Amazing Sporting Firsts of the Last 200 Years

Sports are many things to many people. It’s thrilling, edge-of-the-seat entertainment. It’s an emotional outlet. It’s a way of bonding with the people we love. Most of all, it’s a never-ending series of inspiring achievements. In sporting history, many of its most compelling moments have come when a person or team achieves something for the first time. Here are some of the most extraordinary firsts to inspire us all.

 First to Eight

The U.S. swimmer Michael Phelps is the most decorated Olympian athlete of all time. He has 23 gold medals in addition to three silver and two bronze. His World Championship record is equally impressive and he still holds the fastest time ever achieved over 400 meters as well as 20 separate Guinness World Records.

Phelps’ most notable achievement came in the 2008 Beijing Olympics when he became the first person in history to win eight gold medals at the same games. The previous record of seven had been set by Mark Spitz at the Munich Games in 1972. At the time of writing, no other swimmer has matched either man.

First Under 10

At the start of 2023, the fastest a human has ever run 100 meters is 9.58 seconds. That time was set by Usain Bolt in 2009, more than 13 years ago. Before then, the combined efforts of every sprinter and coach in the world managed to shave just half a second from the record in over 40 years. 

As you can imagine, the first time an athlete broke the 10-second barrier was quite a moment. The person responsible was the American sprinter Jim Hines on October 14, 1968. At the Mexico City Olympics, Hines ran 9.95 seconds to win his only individual gold medal. He helped Team USA win the 4 x 100-meter gold the same year.

First to 1,000

There is often some debate over soccer statistics due to the different methodologies used and the varying reliability of records from each region and era of the 150-year-old sport. One fact that is generally agreed upon, however, is that Brazilian legend Pelé was the first player to score 1,000 goals in his career.

Pelé, who sadly died on December 29, 2022, accomplished this feat in November 1969 when he scored a penalty kick for Santos against Vasco da Gama in Rio. According to his own Instagram, Pelé is soccer’s top scorer of all time with 1,283 career goals. To put that into context, the highest scorer of the modern era is Cristiano Ronaldo with 827.

First-Time Winners

When the Soviet Union men’s ice hockey team arrived in America for the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, they were feeling pretty confident. The Soviet Union team had won five of the last six Olympic competitions and had never finished outside the medals. Their team roster was filled with experienced, professional, and highly decorated players.

By contrast, the U.S. team was comprised entirely of amateur players, several of whom were playing at the Olympics for the first time in their lives. When the two teams met in the final round, the Soviet Union expected a walkover. In what became known as the “Miracle on Ice”, the United States somehow claimed gold.

First to Eleven

Between 1956 and 1969, center Bill Russell played 13 NBA seasons for the Boston Celtics. During Russell’s tenure, the Celtics won the championship every year except 1958 and 1967 and Russell became the first player to reach 11 career championships, almost doubling the previous record of six. To this day, no player has equaled this.

This period of domination was the first in the history of the Boston Celtics. The club has since won six more championships, making them equal first in the all-time rankings, but they have never enjoyed a sustained period of success like they did with Russell. Incidentally, the NBA’s next seven most successful players were all Celtics teammates.

First Beyond the Tape

"You have destroyed this event", the defending Olympic champion Lynn Davies said to Bob Beamon after his 1968 long jump in Mexico City. Moments earlier, Beamon had jumped so far that he landed beyond the limit of the standard optical measuring equipment installed by the event organizers. It took Olympic officials 15 minutes to measure and confirm Beamon’s distance manually.

Eventually, an official distance of 8.90 meters was announced. Beamon wasn't used to metric measurements and it wasn’t until his coach converted it to 29 feet 2 1⁄4 inches that the athlete understood the scale of his achievement. He’d smashed the previous record by almost two feet. Only one person has ever jumped further, but we’ll come to that in a moment.

