Renato: can caucasians compete?

CoachB wrote:

Born at altitude

Financial Incentive

Culture that celebrates runners

Genetics (bio energetics)

Genetics (body type)

Harder training from a younger age....

Rank 'em

Places to run (lots of dirt roads)

Wholesome basic diet

Plenty of people to run with

Good competition

Supportive social environment

No property taxes or taxes on income

Peace and quiet (can hibernate in the mountains)

Altitude and fresh air

Lots of beautiful, fit, potential partners

You got caucasians running 2:15 for women and 2:04 for men in the marathon as well as dominating ultra distances and 3:26 down in the mile and 1:41 in the 800. Nuf said genetically. Greatest non-issue or self made issue, I don't know what. Just close wagons and keep telling oneself ad nauseum.

Billy Pilgrim wrote:

How does that change the overall point? The point is that there is a huge amount of genetic variation within a given population and that if the population is large enough, there will be extremely talented individuals within that population. Obviously there is no way to test whether the idea that we could actually be better than the East Africans if there was widespread participation. It seems pretty clear that the talent is there in the 1500, given the prior success of Coe, Ovett, Cram, ect. The marathon is more questionable but I would not say impossible. In between, it is pretty hard to say but my guess is that we would do pretty well.

And my point is that there is much more genetic variation in the 800 million people of sub-saharan African than there is in the 6.2 billion people that are native to everywhere else in the world.

Guys like Hall and Rupp can be competitive at the longer distances but they're few and far between and they still aren't world record material. If you took the American population and dropped them into an East African environment, the next generation would definitely have more competitive results, but they still wouldn't be producing top runners like the Kalenjin because of the relative lack of diversity and because it took thousands of generations for the effect of moving on foot at altitude to work its way into the genome of all those East African distance runners.

Let's talk crazy: What about a culture's relationship to time? Do "western" athletes get too hung up on time/pacing/math/beliefs about what is possible and what's not?

I really don't know if what you say about genetic variation is true or not. However, assuming it is true, it isn't really clear that it would be relevant to running, since the number of genes effecting running ability are relatively tiny compared to the overall genome. Two people could be very similar overall from a genetic standpoint except for the genes controlling their leg length to height ratio and bone density and would have completely different maximum potential in running.

Also, I really don't know how much credit to give to the Kenyan environment. I think clearly that not sitting around playing video games growing up helps, but beyond that I'm not sure how much benefit is there. Look at the miniscule overall number of east Africans that have grown up or partially grown up here in the US compared to the number that have become world class runners. I would bet that Meb would not have been a world class runner if his family had stayed in Eritrea.

If given the opportunity, Meb would have been wayyy better than he was if he stayed in Eritrea. He runs like an American; he has slow leg turnover, a short, tight stride, and an awful heel-strike. He would have been at least a 2:05 marathoner if he stayed in Eritrea, or better yet, moved to Kenya.

Mixing of people reduces diversity and genetic variation. So Africa has very distinct homogenous populations. Populations that are homogenous become unique relative to other populations.

That is why they say Africa has so much genetic diversity. Because there are specific populations that are very unmixed and share so much of the same genetics. THis population may be drastically different from another. Think Kenyans vs West Africans. Kenya has very little genetic variability, now imagine one single tribe in Kenya which has almost no genetic mixing. The traits they posses will be common in that population. West Africans will become very genetically diverse from Kenyans.

Amongst dogs, why are greyhounds faster than chiwawas?

Whew, then he must be right if you agree with him.

So by Renato's definition - the top 5 1500m runners at the Olympics this year were non-african. What do we make of this?

Any new views on this from Renato?