• njm1314@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    I actually encountered someone a couple of days ago herr on Lemmy that said it was unfair of Phelps to compete because he was too genetically superior. It was bizarre. Course it was on a thread about Phelps criticizing Chinese athletes who were doping so I imagine it was just a tankie trying his best.

    • LustyArgonianMana@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      And yet Katie Ledecky beats Michael Phelps on long distance swims.

      And Simone Biles is arguably the greatest athlete of all time.

      • njm1314@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        She’s obviously the greatest American gymnast of all time. I don’t know if you can go much further than that. Larisa Latynina makes it rather hard to win the argument for greatest gymnast of all time let alone greatest Olympic athlete.

      • sudneo@lemm.ee
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        3 months ago

        And yet Katie Ledecky beats Michael Phelps on long distance swims.

        She doesn’t. Phelps when he was 15 made a time 9 seconds slower than the record established during these Olympic games (although in 25m pool) by Ledecky in the 1500m. He, still at 15, swam 5 seconds faster than the 800m time Katie Ledecky just did in this Olympics (although in 25m pool), only 2 seconds slower than the record she established in 2016. See this.

        Despite Phelps being a completely different athlete, not training for it, it’s quite reasonable to assume that once he was not a teenager anymore he could easily beat Katie (especially since long distance swimming requires maturity and experience to dose energy etc.). I think this reinforces the obvious fact that men do have advantages, and I really don’t see the point of trying to deny it.

        If you want even more info, look at juniors (under 18) records:

        • for 1500m a 16 years old swam more than 30seconds faster than Ledecky’s record.
        • for 800m another 16 years old swam more than 20seconds faster than Ledecky’s record.
          • sudneo@lemm.ee
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            3 months ago

            What do you mean source? I have literally posted you a page with the times and compared to the world records she established.

            The only example your article shows where she swims faster is the table at the bottom. If you look closer, you will see that for the 800 and 1500 freestyle, the times are exactly the ones in the link I shared. These times compare the world records she did, with a time Phelps did when he was 15 in 2001! The only difference with what I shared is that they took the short course time for the 800, while I used as a reference the long course. The other which is lower is the 400m freestyle. I didn’t quote this, but this is from the same competition in 2001, still when Phelps was 15! None of these competitions are what Phelps actually swam in his professional career, and how does it make sense to compare times in your peak athletic age (usually mid-20s) vs one-time races from when Phelps was in Junior category?

            If you open the link I shared, you will see that he literally has 1 entry for 1500m, 800m and 400m, all from FINA Swimming World Cup 2000-2001, which is probably before he even specialized. Everything above 400m in swimming is considered long distance, and he is a sprinter instead.

            The article you cite is making a point, which is the relative superiority of Katie Ledecky compared to peers, which is fair. When it then talks about swimming speed it turns into complete garbage, because it takes garbage data. I have genuinely no idea what are you trying to prove, I have showed you with numbers that Katie Ledecky’s records are tens of seconds behind even what Juniors do in men’s category, once you take athletes that practice the same discipline (long distance swimmers).

            I hope this is enough source for you…

              • sudneo@lemm.ee
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                3 months ago

                Are you in bad faith?

                Would you compare the performance of any swimmer in the Olympics with that of a teenager who didn’t even finish to develop his body, let alone developer experience and was not specialized in the same type of competition?

                Are you really trying to base your argument on a pure rethoric base with such a shitty comparison? I am sure that when I was 20 I was beating Bolt, when he was 5 years old. This conclusively prove I run faster than Bolt.

                • LustyArgonianMana@lemmy.world
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                  3 months ago

                  There are plenty of sports where being a teenager gives you an advantage over adults. A teen isn’t a 5 year old. Per data, I’m correct.

                  • sudneo@lemm.ee
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                    3 months ago

                    Swimming is not one of them for fucking sake.

                    Are you done dancing around rethoric arguments to avoid saying that you were wrong?

                    Comparing the performance of a non specialized teenager swimmer with that of a specialized adult woman in peak adult performance is a shitty comparison.

                    This is a fact that can be easily confirmed if you do 10 seconds of research and you check swimming records by age category.

                    It’s fine, you used as source an article that made this claim based on shitty data, you have been shown that the data was shitty. The mature thing to do is to say “OK, that was a false claim”.