Superior genetics
Anybody else's ears prick up last night when the NBC announcer (I'm assuming it was Dan Hicks, and not the laid back singer, either) ascribed Michael Phelps' success in the pool to "superior genetics?"
I could be mistaken but i don't remember anyone ever attributing this man's athletic successes to superior genetics:
Or this guy:
Or even this guy:
Go figure.
Inspired by a conversation with Mrs. D
But wait, there's more:
Because everyone knows that royalty comes from superior genetics. Oh, yeah, and divine selection.
I could be mistaken but i don't remember anyone ever attributing this man's athletic successes to superior genetics:
Or this guy:
Or even this guy:
Go figure.
Inspired by a conversation with Mrs. D
But wait, there's more:
Liukin is the closest thing gymnastics has to royalty, her genes practically guaranteed to produce gold.
Because everyone knows that royalty comes from superior genetics. Oh, yeah, and divine selection.
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13 Comments:
It's Taboo to talk about it.
By
Joseph H. Vilas, at 1:06 PM
Taboo, or bullshit?
By
Barry, at 1:11 PM
Damn, you skunked me on this one. I was gonna blog about it tomorrow morning.
At least they didn't say it about a German athlete.
By
Anonymous, at 4:15 PM
I should give you a hat tip, at least.
By
Barry, at 4:17 PM
Phelps has really big hands and feet, ya know, the things that propel you when you swim. He's also very tall with short legs for his height which also works to his favor.
Yes, he picked the right parents to become an Olympic swimmer. Either that or by training really really hard you could have been one too. Get over it.
(The Bell curve book is a total non-sequitur since it concerns intelligence and not athletic performance.)
By
Anonymous, at 5:20 PM
There are two points i'm making with this post, both of which seem to be eluding our last anonymous poster. The first is the notion of "genetics." As though "big hands and big feet" are the defining characteristics of a swimmer. One can walk into pretty much any boot camp or skid row in the country and find someone with the physical characteristics necessary to become a world class athlete. Certainly we've all known people who are 6' 6", or who have "big hands and big feet" who are only average or even barely adequate athletically. Or, to cite one extreme example, consider the case of Jose and Osvaldo Canseco, twin brothers whose physical characteristics were pretty similar. Jose hit 462 major league homeruns. Ozzie? Not so much.
The point here is that attributing any one individual's success or even excellence in any endeavor, even something as objectively measurable as running or swimming a fixed distance, to "genetics" is pretty random.
The other point is sociological, and has to do with the use of the term "superiority" in conjunction with that "genetics" stuff. When Michael Johnson was absolutely crushing the competition in the 96 Olympics (i think he ran a 19.3 200 meters, and a 43.5 400 meters) i heard the announcers use a lot of superlatives to describe both the athlete and his accomplishments. "Genetic superiority" was not one of them.
By
Barry, at 6:05 PM
There is very limited pool (pool - get it!) of people who have Phelps characteristics. It's a much longer list than I gave. They are not a dime a dozen. If you don't have them then you might as well forget even getting started. For the same reason that the number of people who have Kobe's is limited. You then have the other half of the equation which is the desire to devote yourself entirely to your sport. You have to have BOTH or you get nowhere near the top of the game.
As the other poster pointed out, talking about the genetics of black athletes is taboo. If you don't believe me I've got Jimmy "The Greek" Snyder on line 1 to explain it to you. Jimmy was waaaay over the line, but if you don't think his actions got put on a checklist of things not to do then you're naive.
By
Anonymous, at 10:05 PM
yeah i noticed that and emailed nbc to mention that they could have used a more artful term. generally speaking, the term "superior genetics" fell out of fashion midway through last century. certainly phelps has physical advantages, but they should have avoided using the term "superior genetics."
By
Anonymous, at 6:19 AM
Anonymous at 10:05 essentially makes my point.
It's OK for TV announcers to ascribe Michael Phelps' success in the pool to "superior genetics." But not Michael Johnson's success on the track.
Why?
Because, in much of our public discourse, especially that which comes from white people, we can talk about other white people as individuals, but as soon as we talk about a black person, they become representative of their race.
What exactly was it that Jimmy the Greek said that was over the line?
The black is a better athlete to begin with because he's been bred to be that way — because of his high thighs and big thighs that goes up into his back, and they can jump higher and run faster because of their bigger thighs. This goes back all the way to the Civil War when during the slave trading, the owner — the slave owner would breed his big black to his big woman so that he could have a big black kid.
There's a whole bunch of people out there, and i suspect that our anonymous friend is one of them although i cold be wrong, who will argue that Jimmy the Greek got fired when he said that not because it's stupid and demonstrably false, but because they think it's true, but just better left unsaid in polite company.
that's the subtext of saying that "talking about the genetics of black athletes is taboo." (Ignoring, for example, that a good many black athletes aren't the descendants of slaves, but are just African.) the other subtext, that it's OK to talk about the superior genetics of a white athlete like Michael Phelps is that, just maybe, white people really are superior.
It's an incredibly stupid argument to make. Not to mention lazy journalism.
