Or spend most of those days making lots of money; then bribe the Olympic Judges in the ice skating events. There’s precedent for that strategy.
I thought breaking kneecaps was the strategy du jour for ice skating 
Actually, I disagree with the exceptional talent argument. With diligent practice, most people will get good at something they attempt. A small proportion will get really good. And most people with an exceptional talent for something never actually try (or pursue) that something, and so miss out. So Olympic medals are won by those with the drive and stamina and resources to try to be the best, and not always by those who could be the best if they were given the opportunity or had the drive.
To answer the OP, you probably need to look at sports where learnable techniques and skills are more important that raw physical fitness and strength.
Shooting and archery are about the ability to relax, muscle control and timing, rather than raw strength (although you need to develop fitness). You might get good enough in four years. Ski-jumping is skill and confidence driven. Bob-sled is a team sport, and you don’t need to be the strongest man on the team. Luge is technique and sheer idiocy. Diving is a skill/confidence issue, too. Could you learn to dive in four years - I don’t know.
Of course, for a winter sport you would have 2 or 6 years to prepare.
I think it would be possible if you could use all that time to train in a single discipline. But if you wanted to try a few things to see what suited you - you would run out of time.
Si
There was a British bloke a few years ago who basically tried what you are suggesting for darts (not an Olympic sport) - he gave up his job believing that if he practised constantly for months, he could be as good as the professionals. I don’t think much more has been heard from him. I would think all Olympic sports are probably more difficult to master than darts. QED.
I think the only chance would be to disable yourself in some way and try for a Paralympic medal. There’s less competition. A colleague of mine lost a leg in a car crash a few years ago and was seriously considering trying out for the British Paralympic team as a cyclist.
Alternatively, invent a new sport, practice it in secret for a couple of years, then introduce it to the world in a blaze of publicity at the last moment and bribe the IOC to admit it as an Olympic event. You’ll at least have a head start on the competition. Who’s for equestrian ski-jumping?
You could join a sport team such as basketball, and then simply not spend any time on the court. (That is, sit on the bench as an alternate but never get called in — I presume that such teams have more players than are allowed on the court at once so that players can be swapped in and out.) Presumably everyone from the winning team gets a medal, even if they don’t actually end up on the court.
This question is equivalent to “which Clay millennium problem should I solve? I flunked out of 8th grade math.” Go ahead and take all the time you want, it’s not going to happen. Some things are just beyond people no matter how much they practice.
Won’t work, you need an international governing committee to be considered for the Olympics, and be actively played on 3 (?) continents.
I don’t disagree. But the OP is a fit amateur runner who has 40 marathons under his belt. Thats not the equivalent of “I flunked out of 8th grade math”. He could not compete in the marathon, but there may be events where his fitness and experience could allow him to compete.
Not all things are beyond all people. In fact, most people can do most things, and do them well. Research indicates that most people could become a concert level pianist with enough practice and motivation. Many people could become a doctor with enough training. High level sportspeople generally have little advantage in reaction times, even when you think it would help (the study I recall involved cricketers, I think). There are probably many people living today who could possibly solve a Clay Millennium problem, but they are not mathematicians. So they won’t. But if they had become mathematicians, they could. Many top athletes are there because they have the determination to persevere, and not necessarily any additional aptitude above anybody else. Occasionally, there appears a sportsperson who does demonstrate something special above their peers - they do have something special, but that specialness could be shared by many others, but they don’t play the sport, or pursue it.
The fact is most people don’t determine their real aptitudes or develop their full potential. And if you could identify your aptitude, and train without restriction, and benefit from appropriate coaching, then you could possibly prepare for an Olympic event in 4 years. Maybe. In my opinion, anyhow.
Si
20 years ago it wasn’t that equivalent. Now it is.
No, but the olympics is beyond 99.9999% of people.
Can I get a cite for any of that? Even if most people could be a concert pianist, I don’t think that’s a good analogy. That’s like saying most people could run a marathon. That’s fine, but if you can’t run a marathon in ~2 hours nobody cares.
Well, I think that anyone who can run for 4 hours and 26 miles is objectively fitter than most people. It might not rate in the world of marathons, but it is a measure of cardiovascular fitness that many people could not aspire to.
The Olympics (like any sports competition) are self-selecting. My point is that people who choose to compete in a sport do not do so because they have aptitude for the sport, but because they like it and succeed at it. And people who choose not to compete in sport may have an exceptional aptitude for it. And if they did choose to pursue it, they could compete at the Olympics. There are few objective ways of determining sports ability apart from results, and most people choose a sport when they are young and don’t change. So they could have a stronger aptitude for another sport they never compete in.
The research indicates expertise - thats not 3 hour marathons (to use your analogy).Wikipedia
This Is Your Brain on Music by Daniel J. Levitin makes this reference as well. In Chapter 7, Levitin explores what it takes to become an expert, as part of the more general question, “what makes a musician?” One particularly noteworthy argument, taken from research in cognitive psychology, is that expertise in any field requires ten thousand hours of practice. According to Levitin’s reading of the research, this is true for everything from becoming a master criminal to a concert pianist, and everything in between.
