This is not a “hate on” question. I am actually curious. Why is it heavily touted Simon Biles is the Gymnastics GOAT when Larisa Latynina surpassed Biles Olympic metal total with a total of 18 metals? She is only behind Micheal Phillips in most Olympic metals won.
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18 medals don’t mean as much when you watch a video of Latynina’s floor routine. Compared that to Biles’ today and you’ll have your answer.
The difference is incredible! Thanks for sharing the video!
As an Aussie watching, she does shit that doesn’t even seem physically possible. You’re constantly like “What the fuck? How?”
And end of the day, in almost every sport, it evolves and progresses, people get faster, stronger, routines and moves step up the difficulty, training and equipment improve etc. So you get athletes in the modern day who can do things previous gens couldn’t.
It’s not universally true. Bolt’s still holding records for example. But people watching tend to call the best of the current day the best ever.
But it’s also hard to compare different eras. Gymnastics is different to what it used to be. Formula 1 is very different now than in the 70s. Doesn’t mean Biles isn’t the friggin best ever though.
Because the US needs to be the best at everything or they’ll implode
It’s hard to compare them because gymnastics has progressed so much since Larisa competed, but Simone competes skills at such a more challenging level with such good execution that it’s very unlikely Larisa would be able to come anywhere close to her even if she came up training and competing today. If you look at the gymnasts Simone is competing against today, a lot of them are very talented, and still Simone is able to dominate against them at insane margins. The fact that she has never lost an All-Around competition since debuting in 2013 speaks to her dominance, and I find it unlikely that the gymnasts competing against Simone now would all just be less talented than Larisa’s competition. Also, in terms of medaling, Larisa competed in a time when there was a medal competition called a team portable apparatus, so she had a greater availability of medals to win. In addition, gymnastics also has yearly world championships that are considered in the GOAT rankings & Simone has the record of most world championship medals and most world championships gold medals, far surpassing Larisa and any other gymnast by a large amount.
To be fair, during Larisa’s time World’s were only held every 4 years. Not that I"m disagreeing about Simone being the GOATj(She is)
Besides the fact that Simone has the most Olympic and World medals, a consistent winning record unheard of in modern gymnastic and some of the most difficult gymnastics moves.
But have you watched Larisa’s routines? It doesn’t remotely resemble gymnastics today and would be considered quite elementary. To me - a GOAT means someone’s records and skills should stand the test of time. Forget even comparing to today - Larisa’s skill set was already being vastly surpassed just 10yrs later. I doubt we will see another gymnast be able to pull off all of Simone’s moves in a long long time.