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.
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 
Any Olympic & WC sprint champions come directly from West Africa nations?
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.
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
Any Olympic & WC sprint champions come directly from West Africa nations?
Yep. Nigeria and Namibia 
(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.
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.
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.
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.
I lol’d when I saw that
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.
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?
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.
- Genetics (basically no one can control that)
- 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)
- 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.
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
Matt also ran 10.29 (e) at 17!!! I was there that day, Australian all school championships. A record that won’t be broken for decades, if ever.
This is a casual conversation. They don’t need to identify every single gene for me or any other rational person to come to this conclusion. I haven’t seen the studies that show short-to-long is a valid way to train or that 5k runs hurt 100m sprint performance at the elite level, but I sure as hell know I won’t be doing them anytime soon. You are confusing the issues here and I am not presupposing that we know everything, but us simply not knowing the specifics does not mean they do not exist.
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 ?
Most of these tests require some sort of specific conditioning (ie teaching) before hand. Understanding complex physics problems and being able to make difficult calculations is not an inherent human trait like sprinting is. Not to mention the majority of what you just mentioned do not even measure actual intelligence (as in, people can be quite intelligent and still perform poorly), while sprinting most definitely measures speed.
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.
These are different arguments and do not have the same logical bases. For example, I can look at West Africans that are in similar situations as other ethnicities and see they perform quite in line with what would be expected on average. I cannot say the same for sprinting where, regardless of socioeconomic status and even family upbringing, they continue to outperform Caucasians and every other ethnicity. In case you didn’t know, there are even individuals who have gone sub 10 who were adopted by families of another race from a very early age… I don’t know how much more one can rule out environmental factors than that.
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.
And Matt Shirvington never got any better, even with all of the top coaches and terrific funding and support in the world, he still couldn’t cut it. Tim Montgomery ran faster than that when he was a teenager and he barely got 3 square meals a day and had a whopping one year of “serious” training.
I think you meant to say exceptions, but either way, there are most definitely outliers. I never argued that there are not. In fact, anybody going sub 10, or even sub 11 for that matter, is by definition and outlier. The evidence is overwhelming, however, that certain groups are more predisposed to be good at certain things.
If it is true that academic & sports performance is limited by genetic racial factors then sports & academics should be 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.
This is not even part of what I was saying. I guess everything from skin color to hair type and height must have no genetic predisposition :). Sweet, because I have always found myself to be a bit pale and whenever I am outside I just get burnt and I always wanted to be 6’4" but I am stuck at just an average height.
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.
You just acknowledged that there are genetic variations. You don’t even understand what the hell the out of Africa hypothesis is.
Nice job quoting an article about a guy who is considered a joke academically. I TA the class the guy took on human evolution when he was in college and the professor is the same as then (ps Johanson barely passed and knows little about biology or genetics seeing as he didn’t take classes in either, but nice job anyway!). He is tremendous in the field, but there are numerous other scientists who have done substantially more and did not misrepresent their work to the degree Johanson has.
That is another matter altogether though. The fact that you acknowledge that there are genetic variations between races and we are talking about something that is determined by hundredths and thousandths of a second is plenty. It doesn’t take a whole lot of variation to go a long way. Remember there is only ~2% of variation, genetically, between humans and chimps (actually, that is an extreme oversimplification, but you are a simple minded person, so I’ll keep it simple for you ;)) and that 2% sure has gone a long way. When we are talking about a single skill that where the difference is incredibly tiny between the best performer ever and the #100 performer ever, it doesn’t take much variation to be significant.
Most of these tests require some sort of specific conditioning (ie teaching) before hand. Understanding complex physics problems and being able to make difficult calculations is not an inherent human trait like sprinting is. Not to mention the majority of what you just mentioned do not even measure actual intelligence (as in, people can be quite intelligent and still perform poorly), while sprinting most definitely measures speed.
These are different arguments and do not have the same logical bases. For example, I can look at West Africans that are in similar situations as other ethnicities and see they perform quite in line with what would be expected on average.
When west africans score poorly- its cultural,socio-economics factors- you question the validity of the test. However when it comes to sprinting- it’s proof they have genetic advantage. Can’t you see the paradoxical nature of your arguement
inherent human trait like sprinting is.
Bulldust!- sprinting is a learned behavior. The limiting factor to max speed is genetic but your statement is absurd. I suggest you go over Motor learning development 101.
And Matt Shirvington never got any better, even with all of the top coaches and terrific funding and support in the world, he still couldn’t cut it. Tim Montgomery ran faster than that when he was a teenager and he barely got 3 square meals a day and had a whopping one year of “serious” training.
