Originally Posted by
calimtb
Cycling doesn't get the most gifted athletes. That's not to say they aren't gifted, however.
The best athletes gravitate towards sports which offer the most rewards: both material and symbolic. In the US, those would be football, basketball and baseball.
Cycling is a sport for averaged sized men: typically around average height with a wiry build. Most of the pro's are based in europe anyway, so we're talking apples and oranges here.
For the most part, I don't see athletes that play basketball or football being the type that would do well at cycling, due to the sizes of the average participant.
On the other hand, I could see someone that was cut from the HS football or basketball team being pretty good at cycling. As the reason why they could have been cut, could have just been that they were not beefy and/or tall enough to play those sports at the HS level and above. Someone 5'7" and 125# or so would be too small to play HS football or basketball, but that lack of size would help them in cycling.
Now, for track, tennis, baseball, and wrestling the smaller size would not be as much of a disadvantage, as those sports are either more skilled based, or have weight classes. And quickness is more important than sheer speed. Now, we'd have to look at muscle groups to tell how much overlap those sports have with cycling.
GH