Certain sports are taken way more seriously than others. But in general, the US takes youth sports extremely serious.
Track is more of a second or third sport for most kids. It's something they do in their man sports off season.
The top ones don't really start to main track until late teens.
>But in general, the US takes youth sports extremely serious.
It's scary how deep it is. I've never seen it up close, but I know damn well I'd get culture shock seeing it up front.
the US has a population of 342 million. The UK has a population of 67 million. If you combine the populations of just California (39 million) and Texas (30 million) it’s still two million more people than all of the UK. We have a way, way bigger pool of athletes competing.
China and India surpass that. Population numbers are not as important.
America has a very complex collegiate system. This is what matters here.
Jamaican has a population of 2.7 million. Yet, look at how they dominate the sprints?
Why? Because of an emphasis on it.
> America has a very complex collegiate system.
While that is definitely true, we also have a very well developed high school system. In terms of raw participation numbers, track and field is the most popular high school sport in a large portion of the country.
When you have that many kids in the sport, usually starting at 14 or even younger, you’re gonna get some pretty talented athletes by the time they’re 18. You’re also going to get a lot of mediocre athletes that are just there to have fun because track isn’t their primary sport.
For every super good high school mark you see, there’s probably 10 or more mediocre varsity or JV kids just having fun.
Yeah, this. Also, because tracks can accommodate a lot of athletes, it's easier to accept a bunch and let the good ones rise to the top.
I ended up starting track because I got cut from another sport. Ended up never going back. Could I have been better in the other sport? We'll never know, and that's part of the point.
Yup same with me.
I was told to do indoor by the baseball coach as a winter workout program basically when I was a freshman.
I had no clue what I was doing but I thought it was fun, so I was definitely in the category of terrible times that you will never if you’re just on the outside looking at results.
Track is almost a requirement for football players in SC. Reason one, speed/explosiveness obviously important aspects of football. Reason two, it’s against the rules to have organized training for football players out of season. However it’s not against the rules to have football players take a lifting class, and have football coaches run the track teams.
Here in MA, high school football has been on a downward spiral for over 10 years, but that was common here too. Our old throwing coach was the head football coach, and our track head coach was a football assistant. Both have since retired, which is part of the reason I help coach track now.
>Reason two, it’s against the rules to have organized training for football players out of season.
You sure on this?\^. Almost everywhere that I know of, how it work is you can definitely have organized football training/coaching/etc. out of season ....it just can't be officially mandatory. Has to be "voluntary" if out of season; but then, yes, it winds up being sort of defacto mandatory without being spoken as such.
So football kids are either doing track, or, doing spring FB training, 7v7's, etc
March 1st - May 1st is defined as closed season for fall sports, clearly states in SCHSL rules no organized team “practices”. I’m sure plenty of schools find ways around such as sponsored clinics, my son’s former school has last period lifting for football players only.
That's a good rule IMO. As football and some other sports are out of control.
But just so you know, many states it goes down like I said: Off-season organized activities just can't be mandatory.
Jamaica doesn’t win medals in anything but the sprints. Despite the incredible emphasis on track there, they are limited to international success in just one discipline due to their small population. It makes perfect sense when you think about it.
The US, putting the same or even less emphasis on track, competes for medals in every event… because our country is more than 50 of theirs.
So yes, I do agree emphasis is very important. It will explain India and China’s historical lack of success. But a large emphasis on a sport still will only take a country so far. Having a gigantic, genetically diverse pool of athletes is more important in my opinion. It’s the building block for everything that follows.
>genetically diverse
I've heard this before. I guess you're referring to the myth that _____ race is *better* at _____ sport / discipline than other races? Right?
They're responding to the actual content of the post, which is baffled that there is less depth in specifically the UK than in the US. Did you read it?
>the US has a population of 342 million.. The UK has a population of 67 million. If you combine the populations of just California (39 million) and Texas (30 million) it’s still two million more people than all of the UK. We have a way, way bigger pool of athletes competing.
But here, with this particular post\^, they are trying to equalize UK to a smaller population of the US. Saying UK is only 67M and the US is 342M, and this is the excuse, USA has larger pool of athletes due to our general population being 5x the size.
Even if you do \[CA+TX\] vs USA ....boy that's not going to bode well either....for reasons complete different that just the general populations being equal.
Total Population has nothing to do with it. Its how many athletes compete, sports culture, what is driving that (college scholarships), genetic make up (sprints), etc.
JAM is only 2 or 7 million or something.
USA sucks at men's soccer.
