The WGOM

Jim Thorpe.

Bob Mathias.

I feel like this is a difficult question to answer, because as you stated above, let's see what Phelps is doing when he is 35. I will be the first person to say that I know very little about the Olympics, but if Phelps sweeps all of the events that he is in that would have to be just as huge, if not bigger, accomplishment that anything Lewis has done.

I am going to have to abstain from voting at this time, but if Phelps wins gold in every event this year I think that I might have to give it to him.

Christian Laettner.

I think some of it has to do with the age of the viewer and the recentness of the events. I was 10 the last time Carl Lewis won a gold medal. He won his first gold before I was born. The Atlanta Olympiad is the first one I remember with any clarity. The only things I remember about the Barcelona Games are the torch lighting and watching them in bed with Mom at the hospital when she had my brother. I don't remember who was doing what in Barcelona, only that I was in the hospital with my new brother and they were on TV. As for Atlanta, I remember Michael Johnson blowing people away, Reggie Miller winning a gold medal, Karch Kiraly and Kent Steffes winning the inaugural beach volleyball gold (for some reason, don't ask why cuz I don't know), and all kinds of other things from that Olympiad. Since Atlanta was only a small part of Lewis' overall accomplishments, I'm not sure I truely appreciate what he was able to do.

As for Phelps, I can watch him and I will remember him beating anyone who even tries to race him. Also, he's been racing for the past week. Emotions are still high. I don't think an objective eye can be used on Phelps for a few years, once he's retired and his accomplishments are a complete body of work.

But that's just some young whippersnapper's opinion.

Carl Lewis ran in the Drake Relays and he did this.

How can he not be the greatest Olympic athlete of all time?

One thing that makes Lewis' feats impressive is that he won gold in both running and jumping. While the two are lumped together under the generic term "track", they really are not all that similar. It's sort of like Babe Ruth being both a great hitter and a great pitcher. While they are both "baseball", they take some significantly different skills.

SI has an article arguing the merits of a number of athletes being the best Olympic Champion, ever. Here's their take on Phelps:

Phelps should be number one because his total of 11 golds trumps everyone else's and his haul is likely to increase by the end of the week. In 2004 Phelps became the second athlete in history, joining Soviet gymnast Alexander Ditiatin, to win eight medals at a single Olympics. In Beijing he is five for five with five world records and three races to go: the 200-meter individual medley, the 100-meter butterfly and the 4x100-meter relay). Phelps has broken 30 world records (25 individual, five on relays), in his astounding career. At a time when swimming world records are falling by tenths and hundredths, Phelps is lopping whole seconds off existing marks. His 17 gold medals at four world championships are also the most of any swimmer in history. Phelps' achievements have lifted his name into a place where swimmers have rarely gone: into a discussion of who the world's greatest athlete actually is. These days, any such discussion may include Tiger Woods and Roger Federer, but it must also include Phelps, who is toiling in a much more competitive era than Mark Spitz did.

And now, Lewis:

Lewis should be number one because he won golds at four different Olympics and because he may have been the greatest pressure athlete of all-time. Twelve years after being the dominant figure of the L.A. Games in 1984, when he won the 100, 200, 4x100 and long jump, Lewis was no longer the best athlete in his sport. Yet he won the long jump at the Atlanta Games despite placing only third at the U.S. trials that year. Put the chips on the line under the Olympic spotlight and no one in history was better at lifting his game than Lewis. Take the argument about competitive era even further, because track and field is a more competitive sport. Every country in the world is capable of at least producing sprinters. The fastest man in the world is arguably the glamour athlete of the Games.

Okay, I'm losing this argument, but let me add this:

Carl Lewis is the only man to defend a 100 meter Olympic title successfully.

He is also the only man to defend long jump Olympic title successfully, four times. No other long jumper has ever won twice at the Olympic games.

Eric Heiden.

He was only in one olympics...and it was the winter...and it was a decidedly non glory sport. However, he won every single event in his sport (speed skating) at Lake Placid. Every one. From 500 meters to 10,000 meters. And did it with olympic and/or world records in each. That would be the equivelant of a track star winning the 100 meters and the marathon in the same olympics.

I wish Lewis had run against a full complement of Olympic competitors in 1984. I don't recall if there was a serious Track and Field challenger from the Soviet Bloc who didn't attend the games but I will always take those 1984 results with a grain of salt since a country with usually pretty good success didn't attend the games.

Ultimately a matter of taste, I think you make some good points. I vividly remember Lewis's performances, and he was a truly brilliant Olympic athlete. I remember the L.A. performance--he was spectacular then, absolutely the greatest, a dominant physical specimen.

My most vivid memory of Lewis, though, is from Barcelona in 1992, when he was on the downslope of his career. He didn't make the sprint team for individual events, but was on the relay. He anchored the WR 4x100 and it was unbelievable. Youtube doesn't really do it justice, but you can find it there. He just exploded off the turn and blew the field away; it's hard to explain how unreal it was to watch live. It's was as if Carl Lewis with a baton in his hand sprinting down the track simply, and forever, defined "Olympian" in both senses of the word.

I agree that not all medals are created equal, and that Lewis' wins are really some of the signature events; and you are right that there are more opportunities is swimming. However, Phelps isn't exactly dominating some tertiary sport; swimming is a big deal worldwide--there are strong swimmers from every continent. Swimming isn't curling.

Further, I've recently heard about Lewis' longevity, his medals at 4 Olympics, and that's a fair point. However, let's not sell Phelps short; he dominated the Athens games, he's dominating these games. That's 2, and he's 23 years old. It's not as if he's a one shot wonder.

Ultimately, I might choose Jesse Owens. He forced Hitler from his own stadium because the Fuhrer wouldn't shake his hand. Just dominated those games, but lost his "amateur" status afterwards due to the politics of American track at the time. Ultimately, the 1940 and 1944 games were cancelled, so he wouldn't have had the chance to compete anyway. Jesse Freaking Owens.

one more name to throw in the hat: Teofilo Stevenson.

That dude was awesome in the Olympic, 3-round format. Heavyweight gold medalist in three consecutive Olympiads.

Here's another possibility: Nadia Comaneci. Completely dominated one of the signature events of the Olympics; essentially revolutionized her sport, doing things nobody else did at the time. She also was a new face of the Eastern Bloc in the West, and was hugely popular world-wide.

I abstained from voting. Phelps isn't even done in this Olympics and has already said he will be back for London, so his career is far from over.

For me, it's gotta be Herschel Walker.