Who is the greatest endurance athlete of all time? In this clip from our 400th Fast Talk episode, world-leading experts Dr. Iñigo Mujika, Dr. Stephen Seiler, and Prof. Louise Burke debate the greatest endurance athlete in history.
Video Transcript
[00:00] Fast Talk Labs Intro
Welcome to Fast Talk Laboratories, your source for the science of endurance performance.
[00:18] Trevor Connor
Well, Chris, hard to believe we are at episode 400.
[00:23] Chris Case
That’s right. Amazing.
[00:25] Trevor Connor
Yeah, we made it. And kind of a unique episode because it’s almost midnight for us.
[00:31] Chris Case
You and I just ate very large pizza, so we’re being like college kids here.
[00:37] Trevor Connor
That’s right. But that is because we have some absolutely amazing names on this show, and they are located in Europe, Australia, and we’re here.
[00:48] Chris Case
Yes. So, big thanks to all of you for joining us for the show. I think we’ve got just about every time of day covered.
[00:58] Trevor Connor
Thank you, guys. It’s a real honor to have you on the show.
[01:02] Dr. Stephen Seiler
Good to be here. Four hundredth episode. That’s well done. Four hundred of anything is an accomplishment, I think.
[01:08] Trevor Connor
We appreciate that. So, the format here: we have some questions that we put together. We’re going to hit you with the questions, and then we’re really just going to let the three of you take the questions and run with them.
[01:21] Chris Case
So, I’ve got to call Dr. Seiler out here because he got a little obsessed with this question and used multiple AIs to help him answer it.
[01:30] Trevor Connor
He’s got a big advantage over the other two because they haven’t heard the question.
[01:34] Chris Case
And I wanted to end with what I would call a fun question, far more subjective perhaps than the others that we’ve spoken about so far.
Pure and simple: who is the greatest endurance athlete in history? And that’s open to interpretation. Of course, you could take the word “athlete” and consider it many things.
Dr. Seiler, I don’t know if you want to explain your methodology, the lengths you went to cross-reference the various things.
[02:08] Trevor Connor
Of course you do. Go for it.
[02:13] Dr. Stephen Seiler
Well, this must be prefaced with the fact that I had a bit of time on my hands because I’m sitting in an airport with a long delay before I fly home from Bulgaria. So, I thought, well, I might as well have some fun with this.
And it’s an intriguing question, but then it comes down to what do we put into that beautiful term: endure, endurance, enduring?
So I first thought about it myself and used my own artificial intelligence, or whatever it is up in my head, and came up with some names of athletes that I couldn’t get out of my head as potential candidates for something they’ve done that’s hard to top.
Kílian Jornet kept coming back for me. The things that he’s done, and just his beautiful attitude toward that idea of enduring over time and space and so forth.
I can’t help but be impressed with a five-time gold medalist, five different Olympics, five different ultimately successful outcomes: Sir Steve Redgrave.
Counting medals, we have Bjørn Dæhlie and Marit Bjørgen with eight golds each in their sport. Eliud Kipchoge, for me, changes the way we think about running, and he does it with a smile on his face.
So those were some that I came up with.
Then I went to the AI and tried to formulate a reasonable prompt. I first used a free, cheap one — I’m not going to say which one — and it came up with a list that overlapped quite well with mine and added a few extras.
Then I used a model that I pay for. It has a deep research function, and I was tremendously impressed with the way it thought and discussed things.
It came up with some people like Nils van der Poel, the speed skater. I would not have put him on my list of all-time greats. I’ve interviewed him and think he’s fantastic, but I would have never put him on that list.
But the AI said, “Hey, Nils pushed some barriers in his own way of thinking.” The 5-2 format, where he trained up to 33 or 34 hours in five days and then took two days completely free, created his own process of approaching the sport. The AI found him interesting, and I thought that was interesting.
Then I was impressed by Sarah Thomas, who swam the English Channel back and forth four times without stopping — 54 hours. That pushes the barriers of human endurance. That redefines enduring.
Courtney Dauwalter, the amazing ultrarunner — you can absolutely make a case that she has pushed the boundaries of what we would expect in endurance.
So for me, you can talk about gold medals and world records, but there are certain athletes who have just redefined what humans can do.
The last on the list was a 31-time Everest summiteer who’s a Nepalese Sherpa. Does he count? I thought he did. I thought it was fascinating.
So that was my little deep dive at the airport.
