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Cristiano Ronaldo has long been considered not only one of the most complete footballers of all time but also one of sport’s greatest athletes. The Portuguese legend started life as a winger before morphing into a striker later in his career but he has always been considered the perfect specimen for succeeding in the game.
Back in 2011 during his time at Real Madrid, Ronaldo’s pace was truly put to the test when he was pitted against an actual professional sprinter to gauge just how rapid he was.
Broadcaster Sky Sports ran a TV series called ‘Tested to the Limit’ in which the 26-year-old Ronaldo would be the star. The former Manchester United ace was renowned for his speed down the wings, where he would terrorise full-backs for fun, but to establish exactly how quick he really was, he was put up against Spain’s No. 1 sprinter Angel David Rodriguez.
Whereas Ronaldo was conditioned to do shuttle runs, as is the norm for a footballer, Rodriguez was a master of the 100m. It made a huge difference.
Both athletes were asked to run a distance of 25 metres. Rodriguez went first and clocked a time of 3.31 seconds. Ronaldo followed up with a time of 3.61 seconds.
Rodriguez said: “I took three-tenths from him [Ronaldo], which is quite a lot. If it was 100 metres, he may be able to get 11.60 [seconds].”
If Ronaldo did run 100m in the time that Rodriguez predicted, the five-time Ballon d’Or winner would still be two seconds slower than Usain Bolt’s world record of 9.58 seconds. But although his predicted time is hardly shabby, it is still off the levels of some of his peers.
Former Arsenal forward Theo Walcott has claimed to have been able to run 100m in 10.3 seconds. At the age of 14, he registered a time of 11.58 seconds over the same distance whilst running for Downs School in Compton, Berkshire in 2004, which is still fractionally faster than Ronaldo’s predicted time.
The quickest 100m ever recorded by a woman is 10.49 seconds set by American sprinter Florence Griffith-Joyner in 1988 – a record that has stood for 35 years and counting. The closest any woman has come to breaking that record this century is 10.54 seconds ran by Jamaica’s Elaine Thompson-Herah in 2021.
Ronaldo’s inability to keep pace with Spain’s top sprinter is hardly surprising, but when it came to running in a zig-zag the results were altogether different.
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Sprinting over the same distance, but in changing directions, the Los Blancos hero was able to notch a time of 6.35 seconds, but Rodriguez could only complete the task in 6.86 seconds.
The results show that although footballers are unlikely to keep pace with professional sprinters who are surging in one direction, the switching of directions and quick turns of footballers set them apart when racing on a changing path.
Ronaldo might not now be able to perform at the same levels as he did as a 26-year-old but his phenomenal fitness levels could see him prolong one of the greatest football careers of all time into his 40s.
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