After Part I, Part II and Part III, here we are: the ten greatest athletes of the millennium so far. Now we enter the upper echelon. Each of the names below could stake a claim as the greatest athlete ever in his or her respective sport—with maybe one exception.
These are the men and women who’ve made my jaw drop the most during the past two decades:
10. Cristiano Ronaldo
If the sports gods set out to create the perfect goal-scorer, the result would look an awful lot like Cristiano Ronaldo. Physically, he’s the Platonic ideal of an athlete, tall and strong and with a sprinter’s speed and a dancer’s mobility—not to mention a much more handsome mug than his sculptor would have you believe. For the past decade-and-a-half, he’s perhaps been the most-skilled soccer player on Earth, dipping into a seemingly bottomless bag of moves to embarrass defender after defender. He can play any position on the front line. And his nose for the net is just about unequaled. Ronaldo is not one to forgo a chance to put the ball between the pipes.
The owner of all-time records both in the Champions League and in domestic play, he’s the greatest goal-scorer in the history of European club soccer. During his eight years at Real Madrid, Ronaldo has more goals than games played. Across all competitions, he scored more than 50 times every year from 2011 to 2016, a staggering rate.
His teams have also been winners, both club and country. While Ronaldo was at Manchester United, the Red Devils won three Premier League titles and a UEFA Champions League crown. Following his transfer to Spain, Real Madrid has won La Liga five times and the Champions League on four occasions. In 2016, meanwhile, his Portugal squad won the European title. For his efforts, Ronaldo has won the FIFA Ballon d’Or, given annually to the world’s best player, four times, the second-most of any player in history.
Ah yes—second-most. That’s because as terrific as Ronaldo has been during a career that’s spanned nearly the entire millennium to date, he still hasn’t been the best footballer in Spain. More on that in a bit.
But that doesn’t make the Madeira native any less impressive, any less creative, any less of a joy to watch. No player in recent history attacks a one-on-four with more gusto. The ultimate point of soccer is to score goals, and when it comes to that particular skill, Ronaldo may be the best ever.
Recommended reading: The ‘Little Bee’ Who Always Cried: The story of young Ronaldo’s path to greatness in Madeira, by Ben Hayward
9. Tim Duncan
The stats and the personal honors are all there for Tim Duncan, the points and the rebounds and the MVPs. More so than anyone else on this list, though, his ranking here is a reflection of his team’s success. The San Antonio Spurs over the past twenty years have compiled the most remarkable extended stretch in the history of American professional sports, winning five titles and never missing the playoffs once. And by far the most important ingredient in that recipe for success was The Big Fundamental.
He was the steadiest, most boring superstar of my lifetime. Playing basketball as a kid, nobody pretended to be Tim Duncan. But they probably should have. Behind the silence and the bug-eyed disagreement with foul calls was a two-way force, an offensive presence who could score an easy 20 points a night (an average he topped each of his first eight seasons) combined with a cerebral defensive centerpiece who could more than hold his own against Shaquille O’Neal, Kevin Garnett and the rest of dominant big men who populated the Western Conference in the 2000s.
In total, Duncan won five titles and was named MVP twice, Finals MVP three times, first-team All-NBA ten times and an all-star fifteen times. After nineteen years, he ranks fourteenth in NBA history in scoring, sixth in rebounding and fifth in blocked shots. And he kept it up for nearly his entire career, playing a critical role for a title contender into his late thirties.
And yet it’s a real question: Which was a bigger factor in the Spurs success, Duncan’s play on the court or his presence off it? I’ve obviously never met the guy, but everything you could ever hear or read about Duncan indicates that he’s just a tremendous dude. His unselfishness, his dedication, his consistency, his willingness to take a pay cut so the team could afford other players—all were crucial in building the San Antonio dynasty. There’s a reason Greg Popovich once said he would retire once Duncan retired. (Kawhi Leonard is the reason he changed his mind).
If Duncan were a jerk who spent his whole career with the Sacramento Kings, he’d probably still be somewhere on this list. But it’s all the other stuff that makes him the greatest power forward of all time.
Recommended reading: Timmy and Pop: NBA Power Couple, by Marc Stein
8. Katie Ledecky
In any one particular moment, the act of watching Katie Ledecky destroy the rest of women’s swimming is not particularly exciting. She’s just swimming, one stroke after the other, arms churning and legs kicking, moving slightly faster than everyone around her. It’s not until you assess the Ledecky experience as a whole that your face begins to melt.