> Total Population has nothing to do with it
Total population is objectively a huge factor. Just because it is not the only factor does not mean it is irrelevant. The UK could copy the US system completely and it would still have far less strength in depth because it cannot match the American pool. Europe as a whole could match the US if it copied its system, because it has the population to do so.
> JAM is only 2 or 7 million or something.
Jamaica is an excellent example of the limitations imposed on a country with a small population size. It is able to excel in a small number of events that it concentrates on extremely heavily, and it is completely uncompetitive in basically every other event. Jamaica won 9 medals at the last Olympics, far less than any major European country. 10x Jamaica's population and it completely demolishes the sprints and starts to win medals in other events too.
> USA sucks at men's soccer.
The US is remarkably good at soccer for a country that doesn't care about it at all and that is in part due to its large population meaning you can still find more decent players than a small soccer-mad European nation can. No other country with such little interest in soccer routinely makes the World Cup.
>The US is remarkably good at soccer for a country **that doesn't care about it at all**
I don't agree with this. There are soccer clubs everywhere where I'm at ... for youths and teenagers. If you are at a big HS on the soccer team, odds have it you are also the kid doing club-soccer the rest of the year.
Parents see Soccer as the 'safe' politically-correct not-tackle-football option for kids/child/youth sports for boys. Sport is relatively cheap (unless travel team).
Many colleges have soccer teams and offer scholarships.
USA been having quite an influx of .... \*ehem\* .... migrants from countries where it IS the #1 sports....this has been going on for quite a while now.
I don't know if you can say that the USA "does not care about it at all".
------------------
The other population/athlete pool points I think we are all saying the same thing and just talking past each other; or at least I am. sorry
How fast is the average high school sprinter in your mind and what are you defining as “National level?”
In Utah (my home state, which I’ll use as a reference since I’m most familiar with it) you need to run 11.15 for 100m to qualify for states. That’ll put you at 80 U20 in GB, which I’d say is national level, but certainly not “average high school sprinter.” Those times are worthy of walk-on/try-out for most D1 schools.
I’d agree that the US system has more and better opportunities for the top 10%, but outside of that I think the club structure provides more opportunities for the people that are truly average.
>In Utah (my home state, which I’ll use as a reference since I’m most familiar with it) you need to run 11.15 for 100m to qualify for states. That’ll put you at 80 U20 in GB, which I’d say is national level, but certainly not “average high school sprinter.”
Super bad Example.
My home State ^((which is NOT TX, CA, FL, GA, LA, etc)) , less than 10 mil population, we got 113 HS kids at 11.15 or better, many of those aren't even seniors ....
so those 113 would roughly take up, or maybe displace those top 80 .....
Not truely average, but GB U20 really sucks in the grand scheme of things (no hate, just real talk)
11.1 is fast enough for most D1 schools? Out of all the sprinters I knew in HS, ONE made it to a D1 school and he ran a 10.6. I’d imagine most schools would expect something like 10.5-10.8 for a walk on and I bet schools like UFL and UGA would want something closer to 10.3.
Utah isn't exactly a hot bed of sprinting activity. While an 11.1 can get you in to state, it's not really a competitive time as far as elite high school kids go on the national level.
That being said, long distance runners from Utah, that's a different story.
Why are you rounding 11.15 to 11.1 instead of 11.2? (Asked in good faith, as a distance guy I don’t usually care about anything more than tenths of a second)
No matter you reinforce my point. I didn’t pick Utah because I think it’s a hotbed of sprinting, I picked it because I’m familiar with it.
11.1 might not be elite, but it’s certainly well above average in Utah. I pulled the 80th in GB from world athletics.
https://worldathletics.org/records/toplists/sprints/100-metres/all/men/u20/2024?regionType=countries®ion=gbr&timing=electronic&windReading=regular&page=1&bestResultsOnly=true&maxResultsByCountry=all&eventId=10229630&ageCategory=u20
I threw that time into runcruit.com and saw there were plenty of good schools in P5 conferences with that as walk-on, though I suspect runcruit is a bit more generous than reality.
It’s true but there’s far, far more that goes into it than that. Firstly, Athletics are simply not nearly as participated in in the UK as they are in the US. We don’t have mandatory athletics in PE in the UK in schools, and that’s on top of the fact that the population is much, much smaller, so a smaller pool of participants to begin with.
The UK also isn’t blessed with numerate athletics facilities. There’s lots of gyms, sports barns and football pitches, but proper all weather athletics tracks or indoor sprung short tracks are rare. I’d bet there’s less in the entire country than somewhere like California alone has.
