Overrated athletes?
in Other Sports ·
Raymond Harris4 said:Every now and then—just in little bursts—I’d find myself following Formula 1 (though I wouldn't say I'm an expert by any means). One of those periods was back in the late '80s, when Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna were absolutely tearing it up. After Senna passed away, I stopped watching, and then I "came back" a few years later. The first thing that hit me—and man, did it hit hard—was this overwhelming sense of mediocrity. You had Michael Schumacher... and then just a bunch of decent drivers, but nobody really stood out from the pack, which is why I quickly lost interest again.
Another thing was this glaring lack of guts among the drivers. Back in Senna's era, drivers were actually trying to overtake and muscle their way past one another in the truest sense of the word; they took massive risks. Nowadays, it feels like everything just relies on the team's overarching strategy. Overtaking in Formula 1 used to be like scoring goals in soccer, but sadly, those moves have become rarer and rarer over the years. What’s your take on that?
When it comes to Formula 1 and the '80s (which I remember pretty well), the whole perception has shifted massively over the last 15 years or so. Certain things—like Senna—have basically crossed over into the realm of pure mythology.
People love to toss around the phrase "golden age" these days, but honestly? Aside from a handful of elite drivers, there has never been a time in Formula 1 history where the field was as filled with mediocre talent as it was back then. Most races (probably 90% of them) were—just like today—boring as hell. Getting points was incomparably easier than it is now. Being "good enough" basically meant just keeping the car running until the end of the race, which most of the time, they didn't even manage to do. Over the last couple of seasons (ignoring last year), the gap between the fastest and slowest car was barely more than a second. In the '80s, that was the gap between the leader and whoever was closest to him! Because of that massive disparity between cars—not to even get into the evolution of brakes, tires, and aerodynamics since then—overtaking was way easier back in the day than it is now. It's not that today's drivers lack courage; they're just clinically perfect "machines" now.
As for Senna, to me, he's the ultimate example of an "overhyped sporting icon."
He was lucky enough to compete in an era when sports info trickled out to the public in tiny droplets.
I mean, how do you think a driver today—in an age where every single sentence is dissected under a microscope—would fare if they claimed to have seen Jesus during a race, or admitted to having an "unusual" attraction to young boys, or whatever...
But unfortunately, he died, and the myth was born.
