What is the fastest 100m ran by a caucasion person?

Expert Discussion Advanced Sprint Training
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Observations and recommendations regarding race and genetics by the National Human Genome Center of Howard University*

  1. When the human species is viewed as a whole, underlying genetic variation and expressed physical traits exhibit gradients of differentiation, not discrete units. Therefore, modern extant humans do not fracture into races (subspecies) based on the modern phylogenetic criteria of molecular systematics.

    1. The biological “boundaries” between any human divisions (groups, populations, nationalities) are circumstantial and largely dependent on what traits are chosen for emphasis.

    2. The demographic units of human societies (and of the U.S. census) are the products of social or political rules, not the forces of biological evolution. The names and characteristics of demographic groups can change and have changed over time.

    3. Group differences in health parameters are not encoded in the human genome as part of an evolutionary pattern of divergence. Thus, differences in health or disease cannot be treated as causally related to ethnoancestral groups.

    4. Genotype-environment interactions are more important in explaining group differences in health than genotype, environment, or a factor called “race”.

    5. The non-existence of human races (subspecies) does not mean the non-existence of racism. Racism is the structured systematic oppression against individuals and groups defined based on physical traits that reflect an extremely limited fraction of the human genome. Racism must be addressed.

    6. Individuals cannot be treated as representative for all those who physically resemble them, or have some of the same ethnohistorical ancestry. Ancestries of individuals and groups should be ascertained in order to evaluate differential expression of genetic effects.

Does anybody what is the fastest 100m ran by a caucasion personis and who ran it? Iv done searches but cant find anything DBjohn

Your question maybe framed inappropriately. Let me elaborate, society thinks of race from a archetypal & singular viewpoint. You can find examples in entertainment politics and sport. The movie White Men Cant Jump is a good example, a lighthearted comedy. But more significantly racial archetypes or racial profiling allows governments to wage inequitable wars. Recent civilian death dolls in Iraq is one example.

Race is a genetic term for scientists and your question can be reframed do Caucasians have the genes to run sub 10s?

Yes, why haven’t they? Cultural factors and the “fast genes” are probably less abundant in the Caucasian group.

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Yeah, it is just cultural factors that >99% of the top 500 times are of people of West African descent from varying socioeconomic conditions (different family backgrounds, some being adopted, some in warm weather, some in cold, etc.) around the world. Total coincidence.

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Using this logic I could use weightlifting & speed skating to show that 99.99% of the top 500 are from the Caucasian East & South Asian group. Trying to frame the argument based on this logic its just fallacious.

I’ll elaborate on my earlier statement

“fast genes are probably less abundant in the Caucasian group” & more abundant in West African groups "

Simply looking at one group and comparing it to another is fallacious.

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First, please make coherent sentences. Your last sentence doesn’t make much sense and “fast genes” don’t make much sense either as we are talking about predispositions to certain factors and “fast genes” doesn’t exactly tell us what (are you talking about excitability of the nervous system, fiber types, different hormonal levels, neurotrophic factors, what?). You need the environmental factors (coaching, training, diet, etc.) to go along with the genetics, but if they aren’t there in the first place, nothing is going to change it.

And on top of that, there is the issue of anthropomorphic differences, which are perhaps the most obvious. Even with everything else being equal, this would be huge in sprinting.

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I have no education in this, it’s just an observation. And I’m certainly not trying to be racist as this is nothing to do with intelligence in different races. I’m only looking at it from a genetic viewpoint or as Sharmer puts it “fast genes” viewpoint.

There are over 300 breeds of horse available in the world today - but only a few that are genuinely suitable for thoroughbred racing. The ‘thoroughbreads’ appear to have evolved over milions of years from a gene pool that has a predisposition to moving very fast.

That’s not to say that there are many other breeds that have fast genes but fewer members of these groups are likely to be super fast.

Is this possible in humans where over many millions of years a certain ‘group’ (I’m loathe to use the term breed) has evolved where the fast genes are more abundant in that group. And on the evidence we have to date when the group is exposed to the right cultural & environmental factors they are more likely to generate a much greater number of fast athletes than another human group?

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You’re jumping ahead 500 steps! Scientist cannot isolate the specific genes that give physiological advantages for running speed. So when I use the generic term “fast genes” I refer to the genes (not yet discovered in humans) that give physiological advantages for speed.

Getting back to your earlier statement

“Yeah, it is just cultural factors that >99% of the top 500 times are of people of West African descent from varying socioeconomic conditions (different family backgrounds, some being adopted, some in warm weather, some in cold, etc.) around the world. Total coincidence.”

