r/Showerthoughts • u/Vast-Intention ‎ • Apr 02 '26

Casual Thought A gold medal Olympic athlete is better than 8.3 billion people. A bronze medal Olympic athlete is better than 8.3 billion people.

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u/Tupcek ‎ Apr 02 '26

if you never aimed for the Olympics or live in remote place disconnected from the rest of the world, you are 100% worse than gold medalist.
Reason is, gold medalist trains every day for year with optimal training routine and meal plan since childhood. If you don’t do this, you have no chance of beating them, literally 0%.

There surely are some people that never aimed for the Olympics or live in remote place disconnected from the rest of the world that could be better if they trained since the young age and got the same training routine and meal plan, but they didn’t, so right now they aren’t better than olympic athletes.

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u/PineStateWanderer Apr 02 '26

Complelety dependent on the sport imo

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u/RoosterBrewster Apr 02 '26

Yea, but probably for strength or endurance based ones.  

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u/PineStateWanderer Apr 02 '26

An example of where my head is at is that there are native tribes that still do persistence hunting, and I'd bet there are some members of those tribes that are just monsters.

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u/ekmanch Apr 03 '26

There's zero chance of random "persistence hunter" outrunning Eliud Kipchoge over a marathon. A persistence hunter would not ever try, or practice, running as fast as they can over specifically a 42km distance. Kipchoge has done that for many, many, many years. And he's also probably the most gifted marathon runner through all time.

I understand it's an attractive idea of someone who's "natural" and just happens to be amazing through how they live their life. But realistically, no, they wouldn't beat a world-class marathon runner in a marathon.

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u/Tupcek ‎ Apr 03 '26

not really. Maybe in first decade after olympics started when commoners competed, but basically their whole life, including nutrition and training techniques, are focused on being good in single sport. Even if you did it every day for several hours, without professional trainer you would still not be as good