The Kenyans and Ethiopians are the fastest runners, but which group of people are the slowest (geographic or ethnic group)? I'm guessing it's the people of South and Southeast Asia. They have about a fifth of the world's population, but none of them can even make it past the preliminary heats of the Olympics in any running event, whether it's sprints or distance.
Thais are NOT slow. There a lot problems facing them, such as the heat and humdity, the sports culture which has no track in high school except for one day per year, and a national federation that only cares about sprinting.
There is a lot of talent for running here in Thailand, but it is not developed at all.
Jason
people don't care about running there and sport is not popular at all. its all about football(soccer) and cricket in those countries. When you grow up watching cricket players(most of them arent that fit athletically)as role models, you arent really motivated to do such a pain demanding sport like running. This might change in few years because Pakistan is increasing the prize money for its prime marathon, Lahore Marathon, and every year Africans win the money. There were articles and this issue was discussed on some online blogs in pakistani community. As the money goes up there are enough poor people in pakistan like there were in Africa that somebody is gonna end up running really fast just to put food on their table. My point is that in few years there might be some fast people from that region.
oh yeah i know a guy who use to run for Pakistan and was 4:16miler, i know its not fast but pretty descent for that country. he says that at nationals there was nobody there to watch and only people in the stadium were the 100 or so athletes and their coaches and the few meets that are run there don't even record times. But now the government is puting some money into it and recently created a site http://www.sports.gov.pk/ thts only one country but i guess its a start
The North Pole...the inhabitants, Santa and Mrs. Claus move pretty slowly. a couple of the elves are pretty quick and one timed a 4.8 40, racing Rudolph
The country that is truly slow is Laos.
There is old saying about Southeast Asia:
Thai people grow rice.
Cambodian people watch rice grow.
The Lao people LISTEN to the rice grow.
Laos is about the only country in the world where the National Marathon record is faster for the women (3:25) than the men (3:37).
I have no data to back this up, but I'd imagine that any extremely cold area would produce the slowest runners because the native people would have a lot of body fat. I can't imagine a native Alaskan, for example, being all that fast.
Ever heard of Pavo Nurmi or Lasse Viren? Norway, Sweden, Finland have excellent runners, as does Russia.
Republic of Texas
This is true. I was thinking more about eskamo type little round guys when I made my post, but you're right, there are some fast guys from cold places. It seems like every region has at least a few fast guys really. Maybe south America (if I'm not overlooking any big names), but that might just be because the olympic quality runners are playing soccer instead.
Papua New Guinea has yet to produce any long class distance runners. Seychelles, neither.
Canada
How about some countries in the South Pacific where everyone's fat? Even if you're the rare low-fat islander, how much running are you going to do when you live on a mile-long atoll?
This is an entertaining read: national records for the marathon.
http://www.arrs.net/NR_Mara.htm
Several of the women's times are over 6 hours, although St. Helena isn't really a country, strictly speaking.
Have you checked the results from any of the NCAA meets in the last 10-15 years?
How about names like Sullivan, Hood, Consiglio, Ellerton, Bunston, Brannen, Bairu, Kerr, Christopher etc.
Come on, you know how many canadians are on here? what are you thinking? guys all across canada are choking on their tim hortons donuts in a posting frenzy!
Harry Kooter wrote:
Maybe south America (if I'm not overlooking any big names), but that might just be because the olympic quality runners are playing soccer instead.
Because there's never been a good Brazilian marathon runner...
This is a very interesing question. Like some other people have said, there are a lot of issues in certain countries; they don't care about running, they don't have any incentive to run, they don't have any program, etc... Just as we had never heard of African sprinters until Frankie Fredericks, I'll be they didn't have any sprinting program, not that they lacked talent. Same thing with distance running in some countries.
I can tell you this though. I have a statistics of the number of Olympic and World Championships top 8 finishers per capita GNP (I know I'm not saying this right; I mean, per how much money per person make...or something like that. I mean, basically how rich the country is); the US ranks VERY low. Of course, Ethiopia is number one.
if you're talking about which country has the lowest standards in running, it will more likely be related to either the climate or the poorness of the country (in so much as people generally don't take part in track and field) or it'll be a very small country.
for example, i can't think of any good runners from these countries but i'm sure i'll be corrected:
in europe: cyprus, iceland, malta and monaco!
others: haiti, peru, bhutan, azerbaijan, armenia, the lesser known african countries (e.g. benin) and some middle eastern countries (e.g. yemen).
Americans -- American Samoa, that is.
MADAGASCAR!!!!