while not completely related to the debate, i remember reading an article, maybe 20 years ago (pre-internet, could've been time/sports illustrated/scientific american or something like that), about sprinters and distance runners of east african, west african and european descent (asians weren't included, didn't consider their exclusion until just now...).
if i remember the gist of the article correctly, it went something like this: the peak of the bell curve was similar for each race, so genetically it seemed you could be world class in either distances or sprints regardless of descent; however, the "flatness" of the peak varied for each race, so higher probability favored certain races (west africans for sprints, east africans for distances).
another interesting purported conclusion was that while european/caucasians had a lower probability (though virtually identical peak) than east africans in distances, they had a higher probability than west africans in this regard. likewise, though european/caucasians had a lower probability in sprints than west africans (which generally includes their descendant african-americans throughout the americas), they had a higher probability than east africans.
i wonder if there have been any more recent studies of the same kind, and if they've included asians--although this is always a tricky business because asians has become a "catchall" denomination that includes very disparate populations, cultures and genetics. of course, the same, to a lesser degree, could be said for european/caucasians....