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.
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.
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.
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.
What's amazing isn't just how much faster she is but also how much control she has over her body. Her motions are so precise and perfect, the people behind her look like a flailing Zombie horde in comparison. I guess that's what I should have expected, but I never noticed it in competitions, because everybody moves like that there.
It's great when people don't hold back, we have a local case of farmer next door hits 24 x 24 inch targets at 5,000 yards while his spotter hits soda cans at 1,200 yards.
Bit daunting for the rest of us, but a good source of advice and tips.
As his skills are at another unachievable level, how do you know if he is not taking a piss with the hints? It's like the multi-billion business founders saying "we got this idea while having having a beer and started in a garage".
That reminds me of the Meaning of Life sketch playing a rugby match with the boys team against the masters as punishment for not paying attention in sex education class :)
I thought the same, and I was thinking of how funny that would be. As if Pryce needs to prove her worth against kids?! Pryce would probably win 1st, 2nd and 3rd places leaving nothing but participation ribbons for the kiddos.
I was in an intramural American flag football league in college and one chemical engineering student who played was the biggest, quickest, strongest and most clever player on the field, and by big margin. He was also very friendly. A whole different class of human. No how much I trained I would never be able to complete with him. In earlier times, he would've been the tribe leader.
The thing that gets me is the difference between "I can win Olympic gold" which is what 10 seconds? And "I'm competitive at the school sports day event" which is ~15 seconds?
For me that's right up there with the difference between the fastest anyone's ever run a mile and the pace per mile of someone running an Olympic marathon. Both seem really weird in a way I can't put my finger on.
By the power of the bell curve, you won't then usually see someone who both participates in the school sports day event seriously and runs it in over 20 seconds.
This seems like a fairly bad example to compare with?
These runners do not even look like amateurs. Look how the best of the bunch still does the novice mistake of decelerating _before_ the finish line. They're just regular people asked for "let's try to run a 100m sprint". It doesn't take an Olympic champion to get a 3+ seconds lead in such competition.
The above-average track runner would look the same in this video. And the Olympic champion might have an 1s+ lead on them, which is still a lot, but not as lot as in this video (at least they will both fit in the camera).
Best thing I have seen in a long time, lucky that there were two cameras, as the drone pilot lost the shot , there was no way to show the race from a close distance.......guessing we just have seen a demonstration of how stadiums got invented ie: sometimes you need a little distance to get a true perspective of what is happening
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."
He is still doing it, last one that got popular was a month ago https://www.boston.com/sports/morning-sports-update/2025/03/...
My favourite illustration of Olympic performance is not from a competition, but a warm-up during a training sessipn.
Some jogging-hurdles by high-jumper Stefan Holm:
https://youtu.be/L28NyIquzIQ?si=RMJhHnInEI0IFj0B
I think this distribution works for almost everything, for example league of legends:
Being in diamond 5~ (top 1% back in the days) meant that you were significantly better than people in silver, gold, platinum.
But the gap between you top 1% (e.g diamond 5 50lp) and top 0.3% diamond 1 was bigger than the gap between gold (top 30%) and you top 1%
I agree it works for almost any game with a competitive scene.
Even SC2, the difference between a top 10 globally and top 100 is a 99% win rate vs the later.
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).
*100m Sprint*:
1st percentile: ~18-20 seconds
50th percentile: ~14-15 seconds
99th percentile: ~11-11.5 seconds
Elite world-class: ~9.8-10.2 seconds
World record: 9.58 seconds (Usain Bolt, 2009)
*1-Mile Run*:
1st percentile: ~12-15 minutes
50th percentile: ~8-9 minutes
99th percentile: ~4:30-5:00 minutes
Elite world-class: ~3:45-3:55
World record: 3:43.13 (Hicham El Guerrouj, 1999)
*Marathon* (26.2 miles):
1st percentile: ~6+ hours
50th percentile: ~4:30-5:00 hours
99th percentile: ~3:00-3:15 hours
Elite world-class: ~2:05-2:10
World record: 2:00:35 (Kelvin Kiptum, 2023)*
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.
Exactly this
Well the one mile and marathon stats pretty much prove OPs point
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.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43743198
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.
