Chris Froome & Zola Budd prove only advantage Kenyans have is altitude

Try again wrote:

KAV wrote:

Ahem... we are talking of Long Distance Running here so say 10k and up. Who you got? I'll give you Tiernan and Hawkins, who are at similar level although the two brothers have a bigger range.... who else is there...

Crickets...

You didn't see the 10km Euro XC champs this year then? Shame Butchart didn't do the Worlds too of course.

1 Aras Kaya "TUR" (ahem) 27.39

2 Polat Kemboi Arıkan "TUR" (ahem) 27.42

3 Callum Hawkins GBR 27.49

4 Andrew Butchart GBR 28.01

Wow... so you got two ex-kenyans and two guys who are slower than both brothers on a 10k (that XC btw was said to be on a short 10k course at the time). Butchart hasnt run better than 28'28 on the road on a flat course in London, CH has yet to break 29'. I am sure they can both run faster but can they run 27'30" ? At the moment no...

Instead based on HM times CH is a wash with the two kiwis (while AB has quite some work to do on that.). On a marathon we shall see whether they two brothers (one of them this autumn) can do better than 2'09/2'10...

You should have mentioned Rupp as rebuttal but you didnt.... and even then from HM and up is probably a wash right now. So yes better non-african long distance runners right now till proven otherwise...

Proof by anecdote.

Good job!

Altitude Not Genes wrote:

pop_pop!_v2.2.1 wrote:

I don't doubt for a minute Zola Budd is an extremely gifted athlete. She is still crushing fun runs. The sign of an extraordinary engine.

Froome had an unspectacular record in South Africa, rode around Europe for a while on b-teams, then suddenly hits the podium on a three week grand tour and is otherwise nowhere to be seen. Funny how the only thing he rides is ASO stage races. Another UCI-sanctioned doper.

2/10 for getting so many replies.

Well I'm no cycling expert but didn't he just become the first man in history to win the Tour de France AND another important race in the same year? And then tried for the fabled treble last week in a road time trial and came very close by winning the bronze.

Altitude has nothing to do with it. It is all GENES. Altitude only came on the radar due to the 1968 Mexico City Olympics. Yes, you need altitude when racing AT altitude, but altitude does not help you any when racing at sea level. Altitude is the greatest myth in running.

No runner has improved JUST BY moving to Flag. There is high altitude all over the world, but only Rift Valley CONSISTENTLY produces great runners. I am assuming RV extends into Ethiopia.

What about Bruce Fordyce?

Well it certainly has worked as well for him in his chosen niche. Almost as well as Froome, at least in terms of notoriety.

Half Mary nutrition wrote:

With this altitude theory.. Killian jornet should have broken 2 hours in Berlin by now..

El Keniano wrote:

Altitude Not Genes wrote:

Where in the title do I say Zola Budd was born in Kenya?

My argument is that as a white African raised at altitude (and not even nearly as high as most Kenyan runners) she was still arguably the greatest talent Africa has produced, and arguably greater than any Kenyan female.

Excuse me? Off the top of my head ... Vivian Cheruiyot, Sally Barsosio, Mary Keitany, Catherine Ndereba, Faith Kipyegon, Agnes Tirop, Joyciline Jepkosgei, Peres Jepchirchir and Hellen Obiri have all shown to be more talented than Budd ever was over a spectrum of distances. Just what in the world are you smoking?

Did any of them run sub 4 as a teenager? Given EPO Budd would be ahead over the longer distances as well

Hallelujah, someone gets it.

It's not that you cannot get a Caucasian runner that can match a Kenyan, it is that the Kenyan population has a far higher number of people with a genetic predisposition to excellence at middle and long-distance running.

Since most of the world descends from a small group of people that left Africa, the "rest of the world" is more genetically similar to one another than are individual populations descended from those who remained.

We actually see something similar - although more for reasons of commercial distribution - in thoroughbred horse racing. Many countries can come up with a world-class horse, but the depth below that occasional outlier would not compare to the powerhouses of the US (for dirt runners), England, France, Ireland or Australia (for turf sprinters).

So maybe the U.S. at some point might field a 4x1500m (or mile) team that would win a world championship, we'd have no chance against Kenya in a 50x1500m relay.

Cavorty wrote:

Hallelujah, someone gets it.

It's not that you cannot get a Caucasian runner that can match a Kenyan, it is that the Kenyan population has a far higher number of people with a genetic predisposition to excellence at middle and long-distance running.

There have been decades of international podium performances explained away by mysterious illness and physical anomaly. Kenya is no different.

I'm not sure why the collective memory of some of these epic liars is so shallow.

OP

You have so much wrong with what you said about ZOLA

and I don't have the time to correct ALL your mistakes.

I know a lot about Zola but don't forget Elana Meyer and others too.

Yes. British (English) paternal grandfather.

Altitude Not Genes wrote:

Well I'm no cycling expert but didn't he just become the first man in history to win the Tour de France AND another important race in the same year? And then tried for the fabled treble last week in a road time trial and came very close by winning the bronze.

