Earlier this week, Lionel Messi broke the record for the most goals ever scored at the FIFA World Cup and the Argentinian now lays claim to one of the most iconic and famous landmarks in all of sport.
This got The Athletic thinking: For which other notable and high-profile records does there appear to be a chance of an upcoming change of hands?
Some long-standing marks in track and field? The most Tour de France wins? Sachin Tendulkar’s runs total in Test cricket? Maybe even Messi’s freshly-established haul?
So, here, our writers pick out some records that may be broken in the not-too-distant future.
Tom Brady’s Super Bowl wins among quarterbacks
Tom Brady watched boyhood hero Joe Montana lead the San Francisco 49ers to four Super Bowls in nine seasons. Montana duly matched Terry Bradshaw’s record: played four, won four.
Not the sort to be content by vicariously enjoying another’s greatness, Brady set about being the best he could be.
The quarterback’s time at the New England Patriots can be divided into three chapters: astonishing early success (three Super Bowl wins in four seasons); an uncertain sequel (a near-decade-long title drought, largely thanks to the upstart New York Giants); and a triumphant finale (three further Super Bowls from four appearances).
That he added to the canon by claiming a seventh Super Bowl in his first season with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers — at the age of 43 — is truly Hollywood.
There we have it. Of quarterbacks in the Super Bowl era, Brady leads with seven wins; Bradshaw and Montana are second with four.
Montana has supporters in the Greatest of All Time debate, but even Joe Cool admitted he leans toward Brady. In 2021, he told ESPN’s First Take: “I think Tom has taken his place on the top up there a long time ago.”
Of the current crop, there is only one quarterback who can get anywhere near Brady’s 7-3 Super Bowl record (catching the unblemished Bradshaw and Montana records are already out of the window). That is Patrick Mahomes, who has triumphed three times on the biggest stage.
Earlier this month, Mahomes penned a $504.75million (£380m) deal to keep him at the Kansas City Chiefs until 2033.
He is already 30, but time is — just about — on his side. Brady won his fourth Super Bowl aged 37. To do so, Mahomes must avoid injury — he had surgery in mid-December for a torn ACL and LCL in his left knee — while playing an increasing number of games, some on foreign fields.
To add to the challenge, Brady also left his mark on the latest pretender to his crown. Mahomes is 3-2 in Super Bowls, both defeats being blowouts. The first, of course, against Brady and the Bucs.
Peter Carline
The men’s and women’s 800m records in track and field
David Rudisha’s men’s 800m world record from the London 2012 Olympic final is under serious threat. Contenders include Emmanuel Wanyonyi, the diminutive Kenyan who is the successor to Rudisha — he won Olympic gold in Paris two years ago, plus the world title last September, and is joint second on the all-time list, with his best run of 1:41.11s just two tenths off Rudisha.
Oh, and there’s American teenager Cooper Lutkenhaus, who won World Indoor gold this March and has recently beaten Wanyonyi in the Diamond League. Add North American record holder Marco Arop (1:41.20s) into that, and there’s so much strength in depth.
The same can be said on the women’s side. In fact, we’ve already had a world record this year. Great Britain’s Keely Hodgkinson ran 1:54.87s indoors in Lievin, France, bettering a record which had stood since the day of her birth in March 2002.
Outdoors, she’s targeting the long-standing record of 1:53.28s, set by Czechoslovakia’s Jarmila Kratochvilova in 1983. Hodgkinson needs to improve her best by just over a second, while Swiss woman Audrey Werro has emerged as a major player. Last summer, she won the Diamond League final on home soil in Zurich, and this June beat Hodgkinson in Stockholm to become just the third woman into the sub-1:54 club, registering a 1:53.98s time.
A specific date to watch: July 18th. Hodgkinson is racing at the London Diamond League, and fellow Briton Josh Kerr is targeting a takedown of Hicham El Guerrouj’s 1999 mile world record.
Kerr has to find a little over two seconds on his British record run of 2024, and has gone all out with his sponsors Brooks for it — there’s going to be a bespoke spike and speed suit and, with this being an open race, one would expect other fast athletes to turn up and try to get the record themselves.
Liam Tharme
The most Tour de France wins
This time next month, Tadej Pogacar is the odds-on favourite to be standing on the Champs-Elysees toasting his fifth Tour de France yellow jersey win.
At just 27 years old, the Slovenian would draw level with the record of five, jointly held by Jacques Anquetil (France), Eddy Merckx (Belgium), Bernard Hinault (France) and Miguel Indurain (Spain).
Lance Armstrong did win seven in a row from 1999 to 2005, but the American was later stripped of those titles in 2012 after admitting his centrality in a systematic doping programme.
As competitive as two-time winner Jonas Vingegaard has been, and as talented as 19-year-old Frenchman Paul Seixas looks to be, Pogacar’s dominance has been absolute enough that it would be a surprise if he does not break the record outright in the next couple of years. His form at last week’s Tour de Suisse looked ominous.
