
What if the greatest athlete alive decided to actually get serious? - panic
http://www.esquire.com/features/usain-bolt-bio-0410
======
karzeem
It's an interesting article, but this type of piece bugs me. It means to
suggest that Bolt is not that hard a worker. Now, to the reader, that means
grabbing a bag of Fritos and heading directly to YouTube. To Bolt, I'd be
willing to bet, it means something like training for five hours a day instead
if eight.

I always admire high achievers who cop to having worked damn hard to get where
they are. The article means to suggest otherwise, but I can't imagine Usain
Bolt is anything even vaguely resembling lazy.

~~~
xiaoma
> _I always admire high achievers who cop to having worked damn hard to get
> where they are. The article means to suggest otherwise, but I can't imagine
> Usain Bolt is anything even vaguely resembling lazy._

Sometimes the truth isn't what we want it to be.

As a 12 year-old _without_ track & field training or experience, he was the
fastest boy in his school. His interest was in cricket, but once he got to
high school, his cricket coach noticed his exceptional speed and encouraged
him to do track. Within two years, he posted a time of 20.61s for a 200 meter
race! That's faster than many of the 200m times posted in the 2008 Olympics.
In fact, 20.61 would have been fast enough to qualify in 7 of the 8 heats.

He did that at age 15. Think about it.

Gladwell's 10,000 hours yarn is bullshit. There is talent, and Bolt's got so
much of it that he's been regularly demolishing more experienced, harder
working opponents for his entire career.

[http://www.monstersandcritics.com/people/Usain-
Bolt/biograph...](http://www.monstersandcritics.com/people/Usain-
Bolt/biography/) <http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSISS99256920080818>

~~~
philk
_Gladwell's 10,000 hours yarn is bullshit. There is talent, and Bolt's got so
much of it that he's been regularly demolishing more experienced, harder
working opponents for his entire career._

Good post. However, I think this needs to be clarified; running really fast is
something that has a strong genetic component and a weak skill component. The
idea that greatness is mostly the result of focused practice is more likely to
hold true in fields with a strong skill component (for example learning to
play the violin or writing code).

~~~
xiaoma
Musical talent may not have been the best example to choose to make Gladwell's
point. Not only is genetics demonstrably important for musicians, but we even
know that the strongly influencing genes come from a certain segment of
chromosome 4.

[http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/musical-talent-
genes-16460.ht...](http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/musical-talent-
genes-16460.html) [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/musical-talent-
pro...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/musical-talent-proves-to-be-
air-on-a-gene-string-695379.html) [http://www.world-
science.net/exclusives/080429_music-genes.h...](http://www.world-
science.net/exclusives/080429_music-genes.htm)

------
markmywords
Another thing to take into consideration is how prize money is awarded in
track and field competitions: There is most of the times a separate amount of
prize money awarded for breaking a world record as all hosts of competitions
would love to see new world records set in "their" events. This prize money is
often higher than the regular prize money for winning.

So for an athlete it makes kind of sense to try and set new world records in
incremental steps in order to earn as much prize money as possible. It also
might lead to more frontpage cover stories in the long run.

That being said, this might not 100% apply to Usain Bolt as he is already a
popular figure contesting in a very popular discipline of track and fields but
it might make sense for an athlete of a less popular discipline like Triple
Jump.

~~~
Danny72
It's generally acknowledged that Yelena Isinbayeva has been doing exactly that
in the pole vault over the last few years.

~~~
dagw
And Sergei Bubka before him. Bubka set 18 indoor and 17 outdoor world records
in the space of 10 years, often beating is old record by only 1 or 2 cm. There
is no way he would have jumped like that if he didn't get a bonus for each
record he set.

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robryan
Maybe some of his success can actually be attributed to taking it a little
easier, it does say in the article he used to train a lot harder and was held
back by little injuries. This seems to happen in a lot of sports, once people
get the chance to get over all the little niggling injuries performance really
improves.

------
wallflower
Summarizing passage:

"Bolt is not just one step ahead but three. When he set his latest 100-meter
record, it took him forty-one steps to reach the finish line. The second-place
finisher, the American Tyson Gay, required forty-four steps to cover the same
distance. So the simplest, most literal explanation for Bolt's speed is this:
He cycles his stride nearly as quickly as other sprinters, but his stride
length, owing to his longer legs, is significantly greater than theirs. Or
even simpler: He's a tall man who runs like a shorter one."

------
JacobAldridge
Single page link - <http://www.esquire.com/print-this/usain-bolt-bio-0410>

~~~
omaranto
I

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mc_
I contest the notion that Usain is the greatest athlete alive. Running in a
straight line or with a slight curve (the 200) is great and all, but doesn't
correlate with overall athletic greatness. For all we know, Usain's hand-eye
coordination could be bunk, he might throw a ball poorly, etc. Probably not,
but its not impossible.

For me, the greatest athlete right now is Lebron James. At his size, his
ability to move in an agile manner, his body control, his ridiculous jumping
and court quickness...I don't think it compares. He shows the complete
athletic package night in and night out, and has from a young age.

Usain's ability to sprint is great, definitely the best so far, but I put more
stock in overall athleticism in events other than sprinting.

~~~
lookleft
He's also quite decent at cricket. In a charity match last year he hit Chris
Gayle (captain of the West Indies) for 6 and also bowled him out. Being able
to both bat and bowl shows a great amount of general athleticism, most people
are only able to do well at one of those.

([http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/cricket/other_international/...](http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/cricket/other_international/west_indies/8313778.stm))

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Paddy3118
Just a reminder after some of the comments directly after the Beijing
Olympics: Bolt is tested to death and is clean. As where those 100m female
runners who swept away _all_ the medals: Shelly-Ann Fraser, Sherone Simpson,
and Kerron Stewart.

There is one thing that was shoddy though, with a bit more effort the ladies
could have got equal times and picked up three golds in the race instead of
one gold and two silvers :-)

\- Paddy.

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mR_fr0g
Why is this on hacker news? Not interested

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iamdave
I thought this was going to be about Peyton Manning. :(

~~~
zackattack
Hahaha

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pi3832
Journalism is fucking dead. People write these days like they're Charles
goddam Dickens and the page should be dense with their words. Like they're
crafting great literature when in reality they're writing something that
someone (with an iPad) will read while taking a crap at work.

Clarity. Precision. Transparent conveyance of content.

When writers turn in pieces for periodicals, they should be shocked with a
voltage in equal proportion to the density of their prose.

~~~
jrockway
I like good writing. I can enjoy a good story and get ideas for how to write
my own.

This is why I subscribe to real periodicals and try to read those in favor of
blogs. For technical stuff, you can't go wrong with a blog. For general-
interest topics, I've never found a blog worth reading.

~~~
wallflower
> For general-interest topics, I've never found a blog worth reading.

Check out Arts & Letters Daily

<http://aldaily.com>

