New take on "Why Kenyans Make Such Great Runners" in Atlantic article.

Everyone's getting at most of the factors, but I think there's something else, too. I can't be sure if it's accurate, but during some marathon broadcast in the last few years, one of the announcers said there were about 5000 Kenyans training as marathoners. Assuming he was even close to being right, we surely don't have that many in the US, and we have a much bigger population. So if they have 5000 guys trying to make it, and 450 of them get burned out or sick or hurt, they still have 50 great runners every year. We have maybe 200 guys trying, so we only end up with one or two great ones.

And finally, my own pet theory with no evidence at all to back it up: Americans tend to equate the concept of "athlete" with a muscular, explosive type of athlete- the type that plays our favorite games like football and basketball. A small, skinny guy with a ton of slow-twitch fibers like Bekele would be likely in this country to conclude that he just wasn't a good athlete, and join the computer club instead of trying out for any sport. The number one guy on my cross country team my senior year only joined because he got cut from the golf team and he really wanted to do a sport. He never thought of himself as a runner before that.

Success breeds success & no I don't mean "breed" like a fast male runner & female runner have a child together...Kenyan runners are successful like Gretzky was in hockey in Canada and Jordan was in basketball in the US. So who do think kids with athletic ability are going to emulate? The athletic Kenyan kids are going to take up a sport like basketball? Of course not. We model the success of those 'close' to us.

There's the odd good runner in North America but unless you're a runner yourself, you could pass him on the street and never know it. If running was treated like professional sports then there would be (self) selection from a much larger bigger population pool, but as it is most of the north american population could give a crap about running.

Count crapula wrote:

Adam C wrote:

Do you think another "ethnic" group (for lack of a better term) will someday supplant the Kenyans as the world's greatest distance runners?

Yes, ethiopeans are surely there already. Sololia may have great talent, but we'd never know. Just shear numbers and ethnic diversity: USA, china, Russia, India.

Moroccan have proven to be fast en-masse. What happened to people from Algeria...? I'm waiting for Peruvians or Mexicans or other south/central Americans. They have some of the ingredients (altitude + poverty); what's missing...?

The most powerful factors are clearly genetic, though not necessarily exclusive to East Africans.

You can't play Left Tackle in the NFL unless you are over 300 lbs (quite a bit over in most cases).

Can't play Center in the NBA unless you are close to 7 feet tall.

You can't be an elite distance runner with a BMI of 23 or above.

You could have raised Tim Tebow in Kenya, no one can question his motivation or work ethic, but at 6'3" 245 with 5-8% body fat, BMI of 30, he would never be an elite.

Cam Newton is 6'5", 250 with 6% body fat, BMI 29.6.

The Sweat Science blog has a nice riposte to the rather misguided article in The Atlantic.

http://sweatscience.runnersworld.com/

Highlight: Danish track star Tom Nolan'd 5K PR was 14:56. So yes, if you stacked him up against top high school runners -- in Kenya or anywhere -- he might not fare so well.

What irks me most about The Atlantic piece is its self-congratulatory tone. The author's rhetorical pretext is that somehow the genetic factor is beyond the pale of polite discourse (he's obviously never read these message boards) and no matter the cost to political correctness, he's going to be the angel of truth who breaches the subject. Congratulations, Mr. Fisher. Another journalist who strikes this rhetorical pose is Wm. Saletan at Slate.

Also, sloppy use of "amazing" in last paragraph--a completely overused hyperbole at this point in time.

Junk Master wrote:

The most powerful factors are clearly genetic.....

Yes. Everything else is icing on the cake. Oh sure, the wrong environment would not allow for a nation of great potential runners to realize that potential. But if it were only environment holding back US or other nations runners, we would STILL see a few more top guys than we have.

The USA has produced exactly ONE non-african born sub 2:09 marathoner in its history (on a "non-aided" course. We all know Boston counts as downhill an thus aided). ONE.

If you want to argue the Boston point, then let's say sub 2:08:30. ONE

Ken/ETH combined?? They have probably around a total of 250 sub 2:09 guys ( I got tired of counting, and the lists I looked at weren't updated).

To look at that and say: yeah, but 'if we were poorer and stopped playing nintendo,' we could match that' seems quite silly to me. The cream rises to the top.

There will always be exceptions to the rule and genetic outliers in other nations too, just far fewer. Just because there is a Solinksy here, a Rupp there, and a Lemaitre over there, doesn't mean that countless euro/euro-heritage countless guys like the are waiting in the wings to, if given the right motivation, dominate the east africans in running or the west africans (often transplanted) in sprinting. I'm not holding my breath at least.

