What does it take to grab gold?

Being enthusiastic about your sport sometimes isn't enough to reach Olympic calibre - the best of the best often have unique characteristics that help them excel

What is it that makes a good athlete great? Is it the 10,000 hours of training experts say is needed to make it to the top? Or are elite athletes genetically destined to excel?

Here are some of the leading experts in their fields weighing in on what it takes to become an Olympian.

Swimming
Look no farther than Michael Phelps - who has won eight gold medals at the Beijing Olympics - when envisioning the perfect swimmer's body.

"Long levers help," said Peter Carpenter, head coach of the Pointe Claire Swim Club and age-group coach of Canadian Olympian Tobias Oriwol.

But it's not just long arms that help swimmers power their way to the end of the pool. Big hands catch and pull a lot of water, and big feet and flexible ankles and knees add whip-like power to the kick. Also on the checklist of physical attributes are narrow hips and a small curvature of the lower spine (no J. Lo butts), which assist in streamlining a swimmer's long torso.

Most swimmers start young. The best age is about 7, Carpenter says, as it takes years to learn the technical side of the sport. Swimmers must learn four strokes, each of which includes movement patterns that exist only in an aquatic environment.

"The complexity of the technical skills to be mastered can't be underestimated," Carpenter said.

And then, of course, there is the work ethic. It takes a special person to spend four hours a day, every day, staring at a black line while swimming up and down a pool. And if you start at the age of 7, which most of the best swimmers do, and continue well into your 20s (or 40s, if you are American Dara Torres), suffice it to say that you've gotta love getting wet if you hope to reap success.

Rowing
Rowing is one of the rare sports that doesn't demand an early start. Many of the world's greatest picked up an oar for the first time in university. That doesn't mean you can put down the remote, hop in a boat and become successful: Most rowers started out as good athletes before transferring their strength and stamina to the boat.

Fortunately, it doesn't take decades to learn how to move an oar through the water. So while there is a technical side to the sport, once you master it, all you have to do is repeat it over and over again at increasingly high speeds.

It helps if you have some height to work with. A male heavyweight rower typically tops 6 feet by two or three inches, and a female heavyweight hovers around the 6-foot mark.

"If you're shorter, you must be very gifted," said Jennifer Parfitt, domestic development officer at Rowing Canada.

The other important factor for rowers is the ability to go

all-out for six gruelling minutes. While that may not seem like a long time, the effort needed is so intense that it's not unusual to throw up over the side of the boat after a tough race.

It's that physical and mental toughness, combined with height, that distinguishes the top rowers from those who don't make the cut.

Beach volleyball
Beach volleyball players need top-notch overall skills to make it in the sand. Compared to players of the indoor game, who are in teams of specialists, beach volleyball players have to do it all - receive a serve, block, hit and set. They also have to cover a lot of court, which means they need agility, superior fitness and quick reaction time.

Most players are tall; male blockers are well over the 6-foot mark and women measure close to 6 feet. Defenders can be shorter, but they need good jumping ability and a quick, agile body to compensate for their lesser height.

According to Brian Hiebert, Canada's beach volleyball high performance director, Canadian beach players are recruited from the indoor game and move to the beach at around 18 or 19 years of age. In California and Brazil, however, more and more players learn the game on the beach and stay there. That being said, the average age of the players in Beijing is 29 for women and 31 for men, making it a late-developers' sport that benefits from experience.

Marathon running
"Only one out of every 1,000 has the qualities to succeed at marathon running," said Guy Thibault, a researcher for Quebec's Department of Sport and Physical Activity and former coach of Quebec marathoner Jacqueline Gareau.

Those rare qualities include an impressive VO2 max (the maximum amount of oxygen one is able to consume), a slight physique and the capacity to run at a high intensity for an extended period of time.

Most of these physical attributes are born, not bred, but genetic gifts won't automatically place you at the front of the pack. Marathoners put in lots of miles, many of which are done at a quick pace, so the physical and mental capacity to endure maximum effort is a must.

The endurance gene shows itself at an early age, but the best time to start developing the attributes necessary to run marathons is 14 or 15. Even then, it's best to start with more middle-distance running (five or 10 km). Thibault says some of the best marathoners were former middle-distance athletes who translated their superior VO2 max into a competitive marathon distance of 42 km.

Source:http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/arts/story.html?id=1afdb1a6-fa3e-4639-ae15-66ce4e2bc370&p=1