Measuring Greatness at the Olympics
Why do track stars, swimmers and gymnasts always seem like the "greatest" athletes, and how hard is it to be great in various sports?
The Olympics is a display of greatness. The best athletes the world over showcase their unique qualities in a variety of disciplines like no place else. There is something magical about watching shot-putter Ryan Crouser—6’7” and 320 pounds of muscle—chuck a 16-pound stone a Herculean distance of 75 feet, and then watching, and then flipping the channel to watch 4’8” gymnast Simone Biles excel at a completely different, but no less impressive or athletic endeavor: twirling herself in mesmerizing on the vault.
Both were gold medalists this year.
But not all gold medals are created equal.
Because some sports are more upset prone than others, greatness can really only be measured within a sport.
So, while it may make sense to compare LeBron James and Michael Jordan, it makes no sense to compare Michael Jordan and Tom Brady. Even comparing Babe Ruth and Shohei Ohtani is on tenuous ground: the equipment, rules, and overall professionalism of the sports render “greatness” in the two games markedly different.
This all leads us to the question: Which sports are the easiest to be “great” in, and which are the hardest to be great in?
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Causes of Greatness
Greatness, as measured by success over time, is a result of an athlete’s average ability and variance, compared to the average ability and variance of their competitors.
For example, an athlete who is much, much better than their competitors (on average), may have a hard time demonstrating it if the sport is sufficiently random. Think about baseball or golf here. Season to season, or tournament to tournament changes in performance are so large, that no single baseball season or golf tournament tells us much about anything.
Indeed, the best golfers in the world right now all have two career major victories to their names: Scottie Scheffler (2024 Gold Medalist), Bryson DeChambeau, and Xander Schauffele. Brooks Koepka is the exception with five major titles.
Compare that to Carlos Alcaraz, the rising Spanish tennis star, who has won 4 grand-slam titles in two calendar years (2023-2024).
Tennis is a sport—like basketball—with relatively less randomness. In tennis, we expect that the top players will win a vast majority of the time. At least this is true for men’s tennis.
Heuristics for Difficulty of Greatness
What makes a sport like swimming or the 100m dash easy to be great in, but a sport like golf or archery hard to be great in? Here are some heuristics we can use.
Simplicity. Sports that are simple are easier to be great in. Sports that are complex are harder to be great in. Swimming and sprinting involve moving your body in a single motion again and again. The devil in the details—but neither requires you to master as many skills as golf, or soccer, or gymnastics. The more skills one has to master, the more room for error.
Standardization. Some sports are standardized and some are not. The 100m dash takes place on a similar track every time it is raced. The 200m freestyle takes place in a similar pool. But golf? Every course is different. The same with events like sailing or cycling or even long-distance running events. As the weather changes or the courses change, the complexity changes. Some athletes will do better in calm conditions and some will do (relatively) better in poor conditions. This is in part why football (an outdoor game) is more variable than basketball (an indoor game).
Size and Structure. Sports with small teams are going to be easier to excel at than sports with large teams, and some tournament structures will favor the stronger competitors over others. For example, the NFL’s single-elimination playoff and the NCAA March Madness tournament favor underdogs; the NBA’s best-of-seven format and the Champions’ League home-home format preference the favorites. Individual sports are the easiest to demonstrate greatness in, because one needs not rely on anyone but themselves. Team sports are the hardest, because one must depend heavily on their teammates. How many titles would Derek Jeter have had without Andy Pettitte or Mariano Rivera?
Strategy. Strategic sports are more difficult than those without a strategic component. The sports that boil down to go and do the best thing that you can—such as gymnastics—are much easier than those that involve a competitive tit-for-tat. The variety of options in a sport like table tennis make it more complex than something like weightlifting. There are more things you need to prepare for in boxing, badminton or volleyball than air pistol or equestrian.
