China is hosting both World Cross & T&F this year, With 1.4 billion people, why are their men's records so slow? (List)

because they don't care

Renato wrote about this syndrome and why he went to china to coach - he talked about how italy used to be a distance powerhouse, but now, just 20 years later, they are terrible. They stopped caring, is all. Nothing about genetics or wealth - they just walked away.

One factor could be serious air pollution in their big cities

http://www.dw.de/china-is-running-out-of-breath/g-18210826

there are two different questions, rojo.

You are answering the question: why don't the chinese win medals in distance races. And yeah, genetics plays a role there.

but the OP is askign something a little different - "why do they stink so bad"

You don't have to have great genetics to have a 5k NR better than 13:25. You just have to care, as a nation.

Put another way - why is Japan so good at distance running despite not getting many medals recently? They can't have genetics much different than china - but they deeply care so they are fast...just not medal fast.

Sports Gene. Go read my review of it and then read the book:

http://www.letsrun.com/news/2013/07/sports-gene-by-david-epstein-a-must-read-for-all-coaches/

It's like asking why such a huge percentage of 7 feet tall people are good as NBA centers? Why are there so few 5'5 centers in the NBA?

Do you know what India's population is? 1.,252 billion. Their national records are very similar to Chinas"

1500 m 3:38.00 Bahadur Prasad

3000 m 7:50.31 Surendra Singh

5000 m 13:29.70 Bahadur Prasad

10000 m 28:02.89 Surendra Singh

10 km (road) 29:43 Aswale Kashinath

Half marathon 1:04:00 Deep Chand

Marathon 2:12.00 Shivnath Singh

Combined, India and China has 2.609 of the World's 7.125 billion. That's 36.6% of the world's population.

There are plenty of poor peole in those countries who run to school every day. Yet the suck at running.

Kenya's population is 44.9 million of whom 5.7 million are kalenjin.

I'm going to put this in the week that was.

-Rojo

PS. I'm not denying that other factors play a role but genetics is #1.

Because Chinese women are better responders.

agip wrote:

there are two different questions, rojo.

You are answering the question: why don't the chinese win medals in distance races. And yeah, genetics plays a role there.

but the OP is askign something a little different - "why do they stink so bad"

You don't have to have great genetics to have a 5k NR better than 13:25. You just have to care, as a nation.

Put another way - why is Japan so good at distance running despite not getting many medals recently? They can't have genetics much different than china - but they deeply care so they are fast...just not medal fast.

I didn't say there weren't other reasons. The abject poverty of much of the nation means many don't have the nutrition to be good athletes. Pollution doesn't help. Plus even if you were going to be decent, does it makes sense to devote your life to training if you aren't going to be one of the world's best.

Comparative advantage is big. Countries focus on what they are good at. Running 28:05 doesn't get you much.

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agip

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RE: China is hosting both World Cross & T&F this year, With 1.4 billion people, why are their men's records so slow? (List)

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because they don't care

Renato wrote about this syndrome and why he went to china to coach - he talked about how italy used to be a distance powerhouse, but now, just 20 years later, they are terrible. They stopped caring, is all. Nothing about genetics or wealth - they just walked away.

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Out of a huge population of nearly 1.4 billion people you would think that there would be at least a few talented male athletes who cared.

With regard to the genetics argument, China women have set some impressive records. However, many were set during the suspicious Coach Ma Junren "Turtle Soup" era in the 1990s (particularly at the National Games in 1993).

800 m 1:55.54 Liu Dong 9 September 1993

1500 m 3:50.46 Qu Yunxia 11 September 1993

2000 m 5:29.43 Wang Junxia 12 September 1993

3000 m 8:06.11 Wang Junxia 13 September 1993

Two miles 9:49.33 Yu-an Jin 20 May 2007

5000 m 14:28.09 Jiang Bo 23 October 1997

10000 m 29:31.78 Wang Junxia 8 September 1993

10 km (road) 31:49 Wei Yanan 10 October 1999

Half marathon 1:08:40 Sun Yingjie 3 October 2004

Marathon 2:19:39 Sun Yingjie19 October 2003

Despite the popularity of the movie "Forest Gump", why does the USA suck at table tennis?

At least India has the excuse that most of the country is hotter than Hades most of the time, and when not, it's flooded.

7:56 for m3000 is just....awful for a NR. Must be ping pong sucking up the talent pool.

What about Liu Xiang - #3 AT in the 110HH - 12.88, Olympic Record as well

Props to Longyun for running a 10,000 NR a month after his marathon NR.

And the dude from India - Deep Chand - great name!

You COULD turn that 28:05 into a popular running website... People would say "Well, that's good enough to be respectable, maybe I should read what this guy has to say." Then you'd read it.

The '93 national games of China were the probably highest level ever women's competition including all the world champs and Olympic games.

Times that can't be touched today on the 8th, 9th, 11th and 13th. A comparatively weak 5.29 for Wang on the 12th, what's the story on that?

As a chinaman in the US I've got to disagree here.

We don't tend to care about sports, man.

We care about becoming engineers, physicians, and perhaps things like lawyers. It if pays well, is prestigious, and stable--we all over that.

Sports--nah. We ain't care bout dat shit.

Genetics play a large part, assuredly, but keep in mind that like 800 million of those 1.3 billion Chinese people live in abject poverty. (If memory serves) They got other worries than sports.

The '93 national games of China were the probably highest level ever women's competition including all the world champs and Olympic games.

Times that can't be touched today on the 8th, 9th, 11th and 13th. A comparatively weak 5.29 for Wang on the 12th, what's the story on that?

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Yes, the combination of Coach Ma Junren's turtle blood and caterpillar fungas soup, forced appendectomies upon his athletes, a marathon per day covered in training and a very spartan training camp atmosphere with no men, phone calls or TV worked wonders. They were known as Ma's Army but eventually deserted him, partly because he kept their prize money.

http://articles.latimes.com/1995-08-06/sports/sp-32150_1_caterpillar-fungus

Some company in China apparently paid the coach over $1 million for his turtle blood and caterpillar soup formula. He must have retired in luxury in China on that kind of payout.

Chinese government (and their OC) does not really care about sports that do not have good medal potentials. So in most sports they are either medal contenders or horrible.

Japan is different because their athlete development is more decentralized. So individual corporations or universities try to develop decent distance runners for their domestic publicity, even if they don't reach the medal level.

If the Chinese government doesn't care about the sport then why did they invest so much effort and money in bidding for the World Track & Field Championships that will be held in Beijing this August? They are also hosting the World Cross Championships later this month.

Clear view wrote:

If the Chinese government doesn't care about the sport then why did they invest so much effort and money in bidding for the World Track & Field Championships that will be held in Beijing this August? They are also hosting the World Cross Championships later this month.

T&F is more than just men's distance running. They are competitive in other events.

World cross... I don't know. One thing I know is that not many countries are interested in hosting it.