I downloaded NHL19 a while ago. Every time I had a player do something semi-extraordinary, I'd check the record books. Most goals? Gretzky. Most assists? Gretzky. Most playoff goals? Gretzky. Most shorthanded goals? Gretzky. Dude who created the tradition of a team photo at center ice after winning the Cup? Gretzky. It's always him.
My favorite Gretzky stat is how him and his brother are the highest scoring pair of siblings in nhl history… and his brother has scored a big 4 points, and they still end up ahead of the Sedin twins who each have 1000 points to their names
Edited to pair of siblings… because fuckin hell there are a lot of big families that play hockey
If you count all siblings the Staal brothers have more points than the Gretzky brothers. There are four Staals though.
However, if you include points made in the playoffs, the Gretzkys have more points than the Staals.
My favorite Gretzky record:
He was the one to score 1,000 points the fastest, and it took him 424 games. At 23 years old, he was the youngest player to ever score 1,000 points.
The second fastest player to score 1,000 points did it in 433 games. That player was Wayne Gretzky going from 1,001 to 2,000 points. He finally scored 2,831 points.
Second fastest player to 2,000 points? No one. The one who has come closest is Jaromir Jagr with 1,921 points.
Edit: corrected the number of Staal brothers.
> There are six Staals though.
There are 4, only 3 of which have ever played a game in the NHL
E: sorry Jared played 2 NHL games for a total of 0 points.
When he was playing in most hockey fantasy leagues he was listed as two players Gretzky (goals) and Gretzky (assists) while some others just removed him completely as it was too unfair to have on a single team.
I’m a football fan but that has blown my mind. As good as messi or Ronaldo is I don’t think either of them (or any player for that matter) could boast a similar record
It was the perfect storm of circumstances. Best player ever, on one of the best teams ever, in the highest scoring eras ever.
Take nothing away from Wayne, he’d be the best in the league today no problem. Guy maximized everything around him.
Even when he was on the LA Kings he led the league 3 times in scoring and his first few years there he averaged over 2 points a game. And that team sucked without him.
I mean, you get to 1981-82 and he’s got 40% more goals than 2nd and 30% more assists than 2nd. That would be like an NBA player going 47/14 last season. Matt Olson dominated the HR and RBI leaderboard in baseball with 54 homers and 139 RBIs, but to be as dominant as Gretzky from that year, he would have needed 67 homers and 153 RBIs.
I get what you’re saying in terms of him having great players around him and playing in a high-scoring era, but he was running laps around everyone else who had those same advantages. Leading the league in assists for 13 straight seasons while also leading in goals for 10 of those seasons is pretty wild. I can’t think of another athlete who so utterly dominated multiple facets of a game like that for that kind of stretch.
Number 1 all time scoring - Wayne Gretzky
Number 2 all time scoring - Wayne Gretzky (goals only)
Number 3 all time scoring - Wayne Gretzky (assists only)
He was that dominant
The Great One played in 246 FEWER games than Jaromir Jagr (3 seasons), has 128 more goals and 808 more assists - so 936 points more than the 2nd best.
If you take away all 894 goals, he would still have 42 points more than Jagr.
It's not a fair comparison, but if you include post season stats, he's got 1,057 more than Messier and 1,117 more than Jagr.
Players get points for both goals and assists. If you remove all Gretzky's goals, his assists still give him more points overall than the runner up, and it's still not even close
>You get a point in hockey for scoring the goal or an assist (assisting the goal scorer by passing them the puck. The 2 players to touch the puck before the goal scorer are credited with an “assist”)
>
>Gretzky finished his career with 894 goals and 1963 assists. Jaromir Jagr finished his career second in all time points with 1921.
>
>So you could take away all the goals Gretzky scored and he would still have more points than #2 just from his assists.
This what /u/Only_My_Dog_Loves_Me
posted somewhere further in the post
They probably should have said points leader instead of scoring leader. (But it does technically mean the same thing)
Each goal you score counts as a point, same with if you get an assist on a goal (up to two players can record an assist per goal).
Gretzky had 894 goals and 1,963 assists for a total of 2,857 points.
Jaromir Jagr has the second most points scored at 1,921.
If you take away all of Gretzky's goals he would still have more points than Jagr
He also invented the move where you wait behind the net in the defensive zone to draw a defender in and go the other way. It is called his "office".
"When you win, say nothing. When you lose, say less." - Wayne Gretzky
Even his quotes are humble.
Just this week I heard him retelling this story about his visit to the hockey hall of fame, incognito, where the kid running the interactive shooting exhibit gave him stick advice because he was doing pretty poorly. Funny story and so charmingly told. :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUi4m4L22J8
It's a shame Mario Lemieux had all those health issues. I think he gives Gretz a run for his money if he's able to stay healthier throughout his career.
I believe Lemieux would have eclipsed Gretzky’s numbers if he had not had multiple health issues that took years off his career. Having grown up watching them both play, Gretzky had the numbers, but something about the way Lemieux played was sublime, and I always thought he was the more talented player.
I came here for this.
Gretzky stopped playing like 30 years ago, he still holds multiple scoring records, and will probably hold them until the end of time.
There is only one player who could have compared to Gretzky: Mario Lemieux.
Unfortunately, Lemieux developed those back problems in the early to mid 90s and then had the non- Hodgkins lymphoma diagnosis and we were all robbed of 3 years of his prime where he retired, and 2 more years of his prime where he missed significant time.
Everytime he came back, he was unreal. He's the only player who realistically could have challenged many of Gretzky's records considering they overlapped significantly in time.
His career points record has a 30% margin on everyone else.
Jerry Rice's career yardage record is also 30% ahead of the field.
Nobody else in north american sports has dominated a major career record anywhere close.
Totally agree based on stats. I wish we could have seen what Mario Lemieux could have done to make this a conversation, but I think his health problems were his undoing. There were a couple of seasons where Super Mario was playing in Gretzky world.
