Sport legends
Sport legendsLionel Messi: The Case for Football's GOAT
Lusail Stadium, December 18, 2022. Lionel Messi is on his knees, hands over his face, and for a moment the small man who spent a career being asked to prove himself simply cannot speak. Argentina have just beaten France on penalties to win the World Cup, the one trophy that eluded him through three previous tournaments, two losing finals, and a decade of debate about whether he could ever be considered the greatest player of all time without it. He scored twice in that final, including a penalty that pushed Argentina 2-0 up before France's Kylian Mbappé produced a hat-trick to drag the game to extra time and then penalties. When it ended, Messi didn't just win a trophy. He closed the last gap in an argument that had followed him since he was a teenager.
Sport legendsMuhammad Ali: The Greatest Inside and Outside the Ring
Atlanta, July 19, 1996. The Olympic stadium doesn't know who is about to walk out of the shadows to light the cauldron, and when the figure steps into the…
Sport legendsMichael Jordan: Why His Legend Still Defines Basketball
With 18.9 seconds left in Game 6 of the 1998 NBA Finals, the Chicago Bulls trailed the Utah Jazz by a point. Michael Jordan stripped the ball from Karl Malone…
Sport legendsSerena Williams: The Champion Who Changed Tennis
Eight weeks pregnant, though almost no one outside her camp knew it at the time, Serena Williams walked onto Rod Laver Arena for the 2017 Australian Open final…
Sport legendsUsain Bolt: The Fastest Man in History
His shoelace was untied. That's the detail that tends to get lost in the retelling of Usain Bolt's 100-meter final at the 2008 Beijing Olympics: the world's…
Sport legendsWayne Gretzky: The Records That Made 'The Great One
On August 9, 1988, in a packed room at Edmonton's Molson House, the best hockey player anyone had ever seen wiped tears from his face and could barely finish a…
Sport legendsMichael Phelps: Inside an Unrepeatable Olympic Career
Eight events, eight gold medals, seven world records, one Games. Beijing 2008 remains the single greatest individual medal haul in Olympic history, and Michael…
Sport legendsAyrton Senna: Speed, Genius and a Lasting Legacy
He crossed the finish line at Interlagos and let out a scream over the radio that had nothing to do with triumph and everything to do with what it had cost him…
Sport legendsTiger Woods: The Golfer Who Changed the Game
The green jacket was still being fitted around his shoulders when Tiger Woods walked off the 18th green at Augusta National in April 2019 and looked for his…