Cristiano Ronaldo’s athleticism has always been hailed as exceptional, but at his peak he was matched against a professional Spanish sprinter.
Throughout his career, Cristiano Ronaldo has been known as one of the best athletes in football.
The thinking has always been that if you create a player in a laboratory with all the physical qualities needed to succeed in the top flight, he will end up looking like the Manchester United and Real Madrid legends. As Ronaldo’s career progressed, he changed his style, switching from winger to forward.
However, back in 2011, when Ronaldo made a world-record move to Los Blancos, he underwent a series of training sessions called “Extreme Tests” by Sky Sports. He was 26 years old at the time and at the peak of his strength from a physical perspective.
To get a true measure of his speed, he was pitted against the fastest sprinter in Spain at the time, Angel David Rodriguez. He is used to running 100m sprints and Ronaldo’s pace is ideal for excelling on the football field.
As it turns out, this difference is telling. The two were asked to run 25 meters each, and Rodriguez ran first with a time of 3.31 seconds. Ronaldo followed closely behind, covering the same distance in 3.61 seconds. “I took three tenths from him (Ronaldo), which is quite a lot. If it was the 100 meters, he might have gotten 11.60 (seconds),” the Spanish sprinter said.
If this prediction is true, it would mean that Ronaldo, even at top speed, would be two seconds shy of Usain Bolt’s world record of 9.58 seconds. Even compared to other footballers, the Portuguese’s time isn’t impressive – Theo Walcott previously claimed he could run 100m in 10.3 seconds.
In 2004, as a 14-year-old at Downs School in Compton, Berkshire, the former Arsenal man ran 11.58 seconds in the 100m – which Rodriguez predicted Ronaldo was able to achieve roughly the same results during his career.
The fastest female 100-meter sprinter of all time is Florence Griffith-Joyner, who set a time of 10.49 seconds in 1988. Jamaica’s Elaine Thompson-Herah set a time of 10.54 seconds in 2021, the fastest attempt this century.
Although football players run very fast, they have not received the technical training required to train on the field. Very few players in the game run in a straight line at full speed. It is usually a brief burst that usually involves a change of direction. Sprinters have a much longer stride and a higher knee action – two pillars of good technique.
This was highlighted by the fact that Ronaldo and Rodriguez competed in a second race over 25 meters in the same series, this time on a zigzag track involving multiple changes of direction. Ronaldo’s time was 6.35 seconds and Rodriguez’s time was 6.86 seconds.
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