As Americans, we tend to think excellence can be manufactured. That greatness can be created out of any piece of human clay. The Constitution states that all men are created equal, and thus, we like to think, maybe, so are elite athletes. Which explains why we have soccer academies for toddlers as young as 18 months. Seriously, I’m surprised entrepreneurs haven’t yet figured out how to sell in-utero sport training - it’s easy money.
Just don’t try out that idea on elite athletes. Like Dara Torres, who joined me several years ago for a moderated conversation with Sports Illustrated senior writer David Epstein, author of the New York Times bestseller, The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance.
In prep for my talk, I caught up with Torres, who won 12 Olympic medals between 1984 and 2008, when she was twice the age of some US teammates. Her teammates' abs looked soft compared to hers.
“For me, it’s always started with good genetics,” Torres said. “I’m not going to say it was all hard work because at the beginning it wasn’t. Growing up, I didn’t swim in the summers until I was in double-digits age-wise. Then, I didn’t even start double workouts until I was a teenager. I was one of those athletes who didn’t overdue it, definitely. Swimming just came easy to me.”
Tom Farrey is director of the Aspen Institute’s Sports & Society Program and the author of Game On: The All-American Race to Make Champions of Our Children. His long-form work with ESPN won Emmy and Murrow awards. Follow Tom on Twitter at @tomfarrey and the Aspen Institute Sports & Society Program at @AspenInstSports. This column was published by The Huffington Post in 2013.