Indonesia's Agus Prayogo has a pb for 10000m in 29:25. If we define such ability as 'talent', then the million dollar question is: can 'hardwork' beat 'talent'.
For context, we obviously use our main character Soh Ruiyong, who comes from a background of 31:15 10000m speed. We are not talking about a guy already running say 29:50 for 10000m working also already very hard, and still looking to continue even more 'hardwork' to surmount the difference to 29:25, the supposed benchmark of 'talent' in the definition above. We are talking about a drastically slower guy who is only running 31:15 on the track with MORE THAN his maximum effort, as illustrated by the race video of 2 years ago on Flotrack where Ruiyong totally capitulated from physical and mental exhaustion at the end of the race! If that is the case, can Ruiyong with his 31:15 pb, with the support of already one of the best training ideologies and guidances from a very good elite distance coach and group be able to continue to work hard so that, according to him, 'hardwork' may beat 'talent'? And that means, he would be running sometime in the next 1,2, or 3 years, faster than 29:25, which would be 2 minutes faster than his current best? We of the blog, and any reasonable and knowledgeable distance running fan, coach, or competitor would obviously and completely reject such a notion. In fact, we of the blog, are even willing to wager that this man will not even run 1 min faster than 31:15, much less 2minutes faster! In fact, based on analysis of the entirety of Ruiyong's running career and trajectory, performances, emotional and mental thresholds and tendencies, and biomechanical style and efficiency, as well as some other work and climate related factors when he returns to Singapore, we do not think he even has a high chance of ever coming within a split second of his 31:15 again!
HARD WORK DOESN'T BEAT TALENT BELOW A CERTAIN CUT-OFF STANDARD! Can anybody disagree with that?! If yes, the onus is on you to prove it critically/theoretically/practically, for the sport of distance running only!
We would like every single Singaporean and non Singaporean runner, coach, parent, fan, competitor of distance sport, to stop promulgating notions such as these above without more critical thinking and analysis like we have done above, especially if you are well educated and have better ability to filter information and knowledge, and/or, differentiate reality from illusion, right from wrong, good from bad, morally and ethically!
Instead, we propose the existence of TALENT BANDS! There must be a band of runners of a certain ability by a certain age and perhaps also of a certain cultural heritage, who one would consider to be above the cut-off standard so that all their hard work may PROBABLY reap some small or large dividends! As you can see, being above the cut-off still doesn't guarantee hard work beats talent! And we speak mostly in probabilistic terms because so many other factors are at work still. We propose that for a senior runner in SEA to run 29:25 one fine day in his career, he needs to graduate from highschool at the tender age of 18 years or 19 years old with a pb for 10000m in the region of 30-31 minutes. This would be called a TALENT BAND! A runner falls into this talent band if he comes from either vietnam, phillipines, singapore, burma, cambodia, laos, indonesia, malaysia, east timor, brunei, and is at most 19 years old and has run 30-31minutes in a 10k track(or road) race. Needless to say, Ruiyong at 18-19 years old, was nowhere near this BAND. In fact he was 4 BANDS away in the high 34min region. For him, no amount of hard work is ever going to cause him to beat a talent of Agus' stature, or run times close to 29:25! If he is going to prove this wrong to all of us, and insist, in his delusion, that hard work beats talent(whatever else that means to him), we wish him all the best in what we definitely believe is futile.
At last word, we heard Ruiyong is hell bent on giving one last push for qualifying for Rio, by way of the Gold Coast Airport marathon 2016, in which Agus Prayogo is also entered(according to his instagram). We have spoken quietly to everybody in the knowledgeable local distance running community, and a quick survey of opinions in general showed that 9 in 10 conversations were totally disagreeable and expressed shock and abhorrence at his naivety! We have no reason to lie about this and our meticulously objective analyses in all our posts speak for themselves. Whoever is overseeing his running career at the moment, probably doesn't have enough influence in Ruiyong's life to prevent him from trying to qualify for Rio again in Gold Coast. That includes his PR agent Nicholas and his personal coach and assistant Ian. Even our own athletics association SAAA exponent C kunalan has questioned Ruiyong's questionable moral and ethical choices over the last few months of his running career, to no avail---no remorse and recourse by Ruiyong and his team at Blackdot. He thinks he can get in and out of the marathon game like an 800m or 1500m race---haphazardly putting together what he thought was a solid training block of 5-6 weeks, in between gingerly managing injuries and being injured and sometimes not training at all due to pain and discomfort, when real solid professional runners like Eliud Kipchoge settle for no less than 16-20 weeks except in this olympic year where the amount of time between the end of the London marathon and the Rio marathon allows for no more than a meagre 12 weeks of actual preparation. At his level, is this not showing any respect for the distance? Because this isn't an 800m or 1500m playtoy, and he knows that! He knows that the marathon distance is an extreme extension which requires months upon months of physical and mental practice to perfect, whereby any small chink in the armor, or weakness, is going to be amplified multi-fold----and he knows this!
Question of the day: how does he act so obstinately dumb?
It's a no-brainer outcome at Gold Coast, just as it was in London: Soh Ruiyong is not qualifying by merit of time(sub 2:19). There could be a window of chance with regards to the national marathon record, but even with our best optimism, we think that is a long shot as well. A really long shot...
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