The great brown hope??? I've been involved in an e-mail correspondence with another fellow South Asian on the lack of athletes from my ancestral region. He pointed out the pathetic medal count from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh in proportion to their population at the recent Asian Games. Is there a possible genetic factor in this? I'm an agnostic on this issue, though it wouldn't surprise me if there were. I do wonder if nutrition might be a problem. Look at these tables (courtesy of the World Bank), and the sheets sorted by low birth-weight and low weight for age in particular (you need MS Excel to view this). It is clear that South Asia gives Africa a run for its money in being the arm-pit of the world. In fact, though some African countries rival Bangladesh and to a lesser extent India in terms of malnutrition (Niger for instance), many like Zambia, Zimbabwe or Kenya come off as almost prosperous. This could be due to human biodiversity differences in that Africans are on average larger and heavier and so it seems as if they are healthier than they are when judged by a one-size fits all criteria. But nevertheless, the proportion of Indians that are well-fed multiplied by their raw numbers should be enough for them to medal more frequently than they do. What I find curious is how badly South Asians perform in comparison to East Asians, let alone their putative distant racial kin, Europeans. One could assert that cultural factors discourage high-status well-fed South Asians from putting as much of their time into sports as people of other nationalities. There might be something to this, and looking at South Asians in places like the UK might give some insight into this. The one sport where South Asians have made any impact is Cricket. Pakistan fields a good national team, and the captain of the British team was a Muslim of South Indian origins, Nasser Hussain. India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka have all won the World Cup in the past 25 years (1983,1991,1995). I looked at something called Wisden's Five Cricketer's of the Year, and a fair portion of recipients are South Asian (I quickly counted 22 out of the 160 winners, with a disproportionate share from Sri Lanka and Pakistan as opposed to India) [1]. I am curious as to the experiences of people from the British Isles. South Asians there exist as a larger community and have a critical mass in certain areas where racial patterns might show themselves on the secondary school level. [1] The greater success of Pakistan and Sri Lanka points to some cultural deficiency in India. Pakistan is dominated by Punjabis, but there are almost as many Punjabis in India, they just happen to be Sikh and Hindu instead of Muslim. Nasser Hussain is of Indian Tamil origin, but a Muslim! Does anyone know if Sri Lankan Buddhists are vegetarian? I have always wondered what effect vegetarianism might have had on the Indian upper castes, perhaps lack of athleticism might be one (the lower castes might eat meat, but they don't get enough to be very athletic).