First to Beat Bob

When Bob Beamon rewrote the rules of what was considered possible in the long jump he set a record that, it seemed, nobody could ever beat. Before Beamon, the record had been beaten 17 times, usually by Ralph Boston extending his own PB. After Beamon, the record went untouched for almost 23 years.

In the end, it was another American, Mike Powell, who took Bob Beamon’s previously unsurpassable record. Powell jumped 8.95 meters, or 29 feet 4 inches, at the Tokyo World Championship on August 30, 1991, more than 31 years ago. The closest anyone has come since is Tajay Gayle, an American jumper, with 8.69 meters in 1996.

First to a 50 Streak

There are a number of ways for a batter to make first base in the NBA. They can get there by a walk, an error, or as a hit batsman. Doing it from a hit is better than all these. This means the batsman must first strike the pitch before making his way to the base without being tagged out.

When a batsman achieves hits in consecutive games, this becomes their hit streak. A Major League streak of over 30 is considered something special. Only six players have ever achieved a hit streak of over 40. Of those, only one has ever broken the half-century. In 1941, while playing for the New York Yankees, the legendary Joe DiMaggio hit an unrivaled 56 in one season.

First Champions League Coaching Hat-Trick

By the time Zinedine Zidane became the Real Madrid soccer team manager, he was already one of the most highly decorated figures in the sport. As a manager, however, he has achieved the unimaginable. Under Zidane’s leadership, since 2017, Real Madrid has won La Liga, the Supercopa de España, the UEFA Super Cup, and the FIFA Club World Cup two times each.

It is in Europe’s premier club competition, the UEFA Champions League, that Zidane and Real Madrid have truly achieved the impossible. After taking victory for the first time in 2016, Zidane returned in 2017 to do it again. One year later, he made it the hat-trick and became the first manager ever to win the prestigious event three times in a row.

First Teenage Wimbledon Winner

Boris Becker was 16 years old when he first entered the most iconic tennis competition in the world. That year, he made the third round before losing out to the American William Scanlon. The next year, Becker returned in a whirl of hype after shocking the world with a victory by winning the Queen's Club warm-up tournament in June 1985.

Three weeks later, at just 17 years and 228 days old, the German became the first teenager to ever win the Wimbledon Grand Slam after beating the number eight seed Kevin Curren three sets to one. To date, Maria Sharapova is the only player of either sex to replicate this feat by winning the 2004 tournament at the age of 17 years and 75 days.

First Over 2,500

In terms of games per year, Major League Baseball is one of the most intensive elite sports in the world. Since 1998, a normal season has included 162 games for every team. The shortest undisrupted season since 1900 was 140 games per team. Even with that in mind, what Cal Ripken Junior achieved was truly incredible.

On September 19, 1998, Ripken played the last of 2,632 consecutive MLB games, a streak he began on May 30, 1982. The previous record had been 2,130 by Lou Gehrig in the 1920s and 1930s. No other player has played more than 1,500 games, or even close. Only Miguel Tejada has passed the 1,000-game barrier in the 21st century.

First Black Heavyweight

The first boxing heavyweight champion was crowned on August 29, 1885, when the white boxer John L. Sullivan defeated Dominick McCaffrey. For the next 23 years, the sport’s most prestigious title was held by a series of six successive white boxers. When Jack Johnson stepped into the ring to face the reigning champion Tommy Burns, he made history.

After years of trying, Johnson finally found a white heavyweight champion willing to fight him in 1908. The fight took place on December 26, aptly named Boxing Day in Commonwealth countries. In Sydney, Australia, Johnson defeated Burns by TKO to become the first black heavyweight world champion in the history of boxing.

First Under Four

The record for running a mile is a difficult one for sporting statisticians to keep track of because the equivalent track distance included in most competitions is 1,500 meters, while a mile actually measures 1,609.34 meters. The first athlete to run 1,500 meters in under four minutes was the Englishman Harold Wilson in 1908.

The story behind the first four-minute mile, on the other hand, is the stuff of legends. On May 6, 1954, British runner Roger Bannister achieved the impossible by running all 1,609.34 meters in under four minutes at Oxford University’s Iffley Road track. 3,000 people watched that day. Two months later, he repeated the feat at the Commonwealth Games in Vancouver.

