PURPOSE: To determine whether cardiovascular fitness (.)VO(2max) is associated with the metabolic syndrome and its individual features in overweight Latino youths. METHODS: A total of 163 overweight Latino boys and girls (body mass index (BMI) percentile = 97.0 +/- 3.1; age = 11.2 +/- 1.7 yr) with a family history of Type 2 diabetes participated in this investigation. The metabolic syndrome was defined as having three or more of the following risk factors: abdominal obesity, high blood pressure, low HDL-cholesterol, high triglycerides, and impaired glucose tolerance. (.)VO(2max) was determined by a progressive treadmill test to exhaustion, and body composition was assessed using dual energy x-ray absorptiometry. RESULTS: (.)VO(2max) was not correlated with any individual risk factor of the metabolic syndrome after adjusting for gender, age, and body composition in partial analysis. Furthermore, ANCOVA revealed that children with zero, one, two, or three or more risk factors did not differ in regards to fitness levels. CONCLUSION: (.)VO(2max) is not independently associated with the metabolic syndrome or any individual feature in overweight youths of Latino ethnicity after controlling for differences in confounding variables.