The UK puts nowhere near as much funding into Athletics as the US do and the funding model is completely different, in that it barely exists in the UK outside of some low level lottery and commission support. If you’re a great runner as a teen in the UK but don’t get offers to compete for a US college, there’s nowhere else to go really after Bucs. You can join a club and train but it’s not that same ‘pro’ style environment.
The OP is a fair statement but there’s numerate factors that explain it. And to be fair, the UK has traditionally punched above its weight on the track and in the Olympics against population and participation numbers, maybe not on gross spend or gdp.
Also worth noting that what funding is available gets disproportionality funnelled towards the sprints, distance and multi events in the UK.
Jumpers and *especially* throwers get sweet bugger all in help from the NGB.
(I *suspect* this is the reason Jessica Ennis-Hill and KJT focused on multi-events despite being world class at individual events.)
For the shot? Yes, 100%. Mainly because the US philosophy of training combined with their talent pool and facilities works very well in producing good shot putters.
Also the most athletically capable kids throwing shot in the UK will probably be able to make more money playing rugby instead (IE: Maro Itoje - who casually threw about 15m for fun as a teenager.) Training for rugby and throws is much harder than training for American football and throws due to the vastly different energy system requirements.
Discus and hammer tend to be more mixed.
What marks are you considering “national level” in the UK?
For every ridiculous one you see from an American high schooler, there’s probably over one hundred mediocre ones. It’s just the result of how many kids do the sport.
For example at the recent Massachusetts state championship, the top 30 boys 100m ranged from 10.66 to 11.50. I don’t know how many boys ran the 100m in Massachusetts this spring, but it was definitely in the hundreds, probably in the thousands.
The “average high school sprinter” in Massachusetts is not running those times. The actual median time is probably closer to 12, if not over. Would you consider that a national level time for the UK? Because that’s what most kids are running.
I just looked at the meet of champions prelims.
Admittedly I know that’s not the most accurate list, but I was trying to illustrate the point to OP.
I’m too cheap to have a real athletic.net account.
There are a lot of nuances to this. The US is way bigger than the UK, 5.5x the size so, without taking in any other factors, for every 10 UK athletes that set a certain benchmark, you'd expect 55 from the US. On top of that facilities in the US are way more common, which helps for young athletes. If you're looking at D1 programs, you have to remember there is a lot of international recruitment, so it's not just americans you're competing with, it's a large portion of all prospective athletes across the world. Also specifically to shot put, it doesn't get nearly as much funding as sprints and middle distance which is where a lot of the funding goes in the UK, which puts it at a lower level comparative to other countries.
Same in Australia. The standard for highschool athletes is much lower, I am a state finalist in multiple events but probably would struggle to qualify in a really competitive American state. But American athletes get so much more support, funding, and opportunities. And in Australia it's much much harder to make a career off athletics, especially for women. So it's harder to justify the time and effort
I would think it really is mostly due to the school sports. My home country in Europe has no high school or college sports (no teams or competitions), so you need to sort of search for it outside of school if you want to.
Well we don't have the same amount of funding, support and systems in place to allow for the same level of opportunities like other countries(US, Jamaica or even places like Ethiopia) Talking about Ethiopia(I'm distance runner, not sure if there's a shotput equivalent like Jamaica for sprinting), there's also the cultural and societital aspect to it too, in the UK, we are way more focused on mass participation and 'giving it a go', we don't really push for high performance as it's seen as a more negative thing here(basically removing the the fun out of the activity, which I get where they're coming from but that's not quite correct)
With the focus on mass participation and 'giving it a go' as well as doing stuff for 'fun and health', means it drives more focus towards running, especially road running. That's also way most of the money is. So field events especially become left as a niche event that only can be done if your lucky and your school or uni has access to facilities that allow it or you can pay to be part of a club that has access to facilities for these events.
Basically, we need to develop better funding of the sport, better accessability and opportunities, better support and systems in place for both schools/uni and clubs, better media coverage and somehow develop a culture of performance. This is how you get the depth of athletes these other countries have.
Yuuuuuup! I am a former college sprinter and went to high school at a 5A school in Texas. I now live in mainland China as an expat. After talking with a former sprinter here, my times in high school and college (D3) would have put me near the very top nationally for my age groups in China and put me in Olympic development programs. Meanwhile, my times weren’t even good enough to get out of District competition in high school and I could only run D3, or walk-on offers at a few D1 schools back in the day. That’s with 10.8 sec 100m, 22.8 sec 100m, 50.7 in the 400. The level of competition is just insanely different. In the US, you have like 95% of the top sprinters in the world but only a couple of them see the world stage.
