Not An Expert wrote:
Here's the truth wrote:
Yes, and I'm sure you're here being very impartial and objective.
Fisher is getting there but the 1500 is more respected of course. And thanks for pointing it out, Fisher is 24!
Cole mf Hocker has achieved all this already at 20!!! Wrap your head around this
Among all the intentional (and kinda funny, in that it illustrates a bias that a lot of people have) bull on this thread, this is one point that I want to actually respond to, because I’ve seen even serious people think this way sometimes:
When talking about whether someone *is* great (descriptively, as in whether they’ve already accomplished great things) at the senior level, age doesn’t matter at all. Its about lining up and beating the best, running eye-popping times, and accomplishing things that stack up to all-time greats.
Where age can become a factor is predicting (prescriptively) whether someone will *become* great. If they’re accomplishing things that very few people their age have ever accomplished before, and those that have accomplished it near-uniformly became great, that likely (depending on the nature of the accomplishment) makes them a strong candidate to become great—and that’s something to get excited about, for sure, but is a different discussion than whether someone is an all-time great at the senior level.
But potential future performances don’t make you great—you have to actually accomplish great things. Having the potential to be great and $7 will get you a craft IPA at The Wild Duck.
As a related aside, I think a distinction between being great—as in, currently very near the top of the world—and being an all-time great—someone whose performances stack up against anyone who as ever competed at the level IMO for consideration—is something that is clearly missing from this discussion. (It also seems, to somehow get even more pedantic, that whether this discussion is about all athletes at the global senior level or whether we’ve limited the pool under consideration to American athletes has yet to be established).
This is what a lot of people don't get, especially in this thread, when I refuse to designate Athing Mu or Cole Hocker as great. Age has nothing to do with it, unless youre specifically talking about how someone can BECOME great. Meaning, they arent already.
Athing Mu can BECOME great at the rate that she's going. But she's not there yet. Neither is Yakob. Neither is Hocker. Especially not Hocker.