles about how bad of a man Ronnie O'Sullivan is will @clayqueen post now.

www.eurosport.com

'I like winners' - O'Sullivan puts Djokovic, Federer and Tiger on his greatest list

Ronnie O’Sullivan has revealed his top sports stars of all time, after former footballer Jamie Carragher namechecked him on his list.
www.eurosport.com www.eurosport.com

He [O'Sullivan] was asked for his views on his favourite sports stars, and picked greats from tennis, golf, F1 and boxing.

Formula 1 legend Ayrton Senna was the first name to cross his lips, followed by boxing icon Muhammad Ali. A pause followed, before the seven-time world champion reeled off greats from the world of tennis and golf.

“[Novak] Djokovic, [Roger] Federer, Tiger Woods" O'Sullivan said. “They would be the top ones there.” Expanding on his reasoning, O’Sullivan said: “I like winners. I don’t have much time for people that don’t win. I won’t say losers, but I do love a winner.”

I agree with O'Sullivan lists, but I'd change just one bit - his airness Michael Jordan instead of Senna.
Click to expand...
Maybe Rafans can't get peace because someone is constantly posting random nothing burgers of opinions from "experts" who don't even play the sport, inventing an agenda on the part of the quoted speakers where there was none, which will only serve to divide further rather than to conclude?

But I admit it's rather foolish of them to take the bait.
 
hoodjem said:
Please. Not snooker again.
Click to expand...

Brits seem to enjoy reminding us that as parochial as NFL groupies are, they're not the worst fanbase in the world. :p

And to me it's embarrassing that any grown-ass adult would get their kicks from any form of auto racing (though even I was convinced by Ford v Ferrari), but then many of 'em love superhero movies, Yanni is one of the best-selling recording "artists," etc. Whatever works for them, I guess.

alexio said:
top five..ali/pele, phelps, bolt, gretzky, jordan
Click to expand...

I guarantee you most Asians couldn't care less about ice hockey. Ditto Africans and South Americans, most likely.

thepaint19 said:
I bet a large majority of the world has never heard of him/her.
You are odd for knowing who it is.
Click to expand...

And that'd be a smart bet. I honestly wouldn't have even heard of these guys if not for this forum.

Kralingen said:
I feel like Phelps and Bolt shouldn’t be on any greatest athlete list. They’d lose to a dog or a fish in running/swimming. Hardly the greatest athlete.

Meanwhile no one but a human could play football, tennis, hockey, basketball.
Click to expand...

But don't we judge great athletes by how far they push the human boundaries?

Which brings us to:

President said:
Don't forget pickleball.
Click to expand...

Good point, actually. (In case you were going for lolz.)
 
Kralingen said:
I feel like Phelps and Bolt shouldn’t be on any greatest athlete list. They’d lose to a dog or a fish in running/swimming. Hardly the greatest athlete.

Meanwhile no one but a human could play football, tennis, hockey, basketball.
Click to expand...

To follow up, no dog could adopt the various techniques used by sprinters or no fish could master any of the 4 standard swimming styles, so that's another knock against this argument.

alexio said:
:-D
9ublIhB.jpg
Click to expand...

And this refutes my observation how? U do realize BR and Yahoo are American outfits, right?

I'm not even denying that Gretzky belongs up there. I'm just saying it's hard to make that case for him when his sport is a virtual nonfactor in 3 of the world's 5 major continents.
 
NonP said:
To follow up, no dog could adopt the various techniques used by sprinters or no fish could master any of the 4 standard swimming styles, so that's another knock against this argument.
Click to expand...
ever seen greyhounds? What exactly are they lacking compared to humans? They wait for the gun and have optimized running techniques, and do it 30-40% faster. The 100m record for a greyhound is in the 5 second range.

And of course fish couldn’t master the 4 swimming styles because they don’t have limbs…
 
Clay lover said:
Maybe Rafans can't get peace because someone is constantly posting random nothing burgers of opinions from "experts" who don't even play the sport, inventing an agenda on the part of the quoted speakers where there was none, which will only serve to divide further rather than to conclude?

But I admit it's rather foolish of them to take the bait.
Click to expand...

I was gonna skip this part but since U brought it up, even tennis pros aren't always the best judges of their own sport. Much like musicians don't usually make the best musicologists most athletes are too focused on their current goals and activities to develop a proper understanding of their sport's history and their great rivals/predecessors.

Appeal to authority isn't necessarily a fallacy, but you've gotta be very precise in your targets and citing an outsider to support your POV isn't the way to go about it, however successful he is in his own field.

