<p>IMHO, I do not believe that Usain Bolt is a clean athlete. When an athlete is beating known cheaters, you have to raise the bs flag. But when he is beating them with mythical records, you have to discredit everything that comes out of their mouth about training, diet, genes etc. What I am seeing reminds me so much of Lance Armstrong. With so much cheating in sports and incentives to cheat, a book about sports and genetics can not come to a valid conclusion. Furthermore, drug testing is a joke. Victor Conte on the Joe Rogan show provided such an eye opener to the various ways of cheating that I realized that the IOC themselves are not serious about cleaning sports.</p>
<p>“These days, 300+ pound linemen are fairly common in the NFL.”</p>
<p>I believe Perry was reporting to camp at 370 and totally out of shape. Compare him to JJ Watt who says he watches what he eats everyday, puts in every minute he has to spare to improve himself and does not want to date any one to maximize whatever shelf life he has for football.</p>
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Everyone could be on PEDs from Bolt to Phelps to Missy Franklin.</p>
<p>Well, the one family I know who is deeply committed to excellence in mathematics seems to be handling it much the same way as a family dedicated to athletics. Mom and Dad coach/teach the child at home, they pay for specialized instruction (Art of Problem Solving, advanced classes online, summer enrichment course), they put them in math clubs and on high level math competition teams outside of school, and they send them to special math training camps in other states. I see no cause to celebrate those children’s accomplishments above those of top athletes.</p>
<p>Very, very rare is the person who arrives at the top in an endeavor without a lot of help and support from others. Some kids are lucky to have access to the support. There are similarly gifted children who do not.</p>
<p>I think the difference is in the numbers, TheGFG. Contrast the number of participants in summer math camps with the number of participants in summer sports camps.</p>
<p>I think Bolt is clean.</p>
<p>There has been some discussion that something like 17% of all 7-footers of basketball playing age in the US are in the NBA. I don’t actually buy that, but I seriously doubt that only 2% of the 7-footers in the US play NCAA Division I basketball. One of my colleagues played in Europe for a few years between undergrad and grad school. His comment on my tall nephew (NCAA Div I) was that “if he’s 7 feet, the NBA will definitely take him.” He did see a high-school video of the guy.</p>
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<p>Isn’t that already getting to be the case in the US? (note that the minimum recommended levels of exercise that 48% meet are far from athletic)</p>
<p>[CDC</a> - Facts - Data - Physical Activity - DNPAO](<a href=“http://www.cdc.gov/physicalactivity/data/facts.html]CDC”>http://www.cdc.gov/physicalactivity/data/facts.html)
[CDC</a> - Physical Activity - Facts - Adolescent and School Health](<a href=“Physical Education and Physical Activity | Healthy Schools | CDC”>Physical Education and Physical Activity | Healthy Schools | CDC)
[Sports</a> and Exercise: BLS Spotlight on Statistics](<a href=“http://www.bls.gov/spotlight/2008/sports/]Sports”>http://www.bls.gov/spotlight/2008/sports/)</p>
<p>I agree. Though I enjoy watching the Olympics, I do not worship the athletes because I can’t trust that hard work alone helped them achieve those results.</p>
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<p>Such gross generalizations are usually incorrect. While it is an acknowledged truth that not all recruited athletes are great students, one needs to balance that viewpoint with the countless students who were and are great student-athletes. Being a recruited athlete is not imcompatible with being … a stellar student. Some might be amazed at the number of athletes who combine the MVP on the field with the MVP academically, as in being valedictorian. </p>
<p>For instance, looking at the recent Stanford team, one could be well-served to look at the academic career of students such as Marecic or the even more famous Andrew Luck. Before lighting up the NFL for the Colts, Andrew was a val at his Texas’ high school. </p>
<p>Going back in history, there are examples such as this: [Cory</a> Booker - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cory_Booker]Cory”>Cory Booker - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>Granted, one could find plenty of stories of students who only see college as a springboard to a pro career and did nothing academically.</p>
<p>HEY! easy there on Missy Franklin! I like her. My son is a freshman swimmer and it is fascinating to see someone like her doing great things. PED use is all about the money. Missy Franklin has turned down the money in favor of an education. She went back to her HS team after the olympics. Sorry to get slightly off topic, or maybe it is right on topic. There is no reason to suspect PED use on her part and many indicators that she stands for what college athletics should be all about.</p>
<p>Disneydad, I completely agree that PED usage is all about the money. I absolutely admire those who turn down money just to compete. I would believe they are clean. I used to believe in Lance Armstrong and vehemently defended his achievements despite his ability to beat known cheaters and accomplish super human records. Boy was I completely wrong!! I believed he was clean until I heard him admit to cheating on Oprah. Such a shame.</p>
<p>Btw, it LA wasn’t the only cheater I believed in: Carl Lewis, Ben Johnson, Mark Mcguire, Sammy Sossa, etc.</p>
<p>Quant mech, the difference is just that you admire math geniuses who work hard and feel athletes are over valued. But the hardest working student I know did not get into an elite school because she doesn’t do well on standardized tests, and the hardest working athlete I ever saw can only play at the D3 level. </p>
<p>Ce la vie. </p>
<p>We are all born with limits and with gifts.</p>
