White_Savage
Mentor
[Interesting article.
BOOBOO: Why some athletes dominate some sports
(or why Jon Entine is not Einstine*)
RACIAL DIFFERENCES IN SPORTS PERFORMANCE
If you were watching any of the recent Olympics or World Championships in athletics, you probably weren't surprised that all the finalists of the 100 m sprint that kneeled down into blocks were black. Similarly, triumphs of Africans at long distances are also expected. But white Europeans still dominate athletic throws and still do very well in the 800 m distance, where they have won 4 out of the last 7 titles. when Andre Bucher won the 800 m, it was the third victory of a white man at this distance in the last five years. But why? Do there exist some „athletic genes" that can explain it?
*I do hope that everybody understands this joke and nobody will accuse me of bad spelling of Einstein's name (like one ingenious American from an unnamed forum)
UPDATED AND REVISITED: 26. 5. 2005
I recommend to take all information contained in this article with caution. Some problems of this topic hasn't been definitively resolved so far and many statements represent my current personal opinions that may change in the near future. Hence I update this page as frequently as possible.
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The black 100 m sprint
An answer to this question is not easy. Elite athletes are namely more or less extreme products of genetic variability; they are exceptional just because they differ from the average. Moreover, many important factors are necessary to realize sports potential, from cultural background, motivation, social conditions to facilities and sports tradition in some countries. In any case, statistics are impressive: We would have to go to the 240-250th place in all-time lists to find the best time of a white sprinter in the 100 m. In 1984 Marian Woronin ran this distance in 10,00 and the same value has an Asian record held by Koji Ito since 1998. At the same time, the 10 sec. bareer has been broken 229 times by 34 black sprinters (2001). Recently, times of white runners have also disappeared from top rankings in long distances like 5-10 km. White endurance runners have actually become competitors of the second class.
However, the dark skin of these runners hides a very important fact: While North American sprinters - who mostly come from the area of West Africa - dominate all distances up to the 400 m, they suddenly disappear at the 800 m and in the mile, they are virtually absent. Athletic history knows no (!) world-class athlete with West African roots who would have performed well in a distance longer than 800 metres. The performance of (a mulatto) David Krummenacker from Stockholm 3:31,93 (2002) is only enough for the 45th position in historical rankings and another athlete with West African ancestors, Steve Holman, is not much better (35th). Even the former world record holder in the 1500 m Sydney Maree is no exception, because he came from South Africa.
On the other hand, excellent endurance runners, who are of South or East African origin, are only rarely competive at the 400 m and they usually don't enter shorter races. This is very interesting from the view of sports physiology, because differences between sprinters and endurance runners are huge.
TOP 30 RUNNERS OF ALL-TIME BY RACE OR POPULATION (2003)
While sprinters represent muscular types with the predominance of fast-twich muscle fibers that are not capable of long-lasting, aerobic performances, endurance runners are typically of slender, tiny, ectomorphic physiques with red, slow muscle fibers that twitch much slower, but enable work of long duration. In Africa, we can find two basic anthropological groups of black Africans that well correspond with this division.
West Africans, speaking languages of the Congo-Kordofanian family and belonging largely to the so-called Bantu type, are characterized by middle, mesomorphic stature. During the last two milleniums this racial type spread due to the migration of the Bantus from the area of today's Cameroon and absorbed or assimilated archaic Pygmies and Sans living originally on the large space of Central and South Africa. On the other hand, the so-called Nilotes, speaking mostly languages of the Nilo-Saharan family, developed in dry, hot savannah of East Africa and are typical by very slender, tall (sometimes over 180 cm), sinewy statures, acclimatized to hot tropical climate.
Moreover, modern genetic research shows that in Africa we are confrontated with an exceptionally rich genetic variability that is incomparable with any other place on the Earth. This divergence of anthropological types is easily understandable when we consider that Africa was the craddle of human evolution and African populations were for a long time exposed to very diverse types of natural enviroment. In theory, we could expect bigger variability of physical and physiological types in Africa than anywhere in the world. This is perfectly confirmed by recent scientific research.
What scientists found
Anthropological studies done in African-Americans (that are primarily of West African origin) generally show - in comparison with white Americans - a tendency towards relatively longer legs (trunk/height ratio close to 51%), narrower hips, relatively longer and slender calves and generally less body fat. This tendency is even more pronounced in indigenous West African populations (trunk index close to 50%), which indicates that American blacks were exposed to certain mixing. In contrast with their African ancestors they are significantly taller a heavier, undoubtedly due to better nutrition. Their hips are also somewhat wider and chest is not so narrow and flat. Again, this must be due to a certain admixture of European genes that is estimated at 20-25%. Whites, on the other hand, have shorter legs (trunk/height ratio ~52,2%) and arms, with wider hips and wider, more volumnious chest. It is also a well-known fact that young African-Americans have higher testosterone levels (as much as 19 percent more than in young white men), which can contribute to higher agressivity and competitiveness. Further, higher bone (+5-20 percent) and body density was repeatedly measured in American blacks. Research also shows that while lean white athletes may have more fat on limbs, fat in lean black sportsmen is rather concentrated on the trunk. In the case of whites, it is quite a logical adaptation of people from colder climates that saves from congelation. In theory, this is also a disadvantage in running, especially in longer distances, because you must exert more energy for moving your legs forward.
Differences in body composition among North American populations aged 20-29 y
(data after NHANES, http://www.cdc.gov/nhanes/)
White Americans
Black Americans
American Latinos
Height (cm)
177,4
177,0
169,7
Weight (kg)
79,0
82,6
73,8
Sitting height (cm)
93,1 (52,48% height)
90,2 (50,96%)
89,6 (52,80%)
Shoulder width (cm)
41,6 (23,45%)
42,0 (23,73%)
41,0 (24,16%)
Upper arm length (cm)
37,6 (21,20%)
38,3 (21,64%)
36,3 (21,39%)
Thigh length (cm)
43,4 (24,46%)
45,0 (25,42%)
41,3 (24,34%)
Waist width (cm)
28,8 (16,23%)
27,5 (15,54%)
28,3 (16,68%)
Buttock circumfer. (cm)
97,7
99,6
95,5
Flexed biceps (cm)
32,5
33,7
31,7
Thigh circumference (cm)
52,2
55,4
51,0
On the basis of athletic performances, we could suppose that athletes of West African origin could be genetically endowed with a higher proportion of fast-twitch muscle fibers. As I stated above, there generally exist two types of muscle fibers (fast and slow) and the fast type has another two subtypes: a red, somewhat slower type IIa that prevails in weightlifters or 200-400 m runners and has a certain aerobic potential, and a white, fast-twitch type IIb, necessary for acceleration and maximal speed. World class sprinters posess about 70-80% fast-twitch muscle fibers. On the other hand, endurance runners can have as much as 90% of the I type. The proportion of muscle fibers is largely genetically determined and can be influenced by sports training only to a certain extent. (It is well known that white IIb fibers represent a "default" fiber type and easily convert into the IIa type during training with some aerobic component. However, conversions IIa > I or I > IIa are not easy.) Further, studies comparing distribution of muscle mass showed tendency towards better development of limbs in African-Americans, especially the muscle of thigh and buttock. The "anterior pelvic tilt", i.e. high buttocks in black Americans, is a typical feature of many sprinters, because it enables a better angle for generation of power during sprinting. In contrast, in European populations it is less common and in Asian men it is almost absent.
