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by patrick0d 970 days ago
It is a good time and I gave the example of a teenager since they will likely be less physically developed, weaker and less experienced than a pro. In a place where sprinting is popular like in the US 10.70 is a pretty achievable for someone who spends time at the sport.

After a quick google, the men's Scottish 100m record was set in 1980 and has not been broken since so I would think that they do not devote a lot of attention to sprinting, and in 2022 only 4 runners broke 11 seconds in the 100m championships final.
1 comments
michaelt 970 days ago
I actually took that time from [1] which was set in 2017.

If you prefer, let's consider California, population 30 million to Scotland's 5 million. According to [2] for the "Boys 100 Meter Dash Varsity" 10.7 would put you among the 20 fastest in the state, although it wouldn't quite get you into the finals (which needed a time of 10.63)

Fastest 20 in a state of 30 million doesn't sound "pretty achievable for someone who spends time at the sport" to me.

[1] https://www.scotstats.net/records/outdoor-records/under-17/ [2] https://www.cifstate.org/sports/track_and_field/past_results...

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patrick0d 970 days ago
I said a good teenager might run 10.7 and you have found a list of teenagers (I don't know how old they are) that can do just that. Very few people sprint after they leave college but if they spent time becoming stronger and more physically mature then 10.7 would be quite achievable - even a good highschool runner can run that time.

My original point being that people can run this fast and that if they do they would only be a few percent slower than the pinnacle of the sport. Even from the list you shared there most of the runners in those state finals ran 10.7 or better. Imagine an olympic final that had extra lanes for the fastest teenagers from Californian highschools. We would see a horde of 60kg teenagers that could finish the race less than a second (<10.7s) behind the fastest man in the world (9.80s in the previous olympics) over a 100m race.

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saberience 969 days ago
20 out of 40M people doesn't seem like a horde to me. In fact, it seems like the chances of any teeneger running 10.7 is vanishingly small, around the chances of winning the lottery.

So going back to your statement, it's really more like saying, "One in a million teenagers is able to run within 10% as fast as the fastest man in the world. But that 10% barrier is incredibly difficult or almost impossible to cross."

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