6/20/08

With the Olympic Games approaching, The Wall Street Journal set out to answer this parlor-game question: If Earth had to send one man to the Intergalactic Olympics, who should go?

Identifying the world's greatest male athlete turned out to be easy to argue but difficult to answer empirically. No matter how impressive, world-class athletes mostly excel at single tasks. Olympic gold medal weightlifter Hossein Reza Zadeh can, in two quick motions, lift 580 pounds over his head, the equivalent of a year-old heifer.