Kralingen said:
ever seen greyhounds? What exactly are they lacking compared to humans? They wait for the gun and have optimized running techniques, and do it 30-40% faster. The 100m record for a greyhound is in the 5 second range.

And of course fish couldn’t master the 4 swimming styles because they don’t have limbs…
Click to expand...

Of course dogs can outrun any human. I'm just saying they couldn't adopt any of these specialized techniques no matter how hard they tried, cuz that requires a level of brainpower beyond their capabilities.

Which brings us back to @President's point. Not sure U ever read that WaPo article I gifted a while back in our group chat, but a major ingredient of pickleball's explosive popularity is that it seems to be one of the few sports that people of all ages can play competitively with each other. That can help bridge divides and bring otherwise divergent communities together, and it certainly meets your criterion of an elite sport beyond the reach of any nonhuman animal, but how many of us would say the best pickleballers are among the best athletes in the world, or at least better than a Bolt or Phelps? That should tell you there's more to athletic greatness than mere ability.
 
AO13 said:
It seems that Rafans can't get peace these days. I wonder which articles about how bad of a man Ronnie O'Sullivan is will @clayqueen post now.

www.eurosport.com

'I like winners' - O'Sullivan puts Djokovic, Federer and Tiger on his greatest list

Ronnie O’Sullivan has revealed his top sports stars of all time, after former footballer Jamie Carragher namechecked him on his list.
www.eurosport.com www.eurosport.com

He [O'Sullivan] was asked for his views on his favourite sports stars, and picked greats from tennis, golf, F1 and boxing.

Formula 1 legend Ayrton Senna was the first name to cross his lips, followed by boxing icon Muhammad Ali. A pause followed, before the seven-time world champion reeled off greats from the world of tennis and golf.

“[Novak] Djokovic, [Roger] Federer, Tiger Woods" O'Sullivan said. “They would be the top ones there.” Expanding on his reasoning, O’Sullivan said: “I like winners. I don’t have much time for people that don’t win. I won’t say losers, but I do love a winner.”

I agree with O'Sullivan lists, but I'd change just one bit - his airness Michael Jordan instead of Senna.
Click to expand...

He also equated himself to Novak in his sport as he is able to maintain a very high level than most of the top snooker players. More like Novak, who doesn't let his level slip by much and eventually the opponents crumble under constant pressure.

GOAT ( Sullivan) knows what it takes to be GOATovic.
 
Kralingen said:
Perhaps he values year-round dominance and weeks/year-end #1s more than individual Slams. Honestly have no problem with that line of thinking, in many ways I agree with it.
Click to expand...
Isn't it weird that when we talk about women's tennis, most consider Serena as the GOAT when she doesn't have the most weeks at #1 and doesn't have the highest number of titles?

Edit: She doesn't even have the highest number of slam titles.
 
Federer_pilon said:
Isn't it weird that when we talk about women's tennis, most consider Serena as the GOAT when she doesn't have the most weeks at #1 and doesn't have the highest number of titles?

Edit: She doesn't even have the highest number of slam titles.
Click to expand...

Exactly who are the most? Americans?

She's not the best ever in my book. Neither does she have the stats, nor the character and attitude of the best ever.
 
All this talk of man vs. animal reminds moi of this amusing yet informative flame war I once came across between Man o' War and Secretariat partisans. I came to side with the former and these two fine specimens' feats are justly legendary, but I'm still not sure it makes sense to talk of either racehorse as an athlete when they must be handled by a jockey while in competition. Each sport has rules in place for a reason and if the "athlete" cannot follow them on his own he'd normally be disqualified, but we make an exception for horses because, well, they're horses. They're incapable of following instructions sans human guidance, which arguably excludes them from the greatest-athletes convo or at least makes comparisons with their human peers rather suspect.

That said Secretariat did leave us with this awe-inspiring race:


Still gives me chills though I wasn't even alive at the time (Chic Anderson's famous call helps). Also dig this comment by a certain Dean:

What made Secretariat, undoubtedly, the greatest racehorse of all time was the fact that he was constructed in a way that no horse ever has been or likely ever will be again. He was just physically capable of doing things on a racetrack that no other horse ever could before him, or has ever been able to duplicate since, or will be able to in the future.

