We often hear hyperbole about how so-and-so "could have been an Olympic sprinter" or "showed Olympic speed" in coverage of NFL, of rugby, of soccer and so on.
There have undoubtedly been many very fast men in all those sports, especially NFL, but have we really lost any Olympians? Is there anyone we can really point to and say "damn, he was a major loss".
I don't mean the likes of Nehemiah and Gault, who were already world class, or even Hayes, who was always really a football player. I mean the guys who track lost completely, who we didn't realise were fast until we saw them in another sport and thought "what?...who?...how did we lose them?"
Valeriy Borzov's drew a distinction between fast men and sprinters. He described a test where runners would go flat out with a tube of paper in their mouths; those who did not crush the paper between their teeth were sprinters, the rest merely fast runners. I see lots of fast runners in other sports, but few sprinters.
I can name one man from a sport I suspect few of you will know, Rugby. During the 80s and 90s Martin Offiah (nickname: "Chariots") lit up rugby pitches with the sort of pure sprinting speed-while-relaxed that makes any 100m fan purr with delight. He was so much faster than everyone else it was a joke - every time I saw him play I desparately wished some track coach had got hold of him as a kid. But he's the only one I can genuinely say would have run in an Olympic final.
What do you all think?
There have undoubtedly been many very fast men in all those sports, especially NFL, but have we really lost any Olympians? Is there anyone we can really point to and say "damn, he was a major loss".
I don't mean the likes of Nehemiah and Gault, who were already world class, or even Hayes, who was always really a football player. I mean the guys who track lost completely, who we didn't realise were fast until we saw them in another sport and thought "what?...who?...how did we lose them?"
Valeriy Borzov's drew a distinction between fast men and sprinters. He described a test where runners would go flat out with a tube of paper in their mouths; those who did not crush the paper between their teeth were sprinters, the rest merely fast runners. I see lots of fast runners in other sports, but few sprinters.
I can name one man from a sport I suspect few of you will know, Rugby. During the 80s and 90s Martin Offiah (nickname: "Chariots") lit up rugby pitches with the sort of pure sprinting speed-while-relaxed that makes any 100m fan purr with delight. He was so much faster than everyone else it was a joke - every time I saw him play I desparately wished some track coach had got hold of him as a kid. But he's the only one I can genuinely say would have run in an Olympic final.
What do you all think?
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