tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post1522976759483418831..comments2024-03-15T20:52:26.967-07:00Comments on Steve Sailer: iSteve: The U.S. Olympic team is always Californian-dominatedUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger39125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-53623680247808093272008-07-31T04:39:00.000-07:002008-07-31T04:39:00.000-07:00Maybe California attracts the genetically superior...<I>Maybe California attracts the genetically superior? See our old friend Kevin Love, for example; guys like him don't get born in, say, Mississippi. His genetically gifted parents would have moved out to California.</I><BR/><BR/>Not so fast, my friend. Californian Tom Brady has been dethroned as the Master of the Universe by the Mississippi Manning boys the last couple years. <BR/><BR/>(btw, Kevin Love is SOFT!)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-53926292978389899972008-07-30T20:35:00.000-07:002008-07-30T20:35:00.000-07:00As you say, in most of the country outside of the ...<I>As you say, in most of the country outside of the elite zones, most of the effort and attention goes to football, b-ball, and still baseball. Only a few Olympians are generated.<BR/>Worse, NO adults except Farve play football and only a few play baseball (albeit many play softball, but neither are good exercise), so investment in these two sports is entirely non-productive for developing fitness for life.</I><BR/><BR/>Yeah, it's ironic. Football is America's most popular sport, yet for adults it's almost entirely a spectator rather than participant sports. Very very few adults actually play it.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-60008561577467428542008-07-30T17:52:00.000-07:002008-07-30T17:52:00.000-07:00What other states besides CA have a disproportiona...What other states besides CA have a disproportionate, on a per capita basis, representation in the Olympics?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-90596973789010327572008-07-30T13:20:00.000-07:002008-07-30T13:20:00.000-07:00Weather and college-level recruitment both sound l...Weather and college-level recruitment both sound like significant influences, but I'm not sure they're all.<BR/><BR/>I'm thinking about population, specifically in its role of achieving a critical mass of trainees. Olympic athletes for the most part don't come out of nowhere from working out in their parents' back yard. They need peers to train with or against, but more important still they need coaches. Some events can be dominated for years by the students of a few good coaches.* Even with completely impartial qualifications tests, there's no reason to expect even distributions from across the country. In events where coaching is critical, you could expect to see clusters of olympians coming from the best coaches, who have attracted the best students. <BR/><BR/>Californians generally may not be a race of supermen, but they have the large population to make critical masses of athletes more likely than other locations.<BR/><BR/>*I think I remember reading this about the US women's gymnast team some time ago, but my google-fu is weak and I haven't located a cite yet.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-23825995189706458672008-07-30T10:14:00.000-07:002008-07-30T10:14:00.000-07:00As you say, in most of the country outside of the ...As you say, in most of the country outside of the elite zones, most of the effort and attention goes to football, b-ball, and still baseball. Only a few Olympians are generated.<BR/><BR/>Worse, NO adults except Farve play football and only a few play baseball (albeit many play softball, but neither are good exercise), so investment in these two sports is entirely non-productive for developing fitness for life. Mostly they just develop nagging injuries for life. I can STILL feel bad knee, shoulder, and back from football played as a slightly undersized hard-hitting corner back in 1963-4!!!<BR/><BR/>Two points (1) The upper middle class in CA is predicatively smart enough to invest in life-enhancing sports and (2) for once the urban underclass makes a good choice to emphasize aerobic b-ball and bag baseball.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-27891612399939146552008-07-29T22:27:00.000-07:002008-07-29T22:27:00.000-07:00When I first moved to California in the early 80s,...When I first moved to California in the early 80s, I noticed that upper-middle-class (and above) Californians were far less likely than the Midwesterners I grew up with to have a piano or a wall of bookshelves filled with books.<BR/><BR/>People who are real sports enthusiasts, sun worshipers, and all-around "out-doorsy" types are more likely to move to places like Southern California, and more likely to STAY there than people like me. I didn't think that the trade-offs (crowded freeways, bad schools, outrageous house prices) were worth it, although my ex-husband DID. <BR/><BR/>And people who are natural-born sports nuts are much more likely to be willing to drive little Johnny all over creation on Saturday so that he can play competitive sports, and spend a big chunk of money on equipment and fees, while indoor people like me spend a lot of time indoors with the stereo, the books, and the piano.