Quote:
Originally Posted by CliffFletcher
We all know athletes across pretty much every sport are better than in decades past. Babe Ruth was fat. Jesse Owen’s records are routinely broken by U.S. college athletes, never mind Olympians. Glenn Hall probably wouldn’t be a starter on an AHL team today.
Training is much better. Equipment is much better. Coaching is much better. And since the financial rewards for top athletes are so much higher today, there’s incentives right from early childhood to find and exploit every avenue of improvement.
But it’s safe to assume that if those tools and incentives were in place for Ruth, Owens, and Hall, they would have used them. They could only excel in the contexts of their times, and they did excel.
If training and equipment continue to improve, we might see someone beat Ovechkin’s record in another 30 years. And future fans might look back on the hockey of 2005-25 and scoff at how inept Ovechkin’s opposition was (the goalie was beat by an undeflected shot from above the circle LOL!!!). But that won’t diminish Ovechkin’s accomplishment.
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Why would training qnd equipment continue to improve, outside of new PEDs / cybernetic transplants / sports-performance targettung genetic engineering?
I think a lot of the physical parts of the sport have peaked and plateaued. Goaltending peaked over a decade ago and equipment sizes were actually un-improved because it became too effective.
I think older eras are put on too much of a pedastal with too much weight given to relative greatness. There were players back then who trained their asses off and were more fit than the average player today even with old methodologies. But their relative advantage due to that was totally profound compared to the most fit players of today vs the average player today.
The training might be better, but it's no longer a better advantage.