Topic: News: Gene Revolution- Genes of Champions

[Chris Ⓐ LeRoux]

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Gene Revolution: Genes of Champions

ORLANDO, Fla. (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Is your child born to run? Is he or she a natural winner? Does your kid have the right stuff to make it to the top? All parents think their children are good at sports, but how do you know if they're really good … good enough to compete and beat the very best athletes in the world?

Will your kicking kid grow up to be a soccer sensation? Can your daughter make it from the training pool to the Olympic pool? Could workouts transform your child into this world-class athlete?

"I'm going to try and make it to the 2012 olympics," weightlifter Jackie Berube told Ivanhoe.

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Even though she will be 40 years old when the London Olympics begin, it's not stopping her. She believes she was born to be a weightlifter.

Jackie works out eight hours a day at the Olympic training center in Colorado. She's one of several Olympic hopefuls who believe something sets them apart.

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"I think DNA definitely plays a role in my success as an athlete," Berube said.

"I think it's definitely in my genes," Vanessa McCoy agreed.

McCoy has always been good at sports too … but never this good.

"When I was running track, I was decent at it, but I would never have been the best of the best, but in weightlifting, it's something that I can come closer to the elite level," McCoy said.

Researchers believe they've found the gene that separate good athletes from great athletes. It's called ACTN3.

"This is something we are all born with, so to a degree we are all athletes," Kevin Reilly, president of Atlas Sports Genetics in Boulder, Co., said.

But to what degree depends on our ACTN3gene? Each person has two copies of it: one from each parent. This gene is responsible for making a special protein.

"This particular protein in the body has a lot to do with the ability of the muscle to contract at very high velocities, so speed explosion sports, it's critical to have this protein inside," Reilly explained.

But in some people, a variant prevents the gene from making this protein. These people tend to be good at endurance sports such as distance running, swimming or cross-country skiing. But athletes who got the variant from only one parent may be mixed -- suited for both endurance and sprint-power sports.

"It's what's called a 10 year rule," Reilly said. "It takes about 10 years from the time you first identify an athlete for their development to get to the point that they're going to be in medal contention."

Romania, China and Australia are already genetically testing young athletes. Some believe tests like these are crucial for the United States to compete on a world stage.

"It probably won't be in the sport of weightlifting if they don't have the genes, and as harsh as that may sound, that's just reality," Paul Fleschler, the women's resident coach for USA Weightlifting in Colorado Springs, Co., said.

Others call it genetic roulette for children.

"In some ways, I feel they are really limiting their children's future by doing things like that," Marta Gwinn, M.D., M.P.H., a medical epidemiologist in the National Office of Public Health Genomics at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, said. "The tests are not that predictive. There is so much more that goes into making someone who they are than just their DNA."

If it was all left to DNA, little Ava should have hit the gold medal jackpot. Her father is a world-class weightlifter. Her mother is a collegiate volleyball player.

"Blocking and hitting, I held a couple city/state records for blocking, so that was basically my best," Hilary Anderson recalled.

But when Anderson's test results came back from atlas sports, instead of having the explosive quick genes of a volleyball player.

"I was more endurance, which is kind of surprising," Anderson said.

Her power-lifting husband Aaron came back mixed … interesting since injuries forced him to give up the sport just before reaching the Olympic level.

"Would he have hit that ceiling before and everybody else kept going?" Anderson asked. "It kind of makes it interesting. It makes you wonder."

Like father, like daughter. Their baby girl Ava also came back mixed.

"The doors are more open for her rather than if she was all endurance," Hilary said.

But she says the test won't have an impact on raising her daughter: "It's ultimately going to be up to her, whatever sport she wants to play."

That's the answer from all the athletes we talked to: genes may play a role in sports, but there's more to it.

"In the end, you have to have the genetics," McCoy said. "You have to be built for the sport and if you have the attitude combined, the sky is the limit."

"I'm still going to train just as hard going into the next Olympics," Berube said.

From the elite playing field to the not so elite, these athletes are not made to play … they just simply love to play.

The president of atlas sports, Kevin Reilly, says the best age to test kids is around eight because kids are still developing motor skills that can help their athletic ability. The Atlas Sports test costs $149. Reilly says the saliva test is just one of several tests that hopeful young athletes should take to measure their performance level.

[Matt Erdman]

"The tests are not that predictive. There is so much more that goes into making someone who they are than just their DNA."

Well said.