Do they just finally put out all their effort at one event, or have they ran the event that fast before it just didn’t count unless they were in a massive race?
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I ran cross country for 6 years. I can tell you with extreme certainty that the caliber of your competition has a huge impact on the caliber of your performance. But on top of that, there’s likely some selection bias. There are Olympic records and world records. Of course, with Olympic records being more selective than world records, they’re almost guaranteed to be lower, and therefore, easier to beat.
The next thing I’m not as confident on, but stage is probably important too. I learned in psychology the difference between distress and eustress. There are athletes who are able to take the stress of performing under pressure and turn it into motivation to perform even better. I would think that is random among amateur athletes, but to make it to the world’s stage, you have to be the best in many categories. And people don’t realize just how much luck goes into that. Veritasium has an epic video about this. Being able to perform under pressure is necessary, and if you can turn that pressure around for your benefit, you’re just that more likely to make it to the highest level.
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