First Over the Color Line

The relationship between racial segregation and baseball has been a complicated one over the last 150 years. While the 19th-century leagues were almost exclusively white, three black players did take the diamond before 1884. Officials drew what is known as the “color line” in 1884 when they excluded Fleetwood Walker from playing in the major leagues.

On April 15, 1947, Jackie Robinson became the first player in almost 63 years to break the color line when he started at first base for the Brooklyn Dodgers on Opening Day. Four more black players followed in Robinson’s footsteps that season but it took until 1959 before the Boston Red Sox became the last MLB team to break the color line.

First Triple Crown

In U.S. thoroughbred horse racing, three races are considered the most important of the season; the Belmont Stakes, which was inaugurated in 1867, the Preakness Stakes, which started in 1873, and the Kentucky Derby, which began in 1875. Together, they have become known as the Triple Crown and, in nearly 150 years, only 13 horses have won all three in a single year.

It took more than 40 years after the races were established for the first Triple Crown winner to emerge. Trained by H. Guy Bedwell and ridden by jockey Johnny Loftus, a chestnut stallion from Kentucky named Sir Barton was the first horse to achieve what is now considered to be the highest honor in American racing. 

First African-American Double

When it comes to racial diversity among its competitors, tennis isn’t exactly a beacon of progression. Before the Williams sisters, the winners of all four Grand Slam tournaments - Australian, French, Wimbledon (British), and the U.S. - were an exclusively white club nearly every year. To this day, only two black players have ever won a men’s Grand Slam.

Things haven’t been much better on the female side. Althea Gibson was the first to break the ceiling when she won the French Open in 1956. She followed this with double victories at Wimbledon and the U.S. Open in 1957 and 1958. No other African-American player achieved the same result until Venus Williams did the double over Lindsay Davenport in 2000.

First Black Heisman Winner

The NFL isn’t the only football competition to be considered important in the U.S. Unlike other student sports around the world, college football attracts huge crowds and is often at the center of local communities. The Heisman Trophy is the award that has been given to the most outstanding player in college football each year since its inception in 1935.

For 25 years, every winner of the prestigious trophy was white. In 1961, while playing for Syracuse University, Ernie Davis broke new ground when he was named the first black winner of the Heisman Trophy. He was the first pick in the 1962 draft but sadly died of leukemia before he could play an NFL game.

First Sportswoman of the Year

It’s no overstatement to say Billie Jean King changed women’s tennis. In 1970, cash prizes for male players were 12 times those offered to females. King, who already had five Grand Slam titles under her belt, was instrumental in changing that. She helped create the 1970 Virginia Slims Invitation which was held for women only in protest of the pay gap.

The following year, King won the U.S. Open. Then in 1972, she became the first woman named by Sports Illustrated as Sportswoman of the Year after winning the French Open, the U.S. Open, and Wimbledon. In 1973, King went on to beat male player Bobby Riggs in the “Battle of the Sexes” and formed the Women's Tennis Association.

First African-American Coach

In 1934, NFL team owners made the collective decision to segregate the sport and ban black players from competing. Up to that point, only one African-American, Fritz Pollard, had been employed as a head coach. Although black players began returning to the gridiron in 1946, it took another 53 years before another African-American head coach was appointed.

In 1989, the Oakland / Los Angeles Raiders appointed their former offensive lineman, Art Shell, as head coach. He was the first African-American to assume such a position in the modern era. The following year, he won AFC Coach of the Year after taking the Raiders to their first Championship Game in seven years. Shell remained the Raiders' head coach until 1994.

First Female Points Kicker

It might surprise you to learn that college football is not officially a male-only sport. Being such a physical game, however, it's perhaps understandable that not many women choose to, or are chosen to, join the almost exclusively male teams. In fact, in the entire history of the NCAA Division One, only two women have even scored points on the gridiron.

