Why shouldn't a white American run as fast as the best Africans?

It is not correct that Kenya have more runners than for example the US to find talents from. The number is quite small from what I have seen on my many trips down there. You have some school meetings and everything - and camps but it would probably all in all come down to a very few thousand schoolage kids running ; even at elite level it is NOWHERE close to the US college + post-college system.

Just to put a perspective to is : In 2005-2006 over 383.000 (!)Americans from 14-18 of age did cross country. That is a way,way higher pool to take talents from compared to for example Kenya at that age group.

I do believe it is possible to compete with them for some rare talented+smart runners, see a guy like Craig Mottram.

But at the same time - though how glorifying as it may sound - the hard work up in the Kenyan mountains,or a greater pool of runners to pick from, or the simple living conditions is simply not enough to explain the Kenyan success.

Marius

Nutha thread wrote:

Mr. Marathon wrote:

To be truely world class as a distance runner today you need four things:

1) crazy talent

2) hard work

3) great coaching/program/philosophy

4) mental toughness

5) doubles

6)EPO

Marius wrote:

It is not correct that Kenya have more runners than for example the US to find talents from. The number is quite small from what I have seen on my many trips down there. You have some school meetings and everything - and camps but it would probably all in all come down to a very few thousand schoolage kids running ; even at elite level it is NOWHERE close to the US college + post-college system.

Just to put a perspective to is : In 2005-2006 over 383.000 (!)Americans from 14-18 of age did cross country. That is a way,way higher pool to take talents from compared to for example Kenya at that age group.

s

I find that difficult to swallow Marius. Kenya has one of the fastest growing populations on the planet. With such a high birthrate, a great majority of Kenya's 40 million population are children.

But most of the very good runners come from a select group of tribes.

mobile9 wrote:

But most of the very good runners come from a select group of tribes.

Being born into one of those tribes provides the environment, the coaching, the nutrition, the training partners, role models, tradition, etc etc.

Too deny to role of natural or "god given" ability in athletics is stupid.

No say that the only thing that seperates WC runners from the rest of us is simply hard work is not accurate or fair. I could run 100 or 150 mile weeks, monitor every morsel of food that goes into my mouth, weight train, and live at altitude and I would never ever be a world class or even natural class runner.

I do not have the genetic make up to run that fast.

Natural talent, when combined with a great work ethic and training is what produces WC athletes.

Most good runners are Kelenji, population of about 3-4 million (to be correct, in 1996 56 % of the worlds 10 bests in all the events 800 to 10.000 were of the Kelenjin tribe - incl nine of the ten best 3000 steeplers.....)

When training in Kenya, I stayed in the areas where majority of the best runners come from ; the Nandihills,Kaptarakwa,Iten,Kaptagat,Eldoret. Lots of people walking around but very few people actually running. To say that the Kalinjin connection provides some kind of special coaching,nutrition,role models,tradition etc as an argument...well...have been there many times and it is really not that "set" in the culture. Nothing special in either of those areas.

Marius

Marius wrote:

Most good runners are Kelenji, population of about 3-4 million (to be correct, in 1996 56 % of the worlds 10 bests in all the events 800 to 10.000 were of the Kelenjin tribe - incl nine of the ten best 3000 steeplers.....)

When training in Kenya, I stayed in the areas where majority of the best runners come from ; the Nandihills,Kaptarakwa,Iten,Kaptagat,Eldoret. Lots of people walking around but very few people actually running. To say that the Kalinjin connection provides some kind of special coaching,nutrition,role models,tradition etc as an argument...well...have been there many times and it is really not that "set" in the culture. Nothing special in either of those areas.

Marius

Marius, I was just making the point that being in the right environment is an advantage. I had some advantages when I was young, as you probably did. But ultimately what makes someone a World Class runner is their own desire.

Nutrition- ?? yeah right!

Coaching- ?? yeah right!

Tradition, training partners, role models- isnt that what happens in college.

Your talking about factors which help develope talent. If you had Gebrasalassie, Tergat, Mottram as your training partners, your coach of choice, a nutritionist. What would be your 10k time? 26:20.

