Now that Michael Phelps has beaten Mark Spitz for an unprecedented eight gold medals, every radio and TV talk show host has posted the question if he is the greatest olympian ever.
Having never seen the man run, jump, or throw something, I find it hard to believe he's the best. The best swimmer? Yes. The best olympian? No.
Think about it. If basketball in the olympics was broken up into many elements to get a gold, one would think Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, and LeBron James would have raked in many medals, but since it's just one medal, that's all they'll get. They'd need to play in 8 olympics to get 8 golds.
To me, a great athlete or olympian is a multi-talented phenom. To me the only olympic sport that blends all of the elements is the triathlon. With modern American sports, it's hard to play multiple sports since it requires a different physique based on the sport, but Bo Jackson and Deion Sanders did a pretty good job it
Overall, though, you have to go back to the early twentieth century to see a person who dominated multiple sports. Jim Thorpe won gold in the pentathlon and decathlon, played professional baseball and football. That's a pretty good cross section of sports and he gets my vote for best athlete ever.