ABSTRACT
Sporting performance is a complex phenotype, and it is acknowledged that to become an elite athlete, a synergy of physiological, behavioral, and other environmental factors is required. It is nevertheless widely accepted that there will be many genes involved in sporting performance. To date, over 200 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs; i.e., variation in a genetic sequence of a single nucleotide, which can be found in at least one per cent of the population) and quantitative trait loci associated with some performance- and fitness-related traits have been reported in the literature and were summarized on a yearly basis until 2009 in “The Human Gene Map for Performance and Health-Related Fitness Phenotypes” (Bray et al., 2009). The large increase in genetic studies and limited resources from the few dedicated teams able to manage these continuously expanded data entries have resulted in the publication of only the most important findings each year since 2010 in “Advances in Exercise, Fitness, and Performance Genomics” (Pérusse et al., 2013). In a review of 133 studies involving athletic cohorts published during the period 1997–2012, 59 genetic markers were reported to be associated with endurance performance, 20 with power/strength-related performance, whereas 25 per cent of these markers were positively associated with performance in at least two studies (Ahmetov & Fedotovskaya, 2012).
