Everyone is an athlete until competition is involved. You see we often hear fierce and heated criticisms of professional athletes who are not doing as well as their counterparts that we might begin to overly underrate the extraordinary feats which they actually accomplish by just being professionals.
We tend to forget that to be good to that extent where one actually gets paid for the sport, and many make successful careers off it is nothing short of extraordinary. The amount of effort that each athlete makes to become elite at what they do is simply enormous.
Some Athletes take up their disciplines from a very young age and carefully craft their skillset until they reach prime competition age. Each day of such a prospects lifestyle will involve following very strict training and dietary regimen to make sure they stay in shape and improve their skillset as they get older.
It is easier to phantom their feats when you consider the various specializations of skillsets we have in the World today. We have top level developers, researchers and professionals who have dedicated years of their lives towards being the best at what they do, and the sporting World is in fact no different.
So I find it baffling when some people feel they can take on and possibly be better than professionals at what they do. I heard about a Men's (amateur) tennis club a few years back who felt they could take on Serena Williams in play. While acknowledging the obvious physiological differences between genders, athlete stretch themselves to such limits that the average female professional still far surpasses most male amateurs in that field. Don't go thinking you can take on Serena Williams just because you have big muscles and can swing a racket.
For me personally, my on epiphany came when I started running consistently. In the time trial runs where I have pushed myself to my limits, I have been made to realize how far away I am from elite standards. Take for instance my 5km Personal best being 25min02secs whereas the World record for Women in that discipline is around 14 Minutes. Yet my time would be considered fairly decent by amateur standards as it requires a fair amount of discipline and consistency to build stamina required over time.
We should be giving professional athletes their dues. Granted, a lot of them are duly compensated for their hard work and sacrifice, but far too many go unappreciated. What's the utility of sport after all? When we see human beings like ourselves go beyond capacities of what we previously felt was unattainable then as an entire species we are encouraged.
This isn't Athlete worship but a recognition of the price that it takes to become elite in the field - dedication, consistency and lots of effort. Indeed, the same can be said for virtually all facets of life.
