Sports Superstars

1) Roger Federer

Roger Federer (born 8 August 1981) is a Swiss professional tennis player. He is currently ranked world No. 1 by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP), having previously held the number one position for a record 237 consecutive weeks. Many sports analysts, tennis critics, former and current players consider Federer to be the greatest tennis player of all time.

Federer has won 15 Grand Slam singles titles, more than any other male player.

2) Michael Schumacher

Michael Schumacher (born 3 January 1969) is a German former Formula One driver and seven-time Formula One world drivers' champion, and current advisor for Ferrari. According to the official Formula One website, he is "statistically the greatest driver the sport has ever seen". He is the only German to win the Formula One World championship, and is credited with popularizing Formula One in Germany. In a 2006 FIA survey, Michael Schumacher was voted the most popular driver of the season among Formula One fan.

Michael was at one point the highest paid racing driver in the world and second highest earning sportsman in the world, earning a reported $80 million US in 2004 ($40m of which was his salary from Ferrari). His younger brother Ralf became the third highest paid driver in Formula 1 in 1999, and his pay after the 2000 season was raised to US$15.5 million.

3) David Beckham

David Robert Joseph Beckham, (born 2 May 1975) is an English footballer who currently plays in midfield for American Major League Soccer club Los Angeles Galaxy and the England national team.

Twice runner-up for FIFA World Player of the Year and in 2004 the world's highest-paid footballer, Beckham was the first British footballer to play 100Champions League matches. He was Google's most searched of all sports topics in both 2003 and 2004.With such global recognition he has become an elite advertising brand and a top fashion icon. Beckham was captain of England from 15 November 2000 until the 2006 FIFA World Cup finals, during which he played 58 times. Since then he has continued to represent his country and earned his much-publicized hundredth cap for England against France on 26 March 2008. He is currently England's most-capped outfield player with 112 appearances.

4) Tiger Woods

Eldrick Tont "Tiger" Woods (born December 30, 1975) is an American professional golfer whose achievements to date rank him among the most successful golfers of all time. Currently the World No. 1, he was the highest-paid professional athlete in 2008, having earned an estimated $110 million from winnings and endorsements.

Woods has won fourteen professional major golf championships, the second highest of any male player, and 70 PGA Tour events, third all time. He has more career major wins and career PGA Tour wins than any other active golfer. He is the youngest player to achieve the career Grand Slam, and the youngest and fastest to win 50 tournaments on tour.

5) Sachin Tendulkar

Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar (born April 24, 1973 in Mumbai) is an Indian cricketer widely regarded as one of the greatest batsmen in the history of cricket. 2002, Wisden ranked him the second greatest Test batsman of all time, next to Donald Bradman, and the second greatest one day international (ODI) batsman of all time, next to Viv Richards. In September 2007, the Australian leg spinner Shane Warne rated Tendulkar as the greatest player he has played with or against. Tendulkar was the only player of the current generation to be included in Bradman’s eleven.

He is sometimes referred to as Little Master or Master Blaster. Tendulkar is the highest run scorer in both Test matches and ODIs, and also the batsman with the most centuries in either form of the game. The first player to score fifty centuries in all international crickets combined, he now has more than eighty international centuries.

6) Michael Phelps

Michael Fred Phelps (born June 30, 1985) is an American professional swimmer who is generally considered the greatest swimmer of all time as well as one of the greatest Olympians of all time. He has won 14 career Olympic gold medals, the most by any Olympian. As of August 2, 2009, Phelps has broken thirty-seven world records in swimming.

Phelps holds the record for the most gold medals at a single Olympics, his eight at the 2008 Beijing Games surpassed American swimmer Mark Spitz's seven-gold performance at Munich in 1972.

Overall, Phelps has won 16 Olympic medals: six gold and two bronze at Athens in 2004, and eight gold at Beijing in 2008. In doing so he has twice equaled the record eight medals of any type at a single Olympics achieved by Soviet gymnast Alexander Dityatin at the 1980 Moscow Summer Games.

7) Viswanathan Anand

Viswanathan Anand (born 11 December 1969) is an Indian chess Grandmaster and the current World Chess Champion.

Anand held the FIDE World Chess Championship from 2000 to 2002, at a time when the world title was split. He became the undisputed World Champion in 2007 and defended his title against Vladimir Kramnik in 2008. With this win, he became the first player in chess history to have won the World Championship in three different formats: Knockout, Tournament, and Match. He will next defend his title in the World Chess Championship 2009against Veselin Topalov, the winner of a challenger match against Gata Kamsky in February 2009.[1]

In 2007 he was awarded India's second highest civilian award, the Padma Vibhushan. He is also the first recipient of Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award in 1991–92, India's highest sporting honour.

8) Lance Armstrong

Lance Edward Armstrong (born on September 18, 1971) is an American professional road racing cyclist who rides for UCI ProTeamAstana.

He won the Tour de France a record-breaking seven consecutive years, from 1999 to2005. He is the only person to win seven times, having broken the previous record of five wins, shared by Miguel Indurain, Bernard Hinault, Eddy Merckx and Jacques Anquetil. He has survived testicular cancer, a tumor that metastasized to his brain and lungs in 1996. His cancer treatments included brain and testicular surgery and extensive chemotherapy, and his prognosis was originally poor