<BR/><BR/>Similarly, I don't think that East Asians are necessarily more musically talented than other races, but the parents ARE more willing to buy a piano and pay for lessons, and they are a lot more inclined to insist that the child practice. When my daughter started group piano/music lessons at age four in California, she was the only non-Asian in the class, although we did NOT live in a heavily Asian neighborhood.<BR/><BR/>To find out if your child has talent in any area (art, music, dance, sports) you usually have to invest some time or money or both. Lots of parents just don't bother.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-53896474857689748742008-07-29T22:05:00.000-07:002008-07-29T22:05:00.000-07:00OC Register, "Why are we home to so many Olympians...OC Register, "Why are we home to so many Olympians?"<BR/><BR/>http://www.ocregister.com/articles/olympic-county-orange-2085530-gold-viejo<BR/><BR/><BR/>"While OC athletes won Olympic medals in the 1960s, the county's emergence as an international Olympic force can be traced to 1972 when the Mission Viejo Company hired an unknown Midwest swim coach named Mark Schubert to coach the Nadadores."Fredhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02562042392964282677noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-10192738669221872652008-07-29T21:47:00.000-07:002008-07-29T21:47:00.000-07:00The Dead Kennedys are vindicated!Your kids will me...The Dead Kennedys are vindicated!<BR/><I>Your kids will meditate in school<BR/>California Uber Alles!<BR/>California Uber Alles!</I>Dennis Dalehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03233729780363740881noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-12175528336018986552008-07-29T21:18:00.000-07:002008-07-29T21:18:00.000-07:00Orange County, CA ranked 9th among nations in the ...Orange County, CA ranked 9th among nations in the medal count, if you counted its athletes as a separate country.<BR/><BR/>The OC Register suggested that the key factor was coaching, esp. in the water sports.<BR/><BR/>Only a few key coaches accounted for the athletic transformation of the county.<BR/><BR/>There's also the weather and the very competitive and driven parents in OC.Fredhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02562042392964282677noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-61721905079012240952008-07-29T19:06:00.000-07:002008-07-29T19:06:00.000-07:00The frontier is a place for manly men.The frontier is a place for manly men.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-78660301338907421652008-07-29T19:03:00.000-07:002008-07-29T19:03:00.000-07:00As a side note, California dominates in soccer in ...As a side note, California dominates in soccer in the US, in particular southern cal. A very large number of the top clubs and players come from there. These are mostly middle and upper-middle class white kids on these teams. Given similar climate and year round training programs which other states take advantage of I have to believe it is a cultural edge.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-11347425598061034202008-07-29T17:59:00.000-07:002008-07-29T17:59:00.000-07:00There are about 550 athletes on Team USA so Califo...<I>There are about 550 athletes on Team USA so California's represent 32%. All things being equal, one would expect Californias to represent 38/300 = 13%.</I><BR/><BR/>13% of 550 is 72, so they have about 100 more than we would naturally expect.<BR/><BR/>A quick check of the USA water polo website shows that of the 26 men and women selected for the teams, 2 women are from Michigan, 1 from Oregon, and one guy is from Hawaii. <BR/><BR/>We'd expect about 3 from Cali if they were distributed evenly, so just one obscure, kind of weird sport not played much in the US accounts for a fifth of the deviation from the expected. <BR/><BR/>As another poster alluded to, maybe there are other sports that are similarly geographically concentrated there.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-5595295020272468042008-07-29T17:02:00.000-07:002008-07-29T17:02:00.000-07:00People in the west are generally in better shape t...People in the west are generally in better shape than those in other parts of the country, this causes the overrepresentation. I suspect you'd find overrepresentation of Coloradans, Utahns, Pacific Northwesterners, New Englander etc. Basically any place where wealth meets a sporting mindset. Plus people from those areas are less likely to funnel their athletic talents into football basketball etc.