Why sport's fascination with aesthetically-perfect form is misguided

The message popped up on my phone: “No one’s saying he’s not fast. He just looks… wrong”.

A friend and I were talking about Quincy Wilson, who won the national 400m indoor high school title earlier this month, in a time of 45.71.

After collecting his individual gold, he anchored Bullis to the 4x400m relay title with a 45.94 split. Their 3:09.44 time combined was a national record, making them the first high school to break 3:10 indoors.

Just six weeks prior, less than a month after his 17th birthday, Wilson had run 45.66 indoors to better his own under-18 ‘world best’ and high school national record. Last June, outdoors, he produced an outstanding trio of sub 45-second 400m races over three days at the U.S. Olympic Trials.

Wilson’s 44.66 in the preliminaries was the fastest-ever outdoor performance by an under-18 male, only to go even quicker in the semi-finals (44.59). The final proved one step too far — he finished sixth in 44.94.

Quincy Wilson’s running style is unorthodox but it clearly works (Billie Weiss/Getty Images)

Here is a teenager repeatedly breaking (his own) age-group records, 23rd on the U.S. men’s all-time 400m list. You can count on two hands the number of American men who have run 400m faster since Wilson was born in January 2008 — nine.

He is already an Olympic gold medallist, the youngest in track and field history, having led off in the 4x400m relay heats in Paris last August (poorly, by his standards, with a 47.27), before their big hitters came in for the final.

So, what’s the problem? Well, Wilson’s gait is pretty unorthodox. He runs as Michael Johnson once did, leaning back but in an even more pronounced manner.

His feet land so far in front that he always looks to be over-striding. The arm carriage is scrappy, with wide, straight arms that swing back so far that they surely cannot bring rhythm or carry tired legs through. Hence: “he just looks… wrong”.

But it works. The proof is in the records, the consistency of races and times, the maintained positive trajectory. Johnson, posting on X, formerly Twitter, said that his arm swing should be corrected because it will cause fatigue earlier. “When to correct? Age, current results and difficulty of the change all should factor,” he added. “He’s young and already fast. Plenty of time!”

Mechanics are a significant limiting factor and there are improvements for Wilson to make if he wants to one day break 44 seconds and enter the pantheon of 400m sprinters. Maybe that can wait for adulthood. Diamonds need cutting and polishing, after all.

The beauty of athletics is its indiscriminateness. Your performance is what the clock stops at, how high the bar is or the distance you throw the thing. There are no extra points for style — this is not diving, gymnastics or figure skating.

Justin Gatlin, the most-decorated 100m male sprinter (three Olympic and five World Championship medals) spoke about Wilson on his podcast Ready, Set, Go. “We always use perfect form instead of saying efficient form,” he said. “Efficient can mean something totally different and it can work for that individual (for) how their body is structured.”

It’s illustrated in a YouTube video, where a smaller, female tennis player and a 6ft 5in, 295lbs American football player are running at 18mph. That speed equates to roughly 50 seconds for 400m — which is fast, unless you’re Wilson. Watch it. Who ‘looks’ better?

Humans are biased towards the tennis player. She is smaller, taking big(ger) steps relative to her size, with a faster foot turnover and higher heel-lift, which means her arm-swing is much quicker to match. The form bears a slight resemblance to the Looney Tunes character Roadrunner.

Why the bias? From an evolutionary standpoint, humans like symmetry and balanced proportions. Facial symmetry is a predictor of attractiveness because symmetry is thought to reflect better genetic quality (and thus fewer mutations). Athletically, metronomic, mirrored form looks safer and more efficient.

That is part of the problem. How something looks never should — but often does — matter more than how it works.

This is to say that ‘good form’ is a misnomer. Form only becomes inherently bad when it causes injury, and the only good style is whatever works for the athlete.

To pick some specific characteristics, no two athletes are going to have identical muscle constructions, bone densities, leg lengths, centres of gravity, tendon strength, foot-size or foot arches.

Imagine the body and its characteristics as a series of puzzle pieces, and every single one can change — between athletes but also for the same individual across a career. The number of possible pictures is massive.

Across sports and eras, there are too many examples of athletes with ‘unconventional’ form succeeding for ‘good form’ — whatever that is — to be truly necessary.

A 2022-published paper, led by academics at Leeds Beckett University, analysed the 100m finalists at the 2017 World Championships. They found “low to moderate asymmetry (to be) a natural phenomenon in elite sprinting. Performances were not related to their (symmetry) scores”.

Athletes had left- and right-side differences averaging at 30 per cent for touchdown (when the foot hits the floor) and 2.2 per cent for toe-off (as they push off).

Usain Bolt, the best male sprinter of all-time — his 100m (9.58s) and 200m (19.19s) world records still stand nearly 16 years on — is the perfect example. His ground reaction forces (how hard his foot hits the track) are 13 per cent higher in his right leg, while his left leg stays on the floor 14 per cent longer. That compensation might owe to his scoliosis and the half-inch difference in leg length.

Usain Bolt and Haile Gebrselassie pose together in 2009 (Andrew Yates/AFP via Getty Images)

Take Haile Gebrselassie, one of the greatest distance runners ever, with two Olympic and four World 10,000m titles. In 2008, he was the first man to run under the 2:04 marathon barrier (2:03:59, which broke his own world record by nearly half a minute). Gebrselassie was notorious for his arm swing — or lack of — which was a product of running 10km each day to school in Oromia, Ethiopia.