Pogacar celebrates winning last year’s Tour de France (Sara Cavallini/Getty Images)
Another record to keep an eye on is Pogacar’s simultaneous assault on the most Tour de France stage wins of all time. That accolade was held by Merckx for 48 years before British sprinter Mark Cavendish broke the legendary Belgian’s record with his 35th stage win in 2024.
Pogacar has already won 21 individual stages at the Tour — and if he carries on at his current rate of winning three to four stages at each edition, that record could also be in his sights by the end of a career which looks set to crown him as the sport’s greatest rider of all time.
Jacob Whitehead
Sebastian Vettel’s record for being the youngest Formula 1 world champion
Kimi Antonelli has quickly torn through several records in the early part of the new Formula 1 season, winning five of the first seven races this year.
Antonelli, 19, is only in his second F1 season. He was largely expected to trail his more experienced Mercedes team-mate, George Russell, only for Antonelli to channel his youthful exuberance into some scintillating performances.
Victory in China made Antonelli the first Italian F1 race winner in nearly 20 years, before becoming the first teenager to lead the world championship after the Japanese Grand Prix at the end of March.
In the space of three months, Antonelli has become F1’s youngest pole-sitter, youngest championship leader and youngest driver to set a ‘grand slam’ (pole, fastest lap, win and lead every lap).
Antonelli currently leads the championship by 41 points from Lewis Hamilton, and was as much as 66 points clear after Monaco. History is already on his side as no driver in F1 history has lost the championship from such a big points lead, though there is still more than two-thirds of the season to go.
Antonelli, who will turn 20 in August, could comfortably become F1’s youngest world champion this year. The current record holder is Sebastian Vettel, who was 23 years and 134 days old when he clinched his maiden title in 2010 with Red Bull.
Despite becoming F1’s youngest race winner aged 18, Max Verstappen didn’t win his first title until he was 24. Hamilton was 23 years and 301 days old when he won his first crown in 2008.
Even if it doesn’t happen for Antonelli this year, a championship win in 2027, 2028 or 2029 would still see him break Vettel’s record. But doing it at 20, less than two years after his F1 debut — and getting his road car license — could see him set a record that may never be broken.
Luke Smith
Lionel Messi’s record for the most World Cup goals ever scored
On Monday, Lionel Messi — for many, the greatest footballer of all time — broke the record for the most goals scored by a man in the history of the World Cup and now has 18 to his name. He surpassed the former Germany striker Miroslav Klose, who scored 16 times in the competition from 2002 to 2014.
Messi’s goals have come at five World Cups (he has played in six editions of the competition but failed to score in 2010) and his Argentina team have at least two more matches left to play in this summer’s tournament.
For many, it will be seen as fitting that one of the greatest sportspeople in history now owns one of sport’s most notable landmarks.
Yet for how long will Messi actually hold the record? The Argentina captain is 39, so this will surely be his last World Cup (though that has been written before), and a certain Kylian Mbappe, aged 27, is in red-hot form for France right now and has netted 16 times overall in the competition at the time of writing.
With the Frenchman just two goals behind Messi and with another three World Cups potentially left in him, it seems highly likely that this new mark will not last especially long. It may even be broken in the coming weeks.
And what about the 32-year-old Harry Kane? The England captain, who is also playing at the 2026 World Cup and has scored 10 times overall in the competition, will likely play in the tournament in 2030. His chances of catching Mbappe are slim, but he has a shot at surpassing Messi.
You’ll notice a certain Cristiano Ronaldo on this list above, too. However, at the age of 41, even he is unlikely to be playing international football in four years, so it seems a safe bet to say that he won’t eclipse his great rival Messi’s total.
At this point, it is also worth noting that the expanded tournament (there are now 48 teams competing instead of the 32 it had been since 1998) only increases the chances of this record getting broken in the near future.
This is because, firstly, there is an extra knockout stage match and, secondly, weaker teams will be competing more regularly, providing top players such as Mbappe and Kane with ample opportunities to rack up the goals.
Will Jeanes
Sachin Tendulkar’s record for the most runs scored in Test cricket
To give you an idea of how long Sachin Tendulkar has held the Test runs record, current Indian sensation Vaibhav Sooryavanshi was three years away from being born when he passed Brian Lara at the top of the list. That was in October 2008, when Tendulkar surpassed Lara’s mark of 11,953, and before his retirement in 2013, he had piled on another few thousand to finish his career on 15,921.
For a few years, there was a clutch of players who could have caught him: Alastair Cook looked likely for a little while, but he retired a few thousand short in 2018. Maybe Virat Kohli had the talent, but he stepped away from Test cricket miles short.
But the only man likely to catch Tendulkar is Joe Root. And he could do it pretty soon: at the time of writing, Root has 14,075 to his name, so if he continues to score at his current average of 50.81, he could get there in about 18 more Tests, which will be at some point in the winter of 2027-28.
Root batting for England earlier this month (Philip Brown/Getty Images)
Root is 35 and has shown few signs of slowing down, so at this stage it’s a probability rather than a possibility.
The question then is: Will anyone ever break Root’s record? The next active player on the Test runs list is Steve Smith, way back on 10,763; and he’s 37. If Root does take the record, it will be his for a very long time.
Nick Miller