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-68665188949586844252008-07-29T13:23:00.000-07:002008-07-29T13:23:00.000-07:00Steve, this comment on the Olympic team raises an ...Steve, <BR/><BR/>this comment on the Olympic team raises an interesting question - is the success of an Olympian determined mainly by genes plus the training that he gets before the age of five or genes plus the training that he gets after the age of five<BR/><BR/>putting it another way, if you test five year olds can you predict their ultimate success as olympians.<BR/><BR/>The Abecedarian Project seems to indicate that IQ is somewhat maleable up to the age of five. So all the money spent on trying to improve the IQ of kids older than five is probably wasted but money spent from birth to five may indeed be worthwhile <BR/><BR/>what does the evidence indicate is the case for Olympic sportsAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-29015260524801083832008-07-29T12:56:00.000-07:002008-07-29T12:56:00.000-07:00Hometowns? As in the top Russian tennis players w...Hometowns? As in the top Russian tennis players who list some city in Florida as their hometown?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-46780406290673787632008-07-29T10:23:00.000-07:002008-07-29T10:23:00.000-07:00I suspect the US leisure industry's largest sector...I suspect the US leisure industry's largest sector is in California. By "leisure" I mean everything from country clubs, golf courses, racquet clubs, to hotels, beach and lake resorts, etc.<BR/><BR/>Sport is a natural progression from this sort of culture. <BR/><BR/>I'd be equally interested in seeing numbers on the average weight/height/waistline of Californians vs. others. (But that would be heavily distorted by short immigrants from the south and fat immigrants from the Middle East!)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-69374485782854203472008-07-29T10:14:00.000-07:002008-07-29T10:14:00.000-07:00I vote weather.Washington state and Alaska have di...I vote weather.<BR/><BR/>Washington state and Alaska have disproportionate numbers of Winter Olympics medalists because there are so many places to ski. Seattle often has the nation's best crew teams because there are lakes all over the city. <BR/><BR/>In California you can run, bike and swim to your heart's content without having to worry about the weather. That's also why Californians are better looking. No need to sit inside, unshaven and glum, swilling coffee and listening to rain pelt the window. But I will say that the sound of a gentle rain on a still lake in the morning is beautiful in its own way.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-50034841997345426082008-07-29T10:08:00.000-07:002008-07-29T10:08:00.000-07:00My guess is that climate started the ball rolling....My guess is that climate started the ball rolling. It's possible to train outdoors almost year round in SC. Moreover, the SC culture tended to reward health, fitness, tans. And SC was a helluva nice place to live. Schools were well financed. And the sports infrastructure grew--pools, coaches, tournaments, traditions, rewards, press. World class talent naturally migrated to the best resources.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-67776705902404213852008-07-29T09:58:00.000-07:002008-07-29T09:58:00.000-07:00UCLA is often referred to as Univ of Caucasions Lo...UCLA is often referred to as Univ of Caucasions Lost among Asians. I dont know how that relates to swimming tho.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-55510560673800677462008-07-29T09:18:00.000-07:002008-07-29T09:18:00.000-07:00As a resident of Orange County, and a 4th generati...As a resident of Orange County, and a 4th generation Southern Californian (non-Okie), I would agree with the previous commenters here, especially halfbreed. The weather plays a signficant role, obviously. Cycling and rowing in particular are very popular in this area. I remember attending the 1984 Olympics where both sports enjoyed strong local appeal.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-72660981768575766182008-07-29T08:40:00.000-07:002008-07-29T08:40:00.000-07:00I can give a little insight from the point of view...I can give a little insight from the point of view of Stanford admissions (I am an alum, a former RA and friends with the admissions director (after I got in, not before))<BR/>Stanford, like China, places great pride in being the "winningest"school in America, that is, having the most NCAA championships. But, from their point of view, it doesn't matter if it is a football championship or women's lacrosse. In fact, they favor individuals over teams because they cost less money, and they tend to have better GPAs/SATs. It would be very, very difficult for Stanford to form a Bowl-winning football team without lowering its admission standards, but it can cherry-pick the best swimmers, x-country runners, golfers, etc without too much damage to its overall stats and it gains a lot of trophies. <BR/>Now, other universities in the PAC-10 need to keep up and UCLA, USC and UCB all play the same game because they don't want to be slaughtered, even if it is in track and field or diving. <BR/>The obvious question