Are people born or trained to be athletes?

Kenyan Stanley Biwott
Kenyan Stanley Biwott runs before winning the 36th Paris Marathon on April 15, 2012 on the Champs-Elysee in Paris.
BERTRAND LANGLOIS/AFP/Getty Images

On The Daily Circuit Monday, we'll air the first of the BBC's four-part series focusing on the rise and fall of elite athletes. In this episode, Claudia Hammond travels first to Kenya in search of young runners who are poised to become champions. Hammond also travels to Britain to learn about world-champion divers whose talents were identified and developed from a very young age. While examining these very young champions, Hammond asks, are young athletes born or are they made?

Timothy Caulfield, professor at the University of Alberta, will also join The Daily Circuit Monday to discuss a recent study which claims that exercise can be dangerous for some otherwise healthy individuals. What is this study telling us and how should the public interpret medical results?

More from The New York Times:

By analyzing data from six rigorous exercise studies involving 1,687 people, the group found that about 10 percent actually got worse on at least one of the measures related to heart disease: blood pressure and levels of insulin, HDL cholesterol or triglycerides. About 7 percent got worse on at least two measures. And the researchers say they do not know why.

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