City Boy wrote:

Nutrition- ?? yeah right!

Coaching- ?? yeah right!

Tradition, training partners, role models- isnt that what happens in college.

Your talking about factors which help develope talent. If you had Gebrasalassie, Tergat, Mottram as your training partners, your coach of choice, a nutritionist. What would be your 10k time? 26:20.

I am a bit old to run that fast. So I have lowered my expectations. I am aiming for a 3.52 1500m at age 45.

The Puritanical idea that the only thing that seperates the typical Letsrunner from WC athletes is hard work and coaching, is more palitable to some because that is "fixable."

To accept the role of genes forces them to realize that no matter what they did, they would never be an Olympic Champion- ever. Even if they hard the full support of Nike writting the checks, no matter how hard they worked.

So now you are an expert on genetics? And through your research you have discovered your limitations? Congratulations, In 44 years I still haven't figured mine out yet.

Wow, that is very impressive! Good luck

So had you started with the above at age 15 - would you be a world class runner?

Everyone has a certain capacity to train, to go beyond that you get hurt/sick etc, Im sure most of us who train hard try to find that point. Then what seperates us is talent, Every East African who has better times certainly doesn't train harder than every American whos times are lesser.

Maybe you started running relatively late in life and feel that if you were younger and just trained real hard you would ahve been world class?

talent is hard work wrote:

Marius, I was just making the point that being in the right environment is an advantage. I had some advantages when I was young, as you probably did. But ultimately what makes someone a World Class runner is their own desire.

No one is denying that desire and hard work are necessary traits of a world class runner. Still that hardly explains why, using Marius' statistics, 56% of the top distance runners come from a population of about 0.1% of the world's genetic pool. That sounds like pretty strong correlation to me.

To presume a genetic advantage to Kelenjin tribesmen is not to deny any individual from the other 99.9% of the world's population might have the potential to become a top distance runner with a large dose of desire and hard work.

I don't think you have to be an expert in genetics to draw the conclusion that genes have a big effect on athletic perfomance.

Get your head out of your ass.

If everyone was jogging 20 miles a week and then getting creamed by the East Africans then yeah, we could say they were out working us. But there are no new tricks in distance running. Some people are blessed with great talent, then they work their butts off and maximize that talent.

Do you think Geb would ever make it as an NFL linebacker if he "just worked hard enough"? OF COURSE NOT!!!!

Due to his genetic make up he would never ever ever ever ever be a line backer. Conversly if Brian Ulacher run 150 miles a week, and was coached by Squire, Bowerman, Daniels, and Lydiard he would never be a great distance runner.

Does that make it a little easier to understand?

Marius's posts are interesting, based on considerable first-hand experience, and deserve to be weighted more heavily than posts by those of us who have never been to Kenya--me, for example.

This particular issue--how to explain extraordinary Kenyan running success over the past 15-20 years--has been hammered to death, here and at coolrunning.

I'm leery of all explanations that employ the word "genetic," frankly. Much damage has been done to black people down through history by commentators who used that word. In the past, it was mostly the phrenologists and self-styled "racial scientists" who spoke of racial inferiority, not superiority. The shoe seems to be on the other foot these days, but I'm not so sure. I hear a lot of agitation: white racial agitation.

Still, it's probably worth flipping the script and imagining, if you would, that Kenyan power-lifting websites are filled with Kenyan angst about how Central Europeans and Samoans are simply....well...genetically gifted in the matter of being able to lift huge weights. Would that be true? Is there something about the Central European/Scandinavian and Samoan genetic makeup that enables such peoples to dominate the World's Strongest Man competition? Maybe there is. Maybe there isn't. But certainly you don't see a lot of Kenyans--ANY Kenyans--participating. I make this observation to no particular point; I'm just making it.

Although I can't say how things will change, I tend to think that the all-time fastest lists in various track events won't necessarily reflect the same overwhelming preponderance of Kenyans in, say, 50 years as they do today. Fifty years ago, in the mid-1950s, what sort of generalizations about "natural talent" or "physical endowment" were being made about distance runners, and from which particular countries? I suspect that Finnish, Czech, and Anglo-Australian stock was up--as Kenyan stock is up today.

