So, here they are – the final 10 of our 100 Leicestershire Sporting Greats, and the end of our fun, week-long series. Today we have World Cup winners, world champions and popular favourites.

But have we got it right? Write and let us know, either to Sporting Greats, Features Desk, Leicester Mercury, St George Street, Leicester LE1 9FQ or by e-mail:

featuresdesk@leicestermercury

10 John Arthur Jarvis

In total, John Arthur Jarvis won 108 swimming championships, the highlight of which were his two golds at the Paris Olympics in 1900.

Swimming in the River Seine rather than a modern-day swimming pool, Jarvis won gold in the 1,000 metres and again in the 4,000 metres.

In the 1906 Intercalated Games in Athens – an Olympics in all but name – he won silver in the one mile freestyle, bronze in the 400m freestyle.

Jarvis lived with his wife, Ada, and four daughters, in Morledge Street, Leicester. He founded the Leicester Swimming Club.

Jarvis was one of only 15 swimmers honoured at the official opening of America’s Swimming Hall of Fame in 1968.

9 Desert Orchid

A horse? In a top 10 of Leicestershire sporting greats? Have we gone mad?

Dessie, arguably the nation’s favourite National Hunt horse, was born in Goadby, near Harborough.

The King George VI Chase in 1986 – a prestigious three mile race at Kempton – was the stage where Desert Orchid announced his intentions, beating a strong field with his iron will and attacking style. It was the first of four King George VI chase victories.

Dessie dominated National Hunt racing in the late 80s, winning the Gainsborough Chase three times, the Martell Cup, the Whitbread Gold Cup, the Tingle Creek Chase, the Victor Chandler Chase, the Racing Post Chase, the Irish Grand National and, most memorably, a muddy Cheltenham Gold Cup in 1989.

His jockey, Simon Sherwood, said after that race: “I’ve never known a horse so brave. He hated every step of it, but he dug as deep as he could possibly go.”

He died, aged 27, in November, 2006, his ashes scattered at Kempton Park, next to his statue.

8 Arthur Chandler

Leicester City’s greatest-ever marksman, ‘Channy’ scored 273 times for City with every part of his anatomy and from every conceivable angle, says Fossils and Foxes author Dave Smith.

He played 419 games for City, from his debut in 1923 to retirement in 1935.

His most famous game was the 6-0 drubbing of Portsmouth at Filbert Street in October, 1928. Channy scored all six goals, a double hat-trick, his sixth goal going in just as six swans flew overhead.

Not only the club’s record goal scorer, he also holds the record for the most hat-tricks (17); the most goals at Filbert Street (173) and the oldest man to play for City and score for the club in the top flight (39 years old).

After a brief spell at Notts County, Chandler returned to City in 1936, performing a variety of backroom roles –and occasionally turning out as centre half for the City Colts team he managed – until, finally, at the age of 73, he retired.

A Londoner, he died in his adopted home city in June 1984.

Curiously, for all his goal scoring exploits, not one of his 273 goals for City included a penalty.

He took only two spot kicks. Both were saved.

7 Graham Cross

He played football in the winter, cricket in the summer; winning a League Cup medal, two FA Cup runners up medals, the Charity Shield – all for City – and a County Championship and Benson & Hedges one day final medal for his all-rounder abilities for Leicestershire Cricket Club. It’s a record few sportsmen can match.

Cross – nicknamed The Tank – played a record-breaking 599 games for City, his versatility enabling him to play in virtually every position for the Foxes during a 16-year-career.

He scored his first half century for the County second XI when he was 15, playing for the 1st team just two years later.

In 1975, he played in both the winning B&H Cup Final at Lords, and the team which beat the visiting Australians. As if to prove his versatility, in his last game for the county in 1977 Cross played as wicket-keeper.

6 David Gower

It wasn’t just what David Gower achieved as top order batsman and captain with Leicestershire and England, it was the way he played the game.

He made the art of batting look easy, even against some of the best bowlers in the world.

Gower made his debut for Leicestershire in 1975, becoming a Grace Road stalwart until his move to Hampshire in 1989.

He was Wisden Cricketer of the year in 1978, the cricket bible declaring the sun barely came out that summer “but when it did it seemed to adorn the blond head of David Gower. He could do little wrong. He typified a new, precocious breed of stroke-players, imperious and exciting, who added colour and glamour to an otherwise bedraggled English summer.”

Gower played 117 Tests for England, scoring 8,231 runs at an average of 44.25. He captained England 32 times, winning an Ashes series in 1985.

5 Tony Allcock

The holder of 14 World titles – yep 14 – Tony Allcock MBE is now an author and chief executive of Bowls England.

One of the few Leicestershire sporting greats to be commemorated in statue form – a life size figure of him in action is based at the retail outlet in Thurmaston, his home village – Tony, 55, retired from bowls in 2003.

“He was the greatest all round bowler in the history of the sport,” according to then number one, David Gourlay.

