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Comment by karzeem | Hacker News Reader

It's an interesting article, but this type of piece bugs me. It means to suggest that Bolt is not that hard a worker. Now, to the reader, that means grabbing a bag of Fritos and heading directly to YouTube. To Bolt, I'd be willing to bet, it means something like training for five hours a day instead if eight.

I always admire high achievers who cop to having worked damn hard to get where they are. The article means to suggest otherwise, but I can't imagine Usain Bolt is anything even vaguely resembling lazy.

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>I always admire high achievers who cop to having worked damn hard to get where they are. The article means to suggest otherwise, but I can't imagine Usain Bolt is anything even vaguely resembling lazy.

Sometimes the truth isn't what we want it to be.

As a 12 year-old without track & field training or experience, he was the fastest boy in his school. His interest was in cricket, but once he got to high school, his cricket coach noticed his exceptional speed and encouraged him to do track. Within two years, he posted a time of 20.61s for a 200 meter race! That's faster than many of the 200m times posted in the 2008 Olympics. In fact, 20.61 would have been fast enough to qualify in 7 of the 8 heats.

He did that at age 15. Think about it.

Gladwell's 10,000 hours yarn is bullshit. There is talent, and Bolt's got so much of it that he's been regularly demolishing more experienced, harder working opponents for his entire career.

http://www.monstersandcritics.com/people/Usain-Bolt/biograph... http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSISS99256920080818

Gladwell's 10,000 hours yarn is bullshit. There is talent, and Bolt's got so much of it that he's been regularly demolishing more experienced, harder working opponents for his entire career.

Good post. However, I think this needs to be clarified; running really fast is something that has a strong genetic component and a weak skill component. The idea that greatness is mostly the result of focused practice is more likely to hold true in fields with a strong skill component (for example learning to play the violin or writing code).

Musical talent may not have been the best example to choose to make Gladwell's point. Not only is genetics demonstrably important for musicians, but we even know that the strongly influencing genes come from a certain segment of chromosome 4.

http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/musical-talent-genes-16460.ht... http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/musical-talent-pro... http://www.world-science.net/exclusives/080429_music-genes.h...

So I guess there is still hope that I can be the greatest programmer in the world and don't have to rely on my genes. Awesome :)

I didn't mean to imply that he doesn't have huge natural skill. He does, certainly. But what pushed him from a great runner to the greatest runner is a lot of focused training on his technique, and I'm sure that was arduous.

There has been a "known fact" that training more always implies having better results. Assimilating the training is, at least, as important as the training itself, and you can't do that without proper rest.

Track and field isn't an equation where if somebody does 9.58 in 100m (it's still unbelievable for me to say that time!) training 3h a day, he will do 9.10 training 8h.

In Bolt case he is not only really well trained but also he is a superior human being in athletic terms. People that are training way harder than he is, will never be close to his PB.

PS: yeah, I think that he will run under 43 seconds in 400m...

I don't think the article implies that Bolt is not a hard worker. After reading the article, I think the title could be rephrased as: what would the world record be if Bolt ran as fast as he could for the entire race. Or even, what would you get if you combined the drive of Lance Armstrong with the ability of Usain Bolt?

A postive result at the next drug test!

Unless I'm missing something, I don't think it's ever been proven that Bolt used Steroids.

No, just Lance Armstrong. (Many allegations have followed him.) To be fair, he's accused of blood doping, not steroids.

Cycling seems to be governed by the phrase, "If you ain't cheating, you ain't trying."

The tests results won't be known for days, but it was a reminder of the barrage of doping tests that Armstrong has faced in France over the years. Armstrong has called himself the world's most-tested athlete, and last year faced dozens of doping tests - all negative - in his return from retirement.

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/sports/breakingnews/armstro...

How many times do pro-athletes in, say, baseball or football get tested in a year?

http://twitter.com/lancearmstrong/status/3732076442

How many times was Marion Jones tested? He had BALCO-type money that could help evade the current state of the art in testing.

I was referring to Lance's practices.

Ah, sorry. I thought since Lance has been tested so many times and always declared clean,that you must have been refering to Bolt. :)

I'd be fascinated to see how fast he could run if blood doped.

It also suggests that because Bolt is talented, he is obligated to behave like an athletic commentator wants him to. What if he just didn't want to run at all? What if he wanted to be a software developer or a chef?

Fritos and YouTube, no. Chicken McNuggets and Call of Duty, yes:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/family-and-relationships...

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