Olympic legacy lives on in families

I am reminded of my days covering the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education, when the Association of Private Elementary School Principals once hosted a luncheon. Seated across from me was the head of a school notorious for its fiercely competitive admissions, and I decided to ask him a question.

“Private elementary schools select students by lottery, yet the grandchildren of conglomerate families and the children of famous entertainers all seem to attend the same schools. Is there some kind of back door?” The principal smiled before replying, “Some children are simply born with good luck in the draw. For them, being selected in an elementary school lottery hardly qualifies as luck.”

That kind of fortune is also required to stand on the stage of the Winter Olympics. First held in 1924 in Chamonix, France, the Winter Games reached their 25th edition at the 2026 Milan-Cortina d’Ampezzo Olympics. Over that span, a total of 32,151 athletes have competed in the Winter Olympics.

During those 102 years, an estimated 13 billion people have lived on Earth. By that measure, only about 0.0002 percent of the world’s population has ever appeared at the Winter Games.

Of the 2,916 athletes competing at the Milan-Cortina d’Ampezzo Olympics, at least 286, or 9.8 percent, have an Olympian within five degrees of blood relation. Inheriting what might be described as Olympic DNA increases the likelihood of reaching the Winter Olympics by roughly 49,000 times. Among those 286 athletes, 243, or 85.0 percent, are competing in the same sport as their Olympian relatives. In other words, certain families tend to excel repeatedly in skating, skiing or sliding sports.

That pattern was visible at this year’s opening ceremony, where Slovenia selected siblings Domen Prevc, 27, and Nika Prevc, 21, as its flag bearers. Both are competing in ski jumping. Their older brothers, Peter Prevc, 34, and Cene Prevc, 30, previously won a combined one gold, two silver and one bronze medal in Olympic ski jumping between the 2010 Vancouver Games and the 2022 Beijing Games.

Even if not at these Games, the likelihood that Domen and Nika Prevc will eventually win Olympic medals appears high. Previous research supports that conclusion. The French National Institute of Sport, Expertise and Performance analyzed 125,051 athletes who competed in the Summer and Winter Olympics from the 1896 Athens Games through the 2012 London Games. After examining family ties among the athletes, the institute published its findings under the title, “A medal in the Olympics runs in the family.”

According to the study, 20.4 percent of Olympic athletes won medals. That share rose to 43.4 percent when an athlete’s parent was an Olympic medalist, more than double the overall rate. When a sibling was a medalist, as in the case of Domen and Nika Prevc, the figure climbed to 64.8 percent. Among identical twins, who share the same genetic makeup, the likelihood that both twins won medals when one did reached 85.7 percent.

Most athletes push back against claims that their success stems from natural advantages. They argue that reaching the top requires relentless effort, and that crediting achievement to innate traits diminishes the work behind it. They are not wrong. Still, whether effort alone can carry an athlete as far without a favorable draw is a separate question. Even Ichiro Suzuki, 53, a Japanese hitting icon famed for his relentless practice, stands 180 centimeters tall, roughly nine centimeters above the average Japanese man of his age.