No, Indians Don’t Lack The ‘Sports Genes’ Because There Is No Such Thing

Dipa Karmakar created history as the first Indian gymnast to secure the fourth position in any Olympics. Her story follows a familiar script of many other Indian athletes, a saga of dedication overcoming severe lack of resources in her sporting journey.

Karmakar caught the nation’s attention after qualifying for the Olympics though she had some success at international events earlier. In coming so close to the medal, she has shown that Indian gymnasts can measure up to the world’s best and there is not so much an issue of lack of talent, as one of lack of facilities and coaching.

The winner of Karmakar’s event, Simone Biles is also rewriting history. And how! This was the 3rd Olympic gold for Biles, the first female gymnast from the US to do so in a single Olympics. Such is her dominance of the sport that many in the field are already proclaiming her as one of the greatest. By virtue of being an Afro-American and dominating the sport that saw a black woman win for the first time only in 2012 (Biles’s teammate Gabrielle Douglas), Biles is shattering long held stereotypes about the genetic ability of coloured gymnasts.

Her compatriot and namesake, Simone Manuel shattered a similar taboo in swimming on day seven by becoming the first black female swimmer to win at the Olympics. Swimming events are globally dominated by White or Chinese swimmers which has led to the stereotype that black swimmers are not good at the sport but Manuel’s success also proves that it is not so much the lack of a genetic ability for swimming among blacks, as much as the lack of access to the right resources and the socio-economic reasons behind it.

This brings me to this familiar coffee-table myth that usually pops up around every Olympics – Indians are genetically not suited to excel in certain sports. My previous article on fan attitudes to Indian Olympians generated the following comment:

Attitude is a complex area which has internal (self-drive) and external dimensions and needs to be addressed separately.

Some people criticise the vegetarian diet of Indians and attribute that to lack of success. Not true. If this was the case, we wouldn’t have won medals in a physical sport like wrestling, where quite a few of our wrestlers like Sushil Kumar are vegetarians. The vegetarian diet may lack proteins or some vitamins (like B12) but even weekend runners these days know how to get them through supplements and we have a growing number of good sports nutritionists in India. In any case, many of our athletes are not vegetarian but the point is that this is not a factor in success. The bigger challenge for us going forward is to make sure that our athletes get the right nutritional advice and access from a very young age.

The idea of genes playing a big role in sporting success has been around since ages. It is an offshoot of the longstanding argument that certain ethnic groups are incapable of certain types of work. This theory has influenced history leading to racial stereotypes right upto the Second World War.

It is also a pillar of the eternal nature vs nurture debate that has spawned much research worldwide.

So far all such myths of genetic superiority have been steadily broken in most sports, as in the cases of swimming and gymnastics above with the success of the coloured athletes (and of course Dipa Karmakar). China and Japan have also been fairly successful in both sports, so it is hard to believe that only Indians would be left out by nature.

This brings me to athletics. A myth that is much bandied about is that black runners have some genetic advantage over all others which accounts for their domination in recent years. Jamaican/African-American athletes dominate sprints and long-distance running is dominated by Kenyan/Ethiopian runners.

But this is not validated by any conclusive data, as highlighted by David Epstein in his landmark book The Sports Gene, which shows that years of genetic research have not been able to link success in sports to specific genes.

If this were the case then sports doping would not be through syringes and synthetic drugs but through gene laboratories. Countries accused of being state sponsors of doping should be very foolish indeed to tamper with urine samples when they could tinker with athlete genes.

There are certain physical characteristics that could lead to a higher chance of success in some sports, for example maximum oxygen uptake (VO2 max) in endurance events or the ACTN3 gene for sprint events, but there are no specific ethnic groups found with exceptionally high proportion of these traits.

This explains why distance running domination has shifted over the decades from Scandinavians to Australasians to Kenyans/Ethiopians or how sprinting success has shifted from White Americans/Europeans to Jamaicans/African-Americans. If there really were an overwhelming genetic reason underlying success in athletics, this dominance would not shift in decades but in centuries (after intermingling).

Mo Farah, the British athlete who was born in Mogadishu, dominates distance running today. On the other hand, no Somali athlete has ever won any medal at the Olympics. Farah won his third consecutive Olympic gold medal in 10,000 meters at Rio and is hot favorite to win the 5,000 meters. He trains extensively in Kenya and Ethiopia (several months every year). If it were just a matter of having the right genes, surely he would train in the best facilities of UK instead of slogging in the dusty roads of Eldoret.

Rasmus Ankersen, a Danish bestselling writer and high performance expert, spent months observing and training with the athletes in the goldmines of athletic success like Iten (Kenya), Bekoji (Ethiopia) and Kingston (Jamaica) and shed light on his findings in the ‘The Gold Mine Effect’. His inference is that athletic success in these places is not due to genetic reasons but because of a combination of effort, conducive training environment and psychological factors (desire and dedication) brought about by their socio-economic conditions.

India has produced world-class athletes in the past like Milkha Singh and P T Usha. We have also won Olympic medals in contact sports like boxing and wrestling. So any suggestion that Indians are not suited to international sports is laughable and needs to be nipped in the bud as this myth could lead to false stereotyping and discourage parents from allowing their children to pursue sports seriously.

With all the other challenges that exist in Indian sports, the last thing we need is negative propaganda. It would be wise to remain free of such myths and encourage our youth to reach new heights in sports by building an environment that nurtures talent and inspires excellence.