The way the US does youth sports is truly remarkable when looking at it from a European perspective. However , most of the top US high schoolers either don't continue track and field in college or focus on another sport.
Also bear in mind that in some events there is the exact opposite of what you described with shot put. The top HS athlete in the US might not even crack the top-5 on another smaller population country just due to the fact that there are some events that the US doesn't develop whereas others do.
On you last point, the hammer is a great example for this.
Almost every top junior hammer thrower in the UK will have had US recruiters get in touch with them because we're allowed to throw it from a younger age. I know multiple people who went to the States as a result of their hammer alone.
I wasn't even a great hammer thrower (ended school with a best just over 40m) and still had some people get in touch with me off the back of it (as opposed to shot, which is my main focus.)
As someone who grew up in America and now competes internationally for a country in Europe as well as in the ncaa I will say you are right on the competition standpoint. However, the popularity of the sport in Europe is much much bigger than in the us, at least viewership wise and monetarily. There is also far more money for professional athletes and for younger up and coming athletes to develop in Europe than in the US. After college in the us almost everyone’s career is over unless you’re running top 8 times in the world. In Europe with my times I ran at 17 I’d almost be able to make enough money to support myself to be a professional. So while Americans develop faster and are better earlier, Europeans have a far greater support system and are more successful in the long run because of it. Also the average high school sprinter cannot make it to the national level since a lot of the fast times you see are extremely wind aided times. The best high schoolers will run 10.2-10.3 and that’s enough to make the national level but the average is like 11.5-12 and that’s not even close.
America has a higher standard of competition than the entire rest of the world, let alone Europe. Obviously some countries do alright here and there, but the American collegiate system is unparalleled at producing talent for athletics.
Also shot put isn’t a good example for the U.K., Britain sucks at shot put, has never had much of a culture in it or throwing events in general. Which is weird because it has the Geoff Capes connection and has a great pedigree in strength sports, so you’d think there’d be more crossover.
Britain is a lot more competitive at track events, obviously not to the depth of America but it’s certainly the strongest European country at it.
And yet, European athletes go over on full scholarships and do very well.
The US collegiate system. & High school system is so high because for now the majority, it's the only way to pay for college in the US. We pay our students to go to college if they can't afford it.
Rankings mean absolutely nothing - how far you can throw is whats important. Didnt see you post that. Doubt there is much difference in distances between the top in Europe and the US.
I believe that clubs have more leeway in who can run, jump, and throw for them than US colleges and universities. Those educational institutions restrict their teams to students of their institution and entrance requirements to get in are supposed to be high. I know that it isn't always reality though.
And yet the US won just 7 gold medals (out of 49) at the last Olympics. If you just take Italy and Poland combined (about 1/4 of the US population), they won 9.
There is no country which is as big as USA and as developed at this point in time. So not just EU countries, American standard will be the highest among all countries. This will continue to be the case as long as they retain their emphasis on sports. Long others have said, NBA and NFL also translate quite well to T&F, so it's just a natural outcome for them.
This really depends on the event, and even then, I wouldn’t say it’s true.
On the world stage, America has the most depth in events like shot put, sprints, and long jump usually. I’m not as familiar with the current climate, but let’s look at shot put.
America has 9 of the top 30 shot putters this year. Making the Olympic team could very well take 22+ meters at the Olympic trials. We have 4 people who have done it this season, and another few who have done it before but not this season.
However, it could very well take nearly 22.50 or more to *medal* at the Olympics. Kovacs is over 23m this year. Crouser hasn’t opened up outdoors yet, but did 22.80m indoors. Fabbri is almost at 23m. There are 7 athletes over 22m.
And then of course, the easiest way to tell: Americans don’t have the top 3 marks in the workd this year, but also to be fair, we did sweep the podium in 2022, I think.
Certain sports are taken way more seriously than others. But in general, the US takes youth sports extremely serious. Track is more of a second or third sport for most kids. It's something they do in their man sports off season. The top ones don't really start to main track until late teens.
>But in general, the US takes youth sports extremely serious. It's scary how deep it is. I've never seen it up close, but I know damn well I'd get culture shock seeing it up front.
A lot of the top guys in American colleges are international students. So that's where some of the talent is going.
the US has a population of 342 million. The UK has a population of 67 million. If you combine the populations of just California (39 million) and Texas (30 million) it’s still two million more people than all of the UK. We have a way, way bigger pool of athletes competing.
