[yt-sdb]

I appreciate the point being made---that we're too reductive in how we view a healthy human body---but calling Patrick Mahomes "one of the greatest athletes on planet earth" is laughable. He's more healthy than many adults, but he's no means an outlier amongst _athletes_. Compare that claim to this header [1] by Cristiano Ronaldo. He jumped 2.6 meters, at pace, perfectly timed, to score a goal, in his mid-30s.

And more generally, I would take almost no health advice from American footballers, many (most?) of whom will go into old age with ailments and injuries due how they treated their bodies.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMZ1O6uFdAE

[lukas099]

He’s the most successful player in the most competitive position in the most competitive league in one of the most competitive sports on Earth.

American football requires a different skill tree than world football. So of course if you only judge by the standards of world football he is not great. But why would you do that?

And athleticism as different from health. In fact, beyond a threshold I believe it is detrimental to it.

[jghn]

> He’s the most successful player in the most competitive position ...

That is likely to wind up true when it's all said & done but Tom Brady still holds that title.

[acatnamedjoe]

> He’s the most successful player in the most competitive position in the most competitive league in one of the most competitive sports on Earth

Isn't it exactly the point of the article though that this doesn't necessarily mean elite across-the-board athleticism?

Your statement would also have described Tom Brady for most of his career, and I don't think anyone would seriously claim he was a 99%ile athlete (certainly not for sprinting, agility, etc.)

[jjtheblunt]

He benefits from superlative play calling and a superlative supporting cast (pacheco etc) with no way to clearly establish how much that benefits his stats. Contrast him with same size Caleb Williams and it gets interesting, for example.

[exceptione]

? You can assume that parent knows who Cristiano Ronaldo is.

[fear91]

Calling American football “one of the most competetive sports on Earth” feels like a stretch. It’s big in US, but not that popular anywhere else.

[recursivedoubts]

There are different types of athleticism. Quarterback in the NFL is the most difficult and important position on the field. Without taking anything away from him, like most humans, Ronoldo wouldn't last a single NFL game.

[AnimalMuppet]

True. But equally, Mahomes wouldn't last a single top-level soccer game. The running is much more continuous, and far longer than NFL players run in a game. NFL players have tuned their bodies for a different activity profile, one that fits the NFL but doesn't fit professional soccer.

[fear91]

And Mahomes wouldn’t last a 3 minute round with a boxer.

[exceptione]

I would rather associate athleticism with very fine motion control than raw power.

Otherwise we would look at kick boxing.

[jppope]

American Football is debatably the competitive sports league with the greatest athletes in the world and he is a top athlete in that league by results. How can you substantiate a claim that he is not one of the greatest athletes on the planet if not by results and the competition?

Also your comment about Ronaldo is basically that he can jump high and run fast which makes him one of the greatest athletes? I think he's an amazing athlete but not because of his vertical jump. There were 30+ kids at my high school with a higher vertical jump than him.

The article's point is that there is more to athleticism than run fast, jump high. They are right.

[naveen99]

There are only 100k professional athletes in the world. That’s 1 in 100k rounding to 10 billion people. So a professional athlete is already 4.2 standard deviations above average. Top 1% is only 2.5 standard deviations above average.

There are closer to a million professional actors… so actors in general are around 4 sd above average.

[exar0815]

Another amazing feat of age is Noriaki Kasai, 51 Years old, still active in competitive ski jumping. Oldest Person to ever win a world cup competition. In 2014. And still (sometimes more, sometimes less) capable of performing.

https://youtu.be/dEkk7coK6Bs?si=2d37ssmtJtzv3Mp-