Is Eric Heiden the greatest ever freak athlete for a widely viewed Olympics sport? Or any?

Tron wrote:

short-track speedskating is done wherever there a hockey rink

speaking of hockey, hella expensive sport to get into despite being popular. Average non-Canadian is not gonna spend $100s of dollars a year on gear for their kid to play in a youth league. They pick soccer, basketball, and then schools pick football.

The USA's best overall athletes are football and basketball players, doped as they may be

Sure lotta Russians playing hockey and paying for that expensive gear. Russians must all be loaded. Belarussians & Ukranians too.

Not sure how football players and basketball players would be the most athletic overall even in the US. I don't see JJ Watt or especially all those fat guys running 400m under even a minute.

Don't see a Charles Barkley doing it either.

Lol. Can you imagine a 6'7" 225+ pound basketball or ameri football player running a 400 in 47 seconds?

And if you look at. those countries, how many people in them ever tried the sport? 1%? .1%?;) Obviously there are levels of nichiness and it some extend it depends on what you are talking about. Track is a mass participation sport in high school. It is a niche sport when talking about viewing among adults.

It should be pointed out that most olympic sports are pretty Nichy. There are very few places where a lot of people try fencing, dressage, canoeing, or breaking. Speed skating might be considered mainstream compared to some of them:)

And speed skating's lack of popularity is probably related to the fact that is a very expensive dead-end sport. Only, perhaps, three Americans have made a lively hood from it.

Bonnie, Apolo and Dan Jansen.

Hadd-like wrote:

And speed skating's lack of popularity is probably related to the fact that is a very expensive dead-end sport. Only, perhaps, three Americans have made a lively hood from it.

Bonnie, Apolo and Dan Jansen.

Shani Davis?

Isn’t that most amateur sport? I don’t think one goes into those sports with dreams of a lucrative living

Tron wrote:

Hadd-like wrote:

And speed skating's lack of popularity is probably related to the fact that is a very expensive dead-end sport. Only, perhaps, three Americans have made a lively hood from it.

Bonnie, Apolo and Dan Jansen.

Shani Davis?

Isn’t that most amateur sport? I don’t think one goes into those sports with dreams of a lucrative living

Some niche sports do have countries where. you can make a good living at them. The Dutch for example have some pro speed skating teams.. There are pro handball leagues in Europe Top chinese table tennis players make millions. I am guessing in most of these sports if you are the top 5 in the world, you can do ok. But man the drop off after that is sharp in a lot of sports...

Coevett wrote:

a bit like Rudolf Harbig, who probably could have won Olympic Golds at everything from 400m to 1500m in 1940 (if the Olympics had taken place), and a finalist in everything from 100m to 5000m, at his peak.

This ranks very high in the never ending list of nonsense written by you in this forum. The astonishing thing: you follow athletics and probably you are serious.

Your list makes a clear argument that the entire winter Olympic Games are a niche sport

Yup, 2+ billion people represented and its a niche sport. At what point does it not become a niche sport? Yup, hockey, which is one of the top team sports in the world played by millions and with some of the highest salaries in sport is a niche sport. Ohhhh boy

Almost 100 countries represented in the winter olympics. So niche.

So what does that make American football and baseball? Most definitely niche.

But Heiden was certainly the biggest fish in that pond by a lot. He definitely was physically a once in a lifetime athlete for speed skating much like Bolt and Kipchoge. His move to cycling was also impressive given how quickly he was able to get on a pro team. I always thought that Heiden should have been a decathlete. https://sites.google.com/view/text-to-speech-guide/

Got to meet Heiden once at an event. Classy man. He even swung my group of friends to say good night when the function ended.