This is a common error in logic. Your making an inductive inference based on one group of data. Now if I adopt the same logic, than Caucasians make better weightlifters & Swimmers, East and south Asians are superior divers and gymnasts etc! Now what makes your argument even more problematic is predicting future performance. Are weightlifters, divers, gymnastic, swimmers going to have a performance threshold based on race?? The whole argument just fails.

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You really are stupid if you think this is the least bit similar.

There are so many problems with you presuming this is simply logic. First and foremost being that sprinting is one of the most basic and essential activities in humans. While one can train for it, it is still nothing compared to genetic predisposition. You don’t need a lot of facilities, you don’t need amazing coaching, and you don’t need to start it from a super young age. All of the sports you listed are of small niches with little involvement worldwide, while athletics ranks as one of the most participated in sports worldwide, requires almost no expensive facilities, minimal coaching (Bolt going sub 20 as a young teen), minimal strategy, etc. That makes your comparison pretty stupid. Not to mention that things like gymnastics and diving are not even objectively scored and there is lots of subjectivity in the judging, so basically irrelevant for the discussion. So now we are reduced to weightlifting and swimming, both of which require extensive coaching, tons of facilities for the latter, provide little opportunity for money (basically none in weightlifting), and more.

Beyond that, there are plenty of studies into different genes and traits with genetic determination that are race related.

BTW citing something from the genetics department at HOWARD??? Are you kidding me?

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To give you an idea, are you telling me it is cultural influences that let Usain go sub 20 as a teen and Tim Montgomery sub 10 as a teen? You’re telling me the cultural influences were so incredibly strong that no amount of training, supplementation, diet, etc. from the numerous Caucasians over the previous decades could overcome that? Give me a break. Do you have some complex about this? Nobody is saying to throw out the baby with the bath water because you should do the best with what you have, but to deny there are extremely strong genetic predispositions would be equally stupid.

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The sprinting elite site is excellent, but it hasn’t been updated in quite a while. That’s one of the better sites I know. You can also try all time athletics.

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Yes but show me the studies that show link between physiological advantages of running with the human genone.

All of the sports you listed are of small niches with little involvement worldwide, while athletics ranks as one of the most participated in sports worldwide, requires almost no expensive facilities, minimal coaching (Bolt going sub 20 as a young teen), minimal strategy, etc

Your digging a big hole Sir :slight_smile:

Any Olympic & WC sprint champions come directly from West Africa nations?

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I don’t deny the genetic predisposition for speed, I am simply saying that we don’t know what these genes are and we do not know what variations exist within differing racial groups. Using performance norms to justify a genetic argument doesn’t work.

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From Science 30 July 2004:
Vol. 305. no. 5684, pp. 637 - 639

Various studies have shown that West African athletes have denser bones, less body fat, narrower hips, thicker thighs, longer legs, and lighter calves than whites. But the differences between East and West Africans are even more striking. The fabled Kenyan runners are small, thin, and tend to weigh between 50 and 60 kilograms, whereas West African athletes are taller and a good 30 kilograms heavier, says Timothy Noakes, a prominent exercise physiologist and researcher at the University of Cape Town.

The differences don’t stop with body shape; there is also evidence of a difference in the types of muscle fibers that predominate. Scientists have divided skeletal muscles into two basic groups depending on their contractile speed: type I, or slow-twitch muscles, and type II, fast-twitch muscles. There are two kinds of the latter: type IIa, intermediate between fast and slow; and type IIb, which are superfast-twitch. Endurance runners tend to have mostly type I fibers, which have denser capillary networks and are packed with more mitochondria. Sprinters, on the other hand, have mostly type II fibers, which hold lots of sugar as well as enzymes that burn fuel in the absence of oxygen. In the 1980s, Claude Bouchard’s team at Quebec’s Laval University took needle biopsies from the thigh muscles of white French Canadian and black West African students. They found that the Africans averaged significantly more fast-twitch muscle fibers—67.5%—than the French Canadians, who averaged 59%.

Endurance runners have up to 90% or more slow-twitch fibers, Saltin reports. Bouchard, now at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, says his team looked at two enzymes that are markers for oxidative metabolism and found higher activity of both in the West Africans, meaning they could generate more ATP, the energy currency of the cell, in the absence of oxygen. The study suggests that in West Africa there may be a larger pool of people “with elevated levels of what it takes to perform anaerobically at very high power output,” says Bouchard.

Although training can transform superfast-twitch type IIb fibers into the hybrid type IIa, it is unlikely to cause slow- and fast-twitch fibers to exchange identities. Myburgh says there is evidence that, with extremely intensive long-distance training, fast IIa fibers can change to slow type I fibers. So far, however, there is no evidence that slow-twitch fibers can be turned into fast-twitch ones. As an athlete puts on muscle mass through training, new fibers are not created, but existing fibers become bigger.