is, don't other schools have the same NCAA trophy-hoarding incentives? Yes, but many of them are already invested in the big name sports. Stanford was an early-mover in women's sports and California schools have a natural advantage with swimming, which the US does well in, as well as other outdoor sports. Not too hot, not too cold. Stanford has also invested hundreds of millions in state-of-the-art facilities: tennis courts, weight rooms, tracks, training rooms, stadiums, pools, etc. <BR/>I think at its base you have to consider what sports champions have the highest IQs. I think Olympians beat out Heisman trophy winners or Final Four players.Antioco Dascalonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10617669156986603638noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-24260681726883077562008-07-29T08:39:00.000-07:002008-07-29T08:39:00.000-07:00I can give a little insight from the point of view...I can give a little insight from the point of view of Stanford admissions (I am an alum, a former RA and friends with the admissions director (after I got in, not before))<BR/>Stanford, like China, places great pride in being the "winningest"school in America, that is, having the most NCAA championships. But, from their point of view, it doesn't matter if it is a football championship or women's lacrosse. In fact, they favor individuals over teams because they cost less money, and they tend to have better GPAs/SATs. It would be very, very difficult for Stanford to form a Bowl-winning football team without lowering its admission standards, but it can cherry-pick the best swimmers, x-country runners, golfers, etc without too much damage to its overall stats and it gains a lot of trophies. <BR/>Now, other universities in the PAC-10 need to keep up and UCLA, USC and UCB all play the same game because they don't want to be slaughtered, even if it is in track and field or diving. <BR/>The obvious question is, don't other schools have the same NCAA trophy-hoarding incentives? Yes, but many of them are already invested in the big name sports. Stanford was an early-mover in women's sports and California schools have a natural advantage with swimming, which the US does well in, as well as other outdoor sports. Not too hot, not too cold. Stanford has also invested hundreds of millions in state-of-the-art facilities: tennis courts, weight rooms, tracks, training rooms, stadiums, pools, etc. <BR/>I think at its base you have to consider what sports champions have the highest IQs. I think Olympians beat out Heisman trophy winners or Final Four players.Antioco Dascalonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10617669156986603638noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-63176984007043687092008-07-29T08:28:00.000-07:002008-07-29T08:28:00.000-07:00Weather, universities, etc. is too obvious and can...Weather, universities, etc. is too obvious and can't account for such a huge gap. <BR/><BR/>Maybe California attracts the genetically superior? See our old friend Kevin Love, for example; guys like him don't get born in, say, Mississippi. His genetically gifted parents would have moved out to California. <BR/><BR/>Maybe many of them are second/third generation athletes born after their athletic\genetically gifted parents Hollywooded-up, so to speak.<BR/><BR/>In any case, interesting catch, Mr. Explainer :-)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-33466702571814932262008-07-29T07:47:00.000-07:002008-07-29T07:47:00.000-07:00'Summer Olympic Medals per capita' by capita is do...'Summer Olympic Medals per capita' by capita is dominated by the Scandinavia:<BR/>http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/spo_sum_oly_med_all_tim_percap-medals-all-time-per-capita<BR/><BR/>(the US does nearly 10 times worse than the elite countries)<BR/><BR/>Finland and Sweden haven't exactly got the perfect weather for Summer sports, but they do have an outdoorsy culture, like California, and governments willing to spend public funds on sport.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-34022968389792772652008-07-29T07:18:00.000-07:002008-07-29T07:18:00.000-07:00There are only a few states with large enough popu...There are only a few states with large enough populations to keep up with California. Texas and Florida are among them. The big difference is, Texas and Florida are football-mad states in a way that California is not.<BR/><BR/>In Texas, guys big and strong enough to be champion discus throwers, shot putters and Greco-Roman wrestlers end up as guards or tackles for the Longorns, Aggies or Sooners.<BR/><BR/>In Florida, guys fast enough to be champion sprinters end up as wide receivers for the Hurricanes, or cornerbacks for the Gators.<BR/><BR/>College football tends to swallow up the best athletes in Texas and Florida. I have no doubt that there are many tight ends in the NFL who'd have made phenomenal decathletes- but they tend not to go in that direction.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com