As a well being and health journalist for over a decade, I come throughout tons of stats, surveys, and figures every year. However one which’s lived rent-free in my mind since 2019? The YouGov survey that discovered one in eight males suppose they’ll rating some extent in opposition to Serena Williams.
Sure, that Serena Williams. , the one who’s racked up 23 Grand Slam titles, as soon as scored 24 aces in a single match, and might blister a serve previous you (however perhaps not, I assume, 12% of dudes) at 126 miles per hour.
The idea that common guys can do extraordinary issues in opposition to top-of-the-game feminine athletes is sadly all too frequent. It was on show as soon as once more over the vacations, when College of Virginia observe star Alahna Sabbakhan posted a video on TikTok that confirmed what occurs when a mean, non-runner man is sort of satisfied he might beat her, a Division I athlete, in one in all her marquee occasions: the 400 meters.
Spoiler: He couldn’t.
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“The man was saying that there’s no approach a lady might beat him; he simply wouldn’t imagine it,” Sabbakhan, a 2022 All-American for UVA and grad scholar learning for her grasp’s in public well being, tells SELF. “He didn’t know that [the 400 meters] is a tough factor to run with out coaching. It’s one of many hardest observe occasions.”
At first, she didn’t even entertain the problem, however the man—a peripheral good friend of her boyfriend’s—stored happening about it for days. “I began getting just a little bored with it,” she says.
In the future once they had been all by the observe, he introduced up the race once more, and Sabbakhan determined to go for it. In any case, she says, she had a exercise scheduled that day that included 400-meter repeats anyway. “I figured, certain, why not?” Sabbakhan says. “I assume I might have him be part of me and perhaps that will get him to cease speaking.”
He introduced his dad and mom, household, and associates to spectate, after which they bought began. Sabbakhan deliberately caught with him for the primary 200 meters, after which he began to fade—quick. A lot so, in truth, that he’s already effectively out of body throughout her final kick.
“That’s what I type of figured would begin to occur with no coaching…you hit the wall,” Sabbakhan says. “I took that as a possibility to begin pushing just a little bit more durable, end just a little more durable. After I spotted that by the final 100 meters that he was nowhere in sight, I simply stored pushing anyway, as a result of it’s a very good behavior to be in as a runner to complete effectively.”