Small Margin of Victory. Sports where the margin of victory is smaller than the variance in performance are going to be much harder to be great in than sports where the margin of victory is larger than the variance in performance. In American Football, for example, is often won by less than a touchdown. The Chiefs scores throughout the season ranged from 13 points to 31 points: an 18 point difference! That means it is hard to be great. Usain Bolt, on the other hand, had performance variance of about .1 seconds—only a hair larger than his closest Olympic 100m race, which was separated by .09 seconds! On his worst best day, Usain Bolt was beating his competitors.
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Assessing Difficulty of Being Great by Sport
We can use these heuristics to assess how hard it is to be great in each sport. And, if our heuristics are good, this should comport with the on-the-ground reality of the sports.
Let’s approach these sports in two ways: by category (popular sports, secondary sports, and olympic sports), and by how much they lend themselves to greatness (less, somewhat, more).
Greatness by Sport Category
Among the popular American Sports, football is the hardest to be great at and basketball is the easiest. This compatible with reality. The Lakers and Celtics both have twice as many championships, during the Super Bowl era, as the top NFL teams. The prevalence of dynasties in basketball—often multiple at the same time—is further evidence of this. LeBron James and Steph Curry; Kobe Bryant and Tim Duncan; Michael Jordan and Hakeem Olajuwon; Magic Johnson and Larry Bird—that basketball has dueling greats is assumed.
Soccer, Baseball, and Hockey fall in the middle. It is possible to have great runs—especially when a star studded cast assembles—but the fundamentals of the sports require those stars to be surrounded by other great talents. Ronaldo, for instance, has been much less potent on Portugal than on Manchester United or Barcelona.
The less popular American sports—golf, auto racing, combat sports, tennis—are all in the same ballpark as the non-football sports. Tennis, like basketball, lends itself to dynasties and champions. And we can see the lineage clearly from the Federer dynasty, to the Djokovic dynasty, to the blossoming Alcaraz dynasty.
Golf is much more like soccer. The best are better than the rest—but upsets happen regularly.
It’s worth taking a look at why the sports are rated as they are. For example, tennis and boxing/MMA get similar ratings, because both are defined by being individual sports with relatively large skill gaps between the best and the rest. Meanwhile, they differ in that tennis is highly variable—with multiple surface types and weather conditions—while, combat sports are more strategic. There is truth in the old saying “styles make fights”.
Lastly, the olympic sports all finish after the popular and secondary American sports. These sports—mostly simple, standardized, strategy-less, individual affairs that have relatively large margins of victory between the greats and the rest—are almost designed to encourage greatness. Of the four popular Olympic sports that we score, only beach volleyball is comparable to popular American sports.
Sports by Tier of Greatness
Looking at the sports in our list, we can quickly come up with three tiers of sports: sports in which greatness is rare, sports in which greatness is expected, and sports in which greatness is common.
Greatness is Rare Tier. In Football, Soccer, Baseball, and Golf, great teams are rare. At the accomplishments of the great will be modest relative to the accomplishments of the good. In these sports, we expect a relatively even playing field. Many teams and players will be in contention. And even when a team is elite, many of their victories will be close.
Greatness is Expected. In basketball, NASCAR, boxing, hockey, tennis, and beach volleyball, we expect to have a dominant force in the sport at any given time. For instance, it’s odd that there’s no clearly elite team in the NBA. It might be the first time in the history of the league there is a serious run of parity.
Greatness is Common. In gymnastics, running, or swimming, a great athlete will run head and shoulders above the competition—able to win without much challenge or suspense. For instance, Michael Phelps, Usain Bolt, Katie Ledecky, Simone Biles. None of those athletes was particularly challenged in their runs to gold.
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Ultimately, when thinking about sports, it is helpful to think about the things that make that sport different than other sports. How sports relate to the fundamental human movements and skills, can tell us a lot about how to analyze them.
For the most part, the sports we’re interested in will be complex team sports. Their complexity makes them the most interesting to watch and to root for—and the hardest to analyze.