Tsunade reacts before Ay, Gaara's sand, Mei's suiton, and Onoki's doton and jumps high at Madara. First you see how far Madara is from the gokage, then I show how close Madara was to Tsunade and then you get that same distance from a different perspective.
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Sakura reacted to a giant amount of acid pouring out on top of her, she grabs another person and is able to get to higher ground and then removes her jacket. Not only a great speed feat but awesome reaction time.
They aren't slower than the average ninja. There are like a few exceptionally fast ninja that any average speed ninja wouldn't be able to keep up with.
Kishi has to even the plains, you can't have one shot characters with Ays speed, just like he didn't make someone with Ays speed or Gais have the strength of Tsunade and Sakura.
But that's just how i see it, because I mean the 1-2 times those two characters ever fought in the manga they were able to hit their opponents by some means. It's only in VS threads that this whole speed debate matters.