Latin America’s Under-Performance

Tyler Cowen is generously soliciting questions: here’s mine, asked knowing that Tyler is keen on South America and capable of answering almost anything…

Why do Latin American countries perform so poorly at the Olympic Games?

The Republics of the Caucasus and Central Asia win medals in sports such as wrestling and weight-lifting, West Africa has produced sprinters while East Africans dominate distance running. So it can’t just be poverty, right?

Is Latin America’s comparative failure explained by a combination of poverty and physiological factors? That is to say, do Latin American countries with high Indian populations suffer from an in-built disadvantage? If so, does this help explain why Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, three countries with greater European and, in the case of Brazil, African immigration are also the dominant (historically and currently) soccer powers on the continent?

But then you might also think Argentina and Brazil would do better in the Olympics than they do, wouldn’t you? Argentina waited decades before winning golds in basketball and soccer in Athens.