WORLD'S GREATEST
ATHLETE
by Tom Jones, St. Petersburg Times, February, 2004
Tony Azevedo is his name. You probably never have seen him. You probably
never even have heard of him. You might not know Tony Azevedo from Tony
Orlando. Or Dawn, for that matter. But if you are a sports fan, you
should know his name and know his game.
His name should be bantered about in every household. His face should
be plastered on cereal boxes. Kids should be hanging his poster on their
bedroom walls while playing video games that feature him as the star.
He should be sellings cars on television, buying mansions in the hills,
taking pop stars to the Oscars.
After all, he's Tony Azevedo. The greatest athlete in the world.
With the Olympics, the world stage for athletic competition, six months
away, we set out to find the world's best athlete.
We talked to the experts. We combed through charts, statistics and tests.
We studied all kinds of sports and competitions, contests and activities.
We analyzed the data, listened to the testimonies of athletes and scientists,
considered all the opinions.
The result: There is no tougher sport than water polo and there is no
one better at water polo than Tony Azevedo.
The 22-year-old from Southern California has the looks of a model, the
intelligence of a professor (he studies International Relations at Stanford,
for crying out loud) and the attitude of a surfer dude.
"When you're talking about water polo, Tony Azevedo is a good place
to start," said John Vargas, the men's water polo coach at Stanford.
* * *
The short list of the world's greatest athletes isn't short at all.
Ask 20 people for their choice and you might get 20 names. So where
to start when choosing the world's best athlete? Maybe the jumping-off
point is to identify which sport is the most difficult to play, or requires
the best all-around athlete. And what sport is that?
"It's almost an unanswerable question," said the one man most
qualified to answer that question. His name is Dr. Peter Davis, Director
of Coaching and Sports Sciences for the United States Olympic Committee.
At his laboratory and think tank in Colorado Springs, Davis and his
staff put Olympic athletes through a battery of tests. Name a body part
and chances are Davis' group has studied it.
"My vote for world's best athlete? I'd say an Australian Rules
football player," Davis said. "Then again, I'm biased. I'm
from Australia."
Davis, though, brings up an interesting point. The Australian Rules
football player combines speed, strength, endurance, toughness and all
the things an American football player encompasses.
"Yeah, except they do it without pads," Davis said. "I
do think they are incredible athletes, but to say they are the best,
I don't know if you can do that for any sport. After all, what factors
do you use? Is speed more important than strength? Is endurance more
important than quickness? Who's to say? Where does agility fit in? What
about durability? In the end, you have likes and dislikes depending
on the sports that might alter what you think of a particular athlete."
For example, Davis said, cyclist Lance Armstrong gets credit for being
an incredible athlete because he survived cancer and has won five consecutive
Tour de Frances, which Davis said is on par with running a marathon
every day or every other day for a month.
On the other hand, a sport such as synchronized swimming - a sport that
scientists at the USOC consider among the most grueling - isn't taken
seriously by the typical sports fan.
"But you try treading water for a minute while making perfectly
choreographed movements," Davis said.
"And, oh yeah, do it upside down, underwater. Tell me that doesn't
take an incredible athlete. The thing is, it's impossible to compare
synchronized swimming to any other sport."
It's almost impossible to compare any two sports. What's more impressive,
winning a marathon or a 100-meter dash? Who's the better athlete, someone
who can lift 500 pounds or swim a mile? Which would you least like to
do, climb a rock or dive off a cliff? Is Roy Jones Jr., tougher because
he won a boxing championship or is he a wimp compared with someone who
rides a bull?
Last year, Men's Journal magazine assigned numerical values to sports
in the following categories: fitness, skills, brains, pain (the chance
of injury or death), contact, venue and intangibles. The magazine considered
gymnastics to be at the top of the list.
Okay, twirling through the air and doing flips is hairy, but you don't
find John Lynch waiting to lay you out when you land. Where's the contact?
"Well, contact with the ground can be pretty nasty," Davis
said.
Making the Men's Journal top 10, in order after gymnastics: Ironman
Triathlon, rock climbing, hockey, bull riding, boxing, rugby, decathlon,
water polo and football. Yet, the magazine named football quarterback
Michael Vick as the world's best athlete, followed by skier Bode Miller,
soccer star Ronaldo and skateboarder Bob Burnquist. Azevedo was seventh.
Baseball almost never makes any of these lists. After all, how in shape
do you have to be when arguably the best player in the history of the
sport (Babe Ruth) resembled the "before" in a "before
and after" diet plan?
"But what about throwing a baseball?" said Mike Stone, the
head of sports physiology for the USOC.
"Throwing a baseball 100 mph takes incredible athletic ability.
Or hitting a 100-mph fastball. You would have to consider baseball players
great athletes."
Stone tests athletes from all sports. He tests heart rates, oxygen intake
and terms so complicated you need a couple of Ph.D.s to pronounce them,
let alone understand them. His vote for the best athlete ever goes to
Jonathan Edwards, a triple-jumper.