[06:03] Chris Case
But you have to choose one.
[06:07] Dr. Stephen Seiler
Yeah. I’m going to say I just have tremendous respect for him: Kílian Jornet.
The things he’s done in the endurance world as an ultrarunner and mountaineer — he’s climbed so many of the 8,000-meter peaks. He had a 90 ml/kg VO₂ max, so his physiology was absolutely world-class.
But I would say his successes were not through overpowering VO₂ max. It was through amazing efficiency, economization of movement, respect for his environment, and so forth.
And just in his latest thing that he did at age 38, where he did every peak in the western United States that was over 14,000 feet and cycled between them up to 200 kilometers, totally self-supported — that is pushing the boundaries of endurance.
He’s just my favorite. I’ve got to say it. And he’s such a humble guy on top of all of it.
[07:09] Chris Case
So, Dr. Burke and Dr. Mujika, you didn’t have a chance to use an AI to come up with your answers, but who would you pick?
[07:17] Dr. Iñigo Mujika
Chris, I’m going to challenge your question.
[07:19] Chris Case
Okay. Please.
[07:21] Dr. Iñigo Mujika
Without a paid AI, in the world of sports, we don’t have endurance events. All events are events of speed.
We don’t have a sport in which we say, “Okay, start running or start cycling, and whoever is standing the longest is the winner.” That would be endurance.
[07:45] Chris Case
Interesting.
[07:48] Dr. Iñigo Mujika
Who can endure? It’s all tests of speed.
How fast can you run 1,500, 5,000, 10,000, half marathon, marathon? How fast can you climb Everest? How fast can you do this? How fast can you do that?
So I think endurance itself is a misnomer in the world of sports. It’s all about speed.
That said, I think one of the most fascinating, impressive, and spectacular sports performances of all time — and it required several hours — was Alex Honnold’s free solo climb of El Capitan.
And that would put Kílian Jornet up there because if they make a mistake, they die. If Eliud Kipchoge makes a mistake during a marathon, he simply doesn’t win. If Pogačar makes a mistake during the key stage of the Tour de France, he simply doesn’t win and loses the yellow jersey.
If these guys make a mistake during their performance, they die.
Those performances required a lot of endurance, if you want to call it that. It’s not about how fast you can climb El Capitan. It’s whether or not you can climb El Capitan, because it’s going to take several hours.
So it requires endurance, but it requires a level of concentration that is beyond anything we can see on the track, on the bike, or in the swimming pool. Because if you make a mistake, you die.
So rather than the best endurance athlete of all time, I would talk about the best performance, or the most impressive performance of all time. And in my case, I would choose Alex Honnold’s free solo.
[09:56] Chris Case
Fantastic. Very interesting answer. Dr. Burke?
[10:00] Dr. Louise Burke
Well, I’m going to go rogue.
I want to say that the greatest endurance athlete we haven’t seen yet, because they keep improving, and they keep improving because we help them.
But another question might be: who’s your favorite endurance athlete? And that has to be yourself.
We all exercise, and I think a lot of our early interest in sport science came from finding out things about ourselves. We’ve been n=1 case studies for the whole of our lives.
So I’m more than happy to put my hand up and say my favorite endurance athlete is me, and I continue to push boundaries.
In fact, I’m going to go on record and say my goal in life is to win my age group at the New York Marathon. I’ll probably be 80 when I do it, but I’ll have a smile on my face, and then I’m going to go shopping.
[10:55] Dr. Iñigo Mujika
Okay, I changed my mind. Louise, you are my favorite endurance athlete of all time.
[11:01] Trevor Connor
Let me rephrase Chris’s question just slightly, because I am interested in the answer to this.
If you could kidnap one athlete, lock them in your lab for a month, and study them to your heart’s content, who would you be fascinated to study?
[11:16] Chris Case
This is a very Trevor question.
[11:22] Dr. Louise Burke
George Clooney.
[11:25] Chris Case
I think your motives are ulterior there, Louise. I’m sorry.
[11:31] Trevor Connor
I’m not sure you’re interested in his physiology, to be honest.
[11:37] Dr. Iñigo Mujika
That’s funny. I would probably say Eddy Merckx, because we were able to measure the professional cyclists who were super good after him, but I don’t think we really have physiological assessments about Eddy Merckx.
He is still the best cyclist of all time when you look at his achievements, his career, and the number of victories that he had.
