ESPN The Magazine today revealed their list of the 20 most dominant athletes of 2018 which includes the likes of LeBron James, Drew Brees, Alex Ovechkin and Mike Trout. However, none of those superstars even cracked the Top-10.
In fact, U.S. Gymnast Simone Biles checks in as the #1 most dominant athlete of the year, followed by Olympic runner Eliud Kipchoge and UFC champ-champ Daniel Cormier.
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As ESPN's Charlotte Gibson describes, "Biles unleashed a historic display of athleticism at the world championships, winning her record fourth all-around title by her largest margin yet, leading the U.S. team to gold, again by a record margin, and taking four other medals. That made her the first U.S. gymnast to medal at every event at a world championship -- and doing all that with a kidney stone, after spending the night before qualifying in the hospital. Not that you needed more, but she also ran the table at this year's U.S. Classic, after taking a two-year hiatus from her four-golds-and-a-bronze triumph in Rio. She is truly unstoppable."
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According to today's press release, here's how ESPN The Magazine determined their rankings:
"ESPN The Magazine's "Dominant 20" list was created by pitting the year's best against their top rivals with cold, hard math. The process started by grading the athletes by the strongest performance measures available in their sport over their most recently completed season (except F1 numbers, which are through November 11, and NFL numbers, which are through November 26), including timed scores, earnings and, wherever possible, advanced metrics. Then, to put those achievements into historical perspective, top athletes in a sport were compared to the best in their field each year since 1998, and results were adjusted to put those athletes onto one common baseline, yielding our ratings."
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