In 1912, King Gustav V of Sweden told Jim Thorpe, "You, sir, are
the World's Greatest Athlete" after Thorpe won the decathlon at
the Olympics in Stockholm. Traditionally, the title of World's Greatest
Athlete has been given to the man who wins the decathlon, a two-day
event that features runs of 100, 400 and 1,500 meters, the 110-meter
hurdles, the long jump, the high jump, the shot put, the discus, the
javelin and the pole vault.
The cousin of the decathlon is the women's version, the heptathlon.
If indeed that is the standard, then the United States' Tom Pappas or
Sweden's Carolina Kluft might be called the World's Greatest Athlete.
The lone flaw? They are consistently good in each of those events, but
not great in any of them, not good enough to beat the best in the world
in those individual events.
Hockey players combine speed, strength and endurance, and they do it
on razor-sharp ice skates. Maybe that makes Peter Forsberg the best
athlete in the world. Canada's Peter Reid and Wyoming's Barb Lindquist
might have a claim because they are considered tops in the world in
Ironman triathlons, a masochistic sport that combines a 2.4-mile ocean
swim, a 112-mile bike ride and a full 26.2-mile marathon one right after
the other.
Or maybe the title should go to Italy's Mario Fattore or Japan's Norimi
Sakurai, leaders in the extreme sport of ultra-marathon, a 100-kilometer
race that takes the winners seven hours to finish.
The World's Fastest Human label goes to the winners of the 100-meter
dash. Is that good enough to consider Kim Collins or Kelli White as
the World's Best Athlete?
It's no coincidence that all great athletes have a common bond, whether
they are a 14-year-old female gymnast or a 45-year-old boxer.
"Genetics is most responsible for great athletes," Stone said.
"With all the tests we do I've learned that I can make the average
person a better athlete, but I can't make them a great athlete. It's
genetics, and a lot of time it comes down to the mental aspect.
"We do some psychological profiling and we've found that all have
the common desire to succeed, to endure pain, to not have the fear of
failure. You can look at all the data of their physical attributes,
but you start with the mental aspect of it. That's the beginning of
a great athlete."
Maybe, then, the sports that take the most concentration and strategy
- auto racing, curling, sports that include shooting a gun such as biathlon
- produce the world's best athletes.
Everyone has his parochialism, all fans have their own slant on what
athletes are the best.
But how can one argue with this:
Jump into a pool. Tread water for an hour. Don't touch the sides or
bottom. Swim about two miles. Throw a ball the size of a volleyball
upward of 70 mph. All the while, get punched, pinched and kicked in
the mouth, eyes, nose and places you don't want to think about.
That's water polo, a sport that requires the skills of baseball, the
strategy of soccer, the teamwork of basketball, the endurance of a marathon,
the exertion of swimming, the grit of hockey, the contact of football,
the danger of boxing and . . .
"Wrestling. Think of wrestling in the water," Azevedo said.
"You're focused in on trying to score, working with teammates while
you're getting roughed up like you wouldn't believe. You should see
the stuff that goes on under the water. And all the while you're trying
not to die from drowning. I'd put water polo up with any sport in the
world."
* * *
Azevedo played basketball and baseball as a child, but he caught the
water polo bug when he was 8 and barely has been out of the pool since.
His father, Ricardo, played for the Brazilian Olympic team and coached
Tony through high school, where he was a four-time All-American and
three-time national player of the year.
He went on to Stanford and won national player-of-the-year honors as
a freshman, sophomore and junior. Undoubtedly he would have won the
award again as a senior, but he is taking two semesters off to train
with the U.S. Olympic team, which is looking for its first medal since
1988 and its first gold since the first Olympic competition in 1912.
He was the youngest player on the 2000 Olympic team that finished a
disappointing sixth and is generally considered the best in American
history. Because he plays a little-known sport, one must draw upon another
sport to describe him. He's the Michael Jordan of water polo.
"I don't know if I can be considered the world's greatest athlete
until I win a medal," Azevedo said. "But I'm proud of this
sport, for sure."
The old joke in water polo goes: How come the horses don't drown?
Water polo gets no publicity, at least not in the United States. It's
big in Europe. The Olympics have been dominated by Italy, Hungary, Russia
and Yugoslavia. Azevedo, though, said watch it once and you'll be hooked.
And you will be a believer in how tough it is.
Water polo players practice eight hours a day, six and a half of which
are spent in a pool. They endure nasty injuries such as eye gouges,
punched-out teeth, torn noses and broken eye sockets.
"I've been lucky," Azevedo said. "The worst thing that
has happened to me is having my ear drum broken - three times."
Azevedo isn't going to end up on a cereal box even if the Americans
win a gold. He won't be going to the Oscars. You might catch a quick
glimpse of him on television during the Athens Games, but probably not.
You might never hear his name again. But Tony Azevedo can make the claim
that he is, at this very moment, the best, the greatest athlete in the
world.
"I don't know if that's true, but it's fun to think about,"
Azevedo said. "It makes me proud of my sport and proud of what
I've accomplished. I tell you this much, anyone that plays water polo
is a great, great athlete."
Maybe the best in the world.
