Dennis Kimetto - what are we Westerners still missing about Kenyan Marathoners?

Dude! wrote:

All humans evolved from from East Africa around 200,000 years ago. Eventually moving out to Europe, Asia...etc..

Wrong, no one knows exactly what happened 200,000 years ago. There are hundreds of predications out there. The oldest homo erectus (the first true human-like specie) fossil was discovered in Georgia (not the state). It's around 1.85 million years old. The oldest in Africa is 1.8 million. There are theories that say those human-like peoples spread throughout the world and into Africa as well...

From wikipedia..

"The second hypothesis is that H. erectus evolved in Eurasia and then migrated to Africa. The species occupied a Caucasus site called Dmanisi, in Georgia, from 1.85 million to 1.77 million years ago, at the same time or slightly before the earliest evidence in Africa. Excavations found 73 stone tools for cutting and chopping and 34 bone fragments from unidentified creatures."[9][10]

EPOpian wrote:

Dude! wrote:

The question is - what was Dennis Kimetto doing between birth and when he broke onto the scene? Walking X miles weekly? Hard labor farming?

EPO micro doses

Odd then that the record didn't budge much at all when the EPO test did not exist.

Who's testing? wrote:

Or maybe they aren't tested as often because they live in Kenya where dope testing is likely unreliable and infrequent.

Nope. They're tested there as much as anyone else. If there such a place where testing simply didn't happen, you'd see Russian sprinters training in Kenya.

Who's testing? wrote:

Who handles the out of competition drug testing in Kenya? Most doping is done during training periods, so it's much less likely for an athlete to get popped in a competition test. Do the East Africans have testers banging on their doors in the middle of the night for surprise controls like the top Western Europeans and Americans do?

WADA, and yes, for the last 25 years.

FALSE. Manute Bol.

missing various things wrote:

The East Africans may very well have superior talent but it does not explain their ability to push each other to newer and bigger heights. They did not stop at 2:06 when that was the gold standard they just kept pushing it. The rest of the world seems to have outliers that pop up every once in a while then go back to mediocrity. That is the biggest evidence for me of a significant non-talent factor. Once you throw in the fact as mentioned before that you have a british woman run 2:15 and no one has even touched that, it even more specious to blame your genetics alone.

There are certain physical characteristics that make you set to excel in distance running. There are simply many more Paula Radcliffes and Ryan Halls among the running tribes in East Africa than there are in the rest of the world combined.

There are a lot more Kimettos that haven't made it for one reason or another, and more still that will have a shot in the future.

EPOpian wrote:

EPO micro doses

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Someone please answer this: how would EPO help someone that lives and trains at altitude? EPO creates red blood cells. Altitude does the same. You wouldn't use an altitude tent while living at altitude, would you?

yyy wrote:

No elite basketball player/footballer would ever perform at the top level

in marathon. Two completely disjoint talent pools.

This is what I meant to quote originally. Disjointed talent pools, but there are rare exceptions. (Manute Bol)

Being born and raised at altitude gives you an advantage in the distances at any altitude. Having plenty of dirt roads gives you an advantage in being able to train at high intensity and quantity with less injury chances. Having few cars and buses means that kids very often have an extremely active lifestyle from an early age, many either walking or running miles to school and home every day, some also going home for lunch if they can't afford the school lunches. Having tremendous financial incentives helps a lot. Having a low calorie diet helps a lot. Having a culture of running hard helps a tremendous amount because that means that there are many, many very successful runners around now to work out with and to learn how to train from, in complete contrast to the United States or Europe, where in most places there are very few sub 15 people in any given area.

Add up all that and you don't need any genetic superiority, which apart from altitude adaptations, is unlikely given that we all evolved from the same group of people living in East Africa 200,000 years ago (with some differences from Neanderthal interbreeding).

The mighty African river flows strongly in this thread with just a few fragments of BS in the undertow.

Kenyans are more genetically suited to distance running

jjjjjjjjj wrote:

(with some differences from Neanderthal interbreeding).

That's the big one that you are glossing over.

You may also not realize that the evolutionary forge if you will is a bit hotter in Africa.

Many tribes essentially selectively bred themselves to be superior athletes.

Kimetto said in a post-race interview that a big influence in him working so hard was the need to help his family and community. A win in Berlin transforms his and his families life forever, and a poor result means further hardship.

Contrast Kimetto's situation to that of a typical western athlete. Sure most pro runners don't make a fortune compared to other sports, but they are comfortable. They know that a lack of a win isn't going to make them or their families destitute. When you're in a whole world of hurt at mile 20, this makes a big big difference. The African incentives to perform are that much stronger. That's why, when two comparable African/Western athletes race together, 99% of the time, the African will win.

Tubalcain wrote:

jjjjjjjjj wrote:

(with some differences from Neanderthal interbreeding).

That's the big one that you are glossing over.

You may also not realize that the evolutionary forge if you will is a bit hotter in Africa.

Many tribes essentially selectively bred themselves to be superior athletes.

This.

Also, people fail to realize that the genetic variation between populations inside Africa is much bigger than the variation in the rest of the world combined.

Also, the idea here is not that they somehow recently evolved to become awesome runners, but that we, the people that left Africa lost some of our running capabilities due to different selective pressures.

High Bred Artist wrote:

OP, and quite a few others here, I'll assume you've never stood next to someone like Kimetto. If you were to stand next to him, both of you in just your running shorts, you wouldn't be asking this question.

Dude is a totally different animal. I question how "westerners" can be as close to these lungs-on-sticklegs "africans" as they are. It's really amazing the different morphology.

This exactly. Neither of those guys, or any of the top Kenyan runners would be successful in any of the major sports in the US. Too short and too light. Yes, I know there is the occasional 5'6" guy that makes the pros, but they are always muscular and explosive - the opposite of distance runners.

It seriously depresses me that people in the running community are so ignorant and out of touch with reality that they can't grasp the simple realities that Kimetto's case makes so utterly clear: 1) yes, GENETICS is by far the biggest factor in running performance, and 2) yes, the east African talent pool is far, far richer than that of any Western county. Just get with the program already you fvcking losers who think otherwise.

fannypack wrote:

Western athletes are soft, spoiled and lazy. They want to get rich by writing a running application for smart phones, not by training hard to be good runners.

Western athletes cannot become rich by being good marathon runners - the cost of living in Western countries makes that impossible. This takes away a huge chunk of motivation that Kenyan athletes have.

objectivity wrote:

fannypack wrote:

Western athletes are soft, spoiled and lazy. They want to get rich by writing a running application for smart phones, not by training hard to be good runners.

Western athletes cannot become rich by being good marathon runners - the cost of living in Western countries makes that impossible. This takes away a huge chunk of motivation that Kenyan athletes have.

Nonsense. Seems like the top American athletes live quite well and only one of them is winning anything.

Hall doesn't even race anymore and he's not living in a trailer and eating ramen noodles.

Manchester wrote:

In a typical year in the 1980's Great Britain would have nearly 200 people under 2:20... today that number would be ~5? and one is a 40 year old former fat guy

And when you get 200 guys at the elite level, the Steve Jones type talents actually show up

Even at America's peak I don't think they had as many top marathoners as Britain, and they are 5 times as big, which shows you how much worse it is possible to be at recruiting marathon talent...

In 2013 it was 12, but your point remains. I think a lot of it is a culture of immediate gratification in the modern world, and a general avoidance of sustained hard work over months and years. (2013 leaderboard for marathon here:

)