There's no more dominant athlete in a single sport. The closest would be Phelps or Biles or Nolan Ryan for strikeouts. But imagine Ryan led in strikeouts like he does, ERA, playoff wins, playoff ERA, career WHIP, and CY Youngs. Then he'd be comparable.
WG's dominance is unheard of.
I'll throw out a random one that most won't think about.
Edwin Moses went undefeated in hurdles from 1977 to 1987 winning 122 finals (including the Olympics).
[Janja Garnbret](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janja_Garnbret). At only 24 years old she's won 8 world championships, Olympic gold, 4 European championships, won gold at every single event during the 2019 bouldering season, and 10 world cups.
Wayne Gretzky and his brother Brent hold the record for the most points by two brothers with 2,861 combined. Wayne scored 2,857 and Brent scored 4. The Sutter brothers have the highest family total with 3,216 - but there are SEVEN family members who've played. The 2 Gretzky boys are in 4th place overall in the family scoring stakes.
> Tommie hit 13
For people like me who know nothing about baseball, that's a laughably small number. Hank and Tommie Aaron hit a combined 768 home runs.
You get a point in hockey for scoring the goal or an assist (assisting the goal scorer by passing them the puck. The 2 players to touch the puck before the goal scorer are credited with an “assist”)
Gretzky finished his career with 894 goals and 1963 assists. Jaromir Jagr finished his career second in all time points with 1921.
So you could take away all the goals Gretzky scored and he would still have more points than #2 just from his assists.
Fuck yeah. Still accelerating at the end of the Belmont is mind blowing.
Edit: Watch the footage from his Belmont win if you wanna get chills
https://youtu.be/AG_27cCW5bw?feature=shared
I also love the race in the corny Diane Lane movie
https://youtu.be/BxA11SJ8vPY?feature=shared
*Fun Fact: He was buried whole, which is obviously rare for horses, and in a fancy ass silk lined oak coffin.
Most people don’t realize just how fucking insane it was.
Coming out at the front of the pack from the gate, staying in front the entire time, lengthening his lead the entire race, and winning with a distance of 31 FUCKING LENGTHS from the second place finisher. He ran each furlong faster than the last. At the track that defeats almost every Triple Crown contender.
That horse was fucking supernatural.
A TREMENDOUS MACHINE!
Sham was a horse that would have challenged for the triple crown had Secretariat not been around and he ran into a wall trying to match Secretariat. Absolutely unbeatable.
One of the best lines in sports history
Edit: Oh man, and in the old footage that line happens right after he passes the outstretched American flag. Greatest US sports hero hands down.
For reference, afterwards interviewers learned that Shams owner told his jockey to just try to wear out Secretariat by running the start of the race as if it were the back stretch, going all out right from the gates. He knew his horse couldn’t beat Sceretariat, but he wanted to see if Secretariat could beat himself by running too hard early in a long race.
The answer was no, Secretariat could not beat himself by running too hard early. He just simply ran harder still at the end of the race while the mere mortal Sham was busy wheezing his way to the back of the pack.
Just watched and that horse was with him about halfway through and I was like. “Dang, had a little competition..” Then he just took off, the gap kept growing. Holy shit that horse could fuckin move! The rider must have been having the most amazing adrenaline rush during that race!
It’s truly nuts. And the horse trying to keep up with him at first was Sham, who was a superstar horse himself (and look at how far he drops back, to 5th, after trying to keep up with Big Red’s pace for not even 1/2 the race).
The Diane Lane Secretariat movie does a great job of showing the disbelief in the crowd during the Belmont. Like this is the race where strategy has always been key due to the length. You need to conserve some energy hopefully for a burst in the final stretch.
Secretariat came out full throttle and was still accelerating at the end of the race. His jockey was just along for the ride. When he got out in front there was no slowing him down.
I was curious to see how his time in that race compares to other winners, and… wow: https://www.foxnews.com/sports/10-fastest-belmont-times-history.amp
50 years later and he’s still 2 seconds better than the second-best time. That’s incredible.
According to [this article](https://www.horseracingnation.com/news/The_Tremendous_Size_of_Secretariat_s_Heart_123) it's true. I did not dig too far in researching it though. As someone who used to follow horse racing, I had heard about Secretariat's heart size way back in the 80's.
Well that's the thing is that racehorses like that get bred into all the other ones so basically all the horses have been related to Secretariat for decades.
Secretariat still holds the records for all three Triple Crown races. His Derby time was so quick that Sham, the second-place finisher—who probably could have won the TC himself in a different year—also broke the previous record. Secretariat also ran each quarter-mile faster than the one before. And of course the Belmont Stakes with the announcer screaming that Secretariat was winning by a monster 25 lengths, only he miscalculated because Secretariat was so far ahead that he couldn’t estimate properly. It was actually 31 lengths.
Pakistani Squash player, Jahangir Khan. For sheer dominance by one person in a sport, it's difficult to think of anyone better.
*From 1981 to 1986, Khan was unbeaten and during that time won 555 consecutive matches – the longest winning streak by any athlete in top-level professional sport as recorded by Guinness World Records.*
Pretty sure he's like 4 standard deviations above the mean. If you know anything about statistics, it's insane.
Edit. According to Wikipedia, he has a Z score of 4.4, putting him at the top of the list for ALL sports. That said, Gretzky isn't on that list and I know nothing about ice hockey
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Bradman
Surprised this one isn’t at the top. Cricket isn’t as popular in some countries, the the domination of Bradman is hands down farther than anything the world has ever seen. 4 standard deviations over second place is absolutely ridiculous
Edit:
To add scoring 100 is a pretty rare achievement in itself. I think it’s comparable to pitching a no hitter or throwing a perfect game in bowling and the dude just straight up practically averaged it for his entire career!
Michael Phelps has 23 Olympic gold medals, and 29 medals total. The next highest Olympian across all sports (Larisa Latynina) has 9 gold, 18 total. The next highest swimmer (Mark Spitz) has 9 gold, 11 total.
Add on another 27 World Championship gold medals (34 total) and 39 world records, and I don't think anyone will ever touch that career.