In order to understand this, you need to understand what happened on Belmont day in June 1973. Secretariat essentially sprinted an entire mile and a half race. That is not physically possible for any other horse to do. He ran the first 6 furlongs of that race in 1:09.4, which would be a track record for that distance at many tracks in North America. He then proceeded to run the last six furlongs in 1:14.1, which is only a drop off of 4.2 seconds over the last 6 furlongs. No other horse could possibly do that. It just isn't physically possible to maintain that speed over 12 furlongs on a dirt course. From the time Secretariat put his head in front of Sham at the top of the backstretch, he never lost an inch to another horse in the race, and in fact was gaining ground with every single step he took. That is mind boggling to think about. He sprinted the first six furlongs, and the other horses were presumably conserving energy running much slower. Presumably by the the time they hit the turn to come into the home stretch the other horses should have started making up ground on Secretariat as he started to slow down. That never happened. He only increased his lead with every stride. He continued to sprint, and at a faster pace than the trailing horses that were starting to run faster themselves and had conserved energy during the first half of the race. Logically none of this is possible, but that is exactly what happened. To top it off, Secretariat ran an extra furlong after the race was over, which means he actually ran 1 5/8 miles that day. That extra furlong was timed, and he actually set a world record for a 1 5/8 race.

There's been a lot of great horses, but no other horse can compare to Secretariat, because no other horse ever has been or ever will be built in such a way as to be able to do the things he did.
Click to expand...

So I'm torn. Mind sez no, but heart sez yes or at least maybe.

A couple more things:

jindra said:
Snooker more relevant worldwide than NFL. Fact.
Click to expand...

Only a couple yrs ago I would've agreed w/U, but my European buds tell moi the NFL has been making inroads up there so I'm not so sure now. (And I say that as someone who counts the chest-thumping Super Bowl as his least fav sporting event.)

Poisoned Slice said:
ronnie.jpg
Click to expand...

I figured your old avatar is one of the snooker guys but didn't know which one until now, LOL.
 
alexio said:
at least kudos for confessin finally that not knowin him lol
Click to expand...

When did I ever pretend otherwise? I still don't know a lick of difference between snooker and billiards/pool, and the only reasons why I'm somewhat familiar with the latter are cuz 1) I've briefly played it a few times with friends/relatives and 2) this comic book I once read (can't recall whether it was manga/Japanese or manhwa/Korean, let alone its title) would lay out the rules to help U understand its characters' Tsubasa/Danpei-like moves. I haven't even seen a pool table since.

BTW the best sports comic of any origin has gotta be the simply and aptly titled Slam Dunk, and I don't say that just cuz it's where I learned my Jordanesque (4 realz) shooting form:


Predictably the anime adaptation seems rather cheesy compared to the original manga (which I still own, at least in JPEG files), but U can see why teenage boys would be drawn to the series and then to the sport of basketball. Certainly worked its mojo on moi before I'd seen a single NBA/Jordan game in full.

victorcruz said:
OP the type to make troll threads 'to own the libs'.

Give it a rest, we know you have nothing better to do but go outside for some fresh air.
Click to expand...

Speaking of going out did U ever sign up for the MoviePass waitlist? If so how'd it go?
 
NonP said:
Brits seem to enjoy reminding us that as parochial as NFL groupies are, they're not the worst fanbase in the world. :p

And to me it's embarrassing that any grown-ass adult would get their kicks from any form of auto racing (though even I was convinced by Ford v Ferrari), but then many of 'em love superhero movies, Yanni is one of the best-selling recording "artists," etc. Whatever works for them, I guess.



I guarantee you most Asians couldn't care less about ice hockey. Ditto Africans and South Americans, most likely.



And that'd be a smart bet. I honestly wouldn't have even heard of these guys if not for this forum.



But don't we judge great athletes by how far they push the human boundaries?

Which brings us to:



Good point, actually. (In case you were going for lolz.)
Click to expand...
NonP said:
To follow up, no dog could adopt the various techniques used by sprinters or no fish could master any of the 4 standard swimming styles, so that's another knock against this argument.



And this refutes my observation how? U do realize BR and Yahoo are American outfits, right?

I'm not even denying that Gretzky belongs up there. I'm just saying it's hard to make that case for him when his sport is a virtual nonfactor in 3 of the world's 5 major continents.
Click to expand...
NonP said:
I was gonna skip this part but since U brought it up, even tennis pros aren't always the best judges of their own sport. Much like musicians don't usually make the best musicologists most athletes are too focused on their current goals and activities to develop a proper understanding of their sport's history and their great rivals/predecessors.

Appeal to authority isn't necessarily a fallacy, but you've gotta be very precise in your targets and citing an outsider to support your POV isn't the way to go about it, however successful he is in his own field.



