In The Sports Gene, American writer and former collegiate middle distance runner David Epstein discusses this dichotomy at length. He begins, appropriately, with examples of both sides of the argument. Specifically, Swedish high jumper Stefan Holm who, despite his relatively small stature, had the fortune to grow up near one of Europe's premier indoor track and field facilities. From childhood, he devoted hours to the high jump, and peaked with a gold at the Athens Olympics. However, in the 2007 World Championships he was defeated by Donald Thomas, a Bahamian who had taken up the event only a year earlier on a bet. So, Epstein states, it is possible to succeed in sport through both relentless practice and by being genetically gifted. But it is the extent to which these might be linked that forms the bulk of the book, and by far its most interesting passages.
Epstein delves into a wide range of sports and scientific ideas, from the ability of elite level athletes to identify a game situation after being shown an image faster than the human brain should be able to process, to the fact that it might actually be arm length rather than height that fuels basketball success, onto the work in identifying genetic variation in humans that might pinpoint the area of sport where an individual might excel.
In essence this is a compendium of sports biology, but Epstein saves it from reading like a journal entry by his ability to spin a yarn. He introduces a host of eccentric characters in the field, from the Greek geneticist obsessed with mapping the genomes of Jamaican sprinters, to the American who travels to Kenya each year to hold distance running trials for academically gifted teenagers who have never run a race in their life. All of the teenagers belong to a single ethnic group, the Kalenjin, and nearly all of those selected go on to full athletic scholarships at American colleges. There is also a truly heartwarming story of a recovering drug addict from Alaska who went on to become the greatest sled dog racer of all time by identifying huskies with an innate desire to keep running and breeding that trait into a whole team. Epstein ends with his own travels in Finland speaking to the family of one of the country's greatest ever cross country skiers - quite a few of whom possess a genetic mutation increasing their red blood cell count to superhuman levels. I can't pretend to have understood all of the science, but it is presented so clearly and accessibly that I found myself learning a lot about the basic concepts.
There were a few issues, however. In making his work entertaining, Epstein has a habit of diverging into unnecessarily flowery prose at times, which I found slightly irritating. The science behind all of this remains largely a new branch and he is careful to remind the reader that the studies he mentions have either not been repeated or deal with such a specific group that they can't be considered representative of humanity as a whole. As he says, it is possible through gene mapping to identify about a billion people in the world who have absolutely no chance of making the Olympic 100m final - but the people themselves could already have told you that. I also feel that he missed a fairly obvious conclusion in that when the traits of physical suitability and an obsession with training coincide in an individual, you get athletes that transcend their sport - the Cristiano Ronaldos, Serena Williamses and Lebron Jameses of the world.
Ultimately, though, I found it absolutely fascinating that we may one day be able to discover the genetic keys to elite athletic ability, and this book was the ideal introduction into a very complex field. I was happy enough to take away the fact that my swimming ability might just be down to my relatively short legs - the same length, in fact, as Michael Phelps'. Never mind that he is four inches taller and blessed with the desire to spend eight hours a day in a pool...
4/5
Really this was just an opportunity to learn obscure facts about sports I don't usually follow.
