Conversely, by choosing the axes differently, Olympic gold medal winners become ordinary people.
Also, being extraordinary in one thing (e.g. running) doesn't mean what people think it means because how many people actually try to become a professional runner? If everybody tried, Usain Bolt would be ranked #1000 or perhaps even lower.
“If everybody tried, Usain Bolt would be ranked #1000 or perhaps even lower.”
I’m skeptical. The people who do become professionals are heavily weighted towards the fastest runners. People naturally gravitate towards what they’re best at.
As someone who follows soccer in the US, and specifically women's sports, there are some absolutely _fascinating_ reasons why that statement is way more complicated than it looks. There are so many factors — the means to access even rudimentary safe training and recovery, happenstance discovery by coaches or organizations, connections through friends and family — that leave me always wondering how many athletic talents simply don't pursue it.
SI ran a fantastic story[1] about Naomi Girma, a top young talent who's already cemented a starting position on the US women's national team, the holding and four-time World Cup champions. Considering the size and depth of the US talent pool, itself massive due to the relative dearth of women's team sports and the accessibility fostered by Title IX, and likewise also rife with abuse and corruption, the USWNT is arguably one of the world's hardest soccer teams to become a starter for.
Girma had none of the advantages of many of her teammates. She's Black, which is still uncommon on the USWNT and even less common among natural defenders. She's the daughter of an Ethiopian refugee and another Ethiopian immigrant, another rarity. She was discovered by a travel team — often difficult to join and expensive youth clubs — while playing at a YMCA, and stayed on a worse-performing team because she relied on getting rides from a friend's family on that team.
When it was overwhelmingly evident that she belonged on the better team, the team itself covered her rides to practice because her parents couldn't — in part by a parent driving Girma to a private school for pickup. Her coach promoted a feeder program to the youth national teams to her, without which neither Girma nor her parents would have any idea what her ceiling would be.
> “You know, my parents had no idea about the college recruiting process. They didn’t even know how to get me onto a club team. Even, like, what is AYSO? The concept of rec—all these little things—you have to learn that, and if you didn’t grow up here, why would you ever know what AYSO is? You’re not going to look that up. So I feel like a lot of things fell in place on my path because of the people I was surrounded by, and I’m extremely thankful for that, because I know I would probably just still be playing at the park on Saturdays—still having fun, but I wouldn’t have gotten where I am today.”
She went on to get a full-ride scholarship to Stanford, won national championships, became a first-overall draft pick in the US pro NWSL, and started for a San Diego expansion team that went to the semifinals in its first year. Girma was Rookie of the Year. She's considered a lock for the 2023 World Cup roster, playing for the defending world champions.
Her contemporaries as exciting young talents are in stark contrast: Sophia Smith, this year's league MVP and USWNT teammate, came up through a sports family where her mother, unlike Girma's, could afford to quit her job to cover the three-hour practice commute. She also had the advantages of a Colorado youth system that produced several other USWNTers.[2] Trinity Rodman is Dennis Rodman's daughter (itself a complex and fraught oversimplification of her relationship[3]). Olivia Moultrie's family was rich enough to build her a sophisticated practice facility, complete with her own pitch, as a pre-teen on her way to a Nike sponsorship and pro contract at 15.[4]
But if Girma didn't have a friend on a youth team who's mom would give her a ride to practice? If, instead of a supportive coach, she had an abusive one?[5] By her own estimation, she might still be playing weekend ball in a park with her dad.
Bolt's story is extremely well documented. But on top of the talent, and on top of the work to excel, to think there aren't hundreds of other kids out of billions with that same potential is difficult to reconcile. A faster kid, a better soccer player, a better wide receiver, a more clever pitcher might just not have a mom who can get them to practice.
It's definitely an interesting thought experiment! A key question is how extreme outliers like Bolt are distributed. There's certainly a chance that there are others in his cohort who match or exceed his genetic potential, but 1000?
I also don't think you can assume the greatest outlier who has been discovered would be significantly exceeded by others who weren't discovered. If they could be better, my intuition is it would be by a very small margin.
I think it becomes even more obvious with team sports. Among males, Sweden is a top-tier ice hockey-nation but an absolutely disgrace in rugby while the opposite is true for New Zealand. There's a significant overlap in the talent pool for ice hockey players and rugby players so there's no reason why Sweden and New Zealand would be equals in ice hockey and rugby. Access to the sport makes all the difference.
Well, Bolt himself was born into a poor family. Someone who has the genetic potential to be that fast is going to spend their whole early life being the fastest kid anyone around them has ever seen. Sure, some might not pursue it seriously for whatever reason, but any kid with that much inborn talent is going to know that they are fast, and others will know it too--that kind of thing gets noticed.
