mastermulti said:
Swede said:
Notice that Coe and Cram competed in the 80s and Cacho in the mid 90s. It´s a slightly simular european regression if you compare it with the sprints.
I'd never thought of that. There's no reason other than lak of numbers/interest that white guys today can't match the times of Coe and Cram.
Tracks, shoes, nutrition, medical treatment etc have all got better. Lack of participation must be the reason!
Swede, a keen observation. Many of us have puzzled about the Euro-descent regression in sprinting as one of the strangest things in sports. But there it is in front of us in the middle distances as well. Like mastermulti, I had noticed it but never really thought of it.
Just looking at Great Britain from that time period, there was also the great Steve Ovett. In the USA from that time period, Steve Scott held records until Alan Webb came along fairly recently. And jogging and road running were just becoming mainstream. But just about the time that jogging and distance running actually became mainstream, it seems that the decline began, I think. Has there also been a regression in the Euro-descent long distances since the 1980's also? I remember some of the great marathoners like Bill Rodgers and Alberto Salazar around 1980. It would be really strange if distance running also declined since that time, because participation rates are way, way up. Maybe someone else can put this better together than I can.
But the decline no longer seems so strange to me when looked at as maybe just a general cultural decline, a civilization under stress: plummeting birthrates, churches turned into mosques, loss of manufacturing base, average weight gains increased by 25% in the USA with almost no increase in height (I'm not sure what the statistics would be for whites), lower academic standards, mass immigration, etc.
On a side note, have you ever seen the new American record-holder in the 10,000?
Chris Solinsky Looks pretty well-built for a distance runner.