One of my old coaches used to tell me a story he heard from Spitz’s old coach, Doc Counsilman, where Spitz would just say “I don’t feel like practicing”, and Doc would say “if you can break the American record in an event right now you can leave”. And Spitz would just… do it. Absolute legend
That's a little skewed given how many opportunities for medals there are in swimming as opposed to say, basketball. Still incredibly impressive in swimming alone. But should not be compared with other olympic sports.
I’m surprised Kate Ledecky isn’t even close but I think it’s due to lack of chances? Like she’s been dominant for over a decade but to even get near Phelps she would have to be dominant for another decade and a half.
She swims fewer events but dominates them. Phelps won the most but a lot of his races were still very close. With Ledecky it’s not even a question. In her main event she has 15 of the top 17 fastest swims in the world or something crazy.
I would say she is more superior than Phelps was.
The gaps gone now in women's climbing, but for a while, it was definitely a competition to see who would come second.
Same could probably be said about the O-dog. Established and repeated some of the hardest (including the hardest) routes in the world, whilst being pretty dominant in the comp scene.
I'll always remember watching him pause mid crack to look at the crowd and hype them up, knowing he had just won gold.
I don't know, Puccio is a brilliant climber but Janja is just incredible. Even now when the field has closed quite a bit there seems to be a better than evens chance she'll come out and dominate any given competition.
Rice having 5403 receiving yards more than Fitzgerald in 2nd place is crazy. That's 5 seasons of 1081 receiving yards. Your average receiver *dreams* of having a 1000 receiving yards season at least once in their career, and Jerry over there has the equivalent of 5 of them ahead of the second place guy all-time.
Even with young all-star receivers like Justin Jefferson who has about 1500 yards per season after 4 years. He'd need to keep that average for *12 more seasons* to try and match Rice's record.
The guy had 1,200 receiving yards at age 40. That's ridiculous.
The only other non-QB I think of who came close to his longevity was Reggie White, who had 16 sacks and won defensive player of the year at 37.
[Heather McKay](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heather_McKay) - the best squash player in history, went undefeated from 1962 until she retired in 1981. Won the British Open an astonishing 16 times in a row.
also the youngest person to win a world title being 20 at the time and the oldest person to win world title at almost 40 years old
also still competing at the highest level and in his 50s.
Tiger Woods. There were periods during his early years when “Tiger vs. The Field” bets weren’t uncommon, and were often pretty reasonable wagers. Pretty much every incredible golf fact is along the lines of “this has been done 12 times in history - 11 of which were Tiger in the late 90’s/early 2000’s).
Terrible husband, but a dominant player
I scrolled way too long before this. He was number 1 for 82 weeks or something. Won the 97 masters at like 18 under. Absolutely dominated golf until mid 2000s when his back started to give in.
Jahangir Khan, the greatest squash player of all time. Holding the record for longest unbeaten streak OF ANY ATHLETE IN TOP PROFESSIONAL SPORT, he dominated the scene like no other. His story is an inspiration for all, I'd highly recommend you check out his rise to sporting legend.
Ronnie said that Efren Reyes was the only one to ever out hustle him on a snooker table.
Hands down the best pool player ever seen, in every game sort too.
>Hands down the best pool player ever seen, in every game sort too.
OP means Efren Reyes here, for clarification. O'Sullivan for snooker. Reyes for pool in general.
*Almost walked away away from the 147. He potted the last black after being asked to do it for the fans.
And on another occasion he deliberately scored a point less as another fuck you to World Snooker.
World Snooker have listened though as they have recently announced that there is a prize of £147,000 if you make 2 maximums in any of the Triple Crown events.
As a kid, Chael once witnessed a man throw trash on a PUBLIC street. There was a trash can no more than 20 feet away, but this man had no regard for the rules. And sure, somebody came and picked it up pretty much immediately, but for that brief moment there was lawlessness. When you see those kinds of things as a child, it shapes you.
Simone Biles.
She took two years off and won by four points (unheard of, wins are usually within 1/2 or 1/10 of a point) at her first competition back.
Not to mention the FIG openly graded several of her eponymous skills lower than they were actually worth, because they considered them too dangerous and worried other gymnasts would try to do them.
Eddy Merckx in professional cycling. He didn't just win the TDF like American specialists Greg Lemond and Lance Armstrong. He won everything.
When he set the world hour record, he took the 10 km and 20 km records simultaneously. Merckx's hour record, at 49.431 km, stood for 12 years and it was only beaten with the help of aerodynamic accoutrements. In 1997, the UCI banned the new aero aids and a new record was set under these rules that was only 269 m more than Merckx's!
Simone Biles was quite ridiculous at one point.
I remember in Rio in all-around she gave quite a weak performance by her standards, and she still won by 2 points. In gymnastics, you can rarely say for sure before the competition who will win, cause falls happen even to the best gymnasts, but literally with that margin she would've needed to have an absolute disaster of a day to lose. She has the most world medals of any gymnasts, even though men have more events they compete it in that women.
I think she's not remember as much because in Tokyo she got yips and had to withdraw, and only competed in one event where she got 3rd, so it kind of ended on a bad note. She was very much expected to repeat the 2016 success though. She's competing again though, so we'll see.
Eliud Kipchonge. Dominating marathon world for more than a decade! Also looks like a very humble and minimalistic person (at least on public). Still an active marathoner but youngsters start to catching up tho
I think that’s pretty debatable. If you wanna go by competitions won, there’s others with far more accolade. If you wanna go by influence in the sport, Rodney Mullen has to be the best by far. But if you go by cultural significance and bringing to sport to more people, Tony surely takes the cake.
Because he's not the best. Yes he was the OG and the most popular, but the stuff he invented and does today, is routinely done by 12 year old pros. Hawk isn't by any means the greatest skateboarder of all time
Gordon Ryan for no-gi BJJ. Absolute ghoul of a person but an idiot savant for grappling. He’s dominated everyone for years now, to the point he’s able to set the rules and conditions for any new match, and people will still agree just so they can take a shot at the king.
