Sigh...
Michael, you just don't want to acknowledge the issues. When a .200 hitter
has a three hit day, we don't suddenly call him the leagues' best hitter.
We are talking population genetics. When 7 percent of the world's population
holds 98 percent of the top times in sprinting, and 5 percent holds more
than 70 percent of the top endurance times, it is meaningful. The overall
numbers at Edmonton, and in this current track season, more than bears out
the trends. Genetics is not destiny, just a sign of probability.
This is not a black and white issue as my post made clear. The differences
within the black population are as great or greater than within any
population in the world.
My question is "why does this have to be an issue with race with you?
On 8/9/01 1:24 PM, "Michael Contopoulos" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> women's 100...
> white, black, white
>
> men's 400...
> white, black, black
>
> men's 200...
> well... we don't know yet... but you can probably count on the white OC to
> be in the mix... and one of the top 200 guys of the year in Little being top
> 5 at worst.
>
> And jon-boy, for every 10 black kids that sprint, probably 1 white kid
> sprints... because of a$$'s like yourself who discourage them.
>
> My question is this though... why does it have to be an issue with race with
> you? Do you have anything else to offer to this sport other than further
> dividing those of different skin color?
>
>> From: Jon Entine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>> Reply-To: Jon Entine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>> To: malmo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Track and Field List
>> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>> Subject: Re: t-and-f: The End of the British Rule in Running
>> Date: Thu, 09 Aug 2001 13:05:43 -0700
>>
>> Malmo:
>>
>> You are an angry person...
>>
>> Except the sprint results certainly do reflect, without question, the
>> underlying bio-genetic reality. Absolutely and unequivocally.
>>
>> How you can turn science into bigotry is an issue you'll have to deal with
>> in the confessional both.
>>
>>
>> On 8/9/01 12:43 PM, "malmo" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>
>>> I guessed that because the sprints aren't complying with Entine's
>>> bigoted views he'd focus on the 1500.
>>>
>>> Nothing new, the same tired, old sh!t.
>>>
>>> malmo
>>>
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>>> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Jon Entine
>>>> Sent: Thursday, August 09, 2001 2:46 PM
>>>> To: Track and Field List
>>>> Subject: t-and-f: The End of the British Rule in Running
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Thought this would provoke the usual outrage. If anyone wants
>>>> to print this unpublished article, or reproduce it on a
>>>> website, please send me a note. I will be most obliging.
>>>>
>>>> ******
>>>>
>>>> 9 August 2001
>>>>
>>>> The End of the British Empire: Why a Brit (Black or White)
>>>> Will Never Again Hold a Distance Running Record
>>>>
>>>> By Jon Entine
>>>>
>>>> When the gun goes off for the men?s 1500 metre final at
>>>> Sunday?s World Championships in Edmonton, it might just as
>>>> well signal the end of an era. The age of great British
>>>> middle distance runners is gone forever. Once the world?s
>>>> dominant power, with a bloodline of Sebastian Coe, Steve
>>>> Ovett, Steve Cram, and Peter Elliott that regularly left
>>>> competitors in the dust, the British hopefuls are today mere
>>>> also-rans in a field dominated by North and East Africans.
>>>>
>>>> The collapse of the once mighty British Empire is actually
>>>> part of a more sweeping trend. Where Brits, Aussies and
>>>> others of Northern European stock used to dominate distance
>>>> running, former greats such as Steve Cram and Sebastian Coe
>>>> now indulge in British bashing. 12So where is the problem?
>>>> wrote Coe last week in the Telegraph. . 12The answer, I rather
>>>> fancy, as Shakespeare said, lies not in the stars but in our
>>>> hands? - run faster. Coe went on to exhort aspiring Brits to
>>>> train with the 12brutal commitment of days gone by - 12the
>>>> mental and physical intensity of what was commonplace 20
>>>> years ago, he added modestly.
>>>>
>>>> Here?s a wake-up call: you might as well look to the stars,
>>>> because distance runners from Britain, northern Europe or
>>>> North America, white or black, will never reclaim the mantle
>>>> as world's best. And cultural factors have little do with
>>>> this changing phenomenon.
