Why can college sprinters get CLOSE to world records, but distance runners don't get close until they're professional?

The distance guys are still waiting to hit puberty during college

The biggest concentration of distance talent is simply usually not in the NCAA these days.

duh because sprints are EASY. do you live under a rock

the430miler wrote:

Does it take distance runners longer to develop?

Yes. It takes years and years to get the aerobic development necessary to challenge distance world records. Distance runners can stay world class until their late 30's, sprinters are usually done at 25.

Obvious answer wrote:

The distance guys are still waiting to hit puberty during college

Congratulations. Your post has been deemed worthy of recognition.

End the thread. This is it. It takes painstaking effort to develop distance abilities. It takes about 3 seasons to make an unbelievably talent into a world record holding sprinter. No shame on them. It's just a short window to get it going. And then it's a slow decline. Two different games. Both are incredible.

Just a theory: The longer the event, the more aerobic, and the more aerobic, the longer it takes to develop the various adaptations. Aerobic fitness is highly trainable. To be sure, Speed is trainable too, but that is more of a nervous system adaptation that happens more quickly. Capillarization, increased VO2 max, take a long time to maximalize.

Sprinters are incredibly fast before they ever step on a track. Coaches refine that last 15-20%.

This is all just a theory, not an expert.

As far as sprinters declining quickly, it shouldn’t be that way: Kim Collins was a 9.9 - 10.1 sprinter for about 20 years. He didn’t overtrain. After watching some footage on usain bolt workouts, it doesn’t surprise me that he declined past 25. His coach worked him too hard.

its because by college,all the top athletes are already on large doses of ped's and theyre not tested for it.the usa college system is rife with drugs,but its worse for sprinters,than distance runners.

I'm not sure the premise of the question is correct. The best college 100m sprinters are .4-.5 seconds off the world record. That's 4-5% slower. That might be a bigger margin than in the 10k.

back woods wrote:

I'm not sure the premise of the question is correct. The best college 100m sprinters are .4-.5 seconds off the world record. That's 4-5% slower. That might be a bigger margin than in the 10k.

Uhm, no. Sprints are not just 100m just like distance isn't just 10k. Besides:

Coleman, 2017 #2 in world.

Benjamin, 2018 #1 in world

Norman, 2018 #1 in world

USC 4x4 2018, #1 in world

NCAA D1 distance vs world?

.... JV squad

The best distance athletes in the US are those who've never run track and play other sports.

The fastest athletes in the US definitely do track and it shows. If you want to see better NCAA distance vs the world, work on getting better athletes to run the Mile and xc.

Because the best college-aged kenyans and Ethiopians don't run at colleges

For example, bekele would have been a college senior (maybe even Junior) when he set the 5k world record

What NCAA distance runner has ever been close to a WR at any point in their career? Rupp is the best we've ever had and he hasn’t been close to any WR. The UTEP dudes are great but again... not close to the 800 WR.

Because sprints take much less time to complete, the difference between a WR and a decent college time seems like next to nothing - because strictly time-wise, it is. But that tiny gap is a huge chasm in reality, and when taken in context, not much different than the gap in distance events.

Pretty clear wrote:

Because the best college-aged kenyans and Ethiopians don't run at colleges

The best Kenyans who say they are college-aged are actually several years older.

Pretty clear wrote:

Because the best college-aged kenyans and Ethiopians don't run at colleges

This is correct. The bets sprinters are of sub-Saharan African origin. Hence lots of fast black guys in US colleges. I’m guessing there would be even faster times run in colleges if Football didn’t draw so many talented guys.

illusionary wrote:

Because sprints take much less time to complete, the difference between a WR and a decent college time seems like next to nothing - because strictly time-wise, it is. But that tiny gap is a huge chasm in reality, and when taken in context, not much different than the gap in distance events.

What you said can be easily negated by looking at the PERCENTAGE difference, rather than TIME difference. Percentages allow for relative comparison .

The difference between the 1500m WR and winning time at this year NCAA (3'44"77) is 9.1%

For the 400m is 1.35%.

Of course we cannot compare sprint and distance racing, because distance racing can be tactical.

But in percentage terms, the winner of the NCAA would have to run 3'28"7 to equal the 43"61 quarter-mile ran at NCAA this year, I do not believe that anybody in college can do that.

The answer to the OP is very simple, the US has a much higher concentration of sprinters than distance runners.

Most US main sports are geared toward anaerobic power (Football, BasketBall, Hockey & Base-Ball). Being fast is certainly more rewarding that having great endurance.

In fact, even soccer the most popular sport in the world is more anaerobic than aerobic. There is not a single popular team sport in the world where you will have run more than 3 minutes in row without stopping.

This weird because human beings have better stamina than other mammals, but are slow in comparison. My guess is that a sport who would be geared too much toward the areobic system would be too boring to watch.

Professional cycling is a very popular mostly aerobic team sport.

Sprinters don't get close to WR. .20 in the 100 is like 30 seconds in a 5k.