Was 2015 the greatest sports year ever? – Washington Post

American Pharoah, ridden by Victor Espinoza, wins the Breeders’ Cup Classic. (Dylan Buell/Getty Images)

American Pharoah winning horse racing’s first-ever “Grand Slam”

Sure, many horse racing fans scoff at this notion, which seemed like a way for NBC to gin up interest in its telecast of the Breeders’ Cup. But at the same time, horse racing fans were thrilled that American Pharoah was even at the event, and when he won its signature race, he capped an unprecedented season.

[The Washington Post Sports Figure of the Year is American Pharoah]

American Pharoah had, of course, won the Triple Crown in the spring, and given that no horse had done that since 1978, that would have been enough to merit prominent mention in any end-of-year list. His owner, Ahmed Zayat, could have immediately sent the horse into retirement and no one would have batted an eye, but he gave fans what they wanted and allowed American Pharoah to finish out the season.

The horse even lost a race, in August’s Travers Stakes, but he took on many of his sport’s best in October’s Breeders’ Cup Classic and not only won, but set a track record while he was at it. That race didn’t exist the last time we had a Triple Crown, but horses have had over 30 years to pull off the Slam and it didn’t happen until this year. That counts for plenty, and it will be interesting to see how many years pass until it is repeated.

Serena Williams’s near-Slam

She came soooooo close. After winning the year’s first three majors, Williams arrived at Flushing Meadow ready to overcome all sorts of pressure, as well as a host of highly motivated opponents, but she succumbed in the semifinals to a relative unknown, Italy’s Roberta Vinci. The year-long dominance — the loss to Vinci was only the third Williams suffered — was enough to get her Sports Illustrated’s coveted “Sportsperson of the Year” award (one that many felt should have gone to American Pharoah).

Oh, and if that wasn’t enough greatness on display in tennis, Novak Djokovic had quite possibly a better year than Williams did. He also won three Grand Slam events and, unlike his female counterpart, got to the final of the other, the French Open.

Jordan Spieth’s near-Slam

At just 21, he won the year’s first two majors, the Masters (tying the the 72-hole record set by Tiger Woods in 1997) and the U.S. Open (becoming the youngest winner of that event since Bobby Jones in 1923), making him just the sixth player to ever win those events back-to-back. Spieth went on to miss a three-way playoff at the British Open by just one stroke, and he came in second, by three strokes, to Jason Day at the PGA Championship.

2015 may also go down as the year Woods’s phenomenal career ended, but it will certainly be remembered for Spieth’s precocious skill and calm under enormous pressure.

USWNT winning the World Cup

The team hadn’t done that since 1999, and it was able to provide an epic send-off for Abby Wambach, the greatest international goal-scorer ever among men or women. The victory in the final, 5-2 over Japan, featured Carli Lloyd’s remarkable hat trick, the fastest from the start of any game in World Cup history.

Kyle Busch win his first Sprint Cup championship

One day before the Sprint Cup opener, Busch broke both his feet in a collision during an Xfinity Series race at Daytona. He was widely regarded as the most talented active driver never to win the top circuit’s title, and it certainly didn’t appear that his breakthrough would come in 2015.

But when Busch returned after missing the first 11 races, he got a medical waiver from NASCAR, one that was contingent on performing well in upcoming events. He met that bar and then some, making it into the four-man group that would contend for the championship during the season-ending race at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Busch then held off not only Kevin Harvick, the defending champion, but Jeff Gordon, who was seeking to end his legendary career with a triumph that would have been amazing in its own right.

Ronda Rousey’s ascent, then defeat by Holly Holm

Rousey became the face of the UFC, a near-mythical figure who dispatched her opponents in mere seconds. But the myth, not to mention the person embodying it, took a beating from Holm in November. That loss may pose a problem for Rousey’s burgeoning film career, but it was a great sports moment, as it both proved that women’s MMA wasn’t just a vehicle for Rousey’s dominance and set up a fascinating rematch in 2016, one in which the previously undefeated fighter must overcome both physical and psychological wounds.

The Mayweather-Pacquiao fight

Okay, the fight itself was a dud, but the build-up to it was astonishing, and the event was the biggest boxing had seen in years, or likely will for years to come. 2015 also saw the end, we presume, of Mayweather’s career, and for all his unlikable characteristics, both in the ring and out, he made history with a 49-0 record and may go down as one of the best ever in his sport.