>>>>
>>>> The world rankings, which combine race results from the 800
>>>> metres to the marathon, paint a stark picture. Africans,
>>>> eight from Kenya, hold the top 10 places. Among the women,
>>>> the top 3 and 7-out-of-10 are Kenyan. However, because of
>>>> social taboos against women runners in Africa, non-Africans
>>>> remain somewhat more competitive.
>>>>
>>>> If you ask self-proclaimed experts what?s behind this
>>>> extraordinary phenomenon, be prepared for the usual clichι:
>>>> the current crop of British athletes is too soft. If they
>>>> just tried harder, they?d challenge for gold. Certainly,
>>>> Coe?s 1981 800-metre run in Stockholm ranks as one of the
>>>> great all-time performances. But a look at the all time list
>>>> of 800 metre runs makes it clear that Britain?s reign as
>>>> middle distance champion (and prior periods of domination by
>>>> the Finns and other Northern Europeans) speaks mostly to the
>>>> fact that for the most part Africans didn?t compete. While
>>>> nationalistic chest pounding may help deal with frustration
>>>> of fading glory, it can?t change the hard reality that
>>>> Britain?s middle distance running glory is gone for good,
>>>> whatever training methods might be adopted. Now that the
>>>> playing field is more level-running is a worldwide sport,
>>>> drawing competitors from Africa, Asia and South
>>>> America-Northern Europeans are decidedly second-class.
>>>>
>>>> Consider the list of all time top 800 meter runs and runners.
>>>> While Coe?s best time ranks third on the all time list,
>>>> Elliott?s stands at 45, Cram?s at 67, and Ovett?s at 341. On
>>>> a regular basis, none could expect to challenge the current
>>>> world record holder, Kenyan Wilson Kipketer, who has 28 times
>>>> in the top 100. Other Kenyan runners bring the total in the
>>>> top 100 to fifty. Overall, athletes of African ancestry hold
>>>> 92 of the top 100 times, with Northern Europeans holding but eight.
>>>>
>>>> What about Coe?s whine that British runners could transform
>>>> themselves from joggers into champions if only they paid they
>>>> mimicked the Kenyans. As the myth goes, Kenyans are great
>>>> because they ran to school as kids and torture themselves in
>>>> practice. That brings belly laughs from Wilson Kipketer, who
>>>> destroyed Coe?s long-held 800-metre record in 1997. "I lived
>>>> right next door to school," he laughs. "I walked, nice and slow."
>>>>
>>>> The reality is that for every Kenyan monster-miler putting in
>>>> 100-mile weeks, there are others, like Kipketer, who get
>>>> along on less than thirty. 12Training regimens are as varied
>>>> in Kenya as any where in the world, notes Colm O?Connell,
>>>> coach at St. Patrick?s Iten, the famous private school and
>>>> running factory in the valley that turned out Kipketer and
>>>> other Kenyan greats. O?Connell eschews the mega-training so
>>>> common among world champion wannabees in Britain and Europe.
>>>>
>>>> The explanation for African domination of running, it turns
>>>> out, can be found mostly in the genes. 12Africans are
>>>> naturally, genetically, more likely to have less body fat,
>>>> which is a critical edge in elite running, notes Joseph
>>>> Graves, Jr., an African American evolutionary biologist at
>>>> Arizona State University. "Evolution has shaped body types
>>>> and in part athletic possibilities. Don?t expect an Eskimo to
>>>> show up on an NBA court or a Watusi to win the world
>>>> weightlifting championship. Differences don?t necessarily
>>>> correlate with skin color, but rather with geography and
>>>> climate. Genes play a major role in this.
>>>>
>>>> Highly heritable characteristics such as skeletal structure,
>>>> muscle fiber types, reflex capabilities, metabolic efficiency
>>>> and lung capacity are not evenly distributed among
>>>> populations and cannot be explained by known environmental
>>>> factors. Though individual success is about opportunity and
>>>> "fire in the belly," thousands of years of evolution have
>>>> left a distinct footprint on the world's athletic map.
>>>>
>>>> "Very many in sports physiology would like to believe that it
>>>> is training, the environment, what you eat that plays the
>>>> most important role," states Bengt Saltin, director of the
>>>> Copenhagen Muscle Research Center, who outlined his findings
>>>> in Scientific American. "But we argue based on the data that
>>>> it is 'in your genes' whether or not you are talented or
>>>> whether you will become talented. The extent of the
>>>> environment can always be discussed but it's less than 20, 25
>>>> percent."
