After reading this thread, I'm struck by how little we know the exact causal factors and the relationship amongst them that provide for exceptional long distance running. To take a few simple questions: How much does low body weight or body shape matter (and correspondingly how much is this a genetic matter)? Does it matter more or less and how much more or less than one's capacity to efficiently use oxygen (and how much is this genetic matter)? What about fast/slow twitch muscle fibers?
We discussed this in my training group and came up with some factors we thought made an athlete world class then applied a simple rating to European or American athletes vs Rift valley athletes and we came up with this:
Factors Overall Rift Valley European/American
Diet (lifetime) 7.5 3.5
Genetics 8 4
Financial Motivation 8 2.5
training partners 8 2.5
Facilities 5 8
Running Culture 8 5
Environment (altitude) 8 5
Coaches 3 6
Training Technology 3 7.5
10 is perfect score 6.5 4.9
32.95%
higher chance a rift valley athlete has of becoming a top athlete
You can argue about the scores and the weighting of the factors but it essentially proves the argument
Sorry format is bad excel doesnt paste well into this message board
Clearly, many East Africans are extraordinarily talented (to start off obviously). Now, when we talk about talant, we're talking abouta couple of different things. There's "mental" talant, a real, deep-seated competitive drive to push yourself. It's (one reason) why some people can put up wonderful training, but just can't exceed a certain level. This isn't genetic, its both inborn and cultural.
Then there's physical talant, a body built for running fast, that can sustain high levels of training. And this is influenced to a certain degree by genetic. It happens that East African bodys tend to be built in a way that enables running 12:37. Obviously its not the only body type- a guy like Bob Kennedy ain't built like an African (Robert Gary said he was built like a champion squash player).
I agree with you about mental talent. But when you say
"It happens that East African bodys tend to be built in a way that enables running 12:37"
I have to say that East African runners come in all shapes and sizes, and Bekele does not conform to any particular stereotype.
I'm gonna have to go with genetics based upon our local high school cross country team. This is a very diverse school with over 65 languages spoken. It is 40% white however. The cross country team mirrors this diversity but the number 1, 2, 4, and 5 runners are all of east African descent. The grace and ease of movement with which these guys run is so obvious, compared to their non-African team-mates, that anyone can see the biomechanical advantages they possess. The important point is that these 4 kids immigrated from their home countries when they were very young and have been here at least 10 years. They have been living our American lifestyle, eating our food, and watching TV just as much as their hard working team-mates. Same altitude, work loads, same coaching, training facilities, etc.
While they didn't win the state CC championship (I believe they placed 2nd and maybe 4th), two of them won the state 1600 and 3200 in track.
The superiority of East African genetics as it relates to distance running talent is so obvious in this example that it is hard to draw any other conclusion.
If you had read the post I was responding to, you might have understood my point. The post was using stats to show that E.Afr. runners have genetic advantages (A large number of the world records are held by a by a small group of runners from specific countries.) Well, a large amount of the worlds finicial resources are controlled by a small specific group. Get it?
Let wrote:
If you had read the post I was responding to, you might have understood my point. The post was using stats to show that E.Afr. runners have genetic advantages (A large number of the world records are held by a by a small group of runners from specific countries.) Well, a large amount of the worlds finicial resources are controlled by a small specific group. Get it?
And so what? Does your logic prove that East Africans are not genetically superior? No. You seem to be arguing that we should not discuss a genetic cause of their superiority because racists might use the findings to make unjustified conclusions.
I might also add that there are many distinguishing factors between wealth and athletic talent. Country of birth and racism/legacy effects of it have a hell of a lot to do with who has money and who doesn't. Track is not so biased -- times are times and racism can't change who is the fastest.
it always seems to change from what countries the best runners come from sweden, germany, britain, new zealand and now kenya/ethiopia, didnt new zealand coach arthur lydiard say the runners from finland are the most genetically gifted, but most runners in finland take their natural ability for granted and are lazy about training (with exceptions viren etc.)
use your common sense, look at the whole picture, whose winning the golds, silvers, and bronze, whose breaking records left and right, the depth, etc and you will know
AFRICANS are genetically superior.
sprints- west african descendants
distances- east africans
blacks are the best atheletes in all mankind! think bout it, if hockey, speed skating, tennis, golf, etc werent sports where the right 'gear' and money was needed to BEGIN with in once training, then blacks would take over hockey, skating, biking, golf, tennis etc...
we already see tiger in golf, william sisters in tennis, dont forget boxing.
my conclusion? there will always be a special case, an athelete that is white that will jump in the pool and compete but as we see it, its rare.
I had Mr. Rivas send me the full article on Kenyans.
It was a study comparing Kenyans. Danish, and black and white South Africans. The only differences found in untrained athletes from all countries were BMI, running economy(as a result of the BMI), occasionally percentage of Type I muscle fibers.
BMI can be controlled. Therefore your running economy will improve. Not all of the Kenyans had different muscle fiber percentages, and muscle fiber % varies greatly from person to person. I know that it is a genetic trait, however it is not one that seems to give the Kenyans an overall extreme advantage. This may help exlain there depth, but our top runners should be able to compete with their top runners.
Send millions of X-Box's, Nintendos, and Game Boys to Kenyan. Then set up hundreds of McDonalds and Wendys and Burger Kings, and make the Kenyans eat all sorts of processed foods their entire lives. Next, get rid of most of their dirt roads and fields and put down acres upon acres of concrete. After that, give the Kenyans huge, high tech running shoes to slog around in on the concrete and tell them going barefoot is "not in style". Then they need a killer system of high school and college track and field/cross country where they are stressed that intervals are more important then aerobic mileage and whatnot and they never run over 40 miles a week in HS. once this is all accomplished, give them all cars and then make their national sport football(american football) and have a host of other sports that take away from their running talent, which wont be there really anymore due to the incredibly shitty cultural and social enviroment for distance running. kinda seems like American culture though:)
all the while us Americans and european countries do everything that the Kenyans did all thes years.
