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From
Aaron-Williams By George Stahl
NEW YORK (AQB)--With the still-getting-ready-for-opening-night ESPN Zone restaurant as the backdrop, ESPN unveiled the remaining 19 athletes on its SportsCentury countdown of the century's 100 greatest North American athletes. The top 20 list features seven baseball players (counting Jim Thorpe), four basketball players and four track and field athletes. Football has only two representatives, one of which (Thorpe) last played more than 70 years ago. Five of the top 20's 13 living members - Jim Brown, Wayne Gretzky, Carl Lewis, Martina Navratilova and Bill Russell - attended the media conference announcing the list Tuesday morning. Russell's appearance was the biggest surprise because he is the only living athlete on the SportsCentury list not to have been interviewed. "It wasn't necessary to do an interview," the Hall of Fame Boston Celtic center said. "For the last 15 years, I haven't done any."
Russell said the only reason he was there was because his daughter convinced him to go. "She's my best friend," he explained. When someone remarked that he was surprised to see Russell at the media conference, Russell joked, "Well, I am too." Navratilova said she was not surprised that more women didn't make the top 20 because "women's sports is so young." But she thinks times are changing. "Next century, I think you're going to see much more equality. [Of] the next 20 best athletes of the 21st century, my bet would be that half of them would be women, or certainly a great percentage. Where Russell, Navratilova and the others eventually wind up in the top 20 is unknown because ESPN only unveiled the names, not the rankings. ESPN will announce the rankings on a weekly basis before the Friday night programs, hosted by Dan Patrick, which generally air at 10:30 p.m. The countdown will continue this week with No. 20, Ty Cobb. ESPN will reach the top 10 in December, when the network will present two athlete shows each week. The countdown will culminate with an hourlong special Dec. 26 on ABC, which will highlight the top two athletes of the century. The rest of the top 50 is:
But while the shows started with No. 50, the list began at 100. Here was the top half of ESPN's 100 greatest athletes of the past 100 years:
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