>>>>
>>>> East Africa is the epicenter of world distance running.
>>>> Runners from highlands that snake along the western edge of
>>>> the Great Rift Valley have clocked more than 60 percent of
>>>> the best times ever run in distance races. Kenyans alone win
>>>> 40 percent of top international events. The Nandi district of
>>>> 500,000 people-1/12,000 of Earth's population-boasts an
>>>> unfathomable 20 percent, marking the greatest concentration
>>>> of raw athletic talent in sports history.
>>>>
>>>> East Africans share a genetic history with mountain
>>>> populations of North Africa. As a result of millions of years
>>>> of evolutionary pressures, these populations turn out a
>>>> disproportionately high number of body types with a
>>>> biomechanical package for endurance activities: lean,
>>>> physiques, large lung capacity, and a preponderance of slow
>>>> twitch muscle fibers that propel endurance athletes. These
>>>> are genetically-endowed attributes. No amount of
>>>> hard-training can radically change what we are born with.
>>>>
>>>> This is not an issue of black and white, but the consequence
>>>> of evolving in varying terrains. In fact, black East Africans
>>>> have a very different biomechanical and genetic make-up than
>>>> blacks who trace their ancestry from West Africa, which
>>>> includes almost all British, Canadian, and American blacks.
>>>>
>>>> 12West Africans have already about 70 percent of the fast type
>>>> muscle fibers when they are born, says Dr. Saltin. 12And
>>>> that?s needed for a 100 metre race around 9.9 seconds.
>>>>
>>>> Canadian geneticist Claude Bouchard, director of the
>>>> Pennington Biomedical Research Center at Louisiana State
>>>> University, found that West African descended blacks have
>>>> naturally smaller lung capacity (about 15 percent when
>>>> compared to whites and East Africans), a preponderance of
>>>> fast twitch muscle fibers, and a more muscled, mesomorphic
>>>> physique - a goldmine for sprinting. Not surprisingly, there
>>>> are no elite distance runners of West African ancestry.
>>>>
>>>> All the training in the world is unlikely to turn a black
>>>> Brit into an elite marathoner or an East African into a top
>>>> 100-metre runner. While the fastest Kenyan 100-metre run is
>>>> 10.28 seconds, ranking 5,000 on the all-time list, blacks who
>>>> trace their ancestry to West Africa, the ancestral home of
>>>> almost all African Americans, hold the top 200 and 494 of the
>>>> top 500 100-metre times.
>>>>
>>>> The pattern of which athletes excel has little to do with
>>>> skin color but much to population genetics. Asian athletes,
>>>> and their ancestral descendants in Mexico and South America,
>>>> are very competitive in distance races, in part because of
>>>> their small frames and extra layer of energy-generating body
>>>> fat, which is otherwise a hindrance in sprinting. The few
>>>> great white male distance runners are almost exclusively from
>>>> southern Portugal, Spain, and Italy, and share many of the
>>>> physical and physiological characteristics-and some of the
>>>> genetic make-up-of North and East Africans.
>>>>
>>>> "Differences among athletes of elite caliber are so small,"
>>>> notes Robert Malina, a Michigan State University
>>>> anthropologist and editor of the American Journal of Human
>>>> Biology, "that 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."
>>>>
>>>> If genetics and race really do matter in athletic
>>>> performance, then we might expect to find noticeable
>>>> differences in the ways different population groups sustain
>>>> anaerobic and aerobic functioning. Sure enough, by applying
>>>> population genetics to athletic performance and examining the
>>>> aerobic/anaerobic energy cycle, scientists are beginning to
>>>> understand the racial pattern in sports.
