China - 1.4 billion people. 1 sub 4 ever - what gives?

No drugging.

This type of situation is usually cultural. They probably just need a Chinese version of Pre to kick off a major running boom. A charismatic freak athlete will eventually come along and change everything.

Guessing they dont race the mile. Who even uses miles anymore, basically us and uk.

They are not interested in athletics.

They are interested in making money.

They are too busy doing kung fu

They hired Renato Canova for a couple years. Apparently that didn't help. Bring back coach Ma!

Under China's Hukou system there are hundreds of millions of poor rural citizens that have less rights and fewer opportunities than those living in cities. China is also horribly corrupt as you can see with their investments into trying to become good at soccer, the whole project was a complete embarrassment and they are regularly destroyed by much smaller Asian countries. These combined give China a very pathetic sporting culture that just relies on trying to dominate solo sports that very few other countries take seriously like diving, shooting air rifles, etc.

They also had the swimming doping scandal recently.

Then why is their per-capita GDP less than $14k a year?

If anything, they're better in athletics and have somewhat decent sprinters doing the 60, 100, 110mh, and 4x100.

China is terrible at sports. 1.4 billion people and they are infatuated with Basketball yet they have produced literally one basketball player of note in their entire history (Yao Ming).

But they produce tons of Oly Champs

If you think that's bad, India has just as many people. Their best sport is cricket, and they're often beaten by Australia, a country that has just 27 million people (2% of India's population).

short limbs, long / thick torsos, maybe other genetic traits like low calf insertions.

chinese aren't bad athletes, they're just not natural runners (unlike India, which has more people but like 2 gold medals EVER)

chinese dominate weightlifting, diving, precision sports like archery, table tennis and are pretty good at swimming, gymnastics and combat / grappling sports.

the chinese probably have the "best" talent selection and training system of any country ever, so it's not for lack of organization. if China could produce incredible runners, it would.

Pianists and violinists make bank, I hear

I don't know how many Chinese runners have ever even raced a mile. If you're looking to make a comparison with the US you'd need to find out how many Chinese runners have run a 1500 in a time equivalent to a sub 4:00 mile.

21 Chinese men have run 3:42.84 or faster. Not sure exactly what the equivalent of a 4:00 mile is. I'm pretty sure it is close to 3:42.

There was a really good runner back in the day named Wang Junxia. Didn't he get close to breaking 4?

That's about the equivalent. I'd have had no idea how to find that. Thanks.

They had those women in the 90s that most people would assume were doping. Why didn't they have the same program with men?