East Africans are not genetically superior

I tend to look at it from a more statistical standpoint. There have been individuals who have competed well against the East Africans but there is no disputing that the East Africans have absolutely dominated the world distance running scene for the last 10-15 years. If they do not have a physical advantage over the rest of the world how can you explain that over half of all the top distance performers are either Kenyan or Ethiopian? Did I mention their talent pool constitutes less than 2% of the worlds population?

I tend to think that the athletes from the rest of the world who can compete with top-end East Africans are genetic anomalies and in some cases chemically enhanced genetic anomalies. I'm sure there are drug cheats among the Africans as well but that is a different debate. While I am sure that their lifestyle and socio-economic conditions help them excel I think their body type and natural aerobic capacity play a much bigger part.

I think the numbers below speak for themselves.

Population of Kenya - 33,829,590

Population of Ethiopia - 73,053,286

Population of the World - 6,446,131,400

% of the world's population that is Ethiopian or Kenyan - 1.65% (the population of the rift valley where many of these athletes come from probably constitutes less than .5% of the worlds population)

% of top 79* all time 10k performers that are Kenyan or Ethiopian - 62%

% of top 76* all time 5k performers that are Kenyan or Ethiopian - 55%

% of top 50* all time 1500 performers that are Kenyan or Ethiopian - 55%

* I excluded duplicate performances from IAAF top 100 performances list.

The population data comes from

http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/

I tend to agree with you Runrayb. And I've stated my belief that it is 99% genetics.

Haven't read the thread so sorry this is repeated. I take exception to this logic:

"A lot of people on this board think that Kenyans are much more talented, have all the advantages, live at altitude, and that is why they are faster than us. I think this is BS. There have been white people compete with the Africans."

The whole argument isn't that every E. African is genetically more suited to distance running than every non-African. It is that they are more likely to have the genetic features that are trainable for distance running (and not trainable, for say, bodybuilding). It should be fairly obvious that ethnicities differ in their phenotype - the basic facts of their physical constitution. This doesn't mean that EVERY INDIVIDUAL is the same, but that ethnicities have different distributions. If you think you could take 100 Rift Valley Kenyans at random and train as high a proportion of them to be shotputters as you could Swedes, then you are ideologically committed to that which contradicts the obvious.

I agree with the original poster and to combate the statistics argument, I think that if America's number 1 or number 2 sport was track they would be the dominant force in the world form 100 to marathon. Not because of superior genetics but because of population and resources.

Locknload wrote:

I tend to agree with you Runrayb. And I've stated my belief that it is 99% genetics.

I don't belive that at all. I've had plenty of african born teammates(ethiopian, eritrean, kenyan) from high school to college and they all sucked.

idiots would say they run better than us because they run barefoot.

If you are actually trying to formulate any sort of argument that asserts that no genetic advantage exists for East Africans in distance running, you will accomplish your objective only if your audience has ingested a mind bending number of methamphetamines.

There is absolutely no question this is the case.

I have a library of track races, world record attempts, and championship races over the Olympics and World Championships. Ever since Kenya and Ethiopia really started turning out droves of runners, which you can stay really started in the early 1990's, they have DOMINATED.

There is no question there is a genetic advantage. You will always find genetic outliers, but that simply does not add up. Let's say Mottram is the fastest non-African ever for 5,000, considering Baumann used drugs. Mottram's PB is 12:55. I recently re-watched the 2003 World Championship 10,000m and saw Gebrselassie, at age 30, tugging Sihine and Bekele through 62 after 61 after 62 after 61 second lap. They closed in 26 for the last 200 and 12:57 for the entire final 5,000 after already running 4:26 pace for the first 5K (13:52).

That is absolutely a completely different plane of athletics. There is no comparison. The Kenyans, Ethiopians, and certain Moroccans have entire nations fulls of athletes that are STILL better than THREE OR FOUR non-Africans FROM EVERY OTHER COUNTRY IN THE WORLD!

