First of all, we do produce some great distance runners. So let's not be too hard on ourselves. But, our talent pool isn't deep enough compared to the East Africans.
Even though I agree to some extent that the US is a fat, lazy society, I don't think that completely accounts for us not being deep enough. As I've pointed out before, >>>>we're still dominating the world in swimming. Only swim-crazy Australia can come close to the US in this sport that is very unforgiving to fat, lazy kids.
A couple of other possibilities:
1. America's athletic talent pool is diluted into many more sports than East Africans. For example, the American black inner city athlete is sorely underrepresented in distance running. Think of what some of those small, fast basketball players could do in distance running if they focused on that sport through high school.
2. As opposed to USA swimming which has a well developed club program, the US leaves the development of distance runners largely to the schools. This is a hit or miss proposition. I'm convinced some talented kids just don't excel early enough to get the opportunities to reach their potential in the sport.
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You make alot of excellent points. The only thing though is that while the US is diluted into many sports their population is still 280 million, and they still have multitudes running HS and college so much of the problem lies with the development, or lack of, in those 2 institutions. That's why a good club system would be so beneficial. Allows a runner to work towards their own goals rather than the schools. Gives them time to build. Much easier swim hard through your teenage years than run hard because of the floatation the water provides.
Africans are very active in their young years but do not necessarily run themselves to death. The play alot of soccer, or other sports, in the park, thus they are running around a helluva lot in play and everywhere they go they walk, including miles to school or the school bus stop. This type of unstructured activity actually develops a good, solid base. IMHO the best time to start running seriously, I believe, is around 16 provided you've had a similar active lifestyle. Your body is at that stage mature enough to handle and absorb the harder workload by then. Thus increasing training load shouldn't be too difficult (within reason). Thus at you're 27, when you're body should be phyisically, mentally at it's peak with all the years of experience behind it, you've had 11 years of running behind you. If you can't perform off that, you never will.
Anyway, that's just my opinion.