A world record is just a number.
An Olympic gold medal means that one time in four years, the fastest, strongest, most athletic humans on the entire planet gathered in one place to compete, and you beat them all.
If you don’t appreciate that, no one can explain it to you.
In many cases, major races aren’t about getting the world record. They’re about beating everyone who showed up that day. People with a strong finish will go out slow and try to set the pace so they’re able to kick to the finish. Others may go out fast and burn themselves out a bit, compromising their final time, but allowing them to break the will of the other runners. It’s strategy and tactics. There may be a time and a place to go after world records but often the Olympics isn’t that time or place. The objective is the win the race and come home with the gold.
This may not hold for other events, but even there strategy (what heights to attempt, or to skip, in high jump or weight lifting) comes into play that may effect the final score/result.
Of course I appreciate it. It’s wonderful. But it’s not what you describe. You don’t necessarily beat all the best on the planet. The best on the planet may have slipped or cramped during a preliminary heat, and you didn’t even race against him. Or he may be a Russian, and wasn’t allowed to compete. Or like one of the examples in a previous post, she may have had an off day in the trials, and didn’t make the team.
And anybody who says a world record is just a number has no credibility regarding appreciating a wonderful achievement.
The Olympics is the biggest stage for most of these sports. Athletes plan their careers around peaking at the right time so they are in the best shape of their lives, rested, and injury free. Everyone has the same goal to be ready for the Olympics. Sure, some folks might be injured or failed to qualify at their national trials due to a fluke, but that just means they weren’t the best in the world that day.
You can set a world record anytime, and it’s a big deal no matter when you do it. But performing at the Olympics is performing under pressure, peaking at the right time, when everyone has the same goal. That’s why the Olympics is different than setting a WR. It’s why performing in an NFL game in October is different than winning the Super Bowl.
I’m just glad Tiger Woods wasn’t competing.
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Here’s another way to demonstrate it: I doubt anybody remembers who set world records in the 1970s. But everybody still remembers Mark Spitz, Nadia Comeneci, and Dorothy Hamill. Because they won gold medals.
Because they won gold medals on national TV, and were hyped then and thereafter for it. I wouldn’t be amazed if more people remembered Dorothy Hamill for her commercials than for her skating. And Spitz doesn’t count, because he set world records all of the races he won at the 72 Olympics (which I attended, by the way).
I have never disputed that you get more fame and fortune for a gold medal. All I’m saying is that IMO it’s the lesser achievement. Still a wonderful achievement, but not as good as a world record. A 9.8 compared to the 10.0 of a world record, and the 2.0 of the best most of us can ever hope for.
Here’s my other way to demonstrate it: which is better, a world record or an Olympic record? And many Olympic records come with a gold medal.
Fame, especially fame that’s the result of TV hype, is not the best criterion for achievement. Who’s the bigger name, Kim Kardashian, or Satoshi Omura?
You’ve said that multiple times, but your arguments in favor of it haven’t been very convincing.
Well, you can lead a horse to water…
Well, a world record is by definition, just a number. It’s a statistic. Have you ever played a sport? Sports are about direct competition. Winners and losers. Crushing your opponents. Hearing the lamentations of their women…
…and if you get there first during the Olympics then you really have something.
I think you’re missing the point entirely, Tony. Here’s why:
I have a world record. Good for me.
Now, I go to a big competition. and I don’t win. This will PISS ME OFF. BECAUSE I have a World Record. I KNOW I COULD have done it. I have DEMONSTRABLY PROVED that I can do better. And I didn’t.
That is INFURIATING. Sure, the medal prize and whatnot is nice, but what really is at stake here is doing the best I can do, and I have clearly just failed to do that.
Michael Phelps could sell his gold medals for an insane amount of money, other Olympians would have to be content with just a regular sum of money, however nobody could sell a world record.
So Gold Medal > World record.
That’s not a good example at all. Sure, if I had a gazillion dollars, and if Michael Phelps was willing to part with it, I could buy one of Phelps’ gold medals. It would be my property insofar as I could do with it as I wished. However, the only reason it has any more value than any other olympic gold medal ever awarded (or, for that matter, an expertly counterfeited medal) is that it was won by Michael Phelps, the most decorated Olympian of all time. So, it a real sense, it will always be Michael Phelps’ medal, regardless of who “owns” it.