Why so many great Caribbean sprinters?

Yes, that's a good theory.

An article posted by someone in an "Usain Bolt is a cheater" thread a while back said that the Caribbean was the last stop and thus the strongest individuals had survived and were left.

The route in fact was England, West Africa, Caribbean, US, back to England. The Caribbean was in fact the FIRST stop, and the slavers there took their pick of the strongest individuals.

piedmontcat:

I will put aside your argument about 100 meter dashers for now.

However I do think your argument that East Africans have a genetic advantage in distance running is flawed. Do we use the same argument for why Oregon is dominant in distance running? How about the top high school teams? There are schools that have had teams qualify for their state meet for 10-20 straight years in nearly every state in the USA!

All but a few of the top Kenyans are from one area...The Rift Valley. If you explore Ethiopia you will also find that they flock in only a few villages.

It is culture and expections that is driving it.

(Have you noticed how skinny the East African champion runners are? Americans are not willing to do that!) Many scientific studies have been done on distance runners from all areas of the world. To this point, they have found NO physical advantages.

We are without excuse.

I'm sure "piedmontcat" has been sitting at his computer for the past 7 years waiting for this brilliant retort.

You actually make a very strong argument but, unfortunately, it is too simple, too transparent, and racially biased for the masses to embrace. Everyone are super-quick to point to West Africa when searching for "the" reason why Caribbeans/Black Americans are so fast. When was the last time someone from Liberia, Ghana, Nigeria, Benin, or Ivory Coast held a world record? What about winning an international high-caliber 100m race? Okay...When was the last time 1 individual from any of these countries (combined) ran under 10s for the 100. I think it\'s happened before, but I\'m willing to bet the numbers are not even close to those of Caribe or America. Asafa Powell has probably run more sub-10 100\'s individually than all of those countries combined!

@Piedmoncat

Your argument is also too simplistic. Y

Before 2004, the only country that produced more sub 10secs sprinters than Nigeria was the USA.

Jamaica had the same number of sub 10s sprinters than Ghana (2) : Ray Stewart (1988 100m finalist and later disgraced coach) and another one which I don\'t remember the name. Then Asafa Powell came in... So this is a ( very ) recent phenomenon.

The Caribbean really overtook Native West African in numbers around the early 2000s (even though population size are not the same, T&F is a niche sport in this part of Africa).

When put in the same environnement, there is no evidence than Caribbean have any advantage whatsoever against Native West African.

Here is the European all time list sub 10 secs sprinters over 100m :

1 9.86 AR 0.6 Francis Obikwelu

1 9.86 =AR 1.3 Jimmy Vicaut

3 9.87 NR 0.3 Linford Christie

4 9.91 NR 0.7 Churandy Martina

4 9.91 1.1 James Dasaolu

6 9.92 NR AUR 2.0 Christophe Lemaitre

7 9.96 NUR 1.4 Chijindu Ujah

8 9.97 AUR 0.2 Dwain Chambers

8 9.97 2.0 Adam Gemili

10 9.98 0.4 Jason Gardener

11 9.99 1.8 Ronald Pognon

11 9.99 NR 1.0 Jaysuma Saidy Ndure

While people of W.African make the larger part of this ranking , Caribbean and Native west African immigrants are roughly in equal numbers (Vicaut isn\'t caribbean).

Both population are found in equal size in Europe, so why do caribbean are not faster than native W.Africans when living in the same settings ?

People are totally \"haloed\" by the jamaicans and other caribbeans, they have always been good sprinters, but their domination since the mid 2000s is nowhere from what it was before that.