The Sports Gene

David Epstein investigates what actually produces extraordinary athletes, weighing genetics against the popular ten-thousand-hours theory of deliberate practice. He reports from Jamaican sprint clubs, Kenyan distance-running highlands, and genetics labs, profiling athletes with rare mutations and physical traits alongside the scientists studying them. The book examines why certain populations dominate certain events, how trainability itself varies by genes, and why the nature-versus-nurture debate in sport resists any single answer. It became a New York Times bestseller and laid the groundwork for the questions Epstein would later carry into Range.