Who’s the greatest Olympic athlete: Usain Bolt or Michael Phelps?

Who’s the greatest Olympian ... the fastest man or the greatest swimmer? (MARTIN BUREAUMARTIN BUREAU/AFP)

There's no doubt that Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps are the best in their fields... but who is the greatest overall?

In this Daily News "That's Debatable" series, writers Ebenezer Samuel and Ian Powers take hacks at each other over who is the best Olympian.
BOLT IS SIMPLY THE BEST





Jamaica's Usain Bolt celebrates after he won the men's 100m Final. (JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/GETTY IMAGES)


It doesn’t get any faster than Usain Bolt. Ever. In the history of humanity. In the one thing that just about any able-bodied human can do.

It has been this way with metronomic consistency for three consecutive Olympic Games: In the three most basic events, there is Usain Bolt running away from everyone else. We saw it again on Sunday night, when American Justin Gatlin ran the seemingly perfect 100-meter dash, only to watch Bolt claim his third straight title anyway.

How could anything else be the dominant image from these Rio Olympics? The great Olympic debate of 2016 says that Bolt is battling Michael Phelps for the honor of greatest Olympian ever, but the battle between sprinter and swimmer simply doesn’t feel that close.

Bolt vs. Phelps is about quality of dominance against quantity of dominance, and it’s simply too hard to ignore Bolt’s brand of dominance. Yes, Phelps, with 28 medals (23 gold) is the “most decorated Olympian ever” and blah blah blah. But he’s a fish ruling a sport of limited competitors, and doing so without the sheer soul-sucking ability of Usain Bolt.


Bolt has “only” seven gold medals, with three in the 100 and in pursuit of a third in the 200 and a third in the 4x100 relay. But his races have barely been close; he shattered three world records in his first Olympics, lowered one of them in his second Olympics, turned the rest of the world into a prop in his meme on Sunday.

And he did it all against the best that the world truly could offer. Phelps, for all his brilliance, competes in a country club sport, a sport that by its nature often excludes talents who merge from poverty.

There’s a reason you see little diversity in the pool: To compete in high-level swimming, you need access to a pool. Not everyone can get that, and not every nation has the affluence to build the swimming program that the United States has erected.



That’s at least partly why the U.S. so thoroughly dominated the Rio pool; claiming an Olympic-best 33 medals this year, three more than the next four nations combined. Since Phelps began his legacy in 2004, the United States has collected 123 swimming medals in four Olympics. No other nation has more than 55.


Phelps is a talented mutant of an athlete, sure, and his extreme success is partly due to that. But it’s also due partly to his nation’s swimming infrastructure, a structure that’s produced the likes of Katie Ledecky and Ryan Lochte as well. He’s part of a U.S. swimming army.

The U.S. sends a similar army to the track and has already collected a Rio-topping 11 medals in track and field so far. And yet Bolt has triumphed over that army (and all other international comers) in three consecutive Olympics.

Any and every nation can field runners, because all you need to learn this sport is two legs; Bolt himself has talked of hitting the national track in Jamaica for the first time barefoot. It’s no wonder 15 different countries have already claimed gold medals on the track; swimming competition concluded with just 13 countries claiming gold medals and all of 18 countries medaling, period.

But Bolt is that much better than everyone that he’s dominated his events against competitors from every actual corner of the globe. And he’s done it in a fashion that epitomizes the “Citius” in the Olympic slogan.

For all Phelps’ dominance, let’s be real: Some swimming events can be timed with a trusty old sundial.

Not Bolt. You need to be on your stopwatch to properly appreciate all his majesty as he does the most basic of human activities — and runs.
PHELPS IS THE GREATEST




United States' Michael Phelps kisses the gold medal for the men's 200-meter individual medley final. (MICHAEL SOHN/AP)


Aw, Ebenezer, how could you believe that a one-note athlete like Usain Bolt is better than Michael Phelps?

From Phelps’ versatility to the criticism of Jamaica’s anti-doping efforts over the years, the nod goes to Phelps.

First of all, let's count the medals: Phelps: 23 gold (13 individual), 3 silver, 2 bronze and setting 15 world records at the Olympics alone. Bolt: 7 gold (5 individual) and 3 world records set at Olympics.

Usain Bolt may be the fastest human in recorded history and winning three straight golds in the 100-meter dash is unprecedented and remarkable. He will likely take his third straight gold in the 200 meters Thursday night and could take another relay gold later on Friday in the 4x100 meters.


But did he do it running backward? Or over hurdles? Or racewalking? If you’re comparing Bolt’s apples to Phelps’ oranges, you have to start there. Phelps isn’t just the greatest butterfly man in history, he is the best medley — traces combining all four swimming disciplines (fly, backstroke, breaststroke and freestyle) — swimmer in history. The medley has no equivalent in running. Imagine Bolt starting with hurdles (fly), turning around and running backward (back), racewalk for 100 meters (breast) and sprint for 100 (free). Phelps also won individual gold in the 200-meter freestyle.

Contemporaries by age (Phelps just turned 31, Bolt will be 30 in a few days), Phelps got started on the world scene and fared better in his first Olympics, placing fifth in the 100 fly in Sydney (2000) while Bolt failed to get out of the first round of heats for the 200 meters at age 17 in the 2004 Athens Games. So Phelps has been at a higher level for a longer period of time.

Then there is the question of doping. For years, during Bolt’s successful runs in the 2008 and 2012 Games, there was widespread criticism of Jamaica’s inability to perform comprehensive testing during the offseason. Victor Conte — he of BALCO fame, the company which helped Marion Jones, 2000 100-meter gold medalist Maurice Greene and others earn Olympic glory with banned substances, of which Jones went to prison for perjuring herself on the subject — was long critical of Jamaica’s anti-doping regimen. Dick Pound, former head of the World Anti-Doping Association (WADA), had been openly critical of Jamaica’s program. The suspicion stems not only from Bolt’s sudden explosion onto the sprinting scene, but from the entire Jamaican group of men and women sprinters emerging among the world’s elite, especially when Jamaica swept all three medals in the 200 meters at London in 2012.



Still Bolt has never tested positive, although his main rival in the 100 (American sivler medalist Justin Gatlin) has served years-long bans for doping. And the International Association of Athletic Federation (IAAF) in recent years has lauded the Jamaica Anti-Doping Commission for improving its program.


Although Phelps can’t totally be above suspicion (just ask Baseball Hall of Fame voters), the only proof we know of is his use of the recreational of marijuana.

Upon his retirement (“I really mean it this time!"), Phelps has stated that he wants to do more for the sport he has championed, including making sure it is clean.

“I don’t think I’ve ever competed in a clean sport,” Phelps said before the Olympics began.

“I think there’s something that needs to change about all sports, not just swimming,” he added. “As athletes you want to be able to compete on an even playing field.

“We’ve had this problem for how many Olympics now?... It’s really sad that we can’t control it — that somebody who is in charge can’t control it.”

Lets see Bolt come out and share those sentiments.

Even if he does, he still takes silver to Phelps’ gold.