<P> In 1973, the Superstars was first televised as a segment on Wide World of Sports; the following year, the Superstars debuted as a weekly winter series that lasted for 10 years . </P> <P> In 1963, ABC Sports producers began selecting the Athlete of the Year . Its first winner was track and field star Jim Beatty for being the first to run a sub-4 - minute mile indoors . Through the years, this award was won by such now legendary athletes of Muhammad Ali, Jim Ryun, Lance Armstrong, Mario Andretti, Dennis Conner, Wayne Gretzky, Carl Lewis and Tiger Woods . The award was discontinued in 2001 . </P> <P> In later years, with the rise of cable television offering more outlets for sports programming, Wide World of Sports lost many of the events that had been staples of the program for many years (many, although not all, of them ended up on ESPN, a sister network to ABC for most of its existence). Ultimately, on January 3, 1998, Jim McKay announced that Wide World of Sports, in its traditional anthology series, had been canceled after a 37 - year run . The Wide World of Sports name remained in use afterward as an umbrella title for ABC's weekend sports programming . </P> <P> In August 2006, ABC Sports came under the oversight of ESPN, under the relaunched banner name ESPN on ABC . The Wide World of Sports title continues to occasionally be revived for Saturday afternoon sports programming on ABC, most recently during the 140th Belmont Stakes as a tribute to Jim McKay, following his death in June 2008, and in 2017 it was use for the revival of the Battle of the Network Stars . Most of ABC's sports programming since Wide World of Sports ended as a program has been displaced from ABC and moved to ESPN; the cable network began producing its own anthology series on Saturday afternoons in 2010, ESPN Sports Saturday, which consists of documentaries originally featured on ESPN's E: 60 and 30 for 30 programs, and a modified version of the ESPN interactive series SportsNation, titled Winners Bracket . </P>

Who said the thrill of victory the agony of defeat