Most naturally talented person you have known personally

Fan of the man wrote:

rviiv wrote:Lance was beating adult professionals as a teenager also. He was also national champion. What are you talking about???

When Lance was in his early 20s everyone was saying that he was one of the most talented cyclists who'd ever come along. He definitely qualifies as "naturally talented".

How many 20 year-old kids have ever competed seriously in cycling? I live in a city of 700,000 and there are probably 20 serious roadies at most in their teens.

Not exactly a big pool.

rviiv wrote:

False. Track and field is a career. Some of these people are making millions per year.

Don't pretend to know the sport if you clearly don't.

Literally two track athletes made over USD 1M last year.

Erik Kynard for track and field in general. For running in particular, Dave Wottle. There are a few nobodies I knew who had physical talent a few steps below theirs and mental abilities about 100 steps below.

Met a 3:35 1500 runner a couple times. Club mate w/a 2:10 marathoner. so was teammate with an Olympian, that runner was a likely drug cheat. Improbable improvements after age 30.

I live in the midwest, so hockey is pretty huge.

My friend's brother played in the NHL for several seasons, big name goaltender. Meanwhile, my friend played to a high level, never NHL but apparently there was a serious sibling rivalry and almost-NHL is pretty high up there in a sport with thousands and thousands of kids going for it every year.

You might wonder, per David Epstein's "The Sports Gene," how much of this is practice and hard work, how much was the family environment, and how much was genetics. I did.

Why am I talking about this star goalie? I've played squash pretty seriously in tournaments for over a decade and eventually invited my friend (who is not in any kind of shape currently) to come hit. Literally he had never been on a court or played a single racket sport in his life. 30 minutes in he's taking it to me (and I don't suck), and within a year he's top of the club. Then he decides he doesn't have time for it. It would be like a local middle-aged guy running 16:00 in his first race, 15:00 that summer, then hanging them up.

Damn these talented MFs :)

Not sure whether the most talented guy I know is the d2 XC All American who trains hard, or my roomate who skips practice 1-2 times per week, smokes cigs, drinks every night, trips on cough syrup, shrooms and acid, an still runs sub 32 for 10k. One is obviously much faster, but I think the other might be even better if he wasn't such a moron

Boris Berian. The guy ran a 33 300m on a 200 flat track in college and did a team-famous 400m workout where he ran all 4 reps at 50.x or faster closing in a rumored 47 high when he was training at Adams. The rest is obviously history

The last year I coached at one of the local high schools. I noticed a blonde girl who walked the hallways with a ton of kick-ass attitude.

I tried to get the girls on the team to talk her in to coming out for the team (in my head I was thinking I could make her a jav thrower)

She never stayed in school much had other things on her mind....

kid was Alecia Moore

her talent wasn't T&F, she became known as P!NK (the singer, not the BarRescue chef)

ran against this local kid, beat him a few times as a soph, senior year he beat me. eric jenkins i think was his name.

Woody Thompson from Erie (PA) East HS. Four star, which at the time was the state’s highest classification.

Fall: First team halfback, all state

Winter: State heavyweight wrestling champ

Spring: State 100 yard dash champ

This was 1973. Played college football, then did 3 or 4 years in the NFL as a second stringer. But in HS, untouchable. About 6'2", 220 pounds.

Someone I know ran sub 4 in the mile. Never played sports his entire life, came out for track, and was just a beast. Ran 1:54 freshman outdoor season (did xc and indoor)...had NEVER played a sport before. NEVER. Kid had a ton of natural talent but still busted his ass and got rewarded for it. He graduated college a few years ago at this point, never did anything huge on the track but the D1 full ride ain't bad.

big fish small pond not talent wrote:

Fan of the man wrote:

When Lance was in his early 20s everyone was saying that he was one of the most talented cyclists who'd ever come along. He definitely qualifies as "naturally talented".

How many 20 year-old kids have ever competed seriously in cycling? I live in a city of 700,000 and there are probably 20 serious roadies at most in their teens.

Not exactly a big pool.

Lance was a doper but it is ridiculous to say he did not have talent. No one wins 7 tdfs without talent - I don't care how much they dope.

Jamie Norton from Tufts. He runs a 4:06 mile. Game, set, match.

Terry Gatson ....Google him.

As classy as he is talented!

Knew a kid who ran 50.2 for a 400 in 8th grade in a diff state on a chat surface (crushed limestone). Still listed on the Illinois state website for small school 400 time. (only 32 in the entire grade, not class) and I feel like it was almost all on natural talent bc he liked basketball and was great but did not grow at the same rate and ended up breaking a leg on an uncontested layup. Good enough for an espn 30 for 30 show overall. Granted we also had a 7th grader (year younger then topic) run a 4:32 or so on cinder and not want to go to college so there might have been something in the water.

I reckon all the most talented kids I knew never took up running, or got injured early. Seriously, we had a good middle/high school XC and track team, but the stars of those teams were barely top 10 previously (like at 12/13yo). All the 'talented' runners were good at all sports, so running was not attractive.

ThisIsFutile wrote:

While not vouching for the truthfulness of this story, and ignoring the irony of discussing lance as naturally talented, the most naturally talented people I know still don't hold a fire to world elites, but that wasn't the question.

[quote]Pop_pop!_v2.2.1 wrote:

The phrase is "hold a candle to".

Did HS track with 2 sub four milers, a guy cross town was 2x 200m NON champ and got a 3rd in the NCAA indoor 200, knew a girl who made NCAA's in the 200 and now is trying to make it as a bobsled pusher but I'd have to go with a guy who didn't run after high school, he ran 48 as a soph and had a really really long stride, hurt hamstring his junior year, slower than as a senior than as a soph, IMO he just seemed like he could have gotten a vest at the senior level in the 800 if things had worked out.

Evan Jager, ran like 30 mpw at a nearby high school. They'd publish his workouts in the paper as if they were impossible and we'd laugh that someone that talented was doing such weak training. Had a shitty coach and was playing club soccer a lot.