But things change. Today's absolute certainties have a way of becoming yesterday's news.

Once genetic engineering becomes a reality in the West, it will be interesting to see what happens. I can imagine some running-oriented American parents checking the box for "Kenyan V02." Assuming it's all genetic, of course.

I know the Meb story. But I'd still like to see some experimental science, on the human-level. Take ten Kalenjin infants, ten caucasian-American infants; bring them up in each other's native habitat. Do genes tell the whole story? Or do you get paunchy Kenyan-American X-Box addicts and lean/mean kickass Caucasian-Kalenjin XC monsters?

talent is hard work wrote:

Yes I have noticed that they are built differently. Some are taller some are smaller. Some are stocky, some are lanky.

It's called genetic diversity and it exists in every country on this here planet Earth.

Do you seriously think there is no physiological difference between the build of an East African, and that of a Westerner from, say, the UK or USA?

Do you think there is a virtue in thinking that way?

I am 5'11", I wonder when I can start pretending that my co-worker - who is 6'4" - is not really taller than I...?

Mr. Marathon wrote:

To be truely world class as a distance runner today you need four things:

1) crazy talent

2) hard work

3) great coaching/program/philosophy

4) mental toughness

I will add that there are certain pockets of people in certain areas of the world that in general seem to have better physical traits for ditance running, such as a small (light) bone structure and narrow hips. And there are pockets people who and live in conditions that help develop other physical traits such as lung capacity. When these two pockets overlap you will get a higher than normal density of people who have natural talent (physical disposition) for a certain sport (i.e distance running, sprinting, etc.) It appears obvious that this is the case in the Rift Valley in East Africa for Distance Running.

But do not confuse coming from this area with being a prerequisite. Many other of people will have these same or similar physical dispositions (talents) living all around the world. The only thing that makes these pocket of people special will be the density of talent.

Similarly there are pockets of people in the world who because of there life style and society will be more likely to be mentally tough and disciplined (parts of Japan for example). This doesn't mean that in order to be mentally tough you have to be from there. Just the density of people who are is probably greater there.

Hard Work / Work Ethic is similar, there are groups of people who are very use to hard manual work and have great work ethics. You can find hard workers all over the world but certain groups (pockets of people) tend to have higher density of this trait.

Thanks to the information age the other component "Great coaching/program/philosophy" is more easily attainable then ever before. Its not easily attainable for some but is more easily attainable then it was 20+ yars ago.

So the whole "why can't white Americans run as fast the East Africans" question is BS. There are people in most every country that have the necessary physical and psychological traits to be world class in distance running. The density of these people may just be higher in some places than others.

Certain tribes of Kenya & Ethiopia, as a result of thousands of years of transformation, have acquired a slight, yet crucial genetic advantage over the rest of the world in distance running.

Nandi

Oromo (Ethiopia)

Marakwet

Kalenjin (larger grouping)

These are just three examples of groups that have genetic advantages. Studies have been done, and the results have shown a different blood chemistry, higher proportion of slow-twitch muscles, and thinner lower legs allowing greater efficiency over long distances. The studies were done on children with no athletic training, so the differences can't be attributed to "hard training."

The explanation is simple. The tribes relied on cattle-raiding to gain an advantage over other tribes. The men of the tribe ran on foot to raid the other tribes' cattle. As they made their getaway, the other tribesmen ran after them, and killed the stragglers. The better distance runners got away with more cattle. The cattle were also used as currency. Tribesmen bought their wives, and also practiced polygamy. What it comes down to, is that the better distance runners had more cattle, were able to buy more wives, and therefore had more children. This made distance running a dominant genetic trait. Not to mention, all this is occurring at high altitude. After thousands of years, they have evolved a slight advantage which they are born with.

However, this advantage is blown out of proportion by non-africans. As Craig Mottram and a few others have demonstrated, talent isn't everything. The genetic advantages are slight, and are definitely not insurmountable.

My point is: talent exists