For the last eight weeks, our family summer exhibition, Action Replay, has been inviting visitors to vote on who their favourite sporting hero is—and why.
Hundreds of you have had your say, and there’s a whole range of sportsmen and sportswomen, from global superstars and local sport teams to fictional characters. All sorts of sports got a mention: football, cricket, tennis, rugby, gymnastics, netball, motor sports, rowing, swimming, horse riding, boxing, ice skating, wrestling, skateboarding, golf, shot put, fencing, bobsledding… and a suggestion from one visitor that theatre should count as a sport. We agree.
British fitness instructor Mr. Motivator got a vote for squeezing into colourful spandex and inspiring the nation to get fit, back in the 90s.
Scott Sterling, the fictitious goalie, received a handful of votes for his ability to always block a goal with his head; Harry Potter for his undeniable Quidditch skills; and the female lead from How to Train Your Dragon, Astrid Hofferson, for being a feisty and talented dragon rider.
There were a lot of votes for family members, coaches, and quite a few people nominating themselves!
But not everyone is a sports fan—and we love that this didn’t hold some visitors back from taking part.
So who came top?
We’ve worked out the top 10 sports players as voted by our visitors for four consecutive weeks. Have a look at our scoreboards to see how the game has changed…*
By week 6, Harry Kane, Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi and Usain Bolt had all managed to keep their top positions, while the rest had a shuffle around. Lewis Hamilton dropped off the chart altogether and Mohamed Salah made a surprise entry and stormed through to number 5.
A surge of Lionel Messi and Andy Murray fans arrived at the museum in week 7 and bumped up their stats, with Messi closing in on Ronaldo and Murray jumping to seventh place. Mohamed Salah and Muhammad Ali were neck-and-neck; Jessica Ennis-Hill and Serena Williams also had equal numbers of votes.
In week 8, an extra two votes for Mohamed Salah secured his position at number 5—and a singular vote for Jessica Ennis-Hill pushed her out of the draw with Serena Williams.
*These percentages look low because the responses we had were so diverse (well, we can’t all have the same hero!)
Harry Kane is our winner for now with 9.5% of the votes. But there’s still time to race down and add yours. Could you change the outcome?
If you want to add your vote, visit Action Replay at the National Science and Media Museum—the exhibition is open until 30 September 2018.