Coe, Cram, and Ovett are the only milers with times even close to El Guerrouj, Ngeny, and Morceli. Cacho is one very good Spaniard, and Baala very fast from France, but that's 2. Kenya has Songkok, Lagat, Kipchirchir, Chirchir 1, Chirchir 2, Rotich, Kipkirui, Kiptanui, Komen, and a whole bunch of others who have all been in that range over the years.

At 5K, Ethiopia has had Bikila, Bayissa, Gebrselassie, Mezgebu, Berhanu, Gebremariam, Geneti, Bekele, Admassu, Sihine, and a whole bunch of others. ALL are better than just about any non-African imaginable. Our best guy, as good as he is, had 12:58.21. That was Kennedy. He was not even in the same straightaway on the best day of his life as Bekele was running 12:37.35. And that was his ONLY attempt at the 5,000m WR.

There is no basis for your contention.

These numbers just don't lie - the East Africans are far more talented than the European/American runners. There are certainly genetic outliers (Kennedy, Paula, Geb, Bekele) but the numbers of Kenyans from the Rift Valley and Ethiopia are just too great not to attribute a substantial part to genetics.

There was a documentary on HBO a while back interviewing boxers asking "why there are no good white boxers?" Every single guy there said "No talent." It wasn't that the white guys weren't willing to work hard or to take a punch it was that they didn't have the genetic talent that it took to be a great boxer. I assume a guy like Ritz works just as hard as any runner in the world or close to it yet he's still behind (for now at least) the very top East Africans.

For genetic reasons, no white person has ever broken 10 seconds for the 100 as well (excepting Mennea in his WR 200).

Of course another explanation is that East Africans could be genetically superior responders to certain substances but that's another thread and certainly can't account for all of the disparity.

: Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2002 Dec

24;99(26):17215-8. Epub 2002 Dec 05. Related Articles,

Links

An Ethiopian pattern of human adaptation to

high-altitude hypoxia.

Beall CM, Decker MJ, Brittenham GM, Kushner I,

Gebremedhin A, Strohl KP.

Department of Anthropology, Case Western Reserve

University, Cleveland, OH 44106, USA.

cmb2@po.cwru.edu

We describe, in Ethiopia, a third successful pattern

of human adaptation to high-altitude hypoxia that

contrasts with both the Andean "classic"

(erythrocytosis with arterial hypoxemia) and the more

recently identified Tibetan (normal venous hemoglobin

concentration with arterial hypoxemia) patterns. A

field survey of 236 Ethiopian native residents at

3,530 m (11,650 feet), 14-86 years of age, without

evidence of iron deficiency, hemoglobinopathy, or

chronic inflammation, found an average hemoglobin

concentration of 15.9 and 15.0 gdl for males and

females, respectively, and an average oxygen

saturation of hemoglobin of 95.3%. Thus, Ethiopian

highlanders maintain venous hemoglobin concentrations

and arterial oxygen saturation within the ranges of

sea level populations, despite the unavoidable,

universal decrease in the ambient oxygen tension at

high altitude.

PMID: 12471159 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

**********

there's lots of data comparing Tibetans and Andes

Indians, but here's the highlights:

This sample of high-altitude native residents from the

Semien Plateau of Ethiopia had hemoglobin

concentrations that differed little from sea level

values. The similar findings of erythropoietin

concentration and oxygen saturation in the normal sea

level range were consistent. The findings would not be

remarkable if this were a sea level sample, but it is

a sample of people exposed to chronic, lifelong

hypobaric hypoxia. Ethiopians must have unique

adaptations of oxygen uptake or delivery that result

in the absence of an hypoxemic stimulus to increase

red blood cell production and hemoglobin concentration

despite their high-altitude residence.

...

The results of this study suggest that Ethiopian

high-altitude natives respond to hypobaric hypoxia

differently than Andean or Tibetan highlanders. This

Ethiopian sample resembles samples from the Tibetan

Plateau in exhibiting little or no elevation of

hemoglobin concentration in this altitude range, but

differs from Tibetans who have very low oxygen

saturation. It differs from Andean high-altitude

natives who exhibited both substantial elevation of

hemoglobin concentration and low oxygen saturation.

