No
Basketball
Football
Baseball
No
Basketball
Football
Baseball
Because instead of shooting just to break 10, their goal is to break 9.8 & 9.7
NativeSon wrote:
Sham 69 wrote:
How is this even possible?
The Jamaicans are NOT dominant.
They have two great female athletes and one great male athlete who is retired!
Their next best thing, Yohan Blake couldn't even make the 100m final or even the 200m.
They are not dominant. The Americans are.
Now, English is NOT my first language. It i NOT even my second languge. May be I don't understand the meaning of 'dominant'.
The men were only really dominant in 2012, but the women absolutely have been dominant.
Since the 2004 Olympics, they have won 11 out of a possible 15 medals in the100m (4 out of 5 gold medals), and 6 out of 15 in the 200m (again, 4 out of 5 gold medals). 2 gold medals and 2 silvers in the 5 sprint relays, one DNF when they were the overwhelming favourites. They have swept the 100m podium twice.
Assuming you’re referring to SAFP and ETH as the two great female athletes, you’re leaving out VCB who was at one point the best female sprinter in the world. In that time, there has also been Kerron Stewart, Sherone Simpson and now Shericka Jackson as medallists.
There is no precedent for that kind of dominance in the short sprints by any country.
When people are resorting to an alleged genetic predisposition, you know they are grasping at straws. The use of PEDs in sprinting has a very well documented history, and if you are dominating in the sport there is one credible reason. It just takes a green light from the national sports authorities and it is off to the races.
astro wrote:
When people are resorting to an alleged genetic predisposition, you know they are grasping at straws. The use of PEDs in sprinting has a very well documented history, and if you are dominating in the sport there is one credible reason. It just takes a green light from the national sports authorities and it is off to the races.
The genetic predisposition is a requirement, drugs or no drugs. Russia and China have green lighted doping in athletics for years, they have larger populations which greater resources, where is their sprint dominance?
astro wrote:
When people are resorting to an alleged genetic predisposition, you know they are grasping at straws. The use of PEDs in sprinting has a very well documented history, and if you are dominating in the sport there is one credible reason. It just takes a green light from the national sports authorities and it is off to the races.
There's definitely a genetic predisposition amongst West African-descended peoples. Or have you not attended high school in suburban America, where this becomes perfectly obvious after watching school after school w/ small black populations where West African-descended kids utterly dominate the ranks of the sprinters, jumpers, basketball players, etc? It is consistent across all regions of the country, all age groups and all levels of competition and has been for over a hundred years (roughly, since Blacks migrated in large numbers to places where they were allowed to compete in sports).
There's nothing really specific to Jamaican genetics, per se, though Jamaica was used as a slave penal colony and some-- Michael Johnson among them in his Usain Bolt documentary-- have speculated that this served to hyper-select the most physically able slaves for Jamaica. I don't know about all that, though.
If Jamaica doesn't dominate, it will just mean that Trinidad or Bahia, Brazil or Atlanta, GA or some such will. What's the diff?
douglas burke wrote:
Usain Bolt is as big a Hero in Jamaica as Nathan Hale or Thomas Jefferson are in America.
As an American I just can’t get over how accurate this is. I mean you totally nailed it. Quote of the year.
This is the documentary you want to watch
https://documentarylovers.com/film/born-to-run-jamaican-runners/
Great genetics through slavery, Horrible thing but definitely helps, and obviously PEDs. They’ve gotten very good at something that’s keeping their best runners from popping. Which I’m good with. We need stars.
I have had several US college coaches tell me that for every fantastically fast sprinter we see in America, there are 10 others just as talented or more who either never pursued the sport or applied themselves (most common), or they played some other sport. In Jamaica, sprinting is THE sport, so you don't have any dilution of talent. They also don't have quite as bad of a hip-hop thug culture as the US, so kids are actually motivated to apply themselves. The government there hasn't destroyed the black family with welfare to near the degree the govt in the US has, so kids have more discipline there since they grow up with fathers.
Given all this, it's not that hard to understand why Jamaica has so many great sprinters.
The David Epstein book actually addresses this (The Sports Gene). I read it several years ago so I don't remember all the details. From what I remember, however, a group of slaves staged a mutiny in the early days of the slave trade, and created an autonomous society in the Jamaica mountains. Many of their sprint stars can trace their lineage to this group. In fact, many top American sprinters fall under this lineage.
This coupled with lax doping enforcement, popularity of the sport and several of the other points brought up probably all contribute to their sprint dominance. What these kids do at Penn every year is insane.