Humans are mostly average, with few (currently) measurable and identifiable physiological advantages for those people who make it to the Olympic podiums. No faster reaction times, some differences in fast/slow twitch muscle fibres depending on sport, nothing additional in terms of respiration capacity (in terms of untrained ability). If there are no natural advantages to explain why top athletes are top, then it follows that they are average human beings with the drive and training to achieve top results, and that many other average humans could get close or achieve similar results with sufficient investment. Of course, 10000 hours is a lot of training - you could find it a push to get that in over four years. But not everybody needs the full 10000 hours. And maybe there are hidden factors we cannot yet identify, in which case my thesis is void.
Si
Could not aspire to? I thought it was your assertion that only training was needed. The OPs best time ever is nearly an hour off world record time by the way.
Ok, I agree. I don’t see how this refutes anything. So if the OP just happens to be ridiculously talented at something he’s never done before, and if he happens to pick that one event to train for, he’s still 20 years past his prime.
Are athletics in between? If so I don’t believe that for a second. Only if expertise is a much much lower standard than even professional athletics let alone olympics.
So now you’re asserting that everybody’s the same except for training? Doesn’t this contradict your earlier statements? If I take this quote in a vacuum there are still thousands upon thousand of amateur athletes that disprove this.
I disbelieve. Why would you like and/or succeed at a sport you don’t have aptitude for? How do you separate out the cause and effect here?
You’re wayyyyyy off. It is not just about training and a little skill, it is much much more.
Again, I go back to my roommate, a man who looks like Achilles. Since a young age his parents and his coaches realized he was very good at swimming. Luckily, he liked swimming, and therefore, since a young age he has been actively training. For the past few years, in university, his routine is pretty much nothing but practice. He doesn’t work, he is paid to practice. He doesn’t take a full course load (and he is actually smart, surprisingly enough), he practices full-time. When he competes at the national university level, he dominates the competition. However, his times were still not good enough to make the Olympic team. It wasn’t that he wasn’t good enough or didn’t try hard enough, it was the fact he isn’t Olympic material. He is good enough to come in first at the nationals, his time just wasn’t good enough to merit a berth on the Olympic team.
I don’t care how mental you think the Olympics are; the athletes who compete there are the best in the world. By all accounts my roommate has exceptional talent and training, yet he still misses the team. Obviously, it is more than that. It is about having a singular proficiency in a sport, coupled with rigorous training; when you possess both of those traits, you might be able to make a team. Eddie the Eagle and the Jamaican bobsled notwithstanding, none of us will make the Olympics because we suddenly try - that just isn’t going to happen.
I never said that he should attempt the marathon. He is well off the pace. But a number of other Olympic sports do not require the same level of fitness as a marathon runner. My assertion was that because the OP is fitter than many people he could learn a skill-based sport that requires moderate fitness. Most people won’t reach the marathon level of fitness because they don’t have the mental attitude to do so.
Not all Olympic sports require youth. Shooting and archery as examples.
Again, not all sports are athletics.
What I am trying to say is that elite sportpeople are not as far off the physiological curve as some people seem to think. What they do have is motivation and dedication. This makes them winners.
Si
Oh I get that. The problem is that you’re wrong. Again, there are many thousands of athletes around the world that train and practice all the time. Just as much as any professional and yet they’re not pros. Hell Alan Iverson doesn’t practice, at least not much, and he’s one of the greatest scorers in the history of his sport, explain that one.
This is not true. Some of the “Olympic sports” are surprisingly local, and some of them barely qualify as “sports” at all.
This makes a good point. To put in 10,000 hours (or any menaningful fraction) of practice in any activity imples uncommon (indeed, almost fanatical) dedication. It’s going to be exceedingly rare for that to be present unless the person is also unusually good at the activity, and enjoying regular success.
I still think it is more than possible to learn to
-run a 3k in 10 minutes
-shoot an air pistol 20 times into a target at 10m
-jump 3’6" on a horse in 1:17 minutes
-swim 200m freestyle in 2:30 minutes
-Fence up to 40 1-minute epee fights, each winnable by a single touch.
The way Modern Pentathlon is scored, you get max points for meeting the standard, NOT by beating everyone else (except in fencing, where you get max points by beating 70% of your opponents.) That is to say, for the most part there is no reward if you exceed the standard.
Swimmers, fencers, runners, riders and shooters – don’t you think that nearly any fairly fit person could achieve the above standards in 5 years, given sufficient cash fo solid coaching and sufficient time to put in the training? IMHO, the only reason more people don’t compete has more to do with limited money and time that is available to amateurs. No one pays you to train for pentathlon. Riding lessons alone ($60/hr x 5 hrs/week x 52 weeks x 5 years) would come to $78,000 in 5 years.
3k in ten minutes is probably doable for a slightly above average athlete, I’m not familiar with the rest of them. I imagine fencing would be the undoing of most people since you have a competitor. You’ve got a good point though. You’d have to find a sport with a very small participation base for whatever reason and hope you have some natural ability at it. There are less likely to be absolute freaks of nature competing in the modern pentathlon just because of the statistics of it.