Sports Records That Will "Never" Be Broken?

Honestly, there's DiMaggio and then there's everyone else.

For reference, the nearest person in the modern era, is a full 12 games off from his record...

I'm gonna say Usain Bolts 9.58 at 100m.

Pietro Mennea still has the European record for 200 metres.
19'72" since 1979.

(only Bolt did better as world record, but he isn't European).

Michael Phelps and his Olympic medals...

Giacomo Agostini (grand prix motorcycle road racer) has an absolute record of 122 Grand Prix wins and 15 World Championships titles.

To Address Some That Have Been Said

I could actually see someone making a run at the DiMaggio streak. It's one of those things where a lot of it is luck in addition to being a really good player. Like, someone might get 60 hits in 70 games with the hitless games spread throughout. With the law of averages it is not something that will happen very often but it's not impossible.

All of Gretsky's records are safe.

Kobe could have scored 100 if Phil hadn't sat him the whole 4th quarter in his 81 point game and a big scorer could always do it in a crazy 3/4 OT game. Wilt's overall scoring and rebounding records are unbreakable, though, just due to how the game has changed. Nobody is going to average 50/25 today for a whole range o reasons.

Agree on Dickerson. AP was basically superhuman and on a team with Christian Ponder playing QB so he was getting fed the ball all the time and even he came up short. With all the passing and teams splitting time between 2/3 RB's now days we're not going to be seeing anyone get 2k yards anytime in the near future.

It's hard to imagine anyone faster than Usain Bolt but if you showed people from like the 40's or 50's video of him running they'd think he was an alien or something so people may just keep getting faster in the future.

Cal Ripken was a good choice. A team just wouldn't let someone play that many games in a row nowdays, they have pre scheduled rest days now. The fact that he played that many games in a row at shortstop too is insane.

Ones I Thought Of

A lot of team dynasty ones. 11 NBA finals in 13 years for the 60's Celtics, 10 championships in 12 years for UCLA basketball, the Yankees winning 20 WS in 40 years. Hard to imagine anyone even 3peating in today's baseball.

John Stockton's career assist record. You'd have to play like 20 years averaging 10 assists a game the whole time. Even with one and done guys having longer careers nobody else is going to do that.

No clean player is ever going to hit 73 homers in a season.

For more baseball, obviously a lot of deadball era batting average stuff like Ty Cobb having a 360 career average and guys batting like 420 and 430 in individual seasons. Rickey Henderson's stolen base records are safe as well.

Jack Nicklaus's 18 majors are going to be really tough to break with the large fields and depth you have in golf today. Even with how much better Tiger was than anyone else playing in his prime he's still going to come up a few short.

Kobe played the whole 4th quarter of his 81 point game against the Raptors. He did have another game that same season where he had 62 after 3 quarters against the Mavericks, but that would have still required him to score 38 in the 4th to tie Wilt (current record for points in a quarter is Klay Thompson's 37).

Still, I could see some super-hot 3-point shooter making a push for Wilt's 100 in a multiple overtime game as you suggested. But that still feels like such a doubtful confluence of events - an absurdly nuclear scorer going off in a game where he is essentially the only option and the opposing team plays them tight and takes it into overtime. Wilt only managed it because of his dominance, the team's near-exclusive reliance on his scoring, outlier free throw shooting (a career 51% free throw shooter going 28-32 from the charity stripe?), and the ridiculous pace of '60s basketball.

All of LeBron's "youngest ever" are almost certainly safe given the NBA forces players to go through a year of college but that's not interesting. And all the career records he has and will continue to stack will be unbeatable.

A lot of NFL rushing records, namely stuff like Barry Sanders' 14 straight 100-yard games and Emmett Smith's career rushing totals will probably never be touched. The advantages of the passing game are so much greater and teams generally prefer to have more of a stable of backs rather than one workhorse.

Brett Favre's 297 (321 including playoffs) consecutive starts is also safe. To play such a physical sport for 18.5 years completely secure in your position is baffling. Not many people are healthy enough to play 18.5 years in the NFL, let alone start for that long. Philip Rivers is at 229 (240 including playoffs) which puts him over 4 seasons away and he's both a) 38, and b) probably going to get benched at some point this year.

Shelley Ann Fraser Pryce ran the second fastest 100m ever today, so perhaps the 31 year old record could go? I still doubt it though, as her time is .14 of a second off the record, which in 100m terms is huge.

Roll on the Olympics though.

One all-timer record getting dangerously close is Alex Ovechkin and his pursuit of Wayne Gretzky's 894 career goals.


Ovechkin turns 37 in September - he's at 754 currently........he's lost so many games due to strikes and COVID...........I think he's like to get this one in a few years.

Gretzky after 30 wasn't much of a goal scorer - although no one will match his single season totals (92 and 87) - this record would have fallen if Brett Hull kept playing I think - Ovechkin is one of those guys who could score 50 when he actually IS 50

Ovechkin becomes the oldesr player to get 50 goals in a season this year 

He's now 114 behind Gretzky...........that record is going to fall in a little over 2 years ........unless he decides to walk away from it..........

Sampras set his weeks at number 1 record in 2000 and within 20 years it has been broken twice, he sets his majors won record in 2002 and within 20 years it has been broken 3 times, and you think those records will NEVER be broken?