Asian athletes limited by genes or nurture

Even with the intense communist olympic training system still in place, it is very premature to make judgments about the Chinese in athletics. The majority of the population in China is still very poor compared to Western standards. Athletics outside of the highly selective Olympic development system in China are largely a luxury for the upper and middle classes, a very small percentage of the population. So, you do not have a huge collegiate system for developing athletes like they do in the US. There is probably a ton of talent that gets passed over by the olympic development system and club athletics in China. If China had the collegiate and corporate system for distance runners that Japan has, they would be just as formidable.

Some Insight wrote:

So why are the Japanese so good at Marathoning, despite their shorter legs? My (unproven) theory is that the longer the distance, the less of importance the longer legs are, because of the slower pace you can make up for it with higher stride frequency.

It probably also helps that the Japanese have a great Marathoning culture.

What do longer legs have to do with running fast? It's about force generated. Has nothing to do with leg length, no?

ddffv wrote:

What do longer legs have to do with running fast? It's about force generated. Has nothing to do with leg length, no?

I wasn't talking about absolute leg length but relative leg length in proportion to the rest of the body.

A poodle can run faster than a dachshund.

East Africans have really long legs. Asians don't.

Some Insight wrote:

ddffv wrote:

What do longer legs have to do with running fast? It's about force generated. Has nothing to do with leg length, no?

I wasn't talking about absolute leg length but relative leg length in proportion to the rest of the body.

A poodle can run faster than a dachshund.

East Africans have really long legs. Asians don't.

I don't see the truth in your idea.

You're saying that leg length matters more in the short distances than it does in the longer distances. But clearly, East Africans get less dominant as the distance gets shorter. So which is it?

And the leg length between the dogs doesn't matter. It's only about how hard you push off the ground. The ground doesn't care how long your legs are. Rhinos are very fast, but they have relatively short legs compared to other animals.

what about americans? wrote:

2. There is a relatively large amount of data indicating that, on average, Asian adults are shorter than Caucasian adults. I wonder if this might be the *only* physical bias that predisposes Asians away from certain sports (e.g. football). In other words, is there any evidence to suggest that if two men were both 6-1, 180 lbs, but of different ethnicities, one would statistically tend to have more raw strength (by some objective measure, such as max squat weight)? I doubt any studies have been done, but it would be interesting to see people speculate on this.

The height difference thing is true, but I think that it is hard to correct for cultural and dietary differences. Apparently North Koreans are about 4.5 inches shorter than South Koreans, and it isn't because of genetics obviously. Even wealthy Asian countries like Japan and South Korea or Taiwan would have their height statistics skewed by the older generation. Is there any data on the height and/or size of children of Asian immigrants in the United States or Europe compared to the rest of the population?

My guess is that distinct populations would obviously have different sizes when corrected for all environmental factors, but it would be less than it appears to be without correction. Also, what does Asian mean? Chinese? Japanese? Thai? Vietnamese? Korean? All those ethnic groups are quite different than each other and you could expect just as much variation between them as you would between a Norwegian and a Greek.

SYM1971 and Preciousroy very good points.

China potentially with a larger population than Japan could be better if it had the system in place.

The Japanese are awesome at sport, just remember, they are competing clean.

The 2 World Baseball Champs that have been held since the sports omission from the Olympics have both been won by Japan with Korea 3rd in 2006 and 2nd in 2009.

At 2009 World Track Champs, Japan medalled in both men's and women's marathon teams and 4th in men's 4x100m. I suspect only Russia or USA could ever possibly achieve the same. With one major point of difference, the Japanese are clean.

It's race on for the 1st Asian sub 10sec. Yoshihide Kiryu 10.19 recently broke the World Youth record again and Ryoto Yamagata is still active.

The rest of Asia have more important things to focus on than sport, having shelter, putting food on the table, slave/sex traders, government stealing children etc. So yes nurture is the over riding factor.

ddffv wrote:

And the leg length between the dogs doesn't matter. It's only about how hard you push off the ground.

Consider two runners, one short legged, one long legged, applying equal force to the ground. At the point of takeoff, the long-legged runner's hips are further forward because his legs are longer. When he leaves the ground, the trajectory of his hips through the air is the same as that of the short-legged runner, because they take off with the same amount of force. So when he lands, he is farther forward.

This is much the same as why a tall basketball player can more easily jump up and dunk the ball. I don't know why I bothered explaining it, but what the hell.

