Bill Rodgers asks: Should races have 'altitude born and non-altitude born' divisions?

If they ban Emma (born in Boulder) I'm all against it. Otherwise ok.

Reavis wrote:

In 2014 top sea-level born was Kohei Matsumura of Japan at #86 with 2:08:09

In 2013, Kazuhiro Maeda of Japan at # 62 with 2:08:00

In 2012, Henryk Szost of Poland at # 70 with 2:07:39

Honorable mention for Ritz just missing the sea-level best of 2012.

rpmcmurphy wrote:

Gary - I was referring to the current thread and the discussion thus far on it. Of course all of my points have been known and discussed for years but for some reason no one replying on the thread had bothered to bring any of it into the mix. That was all i was trying to add. There are too many factors involved than simply altitude. Got to look at all the factors that's all i am saying and no one seems to be acknowledging.

Nobody mentioned it because it is no longer considered "the reason" by many.

rojo wrote:

In 2014 top sea-level born was Kohei Matsumura of Japan at #86 with 2:08:09

In 2013, Kazuhiro Maeda of Japan at # 62 with 2:08:00

In 2012, Henryk Szost of Poland at # 70 with 2:07:39

What altitudes were these guys' places of birth?

enquiring minds wrote:

rojo wrote:

In 2014 top sea-level born was Kohei Matsumura of Japan at #86 with 2:08:09

In 2013, Kazuhiro Maeda of Japan at # 62 with 2:08:00

In 2012, Henryk Szost of Poland at # 70 with 2:07:39

What altitudes were these guys' places of birth?

Matsumura was born in Osaka (average elevation 24m).

Maeda was born in this small coast town in Western Japan (average elevation 56m).

Szost was born in this city. Elevation 590m.

'It takes ONE generation to get a favorable mutation,'

Garbage you might get one in 10,000. Anyway name the favourable mutation there is none.Why do Kenyans go back to traini at altitude if its just genetic!

'However the Ethiopians have been where they are for tens of thousands of years and they do have the best genetic'

More garbage you think they have not moved more than a few miles in 10,000 years through all sort of climate change and wars. Complete rubbish. Only a small area of Ethiopia is at altitude same with Kenya

There is zero evidence that a Kenyan born at sea level is any different genetically to one at altitude, furthermore, if you took the baby born at altitude away immediately and brought it up at sea level then at 20 compared its blood levels to one born and living at altitude they would be different

Name one Kenyan or Ethiopian top elite whose recent ancestors came those areas but who was born at low altitude and stayed there.

Studies with Ethiopians living at altitude have already identified those altitude adaptation genes. Do some reading, coach.

Altitude adaptation still needs to be kept primed.

Just like a black person still fades a bit when no longer exposed to sun. They still tan despite being naturally "tanned".

Actually Kenyans train at altitude because... that's where they live. If there were no advantage to altitude training, they'd still be there.

This likely has some merit to it, but why is it that the marathon has only gotten ridiculously fast in the last 15 and, especially, 10 years? 2:07-2:08 was world class material in the early-to-mid 80s. I remember a few Djiboutians running in the 2:07-2:08 range "out of nowhere" around that time. Were they born at high altitude? Clayton ran 2:08 back in the late 60s unless you believe the course was short and Deek ran it in '81. Now everyone is running 2:03ish and Ritz's 2:07 is second-tier?

Altitude must confer some advantages, but there's way more to the story. Also, one can't train as fast a high elevation, which likely hampers the ability to run to potential at lesser distances unless one lives at sea level and trains in an altitude tent. Rodgers may have a bit of a point, but would he take issue with the fact that the only two times he went sub-2:10 were at fast Boston races, you know, the downhill Boston course with a sometimes significant tailwind?

sleeps...