<p>By the way, I would hire either of them after they graduate in a heartbeat. In life? That work ethic is going to make them golden.</p>
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<p>The “sports gene” makes sense to me. At a recent cross country meet, I noticed that in a sea of Asian participants, not a single one placed among the top 20 in 8 different categories. Surely the Asian kids trained just as hard as everyone else. My suspicion is that it is the curse of having long bodies and, sadly, short legs, which prevented these kids from placing well. I suppose this body type could be advantageous in some sports, but running is definitely not one of them.</p>
<p>I ride so I was a huge fan of Lance but that ship sailed long before the Oprah appearance. That word had been out in the cycling community for awhile. He is also a prime example of it being all about the money.</p>
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<p>Did the lady that swam from Cuba to Florida have anything to gain in terms of $$$? People are accusing her of cheating.</p>
<p>Of course Missy could have done PEDs not for the money, but for the Gold Medals (similar to Ray Lewis using Antler Spray in his last season so he could recover from injury quicker & help his team win) or the fame. </p>
<p>I do not think that she is on PEDs, nor do I think Bolt is on PEDs but it is certainly a possibility as it is with almost every athlete.</p>
<p>Cheating? At swimming from Cuba to Florida? I think she’s near 60. Swimming with sharks. I think she cheated death, if nothing else. I also think she is insane, personally, but it takes all kinds</p>
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<li><p>There was an old Jules Feiffer cartoon whatever – an illustrated short story – about the greatest athlete in the world, who devoted his skill to equaling whatever his opponents did exactly. Ran exactly as fast, jumped exactly as high, threw exactly as far, etc. Of course, he was widely excoriated, even when he explained that it was far more difficult to equal another person’s output exactly than merely to surpass him by some measure. I think Feiffer had HUAC investigating him. The point being, we don’t necessarily appreciate skill, effort, and craft, if it’s not presented in the kind of narrative we like, which is one of competition and winning.</p></li>
<li><p>Do any of you who claim not to respect athletes who are merely gifted watch a lot of movies with unattractive people in them? (And, if so, where do you find such movies?) Read poorly written, uninteresting books because the authors gave it their all? Watch fat, clumsy dancers who nonetheless are doing better than anyone had a right to expect? Heck, as a group you tend to be hard on the Nobel Prize-winner teaching your child who doesn’t speak English well and so is tough to understand.</p></li>
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<p>To be even-handed about things, in response to xiggi’s comment #127: There are some people who are incredibly strong academically, and also incredibly good athletes. I would suspect that Stanford attracts a relatively high proportion of these students.</p>
<p>For example, Dudley Herschbach (Harvard professor, Nobel laureate) was a football player at Stanford until the practices conflicted with chemistry lab, and the coach told him he’d have to choose between chemistry and football. This was not a trivial choice, because I think he had a serious prospect of going pro in football. He chose chemistry, though.</p>
<p>Some of the Stanford parents here have sons or daughters who are quite strong academically and athletically, both. The issue of whether they are Nobel caliber is still open, of course.</p>
<p>Still, there is a big gulf between Nobel-laureate level academics and being a high-school valedictorian–an accomplishment by a Stanford athlete mentioned in xiggi’s post. Even if there is a single valedictorian in each Texas high school (and some schools have 20+), there are about 36,000 high schools in the US. </p>
<p>And yet again, there is a big gulf between a high-school valedictorian and a student who meets the NCAA minimum standards for eligibility. Have you looked at the NCAA standards lately, xiggi? They’re set as they are for a reason. There are gifted high school athletes whose careers are cut short because they don’t meet even those standards.</p>
<p>JHS, I didn’t say that I didn’t respect athletes (at least the clean ones), just that I don’t admire them. I don’t watch many athletic events. Movies with unattractive people? Right, ha ha. I do watch Big Bang Theory sometimes. Does that count? </p>
<p>With regard to your second question overall, I am not sure that I understand the point you are making. I don’t find athletics especially interesting, because I think that quite a lot of the ability to be successful is governed by physical attributes that a person cannot choose and cannot change. I don’t think that adding untalented competitors who were trying really hard would improve it at all for me, and it would undoubtedly make it worse for those who enjoy watching athletic events.</p>
<p>Andrew Luck is a nobel laureate in his own right. </p>
<p>There is only one number 1 pick in NFL each year and it comes with a much larger cash prize.</p>
<p>With regard to the other elements in your second question, JHS, I read “good literature” (as well as cheezoid science fiction and British mystery novels) because it is intrinsically interesting to me. It is true, I think, that there are elements of being an excellent writer that are not chosen by the writers, and are hard to change. On the other hand, if you contrast writing a novel with competing in the high jump, I think that there are many different intellectual and personal attributes that a person can draw upon in writing a novel. If some attribute is not strong (e.g., memory), there are strategies to compensate. In general, the more complex an activity is, the more susceptible it is to compensating strategies–in my opinion, anyway. To me, this differentiates novel writing from high jump.</p>