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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pL7FQEIWpDI&t=318s
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.
I used to think that, and then I realized that if you stuck a random person in the synchronized swimming event, they would just straight up die.
"The Freeze" in MLB is like that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UzW1aJXRUw
It happened. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dJpjSX-aDXI
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.
The modern Olympic Games were meant for amateurs only
Even in amateur sports, there’s a huge difference. My kid is one of the better kids in his baseball league, legit good player.
They played some showcase team from the west coast, who just destroyed them completely. One kid was 6’4” and was 5/5, all home runs. He was 12.
Didn't they try that with the breakdancing competition in 2024? /s
What's amazing isn't just how much faster she is but also how much control she has over her body. Her motions are so precise and perfect, the people behind her look like a flailing Zombie horde in comparison. I guess that's what I should have expected, but I never noticed it in competitions, because everybody moves like that there.
It's great when people don't hold back, we have a local case of farmer next door hits 24 x 24 inch targets at 5,000 yards while his spotter hits soda cans at 1,200 yards.
Bit daunting for the rest of us, but a good source of advice and tips.
As his skills are at another unachievable level, how do you know if he is not taking a piss with the hints? It's like the multi-billion business founders saying "we got this idea while having having a beer and started in a garage".
A great short video — though I was hoping she was running against the kids.
That reminds me of the Meaning of Life sketch playing a rugby match with the boys team against the masters as punishment for not paying attention in sex education class :)
https://youtu.be/HKv6o7YqHnE
I thought the same, and I was thinking of how funny that would be. As if Pryce needs to prove her worth against kids?! Pryce would probably win 1st, 2nd and 3rd places leaving nothing but participation ribbons for the kiddos.
Witness the fitness https://youtu.be/NDWgtB_MD24
I still remember seeing the three legged race for the first time and my brother and I were in hysterics. Still one of my favourite ever music videos.
Roots Manuva never really got the credit he deserved.
Came here for this! One of the best music video concepts ever devised.
I'd like to play a football match with Messi, if my kids shared a class with his.
I was in an intramural American flag football league in college and one chemical engineering student who played was the biggest, quickest, strongest and most clever player on the field, and by big margin. He was also very friendly. A whole different class of human. No how much I trained I would never be able to complete with him. In earlier times, he would've been the tribe leader.
The thing that gets me is the difference between "I can win Olympic gold" which is what 10 seconds? And "I'm competitive at the school sports day event" which is ~15 seconds?
For me that's right up there with the difference between the fastest anyone's ever run a mile and the pace per mile of someone running an Olympic marathon. Both seem really weird in a way I can't put my finger on.
By the power of the bell curve, you won't then usually see someone who both participates in the school sports day event seriously and runs it in over 20 seconds.
This seems like a fairly bad example to compare with?
These runners do not even look like amateurs. Look how the best of the bunch still does the novice mistake of decelerating _before_ the finish line. They're just regular people asked for "let's try to run a 100m sprint". It doesn't take an Olympic champion to get a 3+ seconds lead in such competition.
The above-average track runner would look the same in this video. And the Olympic champion might have an 1s+ lead on them, which is still a lot, but not as lot as in this video (at least they will both fit in the camera).
Nobody was claiming the other parents were runners? Your comment makes no sense.
You see the same thing in e-sports too.
You can be “good” at StarCraft 2 and still be miles away from the top. Even between the top 100 players the difference is stark
It is m not M. As mega is not meter.
I don't think it was intentional, being kottke.org, but it's a terrific click bait headline.
The headline is 70% on the way to being in The Onion.
I think I’d have fun and let someone else win.
Best thing I have seen in a long time, lucky that there were two cameras, as the drone pilot lost the shot , there was no way to show the race from a close distance.......guessing we just have seen a demonstration of how stadiums got invented ie: sometimes you need a little distance to get a true perspective of what is happening
Wow, what a nothing burger. On Kottke. Pretty cool that she gave it her everything at a mere parent event IMO.
Is this why this is on HN? Genuinely asking.
A 100M doesnt have that drastic of a time difference between an athlete and an Olympian.
We are talking a few seconds max.
This is more of a knock on how out of shape the parents were.
as a proportion of the total time a few seconds is a lot