James Jeffries as an athlete.

Uh, I'm a huge proponent of Owens. He would be excellent in the modern era, similar to Calvin Smith or Tim Montgomery... if you know who those folks are.

Jeffries simply wasn't up the that standard, certainly not in sprinting... nor in boxing IMO.

 

Plenty of guys go 10.4. DK Metcalf of the Seahawks thought he was fast and showed up to an actual elite race and went 10.4 and was dead last. Slim him down, train him up, get him everything magical under the sun... and he's probably just a 10.1 guy on his best day, another also ran. He just doesn't have the complete package. He's got the drive phase alright but no gather, no float, no speed endurance. He's another good athlete. And, he's leagues faster than a guy like Jeffries ever imagined being, under any conditions.

40 times are stupid, especially from "pro days".... Only fairly recently they have come to be measured at finish with auto timing, the start measured from the athlete's first movement. Before that somewhat unreliable system you had coaches and agents doing the timing with stopwatches.

4x100 relay legs are equally stupid. Different guys have different levels of rolling starts, receive the baton earlier or later in the exchange zone, tracks are marked incorrectly,... Bob Hayes was greased lightening, tho. No doubt about that. Had he focussed on track he would have dusted everyone for the next 4 years at least, Jimmy Hines included.

Bo was a 10.44 guy, decent for his size. Certainly a great athlete with everything considered.

 

The main problem with the progress of sports argument, when applied to boxing, is as follows:

"Even if everything that you say is true, the Charles Paddock might just hit the Usain Bolt on the chin, and it might be over right there!

 

Charlie Paddock wouldn't be able to read Bolt's bib number by the end of a 200m. Please.

 

You certainly know more than me about sprinting, so I will ask some skeptical questions & see when i can sensibly defer to your experience.

I posited a 10.4 or 10.2, you took the more convenient slower time, but I wonder bout the rate of improvement you claim.

Granted you cannot improve speed NEARLY as much as endurance.
Even strength without any PEDs can be trained more than speed.
I am saying what you must already know to frame my argument & inform some who may not be aware...

Take Bolt's/human's best ever 9.58: that is certainly not even twice as fast as an average untrained man of his age-you may be able to average in all middle aged too, if we have not gotten too collectively fat.
While in say a marathon even the percentage folks could shave off their time would almost exceed that-most could only do it at a walking pace & could get down to maybe low 3 hours...

BUT how can you posit such a tiny total improvement as per your example?
Metcalf is a ripped 6'4" & 236 lbs.
He is gonna benefit from a few things.
If he becomes Bolt's height & weight equivalency, he will lose over 30 lbs. & end up a little over 200.
If he stays as muscular as the very best elite sprinters...Well they hardly get bigger than that right?
Hayes was maybe 187, 5'11" assuming the 6' is overstated & figuring what he would weigh if much taller-that is about as large as anyone per inch I believe.
So taking something between these dudes, Metcalf is gonna need to lose between about 25--> & 35 lbs.

Then you go from minimal to full time training for sprinting.
I realize HE does not get the equipment & track bumps, since he joined an elite race.
But apparently he trains on one meal a day, coffee, & as he said "3-4 bags of candy" daily.

How does he NOT get more of a lifetime gain of .3 seconds?!?
Why would those phases of his race not make more significant improvement?
I mean maybe you are correct that HE would not-taller than you like, something you see limiting his potential...

But look at guys who STARTED & were mainly or only track athletes.
Don't some of their improvements exceed this: WITHOUT altering the diet, body, & training dramatically?
I mean some guys already getting the full program make better than these gains from being newbies to their peak!
Bolt for example-how much he gained in a single

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makes some suspicious of him using drugs. And when they introduced certain biological testing in 2009 he faltered-weigh in by all means if you think he faded from then because he was dirty...


And with PEDs it should be more.
But how can someone shedding so much extra mass AND becoming more efficient in all aspects of their training be assumed to only gain .2-.3 lifetime?

40's are only "stupid" when the times were undocumented correct?
I do not think the relay leg's are irrelevant-you can watch & compensate for hor much momentum they start with.
Also see where they catch the baton in the zone.
I understand that Hayes did so EARLY.
Making his feat more impressive.

Certainly so many relays must have perfectly marked tracks-like for the Tokyo Olympiad.

 

taking the baton early would help his time, maximising his rolling start speed. Most tracks i've seen were marked correctly for zones. An ordinary athlete will not walk a marathon in low 3 hours, probably not even low 4. just a few observations.

 

My point is that you can't get that kind of prohibitive advantage, over a near peer in the sport of boxing.

 

Gotcha

And I shouldn't seem dismissive of Paddock, he was legit.

 

You did not press reply to my comment, but it seems you were talking to me, glad I found the comment.
No taking a baton LATE would help his time.
For two (2) reasons: he could have as much of a rolling start as he wanted, easier to get speed up over more than a few steps-although the risk is going too fast & the teammate not reaching you/having to slow down.
In this case the man passing the baton said he was almost gone, so the timing was excellent.

The later you start an race-in terms of distance down the track-the less you need to run.
All other things being =, running less distance means a quicker time.

You conflated & confused a couple things I said about Marathon times.
I said nothing about people doing marathons at that speed-my point was that distance running or endurance, AND strength, are much, more trainable in terms of the percentage of increase or gain anyone can make when entering the sports.

Even a great athlete would not walk near the fastest marathon times if untrained in race walking techniques/
Unfortunately even this sport has been plagued by PED scandals.

 

Seamus, I haven’t read the whole thread so this might’ve been covered - but you might be able to tell me in summary if it’s okay:-

Over 100 meters, there’s 3 phases, 1)acceleration, 2) plateau - maintaining top speed (= top speed endurance), then deceleration (unless today’s 100 metres sprinters hit top speed and maintain it to the finish - I dunno.

