D1 Bro wrote:
Normally I would agree with the latter statement, but the numbers were not at all close. I mean 0 medals to a ton, and 3 billion people to 0.3 billion people and over the course of 30 years is statistically significant. I would say it implies more than correlation and can't be knocked down by saying interest is "lower" (a relative and subjective term)
Compare it to the US: interest is significantly lower in distance running here, there are 0.3 billion people and the US has won multiple distance medals in the past 30 years.
If 50% of East African males are interested in running, there are about 75mil males interested (not breaking down age demographics)
If 5% of US males are: 7.5 mil males
If 1% of Asians are: 15 mil males
obviously it's exaggerated for East Africa. Some people don't do sports, there's competition with soccer and maybe a couple other sports, (and more limited resources). It still shows the US is doing good with male distance running global medal count over the past ~30 yrs, East Africa is doing good, and Asia (with their zero) is more than just low.
Interest is "lower" is NOT a subjective term. It is an objective measurement of how many people are actually trying to participate. Including the millions of people who have no interest in running makes no sense at all. Compare the actual numbers of participating people.
You do know that there was a long period of time when the Africans weren't getting as many medals. Does that mean that the Western nations had better genes? No, of course it doesn't.
Furthermore, East Asians are much better at long distance than the US runners are. They have considerably more depth than the US. So your whole argument is incorrect.