Oly- this USA team has 4 GOATs on it?
This incarnation of the USA Olympics team probably has FOUR of the greatest-of-all-time athletes in their Olympic sports.
Michael Phelps - men's swimming -- 22 gold medals in 4 Olympics and a block-M tattoo.
Simone Biles - women's gymnastics -- 3 straight world championships followed by Oly gold medal. Won the all-around with a larger margin of victory than the last 7 Olympic champs combined. Hardest routines in history of sport. Will probably earn 3 more golds (floor, beam, vault). Utterly dominant over the competition. No female gymnast of any era can claim to be as dominant or as good as she is.
Melo -- men's basketball -- OK this is debatable, BUT: While he's not Jordan or Kobe and his NBA skillz and career aren't GOAT ... in the Olympics, he's USA's all-time scorer and this year will become the first male basketball player ever to win 3 straight golds. Carried the team (with Irving) the other night, showing how he's elevated to being the team leader. This is arguable, but if you asked who is the "best" Olympian on men's hoops, he probably has to be your first answer.
Kerri Walsh Jennings - women's beach volleyball -- 3 straight Olympic golds and a fourth in sight (with a different partner this time).
Katie Ledecky may some day be on this list, but at the moment she is not the GOAT in women's swimming. Yet.
August 12th, 2016 at 9:33 AM ^
Substitute Kristen Armstrong for Melo. If you include Biles, you need to include Ledecky.
August 12th, 2016 at 9:37 AM ^
Ledecky makes it look too easy. Everyone there is already handing her the gold medal for tonight's 800m.
August 12th, 2016 at 9:39 AM ^
I wonder how many golds she will have when she is done swimming. She won't get near Phelps, but she'll have more than Spitz.
August 12th, 2016 at 9:43 AM ^
I hope she racks up a bunch. Nobody is even close to her this year. However, Russia is probably already working on taking her down in 2020...
*Finger Wag*
August 12th, 2016 at 10:48 AM ^
Her dominance is unreal, but she's still improving and has much of her career in front of her. I'm fine with Biles being included and Ledecky being tentative, because she still has 2+ more Olympics in front of her.
In Gymnastics, on the other hand, the *22 year old* Aly Raisman is nicknamed grandma. At most, Biles has 1 more competitive Olympics, and this year is almost certainly her peak.
August 12th, 2016 at 10:51 AM ^
She's dominant in one stroke. Hosszu will beat Ledeky's metal count in this olympics. I think it's too early to call on GOAT even in just her events, let alone swimmer in general.
I don't think Biles should be on there either. The degree of difficulty argument falls flat for me, the routines always get harder as time goes on. She has dominated her competition, but it's also a down period for the other traditional gymnastics powers (the team competition won by record margin as well). Her performance was absolutely inspiring, but you have to be careful of recency bias on things like naming people GOAT.
August 12th, 2016 at 11:53 AM ^
August 12th, 2016 at 12:01 PM ^
August 12th, 2016 at 3:09 PM ^
While watching Walsh-Jennings and Ross the other day, the announcer said an incredible statistic. Walsh had lost only 2 sets in her Olympic career! One of them was in the match I was watching. That is dominance at another level.
August 12th, 2016 at 7:21 PM ^
August 12th, 2016 at 1:05 PM ^
Maybe it is too early to call her GOAT as a swimmer in general, but you can call her GOAT in her events especially the 800 Free.
Nobody in the world can swim the splits she does. Ledeky has the top 12 fastest times ever swam in the 800 Free.
In the 400 Free she has the 9 of the 10 fastest ever swims. The only other one was Pelligrini who swam that time during the banned supersuit era.
August 12th, 2016 at 2:25 PM ^
she could be called the GOAT...in distance freestyle. But the GOAT women's swimmer? Definitely not yet, and probably not even the best right now. As you mention, Hosszu will come away with more medals and is the WR holder in both medley distances, which includes all strokes obviously.
