What's more important - talent or hard work?

--amadeus--

What it says on the tin Who's faster a hard worker or someone gifted?




yes I'm facing a dull day at work and need distraction :P

Sosa

Difficult one to answer amadeus.

When i saw the thread straight away i thought hard worker because the thread was "whats more important"

In my view ( for the ordinary joe soap ) hard work is everything.
I have come across numerous people in my life that have been hugely talented in sports i played but had zero commitment to it,and the grafter with less talent would be more useful to your team.

But,when you say who is faster...thats different....if the talented runner did very little training,the hard worker would beat him/her...but if the talented one was tipping away,then its no contest...

Talented one wins

Running Bing

--amadeus-- wrote: »

What it says on the tin Who's faster a hard worker or someone gifted?




yes I'm facing a dull day at work and need distraction :P

You could be an incredibly gifted runner but if you sit on the coach all day drinking beer obviously a hard worker is going to beat you.

On the flip side you could work like a maniac but if you dont have the talent there will always be somebody who works just as hard who does!

I dont think its a question of talent versus hard work. To succeed at a high level you need both...its a question of how much talent and how much hard work.


I do think you can achieve lots of hard work alone though.

MCOS

Answer: Hard Work is more important.

Nobody, no matter how talented or how successful got where they are without some hard work and this is in any walk of life.

Michelangelo was a gifted artist but he put more hard work into painting the sistine chapel than most people do in their lifetime.

Usain Bolt didn't just get off the couch and run 9.69!

The thing about talent is that everyone has a talent of some sort or a genetic gift if you will, some choose to tap into it.. find the joy and develop a passion for it and are thus more likely to spend time developing it.

shels4ever

--amadeus-- wrote: »

What it says on the tin Who's faster a hard worker or someone gifted?




yes I'm facing a dull day at work and need distraction :P

You can have people with talent that never reach the top,
You can have hard working people who do better then expected
But when you have both thats when you end up with some class..

tunguska

Hard work for sure. I think less physically naturally gifted athletes are born with iron determination, whereas the naturally gifted ones are born with great physical ability but less determination. I mean the person with the higher VO2 max will not always win the race, according to Jack Daniels.
Roy Keane himself, readily admits that he wasnt the most naturally gifted player but he was more successful than a lot of greater talents due to his determination.
Personally I think if you have the will you can beat anybody with greater natural talent.

Domer

What was the famous line from Chariots of Fire?

'You can't put in what Gods left out'

You can't reach the pinacle of success in your chosen sport if you dont have talent, and then bring out that talent with plenty hard work.

thirtyfoot

Domer wrote: »

You can't reach the pinacle of success in your chosen sport if you dont have talent, and then bring out that talent with plenty hard work.

Yep, I'd say hard work will only take you so far. You need talent to really succeed. The level of success will depend on the amount of hard work you put in to maximise your talent.

misty floyd

Tingle wrote: »

Yep, I'd say hard work will only take you so far. You need talent to really succeed.

Thats why Dublin football team won't go anywhere unless they work on underage football. I think they are one of the fittest teams in the country but as soon as they meet talented oposition...forget it. Slight change of subject.

Bambaata

misty floyd wrote: »

Thats why Dublin football team won't go anywhere unless they work on underage football. I think they are one of the fittest teams in the country but as soon as they meet talented oposition...forget it. Slight change of subject.

there is word going around that they were actually overtrained. I also think they dont have the talent but overtraining certainyl wouldnt help.

helpisontheway

Tingle wrote: »

Yep, I'd say hard work will only take you so far. You need talent to really succeed. The level of success will depend on the amount of hard work you put in to maximise your talent.

+1

booboobear

i'd say hard work 80%.
Talent 20%

T runner

I would say talent: but as the distance gets longer hard work may become more relevant. E.g volume of work might reduce an all rounders percentage of elite times in a marathon more than in a 100 metre sprint.

For people trying to improve their own times hard work is everything though.
If you ran 40 mins for 5 mile on 20-30 miles per week you can probably run near or under 30 mins.

gmurran

I'd add that hard work very often gets stopped in it's tracks if you don't have talent (good natural mechanics) as a result of injury.

wizwill

my favourite quote


“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. ”
Calvin Coolidge
30th President of the United States, from 1923-1929

lizanne83

wizwill wrote: »

my favourite quote


“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. ”
Calvin Coolidge
30th President of the United States, from 1923-1929

HEAR HEAR!!

Mickeybags

We are all born with different talents and potentials. Some of have more fast twitch rather than slow twitch muscles etc .

We all have the ability to reach our full potential in the disipline of our choice through hard work.

Whether thats good enough to beat joe soap will depend on the difference of our potentials given we both apply ourselves equally.

Silk purse out of a pigs ear?

brutes

Most people think hard work beats talent!, so does that mean for example a 2.40/2.50 marathoner can do a 2.20 eventually through sheer willpower determination and hard training do you think ? Or is that level simply unattaianable for your average to good club runner if its not in the lungs/makeup. Any notable examples of athletes who have broken through from the midpack ??

