Are the children of high f liers born to be brilliant too?

by Dr Giles Yeo As Laura Trott jokes she and fiance Jason Kenny will pass on genes for cycling stardom...

MINUTES after her fiance Jason Kenny pedalled to his third gold medal at the Rio Olympics (and sixth gold in total), Laura Trott — herself a four-time Olympic champion — tweeted: ‘Arghhhh !!!!!! I love him to bits. Our kids have to get some of these genes right?!’

So what are the odds? Will their future offspring be sporting superstars or will they be on the sofa, cheering for British athletes with the rest of us?

Although it was just an off-the-cuff comment, Laura has good reason to be very hopeful. The chances of her and Jason’s combined genes producing a child who is not only very athletic, but a potential Olympian, are an awful lot higher than for the rest of us, however active we think we are.

Just as fast bowler Stuart Broad had a better chance of becoming a star cricketer because his father Chris batted for England; and British middleweight boxing champion Chris Eubank Jr was more likely to become a top boxer than his friends at school; and Eilish McColgan, competing in the 5,000metres in the Games this week, should thank her Olympic medallist mother Liz for her athleticism; any Trott-Kenny offspring will have a huge head start.

It’s all down to a combination of genes, environmental factors, beneficial parental behaviour and plain luck.

Genes first. We all have two copies of every gene, one from mum and one from dad. While many single genes — such as those that control hair colour, baldness and ability to tan — have been identified and can be tracked scientifically, many more have not.

At least 100 genes play a role in determining our body weight and shape, but becoming an Olympic cyclist is a far more complex trait. Between 300 and 400 genes, affecting everything from muscles to aerobic capacity, competitiveness, explosive power and endurance, contribute to cycling proficiency. With so many genes involved, it is impossible to make exact predictions about how talented the Trott-Kenny progeny will be.

However, for this pair the muscle genes will be particularly interesting.

While Jason Kenny is a sprinter and has the Usain Bolt-type ‘fast twitch muscle’ genes that power a sprinter (these muscles contract faster, aiding rapid movement), Laura is an endurance athlete, competing in pursuit races and other competitions over longer distances. Her ‘slow twitch muscle’ genes have blessed her with muscles suited to working for a long time without tiring as quickly as those of other people.

Aerobic capacity genes, which influence general fitness and heart rate, are also vital — as are the genes that govern our pain threshold: clearly Trott and Kenny have a higher threshold even than other top athletes, which gives them the ability to operate at the limit of their physical capabilities for longer.

THERE will also be genes that affect the couple’s competitive natures (both Jason and Laura are incredibly focused), calmness under pressure and ‘trainability’ — ie, the ability to respond well to coaching.

As there is no single cycling gene, we cannot calculate the chances of the couple producing an Olympian in terms of solid percentages. But we can have a good guess.

For body weight and shape, 50-70 per cent is thought to be down to genes, while the rest is dictated by environment. With height, it is closer to 80 per cent. For muscle strength and ‘fast twitch’ muscles, it will probably be the same again.

Laura and Jason will pass on some amazing genes — but if they have more than one child, we cannot predict who will inherit what. Maybe one child will inherit their father’s fast-twitch genes, calmness and ability to cook. Another might get their mother’s stamina genes and gregarious nature. Maybe they will get a mix of both and pursue a different sport. Just as important as genes are environmental factors: in other words, how a youngster’s mindset is shaped by their surroundings. And here, again, the Trott-Kenny children could be streets ahead of their peers.

They will grow up in a highly competitive environment — even if their parents keep their gold medals in the bottom of a sock drawer (as apparently they do) rather than displaying them around the house.

The children are likely be heavily involved in sports in their daily lives. This is, after all, a couple who go cycling in the rain on their days off. That passion will rub off on the children.

Just look, for example, at the England rugby stars Owen Farrell and George Ford.

Both of them have fathers who are hard men, professional rugby coaches who played rugby league for Britain. Those lads would have grown up in households where rugby was an obsession, and where their role models were dads who never took a step back on or off the pitch.

They are perfect examples of how a particular upbringing — as well as the physiological advantages that Farrell and Ford inherited — can play a part in forging top sports stars.

Similarly, the type of food that such children eat is going to be better than most. Two Olympians such as Trott and Kenny, with nutritional advisers coming out of their ears, are not going to feed their children junk.

Of course, in the unlikely event that Laura and Jason suddenly thought, ‘right, we’ve got all our medals, we’re going to ditch our bikes, put our feet up, watch telly and eat takeaways from now on’, it would be more difficult for their children to become Olympians. But not impossible.

Genes and upbringing aside, the wider cycling environment in this country also has an impact.

Although Chris Boardman won gold in 1992, 20 years ago in Atlanta, we didn’t have any Olympic cycling champions. Boardman won a solitary bronze and he was perhaps our only cycling role model.

BUT then Sir David Brailsford, the then British cycling boss, came along and put a whole structure of excellence in place. Soon there was investment in the sport, the facilities, the coaching staff, the framework, the structure. That is an extremely powerful environmental impact.

But however helpful or unhelpful your environment, you need the right genes to flourish. And that is why, across all areas of life, we see examples of dazzling genes passing down through generations. So musical parents often breed musical children, and good looks pass from parents to child.

The question is how the child handles the genes they have been given. They can either ignore them, or use them as building blocks for a stellar career.

While Mozart’s father and sister were very, very good musicians, neither was a genius like Mozart. Conversely, many incredibly talented parents have children who do not meet their expectations.

To use the hand of poker analogy: you can have a good hand or a bad hand in terms of genes, and you can only blame your folks for that. But you can still win with a bad hand and still lose with a good one, depending on how you play the game.

So nothing is certain. There will come a day, probably in the next 20 years, when we will understand in detail how our genes make us fat or thin, or fast or slow, or govern how we look, perform or behave.

Of course, whether we want our genes to be put under intense scrutiny by doctors or insurance companies is another story.

For now, though, it’s safe to say that if Jason Kenny and Laura Trott have children, they will have such a genetic and environmental head start that you wouldn’t want your children lining up against them on sports day.