Who's the best?

The Los Angeles Times has a column by Philip Hersh about the 'best' Olympic athlete. He says it's not Michael Phelps (and why does that 'Mister Phelps' line from Mission:Impossible, the original one, ring in Rico's ears every time he hears that name?) but lists five others that he thinks were better:

1. Carl Lewis, U.S., track and field
2. Paavo Nurmi, Finland, track and field
3. Larisa Latynina, Soviet Union, gymnastics
4. Birgit Fischer-Schmidt, Germany, kayak
5. Steven Redgrave, United Kingdom, rowing

Conspicuously absent: Jim Thorpe, referred to as the athlete of the century at this website. (In 1950, an Associated Press poll of nearly 400 sportswriters and broadcasters voted Thorpe the greatest athlete of the first half of the 20th century.) Stripped of his medals from the 1912 Olympics by the IOC due to a bullshit charge of playing baseball (in the Eastern Carolina League, of all things), his medals were later reinstated, with support from the US Congress, in 1982.