"Talent is a myth"

A reader writes...

"Could you possibly write an entry about your opinion about the quote 'talent is a myth?' I've gotten in many arguments about that question."

.. always happy to oblige!

What is talent?

Merriam Webster's dictionary defines talent as "a natural endowment" or "gift" -- an ability that you have been given and (by implication) that you never had to earn for yourself.

We all know people who have a talent for music, math, art, or sport. While others struggle to achieve basic proficiency, the talented one displays an apparently effortless mastery. One thinks of famous prodigies, such as Mozart, who composed his first symphony at age eight; Leonhard Euler, who made major contributions to the field of number theory in his teens; Sammy Reshevsky and Bobby Fischer, who were chess masters as children.

What about distance running? Are there prodigies in distance running as well? And what does that mean for the rest of us?

In 1970, Sports Illustrated put 18-year old Steve Prefontaine on its cover with the headline "America's Distance Running Prodigy." Since I was myself a young runner, you can imagine I read that story many times over, and one thing I remember is Oregon coach Bill Bowerman claiming that Pre had been uniquely blessed with a superior cardiovascular system. A natural talent, right?

But in that same article, Oregon Asst. Coach Bill Dellinger was quoted as follows:

"The kid is just plain amazing. Usually it takes guys in our event ten or twelve years to build confidence in themselves, the confidence you need to win. Here's a young man who has the right attitude naturally. He wouldn't be afraid to stand on the line against anybody in the world in the three mile. If the competition is tough or the wind is blowing like crazy or if it's awfully hot, hell that's not going to stop him. There is nothing in running he doesn't believe he can't do."

As a freshman in high school, Prefontaine had gone out for football but was a 100-lb. benchwarmer. He had no natural talent for football. When he discovered running, he discovered a sport in which he could excel, and he had a burning desire to excel so he drove himself to improve. He ran constantly. By the time he was a junior in high school he was a state champion. A few years later he would hold seven American records in track at distances from 2000 to 10,000 meters.

Prefontaine's development illustrates nicely the real part that talent plays, and the insufficiency of talent as an explanation for ultimate success.

To begin with, most people don't really understand what a talent for distance running looks like.

It's not like sprinting, where natural speed is fairly evident even in someone who hasn't trained. Of course, no sprinter will reach their potential or become a champion without backbreaking training, but no amount of training will make a champion sprinter out of someone who doesn't have a talent for sprinting.

And it's not like baseball or soccer where a degree of natural hand-eye or foot-eye coordination is of paramount importance.

No, a talent for distance running can be completely invisible, lurking undiscovered in an individual who has failed at every other sport he or she has tried. Now this doesn't describe ALL distance runners, but it describes some of them. The reason is that distance running success is dependent on the body's ability to assimilate and use oxygen. Without a prodigious ability to use the stuff, you can't sustain maximum effort for the time required to run 5K. And here's the thing: people don't start out with this ability very highly developed.

This is where talent comes in. Some people have a gift -- there's no other word for it -- for improving their aerobic fitness (the ability to lope along at a sub-maximal pace for long periods of time). These "high responders" might have zero sprinting talent, but their bodies are somehow programmed to respond to high volume training by adapting to that training to an extreme degree. Everyone adapts to training, but not everyone adapts the same. High responders are at the far end of the adaptation curve.

So how can you tell who is a high responder? That's the thing. You can't tell by looking at someone. The secret of their ability lies buried deep in the mitochondria of their cells. You simply don't know who is going to keep getting better and better as they train more and more. And we're talking about training over a period of several years.

At the end of the day, there's no way to tell whether you personally have transcendant "talent" for distance running without training your a** off. And if you do train your a** off, you'll realize that you *do* have at least one talent -- a talent for persistence and dedication and toughness. Then the question of whether you have the talent to win an Olympic gold medal becomes irrelevant. You will be better, stronger, fitter, and wiser than you were before. As Emil Zatopek said, "you will have grown in more ways than one."

No, talent is not a myth; it's real. In fact, you can find it anywhere you care to look. Arthur Lydiard wrote that there were potential champions in every small village and town on earth. However, there is nothing more common than someone with talent, but not the will to develop it. You might have the cardiovascular system of a deer, but if you don't have the mind the train your cardiovascular system you will be beaten by those who do.

Talent is not a myth.

Talent ALONE is the myth.