>>>>
>>>> Timothy Noakes, long-time director of the Sport Science
>>>> Center at the University of Cape Town Medical School, and
>>>> author of many scholarly books, including Lore of Running,
>>>> has observed that black South Africans, who share much of
>>>> their genetic ancestry with East Africans, sweep more than 90
>>>> percent of the top places in endurance races held in his
>>>> country, despite the fact that blacks represent no more than
>>>> one-quarter of the active running population. Noakes has
>>>> attempted to figure out why in his laboratory. In a treadmill
>>>> study, black marathoners consistently bested whites. Although
>>>> white runners matched or exceeded the black runners at
>>>> distances up to 5,000 metres, blacks were "clearly superior
>>>> at distances greater than 5km." The fine print in the data
>>>> was particularly revealing. There was a dramatic difference
>>>> in the ability of the blacks to run at a higher maximum
>>>> oxygen capacity. In the case of the marathoners, blacks
>>>> performed at 89 percent of the maximum oxygen capacity, while
>>>> whites lagged by nearly 10 percent. The muscles of the black
>>>> athletes also showed far fewer signs of fatigue as measured
>>>> by lactic acid.
>>>>
>>>> Noakes noted a link between his findings and the training
>>>> habits of well-known Kenyan runners who report favoring
>>>> low-mileage, high-intensity workouts. This presented a
>>>> nurture/nature conundrum: Does hard training lead to a change
>>>> in oxidative capacity and fatigue resistance, or does it
>>>> merely reflect a genetically well-endowed athletic machine?
>>>>
>>>> The answer can be found in the wild card in performance:
>>>> muscle efficiency. David Costill, former head of the Human
>>>> Performance Laboratory at Ball State in Muncie, Indiana, has
>>>> shown that the adaptability of the muscle fiber for aerobic
>>>> metabolism - its oxidative potential - is more important than
>>>> the basic composition of the muscle. More aerobically
>>>> efficient fibers produce fewer fatigue-producing lactate
>>>> toxins, resulting in better performance. And although fiber
>>>> composition is genetically fixed, which effectively limits
>>>> the pool of possible successful athletes in each event,
>>>> exercise can help muscles better utilize oxygen.
>>>>
>>>> A team from South Africa and Australia, including Noakes, has
>>>> found an apparent link between oxidative capacity, resistance
>>>> to fatigue, and race. The researchers measured "running
>>>> economy"-the amount of metabolic work (and therefore oxygen
>>>> consumption) that is required to run at a given speed, much
>>>> like the fuel economy of a car. Running economy can be
>>>> affected by a variety of factors both environmental, such as
>>>> running technique, and physiological, such as body-mass
>>>> distribution and muscle elasticity. "We've shown that the
>>>> oxidative enzyme capacity of the [black] athletes we looked
>>>> at was one and a half times higher on average than the white
>>>> runners," reported Kathy Myburgh, a co-author of the report
>>>> and senior lecturer at the University of Stellenbosch in
>>>> South Africa. Comparing black and white athletes with nearly
>>>> identical race times, the researchers found that blacks were
>>>> both more efficient runners and able to utilize a
>>>> considerably higher percentage of their maximum oxygen
>>>> potential - a decided advantage if two athletes otherwise
>>>> have the same capacity.
>>>>
>>>> "Whilst the current study does not elucidate the origins of
>>>> these differences," the report concluded, "the findings may
>>>> partially explain the success of African runners at the elite
>>>> level." A subsequent study determined that the superior
>>>> fatigue resistance during high-intensity endurance exercise
>>>> is partially related to the higher skeletal-muscle oxidative
>>>> capacity and lower plasma lactate accumulation found more
>>>> commonly in blacks.
>>>>
>>>> Bengt Saltin has also come to the conclusion that certain
>>>> population groups, including Northern Europeans, who are
>>>> notable endurance runners and cross-country skiers, may have
>>>> superior fatigue resistance encoded in their genes. He has
>>>> found that Scandinavian distance runners, Kenyans, and South
>>>> African blacks all have consistently lower blood-lactate
>>>> levels and perform more efficiently than athletes from other
>>>> regions, the likely result of their having evolved in
>>>> mountainous regions. Population genetics - ancestry-is the
>>>> key determinant.
>>>>
>>>> Saltin brought a half-dozen established Swedish national
>>>> class runners to Colm O?Connell?s school, St. Patrick's, in
>>>> Iten, Kenya, to see how they might match up against
>>>> up-and-coming East African schoolboys. It was a demoralizing
>>>> experience for the Swedes. National champion after national
>>>> champion was soundly trounced in races from 800 metres to 10
>>>> kilometres. Stunned, Saltin estimated that in this one tiny
>>>> area of the Rift Valley there were at least five hundred
>>>> school boys who could best his national champions at 2,000 metres.