While Gebrselassie’s right arm swung normally, his left arm locked. “Because it was in this hand that I carried my books,” he told The Guardian in a 2002 interview.

It was something coaches tried and struggled to change with the Ethiopian. “It was not possible for me to change it. Me and the style, we have grown together,“ Gebrselassie said.

Paula Radcliffe, the greatest female marathoner of the pre-super shoes era, is another former multiple world record holder with form that would never be coached. Her head used to bob and she swayed when she ran, especially deep in races.

The same can be said for Priscah Jeptoo and Eilish McColgan. The former won silver medals in the marathon at the 2011 World Championships (Daegu) and 2012 Olympic Games (London).

McColgan, daughter of former Olympian Liz, won 5,000m silver and 10,000m gold at the 2022 Commonwealth Games, and still holds eight British records on the road and track — for distances ranging from 5,000m/5km up to half-marathon.

Jeptoo and McColgan both flare their feet out when their legs swing back (McColgan’s right leg especially), and tend to land with their knee bending inwards slightly — rather than a straight leg.

The form resembles how other athletes run when fatigued, looks wasteful, and often, harshly, draws comparisons to Bambi on ice. McColgan addressed this in a social media post in 2023, listing some of the hurtful comments she has been sent next to a video of her running on the track.

“Awful running style”
“Too skinny”
“Her form is too inefficient for road racing”
“Will never improve”
“Getting too old”

People are always going to doubt you. But keep working, keep believing & continue to smile! 😊 pic.twitter.com/Ofj8Nv9RXh

— Eilish McColgan (@EilishMccolgan) March 11, 2023

For field events, idiosyncrasies form an even bigger part of athlete identity, particularly in events with run-ups: see Greek long jumper Miltiadis Tentoglou and Australian high jumper Eleanor Patterson.

Tentoglou, a double Olympic Champion and six-time European gold medallist, runs with hunched shoulders and a bobbing head. He won 12 of his 15 meetings in 2024, and only lost once in the first eight months of the year, winning World Indoor gold in early March and taking the Olympic crown in the summer.

Patterson, who won World Championship gold in 2022 and Olympic bronze last August, makes a windmilling motion with her right arm (think David Beckham at free kicks) just before she jumps, with a left-footed take-off. Yet she is one of only 38 women ever to clear 2.02m.

A survey of colleagues for examples in other sports of ‘unconventionals’ who have made it to the very top prompted an avalanche of responses.

Four-time Tour de France winner Chris Froome had form on the bike that was frequently described as ugly. At 6ft 6in, Russian tennis player Daniil Medvedev hits fast serves but often plays from the back of the court. His range of shots is not as elegant as other players, and his success comes through consistency in rallies — he was world No 1 in 2022.

In golf, Jim Furyk (2003 US open winner) and Scottie Scheffler (2022 and 2024 Masters winner), have unorthodox swings, the latter particularly when driving. Furyk never rotated much in the backswing phase while Scheffler’s feet almost come off the floor as he drives the ball.

Chris Froome’s elbows-out style upset cycling purists during his heyday (Luk Benies/AFP via Getty Images)

Sri Lankan Lasith Malinga, with his ‘slingshot’ action, and Indian Jasprit Bumrah, are seam bowlers in cricket with unique techniques.

Rather than bowl with a straight arm above the head, Malinga’s arm comes out at an angle from the side, which he said came from learning to bowl initially with a tennis ball. He was the first bowler to take 100 Twenty20 international wickets in 2019, and was the first to take five hat-tricks across all international formats.

Bumrah, the ICC men’s test cricketer of the year in 2024, takes a shorter run-up by seamer standards. Yet he still generates immense speed and consistently hits a good line and length.

His right arm hyperextends as he bowls, releasing the ball from a lower, further forward point beyond the crease. It means he can create more backspin than others, enabling him to bowl with more variation (in delivery type with spin, and also changing angles against left- and right-handers).

The examples are almost endless. Jordan Henderson has a knee-dominant running gait which reportedly prevented Sir Alex Ferguson signing him for Manchester United. He then played for Liverpool for over a decade, won every trophy there is to win, and has more than 80 England appearances, including going to six major tournaments.

Likewise, watch James Ward-Prowse’s hunched free-kick technique, which made him the Premier League’s top dead-ball specialist for multiple seasons.

Mention ‘gait’ to a football fan and they will probably think of Jordan Henderson (Paul Ellis/AFP via Getty Images)

In team sports especially, and interactive individual sports where athletes compete directly against each other (i.e. boxing), being unorthodox can be advantageous in making someone more unpredictable.

With athletics, though, and sprint events especially, it is mostly about that athlete against the clock. Wilson’s form can improve but, based on his current performances and progression over the past 18 months, there is nothing inherently wrong with it that needs immediately fixing.

Rather, cognitive dissonance is needed and perceptions must change. We should stop overrating symmetry and balance and assess performances by how fast or how good they are, not how they look.

(Header photo: Kirill Kudryavstev/AFP via Getty Images)