When Jacksonville State Gamecocks coach Jack Crowe needed a placekicker in 2001, he turned to the college’s soccer team and noticed Ashley Martin. On August 30, Martin became the first-ever female to score points in a Division One game when she completed an extra point kick in the first quarter. Jacksonville won the game 72-10 with Martin scoring three in total.

First Under 10.5

Though there is some controversy regarding whether the trackside anemometer was functioning correctly on the day, the United States’ Florence Griffith-Joyner achieved the incredible when she took the women’s 100-meter record with a run of 10.49 seconds in Indianapolis on July 16, 1988. 35 years later, that record still stands, though one sprinter has come close.

Before Griffith-Joyner set her landmark time, the record had stood at 10.76 seconds set by Evelyn Ashford in 1984. Since the new record, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce has run the distance in 10.75 seconds at the London 2012 Olympics. Then, in 2021, the Jamaican sprinter Elaine Thompson-Herah ran 100 meters in 10.61 seconds in July and 10.54 seconds in August.

First 13-Year-Old Gold

The recent Tokyo Olympic Games in 2020 saw skateboarding events included for the first time. Two competitors hit the headlines after reaching the podium while just 12 and 13 years old. Long before Kokona Hiraki and Sky Brown earned their silver medals, however, one child star took home gold at the tender age of 13 years and 268 days.

It was at the controversial 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin that Marjorie Gestring from the U.S. leaped into the diving pool from the 3-meter springboard and took the judges’ breath away. Between 1930 and 1940, Gestring won gold at the US Nationals for three consecutive years but, thanks to WWII, was never given another chance to compete at an Olympics.

First 200 Medals

At the third modern Olympic Games in 1904, the home nation achieved something so incredible that it hasn’t been beaten in more than a century. That year’s games were held in St. Louis, Missouri, and Team USA racked up an awesome tally of 231 medals from the 280 handed out. This included 76 gold, 78 silver, and 77 bronze.

Two background pieces of information are needed to put this accomplishment into context. The first is that 1904’s games had more medals available than at the previous two competitions. 122 were handed out in 1896 and 252 in 1900. The second is the most recent Olympics in 2020 had an incredible 1080 medals up for grabs, but no one country earned more than 113.

First Over 11 hours

Unlike football, basketball, or hockey, the length of a tennis match is not predetermined. When two players take to the court, they do not know how long they will be there. They must keep playing until somebody has won. On average, a three-set game should last about 90 minutes while a five-set game should take a little under three hours.

Sometimes, things take a little longer. Occasionally, a lot longer. 14 professional matches have clocked in at more than six hours. One game eclipsed them all. On June 22, 2010, John Isner and Nicolas Mahut took the court at Wimbledon for their first-round game. It ended on June 24 with an official playing time of 11 hours and five minutes.

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First 200 Wins

When it comes to NASCAR, the achievements of one man have outweighed those of every other by so much it seems unlikely he will ever be beaten. On July 4, 1984, Richard Petty raced past the checkered flag to seal his 200th, and final, officially recognized victory. It came 24 years after his first win in 1960.

Petty wasn’t only the first man to reach 200 victories, he is the only one to ever get anywhere near that amount. Next on the chart is David Pearson, who won 105 races before retiring in 1986. At the time of writing, the highest number of wins by a still-racing driver is 83 by Jimmie Johnson, who is 47.

First Undefeated Heavyweight

Becoming an undisputed champion is obviously the main goal of any boxer. Completing an entire career undefeated, however, is really special. On April 27, 1956, Rocky Marciano retired from boxing aged 32. He’d won every single one of his 49 fights. He was the first person of any weight category to complete his entire career with no losses and no draws.

To date, Marciano is still the only heavyweight boxer ever to retire undefeated. The nearest men to his record have been Ricardo López, Joe Calzaghe, and Floyd Mayweather Jr. but none fought as heavyweights. The best female record so far belongs to the super middleweight and light heavyweight Laila Ali who retired with 24 wins, no draws, and no losses.

