I knew I was going to hear someone say it, so I braced myself.

Then it happened.

“Michael Phelps is the greatest athlete of all time.”

Every four years when someone does something remarkable in the Olympics, he suddenly becomes the greatest athlete of all time.

Of course, it doesn’t have to be the Olympics. After Lance Armstrong won seven Tour de France titles, there were plenty of scribes proclaiming him to be peerless in the world of sport.

Muhammad Ali, Tiger Woods, Bjorn Borg — all can lay claim to being the greatest athlete of all time, depending on who you listen to.

How do you figure?

Phelps might very well be the greatest swimmer of all time, and Armstrong the greatest cyclist in history.

But speaking of history, let’s go back to the time of Jacobus Franciscus Thorpe.

Better known as Jim Thorpe, this Native American had a pretty impressive resume.

Let’s see … he won gold medals in the pentathlon and decathlon during the 1912 Stockholm Games.

As a football player he was a running back, defensive back, kicker and punter for his college team, the Carlisle Indians. In a victory over Harvard, he scored all of Carlisle’s points.

He led the team to a national championship in 1912, scoring 25 touchdowns and racking up 198 points.

He also participated in baseball, basketball, lacrosse and track while in college, excelling at all of them.

He went on to play in the National Football League, earning All-Pro honors one season and being named to the NFL’s All-Decade Team for the 1920s.

Thorpe played two seasons of professional baseball, and even found time to play pro basketball, starring for a barnstorming team made up entirely of Native Americans.

Oh yeah, he was also a ballroom dancer. And I don’t mean just some guy who could cut a rug while trying to impress the opposite sex, but one who actually won the 1912 intercollegiate ballroom dancing championship.

Look, I don’t question Phelps’ status as a great athlete. He certainly is, and his achievements in the Beijing Games are amazing. And I don’t dispute the extraordinary abilities of Armstrong — or Ali or Woods or Borg.

If you want to make a case for any of them being the best there ever was at their sport of choice, I’m not going to argue with you.

Yet, sometimes we get a little too caught up in the moment when we blurt out statements proclaiming so-and-so to be the greatest athlete of all time because they proved dominant in one sport.

I’m not going to fall into that trap, so I’m not going to say Thorpe is the greatest athlete of all-time.

I will say, however, I’ve never heard of anyone who was better at more sports.

Have you?