How’s that for some highlights? And we haven’t even gotten to the major team sports. The biggest takeaways there include:

• NFL: The Patriots authored arguably the most memorable play in Super Bowl history (Malcolm Butler’s goal-line interception), one that cemented their status as the greatest dynasty in league history. This while the squad, particularly quarterback Tom Brady, was mired in what would become the most dominant ongoing offseason story, DeflateGate.
• NHL: The Blackhawks sealed their own status as a dynastic group with their third Stanley Cup in six seasons, becoming the first team to do so since the league enacted a hard salary cap in 2004.
• NBA: The Warriors capped a season of captivating play by defeating LeBron James’s Cavaliers for their first title in 40 years, while Stephen Curry won the MVP award and was widely acclaimed as the greatest shooter the league had ever seen. Golden State merely followed that up with the greatest start to a season in NBA history.
• MLB: The Royals came back from a 2014 World Series loss to win their first championship in 30 years, thanks to a string of late-game rallies. Meanwhile, the Mets got to the Series thanks to the unveiling of what may one day be looked back upon as the greatest young rotation ever.
• College football: The first-ever College Football Playoff produced a surprising champion in Ohio State, which used a quarterback, Cardale Jones, who had been its third-stringer in the preseason to defeat the top two seeds, Alabama and Oregon.
• College basketball: Kentucky took a perfect 38-0 record into the Final Four, where its dream of an undefeated season ended at the hands of Wisconsin, which the Wildcats had beaten in the 2014 Final Four. The Badgers went on to lose to to Duke, which won a fifth NCAA title for Coach Mike Krzyzewski, who earlier in the year had become the first men’s coach to win 1,000 Division I games.

How is 2016 going to top all that? Or any previous year, for that matter?

For instance, if we just want to go by years in which a horse won a Triple Crown, we have 11: 1919, 1930, 1935, 1937, 1941, 1943, 1946, 1948, 1973, 1977, 1978. Of those, two years stand out, but neither appears to match 2015.

1930

• First-ever World Cup is hosted and won by Uruguay
• Bobby Jones win’s golf’s only calendar-year Grand Slam
• Knute Rockne wins the third of his national titles with Notre Dame before dying in a plane crash the next year
• Athletics win the last of their five World Series in Philadelphia

1973

• Secretariat’s greatness, even among Triple Crown winners
• Dolphins complete the NFL’s only undefeated season
• O.J. Simpson becomes the first NFL player to rush for over 2,000 yards
• A’s beat the “Ya Gotta Believe!” Mets in a seven-game World Series
• Johnny Miller shoots a record-setting 63 in the final round to win the U.S. Open
• Margaret Court wins the final three of her record 24 Grand Slam singles titles
• George Foreman knocks out Joe Frazier in two rounds to win the heavyweight title

As for non-Triple Crown years, one that immediately comes to mind is 1980, because it featured arguably the greatest single moment in U.S. sports history — the “Miracle on Ice” win over the U.S.S.R. in the Olympics. Other noteworthy sports events that year, which might have locked up this debate if the U.S. had not boycotted the Summer Games, included:

• The Steelers capping their dynasty by winning their fourth Super Bowl in six years
• Rookie point guard Magic Johnson starting at center for injured Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (the league MVP) and leading the Lakers to an NBA title-clinching win over Julius Erving’s 76ers
• Paul “Bear” Bryant winning the last of his sixth national championships
• The Phillies winning the first World Series in their then-97-year history
• Sugar Ray Leonard defeating Roberto “No Más” Duran for the WBC welterweight title
• Jack Nicklaus coming back from a disastrous (for him) 1979 to win the U.S. Open and PGA Championship in record fashion
• The Islanders winning the first of their four straight Stanley Cups
• Bjorn Borg winning his fifth straight Wimbledon title in an epic, five-set match against John McEnroe; that also marked the third straight year Borg won both Wimbledon and the French Open
• Chris Evert winning the French Open and U.S. Open
• Dale Earnhardt following up a Rookie of the Year campaign on the Winston Cup circuit by winning the first of his seven championships

That decade brings us another strong candidate. Here are just some of the highlights of 1986:

• Jack Nicklaus shoots 30 on the back nine of the final round of the Masters, becoming the oldest winner of that event in his 18th and final major victory
• The Mets storm back in the 10th inning of Game 6 (cough, cough, Bill Buckner, cough) of the World Series before winning the championship in Game 7
• The Bears complete an 18-1 season with a 46-10 win over the Patriots in the Super Bowl
• Debi Thomas becomes the first African American figure skater to win the U.S. and world championships
• Diego Maradona leads Argentina to the World Cup
• Greg LeMond becomes the first American to win the Tour de France
• Mike Tyson becomes the youngest heavyweight champion at age 20
• 20-year-old Patrick Roy leads the Canadiens to the Stanley Cup
• Wayne Gretzky sets an NHL single-season record for points with 215, including a ludicrous 163 assists
• 54-year-old Willie Shoemaker, aboard Ferdinand, becomes the oldest jockey to win the Kentucky Derby
• Pat Bradley wins three of the four LPGA major championships
• Michael Jordan scores an NBA-record 63 points in a playoff game against the Celtics
• The Rockets get to the NBA Finals, past the heavily favored Lakers, on the strength of a “miraculous shot” by Ralph Sampson with one second left in the deciding game

Hmm, that is some pretty stiff competition. So, what do you think, does 2015 top them all? What happened this past year that wasn’t mentioned here?

Of course, readers may well have very different choices for the greatest year in sports. Let us know in the comments.