Of course dogs can outrun any human. I'm just saying they couldn't adopt any of these specialized techniques no matter how hard they tried, cuz that requires a level of brainpower beyond their capabilities.

Which brings us back to @President's point. Not sure U ever read that WaPo article I gifted a while back in our group chat, but a major ingredient of pickleball's explosive popularity is that it seems to be one of the few sports that people of all ages can play competitively with each other. That can help bridge divides and bring otherwise divergent communities together, and it certainly meets your criterion of an elite sport beyond the reach of any nonhuman animal, but how many of us would say the best pickleballers are among the best athletes in the world, or at least better than a Bolt or Phelps? That should tell you there's more to athletic greatness than mere ability.
Click to expand...
NonP said:
All this talk of man vs. animal reminds moi of this amusing yet informative flame war I once came across between Man o' War and Secretariat partisans. I came to side with the former and these two fine specimens' feats are justly legendary, but I'm still not sure it makes sense to talk of either racehorse as an athlete when they must be handled by a jockey while in competition. Each sport has rules in place for a reason and if the "athlete" cannot follow them on his own he'd normally be disqualified, but we make an exception for horses because, well, they're horses. They're incapable of following instructions sans human guidance, which arguably excludes them from the greatest-athletes convo or at least makes comparisons with their human peers rather suspect.

That said Secretariat did leave us with this awe-inspiring race:


Still gives me chills though I wasn't even alive at the time (Chic Anderson's famous call helps). Also dig this comment by a certain Dean:



So I'm torn. Mind sez no, but heart sez yes or at least maybe.

A couple more things:



Only a couple yrs ago I would've agreed w/U, but my European buds tell moi the NFL has been making inroads up there so I'm not so sure now. (And I say that as someone who counts the chest-thumping Super Bowl as his least fav sporting event.)



I figured your old avatar is one of the snooker guys but didn't know which one until now, LOL.
Click to expand...
NonP said:
When did I ever pretend otherwise? I still don't know a lick of difference between snooker and billiards/pool, and the only reasons why I'm somewhat familiar with the latter are cuz 1) I've briefly played it a few times with friends/relatives and 2) this comic book I once read (can't recall whether it was manga/Japanese or manhwa/Korean, let alone its title) would lay out the rules to help U understand its characters' Tsubasa/Danpei-like moves. I haven't even seen a pool table since.

BTW the best sports comic of any origin has gotta be the simply and aptly titled Slam Dunk, and I don't say that just cuz it's where I learned my Jordanesque (4 realz) shooting form:


Predictably the anime adaptation seems rather cheesy compared to the original manga (which I still own, at least in JPEG files), but U can see why teenage boys would be drawn to the series and then to the sport of basketball. Certainly worked its mojo on moi before I'd seen a single NBA/Jordan game in full.



Speaking of going out did U ever sign up for the MoviePass waitlist? If so how'd it go?
Click to expand...

Can always count on quality posts from you even in a troll thread!
 
NonP said:
Of course dogs can outrun any human. I'm just saying they couldn't adopt any of these specialized techniques no matter how hard they tried, cuz that requires a level of brainpower beyond their capabilities.

Which brings us back to @President's point. Not sure U ever read that WaPo article I gifted a while back in our group chat, but a major ingredient of pickleball's explosive popularity is that it seems to be one of the few sports that people of all ages can play competitively with each other. That can help bridge divides and bring otherwise divergent communities together, and it certainly meets your criterion of an elite sport beyond the reach of any nonhuman animal, but how many of us would say the best pickleballers are among the best athletes in the world, or at least better than a Bolt or Phelps? That should tell you there's more to athletic greatness than mere ability.
Click to expand...
Disclaimer: there is no definition of greatest athlete, even in the same sport, that satisfies any consensus or stands up to any rigour. Let alone across sport, across discipline, etc. as we all know, these debates are ultimately pointless, and the framework for assessment is just guesses based on personal philosophy.

My view of it, and it’s just an opinion (a slightly facetious one) was that Phelps and Bolt are not candidates due to the nature of their sport. This is not to say they are not some of the most dominant, successful, outrageous athletes in human history; in truth, I agree with your point that they are genetic freaks and outliers combined with incredible success metrics gives them a great case.

On the other hand, my view of what the truly greatest athlete is rests on competition. Bolt and Phelps race others, but they ultimately race themselves at the end of the day; there is no physical contact, no strategy in match, nothing a competitor can do to slow them down.

And in kind, fighting the opposition human with both brain and brawn is the highest form of athleticism, with endurance, speed, explosiveness, reflexes, and vision necessary all at once.

