# The 12 Athletes Who Changed Their Sport the Most

> Not the best players, but the ones who left their sport being played differently than they found it.

*By YPB Team · Published August 5, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/the-12-athletes-who-changed-their-sport-the-most*

---

## Current results (0 votes)

1. **Stephen Curry**
   Made the three-pointer the centre of basketball and every level of the game followed.
2. **Dick Fosbury**
   Won 1968 Olympic gold jumping backwards and nobody has high-jumped any other way since.
3. **Ronda Rousey**
   The UFC had no women's division until her; four years later it had four of them.
4. **Babe Ruth**
   Turned baseball from a game of bunts and stolen bases into a game about home runs.
5. **Royce Gracie**
   Won the first UFC tournaments and forced every fighter on earth to learn grappling.
6. **Bill Russell**
   Made defence and the blocked shot a strategy rather than an accident.
7. **Serena Williams**
   Brought a power baseline game to women's tennis that the whole tour now plays.
8. **Johan Cruyff**
   Player and then coach behind total football, which is still the template at Barcelona.
9. **Jackie Robinson**
   Broke baseball's colour line in 1947 and changed who American sport was for.
10. **Muhammad Ali**
   Invented the modern athlete as a public voice, and the pre-fight sell along with it.
11. **Simone Biles**
   Has four skills named after her, and the code of points had to be rewritten around her.
12. **Usain Bolt**
   Ran 9.58 and moved the ceiling of the 100m so far that nobody has approached it since.

Tags: sports, athletes, legends