First of all, let's look at practical tests that were done mostly in the United States during the last century. Do they confirm the "natural" sprinting and jumping talent of black Americans? Yes, quite convincingly. Dr Robert M. Malina from the Michigan State University collected a very extensive material based on studies of motoric development of the African-American and the white population between 1938-1976. Even over such a long time, young African-Americans have showed better results in sprinting and vertical jump (7 out of 8 studies) and long standing jump (in 6 out of 10 studies). Dr David Hunter from the Ohio University studied differences in anaerobic performances between black and white males aged 16-17 years matched for height and weight. Although he found no differences in the maximal power output during the so-called Wingate test (a laboratory test on a cycle ergometer), when the results were expressed in W/kg body weight (12.65 W/kg in blacks vs. 12.62 W/kg in whites), there were clear differences in performances of the "real world", i.e. 40 y dash (4.81 vs. 5.03 sec.) and especially in vertical jump (56.2 cm vs. 50.7 cm). Although the results were distorted by a higher % of fat in whites, the differences didn't disappear even when the fat percentage was statistically removed. The discrepancy between laboratory and field tests probably lies in the incapability of mechanical tests to cover the capacity to store elastic energy (the energy that is stored in muscle and tendons during a pre-stretch). As stated above, black Americans have long, sinewy calves that can store more elastic energy both during jumping and running. Other physical differences like leg length or calf/thigh length ratio must also be taken into account. Moreover, blacks achieved better absolute power output in the Wingate test (884,6 W vs. 862,3 W), which suggests that the calculation in W/kg may be distorted by a higher percentage of leg muscle in blacks. In other words, they have higher % of muscle that creates the movement and less body weight that must be overcome. Therefore, the relationship between the performance and body weight may not be linear.
Laboratory studies agree with these findings. In 1986, a team of Canadian scientists from the University of Quebec led by dr Pierre Ama examined differences in muscle fiber proportion in thighs of 23 white Canadians and 23 black Africans from Cameroon, Senegal, Tchad, the Ivory Coast, Zaire and Burundi. The muscle of Africans really contained higher ratio of the fast-twitch muscle fibers (67,4 vs. 59,1 percent=8,3% difference), but the difference in the proportion of the IIb type was quite small (19,7 vs. 17,1 percent). However, West African subjects had 50% higher activity of anaerobic enzymes involving in work of short duration. A study done at University of Tennesee in 1997 found similar trends between 14 white and 14 black college students, but the difference was smaller (60,5 vs. 55,1 percent=5,4% difference), which could - in theory - result from the above mentioned admixture of white genes in the black American population (in my opinion, the sample was not perfectly representative, which was apparent from the unusually low difference in aerobic capacities between the two groups). In summary, the research shows that ïnterracial differences of this sort may exist, but they are not too much higher than usual sampling error (8%). When we also consider the huge interindividual variability in the muscle fiber proportion in humans, the difference in sprinting ability should not be abyssal. There is everytime a big overlap of individual capacities. However, as the practical tests shows, average differences are clearly visible and when we will be getting towards the extreme sprinting ends of the bell curve of both populations, where Olympic sprinters are recruited from, the number of potential black talents will get bigger and bigger, while the number of potential white champions will get smaller and smaller.
Muscle fiber composition of thigh muscle (vastus lateralis)
(after Ama et. al 1986, Duey et al. 1997)
I %
IIa %
IIb %
23 West Africans
32,6 (14-48)
48,6 (27-72)
19,7 (8-39)
14 African-Americans
39,5 ± 11,5
40,0 ± 8,4
22,8 ± 9,8
23 white Canadians
40,9 (23-61)
41,9 (24-55)
17,1 (7-38)
14 white Americans
44,9 ± 8,5
36,6 ± 6,9
18,3 ± 9,6
But why is there such a sudden break between the 400 and the 800 m? Aren't these West African runners only "lazy"? However, this phenomenon can be easily explained from the view of sports physiology. After 1 minute of intense muscular work the ratio of aerobic and anaerobic energy changes very dramatically. While a quarter miler obtains only 25-30 percent of all produced energy by aerobic ways (from glucose oxidation), a half-miler obtains this way 50-60 percent and a miler as much as 70-80 percent. West African populations obviously hit biological limits: lower number of slow-twitch muscle fibers that produce energy during long muscular work, lower capacity of the cardio-respiratory system (15-20 percent lower lung capacity, 5-10% lower VO2 max., lower concentration of hemoglobine), lower muscle capillarization and thus generally lower aerobic fitness. In the 400 m you still can run at high oxygen debt, but in longer races it is impossible without "breathing". Notoriously known weak endurance capabilities of the African-American population are repeatedly confirmed in various tests of resistance to fatigue and aerobic ability.
The mystery of East African runners
While Nigerians, Ghanians or African-Americans are one of the worst endurance runners in the world, the opposite is valid for the inhabitants of North, East and South Africa - and especially for Kenyans. Since the Olympic Games in Mexico City 1968 Kenyan runners have won 43 Olympic medals altogether, and among them 15 golds. They achieved a legendary success especially at the Olympics in Soul 1988, where they won at all distances from the 800 m to the 5000 m. Kenyans also hold more than one third of all-time performances at middle or long distances. However, it is only a little known fact that athletic talent in this country is not evenly distributed. Nearly three quarters of the Kenyan international success is produced by runners coming from a 3-million population of the Kalenjins, forming only about 12 percent of the Kenyan population. It is interesting that even among Kalenjins the distribution of sports tailent is not homogenous: One of the six major tribes, called Nandi, having only about 500.000 people, contributes to the international triumph by one half. At the same time, other parts of Kenya by far don't produce such a number of excellent athletes.
Surprisingly, a similar situation, although not in such a manner, exists in neighbouring Ethiopia, where the majority of the world-class athletes comes from the Cush*tic Oromo tribe and a disproportionate number of them was born in a mountaineous province Arsi, south-east of the capital Addis Abeba. It is interesting to note that Ethiopans anthropologically belong to the so-called mixed Ethiopian type that has arised from a long-term, thousand years' lasting mixing between local black populations and Caucasian (Semitic, Cush*tic) groups coming from Arabia. Modern genetic research shows that Ethiopans posess about 40-50 % Caucasian genes.
The research of endurance runners is complicated by a wider number of factors that determine performance. The most important of them are the so-called maximal oxygen uptake (VO2 max. or the maximal amount of consumed oxygen that can be utilized by the body for energy production, which is limited especially by cardiac output that distributes oxygen from the blood to working muscles), running economy (economy of oxygen consumption resulting especially from anthropological parameters like physical slenderness or thin legs) and physiology of skeletal muscles determining the so-called "lactate threshold", i.e. the percentage of oxygen consuption or speed at VO2 max., when lactate begins to accumulate in the runner's blood and soon or later causes inhibition of muscular work. Lactate threshold depends on a variety of factors including % of slow fibers, the amount and density of mitochondria, oxidative enzymes, capillarization etc.
Differences between Kenyan and white runners were studied by the team of dr Bengt Saltin from the Danish Institute of Sports Sciences in Copenhagen. The Danes didn't find any fundamental differences neither in the size, nor in the composition of muscles (about 72,5 percent of the slow fibers in Kenyans and something below 70 percent in Scandinavians). Further, senior Kenyan runners had more blood-carrying capillaries in their thighs, but Kenyan juniors had less density of capillaries than Scandinavians, which can be explained by their more intense training.
However, although Kenyans - on the average - had neither higher levels of hemoglobine in the blood, nor higher VO2 max., some of them reached higher values of VO2 max. than the best Scandinavians (as much as 85 ml oxygen per kg of body weight in minute). This may result from their active living style in altitude enhancing capacity of the cardiovascular system. This was apparent, when the scientists measured VO2 max. in town boys, who had values between 47-52 ml/kg.min and 45% slow-twitch fibers (practically the same numbers like in European contemporaries), but village boys, who usually run or walk to school, reached 56-62 ml/kg.min and had 52,5% ST fibers in their thighs. Some teenagers that just started regular training had even 80 ml/kg.min, which is absolutely extraordinary for this age. However, in general, VO2 max. couldn't be the solution. The biggest difference was in the body type: Kenyan runners were smaller, lighter (170-175 cm/55-60 kg), had very slender, „bird-like" legs and very long, extremely thin levers. These anthropological characteristics enabled them to „fly through the running motion" much easier than it was in Danes, who „pulled heavily into the ground". No wonder that Kenyans ran more economically, which means that they consumed less oxygen at a given speed and were more resistant to fatigue during a treadmill test. Further investigation ("The Kenya Project") confirmed these differences even in previously untrained adolescent boys, who passed a running training and subsequently were compared to similarly trained young Danes. Again, there were no differences in VO2 max. and lactate threshold, but the young Kenyans achieved 10% better time due to 10% better running economy. A more detailed analysis revealed that this running economy is mainly caused by their slender calves. It is worth note that Kenyan runners have extremely long legs (trunk/height ratio below 50%), but their European counterparts in long distances usually have much shorter legs (about 52,3%), with short calves. This difference certainly isn't accidental and suggests that it would be wrong to choose potential European long distance runners according to the Kenyan physique. European legs have more muscle and thicker fat layers, which means that they would be too heavy to move if they had the Kenyan length. The natural selection thus prefers runners with somewhat short legs and shorter calves, which maximally compromises the need for a sufficiently long stride with low weight of legs and running economy.