Our friend is right, though, on one point. The desire to excel, the willingness to sacrifice through the long hours of training, to push yourself a little farther than you've gone before, those attributes are incredibly rare. Much rarer than big hands and big feet.
You do know what they say about guys with big feet, don't you?
By
Barry, at 10:00 AM
Funny you should mention twins.
You and me against the World
When Twins Team Up, Shared Mettle Can Lead to an Olympic Medal
By JASON DEAN
August 18, 2008; Page A16
BEIJING -- In Olympics pair events, some duos are an almost perfect match: twins.
About 30 of the 302 events in the Beijing Games are contested by teams of two, and a review of the rosters shows there are at least six sets of twins competing in those events this year -- more if you count twins competing in team events like gymnastics or basketball.
[snip]
Twins have a number of advantages in pairs events, experts say. Identical twins, like the Evers-Swindells, the Winklevosses, the Bryans and the Jiangs, share a nearly exact genetic makeup, making them physically complementary. That, and a lifetime of living together, means they tend to have similar reactions when split-second decisions can make the difference.
Which part of my remark about Synder's remarks being "waayyy over the line" did you miss. Maybe it was the part about slaves being bred like cattle that offended me but not you. Or maybe you think I'm just a typical white person like O's grandma.
In every one of these contexts, the authors are talking about the specific characteristics that one individual inherited from his/her immediate parents. That's different from talking about the characteristics of a racial group as a whole. Can you just see sports announcers talking about phenotype and genotype?
It's only a hypersensitve aggrieved minority group constantly on the lookout for any offense, real or imagined, that would understand it any other way. "Michael Jordan got his big hands from his mother." Can you imagine the uproar that statement would cause? Your logic is niggardly in its scope.
Here's a little practical experiment for you to run. Do a post titled "White men can't jump but black men can - it's genetic!" and see what kind of comments you get.
I remember seeing a discussion about the relative "hang times" of Jordan and Baryshnikov. There're the same. Turns out white men can jump too.
I want to be a Sherpa on Everest. I'm going to train at it very hard. Think I have a chance of competing against people whose ancestors have been there since time immemorial?
By
Anonymous, at 1:26 PM
Oy. You aren't seriously reading my comments as somehow approving Jimmy the Greek, are you? Holy crap. But let's leave that aside for now.
Twins share nearly identical genetic makeup. Agreed.
Jose Canseco could hit homeruns. His twin brother Ozzie, despite sharing "nearly identical genetic makeup" couldn't. (And don't fall for the steroid argument. Ozzie did time for steroids as well.)
Conclusion - genetic makeup is not responsible for homerun hitting ability.
Baryshnikov and Jordan - nearly the same hang time. Agreed.
Conclusion - Jordan's "genetic superiority," you know, the stuff he got from his ancestors being bred for "big thighs," is not responsible for his hangtime.
Yes, over time, natural selection will change the characteristics of a population. After 50 or 60 generations, the inability to produce the extra quantities of red blood cells needed to survive in thinner atmospheres, to cite an example, will disappear from a local population.
No argument about that. Is it accurate to call that "superior genetics?"
No, it's not.
Athletes routinely train in higher altitudes in preparation for events. It's the inability to have the time to train properly to acclimatise to higher altitudes that led FIFA to recently ban internationals above 2500 meters. Since many of the affected players, from teams like Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, are descendants of immigrants who arrived at the continent 300 or so years ago, it's tough to make the argument that they have genetically adapted to higher elevations. It's the fact that they live and train there year round that provides the advantage. Give the Spanish team 3 months of training at 3500 meters, and they'll be just fine.
By
Barry, at 1:58 PM
Superior Genetics:
http://www.slate.com/id/2197721/
combined with culture
By
Anonymous, at 2:36 PM
The Dominance of Kenyans in Distance Running
Abstract
Kenyan runners, and especially those originating from the Kalenjin tribe, have dominated international middle- and long-distance running for over 40 years, prompting significant interest in the factors contributing to their success. Proposed explanations have included environmental factors, psychological advantage and favourable physiological characteristics, which may be genetically conferred or environmentally determined. Running is inherent within local Kenyan tradition and culture, and the Kenyan way of life, which involves many outdoor activities and pastimes in addition to mostly unfavourable living conditions, is conducive to enhanced distance running performance. Despite economic deprivation, Kenya has produced world and international running champions repeatedly over the past few decades; these champions have become role models for the younger generations, who take up running in the hope of a better future for themselves. Favourable environmental conditions such as altitude, diet and anthropometry, in addition to the motivational and socio-economic factors mentioned above, have all been proposed as possible reasons for the unsurpassed achievements of Kenyan distance runners. However, the fact that the majority of internationally successful runners originate from a small tribe that accounts for approximately 3% of the total Kenyan population also points to a possible genetic component. Whether this is subject to influence from other co-factors, such as altitude or training effects acquired during childhood, remains as yet unresolved.
Well it seems you can talk about Africans, just not African Americans.
By
Anonymous, at 6:40 PM
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