As someone who has participated in and followed the Leadville running scene since the mid 70s, I have some observations. Lake County (which is the school in Leadville) had an extremely successful high school cross country program from about 1970 to 1995-winning over half the state championships in the small school division during that time. Also during that time, it was competitive with every big school in the state. While it would not have beaten all of those schools every year, it would have been in the top 5 of any school in the state. When I graduated, Lake County had 350 kids. Fairview or Cherry Creek had close to 10 times that number. My senior year, we stomped both of those programs at invitationals all season long, both boys and girls. My senior year was not unusual.Since 1995-Lake County has not been successful in high school cross country. The great success of the previous 25 years was driven by 3 coaches. When the last of those three retired, the culture they had built died within 2 or 3 years. Now they can hardly field a team. Culture trumps altitude.The best runner in the years around me was a kid born in Detroit and moved to Leadville as a freshman-no previous family or genetic ties to Leadville. He was state runner up as a sophomore, and as far as I know, still holds the mile record-both true mile and converted to 1600. He did not run after his senior year in HS-As Bruce Springsteen sang, for his 19th birthday, he got a union card and a wedding coat. He's a grampa now.I never saw any talent correlation between native born, and transplants, or multi-generational natives. It all seemed to be heart. Statistically it's a small sample-but hundreds of kids went through that program in the glory years. I think what the altitude did was make marginally talented runners good, and talented runners great. Coaches Anderson, Mencin and Hanks were much more important than Oxygen levels. They knew how to motivate kids, and created a culture that drew more athletes than did football or Volleyball or Gymnastics. The kids had fun-and worked their tails off.No Olympians, no real D1 success, a couple of D2 all americans. The Bolder Boulder website hosts a top ten all time list for every age from 5 to 80. Sprinkled repeatedly among the Frank Shorters, Jon Sinclairs, Pat Porters and Ellen Harts are around a dozen of Lake County's greatest runners from the 70s and 80s. I think Mencin appears in that list a time or two as well. No other Colorado High School-big or small- comes close to that.

interesting theory wrote:

Umm, there's no mega altitude population center in Canada.

Maybe look at Leadville, CO born runners? Denver is not at high enough altitute IMO.

Ask yourself if there is a disproportionate number of distance elites in the United States and Canada who were born at altitude. If not, then it probably means there's a lot more to the puzzle than at what elevation you were born.

the wild west relays has an altitude and flatlander division. I had to prove my elevation by showing my license.

Races should put runners at elevation ranges based on license address and then handicap times accordingly.

no ID = 9000 feet.

rojo wrote:

Skuj wrote:

It's not "genetics" either, Rojo, but we will beat that on ad nauseum.

Yeah genes have nothing to do with it. Then why isn't there a single woman the NFL?

Why does Ethiopia suck at the 100 meters? Jamaica at the 10,000 meters?

What does Kenya suck at soccer?

No one really knows what genes have to do with any of these things except maybe the one about no women in the NFL. You cannot use the absence of other explanations as proof that another unproven explanation is correct.

oh please wrote:

In other words, perpetuating the thought that everyone should get a medal.

There are only two things that should matter in a race:

1. Who is the absolute fastest?

2. How fast did you run?

Anything else is trying to split the pie up so that "everyone" wins. We already do this with gender and age groups. News flash: old people and women will never be as fast as younger males. What do you expect when you join a running race?

Agree.

I suspect Bill Rodgers' opinion is somehow being misrepresented. He can't actually believe that. He once said, in his prime, that no one with a regular full-time job could beat him. How about "full-time job" and "no other job besides running" divisions? Within existing sex and age divisions of course. This whole discussion is dumb.

HRE wrote:

Aside from East Africans people born at altitude haven't performed better in distance running than others. The Mexicans had a little fling at it but are gone now and there are a lot of people born at high altitude who are no better than their low altitude competitors so I don't think there's justification for separate divisions.

...

I'm a little surprised that no one has mentioned Tony Sandoval, who was born and raised in the New Mexico mountains. He was probably the most talented US marathoner ever.

once upon a time in America wrote:

I'm a little surprised that no one has mentioned Tony Sandoval, who was born and raised in the New Mexico mountains. He was probably the most talented US marathoner ever.

How could he be more talented than Ryan Hall?

HRE wrote:

No one really knows what genes have to do with any of these things except maybe the one about no women in the NFL. You cannot use the absence of other explanations as proof that another unproven explanation is correct.

Is it simple coincidence that Frank and Chuck Assuma, Eric and Mark Mastalir, Brad Hauser and Brent Hauser, and Jorge and Ed Torres were all excellent runners, or was there some shared genetic component among those sets of identical twins?

[quote]interesting theory wrote:

Umm, there's no mega altitude population center in Canada.

[quote]

Calgary sits at about 3700 to 3800 feet elevation. Certainly not Denver, but that is high enough altitude to get you into the NCAA DI Mountain Region.