Top 50 Female Athletes in Sports History

The debate over who’s the greatest athlete is one we’ve argued about ever since the invention of sports tens of thousands of years ago. It can be found today on your favorite morning Hot Take TV show, throughout radio airwaves, all over social media and at every sports bar known to man … or woman.

But the debate over who is the greatest female athlete ever is one that hasn’t gotten enough attention. Before that debate can even begin, you need to define what makes an athlete great. Is it their pure athletic ability or success within their sport? Is it their impact on not only the sport they competed in, but how they affected society as a whole? Or is it their dominance, longevity, charisma or star power that separates them from the rest of the field? The answer to all of those questions is, quite simply, “yes.”

We’ve selected the best of the best female athletes and ranked their level of greatness in five different categories: athletic ability, success/championships, impact on sport, impact beyond sport and intangibles. Those rankings are on a scale of 0-100 in increments of five. The average of those five categories will then be the athlete’s GOAT rating, which this list is ranked by. With all of that in mind, here are the 50 greatest female athletes of all time. Who do you think deserves the top honor?

Sport: Track and field, basketball

Career: 15 seasons (1997-2011)

Accomplishments: Three-time World Champion (track and field), stripped of five medals from 2000 Olympics (track and field), NCAA champion (basketball)

Athletic ability: 100

Success/championships: 75

Impact on sport: 85

Impact beyond sport: 65

Intangibles: 50

GOAT rating: 75

Yes, Jones used PEDs, which taints her accomplishments, but that doesn’t take away from her God-given athletic ability. As a high school freshman, she was the California state champion in the 100-meter dash and would repeat three more times. She was invited to the U.S. Olympic trials as a 16-year-old, and let’s not forget her basketball achievements, as she won a National Title while at the University of North Carolina (UNC). 

She won three gold medals at the IAAF World Championships ,but pretty much all of her track feats after that were wiped out due to her using steroids. However, Jones had one last athletic triumph as, at 34 years old, she joined the WNBA after not having played organized basketball in 13 years. She played just two seasons as a backup but got to end her professional career on a high note.

Sport: Horse racing

Career: 22 seasons (1981-1999, 2002-04)

Accomplishments: Only female jockey to win a Triple Crown race, one-time Belmont Stakes winner, first female jockey to win the Breeders Cup

Athletic ability: 50

Success/championships: 85

Impact on sport: 90

Impact beyond sport: 60

Intangibles: 90

GOAT rating: 75

While horses may be better athletes than the jockeys that ride them, it is not easy to control a racehorse that can weigh over 1,000 pounds. It takes great core strength, and Julie Krone showed that she could compete with the best male jockeys in the world. She totaled 3,704 wins during her Hall of Fame career and remains the only female jockey to win a Triple Crown race when she rode Colonial Affair to a Belmont Stakes victory in 1993. 

She retired in 1999 and became a TV horseracing analyst but came out of retirement a few years later, which proved to be a good decision, as she would then become the first female Breeders’ Cup winner in 2003.