Cool story. Note how Japan, Korea, China, India (insert additional Asian countries here) have never done well in the World Cup despite combining for half the world's population. Japan/Korea even hosted in 2002 and with home field advantage neither country got past the Round of 16.
I don't believe that Canadians are genetically predisposed to being good at hockey, but they have won nearly as many Olympic gold medals (9) as the US has won medals (11) in the men's event and 5 out of 7 golds awarded total in the women's.
A country of just 40 million has won over a third of Olympic gold medals in this event.
That said, I can maaaaaybe buy that there are ethnic factors at work for distance running. Distance running is a very fundamental, mechanical sport with a couple of dials you can turn to improve performance (VO2 max, running efficiency) and it's not impossible that some ethnic groups naturally have some combinations of genes that make their whole population better runners than average.
Maybe.
Ice hockey is only played by a tiny fraction of people on earth. They are all in cold northern climates. It is to be expected that Canada, the old Soviet Union, and northern European countries would dominate. Hockey has extremely high barriers to entry, even for kids in those colder countries.
Previous commenter's point was that soccer has low barriers to entry and can be played anywhere. Same is true of running. The most accessible sports are the best gauges for innate abilities around the world.
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