Renato: can caucasians compete?

Renato:

What you are saying is that if:

1. A large population of whites were

2. Born, raised, and trained at altitude and

3. for the most part were interested in running,

Then:

Whites would be more competitive at distances 3k and above.

This is more or less what I've felt for a while.

I thought it has never been proven that living/training at altitude improves sea level performance?

Typical attitude of the racists on letsrun - people are either black or white! Genetically that is a piece of crap. No wonder the education system in America is so backward.

Renato Canova wrote:

In the long distances the Aerobic Level is fundamental, and it's not possible to replace it with any other type of training (exercises, fast intervals, etc..).

Since the first effect of training in altitude is to increase the Aerobic Power, athletes living in altitude have clear advantages compared with athletes living at sea level.

Thank you for showing off your ability to quote and add boldness and underlining.

Could you, or anyone else, point me to research that supports this statement?

jw1 wrote:

I thought it has never been proven that living/training at altitude improves sea level performance?

For people living native to sea level, going to high altitude prompts the production of more red blood cells and more blood volume. As red blood cells are responsible for delivering oxygen, all else being equal, one with greater capacity for oxygen transport will perform better in a long distance race.

jw1 wrote:

Thank you for showing off your ability to quote and add boldness and underlining.

Could you, or anyone else, point me to research that supports this statement?

This is practically high-school biology...

Red-Blood Cells are constantly produced in your bone marrow.

Red-Blood Cells have the function of carrying oxygen throughout the rest of the body, which is made possible by the fact that the Hemoglobin Macromolecules within them contain a measure of Iron.

At higher altitudes, the density of air decreases, and thus, there are fewer molecular oxygen particles per unit volume than at sea level.

In order to adapt, the body will produce more red blood cells.

Certainly, at a high enough altitude, the body can never produce enough red blood cells to completely counteract the reduced oxygen levels, which is why it is substantially more difficult even for athletes who have lived their entire lives at high altitudes to produce record-breaking times at high altitudes.

However, the difference is great enough that if any altitude-acclimated athlete were to descend to sea level, his performance would be enhanced

This might give you some idea:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2012/jan/04/marathon-kenya-guardian-sport-network?newsfeed=true

[quote]Renato Canova wrote:

I agree with your response.

captain and me wrote:

Typical attitude of the racists on letsrun - people are either black or white! Genetically that is a piece of crap. No wonder the education system in America is so backward.

hey renato is italian. Not a product of the US school system.

Seyta wrote:

This is practically high-school biology...

and lots of high-school biology turns out to be wrong or very limited in its explanation. which is why we do research and ask for references. perhaps there is a GXE effect with altitude training. perhaps there are different response pathways. perhaps there are certain genotypes that are non-responders. For different adaptive evolution paths to living in high altitude (among Andeans, Ethiopeans, and Tibetans) google scholar Cynthial Beall).

Interesting that so much of this analysis focusses on performances by men. No women has yet to come anywhere close to Paula's marathon WR...

Twenty-six out of the top 30!

CoachB wrote:

Renato:

What you are saying is that if:

1. A large population of whites were

2. Born, raised, and trained at altitude and

3. for the most part were interested in running,

Then:

Whites would be more competitive at distances 3k and above.

This is more or less what I've felt for a while.

You are likely right that they would be "more competitive" than they are now (who knows for sure), but they would likely NOT be as good as the East Africans even with those changes. Why?

1) Everyone romanticizes the East African environment for developing distance runners. There are surely some advantages as have been touched upon here and on other threads (altitude, dirt roads, lack of opportunity for obtaining wealth from endeavors other than running, tough upbringing which makes one tough and literally and figuratively hungry for success, etc). However, one often ignores the negatives: malnutrition, lots of diseases not present in 1st world countries which result in childhood deaths/malformation/weakness, lack of facilities and organized sports leagues to encourage participation, poverty which forces children to work at young ages and not think about leisure endeavors such as sports {remember, Geb's Dad almost succeeded in denying Geb a chance to become a runner. He forbade him to, but Geb did it anyway. They needed little Geb on the farm}, etc, etc

It is myth that one needs poverty to be hungry to be a champion. Some of the most dedicated and ferociously hungry athletes have come from solid middle class or above backgrounds (think Lance Armstrong, Alberto Salazar, Seb Coe, Paula Radcliffe, Ironman Triathletes, etc, etc, etc.The list goes on forever) And look at our current crop of top US runners: Solinsky, Rupp, Ritz, Hall, etc. They didn't need to be walking to school in bare feet surrounded by mosquitoes to become super competitors. Not even close. American has a culture of competition and drive to be the best, almost to the point of obsession and unhealthiness. This culture breeds champions and people who are willing to push themselves to the point of no return. This philosophy doesn't only come from africa and poverty. If anything is bigger in places like the USA.