First Over 20,000 Yards

Football, the American variety, is a game built on statistics, and some stand out more than others. Jerry Rice is considered by many to be the greatest wide receiver ever to step onto the gridiron. His resume shows three Super Bowl wins and one Super Bowl MVP alongside 21 currently standing NFL records including most career receptions (1,549) and most career touchdown receptions (197).

Perhaps Rice’s most impressive NFL record is for most career receiving yards. In 332 games over 20 seasons, Rice achieved a phenomenal 22,895 receiving yards. The next best all-time receiver is Larry Fitzgerald who made 17,492 yards for the Arizona Cardinals between 2004 and 2020. The closest still active receiver is the 34-year-old Julio Jones with a little over 13,600.

First (Eventual) Win

Not every first is a sign of extraordinary achievement, sometimes it's just about getting out of a rut. Tampa Bay Buccaneers joined the NFL in 1976 and proceeded to lose all 14 games of their debut season. 1977 didn’t go much better. The Buccaneers lost the first game of their second season on September 18 and were still searching for a win after December 4.

Eventually, after 26 games, Tampa recorded the first victory of their existence on December 11 with a 33–14 over New Orleans Saints. In response, the Saints immediately sacked their coach. The Buccaneers' record of 26 defeats still stands as the longest losing streak in NFL history. Second are the Detroit Lions with 19 straight losses between 2007 and 2009.

First Six in a Row

Every Grand Slam is a huge event but Wimbledon is the most prestigious tournament in tennis. To win Wimbledon once is a huge achievement for any player. To win it two or three times in a row is almost unheard of. Since the Open Era began in 1968, only four male and two female players have accomplished the magic three-in-a-row at Wimbledon.

Imagine how incredible it would be if someone was to win six Wimbledon titles in a row. That’s what Martina Navratilova did between 1982 and 1987. She also reached the final in 1988 but lost out to Steffi Graf on that occasion. Five is the most consecutive wins by any male player, achieved by both Björn Borg and Roger Federer. 

First 15,000 Assists

In any team sport, it’s the players who put points on the board who get the most attention. Even so, if every player on the basketball court is trying to be LeBron James then the team falls apart pretty quickly. Sometimes you have to give credit to the guys making the assists. Guys like John Stockton, for example.

Over 1,504 games between 1984 and 2003, Stockton averaged 10.5 assists per game and achieved an extraordinary total of 15,806 assists for the Utah Jazz. The next-best assist player in NBA history is Jason Kidd with 12,091. Of the NBA’s still-active players, Chris Paul has around 11,500 and LeBron James a little over 10,000.

First to 10 Stanley Cups

The biggest prize in the NHL is the Stanley Cup, a best-of-seven final series between the season's two conference champions. Most hockey players never receive a single Stanley Cup winner's ring in their career, only a handful retire with more. Since the NHL began, only 50 players have won the Stanley Cup five or more times.

At the top of this list are Henri Richard and Jean Béliveau, two men who played together for the Montreal Canadiens between 1959 and 1971 and jointly became the first people in history to be presented with 10 Stanley Cup rings. Béliveau retired after 1971 but Richard stayed on to achieve an incredible 11th win two years later.

First Hat-Trick

To clarify this achievement, Bill Mosienko was not the first hockey player ever to score a hat-trick. That honor went to Harry Hyland when he scored three goals in the very first NHL game between the Montreal Wanderers and the Toronto Arenas on December 18, 1917. As far as the game clock goes, however, Mosienko comes before anyone else.

On March 23, 1952, Mosienko scored three times for the Chicago Black Hawks against the New York Rangers in just 21 seconds. Gus Bodnar assisted all three becoming the simultaneous record holder of the fastest assist hat trick. Mosienko’s goals helped Chicago to win that game but couldn’t keep them from finishing bottom that season.

