The Best Record-Breaking Performance ESPY honors the single most historic feat in sports over the past year, and the 2026 field is stacked: Myles Garrett's 23-sack NFL season, Sabastian Sawe's sub-two-hour marathon, Johannes Klæbo's six Winter Olympic golds, and Megan Grant's 42-homer softball season. Kalshi makes Garrett the favorite on the board. The award is handed out at the ESPYS on July 15, 2026. See the live board above for where every nominee's price sits now.
The Best Record-Breaking Performance ESPY honors the single most historic feat in sports over the past year, and the 2026 field is one of the strongest in the category's history. Myles Garrett broke the NFL single-season sack record, Sabastian Sawe ran the first sub-two-hour marathon, Johannes Klæbo won six golds at one Winter Olympics, and Megan Grant reset the NCAA softball home run record. Kalshi has Garrett as the favorite on the board. The live board above ranks where every nominee sits right now.
Myles Garrett is the Cleveland Browns pass rusher who set the NFL single-season sack record with 23 sacks in the 2025 season, passing the 22.5 previously shared by Michael Strahan and T.J. Watt. He sealed it by sacking Joe Burrow in Week 18 on January 4, 2026, in his 17th game, and earned First-Team All-Pro honors for the fifth time in his career. A defensive record is a rare entry in a category built mostly on scoring milestones, and Garrett carries the largest built-in NFL fan base into the vote, which is why he leads the Best NFL Player ESPY market conversation too.
Sabastian Sawe is the Kenyan long-distance runner who did what no one had done in an official race: finish a marathon in under two hours. Sawe won the 2026 London Marathon on April 26, 2026, in 1:59:30, cutting 1 minute and 5 seconds off Kelvin Kiptum's 2:00:35 record from Chicago in 2023. Eliud Kipchoge had gone sub-two in a 2019 exhibition, but that run was not race-legal, which makes Sawe the first to break the barrier under championship conditions.
Johannes Høsflot Klæbo is the Norwegian cross-country skier who became the first athlete in any sport to win six gold medals at a single Winter Olympics, sweeping every event he entered at Milano Cortina 2026. That haul passed the mark of five set by American speed skater Eric Heiden at Lake Placid in 1980. Klæbo left Italy with 11 career Olympic gold medals, second only to Michael Phelps among all Olympians, winter or summer.
Megan Grant is the UCLA softball slugger and the only college athlete in the field. Grant hit 42 home runs in 2026 to set the NCAA Division I single-season record, breaking the mark of 37 that Arizona's Laura Espinoza had held since 1995. She finished with 91 career home runs, the most in UCLA history, and her run puts her alongside the athletes on the Best Women's Athlete ESPY market.
The Best Record-Breaking Performance ESPY has been handed out since 2001, and recent history is a run of American sports icons. In 2025 the award went to Alexander Ovechkin, who passed Wayne Gretzky to become the NHL's all-time goals leader with his 895th goal. In 2024 Caitlin Clark won it and became the first woman to take the category, after breaking Pete Maravich's all-time NCAA scoring record. LeBron James won in 2023 for passing Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as the NBA's all-time leading scorer at 38,652 points. Stephen Curry took 2022 for setting the record for career three-pointers, and Russell Westbrook won 2021 after breaking Oscar Robertson's mark for career triple-doubles. The category was not presented in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Drew Brees won in 2019 for surpassing Peyton Manning's career passing-yards record, Roger Federer took 2018 for his eighth Wimbledon singles title, and Michael Phelps won 2017 as the most decorated Olympian in history. The through-line is clear: this ESPY rewards the milestone the sports world talked about the most, and until Clark it had gone to a man every year.
The winner is revealed live during the 2026 ESPYS on July 15, 2026, the 34th edition of the show, airing on ABC from the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. ESPY winners are chosen by online fan voting rather than a panel, so the result tracks fan-base size and voting momentum as much as the raw historic weight of each feat. The nominee announced on stage that night settles the market.
The record-breaking category is one of many decided on July 15. Garrett also anchors the Best NFL Player ESPY odds, while the marquee individual races run through the Best Men's Athlete ESPY market and the Best Women's Athlete ESPY market. The Best Team ESPY odds round out the night's headline honors, and you can browse every live board on the sports prediction markets hub.
Resolves to the nominee announced as the winner of Best Record-Breaking Performance at the 2026 ESPYS, which air live on ABC from the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles on July 15, 2026. ESPY winners are determined by online fan voting, and the result is revealed during the broadcast. The nominee contract for the announced winner pays $1 per share; every other nominee contract resolves to $0. A separate Tie contract resolves yes only if the ceremony declares co-winners. If the category is not presented or the ceremony is canceled, the market resolves per each platform's event rules.
As of July 11, 2026, Kalshi has Myles Garrett as the favorite at 59c, ahead of marathon world-record holder Sabastian Sawe at 30c, with Johannes Klæbo and Megan Grant further back. See the live board above for current prices.
The winner is revealed live during the 2026 ESPYS on July 15, 2026, the 34th edition of the show, airing on ABC from the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.
The market is listed on Kalshi under the KXESPYS series, and the same nominees are also listed on Polymarket. Each nominee trades as a separate yes or no contract.
Myles Garrett set the NFL single-season sack record with 23 sacks, Sabastian Sawe ran the first sub-two-hour marathon at 1:59:30, Johannes Klæbo won six golds at the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics, and Megan Grant hit 42 home runs to set the NCAA Division I single-season record.
Watch fan-vote momentum through July 15, 2026. Garrett has the largest built-in US fan base, but Sawe's sub-two-hour marathon and Klæbo's six-gold Olympics are the kind of global milestones that can pull crossover votes.