Renato weighed in on this in the 'Can Causasian's Compete?' thread:
http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=4387428
"
1) In the long distances the Aerobic Level is fundamental, and it's not possible to replace it with any other type of training (exercises, fast intervals, etc..). Since the first effect of training in altitude is to increase the Aerobic Power, athletes living in altitude have clear advantages compared with athletes living at sea level.
2) In short distances, the effect of altitude is not very important, and in any case we can have some advantage during the fundamental period only, not during the specific period. The top runners of 1500/Mile, for example, used very fast tests with very short recovery, in order to stress their lactic system (English type of training used by Coe, Ovett, Cram, Peter Elliot), and this is a type of training normally dangerous in altitude, for the lack of oxygen that can't allow athletes to recover quickly lactic tests very fast. Also the athletes of Maghreb (Aouita, Morceli, El Guerrouj, Ramzi) used the same type of training, different from what Kenyans use to do.
3) Using a high speed, athletes need to have more muscular consistancy, in order to develop speed. European, American, North African athletes have a structure more powerful (under muscular side) than the average of Central and Eastern Africans. Of course, there are ecceptions, like Masai (Rudisha, Billy and Patrick Konchellah, Gregory Konchellah alias Yusuf Kamel), but percentually white runners are more talented for high speed than Kenyans.
4) Therefore, there are no indications that in 800/1500m white runners can't be as competitive as Central African runners. We can have Olympic Champions as Borzakovskiy (Russia) or Rodhal (Norway) or Schumann (Germany) and World Champions like Bucher (Switzerland), and in 1500m athletes like El Guerrouj, Morceli, Cram, Coe, Ovett and a lot of other athletes from Spain (Cacho, Diaz, Abascal, Gonzalez, Eastevez), Portugal (Rui Silva), France (Baala), Germany (Wessinghage, Hudak), Italy (Di Napoli), Switzerland (Deleze) and others.
5) Instead, it's really difficult to think that white runners can be totally competitive in long distances.
However, the current Galen Rupp, or Portugueses of the past (Mamede, Lopes) or the top Italians (Antibo, Cova, Mei, Panetta) or Baumann (Germany) could be competitive for a medal still today. The problem is another : while in 800m white runners are able to continue to run fast like in the past, in 1500m not so much but in any case near the past, in long distances we are very far from the performances of the past. So, the fact is we are no more able to produce top runners because we are no more able to recruit the most talented runners. So, it's useless to speak about "theory" when the real problem is the social difference between Western Countries and that part of Africa still interested in running.
The dominance of African is due to their talent, but also to the fact white athletes disappeared. And the solution is not to look at Africa too much, but to look at our young generation, creating again interest in running and organising a different type of life.
"