First Invincibles

Since the very first season began in 1888, the English football league has, arguably, been the greatest league in the world. 12 teams took part in that first season and Preston North End completed all 22 games plus five FA Cup matches undefeated. More than 130 years later, they are still referred to in England as “The Invincibles”.

Only one other English team has ever replicated this achievement but in a much bigger league. London club Arsenal finished the 2003-2004 season with a record of 26 wins, 12 draws, and zero defeats. Sadly for the “Gunners”, they missed out on the FA Cup after a semi-final defeat to Manchester United.

First Over 15 World Cup Goals

For the last decade, two names have dominated all talk of records and achievements in soccer. Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi are, without a doubt, two of the greatest talents ever to play the “beautiful game”. When it comes to World Cup goals, however, they have both been eclipsed by one man.

Miroslav Klose of Germany is the most prolific World Cup goal scorer in history with 16 goals from 24 games over four tournaments. Klose has also scored more goals for Germany than any other player with 71, beating Gerd Müller by three. Klose’s two goals in 2014 helped Germany to their first world cup win in 24 years.

First Over 200 Points

Due to the way points are distributed across the different methods of scoring, Rugby Union statistics are skewed toward players with certain roles. While rugby does not have special teams in the way NFL does, kicking responsibilities do tend to fall to one player in each squad. Jonny Wilkinson of England and Gavin Hastings of Scotland were two such players.

Hastings made history when he became the first player to reach more than 200 World Cup points for his country during his third tournament in 1995. Four years later, Wilkinson took the field in his first of four World Cups. By his final competition in 2011, the Englishman had racked up 277 points, shattering his predecessor's record.

First Over 70 Homers

If there’s anything guaranteed to get the crowd on their feet at a baseball game, it’s a home run. Seeing the ball fly clean out of the diamond and the batsman rounding the bases is what every fan is waiting for when they take a seat in the stands. But, what’s the most anyone has ever hit in a single season?

Babe Ruth, perhaps the most famous batter in the history of MLB, was regularly the season’s top home run hitter. His best was 60 in 1927. Joe DiMaggio only reached 46. Only one man has hit more than 70, Barry Bonds reached 73 for the San Francisco Giants in 2001. Mark McGwire is second with 70 in 1998.

First 100 Shutouts

Scoring goals is one thing, preventing them is another. It takes a certain kind of person to be an NHL goalie. Even with all the padding, facing down a puck as it flies toward you at 100 miles per hour is a terrifying prospect. For a goalie, the best-case scenario in any game is a shutout - preventing any goals from being scored.

A shutout is a rare achievement and only 30 or so goalies have kept more than 50 shutouts in their careers. Two stand above them all. Terry Sawchuk was the first man to reach a hundred with 103 between 1949 and 1970. The all-time greatest, however, is Martin Brodeur who kept 125 between 1991 and 2015.

First 40-Year Record

At the time of writing, we’re actually 130 days from this milestone being reached, but it seems extremely unlikely anything will change between now and then. On July 26, 1983,  Jarmila Kratochvílová from the country then known as Czechoslovakia ran 800 meters in one minute 53.28 seconds. In almost 40 years, no female athlete has ever beaten that record.

No other athletics record has lasted as long. The next longest-standing record is the Soviet Union’s 4 x 800m record set on Aug 5, 1984. 40 years might just be the start for Kratochvílová’s record. Nadezhda Olizarenko, who set the second-best time of one minute 53.43 retired in 1992. The best time in 2022 was one minute 56.30.

First to 555

“It wasn't my plan to create such a record. All I did was put in the effort to win every match I played, and it went on for weeks, months and years.” Those were the words of Jahangir Khan, one of the world’s greatest sporting legends of all time. Khan’s sport was squash, and he went undefeated for 555 games.

Khan was 17 years old when he won his first World Open in 1981 and he didn’t lose again until, in his own words, “my defeat to Ross Norman in Toulouse in 1986.” During that time, Khan won four consecutive World Championships before returning for a fifth in 1988. After retirement, he became President of the World Squash Federation.

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