If we remove the true competitive tussling part from sport, then it becomes, essentially, a genetic competition. Whose body can perform this movement the best? Bolt has the ideal sprinting biomechanics for the modern human, Phelps’ webbed feet, enlarged lungs, powerful wingspan all are basicaly perfect for swimming. But, and this is the problem with their athletic feats, all they do is move fast. And yet, if they were genetically gifted enough to be greyhounds or swordfish, they’d blow all of the records away. Do you see my point?

Also you and President don’t really make the zinger you think it is. Pickleball clearly doesn’t qualify as it requires next to no fitness and is a watered down version of tennis and ping pong (both requiring much more to be successful than pickleball). It is a minor league hobby.
 
MeatTornado said:
I love the implication that there's other people out there who would put losers on their list of greatest athletes.
Click to expand...

I went to an exercise science talk given by a Duke professor, about their lab where hundreds of pro athletes were tested. NBA/NFL guys blew everyone away, real freaks of nature those guys. VO2 max, HR recovery, lactic acid threshold, lean body mass ratio, etc.

But then he zoomed way out on the graph and there was a single dot about 3 standard deviations away from the pack, and said, "Lance Armstrong is possibly an alien."

And officially, he's never won a bike race. Total loser.
 
AO13 said:
It seems that Rafans can't get peace these days. I wonder which articles about how bad of a man Ronnie O'Sullivan is will @clayqueen post now.

www.eurosport.com

'I like winners' - O'Sullivan puts Djokovic, Federer and Tiger on his greatest list

Ronnie O’Sullivan has revealed his top sports stars of all time, after former footballer Jamie Carragher namechecked him on his list.
www.eurosport.com www.eurosport.com

He [O'Sullivan] was asked for his views on his favourite sports stars, and picked greats from tennis, golf, F1 and boxing.

Formula 1 legend Ayrton Senna was the first name to cross his lips, followed by boxing icon Muhammad Ali. A pause followed, before the seven-time world champion reeled off greats from the world of tennis and golf.

“[Novak] Djokovic, [Roger] Federer, Tiger Woods" O'Sullivan said. “They would be the top ones there.” Expanding on his reasoning, O’Sullivan said: “I like winners. I don’t have much time for people that don’t win. I won’t say losers, but I do love a winner.”

I agree with O'Sullivan lists, but I'd change just one bit - his airness Michael Jordan instead of Senna.
Click to expand...
Think you are confusing favourite to watch with greatest. Same with Tyson.
Nadal is statistically the greatest ever but by no means does that mean he is peopled favourite to watch.
Senna clearly not GOAT so I'm afraid that inclusion alone renders your attempt to troll Nadal fans a failure.
 
Kralingen said:
Disclaimer: there is no definition of greatest athlete, even in the same sport, that satisfies any consensus or stands up to any rigour. Let alone across sport, across discipline, etc. as we all know, these debates are ultimately pointless, and the framework for assessment is just guesses based on personal philosophy.

My view of it, and it’s just an opinion (a slightly facetious one) was that Phelps and Bolt are not candidates due to the nature of their sport. This is not to say they are not some of the most dominant, successful, outrageous athletes in human history; in truth, I agree with your point that they are genetic freaks and outliers combined with incredible success metrics gives them a great case.

On the other hand, my view of what the truly greatest athlete is rests on competition. Bolt and Phelps race others, but they ultimately race themselves at the end of the day; there is no physical contact, no strategy in match, nothing a competitor can do to slow them down.

And in kind, fighting the opposition human with both brain and brawn is the highest form of athleticism, with endurance, speed, explosiveness, reflexes, and vision necessary all at once.

If we remove the true competitive tussling part from sport, then it becomes, essentially, a genetic competition. Whose body can perform this movement the best? Bolt has the ideal sprinting biomechanics for the modern human, Phelps’ webbed feet, enlarged lungs, powerful wingspan all are basicaly perfect for swimming. But, and this is the problem with their athletic feats, all they do is move fast. And yet, if they were genetically gifted enough to be greyhounds or swordfish, they’d blow all of the records away. Do you see my point?

Also you and President don’t really make the zinger you think it is. Pickleball clearly doesn’t qualify as it requires next to no fitness and is a watered down version of tennis and ping pong (both requiring much more to be successful than pickleball). It is a minor league hobby.
Click to expand...
Statistically Nadal is GOAT tennis player on the mens side. People confuse GOAT with favourite.
There does seem much angst among Non Nadal fans this autumn
 
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