Michael Johnson says that slave descendants have "athletic genes"

ventolin^3 wrote:

Sports physiologist wrote:This is a very bizarre situation, by the way, because the number of potential talents for these disciplines exponentially increases due to the continuing upward trend of body height

drivel

you haven't a clue

if double the number entering, exponential means x4 the talent

if triple the number entering, exponential means x9 the talent...

drivel

The sun came out on the Kenyan horizon, Ventolin jumped out of his bed, and started to rave on LETSRUN.COM!

it doesn't deter from fact you are a moron

if there are currently 10 white runners capable of ~ 1'43/1'44, then according to your "theory", if you double the number entering the 800, then you woud have 40 more guys capable of running 1'45

drivel

ventolin^3 wrote:

it doesn't deter from fact you are a moron

if there are currently 10 white runners capable of ~ 1'43/1'44, then according to your "theory", if you double the number entering the 800, then you woud have 40 more guys capable of running 1'45

drivel

Ventolin finished writing his drivel, jumped to the table, drank a cup of Indian tea, and jumped back to the computer.

moron

you are the drivel-merchant

In answer to Sports physiologist (ex-Czech guy, I presume).

I have never read such a load of ...

I think you should make a difference between your

opinion and facts.Body height is the major

advantage both in athletics and sports in general? Really you should check the facts.

Football(soccer) is dominated by southern Europeans, you aren't going to tell me that Europeans do not compete in Football or that it is a minor sport,are you ?

Euro 2008: Spain.

World cup 2010: Spain.

Euro 2012 : Spain.

Spain was the shortest team in the last Euro 2012. Check the stats section in the UEFA website.

You have to go back to Euro 1996 to find a northern European team (Germany) winning a major tournament in this sport.Since then World Cup 1998: France, Euro 2000: France, WC 2002: Brazil, E2004:Greece, WC2006: Italy...

Let's talk about Basket-Ball, a sport where height is important: the only team not named USA which won Olympic gold in the past 20 yrs is Argentina (which is only populated by big and tall Nordics, isnt it ? )where Basketball is parsecs away from soccer in

term of popularity, unlike in the Baltic & Dinaric countries.Spaniards are literally crushing

European Basketball right now.

Volley-Ball: Even though Serbians are the current European champions (2011), this is a sport that has

been dominated at European level by Italy since the break up of the soviet union, and by Americans

(Northern & Southern) at World level. USA are the current olympic champions & Brazil world champs,Cuba vice World champs who took down the tall Serbian Dinarics in the semi. This is quite surprising because then again, Base-Ball is the only team sport Cubans seems to care about.

Now Handball, a German team sport: Extremely popular in Northern Europe and Germany, the rest of the continent does not really care about though. Yet a sport that has been owned by France in the past 10 yrs. Even Spain have better results than Germany in this sport.

I m not even speaking about male tennis...

Sorry guy but facts contradict your opinion. Most of the best athletes and the best teams coming from "White countries" do not come from the tallest "White countries" In if people in this board should wake up from the delusional hallucinations spread by US media you should wake and smell the coffee and leave whatever message board in which you read that body height is a determining factor in sport.

I do agree with you that there is not such thing such an "athletic gene" and I explain you why

To Sports physiologist

However, I totally agree with you that there is no such an athletic "Black" gene due to slavery.

If it was the case South american Blacks who do not come from planet Mars, would have produced hundreds of sub10s sprinters.

Most of the descendant of slaves living in the Americas live in Latin America and Brazil got the biggest share of the transatlantic slave trade.

However most of the best sprinters come from the English speaking nations & this is the same in Africa where all the sub 10s sprinters come from the former British colonies.

The bottom line in all this is that black sprinters have unique physical characteristics only found in those with roots to western Africa. No they don't have to work as hard to be successful.

Just in the USA...

No white sprinter has ever ran a sub 10.10

Last white sprinter to run on our Oly 4x1 team, 1964 with Gerry Ashworth.

Who can name the last great white female sprinter?

Last white sprinter to medal in the Oly 100m, Dave Sime 1960.

NFL running backs?

NFL cornerbacks?

Speed receivers?

It's totally ridiculous to get off into...well you see it's like this...hmmm? Who here has been to the Phillipines? Tiny little people. Then there is Samoa, they are huge. Yes believe it or not us humans really are different. Who has seen an Ameican indian with a beard? You cannot mistake a Kenyan for a Nigerian.

Sure there was selective breeding (slavery days) going on back in the day and yes only the strong survived the trip over but that's not why we see blacks doing what they do. It's their physique, they have a body more speed, agile,quick friendly. That's why we see little black kids winning all those midget races.

When something is this overwelming it's due to body type. Where are those speedy, elusive, agile white footballers? How come it's always black footballers with that zip? Then there's the size with speed, something we only see in black athletes.