>>>>
>>>> In a subsequent study, Saltin brought several groups of
>>>> Kenyans to the Karolinska labs in Sweden, where he was then
>>>> working. Muscle-fiber distribution was similar for the
>>>> Kenyans and Swedes. But biopsies of the quadricep muscles in
>>>> the thighs indicated that the Kenyans had more blood-carrying
>>>> capillaries surrounding the muscle fibers and more
>>>> mitochondria within the fibers. That's important because
>>>> mitochondria act a little like power stations, processing the
>>>> glucose with oxygen brought in by breathing into energy. The
>>>> Kenyans also were found to have relatively smaller muscle
>>>> fibers than the Swedes, which Saltin speculated might serve
>>>> to bring the mitochondria closer to the surrounding
>>>> capillaries. This process aids in oxidation, bringing more
>>>> "fuel" to the mitochondria, the engine of the muscles.
>>>>
>>>> The Kenyans also showed little ammonia accumulation in their
>>>> muscles from protein combustion, and less lactic-acid
>>>> buildup. They have more of the muscle enzymes that burn fat,
>>>> and their glycogen reserves are not burned as quickly, which
>>>> improves endurance. Most impressively, they are able to take
>>>> months off from regular training and then regain their old
>>>> form quickly. When they do train, more than half of their
>>>> total mileage occurs at heart rates of 90 percent of maximum,
>>>> far higher than the rate for Europeans or Americans. In
>>>> general, Saltin reported a 5 to 15 percent greater running
>>>> economy at far less mileage, but at a higher intensity.
>>>> Saltin has privately suggested that Kenyans appear to be
>>>> innately efficient, durable, and fast - with the most perfect
>>>> aerobic potential measured so far on earth.
>>>>
>>>> Could a North European or British runner defy the odds and
>>>> emerge as a middle distance world record holder? Certainly,
>>>> for genes only circumscribe possibility and any race opens
>>>> the door for the roulette wheel of the human spirit. As a
>>>> result of natural human variation, there will always be great
>>>> runners from every part of the globe. But don?t expect a
>>>> return to glory. Remember, there were almost no Kenyans or
>>>> North Africans in the mix in the days when British athletes
>>>> used to rule. Today?s aspiring British athletes would be a
>>>> bit foolish to follow Coe?s exhortations and devote
>>>> themselves to grueling training regimens in hopes of cracking
>>>> African hegemony. More than likely, in a sport in which a few
>>>> hundredths of a second is the difference between a gold medal
>>>> and finishing back in the pack, they don?t have the innate
>>>> potential to become the elite of the elite. They are making a
>>>> rational choice to focus on events and sports in which they
>>>> are more likely to succeed.
>>>>
>>>> Humans are different, a product of the inseparable
>>>> relationship of genes and environment. Popular thinking,
>>>> still reactive to the historical misuse of 12race science,
>>>> lags this new bio-cultural model of human nature. Events such
>>>> as the World Championships provide an opportunity to broaden
>>>> our understanding of the genetic revolution now unfolding.
>>>> Get used to it
>>>> Sebastian: the glory days of the British distance running
>>>> empire are gone forever.
>>>>
>>>> Jon Entine [http://www.jonentine.com] is author of Taboo: Why
>>>> Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We're Afraid to Talk
>>>> About It. E-mail him at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Jon Entine
>>>> RuffRun
>>>> 6178 Grey Rock Rd.
>>>> Agoura Hills, CA 91301
>>>> (818) 991-9803 [FAX] 991-9804
>>>> http://www.jonentine.com
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>
>> --
>> Jon Entine
>> RuffRun
>> 6178 Grey Rock Rd.
>> Agoura Hills, CA 91301
>> (818) 991-9803 [FAX] 991-9804
>> http://www.jonentine.com
>>
>
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
>
--
Jon Entine
RuffRun
6178 Grey Rock Rd.
Agoura Hills, CA 91301
(818) 991-9803 [FAX] 991-9804
http://www.jonentine.com