The above video shows her first world record, in the 1,500-meter freestyle, which Ledecky set when she was 16. You can see how far ahead of the former world record she was. Yet in the four years since, Ledecky has set a new record in the event on four occasions, chopping another eleven seconds off her time. It’s the same story in the 800, where Ledecky set her first world record at the age of 16 and has slashed her time by nine more seconds. In the longest, most grueling events in swimming, no other woman in the history of the sport comes close to Katie Ledecky. Over the course of thirty laps, she grinds the competition into dust.
Swimming freestyle at every distance between 100 meters (as part of a relay) and 1,500 meters, Ledecky has set thirteen world records in her career. She’s won five Olympic gold medals and fourteen world championships. She keeps getting better. It’s probably worth mentioning here she’s still just 20 years old.
Recommended reading: This Is Katie F—ing Ledecky: A Thesis About Kicking Ass, by Brian Phillips
7. Michael Phelps
Michael Phelps’s 2008 Olympics represent one of the most stunning individual accomplishments in the history of sports. In the span of eight days, he won eight gold medals and set seven world records; the one event in which he didn’t set the record, the 100-meter butterfly, might’ve been the most dramatic race in the history of swimming, when you consider the circumstances. He’s the greatest Olympian of all time, with more medals and more golds than anyone else, and probably the greatest male swimmer ever.
Both his longevity and his versatility have been stunning. Phelps won his first world championship in 2001, in the 200 butterfly. Fifteen years later, he won five Olympic golds. For the entirety of the millennium, he’s been the world’s dominant presence in the pool, and he’s done it by winning races in every stroke.
That’s what’s special about Phelps. Whereas Ledecky is a freestyle terror, Phelps is great at everything. It’s a fact perhaps best demonstrated by his ownership of the 400 meter individual medley. Phelps first set a world record in the event in 2002 and hasn’t let go since, recording a new low on seven more occasions to cut a full eight seconds off the old mark. His best race in any single stroke, meanwhile, is the 200 butterfly, an event in which Phelps has held the world record since 2001.
It’s that versatility that allowed him to compile such an incredible number of Olympic medals. Nobody’s done that before. But I’ve got a take here: In swimming, every stroke besides freestyle is kinda bullshit.
In what other sport do we do have variations that are slightly worse than the original? Are there track events in which everyone runs backward? Is there a basketball competition at the Olympics where everyone has to shoot underhanded? The point of a race should be to get from Point A to Point B as fast as you can. The backstroke, breaststroke, and butterfly actively slow swimmers down. It still takes incredible talent and effort to master all four strokes, but it also takes incredible talent and effort to master the unicycle; that doesn’t make it worthwhile.
So there. While Phelps gets the slightest edge on this list thanks to his decade-and-a-half of dominance, the fresh-faced Ledecky’s utter dominion in freestyle will ultimately be the more impressive achievement—if she can keep it up.
Recommended reading: Seeking Answers, Michael Phelps Finds Himself, by Karen Crouse
6. Tiger Woods
Golf is hard, and tournament golf is nearly impossible. It’s a game of impossibly small margins and a large degree of luck. At any given event, it’s not particularly surprising if the best player in the world misses the cut. Take Jason Day: Between 2015 and 2016, he won eight times on tour, including a major, and ascended to No. 1 in the world. In 2017, he went winless; last month, Day fired his caddy. Nobody can win all the time. Nobody can even be above-average all the time.
Nobody, that is, except Eldrick Woods.
From his emergence in the mid-1990s until that fateful Thanksgiving weekend in 2009, Tiger Woods may have been the most consistent golfer in the history of the world. He didn’t miss cuts. He didn’t hit bad shots. He hit the ball so far that he forced courses to rebuild. He holed so many putts that you almost wanted to check for magnets.
He was a terror. He was a bogeyman haunting his opponents’ back-nine dreams.
Between 1999 and 2004, Woods ran up a streak of 264 straight weeks atop the world rankings, nearly three times as long as any player in history up to that point. Vijay Singh then briefly interrupted his reign. When Woods regained control of No. 1 in June 2005, he promptly broke his own record with a new streak of 281 consecutive weeks in the top spot, a run that didn’t end until the next decade. Between January 1, 2000 and December 31, 2009, there were a grand total of 32 weeks when Woods wasn’t ranked No. 1 in the world.
To me, that’s more impressive than the fourteen majors titles, the 38 major top-tens, the 79 wins on tour. And those numbers are plenty impressive. Playing against a larger and more diverse pool of elite talent than any golfer before him, Woods dominated the sport unlike any golfer before him. His downfall is the biggest what-if in the world of sports so far this millennium.
