Shadow Boxing (2016)
espn.com
espn.com
Think about snooker: to live off it you need to be really good, as in train for 8+ hours a day, every day. The top player will earn multiples of 250k GBP a year, but already a 3rd ranker will at best do a "decent office job". Everybody else pays to play. This is an exclusive sport.
But look at UTMB[1]: A guy having a day job and training a couple of hours before and after work... was able to finish it under 100 hours, which is jaw-dropping. This is an inclusive sport.
Now pro boxing: you can't have a ranking without enough contenders, and by definition there can only be one champion at a time. So you have the champion, contenders, gatekeepers, journeyman and... everybody else is the filler. It's an inclusive sport, but by pure statistics most players will be filler.
I bet there are people training their snooker an hour a day who have scored 147s, and I also expect very few people can make a good living doing trail running.
Isn’t this more a matter of a sport being popular/having money available? If there were millions of $ available in trail running, that sub 100 hour might start looking “goo but not spectacular”
The main point is "can you compete while not being fully dedicated to the sport (i.e. it being your literal day job)".
And my examples along the spectrum: running - boxing - snooker, are just an example. Shared because I think it's an interesting _aspect_ of looking at sports (one of many aspects!).
Taking that as “compete at top level world-wide”, that’s a matter of number of number of competitors.
To do that, you need to have a good combination of physical abilities, mental abilities, and opportunity (growing up in a rich country or in a rich family helps even in cheap sports such as athletics) and dedication to the sport.
If you are three sigma above the mean from that, you’re (about) in the top 1/1000 of competitors (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/68–95–99.7_rule#Three-sigma_ru...)
If you’re playing soccer, that means that, world-wide, you’re in the top quarter million or so (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_player: “It has been estimated that there are 250 million association football players in the world, and many play other forms of football.”), so chances are you won’t be well-known, world-wide. (https://www.statista.com/statistics/1283927/number-pro-socce... says *“FIFA estimated that there were 123,694 professional soccer players worldwide.”, so half of those that are three sigma above average will play professionally, I expect most of them for, at best, middle class salaries)
Numbers are hard to come by, but in snooker, that probably gets you into the top 100 or so. In trail running, I suspect it gets you in the top 10.
That being said, I get the impression the author has a flair for the dramatic. On a whim I clicked on a random restaurant there on Google Maps (Red Rooster Overtown) and it was described as an "Artful restaurant offering Southern comfort food with a twist, plus craft cocktails, and happy hours." Doesn't exactly sound like a hellhole to me, though I guess it has been 15 years and a lot can change.
By the time I got to this line, I could not stop the tears.