4 Athletes Who Dominated Their Sport
It's one achievement to be a professional sportsperson but its an entirely different thing when you reach greatness in your sport
Many athletes have dominated their sports for years and their greatness makes you feel alive.
Because sport is all about being active and understanding that things happen in an instant that can change the course of history forever.
Especially, in professional sports.
Because they’re on television and that’s where millions of people get to see the greatest athletes perform. That’s how they become role models, celebrities, and people who influence how many others not only play and follow sport but live their lives as well.
Many athletes have influenced me along my path. And when their names come to my mind many great memories are attached to their achievements as well.
Here are 4 athletes that dominated their sports for years, what they achieved, and how it made me feel about them, their sport, and myself.
1. Pete Sampras was born in Washington D.C in 1971 but it wasn’t until he moved to California 7 years later that he took up tennis.
His father employed a pediatrician name, Peter Fisher, to coach Pete as he had been an amateur tennis player himself. Pete used to have a baseball style of play where he’d a two-handed backhand and his coach altered this so he became a serve and volley type of player.
By 1988 he was a professional player after doing well in the junior ranks. By that time I was 8 years of age and I loved all sports.
A couple of years later he bet the formidable Andre Agassi to claim the US Open. Although I loved Agassi for his long hair and focused style when this hotshot 19-year-old won I stood up and noticed. He was only a few years older than me and it made anything seem possible to me.
Sampras went on to win 14 major titles which was a record until 2009.
By that time I was entering my thirties so you can see how his name had such an influence on me when I watched tennis all through those decades.
But Sampras wasn’t the only one who I watched playing tennis.
Because when I would turn on the television screen every day as I worked in our family-owned golf course and flicked to view the daily Wimbledon game I`d wonder if it was a men’s or women’s day.
2. And when it was women’s day it was usually dominated by Steffi Graf.
Graf was a beautiful blonde German woman who always meant business when she stepped out on the court. The word from the other professional female players at that time was that she was so proficient that she never hung around when the game finished. Instead, she quickly showered and left the changing area within minutes.
She played like a well-oiled machine with true German efficiency.
Graf won 6 French Opens, 4 Australian Opens, 5 US Opens, and 7 Wimbledon shields.
She dominated women’s tennis during the 1980s and the 1990s. And although she was the greatest female player for many years when she retired she kept in people’s minds and married another one of my tennis idols that cool long-haired player by the name of Agassi!
3. Michael Phelps is the king of the Olympic Games and not only of his sport of swimming.
Yet when Phelps grew up it never looked as if he’d be a success at much in life. Because his behavior was erratic. And his single mother initially struggled in guiding him. After much research, she discovered that the reasons behind his behavior came from him having attention deficit disorder (ADD).
After years of training and keeping disciplined, the individual sport of swimming not only helped his behavior but he transcended his sport.
Because he won 28 Olympic medals across 5 Olympic Games.
More importantly, Phelps got me back into the water because for years I’d focused on other fitness work when I visited the gym and ignored the pool there. It wasn’t until I remembered all those hours that Phelps spent getting wet to perfect his trade that I decided that I was again ready to take the plunge!
4. Jonah Lomu was another who made me think that the impossible was possible.
Although he was a couple of years older than me he was still a teenager like me when his two huge feet stepped onto the field of international rugby. As a winger, he not only floated on his toes as he glided past opposing players but he was like a train crashing through players when he received the ball.
And when he came on the rugby scene and turned professional, he was the perfect pin-up boy to market it to the world.
Having scored 37 tries in 63 caps he became the all-time leading try-scorer in World Cup tournaments.
He was handsome, huge, fast, and ferocious. But he was also well-spoken and a Mamma’s boy.
Lomu was the one that everyone wanted to be, a real-life superhuman.
That was until it all came to a crashing end that was worse than his collision with a handful of English players who failed to stop him from scoring one of his most famous tries in the 1995 World Cup.
That’s when Lomu died at only 40 years of age and well before his time of rare kidney disease.
Still, he like those before him made me feel truly alive throughout my life and for those athletes, I`ll be forever grateful.