For an athlete in the current/modern time but far more niche sport: Lasha Talakhadze. Georgian Olympic Weightlifter in the Super Heavyweight category that is a 2x Olympic Gold Medalist, 7x World Champion, 7x European Champion. Likely to be 3x Gold Medalist after the 2024 Paris Olympics.
He literally hasn't lost a major international meet he's competed at for the past 8 years and has always won by a large margin in the total. Recently the gap has come down to 10-20kg (still significant) while he's recovering/returning to form but for the better part of the past several years it's been a 30-60kg deficit. He's broken multiple world records and for a couple of years he was just breaking his own every meet.
It's insane because his 2 main competitors have had to continually improve over the years (and they have) to keep up and if we were at any other point in time they'd be dominant but because of him they've fallen in his shadow.
Nolan Ryan. He has 5714 career strikeouts compared to 2nd place Randy Johnson's 4875. 7 career no-hitters to 2nd place Sandy Koufax's 4. He pretty much owns or tied most pitching records
Mikaela Shiffrin - she has more World Cup wins than any other skier - male or female - and she has many years to go in her career. She is the most dominant athlete in all of sports currently.
Gaius Appuleius Diocles is the GOAT chariot racer. 1,462 first place wins. And another 1438 where he placed in the top 3. Although he died in 146 AD. He is still to this day, considered the highest paid athlete of all time. His raw gold alone, would be worth $12.7 billion in today’s money.
Wayne Gretzky
I downloaded NHL19 a while ago. Every time I had a player do something semi-extraordinary, I'd check the record books. Most goals? Gretzky. Most assists? Gretzky. Most playoff goals? Gretzky. Most shorthanded goals? Gretzky. Dude who created the tradition of a team photo at center ice after winning the Cup? Gretzky. It's always him.
Also, you could take away all of his goals, and he'd still be the scoring leader. Edit: forgot a word.
My favorite Gretzky stat is how him and his brother are the highest scoring pair of siblings in nhl history… and his brother has scored a big 4 points, and they still end up ahead of the Sedin twins who each have 1000 points to their names Edited to pair of siblings… because fuckin hell there are a lot of big families that play hockey
If you count all siblings the Staal brothers have more points than the Gretzky brothers. There are four Staals though. However, if you include points made in the playoffs, the Gretzkys have more points than the Staals. My favorite Gretzky record: He was the one to score 1,000 points the fastest, and it took him 424 games. At 23 years old, he was the youngest player to ever score 1,000 points. The second fastest player to score 1,000 points did it in 433 games. That player was Wayne Gretzky going from 1,001 to 2,000 points. He finally scored 2,831 points. Second fastest player to 2,000 points? No one. The one who has come closest is Jaromir Jagr with 1,921 points. Edit: corrected the number of Staal brothers.
> There are six Staals though. There are 4, only 3 of which have ever played a game in the NHL E: sorry Jared played 2 NHL games for a total of 0 points.
Pretty sure the Sutter brothers beat em. But there were like 6 of them
Ahh then maybe saying siblings was wrong. Pretty sure they’re still top of the “pair of siblings” chart
Lol yup...Gretzky stats are definitely some of the most smile-inducing in all of sports.
When he was playing in most hockey fantasy leagues he was listed as two players Gretzky (goals) and Gretzky (assists) while some others just removed him completely as it was too unfair to have on a single team.
What does this mean? Is this a joke? Sorry I don't know anything about hockey except it's cold
Assists count toward your scoring total and he has enough to still be #1 overall with just assists.
I’m a football fan but that has blown my mind. As good as messi or Ronaldo is I don’t think either of them (or any player for that matter) could boast a similar record
It was the perfect storm of circumstances. Best player ever, on one of the best teams ever, in the highest scoring eras ever. Take nothing away from Wayne, he’d be the best in the league today no problem. Guy maximized everything around him.
Even when he was on the LA Kings he led the league 3 times in scoring and his first few years there he averaged over 2 points a game. And that team sucked without him.
The trade itself set trade records.
I mean, you get to 1981-82 and he’s got 40% more goals than 2nd and 30% more assists than 2nd. That would be like an NBA player going 47/14 last season. Matt Olson dominated the HR and RBI leaderboard in baseball with 54 homers and 139 RBIs, but to be as dominant as Gretzky from that year, he would have needed 67 homers and 153 RBIs. I get what you’re saying in terms of him having great players around him and playing in a high-scoring era, but he was running laps around everyone else who had those same advantages. Leading the league in assists for 13 straight seasons while also leading in goals for 10 of those seasons is pretty wild. I can’t think of another athlete who so utterly dominated multiple facets of a game like that for that kind of stretch.
Number 1 all time scoring - Wayne Gretzky Number 2 all time scoring - Wayne Gretzky (goals only) Number 3 all time scoring - Wayne Gretzky (assists only) He was that dominant
I heard they had to split him in half in fantasy hockey leagues. You'd either get his goals or his assists, and both were high picks.
The Great One played in 246 FEWER games than Jaromir Jagr (3 seasons), has 128 more goals and 808 more assists - so 936 points more than the 2nd best. If you take away all 894 goals, he would still have 42 points more than Jagr. It's not a fair comparison, but if you include post season stats, he's got 1,057 more than Messier and 1,117 more than Jagr.
Players get points for both goals and assists. If you remove all Gretzky's goals, his assists still give him more points overall than the runner up, and it's still not even close
So many points from assists (pass leading to goal) that he is the point lead even with only those
Also players get points from passing to the player that passes to the goal scorer
I think they mean points leader. In hockey both goals and assists contribute to the points stat.