Tony started his bowling career at Fosse Way Bowling Club in Syston before his shelves started to groan with silverware. Now retired and living in Gloucestershire, Allcock breeds Japanese Chins, winning the Top Puppy title at Crufts in 2002.

Is there anything you’re not good at, the Daily Telegraph asked him during an interview in 2003.

“Yeah,” said the twice-divorced Allcock, “relationships.”

4 Gary Lineker

Only a very exclusive band of international goal-getters can lay claim to the Golden Boot, the prize awarded for scoring the most goals in a World Cup final tournament.

Gary Winston Lineker is one.

The son of a market stall holder, Lineker made an inauspicious City debut against Oldham in January 1979.

It took another two years for him to make a proper mark in the City side, his pace and predatory instinct the perfect foil for striking partner Alan Smith and winger Steve Lynex.

Lineker played 216 times for City from 1979. He moved to Everton in 1985, scoring 103 goals.

What was remarkable about Lineker, however, was that wherever he went, whatever was asked of him – from City to Everton to Barcelona, Spurs and England – he delivered.

He admirably filled Andy Gray’s shoes at Everton for a season before Terry Venables took him to Barcelona for 2.75 million pesetas.

After learning the language and immersing himself into the Catalonian way of life, Lineker became a cult hero at the Nou Camp too. A fine England career – the Golden Boot in 1986, a beaten semi-finalist in Italia 1990 – ended in 1992, with Lineker one short of Bobby Charlton’s record of 49 international goals.

He confirmed his near God-like status in Leicester by fronting a financial bid to rescue Leicester City in 2003, when the club faced extinction.

3 Peter Shilton

Raised above a corner shop in Braunstone, Peter Leslie Shilton became England’s most capped player with 125 appearances.

In a 30-year career, which included 11 different clubs, three World Cups, two European Cups, a League championship medal and more than 1,000 competitive matches, Shilton could rightly claim not only to be one of the finest keepers of his generation, but one of the game’s bona fide legends.

He made his debut for City at the age of 16, kept a club record of 23 clean sheets in the promotion winning 1970/1 season, scored a league goal against Southampton with a huge clearance in 1967 and, perhaps most famously, played in the World Cup semi-final against Germany in 1990.

He followed in his mentor’s footsteps, Gordon Banks, by moving to Stoke in 1974.

“I still follow Leicester’s results,” he said recently. “They’re my team.”

2 Martin Johnson

The current England team manager and one of the biggest names in world rugby, Johnson was the outstanding 6ft 7ins tall, 18-stone lock at Tigers for 16 years. Born in Solihull, he moved to Leicestershire at the age of seven, making his debut for the Tigers in 1989. As captain, he led Tigers to cup final victory in 1997 then on a run of four Premiership titles and the historic back-to-back Heineken Cup victories in 2001 and 2002.

He retired in 2005 after 361 games for Tigers putting him 13th on the club’s all-time appearance list. It was the international stage, however, where Johnson forged his sporting reputation.

He was England’s World Cup-winning captain in 2003 and made a CBE in the honour’s list that year. He also played in 10 Five/Six Nations tournaments and went on three Lions tours. He is the only man to captain the British and Irish tourists in two Test series.

1 Gordon Banks

There were no banner headlines when City boss Matt Gillies paid a modest £7,000 to bring a new reserve team keeper to City in May, 1959.

Gordon Banks was a Sheffield-born 20-year-old, a former brickie and coal-bagger who had played just 23 games for Chesterfield. Gillies spotted something in the youngster he liked and bought him to City. No-one was more surprised than Banks.

“I’d only played half a season,” he said. “I didn’t even know City were watching me.”

Just seven years later, the unassuming Banks was an international household name – the best goalkeeper in the world, a World Cup winner, and the man who, 40 years on, is still judged to have made the greatest-ever save in the most popular sport in the world.

Banks’ development at Leicester City was swift, according to City bible Fossils and Foxes.

He quickly replaced long-standing City keeper Dave McLaren and kept the Number one jersey for the next eight years.

Banks made his England debut against Scotland in April 1963. He kept hold of the country’s number one position as Alf Ramsey’s squad prepared for the 1966 World Cup.

You know what happened next. At the age of 27, with 33 caps, Banks became a World Champion, lauded as the best keeper in the World.

Banks played 356 games for City before leaving in 1967.

Awarded the OBE in 1970, Banks made his Save of the Century in the same year to deny a bullet header from Pele in that year’s World Cup. “It is the best save I’ve ever seen,” the Brazilian superstar said.

Then came tragedy. In 1972, the same year Banks was made Footballer of the Year, he lost an eye in a car crash. At the age of 34, his career was over.

In Leicester, there is little to commemorate his links with the city. So Gordon – this is for you. You deserve it.

See our choice of sporting greats 100 to 81

See the sporting greats 80 to 61

See the sporting greats 60 to 41

Sporting Greats 40 to 25

Sporting greats 24 to 11