With less than one week until the AAU Junior Olympic Games, Heathwood Hall's (SC) Aly Conyers is ready to see the results of her season's -- or to some, pandemic -- training finally pay off.The 2020 AAU Junior Olympic Games begin on Wednesday, August 5th in Brevard County, Florida. He and his college training partner ran the same workouts and pushed themselves to the point of vomiting, so perhaps Scott wasn’t more talented after all. Epstein speculates that he had low baseline ability but a rapid training response that allowed him to improve quickly, while Scott began with a high level of baseline talent but less potential to improve. There was one guy in particular, Micheno Lawrence, who worked at McDonald's near the high school after school. Where does the intersection between talent and practice lie?These are the questions Mr. Epstein seeks to answer in this captivating book, which began as If that sounds like a hedge, it isn’t: instead, it’s a testament to the author’s close attention to nuance. Since he's not supposed to say exactly who they are, he says, "the likes of a Usain Bolt." The notion is that strong Africans were selected as slaves, that the strongest of them survived the voyage to Jamaica, and that the strongest survivors eventually escaped slavery and cloistered themselves in a remote region to form an isolated “warrior” gene stock that now produces world-class athletes.It makes a convenient story. The book covers a wide range of sports, but there is a special emphasis on athletics (the author was a runner in college). They would come to these night meets and get really riled up. It turns out that guys learn, without even knowing it, they learn how to encode body patterns, body movements, which let them anticipate the ball way before it gets there.DE: So, with innovative science, you can delete little parts of the pitcher, like his shoulder, and you can turn Albert Pujols into, like, you and me, instantly. In the book, Epstein reviews the latest genetic science to try to unlock the secrets of human talent and how it can be developed into truly great sports performances through coaching and adaptation to training. Sports Illustrated senior writer David Epstein explores the role of genetics in sports in his new book "The Sports Gene" (Current, 290 pages). StudySync creates and publishes award-winning educational curriculum for schools in English language arts, ELL, social studies and science. Whether it’s running faster, standing taller or jumping higher, multiple genetic pathways may lead there.In a particularly fascinating chapter, Mr. Epstein investigates an old theory that purports to explain why one small country, Jamaica, produces so many Olympic sprinters. One of the most anticipated races of the AAU Junior Olympic Games this week is led by an athlete that few might know about. Organizers of the postponed 2020 Virgin Money London Marathon announced today that the gala 40th edition their event would proceed as an elite-only race on a closed course within St. James's Park in Central London on Sunday, October 4. I reported from below the equator in Africa, above the Arctic circle in Finland where I tracked down a guy who was the best endurance athlete of his generation (he had an extremely rare genetic mutation which runs in his family). He would show up once in a while and just torch the field, from 100 to 800. The human genome has been mapped now for almost a decade.
It was his “determination and psyche” that made him a champion, he says — his blood had nothing to do with it.David Epstein, who has written a new book called “The Sports Gene,” searches for answers about athletic ability and our genes.
Is there really something going on there? By Christie Aschwanden Aug. 12, 2013
I just started really to wonder about this interplay between nature and nurture.
He approaches his subject like a scientist, stopping to examine the uncertainties and taking care not to overgeneralize.The narrative follows Mr. Epstein’s search for the roots of elite sport performance as he encounters characters and stories so engrossing that readers may not realize they’re receiving an advanced course in genetics, physiology and sports medicine.To illustrate that learned perceptual skills can trump innate reaction speed, for example, he revisits the slugger Albert Pujols’s humiliating Mr. Epstein argues that we often confuse innate talent with spirit or effort.
I think it covers just about everything in the decade since the human genome was sequenced to tell us what genetics can, or cannot tell us, about sports performance. Actually, a lot of the sports literature says that talent is something that has to be there before somebody trains. Epstein sat down with Race Results Weekly last Saturday to talk about the book in an exclusive interview.RACE RESULTS WEEKLY: How did you get the idea for this project?DAVID EPSTEIN: The idea came way before I actually thought about doing a book itself. It just fascinated me.RRW: Without giving too much away from the book, what did you learn about how genetics connected to sport, or maybe didn't connect to sport?DE: Outside of track and field, one of the things that really surprised me was with baseball, for example.