I believe many people have jokingly proposed that every Olympic event contain one random/normal person to give some sense of perspective of the real skill and performance of the Olympians.
I’ve competed at elite level spots in the past, and been in the top percentiles overall for running and weight lifts. I was faster and stronger than pretty much any normal person would be. The difference between me and an average Joe in strength technique and speed was still less than the difference between me and the Olympic level athletes that I occasionally competed (or worse, trained) with. I’ve seen this since with musicians, and even the occasional engineer. They’re just operating at a different level to the rest of us.
Brian Scalabrine was a bottom of the barrel NBA player. He was good enough to stay in the league for years but he'd only play about 13 minutes a game and averaged 3 points a game. Basically he was the guy who would play a few minutes and not completely tank the game while your actually good players were getting a rest.
After he retired he went around playing amateurs and completely dominating them. He became semi famous for his saying "I'm closer to LeBron James than you are you to me."
I'm curious. Do you mean it figuratively? I ask Claude Sonnet 3.7 Extended Thinking since it's usually reliable and the stats for running strongly suggest that for most competitions, the top percentile is closer to world-class athletes than the average person to top percentile athletes (possibly except Marathon).
They’re not talking about the results. They’re saying the gulf between the skill and strength required to go from 11s to 9s is larger than the gulf between 11s and 15s - that’s because it takes exponentially increasing effort for marginal gains as you approach world record times - it’s not a linear thing and thus looking at the output paints a really misleading picture on the relative difference in inputs
Verbatim quote:
“The difference between me and an average Joe in strength technique and speed was still less than the difference between me and the Olympic level athletes that I occasionally competed (or worse, trained) with.”
I’m not disputing the gaps in technique, just to be clear.
Only because he picked 50th percentile. If you'd sample 75th percentile I think for most sports it'll hold pretty true to the 80-20 rule for mastering something: 80% of the result comes from 20% of the investment, and to eek out the last 20% of result you'll have to invest 80% more effort / time / money. Especially the last few percentpoint gain require an inordinate amount extra.
Same for me with boxing. I once sparred with a natural champion of my country. The speed and power were just incredible, actually frightening. And that guy was far away from Olympics level or top professionals. It’s hard for a normal person to understand how good the top people are.
Another one: when I was a kid. There was a guy a few years older who would basically win the matches in his youth league alone. He would often score 10 or 20 goals per match . He finally made it to the pros. There he played a few matches and didn’t get another contract because he wasn’t good enough. Now imagine how good somebody like Messi must be.
That level of physical supremacy reminds me of Melvyn Downes: a guy who fellow SAS operators describe as a "machine" and a "physical specimen". The Royal Marine Commandos send a Physical Training Instructor to USMC OCS and those guys are always beasts. I can't wrap my brain around what Melvyn can do, and how his muscles don't melt.
Another take on it came from my time playing StarCraft 2. When the game was in full swing you could probably break it into 10 levels where anyone from the previous level can never beat someone in the next bracket.
When two of my friends started playing I could pretty easily beat both of them while they were playing together with any race setup, BUT at the same time it would have taken 3-5 of myself to even have the slightest chance against a professional level player.
I saw a swimming contest where all the swimmer except one were normal peple (who swim regularly, the ones on the fast lane at your local pool) and an olympic swimmer.
They jumped except for the swimmer who just got on the starting pole, adjusted his glasses, smiled around, stretched and finally started. He expectedly won.
He was not showing off, it was to show the difference between active people and top class pros.
I was a competitive swimmer in high school, and I note that the Olympic lap times are about on a par with mine.
Except that they're in a 50 meter pool, and I was in a 25 meter pool.
At one point I could run marathons in 3 hours, 50% longer than the winners. Now I'm old, and I'm trying to get back to running them merely 100% longer. That is unlikely.
It’s just unbelievable unless you’ve experienced it. At the absolute top of my game, on my best day, I would still be more than a boat length behind the Olympic guys on their off days.
I find some consoling symmetry in that I can run faster than the fastest swimmers and bike faster than the fastest runners. At least on some distances.
This is one reason I like watching the olympics, because not everyone is professionally paid to be there. Versus for example a diamond league stadium where everyone on the starting line got paid to show up. I especially like to watch the first heats on the 100m where the top sprinters like to show off, usually by jogging the last 10-20m of the race.
