Sports and talent.

Once in a while I get treated to watching some great athletes ascend to the pinnacle of their careers and stay. . Few can reach icon status. • For me it must be Muhammad Ali that leads the way. His sheer confidence in his abilities and his read of the opponents, he could toy around and decide when he would put his opponents out, by and large. And the crowd would love it. Bruce Lee could be in the list too, but there was no MMA yet then. Although his contribution to opening up martial arts to the West is a worthy note. • Michael Schumacher with his mechanical background, knew how to take his machine in whatever condition and his supreme fitness. The fittest guy on the grid and it has been said he'd be top 10 of the international cyclists. • Roger Federer. Not until the threat of Djokovic and Nadal did he engage a coach and started practising. Up to then his training was minimal. Just the warm up matches leading to the Grand Slam. He was that good naturally. • Usain Bolt. Phenomenon! • Valentino Rossi. I've watched him since his 125cc motoGP. And he is still at it at a ripe old age of 36 ! •. If he wins again and returns to his winning ways, then I'd probably have to put Tiger Woods there on the list too. Can't really include people from team sports because it is team work. Any others I might have missed? eace:

Mike Tyson heavyweight champion boxer

He's only had 6 losses in a total of 58 fights Masha Allah.

I recall he also went Umrah heres the video. :thumbs_up

Sport and talent?. I prefer to say "sport and hard work".

In certain branch of sport, indeed, people with specific physical features are better than the others. In long distance bicycle race, for example. White people are better than the small Southeast Asian people because White people physical condition allows them to have better endurance. But in closed track BMX race, the Southeast Asian still can compete with White people.

Mostly branch of sport actually do not require specific physical features and do not require what you call talent, but require high motivation and good effort.

فرحان;2845836 said:

Mike Tyson heavyweight champion boxer

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He was devastating until the unexpected knock out by James Buster Douglas.. I remember the KO of Trevor Berbick where the guy needed 3 attempts to get up...

ardianto said:

Sport and talent?. I prefer to say "sport and hard work".

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Yes, in the vast majority of cases that would be true. Many people have to put in lots of hard work to rise to the top of their field. However, that alone does not guarantee being at the top. With so many putting the effort the one with the extra talent will somehow have the advantage.

I have just listed a few above as they had the extra edge over the hard working competitors.


eace:

I wouldn't omit nasim hamed just because he was among the lighter weights,
Despite his over confidence and boisterous ways he was a legend.
Loved the way he flaunted the faith in face of such overwhelming scepticism.

Prince Naseem. South Paw. Or Sugar Ray Leonard. It seems that boxing has quite a few here already. . . And muslim athletes.. eace:

greenhill said:

Yes, in the vast majority of cases that would be true. Many people have to put in lots of hard work to rise to the top of their field. However, that alone does not guarantee being at the top. With so many putting the effort the one with the extra talent will somehow have the advantage.

I have just listed a few above as they had the extra edge over the hard working competitors.


eace:

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True that. Although not Muslim, Ronaldinho was a master of his sport. Even as a kid, no one his age was near the level he was at. Even in his pro career, many trained day and night to do the things he did, but for him it was just natural talent. There are some things you just can't train for.

greenhill said:

He was devastating until the unexpected knock out by James Buster Douglas.. I remember the KO of Trevor Berbick where the guy needed 3 attempts to get up...

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Do you remember the ear biting towards Evander Holyfield. That was hard to watch! You could see the blood dripping from Holyfields ear and he's in deep pain. mg:

greenhill said:

Yes, in the vast majority of cases that would be true. Many people have to put in lots of hard work to rise to the top of their field. However, that alone does not guarantee being at the top. With so many putting the effort the one with the extra talent will somehow have the advantage.

I have just listed a few above as they had the extra edge over the hard working competitors.

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I don't like to use term "talent" because the people's common meaning of talent is "specific ability for specific job that belong to someone since he was born". An athlete was not born, but built from motivation and training which he develop his self potential that actually is impersonal.

There is no specific talent for motorcycle racing. If Valentino Rossi can be a great racer, it's because he was able to develop his ability in thinking fast and tranquility in act, beside courage and good confidence, abilities that actually owned by many other racer too, and even can be owned by non-racer. But Rossi can use his abilities better than many other racers.

You can see in the video below which Rossi was race in car, not on motorcycle. Look his ability of thinking fast and tranquility in act when he saw his rival made a small mistake in turn.


Do you know bro?, not all racer can take advantage when another racer make mistake because they less rapidly in thinking and less tranquil in act. Rossi is good in this matter, but actually he would not able to do it well if he was not mastering the right technique to overtake in this situation which he got from his training.

I was a competitive swimmer when I was kid, and I also competed in soap box racing and BMX racing. Then in my teen age I competed in motocross competition, also in auto rally. Total I have competed in dozens sport competitions. I have also joined in softball club and practicing roller skate although did not up to level of competition.

So I was very familiar with training and competition, and frankly, I didn't see something that called "talent" by the people in common definition. What I have seen from the champs was ability to do techniques correctly and ability to avoid mistakes which supported by the right mental attitude. Yes, the champ was not born, but built.

