Kenyans sweep distance races, Jamaicans sprints: How evolution has shaped elite sports

Kenyans sweep distance races, Jamaicans sprints: How evolution has shaped elite sports | Genetic Literacy Project

"Distance competitions? Athletes of East and North African ancestry dominate–most especially Kenyans from the Nandi Hills in the Rift Valley–while athletes of West African ancestry are no where to be seen.

Why are East Africans, including Kenyans, so dominant in distance running, but among the world’s slowest elite sprinters? And why are West African descended runners, including the sprinters from the tiny juggernaut of Jamaica, missing-in-action from elite distance running?

When it comes to opportunity, running is the most egalitarian of global sports, a natural laboratory. Unlike the props and costumes required for, say, professional football or ice hockey, or the intense coaching demanded of gymnastics, swimming or golf, anyone can just lace up and go for a run. Ethiopia’s Abebe Bikila proved this quite memorably in the 1960 Rome Olympics, when—shoeless, coachless and inexperienced—he won the marathon...

Those who do not understand the power of genes might argue that the medal podium for runners should reflect a rainbow of diversity, as no country or region should have a lock on desire or opportunity. But just the opposite has happened in track and field: elite running has become almost entirely segregated by ancestry. African descended athletes dominate. And field events are dominated by athletes of Eurasian ancestry...

The most frequently heard reason for this pattern by skeptics, including many scientists, is that Rift Valley Kenyans and Jamaican athletes just work harder at running. They had to run back and forth to school. It’s a way out of often deplorable poverty... culture alone can only take one so far; Jamaicans are terrible at distance running...

West Africa, which has no strong cultural or state support for running, has dozens of outstanding sprinters relative to any group in the world other than sprinters in the West African diaspora. Each of these countries alone–Congo, Botswana, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Senegal–has more elite sprinters than all of Asia combined...

The Kalenjin tribe alone has less than 0.1% of the world’s population, yet members of this tribe have together won more than 60 Olympic medals in middle- and long-distance events. It’s often claimed that Kenyans dominate distance races because they “naturally trained” as children—by running back and forth to school, for example.

“That’s just silly,” Kenyan-born Wilson Kipketer told me. Kipketer the second fastest 800-meter runner of all time and holder of six of the top 20 all-time fastest 800m times. “I lived right next door to school,” he laughed, dismissing cookie-cutter explanations. “I walked, nice and slow.”

No study has been done that suggests that elite runners as a group were more likely to run great distances to school. That’s a particularly absurd claim in Kenya today where even small rural villages, particularly in the Rift Valley, have inexpensive public bus service. Yet, the blank slate theory is advanced all the time, even by some scientist who should know better than to rely on anecdotes, as if it’s beyond question...

Like most young Kenyans, while growing up he hoped that he might catch the eye of a coach who combed the countryside to find the next generation of budding stars. He had dreams of being cheered as he entered the National Stadium in Nairobi. But his childhood fantasy was to be welcomed as a soccer player.

The national sport, the hero worship, the adoring fans, the social incentives that supposedly channel a kid into sports—that all speaks to Kenya’s enduring love affair with soccer, not running. Soccer was and is the national sports obsession of Kenyans. But Kipketer, like many Kenyans and East Africans, are rarely found among the elite of that sport; despite their zeal for soccer and all the social incentives to push them into playing high level soccer, most East Africans simply don’t appear to have the genetic package to make them the world-class quick burst runners that thrive in that sport. Social and cultural conditioning alone cannot turn athletic coal into diamonds...

Bengt Saltin, who recently passed away as the director of the Copenhagen Muscle Research Institute, and is considered one of the world’s expert in this area, has said his research estimated that an athlete’s “environment” accounts for no more than 25 percent of athletic ability. The rest comes down to the roll of the genetic dice...

'Differences among athletes of elite caliber are so small that if you have a physique or the ability to fire muscle fibers more efficiently that might be genetically based … it might be very, very significant. The fraction of a second is the difference between the gold medal and fourth place.'...

At the Olympics, with the exception of some competitive Koreans, the winners of the top strength events–weightlifting and most field events, such as the shot put, javelin and hammer–come from a band of Eurasian countries: across Eastern Europe and through Russia, Ukraine, China, Kazakhstan, Iran and Turkey. They have relatively muscular bodies with comparatively short limbs and thick torsos. No prototypical sprinter or marathoner here. Despite the image of the sculpted African body, no African nation has won an Olympic lifting gold medal...

Why do we readily accept that evolution has turned out Jews with a genetic predisposition to Tay-Sachs, Southeast Asians with a higher proclivity for beta-thalassemia, and blacks who are susceptible to colorectal cancer and sickle-cell disease, yet find it inappropriate to suggest that Usain Bolt can thank his West African ancestry for a critical part of his success? Just last week, in a study published in Nature in which researchers analyzed the genetic codes of more than 60,000 people from five continents, concluded, “Finns Found to be Genetically Unique, Genes Vary Significantly From Europeans”...

Linking population circumscribed body type to elite sports performance is no different from acknowledging that Tibetan people are able to survive better at higher altitudes through higher no2 blood levels and a higher density of arteries in their limbs to transport what little oxygen is available. Genetics is color blind, and acknowledging human differences, is not racist...

As UCLA professor Jared Diamond has noted, “Even today, few scientists dare to study “racial” origins, lest they be branded racists just for being interested in the subject.” But we have no choice but to face this third rail of genetics. Over the past decade, human genome research has moved from a study of human similarities to a focus on patterned based differences. Such research offers clues to solving the mystery of diseases, the Holy Grail of genetics."


Looks like genetic literacy is "racist"