And believe it or not, technology like Alter G's, swimming pools, artificial altitude chambers and houses, customized nutrition, cryogenic chambers for recovery, and on and on and on DO help our athletes become better. East Africans don't have access to these things.

SO......... my point is that people over romanticize and exaggerate the east african environment as being the perfect place to be born and grow up if you want to become a runner, and that 1st world countries like the US are somehow at a huge disadvantage environmentally (due to distractions and other opportunities, and easy lifestyles) when it comes to producing champion athletes, especially runners. There are pros and cons to both environments. Moving a bunch of white babies to east africa raised in typical families there might results in a lot of early deaths and kids too busy working to even think about running.

2) Renato said that East Africans are better because of a combination of reasons, ONE OF WHICH IS TALENT. Talent does not spring from being "born at altitude". Talent comes from having parents with talent. Suddenly moving your parents to african before you were born wouldn't change your their "talent," or yours, right? East Africans have ancestors that were born and have lived at altitude for GENERATIONS, and who had lives where running played a central role. Thus, genes that would be useful to running and working hard and surviving at altitude were selected for. This created "talent" for running in these peoples. If you randomly selected 1000 young men from Ethiopia and Kenya and 1000 who trace their fairly recent ancestry to Europe, you'd almost certainly find more talented distance runners in the East African group likely due to these selective pressures.

Therefore, growing up in East Africa is not as ideal of a setting as you might think if you want to become a champion runner, but having ancestors that have grown up there for aeons IS the right recipe for having talent, which plays a central role in one's ability. And we can't go back in time and change our ancestors.

I like how 'sir lance-alot' tries to just straight put words in renato's mouth.

I'll summarize for you:

800/1500: Definitely can be competitive and world-beating

3000m: Definitely can compete (Rupp), not sure if they can be the best

OK, for the most part, I agree with your synnopsis of East Africa having some serious disadvantages and do not take issue with the fact that there may be other genetic differences in play when it comes to producing distance athletes. Clearly if genes dictate things like skin color and curliness of hair, they may also dictate mitochondrial density in skeletal muscle or the rate at which a body adapts to aerobic training. Furthermore, if you follow the thread of human origins, conventional wisdom says that our ancestors came down from the trees in East Africa as their forests turned drier and sparser. Coming down from the trees dictated that our ancestors must become good at moving from patch of forest to patch of forest, thus developing a natural propensity for covering long distances on foot. CW also says that as our ancestors spread about the globe, different traits developed that allowed us to survive. For instance, CW tells us that as humans moved northward to areas of less sunlight, dark skin UV blocking melanin became a disadvantage as it made the job of synthesizing vitamin D more difficult. Clearly, other genetic drift could have also occured.

However, none of this explains the disappearance of the white athlete (as pointed out by Renato). Just 20-30 years ago, plenty of white athletes (Cram, Coe, Ovett, Scott, Cacho, Silva) were running times that were tops in the world and would still be very competitive today. I cannot believe that evolution would have done us in in that short of a time span. Therefore, we have to consider sociological factors in explaining the dominance of East Africans.

searching for questions wrote:

I like how 'sir lance-alot' tries to just straight put words in renato's mouth.

And I like how you apparently are just straight unable to read or comprehend, and then use that lack of ability to straight make shit up.

This is what I wrote as far as what Renato said:

"Renato said that East Africans are better (at distance running) because of a combination of reasons, ONE OF WHICH IS TALENT."

Did he say that or not? Since you might not be able to read, I will answer: yes, he did say that. So I did not put any words in Renato's mouth. I basically quoted him and that gave my own explanation on why what he said might be the case.

Comprende? Happy? Great.

CoachB wrote:

Just 20-30 years ago, plenty of white athletes (Cram, Coe, Ovett, Scott, Cacho, Silva) were running times that were tops in the world and would still be very competitive today...

In fact Coe is still the 3rd fastest 800m runner of all time; and Cram the 4th fastest miler of all time (although the mile is not run so much in competition these days).

The main reason for the decline of performances in Europe is

not the problem of ot recruiting the best. It is the "less is more" philosophy that has ruined American/European middle/long distance running. Once this is fixed, as is happening now in the States, their runners will be competitive.

Ask anyone 5yrs ago about sub-27 for whites. 26:48 is just the beginning gentlemen.