This is so simple, western Africans have a unique physique not unlike the Watusi, Pgymy, Samoan, Filipino. That black physique more tailor made for speed, agility and quickness.

Black athletes (the speed types) have less boby fat between the muscle and the bone, a more tight physique. More naturally muscular.

Man, I said that I don't like nitpickers. Body height is the main factor in the majority of global sports. If we exclude low weight categories of strength and combat sports (that were artifically created in order to hush uncompetetive dwarfs), there are only 7 Olympic sports with height averages below 180 cm: Table tennis, badminton, gymnastics, shooting, trampoline, diving, mountain biking. In Olympic team sports, only the average height in football and field hockey frequently falls below 180 cm. Basketball, volleyball, handball and waterpolo belong to a completely different category.

You don't want to tell me that the Spanish basketball team is only 177 cm tall - like the average height in Spain? The fact that countries with such a small height excell in basketball is actually a nice proof, how pathetic the current international competetion in basketball is. The proportion of 2 m tall guys namely changes dramatically with increasing height. A nation 177 cm tall will have only 0.02% males with this height (at SD 6.5 cm). In contrast, a nation 181 cm tall on average will find 0.17% guys with this height, i.e. 8.5-times more. This means that in 9-million Sweden, there are almost 2-times more guys with the height of an average basketball player than in the whole 47-million Spain (and one must consider that the recent 7-million increase of the Spanish population is due to foreign immigrants). Why doesn't Sweden excel in basketball? Because basketball is not a popular sport in Sweden.

When something is this overwelming it's due to body type. Where are those speedy, elusive, agile white footballers? How come it's always black footballers with that zip? Then there's the size with speed, something we only see in black athletes.

This is so simple, western Africans have a unique physique not unlike the Watusi, Pgymy, Samoan, Filipino. That black physique more tailor made for speed, agility and quickness.

Black athletes (the speed types) have less boby fat between the muscle and the bone, a more tight physique. More naturally muscular.

The fact that US whites don't bother to compete in sports dominated by US blacks is a special US issue. You must solve this problem on your own.

US blacks are not anyhow exceptionally muscular. They have moderate or at best slightly above-average physique by global standards. But due to the fact that they are the only human group with a moderate or above-average physique that evolved in tropics, their distribution of fat is very different from other humans with the same body type. In other words, their body fat is stored internally, and they have thinner layers of body fat on the frontal parts of the body. This creates the impression of "ripped", "athletic" figures, that is further strengthened by the effect of black color. But it has no direct relationship with any "athleticism".

You don't like nitpickers, but you're nitpicking to by only taking BasketBall as an example.

"In Olympic team sports, only the average height in football and field hockey frequently falls below 180 cm."

Not during the last European championship, where Spain was the shortest team with an average height of 180 cm:

http://fr.euro2012players.uefa.com/Height.aspx#height

The tallest players in football generally occupy the goalkeeping & defending positions, guess what ? The best defense in the tournament was...Spain

"Why doesn't Sweden excel in basketball? Because basketball is not a popular sport in Sweden"

And you don't like nitpickers?

Team Handball: extremely popular in Germany and in Northern Europe, a sport where athletes are generally tall: Northern European are doing well but not better than Latin Europeans, despite the fact the sport is much less popular there. France current olympic & double world champions.

Why don't you tell us in which sport (bar winter sports) northern Europeans do better than their southern counterparts in order to BACK UP your facts ?

But the best player of France is certain Nikola Karabatić LOL

I see you need to explain a lot of things - for example, that physical determinants in team sports are not as important as in individual sports, because these sports depend on specific skills, not speaking about psychology. However, the fact that the situation in volleyball and basketball is turned upside down, against all expectations, is a clear sign that these sports don't enjoy sufficient popularity in countries that are endowed with the best physical potential. These sports are too extreme in their physical requirements and need a specific culture to enjoy big popularity.

sports physiologist

You've just illustrated why your earlier comment is a poor one; there are so many sports where other factors play (heavily) into account. You've just spelled out team sports as an exception where your "rule" doesn't apply. That's not insignificant.

I'm sure, in some sports, height, all other things being equal, is a significant factor; but that's a very different statement to the one you made.

cenotaph wrote:

my only contribution to this discussion is an opinion that variation/selection can occur in <400 years. natural selection may take longer, but i believe what people are arguing is that it is actually a type of artificial selection. so yes, genes in a population can be tailored to creating more genetically able people. plenty of great athletes had athletic parents. sure there is some learned/nurture elements there, but there are genetic advantages too. its not 100%, but certainly above average and not luck/randomness.

its not like black sprinters are running 5s to white sprinters' 10s. it is a few tenths of a second difference. an argument that slavery or something caused a new species to evolve is ridiculous, but some sort of artificial selection process causing better athletes is not unfathomable

400 years would be enough to make population differences in a highly controlled and focused breeding program. Significant changes in dog breeds, for example, can occur in less time (although they have shorter time to reproductive maturity. The question is whether there is evidence of any focused selective breeding program extensive enough to change the entire population characteristics. There is absolutely no evidence of such an extensive program in existence anywhere. In such a program you would have to choose both parents, confirm parentage, destroy or neuter offspring of other parentage, cross the favorable offspring with each other, etc.

ventolin^3, I haven't actually been following what your arguments with everyone on this board are about, but I thought I should point out that you have very poor debating skills, and perhaps you should try to improve them.