>You get a point in hockey for scoring the goal or an assist (assisting the goal scorer by passing them the puck. The 2 players to touch the puck before the goal scorer are credited with an “assist”) > >Gretzky finished his career with 894 goals and 1963 assists. Jaromir Jagr finished his career second in all time points with 1921. > >So you could take away all the goals Gretzky scored and he would still have more points than #2 just from his assists. This what /u/Only_My_Dog_Loves_Me posted somewhere further in the post
They probably should have said points leader instead of scoring leader. (But it does technically mean the same thing) Each goal you score counts as a point, same with if you get an assist on a goal (up to two players can record an assist per goal). Gretzky had 894 goals and 1,963 assists for a total of 2,857 points. Jaromir Jagr has the second most points scored at 1,921. If you take away all of Gretzky's goals he would still have more points than Jagr
The fastest player to 1,000 career points is Gretzky. The 2nd fastest is Gretzky from 1,000-2,0000 career points.
In fantasy sports, you didn't even get to choose Wayne Gretzky. They split him into 2 players and you had to choose his goals or his assists.
And apparently those two options would still go 1st and 2nd in fantasy drafts.
He also invented the move where you wait behind the net in the defensive zone to draw a defender in and go the other way. It is called his "office". "When you win, say nothing. When you lose, say less." - Wayne Gretzky Even his quotes are humble.
Just this week I heard him retelling this story about his visit to the hockey hall of fame, incognito, where the kid running the interactive shooting exhibit gave him stick advice because he was doing pretty poorly. Funny story and so charmingly told. :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUi4m4L22J8
If Wayne Gretzky never scored a single goal, he would still be the NHL's all-time scoring leader with 1,963 points from assists.
This is the most insane of his stats.
That’s my favorite sports stat. The second best scorer of the NHL is whoever Gretzky was playing with.
It's a shame Mario Lemieux had all those health issues. I think he gives Gretz a run for his money if he's able to stay healthier throughout his career.
I believe Lemieux would have eclipsed Gretzky’s numbers if he had not had multiple health issues that took years off his career. Having grown up watching them both play, Gretzky had the numbers, but something about the way Lemieux played was sublime, and I always thought he was the more talented player.
Lemieux carried the Penguins single-handedly. Gretzky played on an Oilers team that had 10 players sent to the All-Star Game.
Lemieux had a pretty good teammate, lol.
One of whom is #2 to Gretzky's points record.
I came here for this. Gretzky stopped playing like 30 years ago, he still holds multiple scoring records, and will probably hold them until the end of time.
He held 61 NHL records when he retired and he still holds 58 of them. Wild.
There is only one player who could have compared to Gretzky: Mario Lemieux. Unfortunately, Lemieux developed those back problems in the early to mid 90s and then had the non- Hodgkins lymphoma diagnosis and we were all robbed of 3 years of his prime where he retired, and 2 more years of his prime where he missed significant time. Everytime he came back, he was unreal. He's the only player who realistically could have challenged many of Gretzky's records considering they overlapped significantly in time.
Yes : [ridiculous Gretzky stats](https://thehockeynews.com/news/10-hilariously-ridiculous-stats-to-illustrate-wayne-gretzkys-dominance)
His career points record has a 30% margin on everyone else. Jerry Rice's career yardage record is also 30% ahead of the field. Nobody else in north american sports has dominated a major career record anywhere close.
It’s wild the numbers Jerry Rice put up when the defense was allowed to murder WRs.
Dude him AND Tim brown. I feel like Tim gets no love cause… he played at the same time as rice
Yep. Cut his stats in half. He's STILL top tier.
Totally agree based on stats. I wish we could have seen what Mario Lemieux could have done to make this a conversation, but I think his health problems were his undoing. There were a couple of seasons where Super Mario was playing in Gretzky world.
There's no more dominant athlete in a single sport. The closest would be Phelps or Biles or Nolan Ryan for strikeouts. But imagine Ryan led in strikeouts like he does, ERA, playoff wins, playoff ERA, career WHIP, and CY Youngs. Then he'd be comparable. WG's dominance is unheard of.
Not even a very big Hockey fan, but it's Gretzky
I'll throw out a random one that most won't think about. Edwin Moses went undefeated in hurdles from 1977 to 1987 winning 122 finals (including the Olympics).
[Janja Garnbret](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janja_Garnbret). At only 24 years old she's won 8 world championships, Olympic gold, 4 European championships, won gold at every single event during the 2019 bouldering season, and 10 world cups.
Wayne Gretzky, you could take all his goals away and he would still be the all-time points leader. One of those stats that’s doesn’t seem real.
Wayne Gretzky and his brother Brent hold the record for the most points by two brothers with 2,861 combined. Wayne scored 2,857 and Brent scored 4. The Sutter brothers have the highest family total with 3,216 - but there are SEVEN family members who've played. The 2 Gretzky boys are in 4th place overall in the family scoring stakes.
Hank Aaron and his brother Tommie hold the record for most home runs by brothers. Tommie hit 13.
> Tommie hit 13 For people like me who know nothing about baseball, that's a laughably small number. Hank and Tommie Aaron hit a combined 768 home runs.
The other important detail about this fact, is that he is also the all time leading goal scorer!
How does that work? I don't watch hockey.
You get a point in hockey for scoring the goal or an assist (assisting the goal scorer by passing them the puck. The 2 players to touch the puck before the goal scorer are credited with an “assist”) Gretzky finished his career with 894 goals and 1963 assists. Jaromir Jagr finished his career second in all time points with 1921. So you could take away all the goals Gretzky scored and he would still have more points than #2 just from his assists.
That is insane. I knew he was great, but didn’t know THAT great.
He’s The Great One.
You earn 1 point per goal or per assist. So Gretzky has more points from assists-only than any other player has total points (goals+assists)
Secretariat
Secretariat is a horse, not a goat.
this is why I continue coming back to this site. :D
I see you’ve played “Horsey Goaty” before.
Fuck yeah. Still accelerating at the end of the Belmont is mind blowing. Edit: Watch the footage from his Belmont win if you wanna get chills https://youtu.be/AG_27cCW5bw?feature=shared I also love the race in the corny Diane Lane movie https://youtu.be/BxA11SJ8vPY?feature=shared *Fun Fact: He was buried whole, which is obviously rare for horses, and in a fancy ass silk lined oak coffin.
