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Notes -
I'm not completely certain that's true. Actually I'd be shocked to learn that Olympic medalists averaged less than an IQ of 110 or thereabouts. Looking at the 2022 Winter Olympics, just to grab a quick example, some events were swept by Asians. Figure Skating, for example, was a near-total victory for Asians. The entire Men's singles podium were Asian, and the Team Event nearly so. Freestyle skiing also had a strong showing from China (three of six Golds medals), and South Korea did very well in Short Track Ski Racing. Similarly in the 2020 Summer Olympics, Japan and South Korea dominated the Archery events, China took silver in both Artistic Swimming events, every single podium in Badminton went to an Asian country, Japan took Gold in Baseball (to the embarrassment of my American chauvinism we only took Silver), and Japan and China took several medals in Boxing.
There’s a bit of a confounding factor on a lot of Olympic sports— which is that especially for those you mentioned, being able to compete requires a lot of training at very early ages. Winter sports have a second cost sink— the equipment and venues needed to train for these events is expensive. Thus for a lot of sports, your ability to even reach a level of competition where it would be worth training you to compete in the Olympics requires tens of thousands of dollars and years of very focus training. And thus if you’re not of reasonably successful stock, including intellectual ability, you won’t get the opportunity to try.
Boxing, running, basketball, soccer and other similar sports are light enough in equipment that it’s at least plausible that you could be from a working class family and be able to try.
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