Check out:

http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html

You are currently at level DH0. Try to get at least to DH3.

Okay prove it. Solve this problem:

Let n be the number of ordered quadruples (x1, x2, x3, x4) of positive odd integers that satisfy x1+x2+x3+x4 = 98. Find n/100.

If you can solve this without cheating, then I'll believe what you say.

Conundrum wrote:

(4) Jamaican dominance might be due to other reasons.

Agreed. There are strong arguments on both sides of the issue with regard to whether or not slavery and genetics play a part.

It does not explain however, the reason for such a great number high caliber sprinters coming out of Jamaica, specifically. The fact is that they have a virtual sprint factory which is churning out a disproportionate amount of talent. This, in a vast region full of people with similar West-African ancestry, (USA included) points to something else other than physical make-up. Mind you, this is not as sudden an occurrence as one might think. If you look at the history of T&F where sprinting is concerned, they have always been a powerhouse, overshadowed only by the USA for the most part. To the chagrin of many, I've always maintained that once the USA lost its chemical advantage in the Balco doping scandals and testing increased sharply, the playing field was became leveled.

Anyway, in continuing…if one focuses solely on people of African heritage to include the African mainland for that matter… if you draw comparisons within that group, you now have to explain why a country with such a tiny percentage is dominating sprints. In Jamaica's case, it’s cultural. Yes, football (soccer) and cricket are prominent but within the educational system, track and field is king. It’s the basic building block on which the other sports are built. Now with the ascension of its sprint stars, the focus on T&F is ever increasing, hence the conveyor belt effect. So in conclusion, if the culture factor can be deemed far more logical than genetics within this group of African descendants, that argument can be re-expanded to encompass this entire discussion.

I think it's easy to underestimate the cultural influences of a few successful athletes; they "drag" the rest of a group higher, without question. Australian swimming, particularly in the men, will be far weaker at the Games this year than in, say, 2000, when Ian Thorpe led a great team. There are still going to be a few Aussie stars, but the depth is nowhere near what it was. Someone like Thorpe, or before him Kieran Perkins, had a profound influence on Aussie swimming, and the medal tally for the Aussies rose with, and behind, his awesomeness.

And, continuing the example, how on earth are Aussies a world powerhouse in swimming anyway? A population of about 18 million people makes the country smaller than some states in this country; yet, from time time, the Aussies rock the house.

One great athlete can easily raise the bar for world athletics, and the rest of the world follow suit; it seems normal to me then, to assume the rest of the local population would follow a stronger suit.

Running on Empathy wrote:

Sometimes it's worth reminding people that they shouldn't let their genetics be the determining factor in deciding their chances of success in athletic endeavors.

Mitt's Celestial Underwear wrote:

Boy you really went out on a limb with that statement.

Of course genetics is THE determining factor is athletic success. It does not matter how damn hard you work, you will not sprint the 100 meters in less than 10 seconds unless you are born with rare athleticism (and possibly take PEDs).

Athletes have a right to speak but it doesn't mean when an athlete speaks he or she is speaking with knowledge. What does Mike Johnson know about genes? Is Michael Johnson an anthropologist? Is Johnson a biologist? Does Johnson name this so-called athletic gene? If there were a west African sprinter gene, why aren't there great west African sprinters? The person whom started this thread stated, "Poor track." Poor tracks don't hurt Kenyan (400 to 3000) metres runners. Some on this thread have stated African-Americans were genetically engineered to be great athletes. 1807 Act Prohibiting the Importing of Slaves and 1863 Emancipation Proclamation would poke holes in that theory. Who has been genetically engineering black athletes the past 151 plus years? According to professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., The Roots, February 11, 2013: According to Ancestory.com the average African-American is 65% sub-Sarahan African, 29% European, 2% Native American. According to Gates, family Tree DNA.com, the average African-American, 72.95% sub-Sarahan, 22.83% European, 1.7% Native American.

Since African-Americans have been randomly selecting mates since, at least, the past 151 years, US blacks should becoming worse athletes yearly since the so-called advantages of masterful genetic engineering dissipates.

If a west African gene is the reason for superior black athleticism, African-Americans have so much European DNA it makes the west African gene argument very weak. See photos of: Zach Lavine.

Truth: we don't know why.