Black male athletes have 26% more muscle viscosity than white male athletes. Black females have 45% greater muscle viscosity than white female athletes(Farley & Gonzalez 1996)

West African sprinters have lower shank inertia in which would allow them to spend less energy on moving their limbs (Rahmani 2004).

Senegalese sprinters were less strong and less powerful at high speeds in a squat movement compared to Italian sprinters of the same 100-m times although muscle abilities involved in slow maximal contractions were similar(Rahmani 2004).

Your digging a big hole Sir :slight_smile:

Any Olympic & WC sprint champions come directly from West Africa nations?

Yep. Nigeria and Namibia :smiley: (probably some others, but I forget off the top of my head). If we extend it to those who have gone under 10/20 seconds as opposed to just those that are world or Olympic champions, the list becomes significantly larger.

And if you include countries that are made up of predominantly West Africans… well you get the picture.

The fact that the country of China with over a billion people and TONS of great facilities, state sponsorship, etc. (or the Soviet Union at its “peak”) can’t/couldn’t muster up a single athlete male 100m athlete that could compete with St. Kitts & Nevis, the Netherlands Antilles, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, Namibia, the Bahamas, and numerous other countries kind of hurts your argument here.

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Don’t know if this has been mentioned but black buys often have a much longer achilles tendon (and hence shorter calf muscle) than white guys giving them more elastic strength.

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If it is purely genetic then Africa would have more sprinters doing well- not just those who leave and learn it elsewhere. Likewise, it is clear that there is a reverse bias against whites in the sprints in America generally. I remember Al Vermiel producing a 4.3 receiver and after the games films were reviewed, and it was clear he was white, his times were rejected as false. The fact that Al had a history of being the S and C coach for the SF49ers when they won the Super Bowl for the first time apparently wasn’t enough to override scepticism.

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Charlie, I completely agree with you here. Nothing is purely genetic. In fact, in sprinting, there are probably numerous things equally important as genetics. What annoys me is when people neglect the fact that genetic factors exist for some odd reason without any basis.

And this should mostly be for people’s casual observation because you can’t do much at the moment to change one’s genes, so you may as well train the best you can as hard as you can. With the information available though, we can see some factors that may be important for elite level sprinting that could be focused on.

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I lol’d when I saw that

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I remember Vitaly Savin (Kazakhstan - but didnt look like Borat!) doing either a 9.91 or 9.97 windy sometime around 1992. He was (slightly) memorable in that if you watch tapes of the 1992 Olympics he clearly modelled his start on Bens.

Also found these times listed (hand tho!)

9.9 1.2 Vladimir Krylov (URS/RUS) 26.02.64 1 Odessa UKR 4 Sep 1985
9.9 0.7 Vitaliy Savin (URS/KAZ) 23.01.66 1 Vladivostok 13 Sep 1988
9.9 Vladislav Dologodin (UKR) 23.02.72 1 Kharkov 13 May 1994

Also Ian Mackie did a windy 10.00 and Doug Walker 10.01 at the Scottish Champs one year with somewhere round a +2.9.

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In this single sentence the whole argument is wrapped up;

If it is purely genetic then Africa would have more sprinters doing well- not just those who leave and learn it elsewhere.

Well said Charlie! There is nothing more to add to it.

Yeah, it is just cultural factors that >99% of the top 500 times are of people of West African descent from varying socioeconomic conditions (different family backgrounds, some being adopted, some in warm weather, some in cold, etc.) around the world. Total coincidence.

If this was true, would it mean that black people are less intelligent because there is no black world champion in chess?

Why black people are not so good in sky jumps?

I happen to know a sprinter from Cameron. He isn’t the fastest guy at the venue where he trains. A bunch of white kids are faster than him. How is this possible? :slight_smile:

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There are basically 3 macro variables that affect any single individuals ability to do well in anything…I’m avoiding technical language so it fits a general non medical audience.

  1. Genetics (basically no one can control that)
  2. Environment (controllable to a certain extent…i.e. x has the $ to move to the US from Kenya where there is better training facilities…earlier posts called it cultural factors…but that never stopped the Kenyan’s from kicking butt despite the Kalenjin region of Kenya’s per capital GDP is ~$500 USD/year essentially just above subsistence level)
  3. Personal Motivation (of the 3 variables this is the most controllable)

In Kenyan distance runners cases they obviously have the highest levels of personal motivation (i’d say 99% of all professional elite athletes max out on this metric)

The Kalenjin Region other than high altitude have no facilities and no $$ for good nutrition and/or doping (till the start making $$).

