I've downloaded the entire blockchain via bitcoin.org several times on different computers. The most recent time took about 3 days. I'd still never download it anywhere else though. Can't be too careful in this game.
Understandable, at the very least this could serve as a proof of concept that you can get a completely synced bitcoin core client faster by using torrents and compressed blockchain, it also mitigates database corruption issues during sync. Maybe the core devs will provide a torrent for an updated compressed blockchain in the future.
It would be great if a respected bitcoin community member could do a security check on the torrent to ensure that it is clean.