By Richard Lee - 25/08/2008

Genetics in Sport

Like most I’ve been glued to the Olympics the past few weeks and the two men who have made most of the headlines this Olympics - rightly so - have been Usian Bolt and Michael Phelps.

We all sat and watched in awe as Bolt seemed to start celebrating with 30 metres to go on his way to winning the 100m final and in the process setting a new world record. The 200m proved to be a bit tougher but yet again a new world record and then to complete an incredible Olympics he played his role in Jamaica claiming the 4 x 100m relay at a canter and, yes, another world record.

Phelps took part in every event he possibly could and won them all, showing the world there really is nobody faster in the water.

It occurred to me that these two have something in common and something that I believe will play more of a role in years to come in sports - I am speaking about genetics.

I firmly believe that we are all born with natural talent for something in life and ever increasingly size seems to be an advantage in a lot of pursuits. Both these men I mention stand at 6ft 5in tall.

It seems logical that someone standing at that height will have an advantage over someone of 5ft 6in. Some would argue that Bolt doesn’t actually appear as fast as some of the other athletes as his long limbs cruise to victory.

There is also the belief that black athletes have more ‘fast twitch’ fibres than white athletes which also gives them a genetic advantage. Whereas it is thought that black athletes have a disadvantage in a swimming pool due to their bone density making them heavier in a swimming pool. When was the last time you saw a white athlete with a chance in the 100m final - or for that matter a black athlete winning a swimming medal? Genetics play their part.

This isn’t to take anything away from any top athletes. I’m sure we all know of someone who ‘could’ve been’ something, had it not been for x, y and z. Therefore there’s a famous quote from Larry Bird which springs to mind ‘A winner is someone who recognises his god given talents, works his tail off to develop them into skills and uses these skills to accomplish his goals’.  This is very true, there are countless people in the world who ‘could be’ or 'could've been' great but very few ever realise their potential.

My thought is that sprinters will become bigger as the years go by and I actually believe that someone will run sub 9.2 seconds this century. I realise that is quite an ask but if you look back in the history books the world record has dropped almost a second since 1912 when it was run in a time of 10.6 seconds by Donald Lippincott.

With training regimes getting better and better and more incentives being involved with sprinting I think there’s still quite a bit of movement in that world record time yet. I think most of us will agree that Bolt could shave some off his current world record judging by performance in Beijing.

Roll on London 2012 I say!