Physiological profile of top Kenyan and top Scandinavian runners (after Saltin et al. 1995)
BMI=body mass index (index of slenderness, kg body weight:m² body height). Note that Scandinavians have practically the same values of VO2 max. like Kenyans and when the values are expressed in more exact allometric scaling ((ml/kg¾min.), the Scandinavians are even better. However, Kenyans are about 8-9 cm shorter and 6-10 kg lighter.
Height/weight
(cm/kg)
BMI
(kg/m²)
VO2 max.
(l/min.)
VO2 max.
(ml/kg.min.)
VO2 max.
(ml/kg¾min.)
Kenyans-middle distances (4)
174,1/61,5
20,29
4,47
72,9
203,6
Scandinavians-middle dist. (3)
182,3/67,3
20,25
5,08
75,5
216,1
Kenyans-long distances (6)
170,8/56,1
19,23
4,42
79,9 (85,5)
218
Scandinavians-long dist.(6)
179,7/66,4
20,56
5,23
78,3 (83)
226,1
Studies of runners from South Africa
Besides Kenyans and Ethiopans, the third African powerhouse of long-distance running is South Africa. Although less internationally successful than Kenyans or Ethiopans, black South African runners seem to be clearly superior to white South Africans in long distances. The reason of their dominance was repeatedly investigated during the last decade since 1989. The key finding was that black runners are significantly smaller and lighter than their white counterparts (168-172 cm/56-59 kg vs. ~181 cm/~70 kg). This is a part of explanation for their success, because they were more economical than whites in tests on a treadmill. But that's not everything. The black runners had surprisingly low values of VO2 max. (much lower than whites). This finding was confirmed in every study that measured this factor. So why were they so much better? The reason lies in peculiar physiological characteristics of their muscles. The black runners have quite high percentage of fast-twitch fibers (not much less than 50%), which is very unusual for a long distance runner. However, despite that they had very high lactate threshold and extremely high activities of oxidative enzymes that correlated with their resistance to fatigue. Scientists still debate, if these elevated enzyme levels are a result of more intense training of Africans in altitude or some genetic response to this training. One study documented this feature even in black runners, who lived and trained at sea level and untrained control subjects from the same region had the same activity of these enzymes like white South Africans. This reasearch thus shows that these higher levels of enzymes may not be genetically determined and may not result from training in high altitude. In any case, it seems that aboriginal South African endurance runners also strongly rely on anaerobic metabolism. The unusually high percentage of fast fibers is accompanied by high activity of an enzyme called phosphofructokinase (PFK), whose activity is usually lowered in distance runners. This is obvious from the fact that the level of this enzyme in black and white control subjects was almost the same, while in the white runners it was much lower than in the black runners. The researchers speculate that this shift towards anaerobic metabolism may reflect higher running speed of black South Africans during intense trainings.
What's the conclusion?
Firstly, it doesn't seem that Kenyans posess any mysterious running tailent. The key to their success seems to lie almost entirely in their better running economy. The rest of their performance (high lactate threshold and VO2 max.) is achieved by immensely hard training or by their active living style, respectively. (No surprise for those, who already emphasized it earlier.) On the other hand, influence of altitude or mountaneous terrain can't be excluded due to the fact that there exists practically no world class Kenyan runner from coastal lowlands. At least for the purpose of training, the Kenyans from highlands must benefit from it. But what's behind the discrepancy between the running achievement of the Kalenjins and the rest of Kenya? The Kalenjins theirselves deny that the Nandis would be somehow exceptionally gifted for running. Their dominance may simply result from their longer running tradition created by the first Kenyan Olympic winner Kip Keino. This assumption can be supported by the recent emergence of other Kalenjin tribes like the Marakwets (Moses Kiptanui) or the Keyios (Daniel Komen, Bernard Barmasai). In spite of it, some genetic factors can't be excluded. For example, at the most known high school that has become famous thanks to upbringing young sports tailents, St. Patrick's High in Iten, 18 out of 25 studying running hopes were related to some of the top athletes. Is running talent somewhat inherited within certain families? Moreover, many authors that studied living style of African runners deny the traditional theories that Kenyan running stars had run to school during their childhood. For example, Haile Gebrselassie really ran to a school 10 km far, but his most serious competitor, Kenyan Paul Tergat, walked to a school that was 800 meters from his home.
Although the existence of such a genetic potential must be taken into account, what about Ethiopian runners? Are they also endowed with some special genes, when they recently beat Kenyans at the international level? Their success clearly results from the combination of their slender physique and altitude, too. The only difference between Kenyans and Ethiopans is now in quantity, not in quality. The Kenyans may have a long advance in athletic development due to enthusiasm of European trainers-monks from religious schools (and possibly due to contribution of a relatively well-functioning and qualified government, a positive heritage of the British colonial system). One must also take into consideration that Kenya is a country with mixed population and although Kenyan Bantu tribes may be mixed and anthropologically closer to the Nilotic physical type, they may not posess adequate physical and physiological prerequisites for distance running like the "pure" Nilotic Kalenjins. This may be supported by the fact that the national Kenyan record in the 100-200 m is not held by a Kalenjin, but a sprinter from a Bantu tribe.
As for black South Africans, they are a very peculiar ethnicon markedly different from East Africans. Obviously, more research is needed to elucidate the strange paradox between their low VO2 max., high oxidative capacity and quite high percentage of fast fibers. From the genetic view, they came into being as a result of mixing between indigenous Sans and Bantu tribes, which may have contributed to the creation of a mixed physical type with "West African" cardiorespiratory system and fibres and "South African" body build. This can also explain, why they are internationally competetive in such different races like the 800 m and the marathon, but not in the 1500-10 000 m, where high VO2 max. is a decisive factor.
What does the high running economy of Kenyans and other Africans mean for runners from other parts of the world? The news are not too optimistic. If a European runner with an average running economy wants to match Kenyans in their strongest distances (3-10 km), he must posess about 10% higher VO2 max. to compensate the difference in efficiency (providing he has comparably high lactate threshold). If we consider that today's average of VO2 max. in the 5-10 km is about 80-85 ml/kg.min., he must posess VO2 max. close to 90 ml/kg.min. or even higher. In reality, he wouldn't need such a high value, because elite distance runners are already a selected group different from the average population and the difference in economy between the best Africans and the best Europeans is certainly lower than 10% (the difference between the best East African and the best North European - Jon Brown - in the 10 km is 1 minute, which is only 3,65%). However, a value around 90 ml/kg.min. should be a minimum. Such numbers (up to 94 ml/kg.min.) are very rare in runners or cyclists, but they are frequent in ski-runners, who stimulate their cardiac output by incorporating a much larger muscle mass during movement. So should European runners train on skis? During winter, it could be a very good supplemental activity, but the effect of such training is doubtful due to differences in movement patterns. However, there is another choice: training in hilly terrain. It is well documented that orienteers have surprisingly high VO2 max. values, very close to top distance runners, although the volume of their training is lower. It undoubtedly results from a much intense stimulus during running in difficult terrain. It seems to me that training in hills is the only way, how to achieve a permanent improvement of VO2 max., because traditional training on track soon leads to plateau and the effect of altitude is only temporary. Furthermore, training in hills can also partly improve running economy.