So if we were to place emphasis on what the biggest contributing factor to distance running success I am led to conclude genetic factors explain most of it. But like all things in the human world its always multi factoral and the problem with studying cultural environmental factors sometimes our studying affects the outcome…people aren’t simple like apples so Sir Issac Newton can keep dropping it and getting the same result so he can figure out a formula for gravity…people change their behaviour even to the same “stimulus” and that fogs any results.

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It’s good that you’re using evidence to support your viewpoint. However the evidence you cite does not show specific genetics of West African’s and compared to other racial groups. Therefore the evidence does not support the argument.

As I have pointed out earlier avoid comparing group performance. This tells us little about the human genome of differing racial groups.

If you compare the average Indian/East Asian academic performance in fields of physics you will find scores much lower for the West African group. You can use a whole range of intellectual activities, chess, spelling bee, SAT, UAI, grade point averages etc and the East Asian/Indian group will score significantly higher than people of West African origin will.Does this mean west Africans are less intelligent ?

The logic of your argument means that West African origin athletes are genetically superior for sprint running and intellectually less skilled for academic performance. Do you agree with this statement? Or do you wish to use group performance to support your argument for sprint performance and ignore group performance for academic performance because it shows West Africans to be less intelligent.

Maybe in the future scientist will discover that academic/sports performance is limited by racial genetic factors. But I doubt it! - Matt Shirvington ran 10.03 at 19yrs and sure there are some high scoring intellectuals from the West African group. Therefore there will always be exemptions to this the racial advantage theory.

If it is true that academic & sports performance is limited by genetic racial factors then sports & academics should have racial divisions. Now this is not such a foreign concept. In Fiji indigenous Fijians have lower entry scores for university. In Australia indigenous aborigines also have lower entry scores for university courses. Should we create racial thresholds to both academic & sport performance? should there be a white/black Olympic final ? Not sure what guys like Spearman or Mo would do, since they’re of mixed race.

What even refutes your theory more is the out of African hypothesis of human evolution. The human species did originate from African Savanna some 55,000-10, 0000 years ago. We may look different but our genetic variations between racial groups are small.

The Out of Africa Model 13 asserts that modern humans evolved relatively recently in Africa, migrated into Eurasia and replaced all populations which had descended from Homo erectus. Critical to this model are the following tenets:
Out of Africa theory: homo sapiens arose in Africa and migrated to other parts of the world to replace other hominid species, including homo erectus.

* after Homo erectus migrated out of Africa the different populations became reproductively isolated, evolving independently, and in some cases like the Neanderthals, into separate species
* Homo sapiens arose in one place, probably Africa (geographically this includes the Middle East)
* Homo sapiens ultimately migrated out of Africa and replaced all other human populations, without interbreeding

 modern human variation is a relatively recent phenomenon

  Studies of contemporary DNA, especially mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) which occurs only in the cellular organelles called mitochondria, reveal that humans are astonishingly homogeneous, with relatively little genetic variation.1,5
*

The high degree of similarity between human populations stands in strong contrast to the condition seen in our closest living relatives, the chimpanzees.2 In fact, there is significantly more genetic variation between two individual chimpanzees drawn from the same population than there is between two humans drawn randomly from a single population. Furthermore, genetic variation between populations of chimpanzees is enormously greater than differences between European, Asian and African human populations.

Africans display higher genetic variation than other populations, supporting the idea that they were the first modern humans.

*

  In support of an African origin for Homo sapiens the work of Cann and Wilson1 has demonstrated that the highest level of genetic variation in mtDNA occurs in African populations. This implies that Homo sapiens arose first in Africa and has therefore had a longer period of time to accumulate genetic diversity. Using the genetic distance between African populations and others as a measure of time, they furthermore suggested that Homo sapiens arose between 100,000 and 400,000 years ago in Africa.
*

  The low amount of genetic variation in modern human populations suggests that our origins may reflect a relatively small founding population for Homo sapiens. Analysis of mtDNA by Rogers and Harpending12 supports the view that a small population of Homo sapiens, numbering perhaps only 10,000 to 50,000 people, left Africa somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 years ago.

Paleoanthropologist Donald C. Johanson, is professor of anthropology and Director of the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University. He is best known for his discovery of “Lucy”, a 3.2 million-year old Australopithecus afarensis skeleton he found in 1974 in Ethiopia. His books include Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind and, most recently, From Lucy to Language. Dr. Johanson hosted the Emmy-nominated NOVA television series In Search of Human Origins