China and India surpass that. Population numbers are not as important. America has a very complex collegiate system. This is what matters here. Jamaican has a population of 2.7 million. Yet, look at how they dominate the sprints? Why? Because of an emphasis on it.
> America has a very complex collegiate system. While that is definitely true, we also have a very well developed high school system. In terms of raw participation numbers, track and field is the most popular high school sport in a large portion of the country. When you have that many kids in the sport, usually starting at 14 or even younger, you’re gonna get some pretty talented athletes by the time they’re 18. You’re also going to get a lot of mediocre athletes that are just there to have fun because track isn’t their primary sport. For every super good high school mark you see, there’s probably 10 or more mediocre varsity or JV kids just having fun.
Yeah, this. Also, because tracks can accommodate a lot of athletes, it's easier to accept a bunch and let the good ones rise to the top. I ended up starting track because I got cut from another sport. Ended up never going back. Could I have been better in the other sport? We'll never know, and that's part of the point.
Yup same with me. I was told to do indoor by the baseball coach as a winter workout program basically when I was a freshman. I had no clue what I was doing but I thought it was fun, so I was definitely in the category of terrible times that you will never if you’re just on the outside looking at results.
Track is almost a requirement for football players in SC. Reason one, speed/explosiveness obviously important aspects of football. Reason two, it’s against the rules to have organized training for football players out of season. However it’s not against the rules to have football players take a lifting class, and have football coaches run the track teams.
Here in MA, high school football has been on a downward spiral for over 10 years, but that was common here too. Our old throwing coach was the head football coach, and our track head coach was a football assistant. Both have since retired, which is part of the reason I help coach track now.
>Reason two, it’s against the rules to have organized training for football players out of season. You sure on this?\^. Almost everywhere that I know of, how it work is you can definitely have organized football training/coaching/etc. out of season ....it just can't be officially mandatory. Has to be "voluntary" if out of season; but then, yes, it winds up being sort of defacto mandatory without being spoken as such. So football kids are either doing track, or, doing spring FB training, 7v7's, etc
March 1st - May 1st is defined as closed season for fall sports, clearly states in SCHSL rules no organized team “practices”. I’m sure plenty of schools find ways around such as sponsored clinics, my son’s former school has last period lifting for football players only.
That's a good rule IMO. As football and some other sports are out of control. But just so you know, many states it goes down like I said: Off-season organized activities just can't be mandatory.
Jamaica doesn’t win medals in anything but the sprints. Despite the incredible emphasis on track there, they are limited to international success in just one discipline due to their small population. It makes perfect sense when you think about it. The US, putting the same or even less emphasis on track, competes for medals in every event… because our country is more than 50 of theirs. So yes, I do agree emphasis is very important. It will explain India and China’s historical lack of success. But a large emphasis on a sport still will only take a country so far. Having a gigantic, genetically diverse pool of athletes is more important in my opinion. It’s the building block for everything that follows.
Agreed.
>genetically diverse I've heard this before. I guess you're referring to the myth that _____ race is *better* at _____ sport / discipline than other races? Right?
No, I was talking about body sizes, shapes and structures. I was not referring to race at all.
OP title: USA vs "Europe" .... its about 400M(EU) vs 340M(USA) or something. But USA has way more elite athletes.
They're responding to the actual content of the post, which is baffled that there is less depth in specifically the UK than in the US. Did you read it?
>the US has a population of 342 million.. The UK has a population of 67 million. If you combine the populations of just California (39 million) and Texas (30 million) it’s still two million more people than all of the UK. We have a way, way bigger pool of athletes competing. But here, with this particular post\^, they are trying to equalize UK to a smaller population of the US. Saying UK is only 67M and the US is 342M, and this is the excuse, USA has larger pool of athletes due to our general population being 5x the size. Even if you do \[CA+TX\] vs USA ....boy that's not going to bode well either....for reasons complete different that just the general populations being equal. Total Population has nothing to do with it. Its how many athletes compete, sports culture, what is driving that (college scholarships), genetic make up (sprints), etc. JAM is only 2 or 7 million or something. USA sucks at men's soccer.
