Just saw an interview where Zion Williamson claimed to run a 4:55 mile in HS.

Rip Hamilton was a sub-4:20 guy, I believe

I coach at a HS in the same county as Spartanburg Day School. Zion did not run in any meets for them and would have been a miler at the County meet if that time was true. Maybe he did this on his own time but until I see an official time or result. I do not believe it.

What college? This sounds like a D3 program. Anyhow UNC does this as linked above (4:50-5:10 typical winner, usually a guard) and with athletes that actually semi-resemble Zion. I'm sure if a D3 basketball team did this there would be some nice results as it's a bunch of relatively skinny, lanky kids instead of freakish athletes who would actually be worse at it (but better at sprinting, jumping and lifting).

Logik wrote:

4:55 is not that fast. In college the basketball team would do a timed mile at the beginning of the season. Times ranged from 4:40-5:40. They all ran very uneven splits. The players all weighed less than Zion but also were significantly less athletic.

Not only do I believe Zion has run 4:55. I bet he did it like 65, 70, 83, 82

Where's this interview? Could you post a link? I'm thinking that you just made this up.

I coach at a D2 school ... our basketball team typically does track sessions at least once per week all summer and fall. It's usually a mix of intervals ranging from 100's to 400's. They do a time trial similar to UNC at the start of the season and typically times range from 5:00-5:45 (everyone has to break 6 minutes or you run it again). I think people are probably underestimating the amount of conditioning these teams do during the summer/fall. It's not just playing bball, many teams do actual track session and interval training. This year our center (listed at 6'9", 240 lbs) ran 5:17. So definitely not impossible for Zion to have run 4:55.

As sports other than running go, basketball is excellent training for the mile. Wrestling is also excellent, as is soccer. In soccer, you're going to be running longer distances at once in games and especially practices--where coaches usually make you run around the athletic fields once or more. In wrestling, you'll typically do a lot of very steep hill repeats every day, ours was about 150 meters per rep, as well as longer hill/stair circuits, plus a lot of situps and pushups, and just an overall endurance element from long, exhausting practices and repeated practice of moves and matches and encouragement to run for conditioning. In basketball practice, you're going to have a lot of wind sprints and a lot of running up and down the court in games. So, you're not talking about untrained guys running sub 5 their first time. The UNC record for 1600m is 4:36 and those big guys run sub 5. Williamson could well have done it. He is an absolute freak of an athlete.

I remember a super old thread on here where Larry Bird was credited with running a 10k somewhere in the 34-36 range. This was during the summer before his best season. Through the course of that summer he had dropped 20 pounds and came into the season in incredible shape. 6'9" 220 is what I'm guessing he measured at. To lose that weight he went on a horrible diet of solely popcorn and 7UP and perhaps that contributed to his injury issues a couple seasons later. If it's true that is extremely impressive at that size.

Complete misrepresentation of the UNC stuff. The UNC record-holder was a lean, guard. Typically the winners are that. Big guys don't run sub-5 unless you consider Luke Maye a big guy. He's some 35 pounds lighter than Zion. Zion is a freak but that's in jumping, lifting and sprinting. Besides this possibly apocryphal 4:55 mile claim there's nothing to indicate he'd be fast in a mile.

ripgoatbballmiler wrote:

Rip Hamilton was a sub-4:20 guy, I believe

Source?

I have a friend who plays basketball at the same mid major D1 school I run track for for. I won't say the name, but the conference we're in usually gets a team to the second round of March Madness, and our school's team is playing pretty well this year. He is just under 6' 5" and just over 182lbs (again, not gonna say specifically but you get the basic idea) and plays mostly shooting guard, averaging around 40% from the 3 (pretty good for a D1 sophomore). He is in great shape as the team puts a premium on their conditioning program, and has the 4th fastest mile on his team at 5:06. The winner this summer was also a guard, who went 4:49.

