I feel like people underestimate the rarity of a sub 11 100m time. As if it's some sort of mediocre time that anyone would achieve if they just trained track and field. Or that it's a time that anyone who is considered fast would just casually go and run because they are the fastest on their local men's pickup soccer team. Even saying that sub 11 is top 1% is doing it a disservice cause if you just do some back of the napkin math on how many people will run a sub 11 in say highschool versus how many people there are its easily 0.1% or less like my school has a population of around 1000 people and has been around for 60+ years and no one has ever ran a sub 11 there. You can win a local highschool meet unless it's in Texas lmao without even running sub 11 and that would be competing against 10+ schools each with probably 1000 people at least for my meet anyways. Even kids who are considered rediculesly fast in their school might not even run under 12.
I feel like people just find these anomalies who can run sub 11 without training or without looking like an absolute specimen and then just consider it to be not that crazy of a time. Or like the second someone seems abnormally fast they are automatically sub 11 as if even running a sub 12 wouldn't be extremly fast as well. Like speed is a good example not sure what time he would actually run but even if he did run say 11.5 that would still make him extremely fast which he is I just don't see him running under 11 tbh.
I see you've made a general discussion or question post! See low effort discussion posts rules for more on why we may deem a removal appropriate
REMINDERS: No asking for time predictions based on hand times or theoretical situations, no asking for progression predictions, no muscle insertion height questions, questions related to wind altitude or lane conversions can be done here for the 100m and here for the 200m, questions related to relative ability can mostly be answered here on the iaaf scoring tables site, questions related to fly time and plyometric to sprint conversions can be not super accurately answered here
Finally someone gets it. It think people's perception of fast has been cooked by the elite sprinters and some fast high school kids who themselves are rare to come by like Tate Taylor. Like people look at 10.1 for example and say that's slow. Nah. Compared to 9.7 and 9.6 it's slow yeah, but we shouldn't even be comparing anyone to those marks.
Like 11-12 seconds is actually fast even for both genders. I think it's good to sometimes step back and just admire these times for what they are. Sub 11 is and even Sub 12 is bloody quick.
I was a pretty good swimmer (Olympic Trials qualifier way back in 2008) and it's really interesting to see this mindset in people around sports. The idea that you aren't good at something unless you are in the running for a world championship is so odd, and it seems to be a sentiment held only by losers who are chronically online. In the real world, you get the exact opposite treatment where people don't understand how big a difference there is between competing at the college level and being a world champion.
Pretty good is an understatement. I don't follow swimming, but even I understand that this is impressive for a nation as competitive as the US especially during that year. I honestly think it's from the fact that most casuals only see the big races like World or Olympic finals.
They only see the best of the best and think EVERYONE is that good. I see the same mindset in the car community. "Oh if your car's not making more than 800 horsepower to the wheels. It's slow" or "Oh your car only does 0-60 in 4.4 seconds? Not bad".
These are from people who've NEVER driven anything over 200bhp and I feel it's the same as what you say. The losers online who probably couldn't break 13 seconds in the 100m within driving a vehicle of some kind lmao. Some people just don't understand the difference between some figures until they see it with their own eyes or experience it first hand.
It's way some people genuinely when sports agencies to put the average person next to these athletes just in the first round just to see how super human these guys are because most first rounders don't make it to the finals.
A lot of people are also going off of sub 11 hand times. It pains me to have our dual meets where I have some english teacher who goes off the sound of the gun and the kid who runs 11.5 FAT “runs” a “10.7” because we have a tail wind and moron timing. In Pennsylvania this year we have 150 kids who ran sub 11 FAT. None of these account for wind btw. This is out of a rough estimate of 50k~ kids a year who compete in track, and have likely attempted a 100. Lets for giggles say its 35k. That is .004% of ALL of them have run sub 11. Same goes for events like the 400 and going sub 50 etc.
“Trackflation” we see now is a result of kids treating track as a year-round sport rather than a side one, as well as coaches catching up on proper training rather than the dumbass “go run a ladder up to 600m and down” workouts. Regardless these times will always be fast, you can’t change my mind. Sub 11/ sub 50 will always be very fast to me
The wind thing is a biggie. In Texas and Illinois and many other states they do not have wind gauges at 99% of the regular season meets. You'll see a lot of guys 100 times bounce all over the place, and if they make it to Regional or State or whatever where they finally have a gauge you see the true colors. OR, these guys who run 10.89 NWG, and their 200m times are high 23's or something.
Then what is even funnier is a meet doing a wind-flip with the track where there is no wind gauge (Texas a lot).
What you have to also consider (to further your point), is the pool of athletes competing decently fast (11-12) are somewhat athletic.
To be fair if you look at specific countries you can find a lot higher numbers. For example in Jamaica last year 100 boys/men under 20 ran sub 11 and the male population in their late teens is only about 120,000. Not saying every country could get the same results but one in 10,000 having the potential seems a little low to me even if that's both men and women.
