20 Greatest Sportstars Of The World

Successful athletes are real-life super heroes of today. With their awe-inspiring physical stamina, sporting prowess and often rugged good looks, these personalities are courted by billion-dollar brands as well as global audiences across all media platforms. In this way, sports-persons turn into sportstars and then often into cultural icons as well.For the purposes of this book though, this is not enough. The genuinely successful sportspersons are those who have had some far-reaching impact on the sport or game concerned. They may have brought about a major innovation in the way the sport is played or perhaps popularised the sport in a way that it was not before. Additionally, some sportspersons may have had raised the bar so high in their particular sport that for years and decades, the records they set remained unbroken.Based on such achievements, this book has zeroed on these twenty sportspersons who are truly the greatest of all time. These men and women have not just attained fame and financial success – some belonging to the earlier half of the twentieth century in fact did not – but have contributed to their game and to sports in general, in such a way so as to award high points in the evolution of the human both in body and mind.______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ContentsIntroduction — Pgs. 51. Dhyan Chand – Field Hockey — Pgs. 92. Jesse Owens – Track and Field — Pgs. 193. Babe Ruth – Baseball — Pgs. 274. Don Bradman – Cricket — Pgs. 375. Muhammad Ali – Boxing — Pgs. 486. Pele – Soccer — Pgs. 577. Sergey Bubka – Athletics — Pgs. 678. Nadia Comaneci – Gymnastics — Pgs. 759. Sachin Tendulkar – Cricket — Pgs. 8610. Michael Phelps – Swimming — Pgs. 9611. Michael Jordan – Basketball — Pgs. 10412. Martina Navratilova – Tennis — Pgs. 11313. Valentino Rossi – Moto GP — Pgs. 12214. Michael Schumacher – Motor Car Racing — Pgs. 13015. Sir Steven Redgrave – Rowing — Pgs. 13916. Jackie Joyner-Kersee – Track and Field — Pgs. 14517. Wayne Gtretzky – Ice Hockey — Pgs. 15318. Gareth Edwards – Rugby — Pgs. 16119. Roger Federer – Tennis — Pgs. 16620. Kelly Slater – Surfing — Pgs. 175