Sports Gene By David Epstein

poolsw wrote:

ArloTheHousecat wrote:

It baffles me that someone cant grasp the concept that

certain body types are better suited for different sports. Ever picked a team in gym class?

What? What body types can't be successful in which sports?

You have to ask? Really??? You'd pick a midget instead of Shaq for a basketball team?

This was an interesting part about Steffi Graf:

"We called Steffi Graf the perfect tennis talent," Schneider says. "She outperformed the others in tennis-specific skills and basic motor skills, and we also predicted from her lung capacity that she could have ended up as the European champion in the 1500-meters."

Graf was a the top of every single test, from measures of her competitive desire to her ability to sustain concentration to her running speed. Years later, when Graf was the best tennis player in the world, she would train for endurance alongside Germany's Olympic track runners.

"Graf was at" My bad typing.

I'm sure if he wrote the book in the early 1900s it would've been the Finnish who had some kind of a gene who made them better runners...

ataglance. wrote:

poolsw wrote:

What? What body types can't be successful in which sports?

You have to ask? Really??? You'd pick a midget instead of Shaq for a basketball team?

If the midget could shoot and move well then of course. Shaq can't move or shoot well.

An interview with David Epstein about the book:

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/08/the-urgency-and-the-challenge-of-connecting-sports-race-and-genetics/278345/

krispy kremlin wrote:

A similar argument can be made for soccer in Europe versus soccer in the USA. A similar gene pool but how many Americans are in the Premier League? Cultural emphasis can't be ignored.

Leaving middle school and going into a high school, all the incoming freshman were gathered in the gym and when potential xc runners were called to report to such-and-such room the place erupted into laughter. Tough to get an on-the-fence, potential Ryun-level, 12yo talent to jump out of the stands with that kind of response...

What you are saying is true*, I don't know what your point is. Yes, there is more emphasis on running in Kenya (less than Americans tend to believe, but still more), and that contributes to the fact that there are more Kenyans running distance. It does not, however, answer the argument that top athletes have a genetic advantage. For every Kenyan who dominates the world scene, there are probably hundreds if not thousands who grew up in similar circumstances, did similar training, ate similar food, had similar desire... why did one make it and not the others? I would say genetics probably play a pretty big role.

Additionally, it is possible that Kenyans (or Ethiopians, or any other group) have a higher probability of having good distance running genes. Take the example of skinny legs. This seems to come up more in Kenyan athletes than European/American athletes. No one is saying "Kenyan's have skinny legs and are therefore good at running". I think the argument is more complicated: "Skinny legs can help one run faster. Kenyans have a tendency to have skinny legs. Therefore, a Kenyan has a higher probability of becoming a good runner.

*I think xc runners, especially "potentially Ryun-level" talents getting laughed at is fairly rare - my experience (American) is that distance runners are generally respected for what they do. I think that this is even more true for runners who have a lot of talent.

Hey everyone--I'm the author of The Sports Gene and I'm doing an AMA on reddit Monday at 7pm ET. I would be happy to answer any and all questions there. Hope you can make it!

Been reading the book, and it's excellent. (Good to know you'll be doing an AMA, David!)

One of the rare and fine talents that Epstein has as a writer is the ability to explain and illustrate complex ideas through compelling, lively narrative. As a reader, you hang in there and wind up absorbing a wealth of technical information because you want to find out what happened next in a particular athlete's storyline.

For those who are curious, this excerpt on Slate.com will give you a taste of what the book is like:

http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2013/08/the_sports_gene_want_to_improve_your_aerobic_capacity_better_hope_you_have.html

Enjoy.

Shifter wrote:

http://www.runnersworld.com/running-tips/kenyan-dominance-real-and-imagined

Good article on the problems with the 2000 Danish study.

I would be curious, what is the source of this following phantasmagory:

"In 1990, the Copenhagen Muscle Research Center compared post-pubescent schoolboys there to Sweden's famed national track team (before Kenya and a few other African countries began dominating international racing events in the late 1980s, Scandinavians were the most reliable winners). The study found that boys on the high school track team in Iten, Kenya, consistently outperformed the professional Swedish runners. The researchers estimated that the average Kalenjin could outrun 90% of the global population, and that at least 500 amateur high school students in Iten alone could defeat Sweden's greatest professional runner at the 2,000-meter."

I read a very similar passage in Entine's Taboo, and if I remember well, these Kenyans were randomly chosen high-schoolers. In this text, it seems that they metamorphized into amateur high-school runners. I can only guess, who were originally the "Swedish greatest professional runners", letting aside the fact that the only Swedish 1500 m runner, who has run under 3:40 during the last decade was a Somalian.

Furthermore, the text is to be derived from this study

but it contains no information of this sort. Nothing about any comparison of high-school Kenyan runners with top Scandinavians. So where the hell does it come from?! I am only aware of two articles from 1995 published in the Scandinavian Journal of Sports Science that investigated muscle fiber composition and training response in Kenyan and Scandinavian runners. The studies concluded that Kenyans had superior running economy and that buffer capacity in Scandinavians training at altitude in Kenya increased on the level of Kenyans.

Note please, that this alleged comparison was made during a period, when Kenyans were running rather mediocre times in the 1500 m - no Kenyan has been able to break 3:32 until the advance of EPO in 1995. This fact only further emphasizes the absurdity of this story.

The oldest article containing this text that I could find is this one by Steve Sailer aka Baron Munchhausen, the renowned founder of the "Human Biodiversity discussion group".

http://www.jonentine.com/reviews/UPI_reconstruction.htm

Apparently, this fabulous story started to live its own life throughout the years, being copied from article to article by the Ctrl+C method and gradually embellished. "The Sweden's best man" changed into "Sweden's greatest professional runner", "the Swedish national track team" changed into "Sweden's famed national track team", "the champions of track-mad Sweden" changed into "professional Swedish runners" (Would you believe that Swedish distance runners were once so good that they could earn living as professional athletes?).

In other words, this example shows, how myths come into being and evolve. Within several decades, we will have a new Kenyan Odyssey describing a furious battle between great professional Swedish world champions and randomly selected Kenyan schoolboys that will end with the building of the great Rift Valley horse and the demolition of Eldoret's walls.

Still I don't think they have some better "handball gene" than other nations.

Selection - it works for horses, greyhounds, and fighting cocks as well as humans.

In any culture where a particular trait is valued (in this case skill in handball) the most proficient members of that society get the best mates (and get more of them). Over time those genetic traits which made them good handball players become more prevalent within that society (it helps if that society is more or less "closed" to outside influence).

In the case of handball, which doesn't have millennia of tradition, I expect you'll find another prized skill which caused the selection process, and that skill translates to skill in handball.