SA sport hopefuls ‘must get a grip’
WAYDE van Niekerk and Caster Semenya were pure gold in Rio last year, but until we stop being a nation of weaklings we’re destined for everlasting Olympic mediocrity.
That’s the warning from health researchers who say South Africa is the second-weakest of 21 nations tested — and they have discovered a direct link between a population’s strength and its Olympic medal tally.
Only Pakistanis have weaker muscles than South Africans when hand grip is used as a measure of strength, according to data studied by scientists in Canada and the UK.
Van Niekerk, with his world record-shattering 400m run, and Semenya, who won the 800m gold six days later last August, were among only 10 South African medal winners in Rio.
In the previous four Olympics — in London, Beijing, Athens and Sydney — we won only 18 medals, for a fivegames tally of 28.
The two strongest nations in the scientists’ study — Sweden and Poland — won 43 and 55 medals respectively, even though their populations are significantly smaller than South Africa’s.
Pakistan, where the average grip strength is half that in Sweden and Poland, has won no Olympic medals despite having a population of more than 190 million.
“There was a significant positive association between national population grip strength and medal tally that persisted after adjustment for sex, age, height, average daily caloric intake and GDP,” said the scientists, writing in the journal PLOS One. They admitted that many other factors contributed to Olympic success, including sending more athletes, spending more on health, social development, and even culture and politics.
But grip strength had been found to “act as a proxy for a range of other physiological characteristics”.
They added: “Our analysis raises a fascinating hypothesis that a large part of a nation’s success at a summer Olympic Games is determined by the strength of its entire population, and that the representative athlete is a reflection of this population characteristic.”
The findings should not detract from the feats of individual athletes such as Van Niekerk, Semenya, and South Africa’s other Rio medallists — Cameron van der Burgh and Chad le Clos (swimming), Lawrence Brittain MUSCLE POWER: Wayde van Niekerk, left, setting a world record in the men’s 400m final in Rio and, above, Caster Semenya after winning gold in the women’s 800m final and Shaun Keeling (rowing), Luvo Manyonga (long jump), Sunette Viljoen (javelin), Henri Schoeman (triathlon) and the Sevens rugby team.
“These athletes are, nonetheless, born into a socioeconomic and cultural context, with its associated dietary and environmental exposures,” they said.
“Prior to embarking on the training and diet specific to their calling as athletes, they would have been influenced by the food and physical activity environments, as well as healthcare, of their society.
“Hence, we speculate that favourable environments promote higher population muscle strength.”
Aside from sporting success, the scientists said, there was a “compelling public health rationale” for increasing a population’s muscle strength.
“Low grip strength is robustly associated with an increased risk of death, cardiovascular disease and vulnerability to death in the context of developing a major illness.”
Ross Tucker, professor of exercise physiology at the University of the Free State, said other studies had found links between early life — and even life in the womb — and sporting success.
“It’s so interesting that quite a simple test such as grip strength has an influence on such a wide range of events,” he said.
But he warned that coaches could not expect to identify a future sports star based purely on hand grip strength. “These predictive tests tend to work in general but very rarely specifically,” he said.
The study was based on data gathered in the 21-nation Prospective Urban Rural Epidemiology study, which has 152 610 participants.
Only Pakistanis have weaker muscles than South Africans when hand grip is used as a measure