Does anyone think Phelps is the best of all time???

Hakeem Olajuwon is a better olympian.

 

meow dont know

 

phelps is. and for the argument of carl lewis, everyone loves him, but what phelps did in his 3 olympics completely over shadows what lewis did. Medal wise he dominated the game.

 

Phelps is the best Olympian of the modern era, not just the best US Olympian.

Also i get the sense that US media really bag on Phelps lack of commitment this year, stemming from his team-"mate's" (Lochte?) comments

He has been at the peak of swimming for 8 years+ he is entitled to feel jaded IMO

 

Phelps is the greatest swimmer of all time, but the greatest Olympic athlete of all time... nope.

 

Did you just say meow?

 

I think his metals speak for themselves. He doesn't seem to have the dominance he had in recent years, but come on... 19 metals is sick!

 

It's unfair to judge by medals, some of the greatest athletes of all-time could never come close to 10 or less due to the amount of medals in each discipline. Saying Phelps is the most dominant olympic athlete of all-time only because he won the most medals seems wrong.

Someone like Sergej Bubka dominated for 15+ years but there's only one medal each olympics for pole vault. More dominant than Jesse Owens, Carl Lewis? Steve Redgrave won gold in rowing five(!) olympics in a row. Gerevich won gold six olympics in a row as a fencer.

Do I think Phelps should be regarded better than these guys, only because he has more medals, while basically everyone outside of swimming and gymnastics never had a shot at 10+ medals? Hell no.

 

I think some of the cold war era gymnasts might be the greatest ever, but with fewer medal opportunities and larger numbers of high level competitors, it was hard to dominate. Go watch youtube videos of Nadia Comaneci. She wasn't just an athlete, she was an artist. Her routines, although often more simple than today's routines were unbelievable and she would most likely make many of the best gymnasts today look bad in comparison.

 

At this point he is the greatest Olympian of all times. What he did in China alone will be hard to duplicate, let alone beat. He won 6 (majority of them gold) or so medals in the previous Olympics prior to China.. so it's not like he did it all in one Olympics. But it's hard to compare the events because they're different and the popularity has deviated from track and field to swimming... at least for me. Growing up, definitely Carl Lewis was the face of USA in the Olympics. Dude was phenomenal.

 

To me Alexander Karelin is the most dominant Olympian of all time. His dominance was ridiculous because of how long he did it and how opponents would just give up against him.

 

Yeah, seems like Karelin would be up there.

 

two pages and still no picture of Phelps smoking pot? c'mon!

 

Carl Lewis...