Matt had his CNS fried by his coach. The guy was burnt out by 22. He had issues with his immune system and illness- common sympton with over training syndrome.
I think you meant to say exceptions, but either way, there are most definitely outliers. I never argued that there are not. In fact, anybody going sub 10, or even sub 11 for that matter, is by definition and outlier. .
YES! This is what I have been saying from my first post however your hyper defensive manner failied to recognise this. People with right genetics from any race can run sub10. Pat Johnson 9.93 ( wind assisted 9.90, 9.88 ) . PJ is of mixed race but he has obvious aboriginal structural features in his limbs. Note he has no West African origin. Also Joshua Ross 10.08 ( mixed race), no west African origin. I would go as far to say that the Australian aboriginals have greater genetic disposition to run fast compared to west Africans. You must realise issues of drug & sexual abuse, morbidies issues are ridiculously high in these communities. I don’t have the genetic evidence but there is anecdotal evidence to support my view.
You just acknowledged that there are genetic variations. You don’t even understand what the hell the out of Africa hypothesis i
There are hundreds of studies that support this theory.
Really what causes your argument to fail other than problems of logic is that your general theory is just based on anecdotal evidence. There is no direct genetic evidence to support it. You say West Africans have better genetics for speed I say Australia aboriginal. Who’ right –neither of us- because there is no direct genetic evidence to support either statement.
You may argue why aren’t there any many Australian aboriginal WC or OG champions, Cathy Freeman is one- another more significant factor is the talent is bought by AFL/ Rugby Union & league in a heartbeat. Joshua Ross 6’2 92kg (10.08) stuck with athletics and he regrets this because he could of made hundreds of thousands in Ruby league. What does his national federation do for him for picking athletics? They don’t send a 4x100 m team for OG, what a f… joke!!! Why even pick athletics, no financial incentive!
Institutional bureaucracy has huge impact here! Look at Nigeria (genetically the most abundant source for 100m champions) No Olympic 100 m champions!
Why not? Institutional corruption drains the funds.
The answer is not simply genetics.
That is another matter altogether though. The fact that you acknowledge that there are genetic variations between races and we are talking about something that is determined by hundredths and thousandths of a second is plenty. It doesn’t take a whole lot of variation to go a long way
If you think that slight variations in performance of the elite are determined by genetic factors more substantially than coaching than you’re really on another planet.
I wrote
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.
& Your response
is not even part of what I was saying
Do you wish to stick your head in sand and ignore the implications of what your saying?
If there are racial genetic limitation of running speed, why should we continue under the current format, it’s not equitable and fair - there should be divisions based on race.
Most of these tests require some sort of specific conditioning (ie teaching) before hand. Understanding complex physics problems and being able to make difficult calculations is not an inherent human trait like sprinting is. Not to mention the majority of what you just mentioned do not even measure actual intelligence (as in, people can be quite intelligent and still perform poorly), while sprinting most definitely measures speed
Sprinting at the elite level is very much a learned response- no more different than academic pursuits. Based on your logic West Africans have greater capacity to learn sprint movements and less ability to learn academic pursuits.
How in the world did “academic” intelligence/aptitude etc get into this discussion? we’re talking about running here lets stay on topic.
Like my earlier simple minded post of 3 macro factors, genetics, social/cultural/economic factors & pure single minded dedication.
i concluded that genetics explains “most” of the success of kenyan runners despite their lousy socio cultural economic factors which sux due to their poverty.
I’m sure Kenyan poverty is much more dire than Australia poverty. Though I agree that institutional corruption has hurt australian aboriginal sprinters its kinda hard to compare institutional corruption vs…abject poverty.
I’m sure the answer is mostly explained by genetics but…it never is so simple
Basically fogelson used the premise that 99% of the top 500 sprinters have West African origins for proof that West Africans have better genetics for running fast. Now I say this entire argument is weak and has logical errors. If the premise to this argument was true- than I cite examples of West African scores across a wide range of academic pursuits and their lower scores compared to other groups. If we accept fogelson logic- than it must be true that West Africans are less intelligent. However since the logic is flawed obviously West Africans are not less intelligent.
the polemics on this thread…confusing the crap out of me…i ain’t that smart people i can’t read thru all the “extraneous” material fogging the issues
thanx sharmer…u must be a lawyer?
newty82;221000
thanx sharmer…u must be a lawyer?
No I work in the insurance industry- I review liability from both the legal and medical perspective. Too much stress !!! I should get one of these bureaucratic sports admin jobs. Than I would really doing nothing to earn my money!