Lighthouses - best in your own country at your sport by ridiculous levels

[Satchmo Distel]

Daley Thompson is the UK winner, I would think. Still holds the UK record with no sign of anyone catching him, 35 years on, and the record he beat had been set in 1972 IIRC by a guy who is still 6th UK all-time.

[treibeis]

David Bryant never "kicked anyone's ass".

My maternal grandfather reckoned he saw David Bryant punch Tommy Banner through a fence after a The Wurzels gig in Shepton Mallet in 1969. They'd been rowing about the use of Campden tablets in scrumpy.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

David Bryant never "kicked anyone's ass", he just sucked on his pipe and made comments about their dry stone wall. And no, he's in the Ed Moses or shall I introduce it Phil Taylor category - a brilliant and repeated champion but not one in a sport where his national rivals were all complete amateurs by comparison.

[treibeis]

David Bryant kicked everybody else's ass for decades.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

We'd had Robin Cousins and the bloke before him just before Torville and Dean. They could be in the set I'm looking for but I have a sneaking recollection that they, too, weren't the only British finalists in ice dancing the years they did it. Which immediately rules them out.

[multipleman78]

Torvill and Dean
Andy Murray for Scotland

[Wouter D]

Interesting topic..... Liberia's George Weah springs to mind for football and Aubameyang for Gabon.

Jari Litmanen.

[ursus arctos]

Giannis Antetokounmpo in Basketball will certainly have this status for Greece if he doesn't suffer a catastrophic injury, and already does for Nigeria.

Greg LeMond for the US in men's road cycling.

[Sporting]

Jonah Barrington?

[ursus arctos]

Anze Kopitar for Slovenija in ice hockey.

The second best player in the country's history is his brother. The best coach is their father.

[Sporting]

How about Daley Thompson in the decathlon?

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Virginia Wade back in her time, at least until Sue Barker came along?

Surgei Bubka? Edwin Moses?

These are kind of the rub answers though (if you'll forgive me) - Virginia Wade was losing in Grand Slams to other British players at the start of her career, and while Bubka and Moses were clearly the best in the world they weren't the sole Russian pole vaulters or American hurdlers. Same with Usian Bolt - yes of course no-one in the world can beat him, but his compatriots were the ones giving him a good race.

[seand]

Interesting topic..... Liberia's George Weah springs to mind for football and Aubameyang for Gabon.

[Sporting]

Virginia Wade back in her time, at least until Sue Barker came along?

Surgey Bubka? Edwin Moses?

[ad hoc]

A lot of successful tennis players seem to beget others from the same country. So Borg, for example, was perhaps a necessary condition for the rise of Wilander and Edberg. I'm not sure where I'm going with this - Borg presumably was the kind of answer you were looking for even though he was quickly followed by others. Murray too, I'd say.

Djokovic at least in men's tennis seems to exist in another universe to any other Serbian player

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Sports stars who have just been so far ahead of their (national) rivals that a national championship would have been like Ronnie O'Sullivan being asked to play me and my mate Sean at pool in a pub.

Vijay Singh being not only Fiji's only major winning golfer but possibly their only golfer ever to break par in a professional event springs to mind. Francesco Molinari would leap off the page as Italy's current equivalent but actually Italy had gone through a little bubble of producing several players of note, not least Francesco's brother Eduardo. The same was true of Spanish golf in the 70s - lots of people think Seve came "from nowhere" but while he clearly went on to be the best, there was a whole generation of very good Spanish players around him at the time.

Rafael Nadal was hardly a one-off in terms of Spanish clay court talent. And wasn't Wawrinka kind of a contemporary of Fed? Tiger Tim might be a better example in British tennis than his successor, but even in Tim's era we always had other players scratching about iirc, plus Greg jumped on board.

Any ideas?