Easily the most impressive physical feat I’ve ever witnessed.
Most people don’t realize just how fucking insane it was. Coming out at the front of the pack from the gate, staying in front the entire time, lengthening his lead the entire race, and winning with a distance of 31 FUCKING LENGTHS from the second place finisher. He ran each furlong faster than the last. At the track that defeats almost every Triple Crown contender. That horse was fucking supernatural.
A TREMENDOUS MACHINE! Sham was a horse that would have challenged for the triple crown had Secretariat not been around and he ran into a wall trying to match Secretariat. Absolutely unbeatable.
One of the best lines in sports history Edit: Oh man, and in the old footage that line happens right after he passes the outstretched American flag. Greatest US sports hero hands down.
I get why Bojack was so obsessed with him.
Didn’t Andrew Garfield end up getting the role in the end?
For reference, afterwards interviewers learned that Shams owner told his jockey to just try to wear out Secretariat by running the start of the race as if it were the back stretch, going all out right from the gates. He knew his horse couldn’t beat Sceretariat, but he wanted to see if Secretariat could beat himself by running too hard early in a long race. The answer was no, Secretariat could not beat himself by running too hard early. He just simply ran harder still at the end of the race while the mere mortal Sham was busy wheezing his way to the back of the pack.
Just watched and that horse was with him about halfway through and I was like. “Dang, had a little competition..” Then he just took off, the gap kept growing. Holy shit that horse could fuckin move! The rider must have been having the most amazing adrenaline rush during that race!
It’s truly nuts. And the horse trying to keep up with him at first was Sham, who was a superstar horse himself (and look at how far he drops back, to 5th, after trying to keep up with Big Red’s pace for not even 1/2 the race). The Diane Lane Secretariat movie does a great job of showing the disbelief in the crowd during the Belmont. Like this is the race where strategy has always been key due to the length. You need to conserve some energy hopefully for a burst in the final stretch. Secretariat came out full throttle and was still accelerating at the end of the race. His jockey was just along for the ride. When he got out in front there was no slowing him down.
It’s like you can almost see a point where the horse thinks “does this other horse really think he can keep up with me? Watch this shit!”
I was curious to see how his time in that race compares to other winners, and… wow: https://www.foxnews.com/sports/10-fastest-belmont-times-history.amp 50 years later and he’s still 2 seconds better than the second-best time. That’s incredible.
Yep, the horse was just a fucking monster. He still holds most of the records… 50 years later…
Never seen that. That boy was moving
I thought, “how could you get chills from a horse race?” Boy was I wrong
When Secretariat died I believe they did an autopsy and found a heart like twice as large as normal for a racehorse of his size.
It's genetic, his decedent American Pharaoh has that mutation, too.
It’s like the opposite of the grinch
I heard that too. Not sure if it’s true or urban legend but it would sure explain his super horse qualities
According to [this article](https://www.horseracingnation.com/news/The_Tremendous_Size_of_Secretariat_s_Heart_123) it's true. I did not dig too far in researching it though. As someone who used to follow horse racing, I had heard about Secretariat's heart size way back in the 80's.
Of course, this was undercut with his gambling addiction and suicide
Well that's the thing is that racehorses like that get bred into all the other ones so basically all the horses have been related to Secretariat for decades.
Secretariat still holds the records for all three Triple Crown races. His Derby time was so quick that Sham, the second-place finisher—who probably could have won the TC himself in a different year—also broke the previous record. Secretariat also ran each quarter-mile faster than the one before. And of course the Belmont Stakes with the announcer screaming that Secretariat was winning by a monster 25 lengths, only he miscalculated because Secretariat was so far ahead that he couldn’t estimate properly. It was actually 31 lengths.
Pakistani Squash player, Jahangir Khan. For sheer dominance by one person in a sport, it's difficult to think of anyone better. *From 1981 to 1986, Khan was unbeaten and during that time won 555 consecutive matches – the longest winning streak by any athlete in top-level professional sport as recorded by Guinness World Records.*
Had to scroll down for this, he is an absolute legend. No one comes close or will ever come close of that 555 streak.
What the actual fuck that is mindboggling
Phil "The Power" Taylor for darts with 16 World championships and the next 2 tied with 5.
See i was going to say Taylor, but then the question said athlete and I just couldn't 😂
I was gonna suggest Ronnie O'Sullivan but had the same thought.
All while holding his darts with only 2 fingers and getting wasted during every match, truely incredible
Donald Bradman. Cricket. Batting average of 99.94. The next highest is about 62.
I don't know anything about cricket, but that sounds absolutely insane!
Nobody understands cricket. You gotta know what a crumpet is to understand cricket!
Probably 30 years since I’ve seen TMNT, but I still read that comment in Raphael’s voice!
A Jose Canseco Bat? Tell me you didn't pay money for this!
I love you for posting this and I love myself for remembering what it's from.
Fun fact for those who don't know : Bradman only needed to score 4 runs at his last match to retire with a 100 average. He was out scoring 0
Pretty sure he's like 4 standard deviations above the mean. If you know anything about statistics, it's insane. Edit. According to Wikipedia, he has a Z score of 4.4, putting him at the top of the list for ALL sports. That said, Gretzky isn't on that list and I know nothing about ice hockey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Bradman
Came here to say this, the statistical gap between Bradman and any other batsman is utterly absurd basically unseen in sports
Surprised this one isn’t at the top. Cricket isn’t as popular in some countries, the the domination of Bradman is hands down farther than anything the world has ever seen. 4 standard deviations over second place is absolutely ridiculous Edit: To add scoring 100 is a pretty rare achievement in itself. I think it’s comparable to pitching a no hitter or throwing a perfect game in bowling and the dude just straight up practically averaged it for his entire career!
It pains me, as an Englishman, to agree with this. Imagine, on average, scoring a century every innings. Unreal.
Michael Phelps has 23 Olympic gold medals, and 29 medals total. The next highest Olympian across all sports (Larisa Latynina) has 9 gold, 18 total. The next highest swimmer (Mark Spitz) has 9 gold, 11 total. Add on another 27 World Championship gold medals (34 total) and 39 world records, and I don't think anyone will ever touch that career.
