What Are the Most Untouchable Records in Sports?
I ran across this post on Threads the other day: “What’s the hardest record in sports history to ever break?” A sampling of the replies:
- “Bill Russell’s 11 NBA championships including 8 in a row.”
- “Lionel Messi scored 91 goals in the 2012 calendar year.”
- “Cy Young 749 complete games.”
- “Fernando Tatis (Sr) - 2 Grand Slams in the same inning. Most of the others mentioned here are highly improbable, but there’s no way anyone ever hits 3 slams in one inning.”
- “Lionel Messi’s 8 Ballon d’or”
- “Sir Donald Bradman’s batting average in Test cricket. His 99.94.”
- “Russian wrestler Aleksandr Karelin. Undefeated for 13 years. 887 wins and 2 losses, both by single point.”
Last year, The Athletic offered a list of their own, which included Wayne Gretzky’s 1,963 career assists, the furthest goal in soccer (96.01 meters), Michael Phelps’ 23 Olympic golds, and Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point game.
Poking around the internet a bit, there’s also FloJo’s 100m record, UConn women’s basketball team’s 111 wins in a row, Cal Ripken’s consecutive game streak, and Simone Biles’ 30 world championship medals.
Any additions to the list?
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Hard to imagine John Stockton's records for career steals or assists being broken.
As long as they keep playing, nobody is ever going to "beat" the Philadelphia Phillies for losingest sports franchise - they've lost over 11,000 games and counting.
From the world of tennis: Roger Federer’s 237 consecutive weeks as Number 1 (followed by Jimmy Connors with 160). Steffi Graf’s 377 total weeks as Number 1 (followed by Martina Navratilova with 332). (Plus Steffi Graf’s Calendar Golden Grand Slam, as mentioned in the Atlantic).
Wayne Gretzky - 50 goals in 39 games in 1981-82; next best is 50 goals in 50 games (several players, including Gretzky).
Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game consecutive hitting streak in 1941 seems untouchable. It’s a whole different game now.
I'm going with Johnny Vander Meer's back to back no-hitters. Someone's going to have to throw 3 straight no-hitters to beat this one... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Vander_Meer
Baseball is unlikely to produce a pitcher with the longevity to match Nolan Ryan's many records. His career strikeout and no-hitter records are incredible, but his career walks record (while not traditionally impressive) is kinda bonkers: more than 50% higher than second place.
The record for number of no-hitters pitched while tripping on LSD seems likely to stand.
I thought that surely that link was going to the Spaceman. :)
wait wut dock ellis is NOT the spaceman?!?!? LOL. I'm not a fan of LSD, mushrooms etc but wowser and it works for many folks so ignore me :-). All I can say is TIL and go Dock go. RIP Dock!
The Guinness Book of World Records claims that Jarmila Kratochvílová's 1983 world record in the 800 meters is currently the longest-standing individual world record in athletics (not sure what metric they are using here, but still pretty cool).
There are two athletes edging closer to breaking that record right now https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2026/jun/28/audrey-werro-edges-closer-womens-800m-world-record-paris-diamond-league-athletics
It's widely acknowledged that the two current fastest women's 800m times are the result of state-sponsored doping programs, so it's no wonder they've stood for so long. But hopefully they're about to get knocked off top spot!
You don't want to convict of a person of "pharmaceutical enhancement" solely based solely on physical appearance, but....I mean....
https://www.alamy.com/jarmila-kratochvilova-cze-competing-in-the-1983-world-athletics-championships-image61927753.html
Old Hoss Radbourn's 60 wins in a season: https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/r/radboch01.shtml
Though baseball in the 1880s was a very different game, so:
Bob Gibson's 1.12 ERA from 1968.
One scoring record Wayne Gretzky could lose before the rest…
Wayne and Brent Gretzky hold the NHL record for most combined points by two brothers, with Wayne scoring 2,857 points and Brent scoring 4 points. 😅
Ha ha!!
Also Cy Young’s 511 wins. With the way the game has changed, I assume there will never be another 300-win pitcher in baseball.
I would add Mikaela Shiffrin. 110 wins, 168 podiums and still going: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikaela_Shiffrin. Next best is Ingemar Stenmark 86 wins, 155 podiums. Every course different.
Kelly Slater’s 11 world championships in surfing.
I like the answers where it really is likely impossible to beat a record because the nature of the game/sport changed.
The one that occurred to me is not that!
