Or you could start a year early and be among the youngest. Then run a 4:07 mile your freshman year of college and be anonymous.
Fall birthdays are the most prevalent among the US population. The more you know.
Truth or fiction: Athletics Weekly claims most elite runners have fall birthdays
Pro News/Info/Results
Distance
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From a UK perspective, which is primarily how the AW editor views things, this seems a pointless article in that it's been rehashed countless times since I was an adolescent some decades ago. The latest article's 'insight' adds nothing that wasn't already widely discussed decades ago. In England, school years are based with only rare exceptions around 1 September as birthday cut off, and the obvious trend follows. To then point out some amazing runners who were born MONTHS after September - well that's what happens in TRENDS.
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i don't buy it on the elite level. i would say that statistically speaking, people born in the fall are better than those who aren't when it comes to the grade school level. with that said, we see many juniors who are just as good as seniors in state meets as well as a few sophomores and occasionally a freshman. some kid with a lot of potential isn't likely to give up when they're losing while they're also consistently improving.
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redstaterunner wrote:
fake news. the fastest distance runners in the world are from the rift valley, and most dont even know when their own birthday is, or have "fake" birthdays like Kipchoge.
Utter rubbish!
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I feel like women are born in the summer and in the early early spring.
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Gladwell would like this wrote:
From Jakob (9/19) to Coe (9/29) to Kipchoge (11/5).
There is an unusually large number of leading endurance athletes with autumnal birthdays – and there is an explanation for it.
The theory is that athletes born in autumn will be among the oldest in their year at school. This means they will be more developed than many of their rivals in age-group competitions and, in some cases, almost an entire year older, which is a significant advantage during puberty.
The consequences are that the older and well-developed kids will enjoy more success. They will therefore be more likely to persist with the sport, could end up with more confidence than younger athletes and, crucially, could gain early advantages such as being picked for regional squads and so on.Do you agree? I think it's hogwash but don't have any evidence to show this is fake news.
Ummmm ... Kipchoge (11/5) ... Kenya is on the equator, so it isn't exactly fall in the same sense as northern countries.
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Ghost of Jim Ryun wrote:
Gladwell would like this wrote:
From Jakob (9/19) to Coe (9/29) to Kipchoge (11/5).
There is an unusually large number of leading endurance athletes with autumnal birthdays – and there is an explanation for it.
The theory is that athletes born in autumn will be among the oldest in their year at school. This means they will be more developed than many of their rivals in age-group competitions and, in some cases, almost an entire year older, which is a significant advantage during puberty.
The consequences are that the older and well-developed kids will enjoy more success. They will therefore be more likely to persist with the sport, could end up with more confidence than younger athletes and, crucially, could gain early advantages such as being picked for regional squads and so on.Do you agree? I think it's hogwash but don't have any evidence to show this is fake news.
Why are they using a sample size of like 20 people? The thesis sounds perfectly reasonable & Gladwell explored this concept with Hockey players already, but this is just poor methodology. You should look at the top 100 or 1,000 runners in a particular event and calculate % from there.
I could write this same article about any 3 month period and cherry pick people to do it.
The comments in this article are backed up by extensive studies on very large sample (e.g. every Olympic gold medalist in every sport). They all show a disproportionately large (e.g 85% +) number of medalists have birthdays in the earlier part of the academic year in the Northern hemisphere (i.e. autumn birthday).
Why? There are numerous reasons which explain this affect but if you want a proper analysis, you’ll have to pay me!
Evidence - there are tons of papers e.g.
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