These findings suggest there are three patterns of

adaptation to high-altitude hypoxia among indigenous

populations (Table 1). Learning why the three

populations differ will require two lines of future

investigation. One is understanding the biological

mechanisms and the underlying genetics that allow

successful high-altitude adaptation with

quantitatively different suites of traits for oxygen

sensing, response, and delivery. The other is

understanding the evolutionary processes that produced

these patterns to explain how and why several

successful human adaptations to high altitude evolved.

***********************************

What about the fact that a good deal of East Africans are 5'3'', 95 pounds, and have long legs and bones as strong as steel?

Doesn't that count for anything? It seems like it would help to me...

I suppose that a caucasian guy with the same features could run as fast, theoretically. But if a caucasian guy had those specs, he is most likely dying of AIDS.

I love how people say that Africans work harder than non-Africans, its their impoverished upbringing (ie - ran to and from school everyday)that makes them faster, etc.

All of that is crap.

Anybody that thinks a typical African professional runner works harder than a non-African runner is ignorant, plain and simple.

the thing i wonder about is why the ethiopian and kenyan girls, do not dominate as much as their male counterparts, yes they have world recordholders, olympic and world champions, but depth wise if you look at the top 20 of big marathons out of the top 20 men there are usually 17-19 east africans, but out of the top 20 women usually only 3-4 are east africans, there seem to be more japanese, russian and other eastern europeans depth wise, although i have a feeling that will change.

Not to mention the snowball effect of a group that finds it tends to have an advantage in a sport is going to be more encouraged to try it to its fullest extent and have cultural determinants grow up around the kernal provided by nature.

In my opinion, the genetic component is probably simply having more people that have a more ideal phenotype (longer limbs, shorter torsos so their long limbs don't translate into as much weight added, propensity not to gain muscle mass from exercise).

Do some research on North African "Arabs" and the East African slave trade (and the different mores that governed slavery in Islamic countries) to figure out why North African countries have distance runners and other Arab countries don't.

I agree with a lot of the things said here. I do believe though that one of the main reasons for the difference in body types is our lifestyle, it is not all genetics. If you raised a cuacasian the exact same way a young Kenyan athlete is raised they would have close to the same body type, the caucasian would probably just be a little taller. The same goes for there training. If you had a westerner live the exact same life as a Kenyan from birth, I believe that they would be close to equal atheletes. Not all Kenyans are good at running, but their massive number of great athletes hides this fact. If we took the entire nation of America and lived exactly how the Kenyans do, you wouldsee the mean times in the long distance events drop drastically. I am not saying that we would be as fast or faster than the East Africans. I do think that our top 50 athletes could be within 5 seconds or so of their top 50 athletes on average in the 5/10k.

"I do believe though that one of the main reasons for the difference in body types is our lifestyle, it is not all genetics."

But why only certain tribes of Kenyans and neighboring Ethiopians and Tanzanians in the Rift Valley and NOT the hordes of other countries with similar third-world "lifestyles"?

If you look at pictures of people from other third-world countries, I think you will find that they do in fact have similar body types.

But why aren't they excelling at running?

Are you saying that Native Americans, before white people arrived, had a similar phenotype to E. Africans? E. Afrians and Pacific Islanders have no discernable pehnotypical differences outside of culture? East Africans and Eskimos? You think if you raised 100 Kenyans and 100 Samoans on the same diet, they would all pretty much have the same distribution of phenotypes at age 15 and excel in the same proportions at the same sports?

I think one thing at play here is homogenaity. Reluctance to marry outside one's tribe leads to much more homogenaity in phenotype. One reason the US has such a broad array of sport stars in very different sports is a very diverse gene pool.

JamesDDDD34 wrote:

idiots would say they run better than us because they run barefoot.

It's not the only reason, but it is a reason. It's tough to learn good form wearing high heels.

genetics.....most white people have huge curves probably not suited for running