Created unequal

Nature laughs in the face of egalitarian fantasies of human equality.

Written by Bo Winegard

At the peak of his athletic powers, Usain Bolt, a record-setting Jamaican sprinter, could run 100 meters in roughly 9.8 seconds. At the peak of my athletic powers, I, an erstwhile American academic, could run 100 meters in roughly 30 seconds. Had I trained diligently from an early age, I like to believe that I would have broken the 20-second barrier—but perhaps only with a strong wind at my back.

So large is the disparity in talent between me and Usain Bolt that no conceivable intervention—no diet, no training program, no performance enhancing drug—would have equalized our abilities. In any imaginable athletic endeavor, I am inferior to Usain Bolt.