Even if these conditions were achieved, there is another problem: to push our chosen runner into an immensely hard work lasting for many years - without any guarantee that one day he will be able to defeat his African opponents and get few bucks for his life-long effort. It is clear that it won't be easy. Many potential talents in Europe don't care about track, because they don't believe that they could compete with black Africans. I don't wonder that they don't want to risk it, because they can find their sports chances in many other endurance sports like cycling, triathlon, rowing, swimming etc. On the other hand, Kenyans can't be too choosy. „What people can't understand is that it is very hard to compete with somebody who knows that his only chance to earn living is running," wrote a young Kenyan in an internet discussion. „Ninety percent of all Kenyan runners belong to this cathegory." Training dosages of African runners are often unimaginable. Scientists compared training regimens of white and African runners and they found that although some of the white runners ran the same mileages like Africans, African runners ran at much higher intensity. Kim McDonald, an American agent and coach of Kenyan runners, who died some time ago, says: „You will find few Americans that are willing to train hard. You will find few Brits that are willing to train hard. But as a group, nobody can't match the Kenyans. A victory in the Boston marathon is a chance for them to return home and support their families." And a veteran British coach Frank Horwill adds: "Trotting around the countryside ....., notching up 100 miles per week, is not the formula for running excellence. A steadier diet of faster, harder running will be required to match up with the Kenyans."
What about North Africans and others?
In the end, we can't forget North Africans (Moroccans and Algerians). To my knowledge, there exist no studies explaining with their running success (but no wonder, because they are not enough black). The first thing that comes on one's mind is the combination of their body type (that is slender than that of Europeans) with the contribution of reasonable altitude. Not too surprisingly, North Africans primarily excel in the mile, which is the strongest distance of Caucasians, but they are more successful than Europeans in longer distances like the 5000 m, which undoubtedly results from their more economical physique. The influence of altitude may be the most important factor considering that we practically know no world-class runner from neighbouring lowland Tunisia. (But there are also difficulties: For example, what about Hicham El Guerrouj, who was born in Rabat, at sea level?) Further, I know that at least Moroccans have a very sophisticated system of talent selection, so the number of their excellent runners is no chance. Some people also speculate about the contribution of North African genes to the running talent of Portuguese and Spaniards. This is interesting and I think that there may be a kernel of truth in it. However, I think that the most satisfactory answer to all these problems is the slender physique of Mediterranean populations, which can be indirectly confirmed by very good performances of Italians in long distances. By the way, Portuguese and Spaniards are the smallest and most subtle of all Europeans.
Eventually we get to another question: Why are there almost no world-class runners from other parts of the world? There exist regions with similar altitude and with populations racially related to North Africans like the Near East or Afghanistan. Maybe we will see good athletes from there, when running with Kalashnikov - which is the favourite sports discipline of people in these regions - will be estabilished as an Olympic sport. There is hardly any chance to see them on track until the wild situation in this region calms down and benighted governments fall or open their countries to the modern world. On the other hand, it is quite understandable, why we don't see any Quechua or Sherpa running the Chicago marathon - chronical adaptations to extreme altitude (3000 m and more) have a negative impact on muscle oxidative capacity, because they lead to the reduction of mitochondria. In fact, these people may be one of the worst endurance runners in the world. The only example of running potential outside Africa, East Asia and Europe show Mexican Indians, who live on a resonable altitude comparable with East African highlands. For example, Arturo Barrios is the fastest non-African runner in the 10 km. Personally, I would be curious, what changes we will see in distance running in the future.
Blacks are faster and whites are stronger?
Despite the apparent dominance of black runners and also bodybuilders, white athletes still dominate disciplines that lay premium on upper body strength like athletic throws, weighlifting, powerlifting or wrestling. It seems that this phenomenon can also be explained in biological terms: Scientific research shows that while West Africans may have more developed muscles of limbs, whites tend to have more muscle on the trunk. But muscles of the trunk are a limiting factor in strength disciplines. Moreover, long arms and legs (i.e. long levers) are bad for weightlifters, because they influence the amount of produced force. If we take into consideration that the best weightlifters have trunk/height ratio about 54-55%, it is no wonder that blacks have little chance in lifting. Their linear stature is actually the absolute opposite of a weighlifter's quadratic physique. The performance in lifting also depends on other factors like muscle architecture or the place of the attachment of tendons on the bone, but racial differences of this sort haven't been extensively studied so far.
Jelena Dokič: A Slavic woman with enormous upper body strength
It is true that longer arms of blacks can be advantageous in throws like discus, but they may be disadvantaged by relatively long legs and shorter trunk, a factor impeding stability and total body strength. Still, there should be no reason, why blacks couldn't excel in the javelin throw, where strength compromises with speed and technical factors. Since performance in the javelin is most influenced by releasing speed, the answer may lie here. In any case, further research in this area would be necessary, but it is quite foolish to expect that some white researchers would be interested in it. One must take into consideration that strength is markedly influenced by the level of physical activity and such differences may not be detectable in untrained persons. In fact, I have found only one study that tried to give an answer to this question (Fields, Bemben, Mayhew 1997), but the results were not too illuminant. The sample was not well chosen (white subjects were almost 9 kg lighter and had 4,4 kg less lean muscle tissue) and most of the discovered results was "non-significant". Black persons performed significantly better in leg press (164,9 vs. 156,8 kg), but that's not surprising. However, it's interesting to note that despite having less lean muscle tissue, whites performed "non-significantly" better in bench press (91,2 vs. 84,9 kg), which confirms the findings about different muscle mass distribution. Whites also produced more strength on the cross-sectional area of muscle (cm²), which may suggest more advantageous lever system, among some other things. In any case, it would be useful to continue in this research, because the differences in strength between blacks and whites must be abyssal. In 2003, there was only one black powerlifter competing at the world championship in middle or heavy cathegories (Tony Harris from USA) and he finished 4th in the 110 kg cathegory, 80 kg behind the winner and 177,5 kg behind the strongest man at the competition, which would mean 22nd place total. It is worth note that the number of black powerlifters was higher in late 90's, but they began to disappear, when Russians and Ukrainians showed on the scene and practically gained control of the sport.
A person acquianted with the world of powerlifting would certainly called my attention to examples like Anthony Clark, Daisuke Midote or James Henderson, non-white bench-pressers of the world class competing in the heaviest cathegory (above 125 kg). However, I think it is no chance that these persons appear just here in the heaviest cathegory, because it's their enormous obesity that enables them to move the bar through a really very symbolic distance (Henderson: 195,5 cm/175,5 kg!). The fact that you won't find almost any world class Asian or African-American in lower cathegories only confirms this assumption. A rare example of the past was American weightlifter and powerlifter Mark Henry, who was an excellent dead-lifter, but less successful in weightlifting.
In connection with this topic it is important to notice the naive opinions of white people, who often confuse the "athletic appearance" of blacks with strength and athletic abilities. In fact, the ripped muscles that we see on their bodies have nothing to do with any athleticism and result from less levels of body fat that is furthermore concentrated internally or in the subscapular region (below shoulder-blade) and effectively reveals "athletic proportions" with wider shoulders and narrower hips. This can be benefical in body building or in modeling, but it certainly has no influence on the movement of a barbell.
However, why do blacks dominate boxing, a sport, where upper body strength is necessary? Outstanding boxers are also characterized by high aerobic and anaerobic capacity, longer arms (for reach) and shorter legs (for stability), but their proportions are generally very variable. This is a confusing mix of "advantages" and "disadvantages"! Perhaps the most reasonable explanation (better than "long arms", "thicker skull" and even nonsense like "dancing ability") lies in the social origin of prominent boxers. In the 19th century, box was dominated by Irs, who lived in workmen's quarters of English towns. In the first half of the last century, the richest source of boxing talents in America was Italian and Jewish immigrants from suburban ghettos. Today American box is dominated by Mexicans in lighter and by African-Americans in heavier cathegories. As one American recently told in the internet forum of IAAF, „nobody except Mexicans, black Americans, Africans and East Europeans is willing to smash his face because of a tiny chance that he will become a superstar in boxing."
