Top 5 sportspersons to play more than one sport

Sportspersons who have played more than one sport are a rare breed and deserve to be saluted. It is one thing to be good in one sport, but to event try another sport takes guts and to excel in it is just sheer talent and a salutation to hard work.

Here are five sportspersons who did precisely that and will be remembered for a long time to come for precisely those reasons.

5. Ian Botham (Cricket and Football)

Arguably England’s finest all-rounder of all time, Botham scored 14 centuries and took a record 383 Test wickets.

He also has the distinction of turning out for Scunthorpe United.

A friend had watched him play for a local pub side and then recommended that he come out and try his luck for The Iron. It took then manager Ron Ashman barely a week before he handed ‘Beefy’ a contract who went on to play 11 times for Scunthorpe in the Football League.

“The authorities didn’t really appreciate me playing against Hull on Boxing Day then flying to the West Indies 24 hours later to captain England,” Botham said. “But there were no central contracts back then… and I didn’t really care what the authorities thought.”

4. Ellyse Perry (Cricket and Football)

Where the men have done it, the women can’t be far behind!

Perry has been capped 108 times by Australia – four Test matches, 57 ODIs and 47 Twenty20s. In that time she has scored 798 runs and taken 136 wickets.

She also happens to be a star defender for Sydney Football Club and has turned out 118 times for her country too scoring four goals in that time.Not bad eh!

Perry is the youngest person, male or female, to represent Australia in cricket and the first Australian woman to have appeared in both cricket and football World Cups. She was part of the cricket teams which won the 2010 World Twenty20 and the 2013 World Cup.

She is still only 22.

3. Michael Jordan (Basketball and Baseball)

The Chicago Bulls shooting guard was – and still is – the greatest player to ever grace a basketball court. Not only was he a six-time NBA champion, ten-time NBA top scorer, multiple recipient of the MVP award and two-time gold medallist, he also helped Bugs Bunny and the rest of Looney Tunes overcome the evil Monstars in Space Jam.

However, in 1993, Jordan announced his retirement from basketball and, in honour of his late father, who always envisioned Jordan as a Major League Baseball star, he signed for the Chicago White Sox. It did not go to plan due to not actually being very good, and he never made it to the major leagues, instead spending a season with the Birmingham Barons in the minor leagues and a brief spell with the Scottsdale Scorpions in a developmental league.

In 1995, His Airness issued a press release which simply read: “I’m back.” Playing basketball, that is.

2. Alessandro Zanardi (Motor Racing and Paralympic Cycling)

Perhaps the most inspirational of the lot!

In 2001, Zanardi was involved in an accident that can best be described horrific and violent. In a cart collision with Alex Tagliani, his single-seater car was completely destroyed and so were both his legs.

It was to the credit of the medical staff at the track, that Zanardi even survived as he had lost three-quarters of his blood volume in the crash.

Most souls would have dithered in their quest to race after such a violent accident, but not Zanardi. The Italian returned to motor racing using a specially-designed car that had hand-operated brakes and an accelerator pedal.

He even won a world series race in 2005. He had previously raced in Formula One, but without much success.

But there was more to come from this courageous Italian. At last year’s Paralympic Games, his success captured the hearts and imagination of millions around the world.

Zanardi took gold in both the individual time trial and individual road race events along with silver in the mixed team relay. This was after he had taken up handbiking with the sole intention of making a dash for it in London.

This was Alex Zanardi – former F1 driver, kart racer, horrific accident survivor, amputee and now a Paralympic gold medallist.

Do you still not believe in miracles?

1. Jim Thorpe (Pentathlon, Decathlon, American Football, Baseball and Basketball)

Thorpe is miles in front of anybody else and wins this category hands down – the undisputed number 1 and perhaps one of the finest sportsmen to ever grace the tracks.

Thorpe first gained recognition when at Carlisle College in Pennsylvania, he scored all of his team’s points as they beat Harvard – one of the top teams at the time – in American football. To go with that he also dominated in other sports for his college such as baseball, lacrosse and track and field.

In the 1912 Stockholm Olympics, Thorpe’s popularity rose further as he won gold in both the pentathlon and decathlon. Soon after, at the All-Around Championship in New York, he won seven of the ten events and finished second in the other three to amass 7,476 points, a new decathlon world record.

Thorpe later went on to join the New York Giants baseball team, and helped them to the 1913 National League title. He was not done with American football either and in 1915 joined the Canton Bulldogs and helped them as well to titles in 1916, 1917 and 1919.

We’re not done yet!

In 2005 it was discovered that Thorpe had also played professional basketball for a team that was the early version of the Harlem Globetrotters, a unit that went by the name of Jim Thorpe and his World Famous Indians.

He also happened to be the Ballroom Dancing Championship, just to confirm his status as the world’s finest all-rounder.

Jim Thorpe: Arguably the finest all-round sportsman who ever lived