Your Daily Dose: 6 sporting greats who reigned supreme

In 1960, at 50 - so goes the story - Aladar Gerevich was told he was too old for competitive fencing whereupon he challenged his entire team to a trial and beat them all. Apocryphal or not, it is a great story of the Hungarian sabre fencer who won gold at six successive Olympics from 1932 to 1960. If World War II had not intervened, the number might have been eight.

His entire world was tied to the Olympics. His wife, Erna, won a foil bronze; his son Pal and his father-in-law Albert won bronzes in sabre; and his daughter-in-law, Gyongyi Bardi, played volleyball for Hungary. Fittingly, on his gravestone, are inscribed the Olympic rings.

The American is 1.42m of action-packed, inventive genius, who has moves named after her on the floor, beam and vault. She started gymnastics at six and now, at 23, has won the all-around title at the world artistic gymnastics championships on five occasions. Next best is three times.

"Sometimes," she confessed, "I wonder how I do it. I feel like it's just, like, not me. I wish I could have like an out-of-body experience to witness it, because sometimes I think I'm going crazy."

Sometimes, what she does is crazy, like becoming the first female gymnast to win five gold medals at a single edition of the world championships.

"I don't think there will ever be anything like that," a former gymnast told USA Today about Biles. "She's one of a kind."

The speaker should know. Her name is Nadia Comaneci.

They had style, swagger, skill, but most of all they had speed. To the point where their fast bowling attack - Andy Roberts, Michael Holding, Colin Croft and Joel Garner - were occasionally referred to as the Four Horsemen.

Led by Clive Lloyd, and starring that gum-chewing god, Viv Richards, the Windies went 15 years between 1980 and the mid-1990s without losing a Test series. Years later a film was made on them, Fire In Babylon, in which Holding says "no other team in any discipline, anywhere in the world, dominated their sport for 15 years".

Whether this was a fact did not matter because no one was going to argue with the fast bowler who had arguably the greatest nickname in sport: Whispering Death.

August 1973 to May 1979 is how long Chris Evert did not lose a match on a clay court. Almost six years. Exactly 125 matches. Of which 71 sets ended 6-0 and only eight matches stretched to three sets. "I was hungry to win every point," she said.

If you do a comparison, just for fun, her winning percentage on clay when she finished was 94.55. Rafael Nadal's is currently 91.8 per cent.

The streak was ended in the Italian Open by Tracy Austin even though Evert was leading 4-1 in the third set of their semi-final. As the book, The Rivals, recalls, Evert went back to her hotel room and wept.

"I felt it was the end of an era," she said.

Not quite, she won five more French Opens.

No one should forget Beijing 2008, the Water Cube and Aquaman. No one must forget those nine days, 17 races, seven world records, eight Olympic gold medals. No one will forget the water in his goggles in one race and a win by 0.01 seconds in another. No one, for decades, even a century, might duplicate the perfection of Michael Phelps.

His coach Bob Bowman told the Baltimore Sun that as a brilliant 15-year-old kid, Phelps once asked: "Who is this Mark Spitz guy and why do they keep asking me about him?"

Now, of course, he had overtaken Spitz and it was a monumental effort.

There were days during that stretch when he was exhausted and a bed beckoned and yet he roused himself day after day. He would tell himself: "This is the Olympic Games, I can't be tired, I've got to get up."

Records had to be set.

A girl from Australia took up squash to help her fitness in hockey. Then she stubbed out her cigarettes and rewrote the history of her new sport. McKay's most astonishing feat is her 16 consecutive British Open titles from 1962 to 1977. In those 16 finals she won 48 consecutive games. Eleven of those were won 9-0 and 13 were won 9-1. In one final, in 1968, she won 9-0, 9-0, 9-0.

Later she went to America to play racquetball - a cousin of squash - and was profiled by Sports Illustrated, who noted that a champion's life wasn't a pampered one.

"Because her jobs as a receptionist and bookkeeper at squash clubs paid poorly, she was obliged to supplement her income. At one point she moonlighted as a telephone dispatcher for a cab company".

McKay made history, but not a fortune.