Words: Oliver Jarvis
To label something as ‘cool’ is a tricky one nowadays. It’s almost as if the word has been omitted from any fashionable conversation, being exhausted by beach-clingers at Surfer’s Paradise, or Tony Hawk enthusiasts – it’s about as in season as Lewis Hamilton’s new hairstyle. We here at The Gentleman’s Journal however would like to use the traditional meaning of the term. Dust off your Oxford Dictionary and turn to ‘C’, the word actually means; not friendly, interested, respectful or enthusiastic.
On that note, we’ve put together a list of the top guys in sport at being the real kind of cool:
Floyd Mayweather, Jr.
No surprise here, Mayweather is about as respectful to others as a man urinating in the holy bathwater of Lourdes. The undefeated, five-division world champion is the epitome of cool. You have to hand it to him though, starting out with bare scraps to becoming the highest paid athlete in the world is a rags to riches story on the same level as Susan Boyle. For this, he uppercuts into our list of cool.
Andrea Pirlo
With an appearance not too far from a modern day Messiah – the full beard, scraggy hair and general I-don’t-really-care personality of Andrea Pirlo is hard to avoid. A man with a taste for fine wine, and a sense of panache only an Italian could pull off, he runs up and scores in our coolest sportsmen list as calmly and effortlessly as that penalty he put past Joe Hart.
Usain Bolt
It’s hard to remember a hand gesture, since the Vulcan send off or the Nazi salute, that had such a worldwide reputation as Usain Bolt’s has. After comfortably breaking the 100m and 200m world record in Beijing 2008, his celebratory hand signal has been mirrored by the likes of Prince Harry and Barack Obama. For his affable love on ridiculing other athletes, the fastest man of all time vaults into our list of cool.
Mario Balotelli
With a career that has seen him square up to his own manager, face arrest by police for burgling his own house, and launch darts at the Manchester City youth team, you start to wonder what really does go on in that head of his. The man that simply does as he does, for his unpredictability the uncontrollable hedonist Super Mario throws a Bull and enters our list of coolest sportsmen.
Chris Gayle
The West Indian king of T20 Cricket appears to have no boundaries when it comes to partying off the pitch. Pictured all over Social Media at various events and often with a bottle of Captain Morgan’s, Gayle has been dubbed the Mr. Cool of the Cricketing world. We’ve knocked him into our list of coolest sportsmen for that self-deprecated smile he pulled when scoring the first ever double century in the world cup.
Zlatan Ibrahimovic
Many love him, many simply can’t stand him. A character so outspoken that even Piers Morgan struggles to compete with the Swedish quote-vendor. Sometimes Zlatan seems only to exist to entertain football fans from all over the world. Oh and he’s scored some quite important goals too. For his egocentric narcissism, he finesses into our top list.
Billy Vunipola
The man that on the rugby field has the appearance of; an over-sized kid that his smaller friends have pleaded for to be on their team, who scores, shrugs when being surrounded by celebrations and walks back to the 22… (after all that) has made it effortlessly into our top list of cool.
Roger Federer
Has he ever made a noise on the tennis court? The gruntless, insular Swiss is undoubtedly one of the best tennis players of all time. It appears almost unfair for a man to play the game so duck soup, for that reason we seed him right in the mix of our pick of the coolest men in sport.
Andrew Flintoff
Sporting the appearance of a pub team enthusiast you’d find jeering at the opposition (Carlsberg in hand) on a Sunday afternoon, Freddie is still going at it in the cricketing world. We’ve placed him in this list, alongside the rest, for getting drunk at No. 10.
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