Wow: World jr 800 champ Emmanuel Wanyonyi (1:43.76) dropped out of school to work for between $1.82 and $9.09 per month

El Keniano wrote:

…. can believe poverty is incompatible with integrity not only betrays the deficiencies of American culture and its education system but is also just too disgusting for me to contemplate.

For the record: the poor are not less honest than the privileged. I'll point you towards every major economic crime and depression/recession in the last hundred years as exhibit A.

I’m gonna have to stop you there. Rojo made a qualified statement - ie ‘more likely.’

You extrapolate that to unqualified - ie ‘incompatible.’

When you have to put words in people’s mouth to make your argument, you really have none.

Shiftering wrote: Now, unfortunately, it has indisputably become clear that some of these runners on these dirt roads are also cheating. In other words, it is now clear that Kenyans and Ethiopians cheat just like everyone else. .

And all Rojo said is that the differences between our cultures and opportunities would make it more likely that someone from a developing nation would cheat, because of the lack of viable opportunities otherwise. What else can you do with a 3rd grade education and no marketable skills?

That is precisely a human nature argument. It passes the smell test much better than ‘Kenyans are too nice to dope.’ ‘Doping doesn’t work for elite Kenyans.’ ‘Haile G is always smiling, why would he dope.’

Fro my perspective, it seems like a hagiography gets constructed as soon as someone from East Africa jets on to the world scene.

East Africans cheat. So do Americans and Europeans. Full stop.

But there are more reasons to think Ethiopians and Kenyans would be the best runners (dirt roads, altitude) than there are to think that Americans and Europeans would be.

That said, Americans do have better access to food trucks.

East Africans cheat. So do Americans and Europeans. Full stop.

But there are more reasons to think Ethiopians and Kenyans would be the best runners (dirt roads, altitude) than there are to think that Americans and Europeans would be.

That said, Americans do have better access to food trucks.

they're lazy wrote:

And that is infinitely more work than rojo and his twin have ever done in their couch napping lives.

That's unfair. Sometimes one of them goes through a whole podcast without leaving.

they're lazy wrote:

And that is infinitely more work than rojo and his twin have ever done in their couch napping lives.

That's unfair. Sometimes one of them goes through a whole podcast without leaving.

BlackMoH wrote:

No one in Europe has to fill bankruptcy to pay for a surgery. No one in Europe has to work 2-3 jobs just to pay rent. No one in Europe has to live in a trailer park.

Uh not sure if you’ve seen Eastern Europe or the slums of literally any huge city anywhere… poverty is everywhere

Class 3 is the equivalent of about 3rd grade in the U.S., or age 9-10. If that kid was making up to Sh1000 a month, that would be roughly equal to a 9 year old in the US making $1000/month, assuming the average adult salary in the US is $50k/year. Outside of Nairobi in the rural area an adult working full time might only earn Sh3000-4000/month. Don't assume poverty. That kid was making bank for a 9 year old. In Kenya, things cost a fraction of what they do in the Western developed world.

I wouldn’t mention doping, but I’m quite willing to believe he’s overage

El Keniano wrote:

rojo wrote:

And many would say why they are much more likely to dope. In America, many of the track pros make less than a normal working adult. In Kenya, it's the opposite.

This classic 'ugly Americanism' is why I'll have no part in borderline racist threads like this. That someone with a supposedly decent education can believe poverty is incompatible with integrity not only betrays the deficiencies of American culture and its education system but is also just too disgusting for me to contemplate.

For the record: the poor are not less honest than the privileged. I'll point you towards every major economic crime and depression/recession in the last hundred years as exhibit A.

Why do you say "borderline racist" when what was being contrasted was not race but income? This strikes me as a class distinction, not a race distinction. Nowadays people assert that math is racist: charges of racism and hate are being flung with little or no justification in many cases.

I’ve long come to terms with the fact this site (owners, writers, admin, posters) overwhelmingly skews alt-right and that it’s best to steer clear of certain threads and topics.

What I don’t understand, and can’t abide, is the characteristic American disdain for the less privileged, evident in simple discussions and, notoriously, your politics. To cast aspersions on someone’s character just because they’re poor, and labelling them inherently dishonest based just on that fact alone is vile, and a step too far for me.

I think we can certainly say crime is tied to poverty. To deny that would be to accept that the disproportionate crime rates among various ethnicities (in USA) is due to just that, ethnicity, rather than the economic and cultural factors of poverty, which disproportionately affect certain ethnicities due to obvious historical events. I think every human is capable of much more evil things than they imagine, they just don't live in the circumstances that would bring it out. For example I don't think Germans are genetically more immoral than other races just because of the holocaust, which an overwhelming majority of Germans supported. As much as we want to, I don't think any of us can claim that if we were in Germany in the 1940's we would not have supported the holocaust. That's just how human nature is, we are so malleable by the society around us. If we grow up around people who hate jews, we hate jews, if we grow up around crime, we do crime, that's just how it is. Look at Germans now, same genetic stock and they hate racism, the circumstances changed. In this way I believe poverty and crime are inherently related. And that doesn't even account for true hardship like famine. If the situation calls for it, I don't anyone is allowed to claim they wouldn't eat another human being in order to survive starvation. There are countless of reportedly normal human beings who were put into 'stranded on a desert island' type situations, and things developed that their family members would never have imagined they'd do. So it's not hard for me to think that a perfectly moral human might be persuaded into doing something arguably victimless like doping in order to support his family.

Having said that, I don't think any of the top African athletes right now are doping and I definitely don't think that the reason Africans are faster than everyone else is because of drugs lol, its definitely due to longstanding adaptations to altitude.

ienjoyracing wrote:

I think we can certainly say crime is tied to poverty.

You mean urban poverty. Crime rates are extremely low amongst the rural poor. At least in Kenya.

Since Ingerbrigsten has already run 3:28:68 last year and 3:28:33 this year he probably has already peaked with all the support of the new technology.

His limits appeared in his last mile (Eugene) and 3000m where he was unable to run below 7:27.

A technical analysis of the single attempt of El G. for the Komen WR 3000:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buwt61VMgCM

oops! this was intended for the other thread of Jakob father claim.

Passant wrote:

Since Ingerbrigsten has already run 3:28:68 last year and 3:28:33 this year he probably has already peaked with all the support of the new technology.

His limits appeared in his last mile (Eugene) and 3000m where he was unable to run below 7:27.

A technical analysis of the single attempt of El G. for the Komen WR 3000:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buwt61VMgCM

Thank you for the technical analysis that no one here understood.

Here's the deal: rojo can comment on someones work history after rojo gets his first job.

What is a job? wrote:

Here's the deal: rojo can comment on someones work history after rojo gets his first job.

come on man. Rojo and JG were putting in 80-100 hour weeks in Tokyo.