Business Exec wrote:
fisky wrote:A closer look at the top 25 women marathon times in history supports genetics as a primary factor in marathon performance.
Some women appear multiple times in the 25 best marathon times in history, so we have 18 women with the top 25 times. The nationality of those women are:
6 Kenyan
3 Ethiopian
3 Japanese
2 Chinese
1 Great Britain
1 USA
1 German
1 Russian
So, 9 of the top 18 women marathoners in the world have been East African.
Quoting the nationalities of the top 25 list says NOTHING about nature vs. nurture.
We can agree that there is something unique about East Africans and distance running success. They're 1.8% of the global population and have 50% of the top marathoners. So, to what do you attribute this success?
My premise is that it is a combination of factors, including but not limited to:
Environment (altitude, climate, local foods, etc.)
Culture (running as common activity for youth, running barefoot from youth, running on dirt, runners revered, low calorie diet since youth, etc)
Genetics (body type, muscle type, especially the unusual make up of fast twitch muscle fiber found in East Africans, torso to leg ratio, pain threshold, heat tolerance, etc.)
Other (financial, motivation, coaching, etc.)
I think we would agree it's a combination of all these factors that makes world class runners. I'd say that genetics are 25%-40% of this equation. It's possible to be a good runner without world class genetics, but it's not possible to be a world class runner without having great running genetics.