The 200 Greatest British Sportspeople Of All Time (introduction)
There are surprisingly few lists of the Greatest British Sportspeople of All Time floating around online, which is to be explained, I suppose, by the difficulty of comparing across different sports (and to a lesser extent different eras).
There'd be few enough people with the all round knowledge to put together a list and none of them would be foolish enough to try. How do you compare a cricketer from 1910 to a boxer from 2010? Absurd.
Well, kind of, but not entirely impossible. It'll never be perfect, but I do think it is possible to look at the achievements of different sportspeople in different eras, and furthermore I strongly think there is some kind of hierarchy of sports - that being great at one sport may mean less than being great at another, that being world champion at one sport may mean less than being world champion in another. Some people would deny this, but it surely becomes self-evident if you ask yourself one question. Do you, in that he is a 16-time World Champion, think Phil "The Power" Taylor is The Greatest British Sportsman of All Time? If so, this blog may not be for you.
Likewise, by the way, if your vote goes for Sir Steve Redgrave. I'll say that right at the start. He may have been voted the All-Time BBC Sports Personality of the Year in 2002 and may seem keen to push his case as Britain's Greatest Olympian but, for a variety of reasons, I look sideways at his preeminence in our sporting pantheon. What he achieved was admirable and showed great determination and dedication, but ...but ... but ... well, rather than set out all my criteria in a big pre-amble, perhaps it's better to just get into my list and explain as I go.
So that's what I'll do, but just to give you an idea of my criteria, my thought processes, my essential feelings about what makes great sport and sportspeople, these are the rough notes I made when I started putting my list.
Being the Best in the World
Prestige of Sport
Longevity of Career
Blood and Guts
Skill
Versatility ...
All round Range of Skills
Flexibility and Grace
Explosive Power
How many other people were aspiring to fill their place
Consistent need to beat off challengers
Pool of Talent the sport calls upon
How much they won
Genuine achievement
Glory
Character and influence
Admiration in other Countries
Transcending the Sport
Competition
Rivalry
Defining moments
Records
Sporting intelligence
Innovation
Self-creation
One other thing to note is some would say that there haven't been all that many genuinely great British sportspeople, worldwide icons - Roger Federer, Tiger Woods, Pele, Don Bradman, Carl Lewis, Michael Phelps, Serena Williams, Michael Jordan, Usain Bolt, Lionel Messi, Shane Warne, Martina Navratilova - are there any Brits on that kind of level? Perhaps not. But, you know, maybe the margins aren't as great as we sometimes think. The "Sportsman of the 20th Century", Muhammad Ali, almost got stopped by a beloved but average British heavyweight, Henry Cooper, and is not always considered by the more churlish boxing writers to even be among the Top 5 Heavyweights of all time. His greatness is about all kinds of things, some of it a little spurious. I'll try to take all the factors contributing to greatness into account, but I'd like to say that our own little heroes aren't necessarily on a lower level than the great big global superstars.
I'll also set limits by mentioning a couple of absences from the list. There'll be no Brian O'Driscoll ... because he's Irish - he represents the British and Irish Lions, but he's Irish. If he were Northern Irish, that would be different, Otherwise, he'd have a pretty high placing.
There'll be no Sir Alex Ferguson, though he was a sportsperson and he was Great. To make the list, people's achievements have to be in the playing of their sport. Once they're in the list, their other achievements within and without their sport may be taken into consideration. So Kenny Dalglish, if he is on the list, well his great success as a manager may be mentioned, but he'd be on the list because he was a great footballer, unlike Ferguson.
I think I have considered everything - every possible sport and all those considered great within that. Some of those just missing out on the Top 200 are boxers Ricky Hatton and Nicola Adams, cylists Laura Trott and Graeme Obree, footballers Sol Campbell and Billy Wright, cricketers Frank Woolley and Michael Vaughan, bowls player David Bryant, basketball star Luol Deng and Sue Barker. Some people I was determined not to include but I realised as my list grew that it would be churlish not to include them within the 200. In 201st place is a water polo player from the early 20th century called Paulo Radmilovic, who won four Olympic gold medals, so might seem extremely unlucky to miss out on a higher placing to some who didn't win nearly so much. But they were as part of the water polo team and they were in the early 20th Century, and therein lies the rub.
I will be unromantic in comparing across eras - most sports have got a lot better, not just in the basic fact that people are bigger, stronger, faster, but also in terms of the level of competition, the organisation, the very meaning. This isn't always true. Some aspects of some major sports might well have deteriorated a little. But not often, really, not often. That's old timer's bullshit, best illustrated by a story I read recently, where a know-all older member of a cricket club gave Kevin Pietersen the faint praise of being "the best of his kind I've seen since Jessop". Gilbert Jessop, the legendary player referred to here, retired in 1912, so I'm not quite sure when this older member thinks he saw him, or indeed whether he knows that Gilbert Jessop's test average was a miserable 21.88, compared to Pietersen's 49ish and counting.
