- Who is the best triathleteof all time?
It's just wrong, wrong.
Flat out wrong.
I'm right, you're wrong, deal with it.
One of the most decorated triathletes of all time.
Morning trainiacs.
You know how when your brain starts getting
depleted of oxygen during a middle of a speed swim
and starts wandering a little bit?
Well I started thinking: who is the best
triathlete in our lane?
Pat, obviously.
Who is the best triathlete in the province path?
Who is the best triathlete of all time?
So that made me think, "Hey, let's talk about that today."
we're gonna do that in the office.
Meet you there, deal?
Trev, deal?
Deal.
Holy snap and crap, trainiacs.
You want to lose friends online?
Come up with the best triathletes of all time idea
and limit it to only 10 people.
Honestly, I am almost pissed at myself
for some of the people that I have to omit from this list.
But I'm gonna send the word into a tizzy here
by listing them off, and this is in order
from number 10 to number one.
The best triathletes, male and female, of all time.
All time!
How I came up with this list is I looked at
not just the performance of people in certain events,
but I looked up performance over the course of many years.
Over the course of many distances.
How hardy they were, how injury prone they were or weren't.
So in some of these cases, a good chunk of these athletes
I think that they could be the best athletes of all time,
but because they're still in the middle of their career,
we don't yet know how they're going to translate
from ITU distance to long course racing.
That gives you a little hint of who I think
can be higher on this list.
At number 10: Daniela Ryf.
She's been knocking it outta the park
over the last few years.
She's a two-time, full Ironman distance winner.
She's a two-time half Ironman World Championship winner,
and she placed third in the sprint triathlon world.
And that race was why she ended up cracking
the top 10.
Because that shows that she still got really
short course speed.
She's not just a long course athlete.
Now do I think that she could become dominant and move
way up this list if she stays healthy and wins
for years on end?
Absolutely.
But this year she's been showing a few cracks
in the armor.
We don't know if they're cracks of if she's holding
back in races.
Time will tell.
Next at number nine on the list, and I think
this is where the world is gonna jump all over me
for not having him higher on the list is Dave Scott.
Six-time Ironman world champion.
The Man, and the reason I have him at number nine
and not higher is because Dave Scott was known
for showing up almost exclusively for the Ironman
world championship every single year,
and the rest of the events took a backseat.
He was injured a lot.
Relatively speaking, he didn't do well
in short course races.
So while the guy was unbelievable, and he set
a new standard for Kona and the other races
throughout his career, he doesn't have
the well-roundedness of some of the other athletes.
Just eking him out at number eight is Jan Frodeno.
And why I'm chosen Jan for the top 10,
even though his long course career is relatively short
is because he's had success over multiple distances.
He's got a gold medal in the Olympics at the ITU distance.
He's got a world championship at the half iron distance.
He's got two world championships at the full
Ironman distance, and it seems like he's very
well-rounded for triathlon in general.
He doesn't have a big history of injury or fatigue,
or having complete blowups in races.
He's fairly consistent.
And while I think he's probably the number one
long course triathlete in the world right now,
there are some athletes who I think have been
more dominating over the last few years,
specifically from ITU, that are ahead of him.
At number seven on the list is Paula Newby-Fraser.
Any list of the best triathletes of all time
that does not have Paula Newby-Fraser in it
is just wrong, flat out wrong.
I'm right, you're wrong, deal with it.
You put eight Ironman world championship wins together
and 24 Ironman titles to your name over the course
of your career together?
That deserves a list in the greatest athletes
of all time for triathlon.
Could she have been higher?
Yes, definitely.
But we just don't know how well Paula Newby-Fraser
would've done had she focused more on ITU distance races.
Now here's we get into a little bit of the inner
turmoil of who I needed to select to be on the list
are not even on the list at all.
At number six is Javier Gómez, and the reason
that I've chosen Javier so high on the list
ahead of people who have, in some cases,
more accomplishments than he does,
is because Javier is mid-way through his career
and he's shown heartiness, ability to withstand injury,
and be versatile over a bunch of different
triathlon distances, and disciplines.
He's a five-time ITU world champion.
He's a three-time overall season champion
in the ITU distance, he's podiumed in the Olympics,
and on top of that, the couple of times
that he basically just played around
with long course racing, he won a half Ironman
world championship, and then a week later,
or a week before.
I can't remember what it is, he won
an Estara world championship.