Condo131

Talent, talent, talent...did I mention talent!

The gifted few (athletes) have a HUGE advantage over the rest of us hard workers. We have to work hard to get within 'an asses roar' of them - and then only if we are lucky. Sure some of the gifted waste their talent, but hard work can't compensate for lack of talent. It might go a long way towards it, but real talent is like gold dust.

sleapy235

I reckon talent is a lot more important in running than for many other sports. If you don't have a good degree of talent no amount of hard work can allow you to compete at the highest level, although people with less talent (but still a good deal) can be competitive through sheer hard work, but they still need a lot of talent compared to the average guy. In other sports such as soccer there is greater potential rewards for pure hard work and determination, an example being Greece in 2004. Tactics also play a bigger role here than athletics. But again, the Greek team were infinitely more talented soccer players than the ordinary guy on the street, but were not as talented as the likes of Portugal, France, Italy etc.
I'm reminded of Mark Carroll's statement at the time of the Cathal Lombard drugs scandal: 'For Cathal it wasn't a case of levelling the playing field, it was a case of getting to the playing field'.

wizwill

sleapy235 wrote: »

I reckon talent is a lot more important in running than for many other sports. If you don't have a good degree of talent no amount of hard work can allow you to compete at the highest level, although people with less talent (but still a good deal) can be competitive through sheer hard work, but they still need a lot of talent compared to the average guy. In other sports such as soccer there is greater potential rewards for pure hard work and determination, an example being Greece in 2004. Tactics also play a bigger role here than athletics. But again, the Greek team were infinitely more talented soccer players than the ordinary guy on the street, but were not as talented as the likes of Portugal, France, Italy etc.
I'm reminded of Mark Carroll's statement at the time of the Cathal Lombard drugs scandal: 'For Cathal it wasn't a case of levelling the playing field, it was a case of getting to the playing field'.

In my opinion and having ran and played soccer, Soccer is a high skill sport and requires more natural talent than running. The example of greece has more to do with tactics and other teams weaknesses at that point in time, otherwise greece would still be a force.

dna_leri

I would say 50% inspiration, 50% perspiration - equal amounts talent and hard work.

The greatest athletes have both but hard work can compensate for some lack of natural ability and some of our irish international athletes are great examples of this e.g. Fagan and Hession were not born with the same talent (genes) as the east african distance runners and jamaican sprinters but through hard work have brought themselves up to that world level.

It can be hard to separate the two though as the more you work the more talented you (seem to) become.

Seres

IMO , you can get further on hard work and little talent , then on lots of talent with little work.

sleapy235

The greatest athletes have both but hard work can compensate for some lack of natural ability and some of our irish international athletes are great examples of this e.g. Fagan and Hession were not born with the same talent (genes) as the east african distance runners and jamaican sprinters but through hard work have brought themselves up to that world level.

I'd have to strongly disagree with what you're saying there. I don't believe for one second that Martin Fagan is less talented than Kenyans running the same tmes or that Paul Hession is less talented than Jamaicans at his level. Kenya mey be much more likely to produce athletes of Fagan's calibre but on an individual level I don't believe they are more talented and I wouldn't really think Fagan trains that much harder than the Kenyans who are known for savage trainig regimes. No wonder kids are being discouraged to take up the sport when stereotypical attitudes like 'You can't spring because you're white' are being thrown at them.

aero2k

I reckon it would be very hard to find anyone who's been successful in any walk of life over a long period, where that success hasn't been based on sustained hard work.
As for talent, I was thinking about this the other day. I got to wondering if the talent that successful sportspeople share in common is not that they were born able to run faster or throw a javelin further or whatever; maybe it's that they were born with the persistence / stubbornness / patience to keep at it until they were better than everyone else.
Also it seems successful people are very good at coping with setbacks - Tiger Woods with his knee, Roger Federer with glandular fever etc. etc.

Seres

maybe the requireements for talent versus work are different for different things for example i think you need more raw talent to succeed as a sprinter than maybe as a long distance runner , where you need to put alot of work into conditioning yourself.

entropi

In reality i would say both have their merits, but hard work will trump talent in the end.

Talent, while rare to see true gifted talent, will obviously help the process of attaining a highly sought level of participation. The hard work will be critical in how that talent is put to use though, as mentioned earlier its not as if Usian Bolt just got up off the couch as we all know he has been training for many years, hard training but it has ultimately paid off for him and his coaches.

Hard work is the backbone to success, putting in the required amount of background training is what makes or breaks a successful sportsperson. The average joe soap can train hard and have a good chance of competing at a high level, and even though it will be tough, they can possibly compete with those elite athletes who have natural talent.

If said elites didnt put in the hard work, they would just be really good at what they do, but nowhere near they could potentially be.

Sports Nutritionists, Sports Therapists, Physiotherapists and Sports Psychologists...these are some of this hard work too, without them the higher echelons of sports participants would not succeed nearly as much.