The highest paid sportsman ever after inflation makes Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi look poor as he earned £12.1BILLION during his career… but who is it?

THE money on display in all of sport these days is borderline shocking…

Once upon a time, the weekly wage for a footballer was a mere £4, yet now £400,000-a-week is commonplace.

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In fact, certain stars are being lured all the way to China in search of even more than that.

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Even in Europe recently, there have been some obscene deals dished out, including Cristiano Ronaldo‘s £365,000-a-week to stay at Real Madrid and Lionel Messi‘s similar deal at Barcelona.

Outside of football and it’s believed golf’s Tiger Woods is sitting on close to £1billion with his career winding down.

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AP:Associated Press

But none of the aforementioned stars come close, even remotely close, to the one man who - taking into account inflation over the years - raked in over £12BILLION during his career.

We could give you 12 billion guesses and we guarantee you still wouldn't name this chap; Roman chariot racer Gaius Appuleius Diocles.

But who was this man and how on earth did he manage to earn so much?

Starting out his sporting career aged 18, Diocles went on to race for over 24 years, taking part in an astonishing 4,257 races... That's 177 races a year, at nearly one every other day.

Even more amazing than that, the Roman megastar won an outrageous 1,462 of those - more than a third of the races he ever competed in.

For context's sake, even Michael Schumacher could 'only' muster 91 wins in his 308 races in his incredible Formula One career.

And the Ferrari ace didn't have to contend with curved swords, armour and a complete lack of health and safety... Talk about pressure.

So good was Diocles, he had a statue erected in commemoration of an incredible career on his retirement, aged 42.

Using the old Roman currency - sesterces - the racer raked in 35,863,120 during his career... Or £12bn in modern-day sterling, an incredible £500million per year (£9.6m-a-week).

To put that into perspective, for Ronaldo or Messi to take home that amount during their career, they too would need to earn an EXTRA £480m per year on top of their 'meagre' £20m-a-year contracts.

Either that or they'd need to play for roughly 600 years...

So before you start criticising the money Chinese Super League teams are splashing on football's biggest stars, remember the man, the legend Gaius Appuleius Diocles.