Dennis Kimetto - what are we Westerners still missing about Kenyan Marathoners?

good grief wrote:

Remember just over a decade ago, whe Lance Rexingtonasaurus told us over and over and over how tall white runners would never go sub 13 for 5000 and sub 27 for 10000?

Something to do with genetics apparently

Never said that Charlie Brown, but nice lie. (show me the quote if it's not a lie).

What I *DID* say was that there are reasons to believe (and many of those reasons have been covered by other posters on this thread) that East Africans superiority in distance running is partly due to their natural ability (aka, genes). And while it's true that guys like Mottram, Solinsky, Rupp and Ritz surprised me (and a lot of other people) with their track times, and made some inroads in their respective events against the East African domination, it is equally true that the East Africans are are now more dominant in the marathon then they ever have been in history, and this, not coincidentally, is the event they have put most of their focus on. Their domination at 10k (or 5k) on the track might be nearly equal to what they are doing in the marathon if all the prize $ that is now available in marathon was available in 10k (or 5k) track races instead.

So not much has really changed. Some outstanding non East African (a.k.a., white) runners have emerged at 5k/10k on the track in the last 10 years, and that's great. (But the non-east africans have gotten a lot worse in the marathon. Kind of a wash.) No one ever said that was impossible, and it doesn't change the overall picture of utter distance domination by KEN/ETH.

(And hey Charlie, if you remember "just over a decade ago" so well on here, what were you calling yourself back then? )

XY wrote:

Maybe so, but with or without drugs, they're still faster on average then 'Westerners"

...except for maybe Khalid Khannouchi in his prime and Abdi, and Meb. And when Cheserek runs his debut marathon

completely illogical statement

[average of population 1] is faster than [average of population 2] except for [a few random samples]... makes no sense whatsoever. a few random samples have no bearing on the mean of a random variable nor do you compare them to the mean of another random variable

please learn how to use proper terminology before partaking in these intellectual discussions. thanks

by the way, Daniel Adongo

Joplas wrote:

XY wrote:

There are now many guys in the NFL from West Africa, mainly Nigeria. None from East Africa.

There is a Kenyan called Daniel Adongo who plays for Indianapolis Colts

Its worth noting that Kenya has one of the best rugby sevens teams in the world. Consistently ranked among the top 6 in the whole world. No west African teams are anywhere close. So its a cultural issue. There are far more 2nd generation Nigerian immigrants in America than there are Kenyans. So it makes sense that that Nigeria has more in the NFL.