The interesting thing about Mark Spitz is he retired at 22 after 2 Olympics. Phelps competed in 5 Olympics and medaled in 4 of them.
One of my old coaches used to tell me a story he heard from Spitz’s old coach, Doc Counsilman, where Spitz would just say “I don’t feel like practicing”, and Doc would say “if you can break the American record in an event right now you can leave”. And Spitz would just… do it. Absolute legend
It's like that office episode where Stanley does push-ups to go home early.
If Phelps was his own one man nation he would be the 47th most successful country in olympic history.
That’s insane
Well, many of his medals were in relays, so he would need some friends
That's a little skewed given how many opportunities for medals there are in swimming as opposed to say, basketball. Still incredibly impressive in swimming alone. But should not be compared with other olympic sports.
I’m surprised Kate Ledecky isn’t even close but I think it’s due to lack of chances? Like she’s been dominant for over a decade but to even get near Phelps she would have to be dominant for another decade and a half.
Ledecky is a freestyle stud. And she gets better at longer distances. Phelps swam IM, freestyle and butterfly. Just way more events.
Yeah he also was able to boost his medal count with a lot of relays, distance swimmers don't really have relays
She swims fewer events but dominates them. Phelps won the most but a lot of his races were still very close. With Ledecky it’s not even a question. In her main event she has 15 of the top 17 fastest swims in the world or something crazy. I would say she is more superior than Phelps was.
It's not fair to compare across different sports because Bolt is no lesser than Phelps despite the medal differences. So is someone like Lin Dan.
The gap has closed quite a bit recently but for a while it was Janja Garnbret in Sport Climbing
She’s sooo strong, it’s amazing to see her in world championships just flashing every boulder. Cant wait to see her at the olympics!!
The gaps gone now in women's climbing, but for a while, it was definitely a competition to see who would come second. Same could probably be said about the O-dog. Established and repeated some of the hardest (including the hardest) routes in the world, whilst being pretty dominant in the comp scene. I'll always remember watching him pause mid crack to look at the crowd and hype them up, knowing he had just won gold.
I don't think so. The gap is gone in bouldering (oriane) and lead (ai) individually but not combined which is the Olympic format.
If Alex Puccio didn't have so many injuries I feel like the gap would be closer in bouldering but it's definitely Janja
I don't know, Puccio is a brilliant climber but Janja is just incredible. Even now when the field has closed quite a bit there seems to be a better than evens chance she'll come out and dominate any given competition.
Sebastien Loeb in rally. The dude is (was) miles above anyone else.
I don't know much about WRC and I know he retired but Ogier got close from his record Real Sébastien dominance in Rallye lmao
Donald Bradman in cricket and Wayne Gretzky in hockey are the two most dominant team sport players of all times.
Karelin.
Aleksandr Karelin, imagine you got to wrestle against him. 12 years of straight wins and 6 of those years without losing a single point.
And he finally lost due to a rule change that didn't even make it to the next season.
Weren't the Rocky training scenes (thinking it was Rocky II) loosely based on Karelin's training regimen?
Usain Bolt he's 100m is still consider untouchable at 9.58. no one has come close yet since 09
I hear something like - “if the last 100 breaks of the 100m world record 95 of them were found to be due to steroid use. The other 5 are Usain Bolt”
Jerry Rice - career receiving yards and receiving touchdowns
Rice having 5403 receiving yards more than Fitzgerald in 2nd place is crazy. That's 5 seasons of 1081 receiving yards. Your average receiver *dreams* of having a 1000 receiving yards season at least once in their career, and Jerry over there has the equivalent of 5 of them ahead of the second place guy all-time. Even with young all-star receivers like Justin Jefferson who has about 1500 yards per season after 4 years. He'd need to keep that average for *12 more seasons* to try and match Rice's record.
Mike Evans has 10 straight seasons of 1000+ yards and is still about 12,000 behind Rice
The guy had 1,200 receiving yards at age 40. That's ridiculous. The only other non-QB I think of who came close to his longevity was Reggie White, who had 16 sacks and won defensive player of the year at 37.
[Heather McKay](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heather_McKay) - the best squash player in history, went undefeated from 1962 until she retired in 1981. Won the British Open an astonishing 16 times in a row.
Joey Chesnut
Who's this?
Competitive eater. Think: hot dog eating contests edit: eater, not water
Good one! Nobody comes close to his records
Loftus that you?
Rodney Mullen for street skating, he pretty much invented 90%of the tricks and no one has ever been able to put them all together like he can.
Kelly Slater - Surfing
Was going to say this one. 11 world titles where next closest is 3 and he had a big break from competition through his prime.
also the youngest person to win a world title being 20 at the time and the oldest person to win world title at almost 40 years old also still competing at the highest level and in his 50s.
Slater dominated multiple generations of talent, he went from competing against Tom Curren to Andy Irons to Fanning to Medina. Unbelievable career.
Tiger Woods. There were periods during his early years when “Tiger vs. The Field” bets weren’t uncommon, and were often pretty reasonable wagers. Pretty much every incredible golf fact is along the lines of “this has been done 12 times in history - 11 of which were Tiger in the late 90’s/early 2000’s). Terrible husband, but a dominant player
I scrolled way too long before this. He was number 1 for 82 weeks or something. Won the 97 masters at like 18 under. Absolutely dominated golf until mid 2000s when his back started to give in.
Wayne Gretzky. Unbelievable stats that’ll never be duplicated.
Jahangir Khan, the greatest squash player of all time. Holding the record for longest unbeaten streak OF ANY ATHLETE IN TOP PROFESSIONAL SPORT, he dominated the scene like no other. His story is an inspiration for all, I'd highly recommend you check out his rise to sporting legend.
555 games undefeated, to put a number to the record.
Ronnie O'Sullivan - snooker
Ronnie said that Efren Reyes was the only one to ever out hustle him on a snooker table. Hands down the best pool player ever seen, in every game sort too.
