The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance

The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance is a 2013 non-fiction book by David Epstein that investigates the role of genetics in athletics. The Sports Gene became a New York Times best seller and was nominated for the 2014 PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing. Epstein, an investigative reporter and a passionate runner, combines data from scientific research, interviews with experts, and biographies and anecdotes of individual athletes to paint a complex picture of how biology and environment interact to produce the world’s top athletes. This guide references the first hardcover edition of The Sports Gene.

The Sports Gene begins by debunking a theory about baseball players having quicker reflexes; instead, Epstein interprets their ability to hit a fastball as a perceptual advantage, introducing the theory of “chunking,” the process by which experts group and process information. He next presents the concept of the 10,000-hour rule, which refers to the average amount of practice required for mastery, although the range of practice hours amongst experts, he notes, actually differs greatly. He profiles two professional high jumpers with wildly different paths to demonstrate that the condition of initial ability, and not just practice hours, is significant to athletic success.