'Natural born runners' myth goes home devastated

My general take on this subject is that there are outlier athletes and then there are elite athletes who dope to become outliers. It is tricky separating the two. Who is a Genzebe Dibaba — a talented runner becoming otherworldly with Jama Aden's doping regimen and then crashing to earth? Ditto, Rachid Ramzi and likely Asbel Kiprop. Now ID'ing an outlier who might just be great like Jakob, Seb Coe, David Rudisha or Joshua Cheptegei is difficult. Which group do they belong to? I would agree that there is a myth that none of these athletes could emerge from the Western world. But that myth was mostly made by Westerners who didn't take accountability for our runners outside of a few exceptions sucking in the 90's and early '00s. Jim Ryun existed, Herb Elliott existed, Dave Moorcroft existed, Steve Cram existed, yet East Africans running 3:29 and 13:00 or better was suddenly some impossible thing to match. Well, look now we have Grant Fisher, Jake Wightman, Josh Kerr, Jakob and so on who are extremely competitive.

You’re only showing the winner. This doesn’t show geographical variation of the top performers

And to spin this to this year, there are many women Western runners who could be competitive in the 5,000 and 10,000. One could say that all of the Kenyan or Ethiopian women are just natural-born runners or all doping if you thought about it like we did in the 90s-early 00s.

Instead: Might it be that Eilish McColgan had a nightmarish string of events since Hengelo? Elise Cranny lost multiple months of fitness with RED-S and was at 90% fitness? And Karissa Schweizer ran pretty well in the 10,000, but her best hope was the 5,000 where she came in injured and had to DNF? I'd say yes and that there is a pathway to be competitive, but all these runners just fell short this year.

Not sure that the women's 5000 and 10000 are good examples here. Let’s look at the 2021/22 time frame to decrease the impact of RED-S and injury. The situation is a lot better on the men's side, actually, but even there, we only have 1 non-African in the top 10 list each (1 with a likely doping teammate, 1 with a banned doped teammate):

5,000 m men: 12:46 – 12:53; 9 Africans, 1 non-African (on 3rd place, 12:48)
10,000 m men: 26:33 – 27:01; 9 Africans, 1 non-African (on 1st place, 26:33)
5,000 m women: 14:12 – 14:27; 10 Africans, 0 non-African
10,000 m women: 29:01 – 30:14; 9 Africans, 1 non-African (on 10th place, 30:14)

my thread praising black achievements was deleted by the mods, this one praising whites and criticising blacks is still up

LetsRun is bigoted

Kenya dominates this list. Do you think this is just coincidence but overall Kenyans are not good at all?

Grant Fisher misses your arbitrary cutoff by .7, which feels like you did on purpose. On the women's side, Schweizer and Klosterhalfen did it in 2019-20 (both injured since. Cranny and GDS were in shape to do so (or get mighty close), but ran a race suited to run 14:45 not 14:25.

Nobody is disputing the Africans have more depth, but the argument is that the best Westerners can go toe-to-toe with the best Africans both in Championships and in times.

Well I chose top ten (outdoors actually). So coincidentally the Brit barely made it, the American did not.

If you include times since 2019 in the women's 5000, then there is one non-African in the top 10, namely doper Houlihan on place 8,

Your toe-to-toe argument is only true in some exceptions over 5,000 and 10,000, and even less often in the marathon (top non westerner women is place 15 in the last two years, no western man is in the top 25), but yes, it works better over shorter distances.

I guess my point is this:
-East Africa is really good and deep at Distance Running
-The rest of the world can be competitive
-Being good and deep at a discipline doesn't mean there is doping OR such a natural born ability that it can't be overcome.

You could make the exact same arguments with the USA and island countries in the sprints and then disprove them when a Jakob type athlete emerges.

There was an article in Runner’s World way back in the late 80’s or early 90’s that said that. A study was done comparing the genetics of East African blacks and West African blacks. The findings showed that there’s a bigger genetic difference between the two than there is between blacks and whites. Ghana and Nigeria are mainly sprinters, and Kenyans and Ethiopians are mainly distance runners.

What did you expect ? Mods are original replacers.

There is a reason Native Americans say they speak with forked tongues.

Oh. Then I guess we agree.

People in Ethiopia and Kenya evolved to live at high altitude. Their "sea level" is above 7,000 feet. In some events, this gives them an advantage.

Laura Muir didn't do much better this year than she did against Genzebe. Is everybody doping?

I don't know whether the recent decline in relative E African superiority is due to more effective doping controls or not. But my perception is that if doping were somehow eradicated from the sport we would see performances across the board to fall. The sixties and seventies would ask for their times back (but better shoes and tracks would make some difference).

Muir is a talented runner but she typically looks like she is struggling out there. Nothing superhuman. I can believe that for her 3.55 or so is clean. But of course I can't be sure. However 3.50-52 I wouldn't trust at all - for anyone.

This is lazy racist thinking.

First of all, how do you explain why we don't see so many Peruvian or Mexican distance runners etc? Do they not get an advantage?

Secondly, if you admit that East Africans could have a 'genetically evolved' advantage in one regard, how do we know that maybe they have 'genetically evolved' disadvantages in other regards, due to their environment (relative lack of muscle strength as compared to Europeans etc)? Not saying that's true at all, but just because they have an advantage in one aspect, doesn't mean it explains their success.

No doubt Ma's Army had a tremendous work ethic. That was an advantage (not necessarily 'genetic'). It doesn't change the fact that their success was obviously down primarily to doping.

Perhaps if you gave Nigerians a free reign to dope with EPO, they would stil be short of world beaters in distance running. This might be genetic. If you gave East Africans free reign to dope with EPO (which is what happened for decades) they would produce dozens of world beaters in distance running (which is what happened). Yes, it's partly genetic, but it doesn't mean they have genetic advantages over Europeans.

So one possible 'genetic theory' is that yes, East Africans get an advantage from living at altitude for thousands of years, which - unlike West Africans - enables them to produce world beaters at distance running when they can dope with EPO and other drugs with close to zero testing as compared to other groups that are just as genetically talented (such as Europeans).

A breakdown of all medals won in the men's 800m since the World Championships started in 1983 (I'm counting Wilson Kipketer and Yusuf Saad Kamel as Kenyan).

1. 🇰🇪 🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇🥈🥈🥉🥉🥉🥉🥉

2. 🇺🇸 🥇🥈🥉🥉

3. 🇩🇿 🥇🥈🥉

= 🇿🇦 🥇🥈🥉

5. 🇪🇹 🥇

= 🇫🇷 🥇

= 🇩🇪 🥇

= 🇨🇭 🥇

9. 🇷🇺 🥈🥈🥉🥉

10. 🇵🇱 🥈🥈🥉

11. 🇧🇷 🥈🥉🥉

12. 🇨🇦 🥈🥉

= 🇧🇦 🥈🥉

14. 🇧🇮 🥈

= 🇨🇺 🥈

= 🇮🇹 🥈

= 🇸🇩 🥈

= 🇬🇧 🥈

19. 🇩🇯 🥉

If this isn't dominance, then I don't know what is:

2022 missing?