Bad Wigins wrote:

ddffv wrote:

And the leg length between the dogs doesn't matter. It's only about how hard you push off the ground.

Consider two runners, one short legged, one long legged, applying equal force to the ground. At the point of takeoff, the long-legged runner's hips are further forward because his legs are longer. When he leaves the ground, the trajectory of his hips through the air is the same as that of the short-legged runner, because they take off with the same amount of force. So when he lands, he is farther forward.

This is much the same as why a tall basketball player can more easily jump up and dunk the ball. I don't know why I bothered explaining it, but what the hell.

Are you being serious or are you trolling?

Someone needs to come up with a leg length adjustment calculator. Manzano would be a 2:23.74 guy.

Someone needs to come up with a leg length adjustment calculator. Manzano would be a 3:23.74 guy.

High Wire wrote:

Someone needs to come up with a leg length adjustment calculator. Manzano would be a 3:23.74 guy.

Not that I entirely believe the proposal, but I think the point was that the leg length as a proportion of the body size was what counted, not the gross leg length. So there would be no adjustment calculation other than from Asians to regular (Caucasian/Africans) proportions.

There are a lot of Japanese marathoners who are tall even by Western standards and/or have long legs for their build. The guy Horiguchi who ran 2:08:24 in Fukuoka is a giant, as was Takaoka, a 2:06:16 guy. Ozaki, who won the women's marathon silver medal in the Berlin World Champs, also has very long legs even though she is relatively short.

ThuMbs_uP wrote:

High Wire wrote:

Someone needs to come up with a leg length adjustment calculator. Manzano would be a 3:23.74 guy.

Not that I entirely believe the proposal, but I think the point was that the leg length as a proportion of the body size was what counted, not the gross leg length. So there would be no adjustment calculation other than from Asians to regular (Caucasian/Africans) proportions.

We got the point. But the point is wrong (or at least unfounded).

Lol. Visited this thread and the advertising banner was for Mail Order Brides.

The problem in the Philippines is the head Go Teng Kok. A known abuser of women and a crook. Yet the stupid Philipinos keep him (and now one of his supporters) in power because he is a rich crook.

IMO I have dealt with approximately 20 asian runners of both sexes.

I believe there is a genetic reason why their performance is less than Blacks and Whites. Their legs for instance are shorter, their feet are flatter, and their heels and toes less developed for running.

This makes running harder and more inefficient for them at any speed. Obviously there are notable exceptions, but they are relatively rare given the income and size of the asian population.

They do better as swimmers and gymnastics because of their bodies.

ddffv wrote:

Bad Wigins wrote:

Consider two runners, one short legged, one long legged, applying equal force to the ground. At the point of takeoff, the long-legged runner's hips are further forward because his legs are longer. When he leaves the ground, the trajectory of his hips through the air is the same as that of the short-legged runner, because they take off with the same amount of force. So when he lands, he is farther forward.

This is much the same as why a tall basketball player can more easily jump up and dunk the ball. I don't know why I bothered explaining it, but what the hell.

Are you being serious or are you trolling?

I was trying to explain it in simple terms you could understand, but you'd rather argue than learn.

Here is an even simpler explanation. A short-legged runner must push harder to achieve the same stride length as a long-legged runner, because he must project his body farther through the air.

Don't make me start drawing pictures.

while not completely related to the debate, i remember reading an article, maybe 20 years ago (pre-internet, could've been time/sports illustrated/scientific american or something like that), about sprinters and distance runners of east african, west african and european descent (asians weren't included, didn't consider their exclusion until just now...).

if i remember the gist of the article correctly, it went something like this: the peak of the bell curve was similar for each race, so genetically it seemed you could be world class in either distances or sprints regardless of descent; however, the "flatness" of the peak varied for each race, so higher probability favored certain races (west africans for sprints, east africans for distances).

another interesting purported conclusion was that while european/caucasians had a lower probability (though virtually identical peak) than east africans in distances, they had a higher probability than west africans in this regard. likewise, though european/caucasians had a lower probability in sprints than west africans (which generally includes their descendant african-americans throughout the americas), they had a higher probability than east africans.

i wonder if there have been any more recent studies of the same kind, and if they've included asians--although this is always a tricky business because asians has become a "catchall" denomination that includes very disparate populations, cultures and genetics. of course, the same, to a lesser degree, could be said for european/caucasians....