[/quote]

Maybe you mean two grand tours in one year? It's an old sport. There are other winners who were, without a doubt, more legitimate than Froome.

We know Pantani was juiced to the point of almost killing himself. Contador was, and is, clearly a doper the UCI likes. Look up America's most recent grand tour champion, Chris Horner. The idiot published his blood scores after his win because no one believed the results. No surprise, they are ridiculously suspicious.

Just like the IAAF, the federation is hopelessly corrupt to the point grand tours are a joke unless you like following 20th place. Froome is out of the same Armstrong playbook.

Starving Dinka wrote:

Bad Wigins wrote:

Nobody is born with any kind of adult body type. How that develops is far too complicated a thing to be determined by genotype. It is a matter of gene expression.

Genes are smart. If you grow up eating sparely, like many Africans, you will end up a skinny and likely short adult with a body structured to move efficiently over long distances.

.

Yeah that's why Manute Bol was almost 8 feet tall.

Time to let go that dumb schtick you've been going on about.

1) It's all true

2) Manute had Marfan Syndrome you insensitive punk

3) the Dinka are skinny and not as tall as they used to be

4) try to contribute positively

why bothering wrote:

Altitude Not Genes wrote:

I wonder how many drug free, non-age cheat African juniors have ran faster than she was as a teen? Probably none.

Then there's no point in even attempting to engage in a rational discussion with you.

I instantly regretted responding to him after realised who he was. I try to avoid and never engage with his kind. You know, the "how dare these third world blacks usurp our sport" types.

Ho Hum wrote:

Altitude Not Genes wrote:

Well I'm no cycling expert but didn't he just become the first man in history to win the Tour de France AND another important race in the same year? And then tried for the fabled treble last week in a road time trial and came very close by winning the bronze.

Altitude has nothing to do with it. It is all GENES. Altitude only came on the radar due to the 1968 Mexico City Olympics. Yes, you need altitude when racing AT altitude, but altitude does not help you any when racing at sea level. Altitude is the greatest myth in running.

No runner has improved JUST BY moving to Flag. There is high altitude all over the world, but only Rift Valley CONSISTENTLY produces great runners. I am assuming RV extends into Ethiopia.

So how come Kenyans born at low altitude areas of the country have no elite presence despite sharing the same genes. Or name a Kenyan born outside the country who is successful.

pop_pop!_v2.2.1 wrote:

Froome had an unspectacular record in South Africa, rode around Europe for a while on b-teams, then suddenly hits the podium on a three week grand tour and is otherwise nowhere to be seen. Funny how the only thing he rides is ASO stage races. Another UCI-sanctioned doper.

^ Exactly. Either that or he's just unlucky to have discovered that by losing a shed load of weight in his mid 20s, and putting in extra dedication to his training, that he went from mediocrity to being an all time great - and destroying times set by caught dopers 😂

What a guy...

Most of the above two posts are junk science bunkem, which leave with no inclination to read that scientific study. You're saying that Zola Budd was an outlier because her parents weren't world class runners??? Oh, and btw, her daughter was setting college records in the USA at 13 a few years ago, but seems like she has dropped her athletics career.

A study that compares black and white South Africans and finds that the blacks have 'more fatigue resistance' means nothing. Is this similar to the 'study' that found that the average Kenyan 12 year old schoolboy can run faster than elite Scandinavian runners? Well we know that Kenyans, on the whole, are running faster than whites, we know that South African blacks, on the whole, run faster than whites. Saying blacks have better 'fatigue resistance' is not much different to saying 'they run faster' or 'they look like they have better running frames'. It doesn't prove anything, certainly not that they are genetically better runners from birth.

El Keniano wrote:

I instantly regretted responding to him after realised who he was. I try to avoid and never engage with his kind. You know, the "how dare these third world blacks usurp our sport" types.

You're not the same racist black supremacist who goes by the name of El Keniano that accused members here of being paedophiles simply for following the most exciting young European running talent in 40 years on Instagram are you? That alone really should have gotten you banned for life.

Well Zola Budd really was quite an outlier indeed, and if her success was due to all the millions of young African women pumping out babies by age 17, how come her junior times from over 30 years ago are still in the all time top lists? A young African female like her setting records in her mid-teens would be strongly advised likely by her parents and everybody around her to put off marriage and lifetime of pumping out and rearing a dozen little basket cases and rather become a world class runner and earn 1000x the average Kenyan wage.

No doubt, Zola Budd was/is the most talented African female athlete of all time. She still has all time junior marks from 40 years ago running barefoot on crap tracks, virtually retired at age 20 due to external factors, comes back 25 years later and competes at a high level in marathons and ultra-marathons (and in the case of ultra-marathons at ANY age group, running against largely 'genetically superior' bantu females a quater of a century younger than her).

It's also a fact that Chris Froome is by a country mile the most famous and rich athlete that Kenya has ever produced, and that he enjoyed zero advantages over his black peers to get into that position. This from a white African population of about 0.2% surrounded by a billion of the black master race. I guess when Hitler was choking at the sight of Jesse Owens at Munich 36, he consoled himself with the thought that Owens was just a black 'outlier'.

/Thread Over