comicbookguy wrote:
You know if it was just one or two east africans running fast and people were saying it's genetics then, yeah you could say they'r reaching. But C'mon people look at the record books! Look at the year end year out performances, the top 100 times in the world in virtually every distance race is dominated by east africans.
People are so worried about being PC that they can not even let themselves consider that there ARE differnces in races.
Exactly. As others have pointed out, it it not all Kenyans that are fast, just the Kalenjin and a few other select tribes. This group of people have been living and running around the Rift Valley for aeons. Add that to the fact that their existence over time has been pure natural selection at it's finest.
As another poster pointed out, think of the World's Strongest Man competition; almost the antithesis, in terms of needed physical attributes, of competitive distance runners. Why are the most successful strong men from northern European decent?
Using the logic applied by many on this thread, one could assert that a Kalenjin man has a good a shot as any to win the World's Strongest Man competition. And using the same logic to provide the answer: well of course they won't win, it is not in their culture to achieve success at such competitions.
Mere common sense tells us that this answer is garbage. No matter how hard a Kalenjin man tried, he will NEVER be a finalist in this type of competition.
The Kalenjin man could certainly improve his muscular strength relative to where he started, but never have the strength to complete one measely event at the preliminaries. This is similar to say Magnus Von Magnusson quitting power lifting and focusing on distance running training. After spending 5 years of doing nothing but intense distance training he most certainly would improve his performance, but would never even be close to finishing near a semi-elite woman.
These examples provide an illustration of the two extreme bookends of this type of continuum of body types. On one end you have the Kalenjin distance runner; extremely skinny, small frame, short torso, long skinny legs relative to overall heigth, and an excellent cardio vascular system. On the other end you have the World's Strongest Man finalist; tall, thick all over, massive, explosive, with forearms larger than a Kalenjin runner's thigh, etc., etc.
There are definitely outliers in every region. There are certainly people from most every country that fit the description of a Kalenjin distance runner, at least in terms of body type. Same can be said for the other end of the spectrum.
The main point is, that on average, a few tribes in the Rift Valley produce MOST of the world's distance talent.