Who’s the greatest athlete of all time? Such a common question is followed by great debate in any sports circle. One of the more popular debates is between Christiano Ronaldo (CR7) and Leron James.
Ronaldo vs. Messi
Now of course, any soccer fan isn’t going to let you get too far in this argument before bringing up Lionel Messi, as he is more popularly believed to be the greatest soccer player of all time. While Messi might just beat Ronaldo in the talent area, CR7 easily wins in the athleticism department. He beats Messi on speed and strength, therefore taking the most athletic spot.
LeBron vs. Jordan
So then we have Lebron James. Now his competitor for the greatest basketball player of all time is Michael Jordan. While this may be true, Lebron James is surely the greater athlete. Michael Jordan played fifteen seasons in the NBA before retiring and Lebron James is on his nineteenth and does not appear to be slowing down. So here we have our two competitors for greatest athlete of all time: Christiano Ronaldo and Lebron James.
Age and Career
The first thing we can look at for these two men is how old they are. Both men are aged 37 years old. Next idea is how long they have been playing professionally. Again, they evened up. Ronaldo joined his first time in the EPL, Manchester United, in 2003 and Lebron James joined the NBA with the Cleveland Cavaliers also in 2003.
Speed, Strength, and Jump
So both athletes are the same age and started playing professionally at the same time. Our next category is athletic ability. First is the vertical jump. Ronaldo recently recorded a vertical jump of 113 cm this was to match Lebron James’ record of 113 cm. Next is speed, and here we finally get a winner. Ronaldo’s top speed is 20.2 MPH and Lebron James only reaches 17.3. However, to even the score up, we could look at strength. There’s no need for stats on this one, Lebron is the obvious choice here.
Who’s the Better Athlete: James or Ronaldo?
There were five things we compared these two men to age, length of play, vertical, speed, and strength. There are many things that could define the greatest athlete, but we can narrow it down to three things that are to be believed non-biased in most sports: Strength, agility, and endurance. Lebron James, as we said earlier, easily wins the strength competition. 6’4” and 250 lbs, that would be quite an unfortunate matchup for most people. However, Ronaldo takes the lead on agility and endurance. And thus, we have our champion. Along with his numerous other awards, CR7 takes home the greatest athlete of all time.
