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Sporting Super Heroes : the Highest Rated Heroes

Super Hero Ratings

I have designed my own ranking system to give each hero a rating score. Each hero is rated on five criteria which have been determined to be the most important attributes of a sporting hero. The five criteria are skill, character, family, charity and popular culture. For more details about these criteria, and why these were chosen, see What Makes a Hero?



Comparing the ratings of these heroes, we can determine the best rated hero - a superhero? Below is the top rated superheroes list based on the ratings that have been given to the current list of heroes on this site, with their average scores weighted based on the importance of each of the criteria. The table below was created based on results from 2012 to 2019. In October 2012 Lance Armstrong was found guilty of doping during his very successful Tour de France campaigns - good enough reason to lose his hero status.kicker

the Super Heroes List!

Here are the rated heroes accoording to your votes (updated Dec 2019). For fans of these sports, there are not many surprises with the top few heroes, with boxer Muhammad Ali tied at the top with tennis players Roger Federer.

 

Rank Hero Sport weighted ave. score (%)*
1 Muhammad Ali boxing 91.7
2 Roger Federer tennis 91.7
3 Pele soccer 90.4
4 Derek Jeter baseball 89.2
5 Bobby Orr ice hockey 88.1
6 David Robinson basketball 88.1
7 Jesse Owens athletics 86.9
8 johnson   86.8
9 Johnny Unitas American Football 86.4
10 David Beckham soccer 85.5
11 payton   85.1
12 jackie robinson   85.0
13 jean king   84.9
14 vwilliams   84.7
15 shwhite   84.4
16 Ian Thorpe swimming 84.1
17 Nile Kinnick American Football 83.6
18 Zinedine Zidane soccer 83.5
19 peytonm   83.0
20 Michael Phelps swimming 82.6
  tedwilliams   82.5
  palmer   82.3
  swilliams   82.2
  Ricky Ponting cricket 81.5
  bird   81.0
  ruth   80.9
  Adam Gilchrist cricket 80.8
  Michael Jordan basketball 80.7
  Greg Louganis swimming 80.3
  Babe Zaharias golf 80.0
  Lombardi   78.7
  Lionel Messi soccer 78.7
  Manny Pacquiao boxing 77.1
  Bobby Jones golf 75.0
  Akram   74.8
  Waugh   74.6
  Bradman   74.2
  Sachin Tendulkar cricket 74.0
  Maradona   70.8
  Carey   70.7
  Danpatrick   67.8
  Tiger Woods   65.6
  Lance Armstrong cycling 61.8
  Ben Cousins   61.1

* the score weighting is based on the rating vote in each of the hero categories, weighted by the importance rating and then a factor based on the number of votes.



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Heroes Extra

Read our discussion about what makes a hero. See our Super Hero list and Heroines, and don't forget our Anti-Heroes.

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