I’ve competed at elite level spots in the past, and been in the top percentiles overall for running and weight lifts. I was faster and stronger than pretty much any normal person would be. The difference between me and an average Joe in strength technique and speed was still less than the difference between me and the Olympic level athletes that I occasionally competed (or worse, trained) with. I’ve seen this since with musicians, and even the occasional engineer. They’re just operating at a different level to the rest of us.
Brian Scalabrine was a bottom of the barrel NBA player. He was good enough to stay in the league for years but he'd only play about 13 minutes a game and averaged 3 points a game. Basically he was the guy who would play a few minutes and not completely tank the game while your actually good players were getting a rest.
After he retired he went around playing amateurs and completely dominating them. He became semi famous for his saying "I'm closer to LeBron James than you are you to me."
He is still doing it, last one that got popular was a month ago https://www.boston.com/sports/morning-sports-update/2025/03/...
My favourite illustration of Olympic performance is not from a competition, but a warm-up during a training sessipn.
Some jogging-hurdles by high-jumper Stefan Holm:
I think this distribution works for almost everything, for example league of legends:
Being in diamond 5~ (top 1% back in the days) meant that you were significantly better than people in silver, gold, platinum.
But the gap between you top 1% (e.g diamond 5 50lp) and top 0.3% diamond 1 was bigger than the gap between gold (top 30%) and you top 1%
I agree it works for almost any game with a competitive scene.
Even SC2, the difference between a top 10 globally and top 100 is a 99% win rate vs the later.
I'm curious. Do you mean it figuratively? I ask Claude Sonnet 3.7 Extended Thinking since it's usually reliable and the stats for running strongly suggest that for most competitions, the top percentile is closer to world-class athletes than the average person to top percentile athletes (possibly except Marathon).
*100m Sprint*:
1st percentile: ~18-20 seconds
50th percentile: ~14-15 seconds
99th percentile: ~11-11.5 seconds
Elite world-class: ~9.8-10.2 seconds
World record: 9.58 seconds (Usain Bolt, 2009)
*1-Mile Run*:
1st percentile: ~12-15 minutes
50th percentile: ~8-9 minutes
99th percentile: ~4:30-5:00 minutes
Elite world-class: ~3:45-3:55
World record: 3:43.13 (Hicham El Guerrouj, 1999)
*Marathon* (26.2 miles):
1st percentile: ~6+ hours
50th percentile: ~4:30-5:00 hours
99th percentile: ~3:00-3:15 hours
Elite world-class: ~2:05-2:10
World record: 2:00:35 (Kelvin Kiptum, 2023)*
They’re not talking about the results. They’re saying the gulf between the skill and strength required to go from 11s to 9s is larger than the gulf between 11s and 15s - that’s because it takes exponentially increasing effort for marginal gains as you approach world record times - it’s not a linear thing and thus looking at the output paints a really misleading picture on the relative difference in inputs
Verbatim quote: “The difference between me and an average Joe in strength technique and speed was still less than the difference between me and the Olympic level athletes that I occasionally competed (or worse, trained) with.”
I’m not disputing the gaps in technique, just to be clear.
Well the one mile and marathon stats pretty much prove OPs point
Only because he picked 50th percentile. If you'd sample 75th percentile I think for most sports it'll hold pretty true to the 80-20 rule for mastering something: 80% of the result comes from 20% of the investment, and to eek out the last 20% of result you'll have to invest 80% more effort / time / money. Especially the last few percentpoint gain require an inordinate amount extra.
Another take on it came from my time playing StarCraft 2. When the game was in full swing you could probably break it into 10 levels where anyone from the previous level can never beat someone in the next bracket.
When two of my friends started playing I could pretty easily beat both of them while they were playing together with any race setup, BUT at the same time it would have taken 3-5 of myself to even have the slightest chance against a professional level player.
Same for me with boxing. I once sparred with a natural champion of my country. The speed and power were just incredible, actually frightening. And that guy was far away from Olympics level or top professionals. It’s hard for a normal person to understand how good the top people are.
Another one: when I was a kid. There was a guy a few years older who would basically win the matches in his youth league alone. He would often score 10 or 20 goals per match . He finally made it to the pros. There he played a few matches and didn’t get another contract because he wasn’t good enough. Now imagine how good somebody like Messi must be.
That level of physical supremacy reminds me of Melvyn Downes: a guy who fellow SAS operators describe as a "machine" and a "physical specimen". The Royal Marine Commandos send a Physical Training Instructor to USMC OCS and those guys are always beasts. I can't wrap my brain around what Melvyn can do, and how his muscles don't melt.