As a high school freshman (age 15), Zion Williamson was 6' 3" 175. Given his truly freakish athletic abilities, I don't see why he couldn't have pulled off at least a 1600 in 4:55.

Why is so hard to believe that such an incredible athlete couldn't run 4:55? It's not uncommon for scrawny, non athletic middle school boys (with little to no formal running training) to run this sort of time. Nobody questions that.

Zion Williamson is ''freakish''? Just a regular big guy. IF you want to see REAL talent, look no further than Wilt Chamberlain. Wilt can easily go sub 4:55, while Zion will fade to 5:25 at best

Idiot Alert wrote:

Zion Williamson is ''freakish''? Just a regular big guy. IF you want to see REAL talent, look no further than Wilt Chamberlain. Wilt can easily go sub 4:55, while Zion will fade to 5:25 at best

If you don't think Zion Williams is a freakish athlete then you either haven't watched him or are a horrible judge of athletic talent.

westsouthrunner wrote:

Im pretty sure the RIP hamilton story was that he was like a 4:50 mielr. Never heard the A.I> story though.

Hamilton ran 4:20 and 16s is cross country at coatsville h.s. in pa; AI supposely ran 4:24 his junior year in high school at a dual meet. i don't know if this is true but I have been hearing about it since his days at G'town. Btw, AI was a top h.s. football prospect known for his speed and at one time was reguraded as faastest player in the nba.

Ding! Ding! wrote:

Idiot Alert wrote:

Zion Williamson is ''freakish''? Just a regular big guy. IF you want to see REAL talent, look no further than Wilt Chamberlain. Wilt can easily go sub 4:55, while Zion will fade to 5:25 at best

If you don't think Zion Williams is a freakish athlete then you either haven't watched him or are a horrible judge of athletic talent.

Coach K said Zion is the most unique athlete he's ever coached, but what does he know?

THOUGHTSLEADER wrote:

Example Luke Maye:

https://keepingitheel.com/2018/10/06/unc-basketball-andrew-platek-wins-carolina-mile/

Broke 5 this year and is 6'8 240. Still that's a far cry from the 35 pounds extra that Zion is carrying at an inch shorter. Also notably, UNC trains for and makes this a thing.

Did they actually run or did the coach just give them a time without having to show up?

blue devils are fast wrote:

Miles plumlee (6'11", 250) was also supposed to be a sub-5 miler

maybe its a requirement for being a big man at duke

as of the 2014-15 season, only 4 Duke players ever had broken 5 at the annual team time trial

source:

Hardly a complete misrepresentation. Luke Maye's big and not a lightning fast, freak athlete like Williamson.

As for Chamberlain, maybe he didn't get any of those marks in high school, but maybe he did. Maybe he jumped 6'6" in practice.

Who knows? But he did jump almost 6'7" in college. And while he didn't put the shot over 50' in college, the college and high school shot were not the same weight back then, so maybe he did get 53' in high school. Your college shot is going to be worse than high school for a while at least because it's heavier. I don't think anyone would doubt that as he got stronger during his career he wasn't capable of putting the shot over 60'. As for the speed, well, he may have been among the fastest on the basketball court for many years in the NBA.

Here is footage of Wilt winning the Drake Relays in 1957 with 6'6" 1/4 in the high jump. You can obviously add a bunch of height to that if he were doing the Fosbury Flop a decade plus early.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eauSi3jOPw8

There's a face off between Wilt and Ali on Howard Cosell's show where their armspan is measured. Wilt's is 92". His hands are not measured but they absolutely dwarf Ali's.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuX7FlddCRg

At 10:05 of this video, there is a claim that Wilt ran a 4.6 hand-timed 40y dash in 1966, a 13' maximum reach in a jump in 1960, and a bench press of 500 lbs (465 even at age 59). Arnold Schwarzenegger states that Wilt would do triceps extensions of 160 lbs when the best weightlifters around could do only about 110-120 lbs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJNpluij3mY