You guys all raise some good points, but........
Your arguments do nothing to diminish my feeling that ON THE AVERAGE an East African person is a more naturaly talented distance runners than someone from another part of the world.
OK, not EVERY East African is brilliant natural runner, and that seems to be your(and Antonio's, in his last few posts) main point. WHO EVER SAID THAT????? What I, and others like Racer1are saying is:
RANDOMLY take 1000 East Africans from Ethiopian and Kenya, equally selecting randomly from different tribes and regions, and then RANDOMLY select 1000 US white children of European descent equally taking from different states or from different specific Euro backgrounds, take them from their parents, bring them to the same mega-orpanage, and train ALL 2000 runners the same way (hell, let Alberto or Renato do it) and I GURANTEE you that the 95% of the top 20 from that group will be East African. Now of course this experiement will never be done, but I'd bet my life on it turning out the way I predict. Let them live and be trained the EXACT same way, with the same motivations, and you will see the CREAM, ie the TALENT, rise to the top. It always does. And the most talented on the average are East African.
And sure, maybe it is true that the majority of Kenya's and Ethiopia's best runners come from certain tribes (like the Kalenjin in Kenya). So???? That just even MORE emphasizes my point that genetics play the biggest role in determining who will become the greatest runners in the world. Because of genetics, most likely the superstars of distance running will be East African, and because of genetics, most likely they will come from tribe X and tribe Y who live in region A and B of those countries. And it is likely that those particular tribes have existed at HIGH altitude for 100,000's of years. So it is still genetics, it is still talent, no matter how you slice and dice it.
The below is a really interesting, though a bit outdated(it does not recognize the rapid rise of the Ethiopians too much), article on this whole subject that I think has been pasted on LetsRun before. Apparently, many Africans and non-Africans alike believe that genes/natural ability play a HUGE role in running, and that the East Africans have the most people with superior distance running genes.
The whole article is here:
http://kenya.com/runners.html
I have selected a few excerpts:
"In 1990 physiologist Bengt Saltin, currently director of the Copenhagen Muscle Research Center, took part of the Swedish national track team to St. Patrick's Academy in Iten, Kenya to race the world's greatest high school track team. The local kids repeatedly trounced the champions of track-mad Sweden. Dr. Saltin estimates there are at least 500 schoolboys in the region who could beat Sweden's best man at 2,000 meters.
Based on the results achieved by the finest Kalenjin runners, Berkeley anthropologist Vincent Sarich, the co-founder of the field of genetic anthropology, statistically estimates that the average Kalenjin could outrun 90 percent of the rest of the human race."
I think it would be more like 95% of the human race, but I did say "AVERAGE" Kenyan, so this even includes the "slow ones".
"Why do Kenyans run so fast? One charming and popular suggestion is that Kenyan talent stems from their all having had to run to school. There are a few problems with this idea, however. Joe Sang, a Kenyan researcher, asked
20 international runners if they ran to school as kids and 14 said NO.'
So much for THAT theory.
Lastly:
"In the meantime, Manners' offers what he admits is purely anecdotal data supporting his thesis about the genetic aptitude of the Kalenjin. He has collected a dozen examples of ``Kalenjin men in their 20s who had never thought of themselves as runners at all until they wound up in circumstances that more or less obliged them to take up the sport." Typically, they had fooled American college track coaches, who assume all Kalenjin are great runners, into giving them scholarships. Once they arrived at their American schools, however, these nonrunners had to make the track team or be sent packing. Manners contends, "In each case, what happened when they started training is quite remarkable."
One young Kalenjin student named Paul Rotich, however, had never even intended to masquerade as a runner. His father was too prosperous for him to bother. And at 5'-8" and 190 pounds, the 22 year old was too heavy to pretend. Unfortunately, in his first year at a Texas junior college, Rotich blew the money his father had given him to see him through two years. To avoid returning in disgrace, he decided to get a track scholarship.
Manners recounts, "He began training -- running at night because he was embarrassed to be seen lumbering around the track." Somehow, he made the cross-country team that fall. He improved so fast that he won a scholarship to a four year college. There, Manners concludes, "He earned All-American honors ten times in cross-country and various track events. When he went back to Kenya and told his cousin what he had done, the cousin replied, 'So, it is true. If you can run, any Kalenjin can run.' "
Amen. And there are other tribes in Kenya and Ethiopia that also produce such stunning results. Do you think it is a COINCIDENCE that Meb is from East Africa? Or that former two-time Footlocker X-C champ Abdirizak Mohmmaned is from East Africa? Or Abdi A.? None of these guys ran in their East African homelands competively, but ALL came here , started training, and then began to dominate in the US. And THEY are not even from the hotbed tribes/nations we are talking about here.....but they ARE from East Africa.
Genes people, genes people. Here is another quote from another article I found:
"While there are the usual nature vs. nurture arguments over why African runners win so much, there is no possibility that culture alone can account for how much West African and East African runners differ in power vs. endurance. "
And I would add: culture can also not account for the way these two different sides of Africa DOMINATE their respective specialities (sprints and distance runs). This is as obvious as it can get.
One more quote:
"None of this conforms to American obsessions about race. First, we dread empirical studies of human biodiversity, worrying that they will uncover the intolerable reality of racial supremacy. Is this fear realistic? Consider merely running: are West Africans generally better runners than whites? In sprints, absolutely. In distance races, absolutely not. Overall racial supremacy is nonsense; specific ethnic superiorities are a manifold reality. "
But they ARE a reality. AND.......there are ALWAYS exceptions to every rule. Hello Jeremy Warniner, and hopefully(to the same extent), hello Dathan Ritzenhein.
I think the discussion can end there.