Let's be fair

With all the talk about Usain Bolt's awesome performance in the Olympic 200m, let's try to be fair when comparing him to Michael Johnson.

First off, he didn't "destroy" Michael's record. Unless Michael Phelps "destroyed" Cavic in the 100m butterfly, I don't think we can call 2 hundredths of a second being "destroyed". I think that seems reasonable enough.

Secondly, I've been hearing/reading the comment that "Michael wasn't beating people the way Usain is beating people." We can approach that two ways: A) Photograph evidence showing the margin of victory as a relation between the winner and the second place finisher, seen below, or B) We can dismiss it as an unfair comparison because MJ's nearest competitor ran the 6th fastest 200m time in history with a time of 19.68, while Bolt's nearest competitor doesn't even come within 2 tenths of a second of the 10th fastest time with a time of 19.96. To say this difference is due to Bolt's dominance would completely dismiss the level of competition that MJ faced in 1996.

Fair enough? Agree? Disagree? Don't care? Share your thoughts.







Attachments
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MJ.JPG (32KB - 24 downloads)
bolt3.jpg (17KB - 23 downloads)