> Total Population has nothing to do with it Total population is objectively a huge factor. Just because it is not the only factor does not mean it is irrelevant. The UK could copy the US system completely and it would still have far less strength in depth because it cannot match the American pool. Europe as a whole could match the US if it copied its system, because it has the population to do so. > JAM is only 2 or 7 million or something. Jamaica is an excellent example of the limitations imposed on a country with a small population size. It is able to excel in a small number of events that it concentrates on extremely heavily, and it is completely uncompetitive in basically every other event. Jamaica won 9 medals at the last Olympics, far less than any major European country. 10x Jamaica's population and it completely demolishes the sprints and starts to win medals in other events too. > USA sucks at men's soccer. The US is remarkably good at soccer for a country that doesn't care about it at all and that is in part due to its large population meaning you can still find more decent players than a small soccer-mad European nation can. No other country with such little interest in soccer routinely makes the World Cup.
>The US is remarkably good at soccer for a country **that doesn't care about it at all** I don't agree with this. There are soccer clubs everywhere where I'm at ... for youths and teenagers. If you are at a big HS on the soccer team, odds have it you are also the kid doing club-soccer the rest of the year. Parents see Soccer as the 'safe' politically-correct not-tackle-football option for kids/child/youth sports for boys. Sport is relatively cheap (unless travel team). Many colleges have soccer teams and offer scholarships. USA been having quite an influx of .... \*ehem\* .... migrants from countries where it IS the #1 sports....this has been going on for quite a while now. I don't know if you can say that the USA "does not care about it at all". ------------------ The other population/athlete pool points I think we are all saying the same thing and just talking past each other; or at least I am. sorry
[удалено]
Yeah, let's not take it too far
Yeah that was a stretch lmao
Maybe a few short sprinters. But all of track and field.... no
How fast is the average high school sprinter in your mind and what are you defining as “National level?” In Utah (my home state, which I’ll use as a reference since I’m most familiar with it) you need to run 11.15 for 100m to qualify for states. That’ll put you at 80 U20 in GB, which I’d say is national level, but certainly not “average high school sprinter.” Those times are worthy of walk-on/try-out for most D1 schools. I’d agree that the US system has more and better opportunities for the top 10%, but outside of that I think the club structure provides more opportunities for the people that are truly average.
>In Utah (my home state, which I’ll use as a reference since I’m most familiar with it) you need to run 11.15 for 100m to qualify for states. That’ll put you at 80 U20 in GB, which I’d say is national level, but certainly not “average high school sprinter.” Super bad Example. My home State ^((which is NOT TX, CA, FL, GA, LA, etc)) , less than 10 mil population, we got 113 HS kids at 11.15 or better, many of those aren't even seniors .... so those 113 would roughly take up, or maybe displace those top 80 ..... Not truely average, but GB U20 really sucks in the grand scheme of things (no hate, just real talk)
11.1 is fast enough for most D1 schools? Out of all the sprinters I knew in HS, ONE made it to a D1 school and he ran a 10.6. I’d imagine most schools would expect something like 10.5-10.8 for a walk on and I bet schools like UFL and UGA would want something closer to 10.3.
Utah isn't exactly a hot bed of sprinting activity. While an 11.1 can get you in to state, it's not really a competitive time as far as elite high school kids go on the national level. That being said, long distance runners from Utah, that's a different story.
For sure considering what Simmons did a few days ago. 11.1 is still fast too (just not quite D1 fast since those people are freaks of nature).
Why are you rounding 11.15 to 11.1 instead of 11.2? (Asked in good faith, as a distance guy I don’t usually care about anything more than tenths of a second) No matter you reinforce my point. I didn’t pick Utah because I think it’s a hotbed of sprinting, I picked it because I’m familiar with it. 11.1 might not be elite, but it’s certainly well above average in Utah. I pulled the 80th in GB from world athletics. https://worldathletics.org/records/toplists/sprints/100-metres/all/men/u20/2024?regionType=countries®ion=gbr&timing=electronic&windReading=regular&page=1&bestResultsOnly=true&maxResultsByCountry=all&eventId=10229630&ageCategory=u20
Rounding 5 to the odd?
I threw that time into runcruit.com and saw there were plenty of good schools in P5 conferences with that as walk-on, though I suspect runcruit is a bit more generous than reality.
