Kenyan Running Dominance: Cultural, Not Genetic

two bits wrote:

None of your post addresses trying to refute the science of their genetic advantages, as laid out in Sports Gene.

I picked of David Epstein's book one day at B&N while I was waiting for one of my kids three or four years ago. The book had so many logical flaws early in the book, I had to stop polluting my brain with Epstein's nonsense! I believe he was a journalism major at one of the Ivy League schools. That doesn't make him a bad person. It means he does not have formal education as an: Anthropologist/MD/Biologist/Physiologist/even a PhD or master in physical education would have been nice. He never was a successful athlete. Epstein never was a high level coach. I recall Epstein talking about femur lengths of east Africans. Basically, Epstein was describing the builds of some athletes from Maassai Tribe. Ebstein must have had the Konchellahs and Rudishas on his mind. There are more successful east African runners not built like the Rudishas & Konchellahs than are/were (Patrick Konchellah is no longer with us) built like them. Epstein, a non-scientist, non-MD was blabbing about Sickle cell trait for reason of lack of relative success of black US runners 1500m to Marathon. Males of any racial group in US are historically less successful 1500m to Marathon in relation to 100m to 800m. Big strong well fed US citizens grow up sprinting. I recall playing T-Ball at age 6. We sprinted foul pole to foul pole at the start and at the finish of practice. Sprinting for baseball, Am. football and basketball is part of US culture. I could type for 100 pages giving reasons why in aggregate US citizens do better 100 to 800 in relation to 1500 to Marathon regardless of race/ethnic group.

Interesting thoughts. But:

- Why do we have to chose one cause? Why not a combination of culture, environment, and genetics?

- Genetics is way more complex than trying to find one or two supergenes. Here are some quotes about genetics and exercise performance, as part of a series of critiques on the "10000 hours" rule.

"Most recently, a paper in Nature Genetics found that you could explain 45% of the variance in height by using 3,925 unrelated people, and a staggering 294,831 different SNPs."

"In other words, it’s not even as simple as having a gene or not, it now becomes a question of which variant in the gene you have!"

"Let’s just go back to that height finding, which bears repeating: Height is almost certainly simpler than something as complex as human athletic performance, yet it requires almost 300,000 different genetic variants, and that helps us explain only 45% of it."

http://sportsscientists.com/2011/08/training-talent-10000-hours-and-the-genes/

Also:

http://sportsscientists.com/2013/04/the-kenyan-success-genetic-controversy/

The seeds of future athletic success for elite Kenyan runners seem to be planted in the early days of their childhoods, when they are first introduced to aerobic exercise by the everyday occurence of running to and from school. Getting an early start on aerobic capacity development, 86% of Kenyan international runners report running being their primary mode of transportation to and from school as children, compared to just 23% of Kenyan children who turned out to be non-athletic (Onywera). Clearly, running as a child is a big indicator of, or at least a helpful factor to, becoming a successful runner in the future. To get a sense of the exercise these young children completed, 73% of the Kenyans who ran to school reported that the total distance they ran daily as a child was between 5 and 20 kilometers (Onywera), which is quite a considerable amount. In fact, Ethiopian Haile Gebrselassie, widely regarded as the best distance runner of all time, still runs with a peculiar swing of his left arm due to carrying textbooks on his runs to and from school as a boy (Barwick). One would have to be hard pressed to find instances of running to school in the majority of other societies- it just doesn’t happen. Running so often and long at an early age, remarkably different than what occurs within other societies, has been found to result in “30% higher maximal oxygen uptakes”, or VO2maxes (the amount of oxygen that one can utilize during intense exercise) over people who don’t run to school, which is massive in terms of running ability and fitness (Pitsiladis). One’s VO2max is highly critical in the success of any competitive endurance athlete, and is directly linked to running performance- the higher one’s VO2max, the faster one can run. Clearly, the combination of having an advanced VO2max from childhood, as well as possessing a remarkably low body mass index, due in tandem to the large amount of exercise performed and low daily caloric intake (Mwaniki) (generally, the lighter one is, the faster one can run), Kenyans, at a young age, are able to separate themselves from the future runners of other countries, children who haven’t even begun middle school yet, let alone decided to train to be a competitive runner. Considering that most young Kenyans have already eclipsed the future runners of other nations with their athletic ability by such an early age, it is unsurprising that such a large percentage of them continue to pursue running, and then are able to transfer this athletic head start gained by early unknowing endurance training into their future success that continues to be just a couple steps ahead of those who stem from other backgrounds.

