In the slides 3 through 11 they are talking about the Winter Olympics, but specifically the woman's hockey game. This game is between Canada and The United States. The girls seem to be very athletic and are scrappy. The pictures keep alternating between the US celebrating and Canada celebrating. At the end of the game, team Canada came out with the victory.
Athletic skills are instinctive and automatic for high end athletes. These are the adjectives I chose because when you are playing sports you are not evening thinking about what you are doing. By that I mean, you are not telling your body to move, jump, flick your wrist, or turn your hips. Those actions are factors of muscle memory from all the work you have put in for your sport. When playing sports, you think about situations and try to predict which way the offense is going to go or what you need to do if you get the ball. A lot of sports are described as "read and react". This is especially true in football, with the read option (an offensive play), and in baseball, with reacting to what pitch is thrown.
For instance, when I step up to the plate I have no idea, well I should not have an idea, of what the pitcher is going to throw. (From playing baseball for some years now you pick up on pitchers or catchers who tip their pitches). When in the box, the pitcher can put various spins on the balls that causes the trajectory to change and the rotation of the ball. From the time the ball leaves his hand, I have to react with my hands to either swing, or let it fly by. It is instinctive and automatic to let a ball over my eyes just sail by or to take a hefty rip at a ball right down the pipe.
Practice can not make perfect. No one can achieve perfection. To achieve perfection would mean that every time you attempt your sport, you never fail. Majority of the world does not even come close to perfection. In the four major sports (in the United States), hockey, football, basketball, and baseball, there are few athletes who even achieve 3/4 perfection. In baseball players would have to bat .750, ridiculous. No player has ever even batted .500 for a whole season. The closet player was Hugh Duffy for the Boston Braves who batted .440 in 1894. Also, a player would has the "athlete DNA", therefore is destined to be a great player does not fit in my vocabulary. Having a parent would use to play sports is helpful because they get hook-ups and they are always around the game, no doubt about that. The player them self has put forth a large amount of work. If you do not practice, you will have no chance of even touching a 70 mph fastball.
Too be good at any sport I believe you have to put forth a large amount of effort and practice. To say someone has the skill set to come into a sport and purely dominate is highly unlikely. In the instance of high jump, you need certain tactics to get over the bar better. Some may be more effective than others, but when it comes down to it, I believe that the Matthew effect is more correct. Therefore, I do think that the Matthew effect is true to some degree, but again, it is not the sole factor that goes into a professional athlete.
I think that athletes have better eyes to see because they have to have their "head on a swivel". In baseball particularly, the ball is moving so fast and the batter has to be able to react and decipher whether or not the pitch will be a strike or ball. Also, the fielders have to be able to track the ball from contact to their glove, then relocate the base they have to make a throw to, all before the runner reaches the base. As a catcher, the hardest play to make is a recovery on a wild pitch. You have to jump out of your crouch from attempting to block the ball, find the ball in the grass in front of the backstop, get to the ball and slide, grip the ball and make an accurate throw to the nail the runner. The video below shows how difficult this play is to make in baseball. The runner in fact is safe and is majority of the time especially at the Major League level due to the backstops being far back.
http://m.mlb.com/video/topic/6479266/v31362729/schuerholz-and-wren-share-memories-of-jim-freg
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