The debate about „black athletic superiority"
A book called TABOO:Why black athletes dominate sports and why we´re afraid to talk about it that was published in the beginning of the last year in the United States, caused a stir. Its author, Jon Entine, a former TV producent, who once successfully collaborated at a TV document of NBC The Black Athlete: Truth and Fiction, quotes words of tennis legend Arthur Ashe, who expressed to such a question short time before his death: „The results are excellent. Nothing sort of stellar. Culture can't explain it. I must believe that there is something that gives us - blacks - an edge." No wonder that books of this sort are published in the overseas, where black sportsmen make up about 80 percent of NBA, 65 percent of the National Football League and roughly one third of the baseball MLB, despite that blacks make up only 13 percent of the North American population. Frankly, reading TABOO was a very memorable experience for me, because it is rare to read such a childishly biased book exuberating by simple-minded demagogy. As one could expect from a book written by a journalist, science is secondary; the primary intention is to catch the attention in the public by a sensational and provocative topic. Therefore, unpleasant facts are carefully eliminated and the main thesis is supported by a goulash of effective half-truths and skilfully darned gaps. Furthermore, TABOO contains virtually no data and the author probably plays a game with the reader, if he finds any reasonable conclusion under tons of worthless lumber. If I didn't get it for free from my friend, I would return it back. But back to our topic.
As we saw in previous paragraphs, Arthur Ashe is right. West African populations really posess a marked advantage in sprinting and jumping, factors that have a significant impact on performance in many sports. The other thing is that these predispositions play a decisive role only in sprinting and jumping or other related sports, and not in team sports, where an individual performance depends on a wide variety of factors. Thus it is not surprising that muscle fiber composition in these games is not too much different from the average. The competing athlete must reach a certain level of overall physical condition that is sufficient for the maximal expression of his psychomotor skills. Being reasonably good in all physiological demands is better than to daze in one or few and fail in the rest. Some physical and physiological differences may contribute to detectable overrepresentation of certain ethnic groups at certain, very specific positions in the game, but due to the extreme variability of performance factors it's extremely risky to start any "genetic" debate concerning the game in general. Moreover, the same physical tests that showed superiority of black children in sprints found no differences in tests of agility (sprints with changes of direction), which probably results from the long-legged African physique that impairs stability and coordination. This finding is very interesting, because team sports (especially such like football/soccer, handball, rugby or even American football) rely more on the combination of speed and agility rather than on pure speed. Thus it is not desirable to imply results of flat sprints on the "game speed". Speed with changes of direction and linear sprinting speed are two very different abilities.
An important thing that one must consider is that TABOO bases its "persuasive" arguements mainly on traditional American sports, whose popularity in the rest of the world is comparable with underwater chess. In fact, the answer to the "overrepresentation" of North American blacks in American sports is much easier than Entine's sociobiological philosophizing. In the case of track and field, it's clear that white Americans don't bother to participate in this sport. The pure stats are enough to show us that here they are one of the most underperforming nations in the world. The whole planet is still waiting for the first white American, who will be able to cross the magic 8-meter bareer in long jump and gets the athletic capacity of his 200-million population within eyeshot of tiny European countries like 2-million Slovenia (perhaps there was already somebody like that, but nobody in the world knows him). The same is valid for triple jump. The fact that Jenny Adams is the first American white woman, who has ever competed in sprints, is virtually grotesque. One would be curious if the recent emergence of talented sprinters like Little, Woody, Potter, Wariner or Steele is only a temporary thing, or white Americans begin to take their athletic participation seriously.
The second main cause of the overrepresentation of blacks in American sports is socioeconomic. It's politically incorrect to present any data, because they are very unpleasant, and, naturally, you won't find them in Entine's book: about 50% black Americans (or even more?) are unemployed; American prisons are composed of approximately 50% black men; about 50% black basketball players in college teams come from families, whose annual income lies below the official level of poverty; about 1 out of 3 young black Americans has a criminal record... The last statistics is really unimaginable and makes one's flesh cree. But this is entirely enough for the explanation of black dominance in American boxing. And these stats can also explain the "natural" inclination of African-Americans towards sports in general. Sports gave them a chance to create their own culture in the American society. The arguement that there are more poor white people than poor black people certainly isn't persuasive, as the example of boxing shows. In a predominantly white society, being poor with the black skin is obviously very different from being poor with the white skin.
Although it is clear that black basketballers generally have important physiological and also physical advantages (e.g. long limbs), the situation in modern basketball tell us that the cause of black dominance in NBA will be close to the cause of their dominance in track and field. Although American media may still continue in their agitation about "natural athleticism" of black basketball players, it's a clear fact that their superior genes begin to degenerate, when they are now exposed to serious competition from Europe. And Europeans now gradually penatrate among the best scorers in the league, where, according to Entine (2000), "not one white player has finished in recent years" (TABOO, p. 19). And NBA is still where NHL was in late 80's. So the future could bring us even some surprises.
I think that it's a natural and logical development, because all the propaganda eagerly spread in the United States was created by medial dilettantes, who have no serious idea about the physiology of the sport. Black Americans began to dominate this sport mainly because white Americans had almost completely left it in early 90's, very probably due to neverending brainwashing concerning their athletic incapability that they hear again and again from the media. Let's take a quotation from an internet forum, where Mr. Entine presented "well-researched" data from TABOO, p. 252:: "Top volleyball players [in America] top out at 50 percent or so. NBA players regularly exceed that with Spud Webb jumping more than 66 percent of his height -- 42 inches [107 cm] (he's 5 feet, 7 inches [170 cm/61 kg]). There is a test called the Sargent test, which measure jump and reach. The greatest Sargent result ever was recorded by former Utah Jazz star Darrell Griffith (aka Dr. Dunkenstein) who jumped 48 inches [122 cm] - that's 63 percent of his 6-4 [193 cm] frame. No white and certainly no Asian has ever come close."
I add that dr. LeVeau and dr Krugh, who measured Michael Jordan's jumping ability, found a much more modest number - 35,9 inches (91,3 cm). However, when he was tested during a jump from running, he achieved 45,8 inches (116 cm). I do hope that now it's clear to you, where all those incredible numbers cited by Entine come from. They are mystifications often spread by NBA stars and don't concern a true vertical jump (the Sargent test), but "a dunk jump", i.e. jump from running. In fact, according to one trainer, who seriously measured NBA players, they usually achieve results between 70-85 cm (28-34 in). Why not more? Count with me: An average NBA player measures 200 cm (6'7), which means that he has a vertical reach of about 255 cm (8'4). To touch the hoop of the basket, he needs a very mediocre jump of 50 cm (1'8). If you take an average basketball player with a decent jump of, say, 75 cm, it means that during a jump from running he jumps about 100 cm and has hands approximately 355 cm above the ground, i.e. 50 cm above the hoop.
Yes, the better anaerobic abilities of blacks - together with their somewhat faster motor development - may give them an important advantage during adolescence, because they can reach a sufficient performance level about 0,5-1 year faster than white kids. This probably explains, why black kids in racially mixed countries succeed in basketball (and some similar sports) more than their white contemporaries (and why the best white players come outside such countries). Naturally, due to their overall predispositions (and the fact that they live in US, the country, where NBA is played) black players will probably prevail in the game even in the future, but some people still can't understand that basketball is not sprinting. Higher percentage of people physiologically suited to the sport is no guarantee of a comparably high percentage of skilled people that will be able to compete in the sport at the elite level. Team sports are much more variable than individual sports.
If there is any team sport, where jumping ability is really critical, then it's volleyball. Top class volleyball players regularly jump 90-100 cm (and they are white). But even here the comparison is not easy and fair: volleyball players usually test vertical jumps with a 3-4 step advance, which increases the final height by cca 10-15 cm. This means that US volleyball team that achieved an average of 94,2 cm before 1984 Olympics actually jumped only 80-85 cm. But this is still higher than the presumable average of NBA players.
Sure, it's no chance that Cubanese women achieved a lot of success in this sport. But the female side is often influenced by a lack of serious competition, because women don't incline towards sports like men and they are not ever willing to undergone a body-deforming training (see also the persisting dominance of WNBA-women contrasting so strikingly with the recent results of the American Bad Dream's Teams). If we look at men's volleyball, the white players of Brazil, the contemporary leading world power in this sport, have 17 cm lower spike height and about 10 cm lower vertical jump height than Russia, the second best team in the world in 2002. In fact, if we predicted performance of Brazilians from such athletic statistics, they would belong to the biggest outsiders in the game. So even in volleyball, there are still other important variables than vertical reach influencing performance!
