Month: August 2011

Ok, believe it or not, all of the truly long pieces are done until I get to the US.  Having spent two days on UK Track Cycling, finishing on Tuesday in Why the US Sucks at Olympic Lifting: Part 5, I promise not to spend more than one day on any one group until I get to the US.  That’s gonna be long.  At this point it would be a bit redundant to just keep making the same points over and over again.  So I’ll be a bit briefer so I can look at more groups faster.

So over the next few parts, I want to take more of a snapshot of a variety of different sport systems that have shown success or outright dominance in various time frames.  And since it makes some logical sense, I’m actually going to look at them in somewhat of a chronological order (that is, in terms of the times they were dominant) since this makes some other points about changes in training and focus some of which I feel are relevant to my ultimate topic of US Ol’ing.… Keep Reading

So last time, in Why the US Sucks at Olympic Lifting: Part 4 I started a discussion of UK Track cycling and how the UK went from also rans to the highest levels of the sport in a relatively short period of time.  First I introduced track cycling in general, bored you to death with a bunch of sociocultural crap, talked about some of the events and the physiology involved in success

From there, I introduced how the UK  decided to go from nobodies to dominance, did so in the span of about 10 years and how an infusion of UK lottery money was sort of the ‘key’ to let this happen (I’m sure the idea that money solves everything will make at least one forum poster happy).  But there was still a critical factor in all of this.

Oh yeah, briefly, it has been brought to my attention that some of my description of the the UK and what it is comprised of are not exactly correct. … Keep Reading

Continuing from the altogether too long discussion of Kenyan running that took all of Why the US Sucks at Olympic Lifting: Part 3, today I want to switch gears (ha ha, this joke will make sense in a second) and look at an example of another group that jumped from relative anonymity to dominance in what is a fairly niche sport in a relatively short period of time.   The sport is track cycling and the ‘country’ is the United Kingdom (technically this includes NORTHERN Ireland, Scotland and Great Britain).  And this discussion will only be marginally too long.

As with the Kenyan runners, I’ll look a bit at the sport and then try to examine what the UK did to achieve dominance (and more importantly how they went from doing nothing on the world stage to kicking absolute ass in a relatively short time period), to see if there are any commonalities or what have you.… Keep Reading

In Why the US Sucks at Olympic Lifting Part 2 I looked at some of the factors potentially to Kenyan dominance in distance running.  This included looking at some potential physiological issues that might give them an advantage, the issue of genetics (in a general sense) and then briefly looked at sociopolitical factors and finally their training (where I spent the most time). Shockingly, I was only half way through.

Today I will wrap up this discussion and look at a bunch of other relevant factors.  Again, I’m only spending this much time on this particular group once; the other groups I’m going to look at will get one part or less.  Mainly I’m going into such depth here to give you some idea of the complexity of this topic in terms of what is required for sports success.

I finished up on Wednesday by talking about Kenyan training and what it entails. … Keep Reading

In Why the US Sucks at Olympic Lifting: Part 1, I introduced the topic that I wanted to discuss and defined some end points that I was going to use in the discussion.  I also introduced the first group/sport I wanted to talk about which was Kenyan distance runners.  If you want the details, read Part 1.  For now just accept that starting in about 1970, Kenyans rose from total anonymity to what amounts to simple overwhelming and absolute dominance in the men’s distance events.

And a question that has been posited since they started winning is why this is the case.   And the answer is not simple.  Demonstrating that, to look at this in the detail I want, it’s going to take me today and Friday to cover factors ranging from physiology, sociology, economics, incentives, and who knows what else.   This should give you some idea of what I’m going to try to address in this series as a whole to answer the original question.… Keep Reading