Why are certain countries good at certain sports?

[cunninghamismagic]

e.g. Jamaican’s great sprinters. But I can’t recall seeing a Jamaican in a swimming final. China dominant in diving, but appear to be mediocre at best in athletics.

Is it genetics? Or success lifting the profile of a sport in a country fostering greater interest & more participants? Or a bit of both? Or something else?

[spandaubaggie]

Interesting conversation last night on BBC about why black athletes are so much better sprinting. It seems that there is no reason why whites can't run as fast in many cases, despite only 1 of 82 having run under 10 secs being white.
A lot is to do with coaching, environment and mental attitude.
It is fair to say if there were white lads growing up in Jamaica with the love of sprinting being what it is there is a good chance they could excel.
I guess here we are spoilt by choice. It's the same reason we never saw a Jamaican winning a gold at dressage.

[dublinbaggie]

Johnson seemed to indicate he thought it was down to opportunity [and that gene that both white and black people have].

There was a discussion here on Irish radio about the Kenyan runners as many of them are trained by Brother Colm O'Connell. He says only particular tribes from East Africa are runners -others are not.

[74bus]

Many years ago (and I do mean many!), as a group of P.E. students, we were asked to come up with reasons as to why black people appeared to do badly at swimming, whilst doing so well at most other sports.
We came up with the usual right-on reasons - lack of opportunity, no black role models, etc., but over the years I've found this to be a load of baloney. I've taught many black kids who excelled at football and athletics, but all of them found swimming to be difficult. It surely can't be a coincidence that the swimming finals at the Olympics are totally dominated by white people whilst the best runners are almost entirely black.
People will still look at this incontrovertible evidence and try to explain it away by any means possible, because to suggest that there may be physiological differences between the various races is tantamount to heresy nowadays.

[dublinbaggie]

Discounting Eric-the-eel I saw my first black swimmer this Olympics.

[Tippi Hedren's Cat]

it is interesting that the 110m /100m hurdles are sprint events - yet there is a more 'diverse' field at most finals compared with the flat 100m

[deeleys]

Aug 10, 2012 16:37:09 GMT 74bus said:

Many years ago (and I do mean many!), as a group of P.E. students, we were asked to come up with reasons as to why black people appeared to do badly at swimming, whilst doing so well at most other sports.
We came up with the usual right-on reasons - lack of opportunity, no black role models, etc., but over the years I've found this to be a load of baloney. I've taught many black kids who excelled at football and athletics, but all of them found swimming to be difficult. It surely can't be a coincidence that the swimming finals at the Olympics are totally dominated by white people whilst the best runners are almost entirely black.
People will still look at this incontrovertible evidence and try to explain it away by any means possible, because to suggest that there may be physiological differences between the various races is tantamount to heresy nowadays.

I hope this doesn't sound racist and I don't know how true it is but I was always led to believe that black peoples bones were heavier than white peoples hence why they struggle at swimming. We had a really good black sports athlete at school and he also struggled at swimming.

[Fido]

Aug 10, 2012 16:37:09 GMT 74bus said:

Many years ago (and I do mean many!), as a group of P.E. students, we were asked to come up with reasons as to why black people appeared to do badly at swimming, whilst doing so well at most other sports.
We came up with the usual right-on reasons - lack of opportunity, no black role models, etc., but over the years I've found this to be a load of baloney. I've taught many black kids who excelled at football and athletics, but all of them found swimming to be difficult. It surely can't be a coincidence that the swimming finals at the Olympics are totally dominated by white people whilst the best runners are almost entirely black.
People will still look at this incontrovertible evidence and try to explain it away by any means possible, because to suggest that there may be physiological differences between the various races is tantamount to heresy nowadays.

+1. A greyhound is quicker than a spaniel but it's still a dog. Everyone is so ridiculously careful not to make any differentiation between races when it is obvious there are.

[Best Bosman of the Summer]

Aug 10, 2012 20:05:35 GMT Fido said:

Aug 10, 2012 16:37:09 GMT 74bus said:

Many years ago (and I do mean many!), as a group of P.E. students, we were asked to come up with reasons as to why black people appeared to do badly at swimming, whilst doing so well at most other sports.
We came up with the usual right-on reasons - lack of opportunity, no black role models, etc., but over the years I've found this to be a load of baloney. I've taught many black kids who excelled at football and athletics, but all of them found swimming to be difficult. It surely can't be a coincidence that the swimming finals at the Olympics are totally dominated by white people whilst the best runners are almost entirely black.
People will still look at this incontrovertible evidence and try to explain it away by any means possible, because to suggest that there may be physiological differences between the various races is tantamount to heresy nowadays.

huge amount of research into this question and there are few conclusions. Environment/altitude, genetics, mentality, coaching and role models are all factors.

No idea of the proportions though

[gzbaggy]

Most of the best Kenyan long distance runners come from near Eldorat and belong to the same tribe, medical research shows to some extent it is genetic but this of course is not very PC. It is probably similar in Ethiopia though as anyone who has ever been to Addis Ababa will tell you the size of the city and number of hills are good training