Alanbike, just a few comments on your inner city Houston argument. It goes back to a society being predisposed to a certain activity. We can try to change the inner city youth, but it's not going to be any easier than changing them genetically. This crosses into any society. People generally resist change. Americans are finally playing soccer to a respectable level, but after how long? We're still not that in to it. Hell, our woman's team is very good, and still they don't get the respect I think they deserve. Give an inner city kid a choice between a bike, a book and a basketball, and what are they going to choose. Due to their societal "norm" they'd be inclined to take the basketball, for whatever reason that is. It can be argued, but once again, you're trying to affect change within a society. Takes time, just like genetic mutation and the evolution that results from it.

Now, we also need to distinguish between these different activities. Basketball and cycling are so completely different, they shouldn't even be used in the same argument. Granted basketball is one of the more rigorous sports, as opposed to baseball and dare I say... golf?? But, basketball is not measured in terms of endurance, but rather skill. Skill is teachable, ability, not so much. There's a peak that everybody has. Some are going to be better than others. Some will have abetter hand, eye coordination, etc. For the pure endurance sports, running, swimming, cycling, cross country skiing, etc, I don't see why any particular ethnic group can't be successful at one or the other. We just end up going back to societal norms.

The Jamaican bobsled team was embraced by Jamaica because they went out with the "look at us, black men on ice" mentality. They used the race card, and said, we can be just as good, and for the most part they are. They've also been given the access to proper training for the event now. Any society can take their top tier athletes and "coach" them to be successful in a given event, as long as it plays on that particular athletes strength. In the case of the Jamaicans, it was their sprinting ability. It's rare though, that somebody will be the best at more than one thing. Triathalons are a great example of this. Even the top tier triathletes have a "best" event. I think it was Andy Hampsten who spoke of Dave Scott as an absolute animal on a bike. But Andy could take him. Andy invoked his skill, which he was coached. If Dave Scott had chosen cycling exclusively, can anybody argue that he would have been amazing? Eric Heiden of speed skating's past ventured over to cycling after training his entire life as a speed skater, and was admirable in that endeavor. If Eric had picked cycling from the beginning, as opposed to skating, he probably would have been top tier also. So, I will argue that there's no reason a Kenyan, at a young age, who runs outside to watch the marathon team run by, and says to himself, "I will be on that team", couldn't just as easily be seduced by the Tour de France, and become a world class cyclist, if he has the potential to be that world class marathoner in the first place.

I will never be a linebacker in the NFL, or a center in the NBA. It's not really a valid argument. I have chosen cycling, and running as my sports. Why? Who knows, I maybe could have been an amazing baseball player, or soccer player. Who knows? But there is the argument, that maybe my children, (if God's got a sense of humor), will be the second in the line of a mutation started by me, to be passed to my progeny, that we will be predisposed to be better endurance athletes, generations from now.