Are champions born or made?

How big a factor is economic well-being then? It’s a mixed bag really. In some cases, quite significant, especially to sports such as tennis, golf and swimming, but not quite so with cricket and football. Federer, for instance, comes from an upscale background; his father was an executive with a multinational pharma company which enabled not only access to facilities, but also expenses for coaching, etc. Ditto with Phelps in swimming and Woods in golf. But Bradman’s background was modestly rural middle class, while Tendulkar’s was modestly urban middle class. Ali, in contrast, was the son of a poor (in the American context) signboard painter from Louisville, while Maradona was even more underprivileged—he was the son of a bricklayer and came from the slums of Villa Fiorito outside Buenos Aires, Argentina.