Is there a more competitive sport than sprinting (talent pool-wise)?

Aside from making loads of money or getting attractive women into bed, no.

At the high school level, no. But at collegiate/pro level, football is king, and it’s hard to reach your potential in both simultaneously. It doesn’t pay off to do track unless you’re so much better at it that you can make as much as you would in football.

Also, I’m guessing soccer gets the top talent from ages 3-10.

Yes in some cases wrote:

At the high school level, no. But at collegiate/pro level, football is king, and it’s hard to reach your potential in both simultaneously. It doesn’t pay off to do track unless you’re so much better at it that you can make as much as you would in football.

Also, I’m guessing soccer gets the top talent from ages 3-10.

I agree track loses a lot of talent even starting in high school and that more kids would rather be ballers etc. than run track but more specifically which sport has the most people try to succeed at but fail?

I think you can rule football out because this is not an international sport. Also, as you say these football players already know they're not fast enough to make more money in track so they've been filtered out.

I would definitely put soccer up there though. In terms of accessibility I'd say you'd need to be in a league to hone your skills, whereas in sprinting this isn't necessary (to reach an almost world class level). This also requires money, but I'd bet you'd be hard-pressed not to find a league or prevented from joining a league because of financial reasons. I'd argue that soccer is also testing grounds for runners at a young age, and sprinting also has any other sport where its a base skill to ID talent.

So an example in favour of sprinting being more talent-loaded than soccer is this: while Lebron never devoted himself to soccer and Messi never devoted himself to basketball we know that they both could never be professional sprinters. That does raise the question about basketball though. Every tall person at this point I'd imagine would be told to play basketball, but this is not such an accessible sport.

BIGLYKNEES wrote:

Considering everyone has access to sprinting, has done sprinting, and takes 0 practice to have recognisable talent is there any other sport more competitive?

Football (= soccer) obviously. Where I live every kid plays soccer and very few have access to a track, and I live in a city of 3.5 million that is a national capital (here there are maybe 15 municipal tracks, most of them inferior in quality to what a typical US high school has).

back woods wrote:

BIGLYKNEES wrote:

Considering everyone has access to sprinting, has done sprinting, and takes 0 practice to have recognisable talent is there any other sport more competitive?

Football (= soccer) obviously. Where I live every kid plays soccer and very few have access to a track, and I live in a city of 3.5 million that is a national capital (here there are maybe 15 municipal tracks, most of them inferior in quality to what a typical US high school has).

You don't need a track to become an almost world-class talent and anyone who plays soccer is also sprinting (even though soccer has an aerobic component). Andre De Grasse who played basketball ran a 10 second 100 m in basketball shoes with no training. I've also heard of similar stories-talented sprinters can run fast times just from being in shape from other sports. Given the money, popularity and accessibility of soccer I wouldn't have a problem with it being the most talent-loaded sport though.

We already know that 0 soccer players would have been in any 100 m Olympic final even with a few years of sprint training-Andre De Grasse did it. Theo Walcott? has like a 10.6 hand-timed 100 m and that's one of his greatest attributes.

Now if we take tens of thousands of the best sprinters as babies, give them a father who is a soccer coach, and sign them up in a league at age four, as most professionals were I think it's safe to say they would fare better than the soccer players who tried to make it in sprinting.