Ventilatory responsiveness to hypoxia (HVR) has been reported to be different between highly trained endurance athletes and healthy sedentary controls. However, a linkage between aerobic capacity and HVR has not been a universal finding. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between HVR and maximal oxygen consumption (VO_2MAX) in a large sample of healthy males with a wide range of aerobic capacities. Subjects performed a HVR test followed by an incremental cycle test to exhaustion. Participants were classified according to their maximal aerobic capacity. Those with a VO_2MAX 60 ml^.kg^-1.min^-1 were considered as highly trained (HT; n = 13), those who were 50-60 as moderately-trained (MT; n = 18), and those < 50 were considered untrained (UT; n = 24). No statistical differences were detected between the three groups for HVR (P > 0.05) and the HVR values was variable within each group (range: UT=0.28-1.61; MT=0.23-2.39; HT=0.08-1.73 L^.min^-1 SaO₂^-1). The relationship between HVR and VO_2max was not statistically significant (r = -0.1723; P > 0.05). The HVR was also unrelated to maximal minute ventilation and ventilatory equivalents for O₂ and CO₂. We found that a spectrum of hypoxic ventilatory control is present in well-trained endurance athletes and moderately and untrained men. We interpret these observations to mean that genetic or familial aspects are more important in determining hypoxic ventilatory control than physical conditioning per se.