"Cal Ripken holds the record for consecutive games played (2,632), having surpassed Lou Gehrig's streak of 2,130 which had stood for 56 years and which many deemed was unbreakable." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cal_Ripken_Jr.
In 20 years the guy never had a poorly timed flu?
Women's Tennis offers some impressive and long-standing records. Court, Graf and Navratilova still retain a number of records despite the brilliance of Serena Williams, another legend of the sport with her own set of records, many which it's hard to imagine ever being broken. Federer, Nadal and Djokovic between them and individually, hold all manner of insane records. But Sinner and Alcarez may challenge a few of them. Have you seen comparisons of grand slam wins at Alcarez's age? Head and shoulders above any other player for his run rate. F1 has Hamilton and Schumacher - whether you think Lewis is 7 or 8x world champion, that feels pretty unassailable with only Verstappen with the talent to challenge it right now. Max feels alienated by the Liberty Media circus and politics, so who knows if he'll stay long enough.
Also of note, as a Montrealer I had to bring it up, Henri Richard (the Pocket Rocket and brother of legend Maurice Richard) won 11 Stanley Cups.
Rickey Henderson's career steal record (and maybe his single season record, too). Lou Brock was one of the best that ever played is in second with just a bit over two-thirds as many as Rickey.
Edwin Moses won 122 consecutive races in the 400 m hurdles over nearly a decade. I don't know enough about track and field to say how unlikely it is that it will be beaten, but ... wow
DiMaggio's 56 game hitting streak.
Tadej Pogačar may end up with something to add to the conversation. Hard to see him NOT becoming the greatest cyclist of all time. Beating the all time record up the Alpe de Huez by over a MINUTE is almost unthinkable. He's so far and ahead of everyone else in an incredibly physically demanding sport year over year that he's absolutely in the mix as the most dominant athlete across any sport.
There was a guy who won not just five, but SEVEN!!! Tours de France. Surely an unbreakable record and oh wait...what's that?
Oh.
The thing about Pog is his dominance over his peers. The Alpe d’Huez record is impressive, but equipment changes have so much to do with that kind of stuff that I don’t want to attribute to much to any one rider’s ability based on that kind of metric. What’s wild is that his biggest rivals are completely different sets and types of riders in different disciplines, but there Tadej is competing with and beating Jonas in grand tours and MVDP and Wout in monuments. It’s incredible. That said, when was the last time you looked at Eddy Merckx’s palmares? He won A LOT. The thing going in Tadej’s favor is Eddy’s last big wins were around age 30. Tadej’s 3 years away from 30, and given modern nutrition and training is likely to be able to keep riding at a high level a lot longer than Merckx did.
Christine Sinclair's world record 190 international goals scored playing for Canada's women's national soccer team. More than any other player, male or female.
I'd really love to see more women's records on this list.
Gotta give a shout out to Takeru Kobayashi for doubling the record (50 vs. the previous 25) at his first Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest. It was surprisingly short-lived, but worth mentioning, IMO, because it changed the game (for better or worse, depending on your thoughts on Competitive Eating).
Gregg Popovich's 1412 NBA wins seems like it'll stand for a long time.
The closest semi-active Coach is Doc Rivers (64) who is 217 wins behind him and indicated he's done coaching.
The next is Rick Carlisle (66) 400 wins back, to catch Pop in a realistic time frame (10ish years) he'd need to pull off a better run than he did when he had Dirk in Dallas, not impossible but highly unlikely.
And remaining active coach in the top 20 is Erick Spoelstra (55) 582 wins backs. He would have the most realistic chance due to his age and the culture in Miami, but he'd need to continue to coach and win at his current pace for the next 12-15 years to accomplish it.
After that, I'm not how many more long serving NBA coaches will even get a chance to touch that. You look at guys like Steve Kerr who been at the helm of one the greatest dynasties for 12+ years and he's "only" at 600 wins and I don't see him sticking around for long after Curry leaves. How many more of those will we see?
Not a world record but since we're talking about sports, I'd like to mention that the New York Knicks are NBA CHAMPIONS!! 😁
Rob Fahey held the Real Tennis world champion title for over 20 years from 1994 to 2016, defending it 11 times.
This is the first world championship in any sport. Clergé, The Elder was the first champ back in 1740.
How is it possible that nobody mentioned Nadal’s 14 French Open titles
or 87 consecutive matches on clay?
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