Building on the question of why East Africans dominate distance running is something that baffles me much more: Why do people of West African descent dominate sprinting so much? I seriously have no clue.

Hasnt anyone ever freakin noticed that Africans are built differently than white people!

Kalenjin's put their young man through 8 stages of initiation into manhood, each stage they are coached, encouraged, trained to endure pain, stay the course and never disappoint. It is a form of weakness to flinch, whine or keep up easily. This is the last stage of the initiation before the boys graduate into man. http://search.kr.real.com/watch.php?id=y834S9GtSfQ.

What I'm struggling to understand is why this is considered a "new take"?

The only thing new was a reference to the finishers of the recent Boston marathon. The studies mentioned were in 1990 and 2000. This isn't recent, or new.

A second, unrelated thing I'm struggling to understand is what can possibly be considered racist in these kinds of studies? It's not racist to collect evidence, and attempt to draw conclusions from that evidence. On the contrary, it's racist to draw conclusions without collecting any evidence.

It's not racist to make statistical observations, and then ask why.

Renato Canova mentioned in a another thread that Kenyan Children play like Westerners played years ago.

Clearly, genetics, altitude, etc have something to do with it, but, as has been mentioned here, childhood diet, exercise habits, etc contribute.

Think about even the active typical American kid- he/she plays in the local town soccer or baseball league- they stand around waiting to hit, kick, catch the ball.

Kids rarely run around the neighborhood like they used to (I'm 53, I used to).

Am I a great runner? No, but I am more fit than about 80-90% of the teenagers that go to the school I teach in.

I eat healthy, run (50 mpw).

I think we would have more runners competing with Kenyans if kids led the lifestyle we used to leave- without all the crappy fake food.

We have a Kenyan girl in our running club. She's from a middle-class family in Nairobi. She runs a marathon in about 4 hours.

Its nice to say I can outrun a Kenyan.

The enclosed interview is a more sober take on this question, suggesting that the "data" referenced in the Atlantic Monthly is A) highly suspect and B) not statistically significant even it it is accurate. http://athleticsillustrated.com/interviews/trent-stellingwerff-2/

nfbvrgnjuvrfv wrote:

People forget that Europeans are completely capable of very fast times too, but are mostly still in the doldrums. Compare UK middle distance in the eighties to UK MD now. That certainly isn't genes.

You can also compare US high school programs. There are some US high school dynasties that consistently turn out a fast collegiate runner or two every year. Most other high schools have trouble finding kids who can break 18 minutes for a 5k.

Kenyans may indeed have better genetics, but the US is completely wasting whatever genetics it does have.

Face it-- we're plain old lazy.

You need not look any further than the almighty dollar.

Here's a great paragraph from that SweatScience article posted above:

***As for the study itself, I suspect he's referring to this one (on which, you'll notice, "T Nolan" is listed as an author). The average 5K times were 20.25 minutes for Kenyan kids from "towns," and 18.42 minutes for Kenyan kids from "villages." (Hang on, does this mean that village kids have better genetics?) The fastest time recorded in the whole study was 16:16. That's still a decent time for a high-schooler -- but it's not what you expect would be required to beat a "Danish track superstar." (The Danish national record, for what it's worth, is 13:25.)***

Here's the link to the study:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15679572

So in other words, if you take 24 Kenyan 16-year olds and train them for 12 weeks, you'll get an average 5k performance of about 19:30, with a best of 16:16. My god, where do they get such talent? I'm having a hard time thinking of a decent sized high school in the U.S. that couldn't give you similar results after 12 weeks of training (which is of course the typical length of a high school cross-country season).

are Americans genetically predisposed to not be as good as Europeans at soccer? why does the US only have a hand-full of players in the Premier League?

Nobody is going to argue that the issue with professional soccer is genetics. Until we can control for other factors (environment, culture/society, economics) calling genetics the deciding factor is lazy and self-defeatist.

Rise above our western economic endowment and cultural cesspool and we can start to close the gap.

I did some e-mailing around and found that a good 25% of their diet is pure sucrose dumped into their tea. The coach I talked to down their said it's unbearably sweet and they also dump loads of salt on their meals. I also have a food diary a local athlete down there. One thing is for sure, every day their glycogen is replenished and the higher CO2 at that altitude is keeping their metabolisms efficient. That alone would make a significant impact on the ability to train more.

Sounds like this backs the 'lifestyle' aspect of the argument. Kenyans from the villages probably do a lot more walking, running, physical work on a daily basis than Kenyans that live in town. Most American kids do none of this outside of established sports in schools. So for an American kid you have to build that base that will allow him to train at a higher level to run fast times. The Kenyan villager only needs 12 weeks to get race sharp.