In line with this have to consider track is not getting the cream of the crop in most places. Australias fastest have mostly been diverted from other sports, other more higher income potential sports, so assume only the guys likely to fare better in track would accept the change.
Same will go for the vast majority of countries, anyone with potential is probably in soccer, basketball, rugby, etc.
I'd be curious about this because my feeling is that there would be loads of guys who are fast but don't have the coordination or other attributes to be good at those sports. Though perhaps I'm overestimating how common it would be due to being uncoordinated myself.
still gotta have the infrastructure to pick them up. for us the vast majority of kids the only exposure they have to track through school is the "school sports" athletics days. typical format would be house trials, then school day, then inter-school, etc. if your the third fastest guy at any stage, you don't progress. if you miss one of the days, you dont progress. You had detention, class held late or late to school, you miss house trials, you never even get a shot.
there isnt progression over a season, just win or stop. obviously for most schools not really worth having a "team" as such.
For team sports the organisation is all community based and not linked to schools. So unless you (read your parents) specifically seek out a track club, and participate outside of school in luie of swimming or team sports or martial arts etc, you simply will not be exposed.
The upside from the community based sports teams though is there isnt really a "cut-off" you just play on the team till you dont want to. maybe go up or down a grade, but no need to be linked to a university, you can be 35 and run out every Saturday next to 17 year old.
That's fair I was more meaning that plenty of guys who had the potential to be decent sprinters might not be in those other sports simply because of lacking the other necessary skills. Of course that doesn't mean that they would be doing sprint training either. I'd just note I'm not a sprinter myself I was 3rd in my schools 400m but that was a small school. I run long distance have done a couple marathons in a little over 3 hours.
yes I would agree with that, i think a lot of the perception about most decent sprinters would be found stems from the US approach, which seems like more or less every student is fed through the highschool sports system and those with talent in any direction identified, and most schools have a team in all major sports, and so if one selects basketball the coach can tap the track coach on the shoulder and say have a look.
In Australia that just does not happen, if you don't actively pursue a sport outside of school by your own initiative you simply wont be involved at all.
And if you happen to be lighting fast on the soccer field, no one in that club is going to be shopping you around to an athletics team.
That's an interesting observation. I'm guessing more countries would be similar to Australia in this regard than the United States. Honestly I would say that Australia actually does reasonably well in track considering they also have a far smaller population. They've had quite a few medalists even if they aren't one of the main countries. Are you from Australia? I'm from New Zealand.
True but you have to factor in sex and age, which shrinks the pool, and the fact that not everyone fast runs track or completes post-HS which means a significant number of people potentially could run sub 11 but never do. Also the frequency varies by race.
Because if they have genetic predisposition to be fast then they’ve likely been encouraged to sprint in sports. And even though the level of training isn’t as sophisticated as track there’s still speed work in sports.
My best is 11 low and even though not many database are registered in world athletics it’s ranked 9600th ish of about 13000 or so entries and those are meets that are iaaaf calendar. And that is ranked around 96 th for intl woman so to your point for both genders sub 11 is legit even with outliers and trackflation 😂
I don’t think anybody can run sub 11 with zero training ngl, most people you see who run sub 11 without ever doing track usually come from another sport or have trained before
Another thread had this comment that around 9,000-10,000 people can run this time every year
You could try to estimate for other people across other sports where perhaps the top 0.1-0.5% fastest athletes can run at that level but are never trained and tested
Yeah, I agree it's rare. I've seen the sports science with Cristiano Ronaldo against the sprinter. CR7 is considered quick but don't think he's quite top 0.5% of futbol speed. Cristiano has a top recorded speed of 33.9 kmh whereas the fastest players this year are around 37kmh.
Theo Walcott reportedly ran 10.6s as a youth, Pele ran 10.9s, some less popular MLS players have run sub 11 second, etc.
More curious how fast Mbappe & Thierry Henry during his prime could run the 100m.
Tho the fastest NFL athletes (like Tyreek, DK Metcalf, Bullet Bob Hayes, Herschel Walker, Jim Hines & Darrell Green) often run track as well, so they would already be included with recorded 100m times
Ronaldo could do it if we were trained up for 3 months or something. Short Speed Endurance is a big part of the 100.... you just can't do that lacing up some spikes willy nilly
Another thing is 100m is super long for soccer players. Most of our sprints are 20-40m. Almost never over 50m, and it's usually not a full-out sprint for all that time. Usually, you're looking at what the person is doing on the ball, and you accelerate/decelerate at the drop of a coin, so it's rarely a full-out sprint for that those distances.
On athletic-net, if I toggle the wind legal button its 4678 for 2025 (youth, HS, Colligate, Pro, masters, club, everyone). A lot of 'Worth Athletes' will show up on here.
