15 People Share the Celebrities Who Have No Real Competition

Ask ten people who the greatest basketball player of all time is, and you’ll probably get a few different answers. Ask who the greatest pole vaulter is, or the greatest swimmer, and the debate gets a lot shorter. Every so often, someone becomes so dominant that comparisons almost stop making sense. Instead of chasing their rivals, they end up chasing their own records, their own achievements, or simply trying to outdo what they accomplished the year before.

These are the celebrities who have no real competition.

Beyoncé

For years, Beyoncé has been the artist other performers get compared to. Between her live shows, chart success, and influence on pop music, plenty of fans feel she’s been setting the standard for an entire generation.

Wayne Gretzky

Gretzky’s records are so far ahead of everyone else’s that hockey fans often joke the only person who could compete with Wayne Gretzky was Wayne Gretzky.

John Williams

Most film composers would be thrilled to receive one Oscar nomination. John Williams has received so many that he occasionally ended up competing against himself in the same category.

Mondo Duplantis

Duplantis has broken the pole vault world record so many times that people almost expect it now. More often than not, the biggest obstacle is clearing the height he set himself a few months earlier.

David Attenborough

If you’ve watched a nature documentary, there’s a good chance you’ve heard David Attenborough’s voice. After decades behind the microphone, it’s hard to imagine anyone else filling that role.

Katie Ledecky

In the 1500-meter freestyle, Ledecky hasn’t just won races. She’s filled the record books with her own name, leaving everyone else chasing times she already set.

Weird Al

Nobody else has managed to build an entire career around parody songs quite like Weird Al. Decades later, he’s still the first name people think of when the genre comes up.

Tony Hawk

Tony Hawk became so closely associated with skateboarding that plenty of people who have never stepped on a board still know exactly who he is.

Magnus Carlsen

For more than a decade, Carlsen was the player every chess tournament revolved around. Winning against him felt like an upset because losing was something he simply didn’t do very often.

Simone Biles

Biles has spent years doing skills so difficult that gymnastics had to come up with new ways to score them. At her best, everyone else was competing for second.

Jimmy Sturr

The Grammy for Best Polka Album became almost synonymous with Jimmy Sturr. He won it so many times that, after the category was retired, plenty of people joked he’d taken it with him.

Tiger Woods

At the height of his career, betting on Tiger Woods often felt safer than picking the rest of the field. He wasn’t just winning tournaments. He was making the world’s best golfers look ordinary.

Secretariat

More than 50 years later, Secretariat’s Belmont Stakes record is still standing. His Triple Crown run was so dominant that it’s still used as the standard every great racehorse gets measured against.

Usain Bolt

Every major sprint seemed to end the same way for years: Bolt pulling away from everyone else. Even today, his world records are still the numbers every new generation is trying to chase.

Yo-Yo Ma

Most musicians spend a lifetime mastering one style. Yo-Yo Ma did that, then started exploring music from around the world, introducing millions of people to sounds they might never have discovered otherwise.