Not sure I agree with you on Biles though. Her dominance is so great that it's like a swimmer lapping the second place finisher in a 400 meter (8 lap) race. It's not hard to watch the things she does and the things that anyone else possibly claiming this title did (Comaneci is probably the only one here) and know that she's on another level - another planet. It's also hard to say that her competition isn't as good, while also admitting that the level difficulty and athleticism overall continues to get better and better. Eastern Europe was dominant for many years, but they might not necessarily be down as much as USA and China have blown past them with increased focus on the sport and a larger pool of now interested women.
Russians and Romanians could probably still get 10s on the routines that their best women were doing 40 years ago, but they haven't been able to go to the new heights of the sport (literally and figuratively). And Biles is redifining what those heights are. A trademark of any GOAT.
August 12th, 2016 at 4:30 PM ^
Biles isn't new though...just new to people who only watch the Olympics.
She's been DOMINATING for years and people in her own sport call her the GOAT. Which rarely happens before someone is retired or at Phelps status.
People don't even argue about Biles. She's destroyed everything since the 2012 Olympics.
Ledeky is just as dominant, but she doesn't even have the 4 year span BIles does (yet).
Biles defintiely deserves to be on the list - no recency bias whatsoever. Just because it's recent doesn't mean it's no the best.
August 12th, 2016 at 9:38 AM ^
gymnasts get one maybe two olympics. Swimmers can easily get 3-4 in if they are that great
August 12th, 2016 at 10:12 AM ^
This 3-4 Olympic window is a pretty new phenomenon for elite athletes and one suspects this relates as much to the availability of sponsorhip monies to support continued training/development as it does modern training/nutrition/rehab/recovery. Mark Tewskbury (former Canadian gold medalist) said as much this week discussing Michael Phelps who, at his age now is married, a parent but can train full time. This was not really sustainable a generation of olympian ago. Hell, the great Mark Spitz retired at 22.
It is quite true that gymnasts start so early and have such a short competition frame that comparisons to swimming are not really viable.
August 12th, 2016 at 10:44 AM ^
Jenny Thompson and Dana Torres hold the record for most Olympic medals in swimming, 12 each, and they both competed in multiple Olympics.
Jenny Thomspon: 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004.
Dana Torres: 1984, 1988, 1992, 2000, 2008.
Matt Biondi who is 3rd all time in men's Olympic swimming medals for the US competed in 3 Olympics: 1984, 1988, 1992.
August 12th, 2016 at 11:49 AM ^
August 12th, 2016 at 3:54 PM ^
has always been more conducive to longevity due to low-impact, low injury risk relative to other sports. Gymnastics is INCREDIBLY hard on the body. Very tough to compete at a high level for a long time.
August 12th, 2016 at 4:36 PM ^
You can have a baby and jump right back in the water as an elite swimmer. How many gymnast moms are in the Olympics?
We've got guys like Irvin who are over 30 swimming in the Olympics. That's not happening in gymnastics.
Which is why people already call Biles the GOAT. Because of what she's done over the past 4 years.
Swimming, if you don't dominate in the Olympics - you're Ryan Lochte. An AMAZING swimmer, but no one is calling him the GOAT and he holds a world record.
Same thing with track. You need the gold medals.
...its why the OP had to qualify Melo. Because yea, he's probably the greatest Olympian to play MBB. But no one is calling him the great basketball player ever.
So is Biles the greatest Olympic gymnast? No. Is she the great gymnast of all time? Yes.
Phelps and Walsh-Jennings are the only two who can claim greatest olympian AND GOAT.
August 12th, 2016 at 11:43 AM ^
When you watch Biles and Raisman sticking their landings in tumbling routines, you can appreciate the physical abuse gymnast's endure which, I'd suggest, is the single largest reason why gymnasts don't have terribly long careers.
August 12th, 2016 at 9:38 AM ^
I would substitute Ledecky for Melo all day long. She is so dominant it is ridiculous.
August 12th, 2016 at 9:41 AM ^
Melo is there. His amateur accomplishments are without peer. You guys are judging him by his pro career... which is not so much.
August 12th, 2016 at 9:43 AM ^
Despite Ledecky's dominance, you can still make strong cases for other female swimmers for the best ever. The same can't be said for Biles, who at this point is basically the undisputed greatest female gymnast ever.
