THEY are the born winners. Scientists have identified the clear biological advantages that give the world’s sporting champions a head start in life before they have even begun their rigorous training programmes.

Medal-winning mutations range from the outsize lungs of Sir Matthew Pinsent, the four- times Olympic gold medal- winning oarsman, to the giant feet of Michael Phelps, the American swimming champion. Other stars sweat far less and have far bigger hearts than average.

Now researchers believe Britain’s 2012 Olympic champions could be just a doctor’s examination or shoe measurement away. Scientists working for official athletics bodies have begun to examine hundreds of teenagers to see if they have any of the genetic traits associated with a range of Olympic sports. Those that match up will be fast-tracked into rowing, gymnastics and swimming.

Doctors were surprised when they found that Pinsent had a lung capacity of 8½ litres, 2 litres more than his longtime rowing partner Sir Steve Redgrave. At more than twice the normal volume, it was thought to be the biggest lung capacity in Britain and a key factor in Pinsent’s pull to victory in Athens last year.

Now Josh West, a 6ft 10in former geochemistry student at Cambridge University, who took part in four Oxford and Cambridge boat races and is a British hopeful for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, has been measured with a lung capacity of 8.9 litres.

Peter Shakespeare, performance development manager for British rowing, said: “We are looking for people who have got something better than even Redgrave and Pinsent. We measure between the ages of 16 and 18 for height, arm span, endurance and strength.

“But only one in 10,000 people have the physiological aspects needed for rowing, swimming or cycling.

“Biology is now a huge factor in determining the destiny of an athlete. In the past some people have overcome lack of physical or biological advantage by sheer mental application, but that is getting less and less likely.”

Scientists say that in order to be dominant in a sport, an athlete now needs to possess at least one freak of nature.

While David Beckham’s bandy legs have often been partly credited with helping to put a spin on the ball when he takes a free kick for England, other biological abnormalities are more measurable.

Andy Roddick, the American tennis player with the fastest serve in the game, is able to arch his back so much that it increases the rotation of his arm to 130 degrees — 44% better than the average professional player — enabling him to drive the ball over the net at 155mph.

Phelps, the six-times Olympic swimming champion, has size 14 feet, which act like flippers to propel him through water. He is 6ft 4in tall but has arms that span 6ft 7in from fingertip to fingertip. “If you’re putting a human being together from science this is what you want,” said Rowdy Gaines, the winner of three Olympic swimming gold medals in 1984.

Phelps is also faster at processing lactic acid, the fluid which makes muscles ache, than any other known human.

After a race, most swimmers measure a lacticity of between 10 and 15 millimoles per litre of blood. Phelps’s count after breaking a world record last year was 5.6. Genadijus Sokolovas, the Team USA physiologist, has measured 5,000 international swimmers and failed to find another with a post-race lacticity count of less than 10.

The difference means that while most swimmers take half an hour to recover after a race, Phelps is ready to plunge back in after 10 minutes.

The biological abnormalities are not restricted to men. Mia Hamm, who was recognised as the best all-round woman footballer in the world after leading the US team to gold at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, produces less than one litre of sweat an hour when doing vigorous exercise, half the human average.

One of sport’s longest scientific studies has measured the decision speeds of leading racing drivers over the past two decades at Human Performance International’s laboratory in Charlotte, North Carolina.

While an average person takes 300 milliseconds to make a reactive decision, Liz Halliday, 26, a racing driver from Farnham, Surrey, can do it in about 260 milliseconds. It may not sound much quicker but at top race speeds this makes a difference of three car lengths. In 2003 she became the first woman to win a round of the British GT championship.

Halliday’s ambition is to be the first woman to win the Le Mans 24-hour race and to compete in equestrian eventing at the 2008 Olympics.

Scientists say medical evidence is playing an increasingly important role in the selection of athletes.

A study of the 40-year dominance of Kenyan runners in long-distance events by the International Centre for East African Running Science, based at Glasgow University, has revealed that 45% of them come from the Nandi tribe which only makes up 3% of the Kenyan population, suggesting a genetic predisposition for superior running performances.

Clyde Williams, professor of sports science at Loughborough University, which produced Sebastian Coe, a double Olympic gold medal winner, said anthropology was vital in finding future champions.

“We are looking at gymnasts,” Williams said. “If we do not identify those with the right biological factors they could fall short, quite literally.”

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