The guy isn't even a mountain biker, and he went
and won a world championship.
There's been rumors that's he's gonna step up
to long course racing over the next couple years,
and if he does that, I think he's got the body structure
to do really, really, really well at long course.
Now just ahead of him has been his main adversary
over the last few years, Alistair Brownlee.
While Alistair hasn't been as well rounded
as Javier has, his dominance in the ITU distance
has set a completely new standard.
Typically in the history of ITU racing,
you would have athletes that might be good
at one or two of the disciplines, but not good at all three.
Consistently, Alistair comes out of the water
first, second, or third.
He gets off the bike first, second, or third.
And then he runs and wins the event.
He's incredible.
He might be ITU's single best one day racer of all time.
Add on two Olympic gold medals, and now stepping up
to the Half Ironman distance, and crushing the field,
and setting new course records?
If his body can hold together, that's always been
the chink in Alistair's armor.
He could be the most talented triathlete ever,
we just don't know how that's going
to translate when he steps up to full distance racing.
The fourth best triathlete of all time, in my opinion,
is Gwen Jorgensen.
13 ITU wins in a row.
Enough said.
Seriously, her dominance over the course of those
two years leading up to the Rio Olympics
is something that I have never seen
and I don't know if this sport has ever seen
in the history of triathlon.
She ran away from the most talented ITU athletes
in the world.
It's not like she came into a soft few years.
She has been crushing the field with some
of the fastest runs and developing into
a very fast cyclist and swimmer alongside that.
Just like Alistair, I think that Gwen
could develop into the most talented
triathlete of all time.
We don't yet know how her body is going to handle
going to longer distance racing.
She could move right up the list to be the best
triathlete of all time, or not.
We'll see, I dunno.
Again, inner turmoil here for number three.
Chrissie Wellington.
Now because she hasn't done any short course racing,
we don't know how well rounded a triathlete Chrissie was.
The reason that Chrissie is so high on the list
is because she never lost a full Ironman distance
race in her life.
Who does that?
She goes from just casual triathlete to age group
world triathlete winner, to full Ironman Pro
triathlete champion, to Kona world champion, multiple times.
She still owns the World Ironman distance all time
course record, and she's a four-time Ironman world champion.
The only reason that she didn't win more, in my opinion,
because she just decided she had enough.
She was so, so, so insanely dominant at that distance,
that even a week after getting in a bike crash,
she still won and beat the entire field.
It's hard not to put her high on this list.
Second on the list I think is one of the most
decorated triathletes of all time.
We don't hear about much anymore,
besides some charity event, and that's Michellie Jones.
Over the course of her career, she won 175 races.
And it was all over the map.
Two-time ITU world champion.
One time Kona world champion.
And one time off-road Ostero world champion.
Throw in a couple of good Olympic placings in there,
and I think that Michellie is one of the most talented,
well-rounded triathletes out there coming
from the female side of things.
However, I think that the single best, most talented,
triathlete of all time over all distances, all time,
is Mark Allen, the grip.
The reason that I chose him isn't because of his
six Ironman world championship wins.
It's not because of his winning streak of 20 races
in a row that he won.
It's because over the course of his career,
he place on the podium in 90% of the races
that he went into.
Think about that.
If he goes into a race, he's basically on the podium.
For an entire career, and it lasted a long time.
It lasted from the early 80s to the late 90s.
And it was all distances.
It was sprint, it was funky, fun distances
that don't really exist anymore.
Random distances.
He was an ITU world champion in 1989.
He made 10 tips to Nice, France, and he went undefeated.
And if you look at old footage of Mark Allen,
the swim, the bike, and the run, the guy looks
like an athlete.
He's a physical specimen.
His running style is just a sight to behold,
and I think that all around, well rounded
over the course of many years, Mark Allen is the single
best triathlete of all time.
Now I'd like to welcome you all to get in the comments
below and tell me what you think about this list
and who I missed.
And I know, I got the list right here
of some notable omissions.
Scott Molina, Simon Lessing, Craig Alexander,
Greg Welch, Mirinda Carfrae.
I think I have to do another list for all
the triathletes that I unfortunately left out of this list.
Trainiacs, hit me up in the comments below with who
you like from this list, who you think that I should
have put on, who you think that I should kick off.
Get on in there and do what the internet does
and tell me how right or wrong I am.
Thanks trainiacs, have a good one.