Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Most Dominant Athlete Ever (Redux)

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey everyone, I'm out of town this week, so rather than run a bunch of encore episodes, I thought I'd do something just a little different. This week, I'll be running full encore episodes as they were originally released, and then at the end, where I normally read a review, I'll be providing an update to the episode. So make sure to stay tuned all the way to the end of the podcast. This episode was originally released on July 3, 2020, and it was the third episode I ever recorded. So you might notice that the sound is a bit different as I was recording it in a completely different environment. So with that, enjoy the story of the most dominant athlete ever. Question. Who is the most dominant athlete of all time? It's an interesting question in one that

Starting point is 00:00:45 has started endless pub debates. Is it a basketball player like Michael Jordan, a baseball player like Babe Ruth or a soccer player like Lionel Messi? Or maybe it's an athlete in an individual sport like Tiger Woods or Serena Williams? My answer to this question of who is the most dominant athlete of all time might surprise you. Find out who I'm talking about on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night.

Starting point is 00:01:34 And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. Now before I answer the question, I have to note that. I was very particular about the words I chose. I never asked who was the greatest athlete of all time, or who was the best, meaning I'm not talking about a person who might be the fastest or the strongest. So I'm not talking about Usain Bolt or Hathor Bjornsen. He was the guy who was the mountain in the Game of Thrones and just set a world's record for the deadlift. I'm talking about who is the most dominant, the person who crushed their competition, someone who rose to the top of their sport and then

Starting point is 00:02:19 stayed there for a very long time, someone who just kept winning and winning and winning. The person I have in mind was described by the New York Times as the most dominant athlete in any sport in the country. And after considerable research, I'd say he might be the most dominant athlete and of any sport in the world. Who am I talking about? Why none other than the legendary Alan Francis. Now you're probably asking yourself, who in the world is Alan Francis? If this guy is so great, why haven't I heard of him? Well, Alan Francis is the greatest horseshoe pitcher in history. Now you might be saying yourself that horseshoe pitching isn't a real sport.

Starting point is 00:02:58 Well, it is certainly a sport as much as golf or bowling is a sport, and quite frankly, if curling could be an Olympic event, then I think horseshoe pitching can be a sport. So let's unpack the legend of Alan Francis, just to see how dominant he really is. Alan grew up on a farm in Missouri where he learned how to pitch horseshaw. from his family. He won his first junior boys' world championship at the age of 12 in 1982, which was the first of four consecutive junior world championships, which was a record at the time.

Starting point is 00:03:29 In 1989, he won his first men's world championship at the age of 19, setting a record for the youngest person ever to win a world championship. After some fourth and third place finishes at the world championship in 90, 91, and 92, he won his second world championship. He won his second world championship, in 1993. In 1994, he again finished third in the world, and in 1995 he started what can only be described as one of the most incredible runs in the history of sports. He won the World Championship in 1995, and in 1996, and in 1997, and in 1998, and in 1999. By the year 2000, at the start of the new millennium, he had already won seven world titles and was just getting warmed up. He won again in 2001, and in 2003 he won the first of what would be a record eight consecutive World Championships.

Starting point is 00:04:24 In 2011, he was the runner-up at the World Championships, ending his eight-year streak. A streak, which was tied last year by, you guessed it, Alan Francis, who went on to win another eight consecutive World Championships from 2012 to 2019. As of the time I am recording this, Alan Francis has won an astounding 24 world championships and is the defending world champion. The 2020 world championships were canceled due to COVID-19, but he was the odds on favor to win again this year. And if he had won, it would have been his 25th world championship, and he would have won world championships in five different decades, the 80s, the 90s, the 2000s, the 2010s, and the 2020s. He is currently both the youngest and oldest person to have ever won a world championship. I can't think of anyone who has had that level of dominance over their competition for that length of time.

Starting point is 00:05:24 You might have noticed that there were a few years in there where he didn't win a world championship. He has been in at least the finals of every world championship tournament since 1995, which is an incredible 25 years in a row. And he has finished no worse than fifth since 1988, a 32-year run. As impressive and as dominant as this performance has been in the World Championships, that doesn't even really express just how much better he is than everyone else at throwing horseshoes. If you get a ringer, which is when the horseshoe successfully is thrown around the post, over 75% of the time, you are among the elite horseshoe pitchers in the world. In fact, prior to Alan Francis, many world champions had ringer percentages in the high 70s.

Starting point is 00:06:08 If you can get your ringer percentage into the 80s, you're probably, in competition for a world title. And if you can get your ringer percentage over 90, then your name is Alan Francis, because no one else in history other than him, has ever had a ringer percentage over 90. He was inducted into the Horseshoe Hall of Fame at the age of 26. To put that into perspective, the youngest person ever inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was 32, Josh Klinghofer of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. The youngest person ever inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame was Sandy Kofax at 36. Youngest in the Basketball Hall of Fame was Ed McCauley at 32, and the youngest person in the Pro Football Hall of Fame was Gail Sayers at 34. Now, there's not a lot of money in professional

Starting point is 00:06:53 horseshoe pitching. Winning the World Championship gets you a whopping $3,000. Being the greatest horseshoe pitcher of all time hasn't gotten him any endorsement deals, other than the fact that he does have a signature line of horseshoes that you can buy on Amazon. So what does the future hold for Alan? Well, horseshoe pitching isn't really a sport where you have to retire at a young age. You can be competitive well into your 50s. So we shouldn't be too surprised if he win several more world titles before he's done. There's a senior division for pitchers over the age of 60, which I'm sure you'll dominate once he reaches that age. So the next time you get into a debate with one of your friends about who the most dominant athlete of all time is, just sit back, smile, and bust

Starting point is 00:07:34 out Alan Francis, the greatest horseshoe pitcher in history. Since I originally recorded this episode, I've gotten a lot of feedback from people who've basically had the same complaint. They say that Michael Jordan, Usain Bolt, Lionel Messi, or pick, whoever your favorite athlete is from a popular sport, was a better athlete. I think they've all completely missed the point of the episode. I never said that Alan Francis was a great athlete. If you measured strength, speed, endurance, or any other physical attribute, I'm sure he would come up short to thousands and thousands of people. The point was that no one has to, you had ever dominated their sport like Alan Francis dominated horseshoe pitching.

Starting point is 00:08:17 You might say that it isn't much of a sport, and to be sure, it doesn't require as much physicality as other sports, but I do think it is a sport insofar as it requires a great deal of hand-eye coordination. Basically, if golf is a sport, then so is horseshoe pitching. That being said, since I recorded this, how has Alan Francis done? Well, in 2020, the world championships were canceled due to the pandemic, and if they had taken place, I am highly confident that he would have won again. In 2021, the world championships were held, and Alan Francis won his 25th World Championship in his fifth decade. He went undefeated. In 2022, he won the world championship again, once again, going undefeated. And last year in 2023, he won the world

Starting point is 00:09:01 championship again and went undefeated again. He has now won a whopping 27 world titles and is currently on a record-setting streak of 11 in a row. He will turn 54 this year, and he's still the best horseshoe pitcher in the world. In almost any other sport, 54 would be well past your prime, and for every other horseshoe pitcher, that's the case as well, but not for Alan Francis. It is not out of the question that he could wind up with 30 world championships, which is an incredible amount considering that the next best horseshoe pitcher only has 10.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Most Dominant Athlete Ever (Redux)

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