The Most Dominant Athletes of All Time: Who Was Furthest Ahead of the Competition?

The most dominant athletes of all time are not necessarily the same as the greatest athletes of all time. Greatness considers an entire career—longevity, championships, records, influence, and accomplishments. Dominance asks a different question: At his or her best, how far above the competition was this athlete?

That distinction produces some extraordinary candidates. Wayne Gretzky rewrote hockey’s record book, Sir Donald Bradman put up a cricket statistic that still looks impossible, Aleksandr Karelin went years without even surrendering a point, and Simone Biles routinely separated herself from the best gymnasts in the world by staggering margins.

Sir Donald Bradman Was Almost Twice as Good

For American fans unfamiliar with cricket, Sir Donald Bradman may be the athlete they are most likely to overlook.

Bradman finished his Test cricket career with a batting average of 99.94. In cricket, a career batting average in the 50s is generally extraordinary. Bradman essentially lived in another statistical universe.

He scored 6,996 Test runs and 29 centuries in only 52 Tests. When discussing statistical separation from contemporaries, Bradman may have the strongest case in the history of sports.

Aleksandr Karelin Barely Allowed Opponents to Score

Then there is Aleksandr Karelin, the Russian super-heavyweight Greco-Roman wrestler nicknamed the “Russian Bear.”

Karelin went 13 years without losing in international competition. Even more absurdly, he went six consecutive years without surrendering a single point. He won three Olympic gold medals, nine world championships, and 12 European championships.

Think about that for a moment. These were the best heavyweight Greco-Roman wrestlers on Earth, and for six years none of them could even score on him.

That is dominance.

Wayne Gretzky Broke Hockey Mathematics

Wayne Gretzky may have the greatest dominance argument in a major North American team sport.

Gretzky is the only NHL player ever to record more than 200 points in a season, and he did it four times. His career assist total alone is greater than the total career points accumulated by almost every player who has ever played professional hockey.

Plenty of athletes hold records. Gretzky created records that often seem mathematically disconnected from everybody else who played the same sport.

Simone Biles Was Often Competing in a Different Zip Code

Simone Biles did not simply win gymnastics competitions. At her peak, the distance between Biles and the second-best gymnast in the world could resemble the distance between second place and the rest of the field.

At the 2019 World Championships, Biles won the all-around by 2.100 points. Her margin over the silver medalist was actually greater than the margin separating second place from tenth. At the 2016 Olympics, she also won the all-around by 2.10 points—a winning margin greater than the combined margins of victory in every Olympic women’s all-around from 1980 through 2012.

And Biles was doing this while performing some of the most difficult gymnastics ever attempted. Multiple skills now carry her name because she successfully performed them at major international competitions.

That is exactly what this ranking is supposed to measure. Biles was not merely the best gymnast in the world. For significant stretches of her career, the gap between Biles and No. 2 was comparable to the gap between No. 2 and a large portion of the rest of the world’s best gymnasts.

Usain Bolt Was Racing the Fastest Humans Alive

There is nowhere to hide in a sprint. Everyone runs the same distance, and the clock settles the argument.

Usain Bolt won the Olympic 100-meter and 200-meter titles at three consecutive Games on the track and set world records of 9.58 seconds in the 100 and 19.19 in the 200. At his peak, Bolt could pull away from the fastest sprinters on Earth and occasionally begin celebrating before he had even crossed the finish line.

That visual separation is one reason his dominance was so memorable.

Michael Phelps Owned the Olympics

Michael Phelps won 23 Olympic gold medals, an almost ridiculous total.

His eight gold medals at the 2008 Beijing Olympics remain one of the greatest performances by an athlete at a single Olympic Games. What makes his career even more impressive is that swimming requires mastery of different strokes, distances, and events rather than one repetitive specialty.

Phelps did not dominate one race. For years, he dominated entire Olympic swimming programs.

Babe Ruth Overwhelmed His Era

Babe Ruth is another athlete whose dominance becomes clearer when compared with his contemporaries rather than modern players.

Ruth began hitting home runs at levels baseball had never seen. In 1920, he hit 54 home runs at a time when no other American League player hit even 20.

That is what dominance looks like: not merely leading a category, but producing numbers that make the rest of the sport look as though it is playing a different game.

Kareem at UCLA Was Almost Unfair

For this discussion, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s college career as Lew Alcindor deserves special treatment.

UCLA won three national championships during his three varsity seasons. His size, touch, intelligence, and unstoppable play around the basket were so overwhelming that the NCAA prohibited dunking beginning before his varsity career, a rule widely associated with Alcindor’s dominance.

Kareem belongs among basketball’s greatest players ever. But UCLA Kareem belongs in a separate discussion about domination.

Serena, Moses, Ledecky, Tiger, and Handball’s Greatest

Serena Williams combined overwhelming power with serving, movement, competitiveness, and longevity. At her best, opponents often entered matches knowing they needed Serena to play poorly as much as they needed themselves to play well.

Track legend Edwin Moses won 122 consecutive 400-meter hurdles races during a winning streak lasting nearly a decade. Katie Ledecky has won distance swimming races by margins that sometimes make world championship and Olympic fields look ordinary.

Tiger Woods, particularly around 1999–2002, dominated a sport where winning even a small percentage of tournaments is extremely difficult. His peak was so overwhelming that entire major championship fields often seemed to be competing for second place.

And a worldwide list should not ignore Magnus Wislander. The Swedish handball legend was selected by the International Handball Federation as the Men’s World Handball Player of the Century, an extraordinary distinction in one of the world’s major team sports.

Dominance Means Separation

The key is not simply asking, “Who was the greatest?”

Ask instead: Who was furthest ahead of everyone else?

How large was the statistical gap? How long could opponents go without solving them? Did they force their sport to change strategy, expectations, or even rules because of what they could do?

That is why Bradman, Karelin, Gretzky, Biles, Bolt, Phelps, Ruth, and Kareem belong so prominently in this discussion.

Greatness measures the résumé. Dominance measures the gap between you and everybody trying to beat you.

At UltimateRankings.com, fans can vote on the Most Dominant Athletes of All Time and decide which athlete separated himself or herself from the competition more than anyone in sports history.