So I would really be interested in his physiology and how that physiology would compare to the cyclists we are seeing nowadays.
[12:16] Dr. Stephen Seiler
I would agree with that.
[12:17] Chris Case
Trevor, do you have an answer to this question? Who would you like to lock in your laboratory and study for the next month?
[12:26] Trevor Connor
I don’t want to inflate Dr. Mujika’s ego too much because, Chris can say, we talked about this before. But I 100% agree with you.
I said this to Chris beforehand: I would pick Eddy Merckx.
My reason for picking Eddy Merckx is because we still, in my opinion, haven’t seen a cyclist who has been as dominant as him.
But the science and training have improved so much since. It is fascinating to me that he could be that good without all the science and all the training understanding that we have now.
[13:05] Dr. Iñigo Mujika
But I would also argue that the average quality of the rest of the peloton is way higher today.
So my question is: would he be as dominant nowadays as he was in his time? Because the average level of the professional peloton has increased so much that it’s going to be way more difficult to be so dominant in the future.
[13:34] Dr. Stephen Seiler
And it’s interesting about him because, if the bio is correct, he was about 73 kilos when he was competing, which puts him a good 13 to 15 kilos heavier than the GC candidates today, who are in that 57 to 62 range, many of them.
So yes, his physiology would be interesting to study.
But I would study two Van der Poels: Nils van der Poel and Mathieu van der Poel.
I found Nils’ way of approaching his sport interesting. And by the way, he was doing three times 30 minutes at 400 watts, which was not bad physiology. I think he got some cycling offers just based on the interview we did.
But my fascination with Mathieu started pretty early because initially, he was putting his data out there on Strava for some of his big races. I was directly comparing him with some other athletes and looking at how his heart rate was recovering during these multiple surges.
The repeatability aspect that he demonstrates is fascinating.
Another example is Mads Pedersen, who finished fourth in Glasgow 2023. I met his coach in Sweden just recently, and he confirmed what Mads said: in that race, when it goes into the circuit with the 10 laps, with many 90-degree swings and sharp little climbs in Glasgow, he exceeded 1,000 watts 246 times in 240 minutes.
Think about that, folks. He’s averaging a 1,000-watt pop every minute for four hours, and he gets fourth. He loses to Van der Poel.
So yes, cycling — could Eddy have done that? I don’t know. But cycling is amazing. The repeatability, that high-intensity repeatability aspect of many sports, because of television and the way we are redefining the arenas, is different than maybe 30 or 40 years ago.
So I think it would be fun to bring some of them into the lab.
[16:14] Trevor Connor
So, the quick Eddy Merckx story I have to share with all of you.
Back when I was managing a team, Axel Merckx was also managing a domestic team, and it happened that we were at a race where our car was in the caravan right behind Axel’s car.
I had my mechanic driving, and he slammed into the back of Axel’s car.
So after the race, I had to go to their car to talk to them, and he had his dad there, Eddy. I had to sit there and get yelled at by Axel and Eddy.
And I’m sitting there going, “Well, on one hand, this sucks because I’m getting yelled at and I’m going to have to pay for the car. On the other hand, I’m getting yelled at by Eddy Merckx, so this is kind of cool.”
[16:57] Chris Case
Well, that’s amazing.
All right. I think we should leave it there. This was the conversation I had truly hoped for. So thanks to all three of you for being part of this. It was truly appreciated.
Really great that you could be part of our 400th episode.
[17:13] Guest
Thanks for having me.
[17:14] Guest
Thank you for the invitation.
[17:16] Dr. Stephen Seiler
Yeah, it’s a pleasure. It’s always enjoyable. So thank you so much, and it was an honor to be part of this little trinity here.
Congratulations on your 400, and let’s hope we can be there for the 800, too.
[17:31] Chris Case
How long did it take you to get to 400?
[17:32] Trevor Connor
We started in 2016, so almost—
[17:36] Dr. Louise Burke
I might still be around.
[17:38] Dr. Stephen Seiler
These guys taught me. I didn’t even know what a podcast was before some dude from something called Fast Talk invited me to do one.
So I have to say, my whole podcast experience started with Trevor Connor and Chris Case. Who else could I do 400 episodes with than those who taught me about the evils of podcasting?
[18:03] Chris Case
The art. The art.
[18:06] Dr. Stephen Seiler
Sorry, the art.
[18:08] Guests/Hosts
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
