One thing that a lot of people don't know about Herb Elliot is that he was over 9 feet tall. On a modern track he could run the mile in the 2:30 to 2:40 range. He had hands that looked like catcher's mitts. Peter Snell once ran 440 yards in 44 seconds in a freshly ploughed field.
Joe Louis was only 8'6", which was pretty small for that era, but he was so fast that he sometimes travelled backwards in time during his roadwork. Babe Ruth once ate 30 shot puts. Ted Williams once fought his way out of an iron cage using only his super-developed wrist muscles. Babe Didrickson-Zaharias ran 47.2 for the 500 yards whilst strangling a gibbon.
Everybody was better back then. Everybody is terrible now.