Michael Schumacher has dominated Formula One automobile racing for the
past six years.  My question is: how difficult have his
accomplishments been when compared to other sports teams, and
individual athetes?  Is Michael Schumacher a rarer occurence than
Michael Jordan, or Tiger Woods?

Thank you

Hopefully these sites hold the comparative answer you're looking for:

http://www.mschumacher.com/welcome.html
"German ace Michael Schumacher is recognised as being at present the
world's best racing driver.  Many people say he is the best ever, but
he himself denies any comparison to Fangio of the 50s - the only other
driver to achieve five F1 championships. In 1995 Michael became the
youngest double Formula 1 World Champion (1994 and 1995 seasons) ever.
Michael is also the 2000, 2001, 2002 and current (year 2003) World
Champion. This phenomenal record speaks for itself. This year (2003)
he beat Juan Manuel Fangio's five championships, by taking his sixth!

Michael is also the highest paid racing driver in the world, earning a
reputed $30 million US. His younger brother Ralf became the third
highest paid driver in Formula 1 in 1999, when his pay after the 2000
season was raised to $15.5 million US."

His bio and a link to his book http://www.mschumacher.com/biography.html

Here is the official Michael Jordan site with listings of his accomplishments
http://jordan.sportsline.com/

Tiger Woods and the same:
http://www.tigerwoods.com

Thank you for your response.  I'm really looking for what (team) or
who, is achieving the most difficult accomplishment.  I.e, Tiger
Woods, Michael Jordan, the Yankees, Michael Schumacher, etc.

While it is valid to argue the skills of Michael Schumacher versus
Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan, comparing auto racing to other sports
is problematic. As crazy as this may sound, it is more realistic to
compare Tiger Wood's relationship to his golf club, Jordan to his
basketball and Schumacher to his race car than it is to compare the
respective athletes. Micheal Schumacher and every other race car
driver are operating a machine, working with a chief engineer, a pit
crew, a multi-million dollar budget, and a host of other outside
factors that greatly effects their performance. Tiger Woods and
Micheal Jordan are great athletes with exceptional skills and they
stand alone, not aided props, drugs, extra-exceptional trainers,
special equipment or massive budgets to keep them at the top. Michael
Schumacher's skills can not be doubted, but driving for the best team,
having a great relationship with his chief engineer over a long period
of time, and driving in one type of race car during his entire career
has had a tremendous positive effect on his results for the past
decade.

Another way to evaluate different athletes is what the market pays
them. The top F1 drivers are paid very well, as mentioned in other
comments. Also, bear in mind that while Micheal Schumacher does drive
for one of the best teams, Micheal Jordan also played for one of the
best teams. I would posit that there are usually only 2-4 drivers in
the world at Schumachers level. He gets paid the big $$ because he can
lap a few fractions of a second faster than anyone else, and that is
the margin of victory in F1. So, in conclusion, at the VERY TOP of any
sport, there are usually only a handful of people. The rest are the
rest.

I've even heard from a coworker who's a fan that Schumacher wins
because he's with the best team - Ferrari, which makes the most
powerful and reliable machines for F1. Put him in another team and
another machine and he will lose, my coworkers says. If some of the
new talent can ride Ferrari, like Alonso, they might even do better
than Schumacher. Quite an arguable comment, but looks like an idea
worth looking over and getting other's analyses about.

Tough to compare Schumacher to anything other than another racing
driver and even then tough to compare him to anything other than
another F1 driver.

He is absolutely one of the best ever, arguably the best ever
(although I don't agree). He has benefited from having the best
machinery through most of his career and has managed to keep the same
core group of engineers, designers, management and strategists through
his F1 career. As a team they have become the most dominant force in
F1 right now and have broken a lot of records (most of them). It is
true that if you put Michael into a lesser team he would not be as
dominant, but if you were to put one of the other top drivers into the
Ferrari team with Michael he will likely beat them. He is one of the
fastest drivers in F1 and there are only likely 2 or 3 drivers who
would be able to challenge him in equal equipment.

The only person I would compare Michael to is Wayne Gretzky based on
the amount of records they each hold and the dominance they had in
their respective sports. I tip the hat to Wayne though given that he
played for a number of low ranked teams and still managed to keep
those rediculous numbers.

forgey