why are British sprinters so slow?

Zharnel Hughes seems pretty fast to me.

They have stricter drug testing. You can tell when times are more natural, they become slow in regular conditions in some of the most important meets of the year. Track and field fans just aren’t very smart

Mostly comes down to population but the youth sports culture in the UK plays a big role too. There isn't a football/basketball and track connection in the UK like there is in the US - soccer is kind of an "all in" sport in the UK. If you read the bios of many of the top UK sprinters they all started out as soccer players but eventually switched to athletics after their speed on the pitch was noted by their coaches - they were never really 2 sport athletes like is common in the US.

Also, it's about to get a whole lot worse because of the UK selection committee's decisions over the past few years. Younger athletes are gonna either never go into athletics because it's seen as "not worth it" or just switch allegiance to another country.

This. How many British footballers could have been international class sprinters? A good amount. Walcott, Walker, Bale, etc. They decided to go the route that made them insanely ****ing rich so fair play to them.

A lot of the British sprinters heritage isn't Jamaican like the Americans are it's more Nigerian/Ghanaian so they don't have the elite sprinting genetics of the Jamaican-Americans like Lyles, Thomas etc

But that doesn’t answer the question why the times are so slow. For example, there are sub 10 and 20 flat British sprinters today. But yet the times we saw were on the border of semi pro and professional. Even the women were slow. It’s because of the drug testing. You put drug testing before, during, after a meet and you can get a collection of the most culture oriented , naturally talented sprinters and you will still get “slow” (slower) times.

- Worse conditions
- Lower population
- Worse facilities
- Less resources
- Less doping

+ UKA supports the sport so little that at age 14 if you find that you are very fast you're better off seeing if you can't make it in football or rugby first.

The times you saw where? If you mean British champs, the conditions are 5x worse than Eugene. For example Asher Smith's 200m run was probably enough to make the USA team if she ran it there.

I thought there was a large population with Jamaican heritage in the UK. But they just don’t end up in TF?

I thought there was a large population with Jamaican heritage in the UK. But they just don’t end up in TF?

I think the question should be why are American sprinters so fast? Americans suck at most track and field events but in sprinting they dominate, along with Jamaica. Either they all have Jamaican heritage, they have really good coaches or they use steroids and other drugs.

The UK is on a par with other countries a similar size and does well for its location in the North Atlantic. Weather is a lot colder there than where sprint groups are located in the US and yes sprinters can go abroad to train, but that doesn't help when you're a young athlete.

What you really should be asking is why Spanish or North African sprinters are so slow, since those countries are located at the same latitude with similar weather to the parts of the US that are mainly producing good sprinters.

Ignore this Jamaica vs. West Africa nonsense. There are people of both backgrounds in the UK and they all find their way into elite track.

From the UK all-time 100m list:

Hughes (non-resident), Christie, Prescod, Fearon, Chambers (controversial), Gardener and Mitchell-Blake, Glave, Williamson, Campbell, Lewis-Francis, and Ellington have Caribbean ancestry.

Dasaolu, Amo-Dadzie, Ujah, Azu, and Edoburun have West African ancestry.

Without either ancestry are Hinchcliffe, Gemili and Kilty.

You are not making allowances for the condition the British athletes ran in. I seem to recall that it was cold. Sprinters do not perform well in cold weather.

LOL none of those footballers could have been runners let alone sprinters.

Loads of factors but yes, the weather doesn't help. Have just been outside and it's about 12C and raining. It's July. It's freezing. Can't help really. I don't think we do badly for our size as a relatively small nation. Compare this to e.g. conditions in Florida.

Bale allegedly had a 4:08 1500m as a 16 year old. If it's accurate that's impressive for someone who was not focused on the sport.

It also shows that what people consider "fast" for a footballer isn't really in the same universe as fast for a specialist sprinter. Bale destroyed elite footballers with pace but would seemingly have been a mid-d athlete.

bbc.co.uk

Gareth Bale: Real Madrid star will keep his feet firmly on the ground

https://www.facebook.com/BBCSport/

BBC Sport's Ben Smith profiles Gareth Bale, the global superstar described by his friends as modest, grounded and polite

Link:www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/23588541

"Bale was always an exceptional athlete. As a schoolboy at Whitchurch High School in Cardiff, he could run the 100m in 11.4 seconds. But he was an all-rounder, playing rugby and hockey and representing south Wales at cross-country while also competing at 400m, 800m and 1500m, setting an impressive personal best of four minutes eight seconds in the latter."

Anyway, British sprinters aren't slow. Britain regularly wins medals in the 4x1 albeit they are nowhere near the best Americans/Jamaicans.

It's obvious sprinting talent isn't evenly distributed across all population groups and the west African-derived population in the UK is ~2 million compared to ~40 million in the US. 2 million is about the same size as the black population of South Carolina alone.

The real question is why Jamaicans are so successful given their small population. They shouldn't be able to compete with the US.