August 12th, 2016 at 9:48 AM ^
With respect to just the Olympics, she only has 1 team gold and 1 all around gold so far. I agree that Biles is more dominant and has more all around skill in her sport. For the 400 and 800, Ledecky is just as dominant.
August 12th, 2016 at 10:01 AM ^
This is where comparing medal counts gets tricky and misleading. It's fairly rare for female gymnasts to compete in more than one Olympics, while swimmers get mutiple opportunities for medals in multiple Olympics. Truth be told, Biles would have very well be favored to win gold in 2012 but couldn't compete because of age restrictions. Regardless, the discussion really wasn't about dominance, it's about greatest ever. Don't get me wrong, I think Ledecky probably ends up there eventually, but Biles is there today.
August 12th, 2016 at 11:54 AM ^
August 12th, 2016 at 12:07 PM ^
August 12th, 2016 at 12:17 PM ^
Sent from MGoBlog HD for iPhone & iPad
August 12th, 2016 at 1:51 PM ^
August 12th, 2016 at 12:35 PM ^
I know I follow women's gymnastics a lot closer than most people, but as was just stated, Biles was dominant immediately upon becoming eligible for senior competition and has remained dominant over that stretch in a way the sport has never experienced. People anticipated her eligibility for senior level competition the same way people anticipated LeBron's NBA arrival (clearly not the same level of attention, as women's gymnastics is only so popular). It's not at all a stretch to state she was likely the best gymnast on the planet in 2012. Trust me when I saw she was that good even then.
August 12th, 2016 at 10:19 AM ^
Biles just won an all around gold by one of the largest margins ever. Shamone, dude. It's not an endurance sport.
August 12th, 2016 at 12:05 PM ^
But margin of victory also has to do, in part, with the level of competition you face, which varies from one Olympics to the next. The judging system has also gone through some changes.
I think it's tricky to compare gymnastic greats from different eras. Suffice it to say that she's in that select group, anyway.
August 12th, 2016 at 9:48 AM ^
August 12th, 2016 at 10:13 AM ^
Sub Melo for Kayla Harrison
August 12th, 2016 at 12:06 PM ^
Yay another Judo fan! Kayla is far and away the GOAT American Judoka. Historically we've been quite weak as a Judo nation but she has been dominant. Hell she won both the semi and gold this year on ippon.
August 12th, 2016 at 3:49 PM ^
I don't even know what that means, but it sounds awesome!
August 12th, 2016 at 9:33 AM ^
oly a thing now? Agree on Biles, Phelps and Jennings though
August 12th, 2016 at 9:47 AM ^
I had no idea.
#noteverythingneedstobeabbreviated
August 12th, 2016 at 9:53 AM ^
#NENTBA
August 12th, 2016 at 12:10 PM ^
August 12th, 2016 at 9:43 AM ^
I think Melo sucks, but that's just me.
August 12th, 2016 at 9:44 AM ^
August 12th, 2016 at 10:00 AM ^
August 12th, 2016 at 10:03 AM ^
Russell, Kareem, Big O, MJ, Magic, Jerry West, and LeBron called, among others, asking who decided Melo was GOAT.
August 12th, 2016 at 10:51 AM ^
August 12th, 2016 at 11:09 AM ^
It's still a silly argument. He's played in far more games than Jordan, Robinson and the rest.
Not to mention that there is more to basketball than just scoring, though that's basically all he does.
August 12th, 2016 at 12:14 PM ^
August 12th, 2016 at 12:38 PM ^
No, you can't make a case for longevity, because for decades, American basketball players weren't allowed to play in the Olympics once they turned professional. And in the professional era ('92-present), many players have been happy to compete only once.
And he's not the best ever in Olympic play. In his three previous Olympics, he averaged 2.4, 11.5 and 16.2 points per game.
Even if you think scoring is the only part of basketball that matters (as opposed to defense, rebounding and passing, none of which he's terribly strong at), he's hasn't been anything special. He's just played in a lot of games.
August 12th, 2016 at 12:53 PM ^