Top 5 sportspersons to play more than one sport

1. Jim Thorpe (Pentathlon, Decathlon, American Football, Baseball and Basketball)

Thorpe is miles in front of anybody else and wins this category hands down – the undisputed number 1 and perhaps one of the finest sportsmen to ever grace the tracks.

Thorpe first gained recognition when at Carlisle College in Pennsylvania, he scored all of his team’s points as they beat Harvard – one of the top teams at the time – in American football. To go with that he also dominated in other sports for his college such as baseball, lacrosse and track and field.

In the 1912 Stockholm Olympics, Thorpe’s popularity rose further as he won gold in both the pentathlon and decathlon. Soon after, at the All-Around Championship in New York, he won seven of the ten events and finished second in the other three to amass 7,476 points, a new decathlon world record.

Thorpe later went on to join the New York Giants baseball team, and helped them to the 1913 National League title. He was not done with American football either and in 1915 joined the Canton Bulldogs and helped them as well to titles in 1916, 1917 and 1919.

We’re not done yet!

In 2005 it was discovered that Thorpe had also played professional basketball for a team that was the early version of the Harlem Globetrotters, a unit that went by the name of Jim Thorpe and his World Famous Indians.

He also happened to be the Ballroom Dancing Championship, just to confirm his status as the world’s finest all-rounder.

Jim Thorpe: Arguably the finest all-round sportsman who ever lived