Recommended reading: The Man. Amen., by Charles Pierce
5. Roger Federer
And so we arrive at the greatest tennis player of all time, winner of nineteen grand slams, an artist in a Nike headband. More so than any other sport, perhaps, tennis provides a venue for individual creative genius. And more so than any other player, Federer is its vessel.
Really, tennis is a geometry problem. The ball is traveling on plane X, moving at Y speed, spinning at Z frequency. You’re standing at point A, and your opponent is at point B. Using nothing more than a piece of carbon fiber and some kevlar—and with far less than a second to think, and absolutely zero margin for error—what’s the best way to get it past the player on the other side of the net? Out of infinite possibilities, which do you choose? Nobody’s solutions are more beautiful than Federer’s.
And he’s been offering them now for quite some time—much longer than most expected. When I watched Federer play in person in May, I didn’t imagine it would be part of a year in which he won two more majors. He’s a marvel. Others on this list (including Rafael Nadal, his primary rival) are powerful athletes, intimidating, fearsome, ferocious. Federer is sublime. He gives us the ultimate gift of sports: He helps us reconsider what’s possible.
Recommended reading: Roger Federer as Religious Experience, by David Foster Wallace
4. Lionel Messi
In a lot of ways, the dynamic between Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo—his primary competition for the mythical title of Best Footballer of the Era—is akin to that of Sidney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin, or LeBron James and Kobe Bryant. They present a dichotomy: One is an all-time great playmaker, one is an all-time great scorer. By this point of the list, you’ve probably noticed a trend as to which I prefer.
Messi can score—oh yes, he can score—but the Argentinian is at his finest with the ball at his feet and open green ahead. Messi’s a savant. He sees things others don’t and does things others can’t.
Messi makes the world’s greatest defenders resemble uncoordinated children. At a listed five-foot-seven, he’s so tiny he famously had to take growth hormones, but that lack of size often seems to work to his advantage. He moves like a wisp, here there and gone the next, his blindingly quick strides moving faster than any other pair of legs on the field.
Since debuting for Barcelona in 2004, he’s won too many trophies and earned too many honors to list. It’s certainly worth mentioning his five times taking home the Ballon d’Or as the best player in the world, more than any player in history. His fifty goals in a single La Liga season may cause eyebrows to raise. He’s helped Barcelona win 29 trophies across all competitions, or more than two a year. The list goes on; the résumé is flawless.
But you don’t need the numbers to understand Messi’s greatness. Trying to describe his ability to destroy defenses and create chances—for himself, for his teammates, for everyone—is like trying to write about a Picasso. Sometimes, you just have to look.
Recommended reading: The World At His Feet, by S.L. Price
3. LeBron James
Consider how insane it is that LeBron James lived up to the hype. That someone whose 17-year-old face was on the cover of Sports Illustrated next to a headline reading “The Chosen One” has become one of the five greatest basketball players of all time. And that’s right now, at 32, if James never played another game. When it’s all said and done—maybe ten years from now, maybe after playing a season or two in the NBA alongside LeBron James Jr.—top five will be conservative.
Consider that the next high-school hooper to appear on the cover of SI after James was Sebastian Telfair.
Consider his staggering statistical achievements. For his career, James has averaged 27.1 points, 7.3 rebounds and 7.1 assists per game on 50.1% shooting. Only three other players in NBA history have managed to post such a line in any single season, according to Basketball Reference: Michael Jordan, Oscar Robertson and Larry Bird. And again, those are James’s numbers for his career. He already has more than 28,000 career points. He’s going to retire as the NBA’s all-time leading scorer (even though Kevin Durant may pass him by a few years later).
Consider the wins. James spent the first seven years of his career dragging otherwise-trash Cavaliers teams to fifty victories. Then he went to Miami and won two titles; then he came back to Cleveland and won another. All told, his teams have played in seven straight NBA Finals, an unprecedented streak in a thirty-team league. His total regular season winning percentage: 64.8%. In the playoffs: 66.4%. And the all-around, all-everything excellence of James has been the biggest reason why.
Consider how frequently he can take a viewer’s breath away. James is an awe-inspiring athlete: People that big aren’t supposed to be able to move like that. They’re not supposed to be able to fly. And forgot the fact that he’s 6-foot-8, 240 pounds: Basketball players of any size aren’t supposed to be able to play like James, to see the court like sees it and to thread passes the way he threads them. To sprint the length of the court in six strides and stuff a layup against the glass, then turnaround and sprint the other way and throw down a monstrous dunk. Consider the fact he seems bionic. He’s never been seriously injured—or if he has, the injuries haven’t slowed him down. He’s a hurricane with a jump shot.
