Greatest performance in all of sports history?

Fedorgasm

Fedorgasm

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And it can't be something like Tom Brady winning 7 Superbowls. It has to be a single game, or a single fight, or a single race.

But there has to be one that stands above the rest.

I'll start because of recency bias with Shohei Ohtani's performance in the playoffs. Struck out 10 hitters and then hit 3 home runs himself.
 
This.....

Day of days

May 25, 1935, is remembered as the day when Jesse Owens won four events and established six world records in athletics at the Big Ten Championships. On that day, Owens battled through a lower back injury and set five world records and tied a sixth in a span of 45 minutes from 3:15–4 p.m. during the Big Ten meet at Ferry Field in Ann Arbor, Michigan.He equaled the world record for the 100-yard dash (9.4 seconds) (not to be confused with the 100-meter dash), and set world records in the long jump (26 feet 8+1⁄4 inches or 8.13 metres, a world record that would last for 25 years); 220 yards (201.2 m) sprint (20.3 seconds); and 220-yard low hurdles (22.6 seconds, becoming the first to breaBoth 220-yard records had also beaten the metric records for 200 meters (flat and hurdles), which counted as two additional world records from the same performances

Owens running/jumping/hurdling SIX World Records in 45 minutes, yep....wow!


What gets lost in his story is the fact a cat out of Temple named Eulace Peacock had a 7-3 record vs him in the 100, but, was injured in 1936 so no Olympics, a place Owens won 4 gold medals.
 
This is more in the category of .....bullshit. But it did actually happen, honest!

It was 1928 at the California State high school champs sprinter Frank Lombardi had just false started the 100 yard dash, back then the penalty was you moved back a yard, yep...hahaha!

Anyway....

So there is Lombardi a yard behind the field, at the gun....BOOM he exploded, it was as if he was the only one running. He hit the tape at...........9.6.....to tie the world record. A high school kid running a world record , what a shocker.

After 1928, Frank Lombardi........poof!!!!!!

So the world record for 101 yards is still his 9.6.
 
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On behalf of a more obscure sport, I offer Jason Lezak with "the swim"...



Look at Phelp's face at 3:07. That tells you what every American who knows the sport was thinking and feeling; about to see an American undefeated streak in that race across over 50 years of international competition evaporate. Everyone thought we were witnessing that moment. But we were about to witness something entirely else.
 
Fedorgasm said:
And it can't be something like Tom Brady winning 7 Superbowls. It has to be a single game, or a single fight, or a single race.

But there has to be one that stands above the rest.

I'll start because of recency bias with Shohei Ohtani's performance in the playoffs. Struck out 10 hitters and then hit 3 home runs himself.
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Ohtani is a great one because just even being a pitcher that hits is so outside the norm these days, let alone be damn elite at both.

Lebron's 25 consecutive points in a row in a playoff game was amazing.

Roberto Duran beating Sugar Ray Leonard in the first fight (Brawl in Montreal) is up there for me as I view it as a quality of boxing that hasn't been matched since in nearly 50 years now and it's pretty rare that a guy up a few divisions from his best weight manages to beat a prime/very near prime guy fighting at their prime weight.

Diego Maradona beating England and Zinedine Zidane beating Brazil 3-0 in world cup finals are huge too. I'm a bit partial to the latter, looking back Brazil was a stacked team (Ronaldo, Roberto Carlos, Cafu, Rivaldo, Bebeto). While Zidane did have some support on his team too he was just so much the engine of it all.
 
Oh, and speaking of obscure, who can forget Pete Weber's clutch, while high on drugs, performance at the U.S. bowling Open with the critical strike in the 10th frame.



"Who do you think you are? I am!!!" is the cherry on top for the GOAT.
 
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When Paul Pierce got life flighted to Mass General and woke up from a coma with enough time to come back and lead the Celtics to a game 1 victory.
 
The Rumble in the Jungle.

Foreman was 40-0, had just decimated Norton and Frazier, and was a big favorite. Fighting in Zaire with over a billion people watching world wide (a record at the time), Ali rope-a-doped, took Foreman's best shots while taunting him, and knocked Foreman out to regain his titles at 32 years old after being effectively banned for three years.

Taking everything into account; the social, cultural and political context, where they were in their careers, and the sheer magnitude and pressure of the fight itself, it's one of the greatest performances in sports history.

 
Unknown Pleasures said:
Diego Maradona beating England and Zinedine Zidane beating Brazil 3-0 in world cup finals are huge too. I'm a bit partial to the latter, looking back Brazil was a stacked team (Ronaldo, Roberto Carlos, Cafu, Rivaldo, Bebeto). While Zidane did have some support on his team too he was just so much the engine of it all.
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Zidane scored 2 in that final but his performance was just regular good, not great IMO. Him eliminating 2006 Brazil with Ronaldo, prime Ronaldinho, prime Kaka, prime Adriano, near prime Robinho, etc. was much better.

He was past his prime and injured but pulled the strings and just toyed with a heavily favored Brazil. Complete masterclass.

And I only recently became aware of how great Maradona's game against Belgium in the 1986 semifinal was. Absurd shit.




Messi scoring 5 on Bayer Leverkusen could also be mentioned
 
Going back to 1928.

This would be the first time the ladies were allowed to compete in the Olympics.

A 16 year old USA high schooler named Betty Robinson in her 4th 100m ever won the gold medal.
 
Possum Jenkins said:
Zidane scored 2 in that final but his performance was just regular good, not great IMO. Him eliminating 2006 Brazil with Ronaldo, prime Ronaldinho, prime Kaka, prime Adriano, near prime Robinho, etc. was much better.

He was past his prime and injured but pulled the strings and just toyed with a heavily favored Brazil. Complete masterclass.

And I only recently became aware of how great Maradona's game against Belgium in the 1986 semifinal was. Absurd shit.




Messi scoring 5 on Bayer Leverkusen could also be mentioned
Click to expand...


I probalby got my games mixed up! Sorry!
 
If one considers chess a sport, then Bobby Fischer's Game 6 against Boris Spassky at the 1972 World Championships where he finished dismantling the Soviets and ended their 24 year reign. Fischer was already acting pretty erratically by that point and he was unhappy about the cameras so he forfeited Game 2. Everyone thought he'd gone off the deep end. He came back for Game 3 and put on a clinic the rest of the way. Game 6 was such a masterpiece that Spassky stood and applauded Fischer afterwards.



Honorable mention to Bobby Fischer at 13 years old playing the game of the century against Donald Byrne.

 
I might be a little biased(just a little), but Kawhi Leonard's entire Raptors tenure, especially his playoff performance.

Build that man a damn statue, already. Absolute legend.
 
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True or false?

Georgia Tech 222 Cumberland 0, a Tech RB scored.............................................................................................18 TD's.
 
May not be at the top of the list, but Martin Truex Jr leading 392 out of 400 laps in the Coke 600 might be the greatest performance in the modern era of NASCAR.
 
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