It's always tempting to watch the Olympics and wonder: Could I have been good at [obscure sport]?
The answer is almost always no — probably because most of us don’t have the work ethic, perseverance, and athleticism. But there's one other thing that really matters for most sports: your height.
We’re not just talking about basketball or volleyball, where height gives you an obvious advantage. We’re talking about sports like sprinting, where it’s unclear how being a certain height can help. But once you start looking at the best athletes, you start to see a trend.
What you find out is, for example, that marathon runners tend to be shorter — because being lighter is a huge advantage. Meanwhile, being around 6 feet as a weightlifter is ideal because it helps you get under the weight, while having a tall enough frame for a lot of muscle.
It's a lesson I learned in another life, as a hockey writer, when all my data crunching helped me realize that almost all successful hockey pros were about 6-foot-1, give or take a few inches.