Some suggest it’s an illusion when the fastest sprinter might appear to be pulling away from the rest of the field ( = apparent acceleration) toward the finish of a race when the truth is that he is actually decelerating the least.

Anyway, selecting a distance after which top speed is reached (say at the 30m to 50m mark) allowance for the plateau phase and then deceleration (say at the 80 - 90 m mark, does it stand to reason that a 100 yard sprint time (91.44m) can’t necessarily pro rated to 100 m given a longer period of period of deceleration which would have to also be accounted for?

As to sprinting 100 yards, only being allowed the time it takes to walk back to the start for recovery, wouldn’t you see a more notable decline in Jeffries’ times on average over 10 sprints - his best 10.2 vs 10.4 average?

It’s amusing what some people arbitrarily nominate and isolate as deliberate exaggeration vs stone cold serious claims - which in themselves are extremely hard to believe anyway.

 

Seamus whaddya thunk about my reasoning below.
I had a couple undistinguished years of track & field in school, 1/2 mile & broad jump (that one decent as a kid), you have a relative wealth of experience.

It's sad when anyone assumes that others are exaggerating rather than so many points being debatable-& if you are

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basic questions about track speed via running phases you also do not know elementary sprinting details-instead of earnestly trying to find what is most likely true.

I previously wondered whether Jeffries consistency of efforts over 10 shortly spaced runs was credible.
Seamus I suppose you would agree that having minimal decline (as the 2 listed times & average implied) & the final run matching his best one IS suspect: assuming each run was a maximum effort.

So for example in weightlifting, if your max bench on a given day is say 300 lbs. with flawless form, nobody would be expected for each of 10 efforts within under 1 & a 1/2 minute breaks would be all clustered right around 300 lbs.
For 2 reasons-after that much work given proper recovery one would expect more decline-although some with excellent muscular endurance

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do it.
BUT only most of a set's capacity is normally recovered within under 90 seconds (which it would be given Jeffries elapsed time of under 15 minutes)-a rule of thumb is you will be just about at 100% recovery in THREE minutes.
Although the recovery is front loaded, you recover the majority of capacity in the first half...

What would be implausible is that all times are about the same with such a short rest.
And that the last one will match the fastest.

In fact the only way it is quite plausible is IF the runner or lifter is not going at maximum capacity to begin with.
So if a guy could do 100 yards in say 9.7 going balls-out, 1/2 second slower as an average seems quite plausible.
As would be matching his best time in the last run...
Just like someone at a max B.P. of ~330 lbs. could likely maintain a 300 for 10 quick-break sets & match his "best" at the end.

We know some non-professional sprinters, even big guys can do *the somewhat slower mathematical equivalency* for 100 meters-occasionally under imperfect/maybe Jeffries-like shoe & ground conditions. You quoted a guy who was 10.7 at 100 Meters & much bigger than Jeffries.
What we do not know is if Jeffries was either going Hell Bent for Leather on the first & all sets...
And we are relying on something unverified anyway.

So to me while it would be within the realm of possibility that Jeffries could do it,

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he was not going at maximum capacity at first...
It is unknowable whether he was fast enough to do this.

Oh & while people slow towards the end of 100 meter sprint (although once the fastest 10 meter time was Carl Lewis at 80-90 meters out, an anomaly)...It is a trivial amount added to the total time, certainly compared to running ~ 9% further.
Although to be precise, best to consider it.

But even considering the ramp-up time, the average & top speeds reached do not vary as much as one would imagine.
For Bolt *the fastest 100 meters ever) it is a typical proportion, although his start at the block is relatively slow...
Right around 23 1/3 MPH for the whole race.
27.5 for the very top speed recorded.

 

Basically impossible, especially for someone not trained or conditioned to be a sprinter. Jeffries told this story in his dotage. I won't say he was lying but he wasn't telling the truth. This never happened.

 

Thanks Seamus!
But I said it did not seem plausible.
Did you not notice the other part, where I said it would be theoretically possible IF he was not going all out to start?
Please review my detailed post & tell me if THIS seems like I believe, unknowable because nothing is verified...
But that someone Jeffries size & athleticism MIGHT have been able to run at max in the high 10's for 100 YARDS like some others untrained & even larger can, so if he had something in the tank during most of the sprints, averaging an 11.2 could happen.

 

I don't get your point. He didn't do it. He was an old guy enhancing this past athletic accomplishments, something every old jock is prone to. It is fiction on every level but that he said it.

 

He may well have been.
I am not saying to accept an unverified story as Gospel Seamus.
And I accept-& in fact volunteered before you weighed in, in an earlier post, then above very recently-that doing those 10 sprints WITH minimal recovery AT hardly varying speeds was not believable.

But again I am asking this:

1) You showed people who are non-sprinters, including the one much larger than Jeffries that ran a time of 10.7 meters-also untrained, & I dunno that he had any ideal conditions.
Some untrained that go faster, like the also LARGE-& quite tall, a disadvantage 10.4 guy who came in dead last in an elite run.

2) I am asking IF Jeffries could go say 10.7 at his best, but was NOT going all out for those earlier sprints of 10...
Would the 11.2 average over 100 yards not be plausible?
Since some athletic untrained guys presumably could do it today?

3) I wrote in an earlier post you may have missed:
I see some track guys improving MORE than the .3 seconds MAX you said the 10.4 guy could possibly manage over a lifetime.
Do not some guys who already have some training gain that much or more in their career?
If so, why could the 10.4 guy never possibly beat 10.1 max?
How can you know that the less efficient phases of his race-never trained in sprinting-be brought up more than that?