Average Athlete vs. Olympic Athlete

I’ve always loved the Olympics. Despite NBC’s uncanny ability to squeeze all the joy out of the games, I leave my self-imposed “no TV zone” every couple of years to watch the world’s top athletes compete. When I was a boy, I actually wanted to be one of those top athletes. (Though I had no idea the amount of work that would be involved.)

Christian and Dennis at 5-in-5 recently spent a day trying to see how well they could do at five Olympic events. When they were finished, they compared their results to those of Olympic athletes. Here’s their video:

I love this on so many levels. First of all, how many people ever actually try this stuff? Like many of you, I’ve found myself wondering, “Yeah, just how hard is that anyhow?” (Well, not about the still rings. Those guys are amazing!) But how many people actually get off the couch to test themselves?

Second, these guys are pretty fit. Admittedly these aren’t events for which they’ve trained, but they’re still in good shape and pretty indicative of the average athlete. That they can’t even come close (spoiler!) to the Olympians is perhaps unsurprising, but humbling nevertheless.

Finally, I like the ingenuity that Christian and Dennis display. I especially like their impromptu hurdles.

In a related story, Kathryn Bertine, a former competitive ice sakter and a professional triathlete, decided to find out just how difficult it is to make the Olympic games.

Does it require a lifetime of training and devotion? Would an average person with an athletic background have any shot at all?

You can read her story in ESPN’s “So You Wanna Be An Olympian?”

Now that I’m nearly 40, I no longer harbor any illusions that I’ll one day be on an Olympic team, but I still find the games just as inspiring as ever. I may never be a world-class athlete, but I hope to one day be a Lee Avenue-class athlete!