sstang13

David Epstein: Are athletes really getting faster, better, stronger? | Talk Video | TED.com

This is an interesting watch if you have not already seen it. Take it fwiw.

botto 

foo.

gsteinb

why?

EventServices

Probably because he only touches on cycling (the hour record) for about a minute. It's interesting, but it's not about bike racing. It think more people will see it in Foo.

That said, the beeps of the finish of the 100m dash was pretty cool.

cmh

I like the depiction of Eddy Merckx technology used for the hour record. I didn't know he did it on a hybrid bike with a rack and reflectors. A very interesting topic, but not a particularly interesting talk.

mattm

Are athletes getting better, faster, stronger?

Dunno about the rest of you, but I am!

happybday29475

Agreed. I was disappointed.

botto 

You only had one way to go.

sstang13

That's what I was getting at when I said take it fwiw. I didn't realize though that everyone was so uninterested in things other than cycling :S

roadandmountain

TED talks almost always suck. It's one of the most overrated pseudo-resources on the 'net.

Ygduf

do a ted talk on the sillyness of ted talks these days.

cmh

I think I would have found it more interesting if it focused on one sport and went into more depth, no matter the sport. It bounced from genetic selection in basketball, to running surfaces, to aero cycling gear without any real details or analysis. Also honestly, showing a picture of a guy on a hybrid bike when talking about Eddy M. lost a lot of credibility with me. He obviously didn't know a damn about cycling, and so I assume he knew nothing about any of the sports he was talking about.

spectastic

didnt watch the video, but if you look back into the past, athletes certainly have gotten better, due to a variety of reasons. we'll find out in 20 years

Racer Ex 

Pampers?

mattm

I find that the internet itself is one of the most overrated pseudo-resources on the 'net.

Racer Ex 

Dunno. Maybe I do a better job at filtering than you; I've found quite a few to be pretty good. Peter Attia's in particular I thought was excellent, Breel's was good and Gladwell's was interesting. Couple of other's were meh. Calling them a "resource" is misplaced. They aren't there to provide material for research. They are much more in line with the Chautauqua tradition of lectures to provoke thought. Chautauqua-lite if you will.

furiousferret

My nephew is 6'3" and 13 years old. If 1 out of every 6 people over 7 feet are in the NBA hopefully he has a shot. Unfortunately he has the coordination equal to a bag of rocks.

Racer Ex 

That's not a hindrance to making the NBA.

grolby

Tough room. I thought the talk was reasonable, not the most exciting I've ever watched, but the deconstruction of improvements in athletic performance is an interesting exercise. Knowing that adjusting Jesse Owens' 1936 gold medal sprint time for modern track surfaces would put him right at Usain Bolt's heels sheds light on just how remarkable he was as an athlete. As for the bellyaching about the choice of clip art hurting his "credibility" (huh?), LOL. So finding a picture of Eddy Merckx on his hour record bike would make the talk more believable? He had a picture of the bike itself, if I recall correctly.

Enthalpic

That talk was meh, but if you think all TED talks suck you haven't watched enough of them; some are great.

Racer Ex 

It's not knowing, it's conjecture based on a lot of assumptions. Hand timing in the 30's, lack of wind gauges, Etc all make tenth of second "accurate" comparisons a bit hard to make. Owens was a great athlete, no doubt. But he ran 10.3 +/-. That's a huge difference.

Bolt's records are hard to swallow btw. Good interview on Competitor Radio with Mark Zeigler about the 100. He interviewed the two best coaches in that game, including the guy that worked with Ben Johnson. Both pegged the non-doped 100m best at just under 9.8.

Of the 10 guys who have gone 9.7, eight were implicated in doping. Bolt went 9.58. Last year 6 of his countryfolk got popped. Turns out the federation did one OOC test all year.

So it goes.

spectastic

I've seen some good ted talks. one i saw recently was the one about growing human organs using cellular templates. there's one a few days ago about robotic prosthetic limbs that read your nerve impulses and move just like a real foot. it's unfair to judge those talks based on what you like to see and what you don't.



there are a few BS talks, but they're in the minority

gsteinb

Any time Ben Johnson is mentioned I need to post this book.



Moore wrote Slaying the Badger, and a bunch of other top notch cycling books.

botto 

he used to be a reasonable cyclist as well, even if he was a bit of a bore to ride with.

Ygduf

That's the thing. Jamaica had a string of guys, all from Bolt's same camp, get popped for PEDs, but he just beats them all clean. Right?

Nobody is suspicious in the media about him, that I've ever seen.