But this will never happen, and it still doesnt prove that Kenyans are or arent genetically superior in distance running haha.
Mizan Mehari and Sisay Bezabah were two of Ethiopia's best young athletes and came to Sydney, Australia for the world juniors in the mid-late nineties. They gained Humanitarian visa's or something and became AUS citizens.. They continued training and competing in AUS and have not really achieved anything since moving here... (nearly ten years ago)... This may say something about lifestyle/ training/motivation etc. why did they not reach the levels that their fellow countrymen have? Would they have become better runners had they stayed in Ethiopia? Food for thought...
You’re quite correct. I doubt anybody on this thread has even been to Africa.
I sailed all over the African coast as a deckhand on a tramp steamer in the late forties after I left school at 15.
Our first calls were to the West African countries where most of the males in those days wore little other than shorts.
The first most obvious difference between we Europeans and the African natives to a 15 year old, (apart from the obvious skin colour) was the incredibly powerfully build and muscularity of virtually every male in those societies.
Many of the those for instance, who were paddling large heavy cargo barges back and forth to the moored ships had biceps that Schwarzenegger would envy.
It was less obvious with the females, most of whom appeared rather fat - but apparently not the sort of fat Western female develop as they were more physically more active than the males and could walk, carrying huge loads on their heads, for miles without tiring.
Take the fact that all the slaves that crossed to the Americas were from that area with only the finest specimens initially chosen, the weakest of those dying on the voyage and then the choice of the remainder selectively bred - one has an almost Hitlerish breeding programme to explain why blacks dominate at power sports in the USA and neighbouring countries.
"...Take the fact that all the slaves that crossed to the Americas were from that area with only the finest specimens initially chosen, the weakest of those dying on the voyage and then the choice of the remainder selectively bred - one has an almost Hitlerish breeding programme to explain why blacks dominate at power sports in the USA and neighbouring countries..."
Your statement would be perceived as Racist in America...I don't think it is. I will add that if your observations on "Natural Selection" were correct..the "finest specimens" would never have been captured as slaves as they would have has the speed to run ahead of the slower "specimens." In addtions, as a physcian as described in my Name..I can assure you that the ability to survive in the hold of a slave ship is more mental than physical. I would not be surprised to find that a good number of captured Africans in the holds of slaveships went mad and stopped eating making them more suceptible to disease...and the physical ravages of the journey. It is an oversimplification to conclude that "Athletic prowess" gives a person a survival advantage in teh hold of a ship when other factors like mental, immunocompetence, intelligence, etc... are more important.
wizard wrote:
You’re quite correct. I doubt anybody on this thread has even been to Africa.
I sailed all over the African coast as a deckhand on a tramp steamer in the late forties after I left school at 15.
Our first calls were to the West African countries where most of the males in those days wore little other than shorts.
The first most obvious difference between we Europeans and the African natives to a 15 year old, (apart from the obvious skin colour) was the incredibly powerfully build and muscularity of virtually every male in those societies.
Many of the those for instance, who were paddling large heavy cargo barges back and forth to the moored ships had biceps that Schwarzenegger would envy.
It was less obvious with the females, most of whom appeared rather fat - but apparently not the sort of fat Western female develop as they were more physically more active than the males and could walk, carrying huge loads on their heads, for miles without tiring.
Take the fact that all the slaves that crossed to the Americas were from that area with only the finest specimens initially chosen, the weakest of those dying on the voyage and then the choice of the remainder selectively bred - one has an almost Hitlerish breeding programme to explain why blacks dominate at power sports in the USA and neighbouring countries.
i think you and i were on the same ship!
Ran away?
I see.
So the slave traders landed and everyone in the villages upped and ran away - and the traders were left with the cripples, infirm or anyone else they manage to catch?
How many of them would have survived a voyage in the sort of vessels used in the trade and who would have purchased the miserable specimens remaining?
What a wally.
In fact in most cases the tribal chiefs were just as those involved in the trade and selected those to be ‘exported’.
They were simply starting the tradition where these days African leaders enrich themselves with bulging Swiss bank accounts while their subjects starve or die of disease.
Black Americans should give thanks to God every day for the slave trade.
How else would they have managed to enjoy the pleasures of living in God’s Own Country.
Ever heard of a black American going back to live in Africa?
I also called in at Liberia. That place for those who don’t know, was land in West Africa purchased by the USA with the aim of sending the blacks back to their ‘roots’.
Precious few ever left, and ironically those who did immediately started acting like Southern plantation owners towards the indigenous population!
You wouldn’t send your worst enemy to that place these days.
To Jimmy Z greek,
Were you on the MV Zent out of London? I think not.
grover wrote:
NativeSon, your post says it all.
The facts speak for themselves, whatever the reason, it just is so. As an inferior caucasian distance runner, I take my hat off.
My comp. just broke down. The mouse wouldn't behave. Now that I am back, I have to catch up with the latest. Thanks for your input bloke.
Wow, you just made my argument.
THere are otehr factors that contribute to wealth aside from a persons genetic backround!! My point is exactly that when it comes to running!! Why is it easier to except and list all of these other factors when it comes to wealth and not running?! My argument was used to point out the flaw in using statistical data to prove a point!