A classic example

of the modern sportswriter's obsession with finding the next Jackie Robinson, no matter how diminishing the returns. From the NYT:

Black Athletes Missing From the Pilot's Seat
By JOHN ELIGON

TURIN, Italy, Feb. 19 — Herschel Walker demonstrated that blacks could have success in the essentially white sport of bobsledding when he competed in the Winter Olympics 14 years ago.

But Walker did so as a push athlete, not as a driver. The role of the pusher is defined by strength, brawn and athleticism. The role of the driver is a lauded position that requires grace, wits and touch. The driver steers the sled down the track, while the pushers are charged with getting the sled off to a fast start, then hopping in for the ride.

Many blacks have competed in the Olympics for the United States as push athletes, but none have held the coveted pilot position.

This may evoke comparisons to a discredited stigma once attached to blacks in football — that they were not intelligent enough to play quarterback and were better suited for athletic positions like running back and wide receiver.

Now, all 32 starters are black at tailback in the NFL, the second most important position in the most important league in American sports, but the NYT does not run articles asking why that is. Instead, it's considered more newsworthy to wonder why there aren't black pilots in the bobsled!

The more interesting question about the demographics of the bobsled is why there are any blacks in bobsledding at all, since there are so few in ski-jumping, biathlon, and so forth. Most notably, there are very few blacks in luge, where many bobsledders start out.

Virtually no African-Americans grow up planning on becoming bobsledders. The reason that there are any black bobsledders is because blacks are recruited to be pushers because of their greater combination of speed and strength. (Heisman Trophy winner Herschel Walker, who finished 7th in the 1992 Winter Olympics as the pusher on the 4-man bobsled, being an extraordinary example. Herschel held the world record in the 60 yard dash for a few minutes until Carl Lewis broke it in the next heat.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer