When we think of great athletes, we think of the top performers in one individual discipline, rather than the composite.
When people think of the best athlete in the world, they think of Leo Messi or Lebron James, not Ashton Eaton.
I’m not sure it’s very relevant to your point, but I think it’s pretty weird to call soccer or basketball “one individual discipline.” I thought you were going to point to something obviously narrower than the decathlon, like one of its components. Whereas, popular spectator sports seem to me to involve a lot more skills than the decathlon. At the very least they involve teamwork and a lot more perception, but I think that they involve a greater variety of physical skills. On the other hand, OJ Simpson was a world-class sprinter, not a decathlete.
Understood. I didn’t articulate this well. My point was merely to say that soccer, basketball, and other sports have arbitrary and sport-specific constraints, whereas the decathlon was explicitly constructed to test a battery of physical abilities. And perhaps that the composite well-rounded athlete is usually less interesting than someone who is a freak in a specific discipline.
I’m not sure it’s very relevant to your point, but I think it’s pretty weird to call soccer or basketball “one individual discipline.” I thought you were going to point to something obviously narrower than the decathlon, like one of its components. Whereas, popular spectator sports seem to me to involve a lot more skills than the decathlon. At the very least they involve teamwork and a lot more perception, but I think that they involve a greater variety of physical skills. On the other hand, OJ Simpson was a world-class sprinter, not a decathlete.
Understood. I didn’t articulate this well. My point was merely to say that soccer, basketball, and other sports have arbitrary and sport-specific constraints, whereas the decathlon was explicitly constructed to test a battery of physical abilities. And perhaps that the composite well-rounded athlete is usually less interesting than someone who is a freak in a specific discipline.