Br. Ardianto, call it what you like, or don't call it at all. I believe that you need the extra edge. Everyone would have practised enough, trained, developed where no one will be truly outstanding without the something extra. For the sake of it I call it talent. Gift, natural abilities, flair or whatever other terms. They just have something that makes it 'easier' to stay at that level for prolonged periods. Their ability to not only know about their sport, but also their ability to 'read' the game. About Rossi, there was a time that he took Schumacher's Ferrari F1 (or was a spare car) and came within 1 second of Schumacher's time. He has abilities, talent at that level. Not a 'talented' kid showing potential kind of level (which is what we are used to saying).eace:

I remember watching a program about windsurfing. About the sport and the competition. Everybody practices and trains. But there was this slightly build competitor that was doing things never thought possible. It opened a whole new dimension to the stunts performance. But there was this other guy, muscled brickhouse that dominated the speed surfing competition where the slightly framed competitor just didn't have enough mass to harness the wind force. You need natural abilities to push the edge or boundaries. For the rest, without any talent, we will have to work darned hard to get nowhere. eace:

I played football my entire life and still got bashed at every competitive tournament I ever played in lol.

To be fair everything is god given really.


Although players like messi and Ronaldo are worlds apart in approach.

greenhill said:

Br. Ardianto, call it what you like, or don't call it at all. I believe that you need the extra edge. Everyone would have practised enough, trained, developed where no one will be truly outstanding without the something extra. For the sake of it I call it talent. Gift, natural abilities, flair or whatever other terms. They just have something that makes it 'easier' to stay at that level for prolonged periods. Their ability to not only know about their sport, but also their ability to 'read' the game. About Rossi, there was a time that he took Schumacher's Ferrari F1 (or was a spare car) and came within 1 second of Schumacher's time. He has abilities, talent at that level. Not a 'talented' kid showing potential kind of level (which is what we are used to saying).eace:

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Everyone has different basic abilities, just like everyone has different level of ability in learning, and Rossi has basic ability that very suitable to be applied in motorsport. But without his dream, strong motivation and willingness to learn and train seriously, then he would not become the great racer in motorsport.

I prefer to call it ability, not talent, because the people's common understanding of talent is indeed refer to 'gift', which someone can be great in one field without work hard. The term "talent" can mislead people in self-development program.

You don't need to have special 'gift' to make you able to compete in motorcycle or car racing. What you need is motivation and serious effort. But of course, this is not guarantee to make you become the champ because other people might be could race better than you.

Okay, okay, you can call it talent. But actually the reason why I suggest to not call it as talent is because there is bad habit among people which they believe they would not be able to do something because they don't have talent for this. In example, there are people who are jobless but never want to establish a business with reason "I don't have talent for business".

greenhill said:

I remember watching a program about windsurfing. About the sport and the competition. Everybody practices and trains. But there was this slightly build competitor that was doing things never thought possible. It opened a whole new dimension to the stunts performance. But there was this other guy, muscled brickhouse that dominated the speed surfing competition where the slightly framed competitor just didn't have enough mass to harness the wind force. You need natural abilities to push the edge or boundaries. For the rest, without any talent, we will have to work darned hard to get nowhere. eace:

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Many branches of sport require suitable body posture. But body posture actually still can be built through body building program.

to be good at anything, you gotta invest time into practice - Ronaldo wasn't born with a ball tied to his foot. His passion for football clearly developed into a talent which was nurtured by practice into the international star he is today. Talent exists, but no one is born with it - it has to be developed... some people remain essentially talentless, the very same hardly have any interests which one would consider "interesting"... for example, bird watching - takes patience Where's MIA, he'd appreciate that one

Scimi

Scimitar said:

to be good at anything, you gotta invest time into practice - Ronaldo wasn't born with a ball tied to his foot. His passion for football clearly developed into a talent which was nurtured by practice into the international star he is today. Talent exists, but no one is born with it - it has to be developed... some people remain essentially talentless, the very same hardly have any interests which one would consider "interesting"... for example, bird watching - takes patience Where's MIA, he'd appreciate that one

Scimi

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That's what I mean with "the champ was not born, but built".

I agree bro,

Not many Muslims in sports though, considering the world is 1/5th Muslim, we don't even represent a fraction of that fifth in sport. Is that a problem? Not necessarily, Muslims have other motivations - simple.

Scimi

We are encouraged to 'earn an honest living' and sports somehow does not quite get to the level of being productive to be really earning. It seems more for entertainment factor. Hence, I suppose it is hardly surprising there's not a lot of sports personalities who are Muslims. The way most athletes dresses especially makes it difficult for it to be given serious consideration. eace:

What about Sergey Bubka? I reckon he could have gone higher. Many times just pushing the record attempt by a tiny bit when it is clearly shown that he was going much higher than that. eace:

I believe some part is natural born talent and some part is from effort and pursual/harnessing of the talent.
Different people are naturally good at certain things and their father/mother's brain was also wired similar, maybe a part to do with micro-evolution where we hold on to certain positive traits and discard negative ones - people even pass on squints or twiches unless they're discarded.

One of my brothers has always been gifted at art and you can see even from his childhood paintings that he's a natural, whether with charchoal or paint.
We're all fast drivers too and often have to check ourselves when we get carried away, whereas for some people it requires effort and they freak out when they see everything wizzing past, i feel a peculiar exhilarating headrush when speeding and sliding over gravel at stupid speeds and so it seems do my older brothers.