Yup Steve and John,

so when we consistently read about how all the winners are talented in media, you agree? (provoking a bit now..)


I dont deny that some sailors have a marked innate ability that make them fast. But not _all_ of the top sailors? I also believe that it must be possible to quantify exactly what they do and learn the same skill. There are limits to this of course, not everybody has the timing, reflexes and killer instinct to be a good boxer, let alone the motivation. But as I said earlier, I am a bit surprised over the lack of belief we sailors have in our own potential.

I dont believe we will bring this thread much further (and it has been excellent), but one small example. Norway is a country with a pop. of 4.6mill. Yet we have almost always ranked up there with the large countries in the winter olympics. The former USSR had a much larger gene pool to choose talent from, and used the means necessary to bring forth winners. Still Norway was able to bring medals, and lots of them, home, especially for cross country skiing, skating and other endurance events. As the gene pool is so much smaller in Norway, talent should be harder to find. After one disasterous event where we brought home just a bronze from the winter olympics, the goverment funded a centre for training and research to bring forth future top-athletes. Research done here proved that what counted the most was exercise, and the right type of exercise. Working professionally with your sport is what they say is the key to becoming a top athlete. So far, they are not so hung up in talent, but what kind of attitude coming athletes have to their sport. If you are willing to go trough the effort, you can become a winner.
Here is the medal statistics for the games in Athen:
http://www.abc.net.au/olympics/2004/results/medaltally.htm
And here is the total medal tally for all winter games:
http://www.darmoni.net/hivertot.htm

I dont think the gene pool in Norway is so good, and we certainly dont fund our athletes so well that you can live from it. Instead I believe that we have found a method and philosophy that bring forth winners if the athlete is willing to go trough with the effort and sacrifices.
(Norway won the gold in the Europe class dinghy, and placed fourth in 49ers. Yngling and Mistral did miserably, but looking on how many potential athletes we had in those classes in the 4 years before the Athen games, it was a very good result).