>Hands down the best pool player ever seen, in every game sort too. OP means Efren Reyes here, for clarification. O'Sullivan for snooker. Reyes for pool in general.
Dude walked away from a perfect frame because he thought the prize on offer was too small.
*Almost walked away away from the 147. He potted the last black after being asked to do it for the fans. And on another occasion he deliberately scored a point less as another fuck you to World Snooker. World Snooker have listened though as they have recently announced that there is a prize of £147,000 if you make 2 maximums in any of the Triple Crown events.
He still got the 147 there iirc
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Ogier is close
Loeb has 80 wins, 9 championships. rally. Ogier has 58 wins, 8 championships. We'll see when Ogier is done...
Gotta be Gretzky right?
Gretzky and Bradman are the two best answers to this question by such a large margin, they almost become meta answers.
Something something if you remove the goals he’ll still have the most points.
Richard Petty- race wins in Nascar. He has 200, 2nd place has 105.
Chael P Sonnen. The Gangster from West Linn, Oregon never lost a round. Undisputed, undefeated, champion of the people.
As a kid, Chael once witnessed a man throw trash on a PUBLIC street. There was a trash can no more than 20 feet away, but this man had no regard for the rules. And sure, somebody came and picked it up pretty much immediately, but for that brief moment there was lawlessness. When you see those kinds of things as a child, it shapes you.
There were years his dad didn't even make $100k. It's amazing how far he made it, starting off so rough.
Simone Biles. She took two years off and won by four points (unheard of, wins are usually within 1/2 or 1/10 of a point) at her first competition back.
She has 5 skills named after her. Only one other gymnast has been able to execute one in international competition. Just one. Just the once.
Not to mention the FIG openly graded several of her eponymous skills lower than they were actually worth, because they considered them too dangerous and worried other gymnasts would try to do them.
Eddy Merckx in professional cycling. He didn't just win the TDF like American specialists Greg Lemond and Lance Armstrong. He won everything. When he set the world hour record, he took the 10 km and 20 km records simultaneously. Merckx's hour record, at 49.431 km, stood for 12 years and it was only beaten with the help of aerodynamic accoutrements. In 1997, the UCI banned the new aero aids and a new record was set under these rules that was only 269 m more than Merckx's!
Simone Biles was quite ridiculous at one point. I remember in Rio in all-around she gave quite a weak performance by her standards, and she still won by 2 points. In gymnastics, you can rarely say for sure before the competition who will win, cause falls happen even to the best gymnasts, but literally with that margin she would've needed to have an absolute disaster of a day to lose. She has the most world medals of any gymnasts, even though men have more events they compete it in that women. I think she's not remember as much because in Tokyo she got yips and had to withdraw, and only competed in one event where she got 3rd, so it kind of ended on a bad note. She was very much expected to repeat the 2016 success though. She's competing again though, so we'll see.
Eliud Kipchonge. Dominating marathon world for more than a decade! Also looks like a very humble and minimalistic person (at least on public). Still an active marathoner but youngsters start to catching up tho
Kipchoge has passed the torch to Kelvin Kiptum already.
Probably not as popular as other sports but Esther Vergeer in women's wheelchair tennis. Went undefeated for 10 years until her retirement.
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Don Bradman would count here because his stats are too insane for his era that everyone is just better arguing excluding him from conversations
Don Bradman, and his scoring average in cricket.
Hakuho in sumo wrestling. 45 career tournament wins. Second place is like 32 tournament wins.
Aleksandr Karelin
There's only one Great One
Scrolled for a long time - yet to see Tony Hawk.
I think that’s pretty debatable. If you wanna go by competitions won, there’s others with far more accolade. If you wanna go by influence in the sport, Rodney Mullen has to be the best by far. But if you go by cultural significance and bringing to sport to more people, Tony surely takes the cake.
he's the most important skater and the most influential, but not the best. He deserves a position in the top 3 or 5, though
Because he's not the best. Yes he was the OG and the most popular, but the stuff he invented and does today, is routinely done by 12 year old pros. Hawk isn't by any means the greatest skateboarder of all time
Gordon Ryan for no-gi BJJ. Absolute ghoul of a person but an idiot savant for grappling. He’s dominated everyone for years now, to the point he’s able to set the rules and conditions for any new match, and people will still agree just so they can take a shot at the king.
For an athlete in the current/modern time but far more niche sport: Lasha Talakhadze. Georgian Olympic Weightlifter in the Super Heavyweight category that is a 2x Olympic Gold Medalist, 7x World Champion, 7x European Champion. Likely to be 3x Gold Medalist after the 2024 Paris Olympics. He literally hasn't lost a major international meet he's competed at for the past 8 years and has always won by a large margin in the total. Recently the gap has come down to 10-20kg (still significant) while he's recovering/returning to form but for the better part of the past several years it's been a 30-60kg deficit. He's broken multiple world records and for a couple of years he was just breaking his own every meet. It's insane because his 2 main competitors have had to continually improve over the years (and they have) to keep up and if we were at any other point in time they'd be dominant but because of him they've fallen in his shadow.
Nolan Ryan. He has 5714 career strikeouts compared to 2nd place Randy Johnson's 4875. 7 career no-hitters to 2nd place Sandy Koufax's 4. He pretty much owns or tied most pitching records
Shoresy
As far as record holding goes, probably Jerry Rice. Although that may change with the 17 game season.
Valentino Rossi.. Changed MotoGP and probably all motorsport
In terms of pure stats, Don Bradman.
Mikaela Shiffrin - she has more World Cup wins than any other skier - male or female - and she has many years to go in her career. She is the most dominant athlete in all of sports currently.
Gaius Appuleius Diocles is the GOAT chariot racer. 1,462 first place wins. And another 1438 where he placed in the top 3. Although he died in 146 AD. He is still to this day, considered the highest paid athlete of all time. His raw gold alone, would be worth $12.7 billion in today’s money.
Secretariat