Multi-sports champions

[Moonlight Shadow]

Just read an article about one Kathrin Lehmann, an ice hockey player from Switzerland. Not only is she good at that, winning the European cup with AIK Stockholm in 2008. She then won the European cup again, in 2009, with Duisburg. But this time playing football...

Not bad...

In French...

[evilC]

Multi-sports champions

The 'obvious' cross-sport success I know about is Jackie Stewart, who became a clay pigeon shooting champion (world champion?) as well as Formula 1 world champion.

Don't we Brits have a current female cyclist in our national squad who used to be a medalled bobsleigh (or something similar) competitor too? My memory of this is blurry, though - it could be that either one of those sports is wrong ...or both!

[evilC]

Multi-sports champions

The other mega-successful multi-sportsman I can think of is world champion serial psycho Luc Alphand. Very current, that one, too.

[Reed John]

Multi-sports champions

Chris Drury has been on teams that won the Little League baseball World Series and hockey teams that have won the NCAA title, an Olympic silver medal and the Stanley Cup. He has also won the Hobey Baker and Calder Trophy.

[Guy Profumo]

Multi-sports champions

Denis Compton

[oscar mike]

Multi-sports champions

Don't we Brits have a current female cyclist in our national squad who used to be a medalled bobsleigh (or something similar) competitor too? My memory of this is blurry, though - it could be that either one of those sports is wrong ...or both!

That would be Rebecca Romero. World champion at rowing, World & Olympic champion at track cycling.

[oscar mike]

Multi-sports champions

Whilst rummaging through Wikipedia I came across Waclaw Kuchar.

That's pretty impressive.

[oscar mike]

Multi-sports champions

And then there's Babe Zaharias.

[Wyatt Earp]

Multi-sports champions

Going back a bit, there's C. B. Fry.

[ursus arctos]

Multi-sports champions

Jim Thorpe, Jackie Robinson, Jim Brown, Bo Jackson.

The speed skating/track cycling combination for double Olympians is quite popular, with Eric Heiden being perhpas the most well known example.

Going back to Moonlight's original post, several of the best Czech footballers had significant careers in junior hockey, with Pavel Nedved being a particular example.

[evilC]

Multi-sports champions

ursus arctos wrote:

The speed skating/track cycling combination for double Olympians is quite popular, with Eric Heiden being perhpas the most well known example.

Going back to Moonlight's original post, several of the best Czech footballers had significant careers in junior hockey, with Pavel Nedved being a particular example.

It's all to do with thighs, isn't it?

[Incandenza]

Multi-sports champions

Ursus stole my answers. While at UCLA, Jackie Robinson became the first Bruin to receive varsity letters in four sports: baseball, basketball, football, and track (athletics). Baseball, famously, was his "worst" sport while at UCLA.

Robinson's teammate Woody Strode was also on the football team at UCLA, and was a champion decathlete (he also became an accomplished actor, appearing in Spartacus).

[Third rate Leszno]

Multi-sports champions

At a distinctly local level, Cumbrian all-rounder Willie Richardson was a county standard badminton player before moving into car rallying, where he won National championship events before his backing dried up and he swapped sports again to have a lengthy career in professional rugby league (playing for three of the four Cumbrian teams).

Other multi-talented rally drivers include World Champion Sebastian Loeb (previously a gymnast good enough to finish 5th in the French championship) and Middle East Champion and Dakar runner-up Nasser Al-Attiyah (skeet shooting at four olympics, Asian champion and World Cup medallist).

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Multi-sports champions

Have we really got this far into this thread without mentioning Denis Compton?

[ursus arctos]

Multi-sports champions

Of course not.

See Guy's post (fifth from the top).

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Multi-sports champions

Ah! Good.

Compton was (admittedly in an era when most of Britain's men aged 25-35 had just been killed or injured in the War) a real enigma. For those who've never heard of him, he played in the (winning) Cup Final team for Arsenal and then a Cricket Test Match for England within the space of ten days, or something silly, in 1950. Or maybe he jumped in his Jag after the Cup Final and drove from Wembley to Lord's, padded up, and scored a century before the close. The story tends to get exaggerated.

Needless to say, few have come to close to a double like that since, although yes, Ian Botham did play professional football (Scunthorpe?) and at about the same time I think Gary Lineker briefly played cricket for a first-class county (Leicestershire).

[Gangster Octopus]

Multi-sports champions

Darren Gough played for our reserves. I doubt if he'd ended up on Strictly if he'd stayed there...

[Etienne]

Multi-sports champions

Phil Neville apparently was very good at cricket, but chose football. Andy Goram played as a wicketkeeper for Scotland until Rangers told him he couldn't anymore (as I've mentioned on here before). A.B de Villiers apparently was a top junior in about 5 different sports, but especially tennis, before settling on cricket.

[Third rate Leszno]

Multi-sports champions

Rogin the Armchair Fan wrote:

Ah! Good.

Compton was (admittedly in an era when most of Britain's men aged 25-35 had just been killed or injured in the War) a real enigma. For those who've never heard of him, he played in the (winning) Cup Final team for Arsenal and then a Cricket Test Match for England within the space of ten days, or something silly, in 1950. Or maybe he jumped in his Jag after the Cup Final and drove from Wembley to Lord's, padded up, and scored a century before the close. The story tends to get exaggerated.

Chris Balderstone did summat similar.....

Wikipedia wrote:

In the game when Leicestershire won their first ever County Championship, on September 15 1975, Balderstone was batting on 51 not out against Derbyshire at Chesterfield. After close of play he changed into his football kit to play for Doncaster Rovers in an evening match 30 miles away (a 1-1 draw with Brentford). Thus he is the only player to have played League Football and first class cricket on the same day. He then returned to Chesterfield to complete a century the following morning and take three wickets to wrap up the title.

Top bloke, sadly missed.

[Bourbaki]

Multi-sports champions

Norwegian dual football / chess international Simen Agdestein

[Sam]

Multi-sports champions

I don't know whether he was champion of anything as such, but this chap was my dad's uncle (by marriage). He spent his 21st birthday on a cargo ship on the way back from Argentina, where he'd been playing on tour for the England rugby union side (in spite of the stats on that link, he won more than 2 caps). During that tour he scored so many points in one match against some hopeless provinical club side that he single-handedly broke the England national side's record for point scored (by the entire team) in a match up that point. He wasn't aware of this at the time - he walked into a pub about a decade later with my grandad and a bloke sitting at the bar recognised him and told him.

He also played test cricket for England (a Google search throws up another Guy Wilson who played a generation earlier). I don't believe he did this for very long, and my grandad certainly doesn't know as much about his cricket career as he does his rugby career.

Apparently at half time of a match at Twickenham he once bet a friend he could throw a rugby ball the length of the pitch - from standing underneath one of the goals, he threw it over the crossbar at the other end. My grandad's got a photo of him scoring a drop goal at Twickenham in 1928 or so. He played a bit of league on the sly too, but had to keep it a secret from his dad who apparently would've chucked him out of the house if he'd found out!

[EDIT] He gets a mention about seven items down on this history of Tyldesley RFC.