Jamaica like Kenya and Ethiopia predomitainly have only one main sport .They don`t lose athletes to other sports.
astro wrote:
Of course it's PEDs. When you are beating other PED users, it isn't hard to figure out. It is just impolite to say. I recall in 2017 when Gatlin beat Bolt, who suddenly looked very human. I always thought Bolt just did not want to pull an Armstrong and get caught on the way out.
While I don't deny the likelihood of Jamaican track being littered with PED cheats, why does that lessen their accomplishments considering a large portion of top tier sprinters, particularly Americans, are also PED cheats? Jamaica does not have access to stuff that others don't.
To say "well, Jamaican's are doped to the gills" is lazy. A better answer is that JA athletes don't have many sports to choose from, particularly sports with top level coaching. I'm certain if America didn't have football and basketball, that alone would tilt things heavily in Team USA's favor.
The slavery and West African genes arguments dont explain the other countries that had slaves.
Brazil had far more slaves than Jamaica. There are over 50 million descendants of slaves in Brazil.
Other nations that had significant numbers of slaves are Haiti, Cuba, Colombia, Panama, Ecuador, Belize, Guyana, La Guiane, Surinam, Peru, Venezuela, Paraguay, Uruguay, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, even Mexico. Yet none of these produce sprinters.
Haiti is the most interesting to me because there are far more Haitians in North America and Europe than Jamaicans and there are hardly any sprinters.
douglas burke wrote:Slavery is Brutal and Evil REGARDLESS of who is doing it.
Yes, but slavery is indispensable as a way to organize labor in the absence of capitalism and free markets. All opponents of capitalism are implicit supporters of slavery.
Jetagimath wrote:
The slavery and West African genes arguments dont explain the other countries that had slaves.
Brazil had far more slaves than Jamaica. There are over 50 million descendants of slaves in Brazil.
Other nations that had significant numbers of slaves are Haiti, Cuba, Colombia, Panama, Ecuador, Belize, Guyana, La Guiane, Surinam, Peru, Venezuela, Paraguay, Uruguay, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, even Mexico. Yet none of these produce sprinters.
Haiti is the most interesting to me because there are far more Haitians in North America and Europe than Jamaicans and there are hardly any sprinters.
The situation in Brazil, and in most other South American countries but especially Brazil, is the same as in the USA. There is already a dominant sports culture which is takes on the best athletes, soccer. If you are fast and have even a little bit of soccer talent, becoming a sprinter will not be even a secondary consideration in your mind. You might even play volleyball before considering track and field.
There was that whole zero out of competition tests of Jamaican athletes before the 2008 and 2012 Olympics. If you take a world class athlete and give them a green flag for doping they are going to dominate.
1. Drugs.
2. Culture.
That’s all.
Drugs are/were rampant, and the Jam’s were and still are protected by their national federation and the absolute highest levels in sport, in part to crush insufferable American cockiness. Drugs are just one form of cheating, the Jams do it at all levels, it starts in club when they lie about kids’ ages.
Jam sprint culture is great. I grew up in it, trained in it. It was the reason I sprinted. Everyone else except for a handful was Jamaican, some Trinis, etc. It was all about how fast you were—and 3 WR-holders came out of that, and a bunch of others who were close, it was THAT good. It can get dangerous when you get older if you’re good, because people don’t like getting beaten. Very uncomplicated, and very raw—and that was now 40 years ago.
Trainwreck watcher
The situation in Brazil, and in most other South American countries but especially Brazil, is the same as in the USA. There is already a dominant sports culture which is takes on the best athletes, soccer. If you are fast and have even a little bit of soccer talent, becoming a sprinter will not be even a secondary consideration in your mind. You might even play volleyball before considering track and field.
I disagree that soccer takes away sprinters. In soccer, being super fast is not critical.
Of the Afro Brazilians who have excelled in soccer, none were fast. Pele, Romario, Garrincha, Cafu, etc etc
Interestingly if you look at the greatest soccer players of Jamaican descent, none were fast. John Barnes was a brilliant dribbler not fast neither was Sol Campbell, Raheem Sterling, Andy Cole etc
Again because pure footspeed is not critical in soccer
Sprintgeezer wrote:
Drugs are/were rampant, and the Jam’s were and still are protected by their national federation and the absolute highest levels in sport, in part to crush insufferable American cockiness. Drugs are just one form of cheating, the Jams do it at all levels, it starts in club when they lie about kids’ ages.
Come on Sprintgeezer. Jamaica may be relatively poor, but its birth registration is on par with any developed nation, and it’s even more difficult to get away with age-cheating in a country that small where everyone knows each other, you’re just making stuff up now. This isn’t Kenya we’re talking about.