Only in certain events, uk is just as competitive at 800m up despite one fifth the population
It’s true but there’s far, far more that goes into it than that. Firstly, Athletics are simply not nearly as participated in in the UK as they are in the US. We don’t have mandatory athletics in PE in the UK in schools, and that’s on top of the fact that the population is much, much smaller, so a smaller pool of participants to begin with. The UK also isn’t blessed with numerate athletics facilities. There’s lots of gyms, sports barns and football pitches, but proper all weather athletics tracks or indoor sprung short tracks are rare. I’d bet there’s less in the entire country than somewhere like California alone has. The UK puts nowhere near as much funding into Athletics as the US do and the funding model is completely different, in that it barely exists in the UK outside of some low level lottery and commission support. If you’re a great runner as a teen in the UK but don’t get offers to compete for a US college, there’s nowhere else to go really after Bucs. You can join a club and train but it’s not that same ‘pro’ style environment. The OP is a fair statement but there’s numerate factors that explain it. And to be fair, the UK has traditionally punched above its weight on the track and in the Olympics against population and participation numbers, maybe not on gross spend or gdp.
Also worth noting that what funding is available gets disproportionality funnelled towards the sprints, distance and multi events in the UK. Jumpers and *especially* throwers get sweet bugger all in help from the NGB. (I *suspect* this is the reason Jessica Ennis-Hill and KJT focused on multi-events despite being world class at individual events.)
For the shot? Yes, 100%. Mainly because the US philosophy of training combined with their talent pool and facilities works very well in producing good shot putters. Also the most athletically capable kids throwing shot in the UK will probably be able to make more money playing rugby instead (IE: Maro Itoje - who casually threw about 15m for fun as a teenager.) Training for rugby and throws is much harder than training for American football and throws due to the vastly different energy system requirements. Discus and hammer tend to be more mixed.
What marks are you considering “national level” in the UK? For every ridiculous one you see from an American high schooler, there’s probably over one hundred mediocre ones. It’s just the result of how many kids do the sport. For example at the recent Massachusetts state championship, the top 30 boys 100m ranged from 10.66 to 11.50. I don’t know how many boys ran the 100m in Massachusetts this spring, but it was definitely in the hundreds, probably in the thousands. The “average high school sprinter” in Massachusetts is not running those times. The actual median time is probably closer to 12, if not over. Would you consider that a national level time for the UK? Because that’s what most kids are running.
This season, the #30 100m sprinter in Massachusetts was 11.01. The top guy was 10.58.
I just looked at the meet of champions prelims. Admittedly I know that’s not the most accurate list, but I was trying to illustrate the point to OP. I’m too cheap to have a real athletic.net account.
In Ohio 11.01 would put you at #78. Michigan #67. In the entire US High school circuit 11.01 would put you at #3562
Ya, MA is far from being a top sprint state. I was just correcting his implication that MA was that terrible.
There are a lot of nuances to this. The US is way bigger than the UK, 5.5x the size so, without taking in any other factors, for every 10 UK athletes that set a certain benchmark, you'd expect 55 from the US. On top of that facilities in the US are way more common, which helps for young athletes. If you're looking at D1 programs, you have to remember there is a lot of international recruitment, so it's not just americans you're competing with, it's a large portion of all prospective athletes across the world. Also specifically to shot put, it doesn't get nearly as much funding as sprints and middle distance which is where a lot of the funding goes in the UK, which puts it at a lower level comparative to other countries.
Same in Australia. The standard for highschool athletes is much lower, I am a state finalist in multiple events but probably would struggle to qualify in a really competitive American state. But American athletes get so much more support, funding, and opportunities. And in Australia it's much much harder to make a career off athletics, especially for women. So it's harder to justify the time and effort
I would think it really is mostly due to the school sports. My home country in Europe has no high school or college sports (no teams or competitions), so you need to sort of search for it outside of school if you want to.
Well we don't have the same amount of funding, support and systems in place to allow for the same level of opportunities like other countries(US, Jamaica or even places like Ethiopia) Talking about Ethiopia(I'm distance runner, not sure if there's a shotput equivalent like Jamaica for sprinting), there's also the cultural and societital aspect to it too, in the UK, we are way more focused on mass participation and 'giving it a go', we don't really push for high performance as it's seen as a more negative thing here(basically removing the the fun out of the activity, which I get where they're coming from but that's not quite correct) With the focus on mass participation and 'giving it a go' as well as doing stuff for 'fun and health', means it drives more focus towards running, especially road running. That's also way most of the money is. So field events especially become left as a niche event that only can be done if your lucky and your school or uni has access to facilities that allow it or you can pay to be part of a club that has access to facilities for these events. Basically, we need to develop better funding of the sport, better accessability and opportunities, better support and systems in place for both schools/uni and clubs, better media coverage and somehow develop a culture of performance. This is how you get the depth of athletes these other countries have.
