ESPN recently named its top 100 athletes of the 21st century, mainly to bait hopeless chumps who like to argue over these sorts of things. And what a crock it is! Numbers 11 to 100 are mostly baseballers, American footballers, ice-hockey players and basketballers (honourable mention: Lauren Jackson, No.84 – the one Australian on the entire list; no Emma McKeon, no Sam Kerr, no Ash Barty).
It’s ESPN; it’s for hopeless American mugs. Let’s get really exercised over the top 10, who are, in the opinion of ESPN: Michael Phelps, Serena Williams, Lionel Messi, LeBron James, Tom Brady, Roger Federer, Simone Biles, Tiger Woods, Usain Bolt and Kobe Bryant. To be a world-beater, you ought to beat the world.
As the Olympic Games demonstrate each cycle, gold medals follow the money. Advanced countries, with the resources to pour into expensive technology and full-time professionalism for their athletes, celebrate a quadrennial jamboree to reinforce global inequality through ever-more exotic pursuits. As the global north has always known – and as the eastern bloc turned into an industrial mode of production – nothing succeeds like success.
Phelps, who won 23 Olympic gold medals, dominated a minority sport. Forget the technology and professionalism at his service; according to a 2019 Gallup poll, 55 per cent of the world’s population aged over 15 can’t swim. That includes 67 per cent of women.
To an even narrower extent, Williams and Federer (tennis), Brady (American footbal.