ABSTRACT
Descriptions of genealogies or the tracing of family lines across the history of mankind are pervasive in many domains. This chapter reviews available twin and nuclear family data on sport participation, describes, as precisely as possible, what is meant by sport performance and/or elite athleticism, and explains available data on twins associated with sport performance/elite athleticism. It investigates family lines of outstanding athletes using historical data as well as a dataset from elite athletes of Colombian origin. The chapter addresses the issue of intensive deliberate practice and its links to superior performance, together with the idea of athletes’ exposome as well as genotype-by-exposome data on families of athletes. Olympic and international-level twin athletes fascinate sport scientists for they also have the potential to help unravel the influence of their similar genetic endowments and common home environments on how they arrived at the summit of their sports’ careers.
