[amnandkishore]

I fully respect this view towards athletic competition. But to what extent do you think this is the case now (even if we assume drug testing catches the cheats perfectly)?

I'd struggle to believe that a person could succeed in, say, an Olympic athletics event without a top-quality nutritionist and team of trainers, probably including in-depth analysis of their biomechanical patterns and minute adjustments they need to make. Even with famous stories like Usain Bolt's McDonald's habits, he's probably had a nutritionist evaluate and design a custom diet based around his liking of McNuggets.

In some very real sense, the poor kid who doesn't have access to this team will never be able to compete, regardless of his 'natural' talent. The same is probably true across a large, large proportion of elite sports.

Now, obviously, we have a system where if you demonstrate enough talent you ideally get pulled into academies or teams or structures where you do start to get access to these teams and facilities - but then if that's the case, how does it matter if the teams are providing non-drug-enhanced meals designed for peak performance or drugged-enhanced meals designed for peak performance?

[5partan]

There are exceptions to the rule though, Donald Thomas jumped higher at his 7th attempt at high jumping as a basketball player (not measuring his run-up, shoes without spikes, arms behind back to land on the mat as if breaking his fall), than years later at the olympics. Sometimes natural talent beats all the science of the world.

[amnandkishore]

Thanks, this is an interesting story I wasn't aware of. Having said that, I think it only partly suggests that 'sometimes natural talent beats all the science of the world.' After all, even when he first tried high jump, it sounds like he was on a collegiate basketball team, where he'd have been going through closely monitored training. (Not as precise or dialed in as an average Olympian, but still, probably pretty solid). To me his subsequent decline in high-jump suggests one of two possibilities:

1) He was gifted at jumping, but got exceptionally unlucky with timing in that his natural abilities were at their peak when he first tried jumping and basically declined constantly thereafter.

2) High-jump training is far from optimized (at least for all athletes), and potentially has a lot to gain from adopting basketball training techniques, since clearly those worked better for Thomas.

In either case, I'm not sold that this story is representative of a general trend whereby the science of the world can only take you so far - simply because those with incredible natural talent, more often than not, also have incredible science already backing them these days. At the elite levels, my strong belief is that it takes both.