So, no Gilbert Jessop. Will there be a Kevin Pietersen? Let's see ...
There'd be few enough people with the all round knowledge to put together a list and none of them would be foolish enough to try. How do you compare a cricketer from 1910 to a boxer from 2010? Absurd.
Well, kind of, but not entirely impossible. It'll never be perfect, but I do think it is possible to look at the achievements of different sportspeople in different eras, and furthermore I strongly think there is some kind of hierarchy of sports - that being great at one sport may mean less than being great at another, that being world champion at one sport may mean less than being world champion in another. Some people would deny this, but it surely becomes self-evident if you ask yourself one question. Do you, in that he is a 16-time World Champion, think Phil "The Power" Taylor is The Greatest British Sportsman of All Time? If so, this blog may not be for you.
Likewise, by the way, if your vote goes for Sir Steve Redgrave. I'll say that right at the start. He may have been voted the All-Time BBC Sports Personality of the Year in 2002 and may seem keen to push his case as Britain's Greatest Olympian but, for a variety of reasons, I look sideways at his preeminence in our sporting pantheon. What he achieved was admirable and showed great determination and dedication, but ...but ... but ... well, rather than set out all my criteria in a big pre-amble, perhaps it's better to just get into my list and explain as I go.
So that's what I'll do, but just to give you an idea of my criteria, my thought processes, my essential feelings about what makes great sport and sportspeople, these are the rough notes I made when I started putting my list.
Being the Best in the World
Prestige of Sport
Longevity of Career
Blood and Guts
Skill
Versatility ...
All round Range of Skills
Flexibility and Grace
Explosive Power
How many other people were aspiring to fill their place
Consistent need to beat off challengers
Pool of Talent the sport calls upon
How much they won
Genuine achievement
Glory
Character and influence
Admiration in other Countries
Transcending the Sport
Competition
Rivalry
Defining moments
Records
Sporting intelligence
Innovation
Self-creation
One other thing to note is some would say that there haven't been all that many genuinely great British sportspeople, worldwide icons - Roger Federer, Tiger Woods, Pele, Don Bradman, Carl Lewis, Michael Phelps, Serena Williams, Michael Jordan, Usain Bolt, Lionel Messi, Shane Warne, Martina Navratilova - are there any Brits on that kind of level? Perhaps not. But, you know, maybe the margins aren't as great as we sometimes think. The "Sportsman of the 20th Century", Muhammad Ali, almost got stopped by a beloved but average British heavyweight, Henry Cooper, and is not always considered by the more churlish boxing writers to even be among the Top 5 Heavyweights of all time. His greatness is about all kinds of things, some of it a little spurious. I'll try to take all the factors contributing to greatness into account, but I'd like to say that our own little heroes aren't necessarily on a lower level than the great big global superstars.
I'll also set limits by mentioning a couple of absences from the list. There'll be no Brian O'Driscoll ... because he's Irish - he represents the British and Irish Lions, but he's Irish. If he were Northern Irish, that would be different, Otherwise, he'd have a pretty high placing.
There'll be no Sir Alex Ferguson, though he was a sportsperson and he was Great. To make the list, people's achievements have to be in the playing of their sport. Once they're in the list, their other achievements within and without their sport may be taken into consideration. So Kenny Dalglish, if he is on the list, well his great success as a manager may be mentioned, but he'd be on the list because he was a great footballer, unlike Ferguson.
I think I have considered everything - every possible sport and all those considered great within that. Some of those just missing out on the Top 200 are boxers Ricky Hatton and Nicola Adams, cylists Laura Trott and Graeme Obree, footballers Sol Campbell and Billy Wright, cricketers Frank Woolley and Michael Vaughan, bowls player David Bryant, basketball star Luol Deng and Sue Barker. Some people I was determined not to include but I realised as my list grew that it would be churlish not to include them within the 200. In 201st place is a water polo player from the early 20th century called Paulo Radmilovic, who won four Olympic gold medals, so might seem extremely unlucky to miss out on a higher placing to some who didn't win nearly so much. But they were as part of the water polo team and they were in the early 20th Century, and therein lies the rub.
I will be unromantic in comparing across eras - most sports have got a lot better, not just in the basic fact that people are bigger, stronger, faster, but also in terms of the level of competition, the organisation, the very meaning. This isn't always true. Some aspects of some major sports might well have deteriorated a little. But not often, really, not often. That's old timer's bullshit, best illustrated by a story I read recently, where a know-all older member of a cricket club gave Kevin Pietersen the faint praise of being "the best of his kind I've seen since Jessop". Gilbert Jessop, the legendary player referred to here, retired in 1912, so I'm not quite sure when this older member thinks he saw him, or indeed whether he knows that Gilbert Jessop's test average was a miserable 21.88, compared to Pietersen's 49ish and counting.
So, no Gilbert Jessop. Will there be a Kevin Pietersen? Let's see ...
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