Rustam Muhamedov of Uzbekistan’s Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry has announced that his country will begin genetic testing of children to determine their athletic potential. It’s something that could potentially work at some point in the future, but it presently seems a pipe dream. In an article by Ron Synovitz and Zamira Eshanova in the Atlantic, SI’s David Epstein casts doubt on the project:

“David Epstein, a sports science journalist and author of the best-selling book The Sports Gene, explains that genes are important in terms of athletic achievement and development. But he doubts Muhamedov’s claims that genetic tests can accurately identify future world-champion athletes.

‘Actually, it doesn’t make much sense to do it at the genetic level at this point. What they are trying to do is learn about someone’s physiology. If you want to learn about someone’s physiology, you should test their physiology instead of the genes,’ Epstein says.

‘We have no clue what most genes do. So if you make a decision based on a small number of genes, which presumably is what is going to happen, you’re sort of trying to decide what a puzzle looks like when you’ve only got one of the pieces, or two of the pieces, and you don’t have the other hundred or thousand pieces,’ he adds.”