It's a bit like if a 12 year old is 6'6" and athletic... there's a pretty high chance someone is going to try to teach that kid to play basketball.
So we're digging our heels in that no one could ever be faster than Bolt.
> Well, Bolt himself was born into a poor family
Sure, but what about the really fast kid who was shot in Somalia or the other one who lost a leg to an unexploded antipersonnel mine. Or as innocuous as the really fast kid who didn't like the pressure of competition.
What about the people who were simply born earlier? Technology showed up in the 2 years that's making people even faster. Those throughout history were not given the same opportunity, but if they were, could they have been faster that Bolt? Possible.
Your skepticism requires that everyone be given an equal chance which simply isn't grounded in reality.
Culture matters too. It isn't a coincidence that Bolt came from Jamaica, which has a tradition of high level sprinting. If he was born poor in the US, my guess is he would have been a wide receiver or basketball player and only would have focused on running if it was clear he had no future in a more lucrative/higher status sport.
Not everyone wants the results of concentrating on a certain sport/job/hobby, even if they are naturally great at it. For example, many women (or men for that matter) might not want the physical result of being the world's best body builder, even if they are genetically predisposed for it. Being the world's best horse hockey might also not appeal to many, the prestige probably goes most too the horse and not the jockey. I'm sure there are other activities which are lacking in some aspect, which would make people who would excel at it turn away.
Also, as it takes some time to get past the amateur level and explore whether one actually had generic potential to be great at a sport, and that there are more sports than time, there's an element of chance whether someone hits upon the right sport.
"Only" is not an appropriate term there. Everybody races when they're a kid, and it tends to be a win a bit, lose a bit, and always by a margin of couple of steps. Beating somebody by even 5% is an unbelievably huge margin in a race that is extremely visible.
In a 40 second race a 5% margin would be 2 seconds - enough to quickly turn around, sit down, and feign some yawns as you wait for the #2 guy to come in. A 20% margin? That'd be 8 seconds in a 40 second event. It'd look plainly comical.
I can’t remember ever seeing little kids running anywhwre near a 40 second race. 10 seconds is probably a bit long for an impromptu race.
Also Usain Bolt was 15-20% faster at his peak than a decent high schooler. He was nowhere near that when he was in high school. In addition to genetics he was also training much more than a decent high school runner would.
A huge component of genetic potential is a greater response to training. Someone like Usain Bolt could easily slip under the radar just by being uninterested in running.
You never played football, tag, or even ran track in PE? I'm also not entirely sure where you're getting your comments about his high school stuff from. He won both the world youth and junior championships while in high school, and was the fastest man alive in his age group - a record that stood until quite recently. He ran a 20.4s 200m in 2003 at the age of 17. His ultimate personal best and still world record would be 19.19 in 2009.
Incidentally he also wasn't interested in running. He was much more interested in football, but seeing one kid Bolt across the field led others to convince him to try out track and field.
I played American football as a kid, but I know plenty of kids who never played any sports outside of PE. And PE was mostly just jogging around a track, dancing, and other non competitive actives. Plenty of kids just half-assed PE, and never would have demonstrated to anyone any genetic proclivity for sprinting.
>Incidentally he also wasn't interested in running. He was much more interested in football, but seeing one kid Bolt across the field led others to convince him to try out track and field.
Being seriously into any team sport makes being identified as a gifted athlete of any kind much more likely. Most kids are either not involved in team sports or aren't trying hard enough to really be noticed even if they are genetically gifted.
In addition in many countries almost half of the kids are overweight, obese, or just out of shape, which probably swamps out any genetic benefits in terms of sprinting.
>He ran a 20.4s 200m in 2003 at the age of 17. His ultimate personal best and still world record would be 19.19 in 2009.
That's about 10% faster than what's considered a good time for someone that age, and that was after, by that time, a ton of practice. My point was that he probably wasn't beating other "fast" kids by 20% margins.
My overall point isn't that when participating in athletic events, a genetically gifted kid isn't going to be noticed. My point is it's very possible for a kid with Usain Bolts genetics to go unnoticed, simply because they aren't interested in sports.
The differences in speed between young kids are likely small enough that it's not obvious just from playing tag a few times that this kid is freakishly fast. And many kids will just never run 40 second races. It's very possible that whatever genetic advantages Usain Bolt had didn't even show up till puberty.
Maybe the kid is just bookish and doesn't play outside much, maybe he plays with older siblings so his natural ability is dwarfed by the extra year or 2. Maybe he gets fat because his parents feed him too much etc...
One thing I want to hit on is how Usain would look against a normal person. Imagine Usain, at his best, (at 17) runs a race against the 200th fastest other 17 year old, of all time, at his best. How do you think this would look? From your comments I suspect you think it would be a photo finish. We can actually answer this precisely with a bit of math (and record keeping).
