There is a common belief that to be successful in sport, you need to eat meat and drink milk. Many think that vegans will not have the strength or endurance to beat carnivores. These beliefs are false and are based on a lack of knowledge.

The ‘proof’ that is sometimes offered is that hardly any vegans are at the top of sports endeavors. This is flawed logic that could only be applied if there were an equal number of vegans and carnivores.

There are very few vegans in the world. To become the best in any sport, you need the dedication and focus to reach the top when there are so many distractions that could stop you. Not many people have that dedication. You need the right genes to have an advantage over your competitors. Very few have the right genes that can make them champions.

If there is only, say, 1 person in 400 who is vegan, what are the chances that that person is the one with the ruthless dedication and the right genes for the sport that interests them? What is the possibility that they have had the right encouragement or influences when they are young that will lead them to that sport? It would be much safer to bet that a carnivore would have those things because there are 399 carnivores and only 1 vegan. We would have to put all our hopes on that 1 vegan to emerge with everything it takes to be a champion. Your money would be much safer by betting that one of the 399 meat eaters would have what it takes. It’s a numbers game – double the number of vegans and you’ll double the number of vegan champions.

In the UK there are supposed to be around 250,000 vegans out of a population of 60 million. That’s about 1 person in 240. Some will have been vegan for just a few months. Some will go back to being carnivores or lacto-ovo vegetarians. There is an even lower percentage of vegans in some other countries. My estimate is that long-term vegans are more likely to be less than 1 in 400 or even 1 in 500. If you have a group of 400, how many will have the genes to become champions? Very few. How many of those few will have the determination? Very few. How many of the few (of the few) will be vegan? Probably not even one. Those people are more likely to be carnivores. But vegans still manage to become champions against all those odds. It’s strange, isn’t it that the still common perception of vegans is that of skinny, weak and sick people?

There are some vegan champions out there, but why aren’t there more if it’s such a healthy lifestyle? There are very few vegan champions because there are very few vegans. How many red-haired left-handed athletes named Alphonse are champions? None at all. Not because someone like that is incapable of succeeding in sport, but because there are so few of them.

Most elite athletes are determined to pursue excellence. They won’t let anything get in their way. They are willing to give up family life, friendships, and free time to focus on training. They are willing to risk their health, as can be seen from the number of people who are willing to take dangerous performance-enhancing drugs. They are willing to overtrain to such an extent that their immune system weakens. They do not care at all about the possibility of suffering from arthritis in later years as a result of punishing their bodies in training and competition.

Winning is everything to them. They are like fanatics. And, like fans, nothing else matters as much as the object of your desire. Compassion for farm animals is of little importance to them in comparison. Thus, this fanaticism will prevent many individuals who could have become vegan from doing so because from a very young age, like all of us, they have been indoctrinated with the lie that meat and milk are necessary for good health. This lie reduces the number of athletes and sportsmen who could become vegan and who could achieve glory in sports. Being a champion is more important to them than being vegan. The few vegan champions are those who don’t believe lies about meat or those who put compassion first.

There are quite a few vegan athletes who regularly beat up carnivores. I will only mention a few as representatives of the world of vegan sports.

Mac Danzig won his King of the Cage fighting title as a vegan. You have to be tough to survive in that kind of competition and yet he thrived and thrived.

Carl Lewis has said that his best performances on the running track came when he was on a vegan diet.

Scott Jurek is the multiple 100-mile race winner and two-time winner of the Badwater Ultra marathon, which is run over a 135-mile course. The race begins in Death Valley, 280 feet below sea level, and ends at Mount Whitney Portal, which is 8,360 feet above sea level. That’s a 135-mile course over three mountain ranges with a cumulative ascent of 13,000 feet and a cumulative descent of 4,700 feet. You have to be tough just to think about doing it.

Brendan Brazier is a vegan and professional Ironman triathlete, a two-time winner of the Canadian Ultra Marathon Championship.

Therefore, it is possible for vegans to be world champions in both sprinting and endurance events. But what about strength sports? Can Vegans Be Strong? Or can they be the best bodybuilders? Can they build formidable strength or massive muscle mass?

The answer is (you guessed it): ‘yes!’

There are many very strong vegans who train with weights. There are quite a few awesome bodybuilders who have bulked up on vegan diets.

But where are all the vegan Olympic weightlifting champions and world weightlifting record holders? Where is the vegan who has won the title of World’s Strongest Man?

Give it time. As I said earlier, there are not enough vegans from whose ranks these people can emerge. It will happen. It is happening.

However, there are two vegan strength champions that come to mind. Both women. Pat Reeves: She is a world-class weightlifter. Many times the British weightlifting champion. And Jane Black is an Olympic weightlifter who has set records in teacher lifting events.

And the men? Perhaps too many male strength athletes are concerned about not getting enough of their regular slaughterhouse products. Again, give it time for the truth to catch up with them. There are a lot of vegans in training, as you can see on the vegan fitness and bodybuilding forums. Wait until they start to be more successful and then the shy carnivores will see that they have nothing to fear in giving up the meat and milk that their mummies told them they had to eat to grow big and strong. They will realize that real men do not need to eat meat.

What about vegan bodybuilders? Until a very few years ago there were no special supplements for vegan bodybuilders. Carnivores had a choice, but vegans had no other choice because there was nothing to choose from. Very few bodybuilders rely only on normal food. They take supplements in the form of powders and pills. And many (most professionals?) Use dangerous and illegal drugs. Many of them have muscles that are partly a product of the chemistry lab. Anyone who could build huge muscles on a meat-based diet could do so on a vegan diet.

Not everyone can build the winning muscles of a competition. Again, the vegan who does it must have the correct genes. And time and dedication. It must be that rare individual who has all the right attributes. There is not much chance that there are many vegans who are like this. Someone from the vast majority of meat eaters is more likely to have what it takes. You are more likely to find an elite athlete or Nobel laureate in Scotland than on the Isle of Man. Not because the Scots are inherently superior to the people of the Isle of Man. But because there are more of them.

Don’t believe the lies of the vested interests of the meat and dairy industries. They have invested heavily in cruelty and need to keep people convinced that the killing and abuse of their victims is necessary for the continued health of human beings.

Instead, believe in the many healthy, strong and fit vegans who test daily how healthy the vegan diet is. There is nothing that humans need that cannot be obtained from a well-balanced vegan diet. A vegan diet is suitable for humans of all ages, as recognized by the American Dietetic Association and Dietitians of Canada.