Consider LeBron James, the greatest athlete in a team sport of the past eighteen years.
Recommended reading: You Gotta Carry That Weight: LeBron James enters the NBA, by Jack McCallum
2. Serena Williams
Serena Williams is much, much more than pure power. But even if she weren’t, the power might still be enough. In the past eighteen years, no athletes have transformed their sport in quite the same way as Venus and Serena, changing women’s tennis from a staid affair of serve-and-volley and never-ending rallies into a game of speed and strength. They overwhelmed opponents with skill, sure, but also with force. With miles-per-hour. They intimidated. Two decades later, the rest of the sport is still trying to catch up.
For a while, the sisters were equals. In the early part of the new millennium, though, it became apparent the younger Williams was destined for a higher plane. And in the decade-plus since, she’s ascended to that plane: As perhaps the greatest female athlete of all time, and certainly the best of millennium so far.
Williams has won 23 grand slams on her own and 14 more playing doubles with her sister, the second-most combined wins of any player in the Open Era. She’s won 72 career singles titles on the WTA and nearly 86% of her total matches, a stunning rate. In 2003, she became the first player in sixteen years to hold all four Grand Slams singles titles simultaneously; in 2015, she did it again. She won her first Grand Slam in 1999 and her latest this year. And if Williams resumes playing serious tennis after the recent birth of her daughter, there’s little reason to think more victories aren’t on the way.
It hasn’t always been smooth sailing. Williams has repeatedly fallen down the world rankings only to again ascend to the pinnacle of her sport, a sort of yo-yoing that only further establishes her dominance. Who else could not play tennis for six months, then win the Australian Open? What other championship athlete is also a published author, a civil-rights pioneer, trilingual, part-owner of an NFL franchise, a fashion designer, an actress, a mother? Who else can be so, so good at one thing and still have the bandwidth for everything else?
Who else could be Serena Williams? No one. At least not yet.
Recommended reading: The Meaning of Serena Williams, by Claudia Rankine
1. Usain Bolt
Every human being who has ever walked on two feet has tried to move as fast as they can. And out of all those billions of people, none has ever been faster than Usain Bolt.
His three world records at the 2009 world championships in Berlin are the most breathtaking athletic feat of my lifetime. For decades, the 100 meter record had progressed by one or two tenths at a time, gradually dropping from 9.95 in 1968 to 9.74 in 2007. Then came Bolt, who set a new record of 9.69 at the 2008 Olympics and followed it with an unreal 9.58 in Berlin, cutting more than a tenth of a second off the mark. That’s unheard of.
Perhaps the best comparison is the American Michael Johnson, who stunningly cut more than three-tenths of a second off the 200 meter world record at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, winning gold in 19.32 seconds. The mark stood for twelve years—until Bolt. Just like in the 100, Bolt broke the 200-meter record first at the 2008 Olympics, running 19.30, and then obliterated it at the next year’s world championships with a 19.19, video of which you can see above. It’s worth mentioning Bolt was running into the wind.
In the clip from Berlin, watch Shawn Crawford in the outside lane—the same Shawn Crawford who won gold in the 200 meters at the 2004 Olympics. Watch how fast he is moving, with perfect form: arms pumping like mad, legs churning like pistons, head perfect motionless atop it all. This is one of the greatest sprinters in history. And Bolt makes it look like he’s jogging.
From his supernova-like emergence in 2008 until his retirement earlier this year, Bolt dominated the sport of sprinting like no one before him. Often, it seemed, he barely had to try. The Jamaican sensation won gold in the 100, the 200 and the 4×100 meters at the 2008, 2012 and 2016 Olympics, even though one of those relay medals has since been rescinded due to a teammate’s failed drug test. Until this year’s world championships, Bolt had run 21 times in the past decade at either the Olympics or the world championships. He won 20 of those races. The exception: A DQ after a false start. Like Brooks Robinson playing third base, Bolt ran sprints like he came down from a higher league.
And then it was over. Watching a balding Bolt lose the 100 final at this year’s world championships—not just lose, but come in third—was a clear, sad, terrifying reminder of our mortality. Nothing lasts forever.
But even when all of Usain Bolt’s hair is gone, when he’s old and creaky, we’ll be able to watch an old video as he sprints down a track toward the finish line in Beijing or Berlin, his legs swallowing up ground, the hint of a smile creeping across on his face, a celebration already forming in his mind, the greatest sprinter who ever lived racing away from them all.
Recommended reading: Usain Bolt chasing three more golds at his last Olympics, by Tim Layden