"What we are watching when we watch élite sports, then, is a contest among wildly disparate groups of people..."

"... who approach the starting line with an uneven set of genetic endowments and natural advantages," writes Malcolm Gladwell in The New Yorker, which is so elite it puts an accent on the "e" in "elite." But don't let that stop you from reading this! It shifts from talking about the legs of Kenyan runners — who are genetically adapted to a particular environment and have thus lucked into an advantage — and the drug users in baseball and bicycling. That's some sleight of hand.