The current 200th highest world record for a U18 is 21.04. Usain's record is 20.13 (my mistake). In the 200m you're generally looking at around 4.2 strides per second with each stride covering around 2.4 meters. So we have all we need. The difference at the end would be (21.04 - 20.13) * 4.2 * 2.4 = 9 meters, or more than 30 feet - multiple car lengths!
And that 200th fastest 17 year old of all time is not just a "fast kid". He's a physical outlier several sigmas away from the mean that would be creating similarly lopsided finishes at nearly nearly every local, state, and even national competition he entered. But Usain is just on an entirely different level than even that. So Usain racing against anybody even remotely normal would look like "fast kid" vs "extremely slow kid."
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Basically it's not really possible to fail to notice this sort of achievement. In PE he'd casually run laps around everybody without even trying. And by football, I don't mean any sort of team event - just a bunch of kids grabbing a football, imagining some nets, and playing. Nobody would be even close to being able to keep up to him. Literally anytime there is any sprint movement in anything, he would be on top - by far.
As for the hypotheticals beyond this, I don't know. We might have to just agree to disagree. I tend to think people are drawn to the things they're good at. And with running it's basically impossible to not notice that you're this many sigmas away from the mean. It's not like we're talking the best Polo player.
Yes in a 200m foot race someone who is 5% faster is very noticeable (in a 20m race, which is closer to what little kids are doing, it's much less noticeable at 1 meter). But by that time Usain Bolt was already a well trained athlete competing in organized events, so of course he was noticed.
My argument can be broken down into 2 parts.
1. If we accept that Usain Bolt's genetic speed boost is the same throughout his life, so that at 4 years old he had a 10-15% boost compared to other other fast 4-year-olds with similar fitness levels--I'm saying that given the kinds of running and games 4-year-olds play, and who they play them with, that isn't a big enough difference to guarantee that someone notices it. That is, it isn't guaranteed to swamp out other variables. Bolt at 4 wasn't likely faster than his 6-year-old cousin or any faster in a short race than the kid who starts half a second before him. Hypothetical fat Usain Bolt at 4 wasn't likely faster than his fast 4 year old friend. Hypothetical indoor sheltered Bolt who never played outside, probably wasn't faster than his fast friend who ran outside all day long.
2. We shouldn't accept that his genetic speed boost stays the same throughout his life. It's very unlikely that Usain Bolt was the fastest 8 month old in the world. It's very likely that at least some of the physiological differences that enable his freakish speed didn't develop until puberty. Kids are not scaled down mini adults.
Kids generally stop running around for fun outside of organized activities well before puberty. Potentially giving hypothetical Usain 2, plenty of time to develop other interests based on other things that he might also be good at.
A deconditioned couch potato 12-year-old isn't going to be lapping his peers who play soccer every day after school, no matter his genetic potential--especially if he doesn't care enough to really try.
Yeah and running isn’t like say hockey where you need a load of equipment and a certain socioeconomic background to play. Literally every kid runs. Some are faster than others and some enjoy it more.
Just to balance this out a bit... the alternate reality of "everyone tried" is kind of fictional, because a huge factor in high performers of their chosen sport/field/art is determination, resilience, imagination, visualisation, their psychology and finally personal desires - which are a product of their life experience combined with physiological predispositions.
In other words, what made Usain Bolt a gold medal winner wasn't merely physical potential and chance, but the mental ability to push his body to extremes and work at it every single day because he desired it that much and had the mental stamina to do so. In the "what if" reality, you would have to change everyone's mind to have the same psychology. You can have all the physical attributes and potential of a runner, but if you hate running and generally don't have much "grit", you aren't going to get far.
This "if everyone did x" is always a fiction, since it is impossible to get everyone to do the same thing at the same time. It is I believe a useful thought experiment, for the reasons you mention.
What if someone had the potential but not the determination to follow through. Or they did not have a way to train, or got injured the day they had the first competition, or the first training, or they did not like the coach or the teacher, or they preferred dancing or music instead of running, etc.
Your comment reminds me of a comedian who used to remark that for a person like Bolt it is not really extraordinary to do what he does: it’s his ordinary job.
Extraordinary would be, say, a plumber dropping by the stadium on his way to work, outrunning Bolt, then quietly going back to his clogged drains.
> Conversely, by choosing the axes differently, Olympic gold medal winners become ordinary people.
See Michael Jordan trying baseball or every programmer who thinks they know everything about everything else because they know programming. One of my favorites is when an athletic guy comes into Jiu-Jitsu the first time and gets submitted over and over by one of the kids or women.
Also, being extraordinary in one thing (e.g. running) doesn't mean what people think it means because how many people actually try to become a professional runner? If everybody tried, Usain Bolt would be ranked #1000 or perhaps even lower.