Let's laugh with/to Jon Entine
White players (in NBA)...wonder, what kind of future they have...guard Jon Barry, son of Hall-of-Famer Rick Barry, believes he is the last of a "dying breed". Only the demand for mutant giants of any background is likely to forestall a near total wash-out of nonblacks (in NBA) in coming years (p. 20).
Comment: Written in 2000, before OG in Sydney. Sure, I would rather wait even several coming years (several seasons of NBA, several Olympics and world championships). Judging from the recent results, one could say that men's basketball is a white sport and natural athletes from NBA should find refuge in American football, because this is a sport that nobody is seriously interested in. Here their physical superiority wouldn't be exposed to any serious threat. But who knows...
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That familiar trend is readily apparent in the world's most popular team sport, soccer. Nigeria won the Olympic medal in 1996 and qualified two years later for the World Cup...Even in England, which was slow to allow foreigners and has a black population of less than 2 percent, 1 in 5 professional soccer players in the premier division is black (p. 20).
Comment: Nigeria deservedly won a gold medal at the Olympics, where the best players refuse to go, and two years later qualified for the World Cup, where they got a warming from Denmark 1:4 in the round of 16 and went home. No African team has ever got further than into the quarterfinals and despite the flood of African players into the English and French league, it seems that the gap between African national teams and the rest of the world is rather getting bigger. England has a black population of less than 2 percent, but black professionals in the Premier League are mostly foreign legionaries from former English colonies or European countries like France or the Netherlands (but I admit that this statement may not result from Entine's poor knowledge of soccer; it may be another of his numerous and intentional demagogic tricks). According to one source, the percentage of "native" black Englishmen in English professional competitions is about 13%, which may be exaggerated, but it changes little. Nobody can forbid black kids to play soccer, if they want to play it. They make up about 10% of all youngsters playing in soccer preparatory schools. As far as I know, their socioeconomic stats are comparable with those in America. By the way, the share of the black population in London, where they have the easiest access to big clubs, is about 13%.
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Although the overall numbers of blacks in baseball do not approach those in football or basketball, the stars are disproportionaly black (p. 22).
Comment: Although the total number of registered ice hockey players in Canada and US is far, far higher than in the rest of the world combined, the stars in NHL are disproportionally Europeans. About 7 out of Top 10 most productive players of NHL are Czechs, Swedes, Russians or Slovaks. A good suggestion for another scientific research of baseball historian Bill James.
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Britain's middle distance running glory is gone for good. Don't expect a return to glory!...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... While Coe's best time ranks third on the all-time list, Cram is at 39, Elliott stands at 45, and Ovett's best ranks 341 (an article published in a British magazine in August 2001, when two Europeans won a world gold and a bronze in the 800 m).
Comment: Yes, when you use time statistics to make the numbers as big as possible, it looks much more differently than when you use the all-time list of best athletes: Coe is 2, Borzakovskiy 6, Bucher 7, Rodal 8, Cram 16, Elliott 19, Baala 25, Czapiewski 29... and Ovett 86. By the way, Ovett performed better in the 1500 m, where he still appears in the 28th place (September 2003). Even after 18 years, Cram is still 12 and Coe 13 in the 1500 m, not saying that at least one „natural athlete" from Africa with better times was loaded on drugs. Even today, Cram and Coe with their personal bests would belong to the absolute elite both in the 800 m and the 1500 m and there is no doubt that in races with El Guerrouj, they would be even faster. This can be shown on the example of FermÃÂn Cacho (the only European fool of 90's, who wasted his time on track and reached Coe's and Cram's calibre), who broke Cram's European record and has collected quite an interesting collection of medals from the Olympic gold in Barcelona 1992 to silvers in 1993 and 1997. By the way, Entine doesn't explain, why those superior East Africans now don't have enough innate potential to become the elite of the elite and win a gold in a middle distance race. In August 2001 Entine's brain obviously began to serve out. This is the most perverse example of his vicious, criminal demagogy.
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Top volleyball players [in America] top out at 50 percent or so. NBA players regularly exceed that with Spud Webb jumping more than 66 percent of his height -- 42 inches [107 cm] (he's 5 feet, 7 inches [170 cm/61 kg]). There is a test called the Sargent test, which measure jump and reach. The greatest Sargent result ever was recorded by former Utah Jazz star Darrell Griffith (aka Dr. Dunkenstein) who jumped 48 inches [122 cm] - that's 63 percent of his 6-4 [193 cm] frame. No white and certainly no Asian has ever come close. (an internet forum, where Mr. Entine presented "well-researched" data from TABOO, p. 252)
Comment: See my explanation above.
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"To the degree that it is a purely scientific debate, the evidence of black superiority in athletics is persuasive and decisively confirmed on the playing field. Elite athletes who trace most or all of their ancestry to Africa are by and large better than the competition." (Jon Entine, TABOO)
Comment: See graphs below. Don't you know some good American head doctor?
Eventually, there are examples from two more sports - baseball and American football. It is hard for me to comment all the statistics presented in the book, because I have no idea about its rules and I don't know any eccentric, who would be interested in it. However, the "overrepresentation" of people from the Carribean is no surprise considering their socioeconomic motivation. Moreover, as recent examples show (Barry Bonds), the rampant drug use in MLB (Major League Baseball) and other American professional sports largely washes out possible racial differences and makes "a level playing field" even for those, who don't have physical capacities for it. Frankly, I don't understand the arguements presented on p. 24-25, where the author, citing words of Mr. James, actually tells us that physical differences and pre-professional statistics can't explain bigger success of black players in MLB. I would suggest to make the same research in NBA and NHL. Perhaps if Mr. Entine and Mr. James joined their intellectual capacities, they would come to a conclusion that "Europeans are better athletes, because they are born better athletes, which is to say that it is genetic, or that they are born equal and become better athletes". It could be a big relief for all those depressed white Americans, who sit on the bench. (A note: I wouldn't wonder that "white Hispanics" are not successful in professional sports; 7 cm difference in height is really too much.)
The final example of the black athletic superiority in TABOO is the growing presence of blacks in bobsledding, and a long story (3 pages) about black athletes in the American team that ends with an essay about how Americans missed a world medal by 0.2 second... which must be meant as a joke, otherwise one could die from laughing. At present I really don't see many sports dominated by black athletes, as Entine phantasized four years ago (2000). Their international domination in men's basketball is probably lost forever (but at least, they still dominate NBA; the other thing is, how long); the current champion in professional heavyweight boxing is white and Olympic stats also don't tell us anything about any domination of black boxers in this sport. And as for their domination in American football - who cares? I must add that I am wise enough to know that things can (again) change, but the current state is really far, far from the phantasmagoric world that Entine painted in his book. Eventually, we get to the widespread athletic mythology that deserves a special chapter.
"The black domination in track and field"
In fact, if something like this has ever existed, it lasted only several years in the early 90's. The apparent decline of European athletics at this time was not caused only by the emergence of African runners, but also by the changed political and economical situation in post-communistic East European countries. When we look at medal statistics, we can see that at the same time the trend changed its course and in the combination with a weak generation of North American athletes (mainly jumpers) it is responsible for a declining curve of black medal winners in the last years. In 2001, the medal bilance of white athletes returned back on the level of 1988 and the bilance of athletes of West African ancestry fell on the lowest level since mid 80's. Still, some people continue in writing articles about the "dominance of black athletes in track and field" and to make the biggest possible impression, they often use statistics from WC 1991. The persisting „domination" of black athletes at international meetings is something different, because from many reasons the competition is never complete here. Moreover, it's rather a contest for the best manager, not for the best athlete. (The self-destructive nomination politics of Kenyans would also change little on the results, because in races like the 800 m and the 1500 m they currently aren't the leading world power). At the last world championship in Paris 2003 white athletes collected 30 medals, which is more than athletes of West and East African ancestry together (24).