Yuuuuuup! I am a former college sprinter and went to high school at a 5A school in Texas. I now live in mainland China as an expat. After talking with a former sprinter here, my times in high school and college (D3) would have put me near the very top nationally for my age groups in China and put me in Olympic development programs. Meanwhile, my times weren’t even good enough to get out of District competition in high school and I could only run D3, or walk-on offers at a few D1 schools back in the day. That’s with 10.8 sec 100m, 22.8 sec 100m, 50.7 in the 400. The level of competition is just insanely different. In the US, you have like 95% of the top sprinters in the world but only a couple of them see the world stage.
The way the US does youth sports is truly remarkable when looking at it from a European perspective. However , most of the top US high schoolers either don't continue track and field in college or focus on another sport. Also bear in mind that in some events there is the exact opposite of what you described with shot put. The top HS athlete in the US might not even crack the top-5 on another smaller population country just due to the fact that there are some events that the US doesn't develop whereas others do.
On you last point, the hammer is a great example for this. Almost every top junior hammer thrower in the UK will have had US recruiters get in touch with them because we're allowed to throw it from a younger age. I know multiple people who went to the States as a result of their hammer alone. I wasn't even a great hammer thrower (ended school with a best just over 40m) and still had some people get in touch with me off the back of it (as opposed to shot, which is my main focus.)
As someone who grew up in America and now competes internationally for a country in Europe as well as in the ncaa I will say you are right on the competition standpoint. However, the popularity of the sport in Europe is much much bigger than in the us, at least viewership wise and monetarily. There is also far more money for professional athletes and for younger up and coming athletes to develop in Europe than in the US. After college in the us almost everyone’s career is over unless you’re running top 8 times in the world. In Europe with my times I ran at 17 I’d almost be able to make enough money to support myself to be a professional. So while Americans develop faster and are better earlier, Europeans have a far greater support system and are more successful in the long run because of it. Also the average high school sprinter cannot make it to the national level since a lot of the fast times you see are extremely wind aided times. The best high schoolers will run 10.2-10.3 and that’s enough to make the national level but the average is like 11.5-12 and that’s not even close.
America has a higher standard of competition than the entire rest of the world, let alone Europe. Obviously some countries do alright here and there, but the American collegiate system is unparalleled at producing talent for athletics. Also shot put isn’t a good example for the U.K., Britain sucks at shot put, has never had much of a culture in it or throwing events in general. Which is weird because it has the Geoff Capes connection and has a great pedigree in strength sports, so you’d think there’d be more crossover. Britain is a lot more competitive at track events, obviously not to the depth of America but it’s certainly the strongest European country at it.
And yet, European athletes go over on full scholarships and do very well. The US collegiate system. & High school system is so high because for now the majority, it's the only way to pay for college in the US. We pay our students to go to college if they can't afford it. Rankings mean absolutely nothing - how far you can throw is whats important. Didnt see you post that. Doubt there is much difference in distances between the top in Europe and the US.
I believe that clubs have more leeway in who can run, jump, and throw for them than US colleges and universities. Those educational institutions restrict their teams to students of their institution and entrance requirements to get in are supposed to be high. I know that it isn't always reality though.
And yet the US won just 7 gold medals (out of 49) at the last Olympics. If you just take Italy and Poland combined (about 1/4 of the US population), they won 9.
There is no country which is as big as USA and as developed at this point in time. So not just EU countries, American standard will be the highest among all countries. This will continue to be the case as long as they retain their emphasis on sports. Long others have said, NBA and NFL also translate quite well to T&F, so it's just a natural outcome for them.
I would say it is even more crazy with regions within the states. The qualifications standards between them can have huge differences.
[удалено]
This really depends on the event, and even then, I wouldn’t say it’s true. On the world stage, America has the most depth in events like shot put, sprints, and long jump usually. I’m not as familiar with the current climate, but let’s look at shot put. America has 9 of the top 30 shot putters this year. Making the Olympic team could very well take 22+ meters at the Olympic trials. We have 4 people who have done it this season, and another few who have done it before but not this season. However, it could very well take nearly 22.50 or more to *medal* at the Olympics. Kovacs is over 23m this year. Crouser hasn’t opened up outdoors yet, but did 22.80m indoors. Fabbri is almost at 23m. There are 7 athletes over 22m. And then of course, the easiest way to tell: Americans don’t have the top 3 marks in the workd this year, but also to be fair, we did sweep the podium in 2022, I think.
I really hope Fabbri breaks 23m this season. Three men over 23m in the same year would be crazy.
In very few athletics events has this ever been true, 100mh a few years ago is the only one that comes to mind.