How does TL explain Sedjati's background as a soccer player?

Yep, most school in the UK don't even have a track. It's normally a grass field with somewhat inaccurate track lines drawn on them

I don’t feel comfortable speaking definitively about Sedjati. Seems like he was grabbed from military physical exercises.

As far as your general premise, it was your level of exaggeration that I rejected. That there’d be 50-100 sub-1:45 guys in the English Soccer leagues, and that pitiful Kenya can also produce 10-15 of those guys with it being the only sport they do. Kenya does have a soccer league as far as I know.

Sidenote: George Mills and Andreas Almgren are odd examples as two failed 800m runners who had to run 100mpw and move up in events to be competitive and make money.

Anyhow, I’m sure soccer takes away some potential bright prospects in track. Just as football and basketball do in the US. But I don’t think it typically takes away the best of the best. There’s enough history in the US or UK where elite talent is recognized and encouraged to try track. True not everyone switches. It does harm the depth and maybe THIS is why Kenya and Ethiopia have such outstanding depth in that their 50th best HM/Marathon guy can run with our best. That’s the event requiring the least natural speed where accumulated training/work comes through as well as being born at altitude.

I think your argument would make more sense to me for South America or something where the soccer obsession combined with lack of track history for some countries might really stand out. Either way one guy (Sedjati) doesn’t prove anything and sub-1:48 and sub-1:44 are huge differences. I think there are some runners being missed, just think you’re making a mountain out of a molehill.

It is not needed, there is something called word of mouth.

BTW, being fast in soccer means nothing as it is a sport where success is mainly based on technical ability, this is the reason why when analysing overall athletic performance at soccer world cups, the USA always top the list and the last World Cup in Qatar was no exception (see :
A Contextualised Physical Analysis of the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022)

A famous couple of examples coming from basketball and soccer were Alberto Juantorena and Said Aouita. The Cuban Juantorena was age 17 and played basketball when he switched to 400/ 800 and became Olympic Champion. Said Aouita played soccer in the Morocco junior team but when he without special training ran a test 3000m at 8:25 his coach adviced him to switch to athletics. Even he became Olympic Champion.

No it doesn't mean 'nothing'. It's why over half the England, Dutch and French teams are West African descent. That's like saying being able to run fast means nothing in the Pole Vault because the most important thing is technical skill.

Mbappe was signed by his local club at 9 years old, and had a huge contract with the biggest club in France at 15. When would any potential talent for track be spotted? At six?

Ronaldo played for his local youth side from the age 7. He was signed to the biggest club in Portugal on a professional contract at 12. Now at the age of 39, he's earning $4.3 million EVERY WEEK. Damn, lucky he clearly had zero 800m potential when he was five and wasn't dragged into track to chase Sedjuti and Wayoumi's behinds for a couple of grand 4 or 5 times a year.

Some serious delusion in this thread.

It is an interesting conversation, Coevett. You realize it is had in the USA where the best athletes typically do not play soccer. Do you think if that the entire country had kids doing youth soccer and skill academies instead of AAU basketball, Little League, Pop-Warner, flag football etc. America would not absolutely smoke the world in soccer? Come on now. But that doesn’t mean I discredit the rest of the world for being better at soccer and having better players. So I don’t see why you’re doing it with the 800m or Kenya who has a guy running 1:42.0-1 not even making their Olympic team. Track has pretty low barrier to entry and in places with some history in it, I really don’t think many of the top talents are slipping through the cracks. Some? Sure.

Wrong about Ronaldo.

And wtf are Sedjuti and Wayoumi?

Not sure if you are attempting to be funny again, but I said nothing about the USA's potential at soccer, and it's pretty irrelevant to the topic. Except perhaps that we could both agree that the USA would 'smoke the rest of the world' if soccer was as big in the USA as elsewhere, and the reason primarily would be that you have by far the largest population of West African descent citizens, and soccer is indeed, contrary to what others are saying here, relevant to the ability to run fast.

As for your relevant last sentence, that's just your opinion which seems to be based on nothing, and which is completely contradicted by Sedjuti. If it is the case that he was a soccer player until 19 or 20, then why was his 1:41 ability not spotted earlier? With all the thousands of pro soccer players in Europe, it just so happens that the only one with 1:41 potential is an Algerian who didn't quite make the grade? And despite there being a proven case of one soccer player having the talent to be the best 800m runner in the world and possibly break 1:41, then only a handful of other pro soccer players in the world out of thousands had the potential to break 1:45?

My point about Kenya and soccer players, which you ridiculed, was that it would only take 2 or 3 soccer players in each major European or South American country having world class 800m potential to completely rewrite the notion of Kenyans having any 'special ability' for the 800m. No world class Kenyan 800m talent is lost to any other sport. There are no professional sports in Kenya (or Ethiopia) than running. It's absurd to think that in the UK alone, with thousands of professional sportsmen in other sports, that no more than 1 or 2 would have the potential to be a world class 800m runner.

Another example is Josh Kerr and his brother. His brother is a professional rugby player who has represented Scotland. Again I was ridiculed a few years ago (perhaps by you) over the idea that there could be world class runners lost to sports like rugby, or boxing. It's a bit of a stretch to think that Josh Kerr simply had genetic talent for running the 1500m and nothing much else, and his brother only had genetic talent for playing rugby and nothing much else.

Where I’m from (Cuba), soccer doesn’t “steal” any talent but Athletics does. We always joke that Cuba could be a World Cup contender with its athletes (explosive; fast twitch, speed endurance) if they ever cared to play the sport.

Where you miss the point is this notion that Sedjati is necessarily a failed soccer player. We don’t really know that. You then make a huge leap of logic from that.
You are also then accusing me of holding a straw man opinion that Kenyans are more gifted at the 800m than anyone else. Kenyans and Britons have a great tradition for running the 800m. That is all I’d say or think about it. They look for the talent in Kenya just as Britain does. The 800m is probably the glory event in Kenya. They move sprinters up and try distance runners with speed at 800 first before 1500 often (Cheruiyot, Kipsang, Chepchirchir, Obiri).
At 10K and up then let’s start talking about an advantage of being in the Rift Valley and running as children etc. To your point, maybe more 800m talent is missed in Britain which is why the 15th best Kenyan could probably beat the 5th best Briton. Sure. Do I think Sedjatis existence means that there are lots of 1:41 guys playing soccer? No I don’t think so. First of all these guys’ running talent would be somewhat known in training and in games. Second of all there’s a large difference from being a 1:44-1:48 type talent and a 1:41 guy. That range of fringe world class I could completely see being missed in large numbers. I am skeptical of this idea of lots of 1:41 guys being missed.

It seems you are saying that West Africans are better at sprinting than you pasty Brits? I thought you said the pasty whites were superior at running and only the darker people had to use drugs? This is all very confusing.

Kenyans play soccer just like any other country in Africa.

There is a Kenyan Premier League since 1963.

Secondly you keep saying that Sedjati is a former soccer player on the basis of what evidence ? A Letsrun post ?