The biases that make us underrate underdogs By William Park 4th August 2021 Myths about prodigious sporting talents might mean that we overlook less obvious athletes. If we could only avoid our biases, we might be able to spot the next big star. W Jacobs held off runners from nations with a much greater history of producing sprinters. The 26-year-old also did it in his second-choice sport. While he competed as a sprinter as a teenager, he discovered long-jump in his late teens and only switched to the 100m as an adult in 2018. He is also not a sprinter with a particular record for fast times – he recorded his first sub-10-second race only earlier this year.