James Jeffries as an athlete.

You may well be right.
As perhaps was the other point made about exaggerations-even though possibly-over time-Jeffries could have done something stupid like drank a lot of alcohol thinking that would "kill" a fairly serious illness-& anyway got better despite that, in part due to his strong constitution, & most sickness is self-limiting. Getting causation totally mixed up.

I was addressing the claim that the times stated-undebated by our admirable interlocutor who has been here forever, Seamus-would be only competitive with High School girls.
That is completely wrong-he did not argue the times were false, but those times under the MUCH harder conditions of the day might make hima World Class sprinter today.

Maybe it was taken incorrectly.
However unless he was lighter than stated, it would/could have been 225.
I would not be surprised if a remarkable athlete like Jeffries could run faster than Dempsey-not at all.
If he could do so by a full SECOND in such a short race: that is a real question.
As for 210-realize that for many years, since the 1980's sprinters have learned that being fairly muscular is better than being just very lean. Lynford Chrystie was a champion at 210, Bolt the fastest ever barely under that...

 

I would agree if that is what was claimed.
But it seems to be that the story was only his second run was his PB (you must mean just that day, what was indicated, anyway easier than ever, but he seems to rarely have sprinted so a PB is easier...)
Although if the OTHERS were also on average nearly as good with minimal recovery, well you might have a point there!

 

"I ran the final sprint that day in 10 1-5 th (11.2) seconds and that mind you, came after i had run 9 others in rapid succession."
ps overall claimed average 10.4.

 

I just do not understand where that quote is coming from.
I am going by what the OP said in the very first post.

"Then Billy Delaney and a crowd *
from my camp measured off 100 yards. I
ran it in 10 3-5th seconds. They couldn't
quite believe what had hapnened because
I was weighing around 225 then — and
that's a lot of bulk for a sprinter. So
they remeasured, verified thn distance—
and I ran the next 100, in 10 1-5. .
'I can run pretty nearly nil day at
that clip,' I grinned at the fellows".

After that it speaks about doing 10 sprints & the 10 2/5th average.
Where did you get the quote you used Matt?
'Well,' said Delaney, 'here's where yon
get your chance. You'll run 100 yards,
walk back, 'to the starting, line, win. it
againr— and repeat ten times. We'll
see if you are kidding us.'
That was the day. When I made the
ten snrints in an average time of
10 2/5 seconds

 

its all in the OP's original post, go to the Trove link, it is all kinda rambling. The OP used OCR text reading or something.

 

You're assuming that all of the above is true.

 

I think it could go either way.

Johnson kicks his ass and wins or Johnson kicks his ass until Jeffries wears him down and knocks him out.

 

Jeffries put his name to a ghosted auto biography in which he claimed Johnson only beat him because he had "drunk ,drugged tea".
Is that true,or was he lying? If he was lying about that , could he not also be lying about his athletic feats?

 

It's a fair point.

But then again, maybe there were a couple of Johnson moles working as servants in the Jeffries residence and when Jeffries asked for a cup of tea, one said to the other:

'Give me the other teapot - the one I mixed.'

 

Jeffries wouldn't a world class anything today.

Even if we believe his own press, that he ran a 10.2 100 yards, that converts to a 11.3 100 meters. Now, factor in that today's athletes are Full Auto Timed versus Handtimed and add another .24 and you get 11.54 which wouldn't get him Top 10 on the US high school GIRLS list last year. This, if we are to believe the fingers on the watches that were his own people weren't clicking a bit early. I can't tell the number of times I got psyched out by some kid with a crazy HT done at one of his home meets, timed by his own people, only to dust him when we met on equal footing. It is universal.

 

Where did the Dempsey quote come from ? It is interesting but I never saw it before ..

 

I quoted the original post, as I wrote.
Which clearly states that his second run was the fastest one, then gave the average time at the end of 10 100 yard runs.

 

Usually .16 is the standard for hand time events delay: but I have heard 2/10ths of a second used too.

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Regardless, you totally ignored my supporting points, & remember that you are still under oath! ;-)

Which is: NOBODY from you or H.S. girls to Usain Bolt would run NEAR their best times-with all the training in the World-if they ran under the same conditions.

Same clothes.
Regular, not spiked/track shoes.
Not just an inferior track like years ago: NO track at all.
No starting blocks, just from a standing run!

There are videos of people running under sllightly better old fashipoed conditions on yourube: they do MUCH worse.
Now factor in modern training which makes everyone faster-or any training at all-even assuming the larger than usual delay you posit, Jeffries would easily break the girls H.S. record.
He MAY be able to be trained to be an elite men's sprinter.

That all depends upon whether the time is acurate with a .16-.24 delay.
But your assumptions for how all older athletes do under fair & rational, equivalent, non-handicapped conditions...

Is sometimes off.

 

It's in a couple of books on him.

 

Even 11:54 for 100m is absolutely impressive for a 225 lbs boxer without modern conditions who never trained professionally for sprinting.