Every January, mainstream sports media critiques the past year, listing the best world athletes. But the end of 2009 also brought about the end of a decade, and the media has also been recognizing the best athletes of the decade.
Talent can’t go unnoticed, and MotoGP star Valentino Rossi is being rated as an outstanding world athlete, placing motorcycle racing in perspective with other highly popular sports such as tennis and Olympic swimming.
Rossi came to the world stage of racing in 2000, and since has won seven premier-class championships. This placed his achievements alongside Swiss tennis star Roger Dederer, Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps and Olympic record holder for the 100 and 200 meters dash Usain Bolt.
The evaluation methods differ. For some assessments, well-known publications decide who’s best, and for others the athletes themselves vote and set the rankings.
As was expected, the 30-year-old Rossi topped the rankings in his native country Italy. The Gazzetta dello Sport, a prominent Italian newspaper dedicated to sports that’s been in existence since 1896, reports more than 40 percent of its readers consider Rossi the top athlete, ahead of Federer (who received 13.8 percent of the vote) and Bolt (8 percent). Also on the Italian pole was Formula 1 icon Michael Schumacher with 7.4 percent of the vote, and the Italian National Football Team with 6.3 percent of the vote.
Similar reports came from Tuttosport, another popular Italian sport newspaper. The No. 46 rider Rossi took 48.6 percent of the vote, with Bolt at 12.4 percent and Federer at 11 percent.
In Spain, the El Mundo registered nearly 30,000 votes from readers, and Rossi came in second with 17 percent of the vote, just behind first-place winner Federer with 27.1 of the vote. Phelps came in third with 12.2. percent of the vote.
The most widely-circulated newspaper in Spain, the El Pais, asked athletes to choose the top stars of 2009, and Rossi again came in second place with 16 votes, behind Bolt, who had 47 votes.
These kind of achievements not only display the raw talent of Rossi, but also show how much more popular motorcycle racing has become in the last decade.
If this trend continues, maybe a few other motorcycle racing icons will surface in the world’s best athlete segments along with Rossi, such as that Texan Ben Spies who took a World Superbike title during his rookie year…
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