Above: "The black domination in track and field" at world championships and Olympics expressed by numbers.
Medal statistics by point value of medals (3-2-1) at the most important athletic events since 1987 (except walk and relays). "East Europe" doesn't include Eastern Germany.
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Statistics in female athletes. As we can see, the statistics is currently almost exactly on the same level like in men.
Point value of medals (3-2-1). A note: in 1993, triple jump was added; hammer throw in 1999.
As one can see from the graphs, international success of white runners dropped by cca 50% in late eighties and reached the lowest level in history between 1988-1996. The quality has again increased since, but it still isn't much higher than in the mid 80's. Currently white runners collect roughly 15% medals in all 11 running events. Since this state has interesting causes, we should look at them in a more detailed way.
Historical stats tell us persuasively that white runners improved their times until mid 80's, but in late 80's and early 90's there occured a sudden break and their times at all distances fell below the level of the seventies (!). At the same time, runners from Kenya and other African countries flooded track and began to "dominate". These changes are very marked especially in middle distances (800+1500 m). Ironically, the times of Africans were the same or a bit worse than those of white runners one decade ago. But the downfall of "white" times was so deep that there virtually existed no serious competition and Africans certainly were not willing to leave track because of those few second-class white competitors, who remained in the sport. The immediate consequence of the European downfall and the "African dominance" was a ten years' stagnation in middle distances (1985-1995). In 1996, a second break came, this time a positive one for whites: their times again started to improve and soon got close to the level of mid 80's. However, in the meantime Africans got the sport onto a higher level, so the differences largely persisted. Since 2000, the times of whites have again improved a bit (although in the average they still aren't noticeably higher than 20 years ago), and times of Africans slightly declined. The consequence of these changes was a marked disappearance of Kenyans and other sub-Saharan Africans from top medal positions in middle distances (since 2000 they have won only 1 out of 8 middle distance titles; whites won 3, North Africans 4).
But what's behind the sudden decline in mid 80's? Was it a psychological influence of the devastating emergence of Africans? I would like to remark that the same, what happened in the 800/1500 m in mid 80's, actually occured in the 3000 m steeplechase as early as one decade before. It makes sense, because the 3000 m steeple was the first distance, where Kenyans started to excel and set world records (Jipcho, Rono). Thus we could expect that the dropout of whites started earlier here - more exactly, in late 70's. To illustrate the degree of "participation" of Europeans in steeple today, let's compare the best times of 70's with the current European record: As early as in 1976, the Swede Anders Gärderud ran 8:08.02. This time - once a world record - still guarantees him 31st place in the all-time list. By the way, Gärderud's personal best in the 1500 m was 3:36 something. Today, Simon Vroemen from the Netherlands holds the European record 8:06.91 (2002). Yes, this is really no error: during the last 28 years European steeplers have improved by 1.11 sec.(!). What a paradise for the Kenyans! No wonder that the 3000 m steeple remains the only distance, where they still preserve their hegemony. A similarly "quickened" decline is apparent in the 400 m, which apparently resulted from the coming of black Americans. (I don't have enough data for the 100 and 200 m, but from general tendencies I think that the changes were exactly the same). Thus, like in the case of NBA or NFL, whites simply left a sport that blacks began to enter in great masses. This is really an interesting psychosociological fact that we should have on our minds, before we start any biological discussions.
However, the striking downfall in early 90's is apparent in all distances and may have a common cause. Was it the start of the "screen generation" of European children, who began to sit in the front of their computers playing video games? Or was it the consequence of growing financial offers in European soccer as some people think? I don't have enough information to judge it. In any case, I don't doubt that today's situation in track doesn't reflect real racial differences in running even remotely. Especially distances like the 400 m are strongly underdeveloped from the European side. There has been no improvement since mid 70's! In the 100 m, 800 m and 10 000 m the times have been stagnating since mid 80's. And even improvements in other distances are actually exceptions of exceptions, because they were mostly done by individuals, who otherwise have no serious competition in Europe. I would like to remark that especially the "domination" of Africans in the 800 m is quite funny, because even after 23 years, there was only one African that broke Coe's world record. During the last decade, they found here a real oasis without serious competition, which can be seen from their markedly high numbers in the all-time stats that can't be explained physiologically. If you can think reasonably, you must acknowledge that if (Caucasian) North Africans consistently defeat Kenyans in the mile, there can be no idea about any "superiority" of Kenyans over Europeans in the 800 m! Hopefully this situation will change in the near future.
The graphs above show the average time of top 5 runners in each 5 years according to racial origin (European/white and West African or East African). The best time of a white runner ("Europe max.") is also added. The value of the average in Europeans between 1991-1995 on the graph "400 m" must have been estimated, because there was not enough data.
The two graphs below (800+1500 m) show the development of average times of top 10 performers in each year since 1970. Similarly like in the graphs above, I added average times of top 5 performers in each 5 years according to racial origin.
Race and sport
(To be continued...)
Women compete otherwise
We don´t have to count numbers of statistics to find out that the differences in women are less than in men. Why? Firstly, cultural factors limit the participation of African women, but this situation recently changes for the better. Further, this difference results from the nature of sports as a substitution for men´s combats. Therefore, women are less „ambitious" in sports than men and the pool of athletes is deprived of potential tailents that preferred other career. Anthropological differences between women of different races are smaller as well: Women produce 20-times less levels of testosterone (thus they also have less muscle and in all sports, where strength plays a role, the differences are smaller, because strength can be trained) and, on the contrary, a female hormone estrogene supports the formation of very similar levels of fat. By the way, there also allegedly exist less differences in the length of limbs! And eventually, the racial statistics are complicated by doping. The use of male hormones and anabolic steroids causes dramatical improvement of performance in female athletes.
A review from Jon Entine
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Kenyans and Ethiopans
Marco Tartaglia, Giuseppina Scano, Gian Franco de Stefano: An anthropogenetic study on the Oromo and Amhara of Central Ethiopia, American Journal of Human Biology, 8/1996
B. Saltin, C.K. Kim, N. Terrados, H. Larssen, J. Svedenhag, C.J. Rolf: Morphology, enzyme activities and buffer capacity in leg muscles of Kenyan and Scandinavian runners, Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports, 5/1995
B. Saltin, C.K. Kim, N. Terrados, H. Larssen, J. Svedenhag, C.J. Rolf: Aerobic exercise capacity at sea level and at altitude in Kenyan boys, junior and senior runners compared with Scandinavian runners, Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports, 5/1995
Alon Eliakim, Dan Nemet, Louis Shenkman: Serum enzyme activities following long-distance running: Comparison between Ethiopian and white athletes, Israel Journal of Medical Sciences, 11/1995
Black South Africans
Adéle R. Weston, O. Karamizrak, A. Smith, T.D. Noakes, Kathryn H. Myburgh: African runners exhibit greater fatigue resistance, lower lactate accumulation and higher oxidative enzyme activity, Journal of Applied Physiology, 3/1999; p. 915-923
Andrew N. Bosch, Brian R. Goslin, Timothy D. Noakes, Steven C. Dennis: Physiological differences between black and white runners during a treadmill marathon, European Journal of Applied Physiology, 1990; p. 68-72
Pieter Coetzer, Timothy D. Noakes, Barry Sanders, Michael I. Lambert, Andrew N. Bosch, Toni Wiggins, Steven C. Dennis: Superior fatigue resistance of black South African endurance runners, Journal of Applied Physiology, 4/1993; p. 1822-27
Adéle R. Weston, Z. Mbambo, Kathryn H. Myburgh: Running economy of African and Caucasian distance runners, Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, 6/2000, p. 1130-4
General articles
Tim Noakes: Why do Africans run so swiftly?, South African Journal of Science, 11-12/1998
David R. Basset, jr. and Edward T. Howley: Limiting factors for maximum oxygen uptake and determinats of endurance performance, MSSE, 1/2000; p. 70-84
Ward-Smith, A.J.: Aerobic and anaerobic energy conversion during high-intensity exercise, MSSE, 12/1999, p. 1855-1860
Scientific American: Building the Elite Athlete, September 2000, especially pp. 90-97 (Gary Taubes: Deconstructing the Taboo), 98-103 (Reinout van Wagtendonk: Unlikely Domin-ation)
Jesper L. Andersen, Peter Schjerling, Bengt Saltin: Muscle, genes and athletic performance, Scientific American, September 2000
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Edited by: White_Savage
BOOBOO: Why some athletes dominate some sports
(or why Jon Entine is not Einstine*)
RACIAL DIFFERENCES IN SPORTS PERFORMANCE
If you were watching any of the recent Olympics or World Championships in athletics, you probably weren't surprised that all the finalists of the 100 m sprint that kneeled down into blocks were black. Similarly, triumphs of Africans at long distances are also expected. But white Europeans still dominate athletic throws and still do very well in the 800 m distance, where they have won 4 out of the last 7 titles. when Andre Bucher won the 800 m, it was the third victory of a white man at this distance in the last five years. But why? Do there exist some „athletic genes" that can explain it?