Pair this higher than average aerobic ability with youth who desperately want to escape the poverty and destitution of Kenya (40% of the country is unemployed, and almost half live in absolute poverty) (“Kenya Unemployment), and what results is thousands of young Kenyans who, after seeing the success and following wealth of the elite Kenyan runners who have come before them and who have established a tradition of running excellence, want nothing more than to become successful runners themselves, in order to escape poverty and to find financial success for themselves, their families, and their communities. For Justin Kipchumba, a 27 year old aspiring athlete who resides near the Kenyan distance running mecca, Eldoret, competitive distance running is what he believes to be his ticket to a better and more financially successful future for himself and for those he is responsible for; his “aging parents, children, spouse… and siblings.” (Burke). His life, as he explains to journalist Jason Burke upon completing a morning 30 kilometer run through the fields and hills of Eldoret, “is like this every day. I sleep, I run, I eat. One day,” he promises, “I will win big races.” This promise of one day winning big races (many of which, such as the Boston Marathon, award prizes of up to $150,000 to its first place finisher) (Guilardi) is a shared vision that motivates thousands of hopeful East African runners like Kipchumba to develop their skills as runners in order to escape their country’s poverty and finally become financially successful. It is their route to escape the poverty and destitution that surrounds them. Notably, the investment required of these runners to achieve the distance running greatness they desire is of a commodity that they possess and are capable of paying- the investment of time and pain spent training, and requires very little of the commodity that they lack- money, allowing them to pursue their athletic greatness in the first place. Kipchumba, for example, is able to able to pursue distance running greatness despite of his poverty, as he gets by training in “cheap Chinese shoes,” and living out of a low-level rental (Burke). And, to give even more incentive to these financially struggling athletes, this vision to bring in big money from big races isn’t only achievable by those who cross the finish line first, but is expanded to an entire group of runners who are near the top. In the Boston Marathon alone, $203,000 is given collectively to the second through fifteenth place finishers (Guilardi), not to mention the large amount of money earned by these high caliber runners through sponsorship and endorsement deals, meaning that for Kipchumba, and others like him, becoming rich, or at least financially stable, through distance running isn’t as much of a pipedream as it might seem. Kenyans and other East Africans run towards the riches that accompany elite performance when they race, needs that are magnified for them because of the hardships of where they originated, being a more influential motivational factor for them than for others who perhaps have an easier home life, setting the East Africans apart.

Coevett wrote:

Kenyans are certainly genetically superior to most other African nations. Superior to whitey? Naah.

Keep repeating that to yourself and who knows? You might start to believe it.

Conversely wrote:

Bad Wigins wrote:

they ate too much as children and their skeletons grew too big to be efficient over long distance. It is really that simple.

No matter ho much you feed a Thoroughbred, it won't turn into a Clydesdale. The opposite is true as well.

That's a cute straw man argument. There are no different breeds of human, and yes it is racist to suggest it.

Feed any kid East Africa caloric levels, they will likely grow up with a marathon build, if the state doesn't take them away and put them in foster homes first. Wealthy countries cannot compete.

Bad Wigins wrote:

Conversely wrote:

No matter ho much you feed a Thoroughbred, it won't turn into a Clydesdale. The opposite is true as well.

That's a cute straw man argument. There are no different breeds of human, and yes it is racist to suggest it.

Feed any kid East Africa caloric levels, they will likely grow up with a marathon build, if the state doesn't take them away and put them in foster homes first. Wealthy countries cannot compete.

False. Kenya had a fat kid of theirs win Boston a while back. He was still a Kenyan under all the blubber.