WEDNESDAY NIGHT SAW the Miami Heat’s 27 game win streak come to an end at the hands of the Chicago Bulls.
To commemorate the streak, we’ve put together a list of our nine favourite streaks in sport.
7. LA Lakers 33 consecutive NBA wins
YouTube Credit: Eric Stratten
Despite the Heat coming within six, this is a record that looks unbeatable.
40 years have passed and some of the game’s brightest and best players have failed to come close.
Betting on a team to do it would be like betting on the Washington Generals to beat the Harlem Globetrotters (current win-streak 2,495 to Harlem).
6. Byron Nelson’s 11 straight PGA Tour wins
YouTube Credit: GolfAus
1945 wasn’t a vintage year for sport, what with World War II depriving the calendar of a host of events.
However, Nelson still managed to win 18 of the PGA Tour events held that year.
The 11 consecutive tournaments he won include the only major of the year, the PGA Championship.
5. Edwin Moses wins 122 consecutive 400m hurdle races
Edwin Moses won every race he competed in between 1977 and 1987 when he eventually lost to Danny Harris.
Moses’ races were at the highest level too as he won 107 straight finals and just 15 prelims in the streak.
His success also included an Olympic gold medal victory and four world records.
4. Juilo Cesar Chavez goes 90 fights without a loss
YouTube Credit: sweetfighters
Chavez won the first 87 fights of his career, starting in 1980 and continuing through to 1993.
His 88th fight ended in a draw but Chavez bounced back with two consecutive wins before eventually losing to Frankie Randall in January 1994.
Chavez finished his career a six time world champion across three weight divisions.
3. Brett Favre makes 297 consecutive NFL starts
Over 19 seasons, Brett Favre stepped out every Sunday regardless of injury, illness or even the death of his father.
While he became something of a joke figure in his later career, his achievement can’t be underestimated.
Even more so when you consider there were 11 players lining up to injure him every week.
2. Joe DiMaggio’s 56 game hit streak
YouTube Credit: CC1BodaciousBriefs
You know how good this streak is because nobody has come anywhere close to it since DiMaggio recorded it in 1941.
Given the increase in professionalism, not to mention proliferation of performance-enhancing drugs in the 80s and 90s, you would have expected it to be threatened.
However, Di Maggio’s target remains the one to beat.
1. Esther Vergeer’s 10 years on top of wheelchair tennis
The Dutch sensation retired in February this year riding a 10 year, 470 match win streak.
Remarkably, the 31-year-old only lost 18 sets in that time and won 95 of her matches without dropping a single game.