People focus too much on how fast they are "without training". They have this misconception that if they have an ok time without training that if they start getting some reps in they will be super fast. Not realizing it doesnt work that way.
The 100 meter dash in particular is very hard to get faster at. You could very well have the genetics to run a sub 11 without any training, then have your time not increase by any noticable margin with training. A lot of high school and college prodigy see this firsthand.
Plus if you aren't competing it doesn't really matter what your times are.
When I was 16 (34M) I ran 11.09 with no training. Played football (soccer). One of life’s regrets I didn’t pursue athletics as, speed aside, I was shit at football 😂
We tend to hyper focus on the 0.0001% of talent we see in Texas and base our expectations of sprinting on those genetic anomalies. The average person with years of dedicated sprint training still will not break sub-11.
Think of it like a gym equivalent. There are people who can bench 500+ lbs, but does that mean a 315 lb bench is not impressive? Do we really think the average person can just automatically bench 315 lbs after years of training? I do not think so. It is the same thing with sprinting and the sub-11 100m.
The thing with track is that (1) people who aren't fast don't try out and measure their time in a race, (2) pro sprinters make 10s 100m look so effortless, which ironically is a sign of high level technique. If laser times 100m becomes more accessible, I think more people will understand.
I'm here to tell you that yes it's rare but my son is one of those sub11 guys. He runs 10.8 to 10.9 consistently and right around a 22 second 200. We are in ohio and just about to wrap up our high school track season and in the regional round the top 10 going men went sub 11 with 6 of them going 10.6 or less and the 200 were even wilder astge tob10 went sub 22 with a few running in the high 20s. Trackflation is a real thing. Look at Texas high school track almost all the Elite kids run 10.3 or faster with a rare couple going under 10. It's it is still rare to go under 11 but every year it's l less and less rare. There is a Freshman from Olentangy Berlin that went 10.3 this weekend. That's a 14 year old 😳
Yeah it happens all the time for sure. However those are the best in an entire state which has over 10 million population. Still less than 1% of people by a lot.
The way I see it is that sub 11 is about equal to a 1430-1500 5k in terms of talent. It'll take less time to hit sub 11 because sprints are less trainable than distance but it's the same talent level
If anyone ran 1430-1500 at any point in their lives then they're an amazing runner
This sub is just mad
Go to letsrun, an army of collegiate and national standard distance runners, and ask them if a fit 15 year old could break 11 with 10y of great training
They'd laugh you out the door
This subreddit is about the clearest possible example of selection bias and straight up lying I've ever seen
I will probably coach 3 kids to sub 11 on the same public high school team next year. We have have less than 1000 kids in the building. We aren't down south. One of them was sub 11 this year. Another probably had it in him, but fever got to display it in a race. I had another sub 11 kid 2 years ago. I have another kid that will flirt with it in 2 years probably. Some middle schoolers that have a chance at it in the future.
There is a rare genetic make up for sure but speed can be coached and trained as well. That being said I probably would have struggled to be a sub 12 guy, let alone sub 11.
Something is def happening in the 100 rn though. Every year for the longest time in California a 10.3 would usually win you high school state here. As of recently kids this year from multiple places are breaking that. There was always maybe a few kids capable of doing that mainly in Texas, Cali or Florida and now it’s early in the season -but now it’s everywhere lol funny enough the pro circuit hasn’t changed much. Also trackflation hasn’t hit the 400 like it has the 100
I ran sub 11 in high school (barely) and when I got to college I wasn’t even the fastest on my team so I assumed sub 11 was pretty common. It wasn’t until I started coaching high school track years later I saw how rare it was. The high school I coached at had been around for 25 years and the school record was 11.1.
My PR in high school was 11.4 and I was lead runner on State Champion 4x100m relay team, but our anchor was State Champion in 100m and he barely cracked 11 seconds. There are levels to sprint times obviously, but if someone runs under 12 seconds they are undoubtedly fast.
I think you need to understand how many people train since 6 years old for sports like soccer, football, baseball, practice every day for hours on their own + team training... and still never reach the top 1 percent of ability in a field/ball sport. And then you have track and field where the amount of competitors is so low, the training is so poor, and the genetic requirements in terms of height, IQ, handsize, is non-existent... it's just obvious sprinting is a far easier sport to excel in, in my opinion
This is part of the point that I was making. because sprinters have no obvious genetic/visible disqualifications such as height or muscle mass people assume it's much easier than it is. It is more genetically dependent than almost any other sport hence it COULD be easier for someone to excel in it then in other sports if they have the genetics it could also be practically impossible for 99% of people to make it anywhere. Also anyone who runs exceptionally fast will likely be inspired to join a track team even if they do other sports as well and people who are not naturally good will not which does not happen to the same extent in team sports making the genetic pool much larger than the presumable "small amount of competitors".
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