nonsense
Renato Canova wrote:
Clearly you don't know what means the Word "Talent".
A person like Kenenisa not overweigth, at the age of 25 years, working as farmer (therefore, a manual job, where he needs to use energy), can easy run UNDER 15' in his first attempt on the distance.
Forget the idea that, with his talent, he has to spend one year for running 15', and start to think that the natural aerobic ability of the best runner all-time can produce, with no training, a performance that, for example in Italy, put him about position one hundred in the seasonal lists.
Don't do the mistake to think athletes of that level can reach their results because hard training only. In percentage, I give 80% to the natural talent, and 20% to their training, if carried out under a proper coach and in the proper way.
Without speaking about top levels, several years ago I had some Italian athlete, not runner, who decided to start at 23 years of age, went to the Track of Sisport Fiat for being tested, and ran 3000m in 8'52". At 27 he ran 13'23" (5000) and 2:11:51 (Marathon), at 28 ran 28'01" (10000) and at 30, 61'07" (HM).
One person every billion people on Earth can have Kenenisa's talent, and every comparison with normal people is a useless and stupid attempt.
(Please disregard my username, it is not an attempt to be disrespectful.)
Thank you for your thoughts, Renato, but some of what you write here seems dubious. Firstly, with regard to 80% talent, 20% training. This would imply that the limit of someone who runs 25:00 in the 5km without training would have a limit of 20:00, or that someone who runs 20:00 without training would have a limit of 16:00. Both of these are certainly wrong. Maybe you meant to restrict only to 'elite' athletes, but it still seems very doubtful.
Secondly, as late as 1954, Zátopek set a world record of 13.57. This was a 1 second improvement on the world record of Hägg from 12 years before. Could Bekelele or anyone run within a minute of that time with no training? Absolutely no chance.
Not in response to Renato: I interpreted the question in the thread as 'what could Bekelele run off no significant aerobic training whatsoever?' This is what I based my not sub 20 and probably not sub 25 on. If the question is in fact 'what could he run if aerobically quite fit but without any running training', that changes things: obviously he could then go way under 20 the first time. I don't know how much under, but certainly not sub 15.