*I do hope that everybody understands this joke and nobody will accuse me of bad spelling of Einstein's name (like one ingenious American from an unnamed forum)
UPDATED AND REVISITED: 26. 5. 2005
I recommend to take all information contained in this article with caution. Some problems of this topic hasn't been definitively resolved so far and many statements represent my current personal opinions that may change in the near future. Hence I update this page as frequently as possible.
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The black 100 m sprint
An answer to this question is not easy. Elite athletes are namely more or less extreme products of genetic variability; they are exceptional just because they differ from the average. Moreover, many important factors are necessary to realize sports potential, from cultural background, motivation, social conditions to facilities and sports tradition in some countries. In any case, statistics are impressive: We would have to go to the 240-250th place in all-time lists to find the best time of a white sprinter in the 100 m. In 1984 Marian Woronin ran this distance in 10,00 and the same value has an Asian record held by Koji Ito since 1998. At the same time, the 10 sec. bareer has been broken 229 times by 34 black sprinters (2001). Recently, times of white runners have also disappeared from top rankings in long distances like 5-10 km. White endurance runners have actually become competitors of the second class.
However, the dark skin of these runners hides a very important fact: While North American sprinters - who mostly come from the area of West Africa - dominate all distances up to the 400 m, they suddenly disappear at the 800 m and in the mile, they are virtually absent. Athletic history knows no (!) world-class athlete with West African roots who would have performed well in a distance longer than 800 metres. The performance of (a mulatto) David Krummenacker from Stockholm 3:31,93 (2002) is only enough for the 45th position in historical rankings and another athlete with West African ancestors, Steve Holman, is not much better (35th). Even the former world record holder in the 1500 m Sydney Maree is no exception, because he came from South Africa.
On the other hand, excellent endurance runners, who are of South or East African origin, are only rarely competive at the 400 m and they usually don't enter shorter races. This is very interesting from the view of sports physiology, because differences between sprinters and endurance runners are huge.
TOP 30 RUNNERS OF ALL-TIME BY RACE OR POPULATION (2003)
While sprinters represent muscular types with the predominance of fast-twich muscle fibers that are not capable of long-lasting, aerobic performances, endurance runners are typically of slender, tiny, ectomorphic physiques with red, slow muscle fibers that twitch much slower, but enable work of long duration. In Africa, we can find two basic anthropological groups of black Africans that well correspond with this division.
West Africans, speaking languages of the Congo-Kordofanian family and belonging largely to the so-called Bantu type, are characterized by middle, mesomorphic stature. During the last two milleniums this racial type spread due to the migration of the Bantus from the area of today's Cameroon and absorbed or assimilated archaic Pygmies and Sans living originally on the large space of Central and South Africa. On the other hand, the so-called Nilotes, speaking mostly languages of the Nilo-Saharan family, developed in dry, hot savannah of East Africa and are typical by very slender, tall (sometimes over 180 cm), sinewy statures, acclimatized to hot tropical climate.
Moreover, modern genetic research shows that in Africa we are confrontated with an exceptionally rich genetic variability that is incomparable with any other place on the Earth. This divergence of anthropological types is easily understandable when we consider that Africa was the craddle of human evolution and African populations were for a long time exposed to very diverse types of natural enviroment. In theory, we could expect bigger variability of physical and physiological types in Africa than anywhere in the world. This is perfectly confirmed by recent scientific research.
What scientists found
Anthropological studies done in African-Americans (that are primarily of West African origin) generally show - in comparison with white Americans - a tendency towards relatively longer legs (trunk/height ratio close to 51%), narrower hips, relatively longer and slender calves and generally less body fat. This tendency is even more pronounced in indigenous West African populations (trunk index close to 50%), which indicates that American blacks were exposed to certain mixing. In contrast with their African ancestors they are significantly taller a heavier, undoubtedly due to better nutrition. Their hips are also somewhat wider and chest is not so narrow and flat. Again, this must be due to a certain admixture of European genes that is estimated at 20-25%. Whites, on the other hand, have shorter legs (trunk/height ratio ~52,2%) and arms, with wider hips and wider, more volumnious chest. It is also a well-known fact that young African-Americans have higher testosterone levels (as much as 19 percent more than in young white men), which can contribute to higher agressivity and competitiveness. Further, higher bone (+5-20 percent) and body density was repeatedly measured in American blacks. Research also shows that while lean white athletes may have more fat on limbs, fat in lean black sportsmen is rather concentrated on the trunk. In the case of whites, it is quite a logical adaptation of people from colder climates that saves from congelation. In theory, this is also a disadvantage in running, especially in longer distances, because you must exert more energy for moving your legs forward.
Differences in body composition among North American populations aged 20-29 y
(data after NHANES, http://www.cdc.gov/nhanes/)
White Americans
Black Americans
American Latinos
Height (cm)
177,4
177,0
169,7
Weight (kg)
79,0
82,6
73,8
Sitting height (cm)
93,1 (52,48% height)
90,2 (50,96%)
89,6 (52,80%)
Shoulder width (cm)
41,6 (23,45%)
42,0 (23,73%)
41,0 (24,16%)
Upper arm length (cm)
37,6 (21,20%)
38,3 (21,64%)
36,3 (21,39%)
Thigh length (cm)
43,4 (24,46%)
45,0 (25,42%)
41,3 (24,34%)
Waist width (cm)
28,8 (16,23%)
27,5 (15,54%)
28,3 (16,68%)
Buttock circumfer. (cm)
97,7
99,6
95,5
Flexed biceps (cm)
32,5
33,7
31,7
Thigh circumference (cm)
52,2
55,4
51,0
On the basis of athletic performances, we could suppose that athletes of West African origin could be genetically endowed with a higher proportion of fast-twitch muscle fibers. As I stated above, there generally exist two types of muscle fibers (fast and slow) and the fast type has another two subtypes: a red, somewhat slower type IIa that prevails in weightlifters or 200-400 m runners and has a certain aerobic potential, and a white, fast-twitch type IIb, necessary for acceleration and maximal speed. World class sprinters posess about 70-80% fast-twitch muscle fibers. On the other hand, endurance runners can have as much as 90% of the I type. The proportion of muscle fibers is largely genetically determined and can be influenced by sports training only to a certain extent. (It is well known that white IIb fibers represent a "default" fiber type and easily convert into the IIa type during training with some aerobic component. However, conversions IIa > I or I > IIa are not easy.) Further, studies comparing distribution of muscle mass showed tendency towards better development of limbs in African-Americans, especially the muscle of thigh and buttock. The "anterior pelvic tilt", i.e. high buttocks in black Americans, is a typical feature of many sprinters, because it enables a better angle for generation of power during sprinting. In contrast, in European populations it is less common and in Asian men it is almost absent.
First of all, let's look at practical tests that were done mostly in the United States during the last century. Do they confirm the "natural" sprinting and jumping talent of black Americans? Yes, quite convincingly. Dr Robert M. Malina from the Michigan State University collected a very extensive material based on studies of motoric development of the African-American and the white population between 1938-1976. Even over such a long time, young African-Americans have showed better results in sprinting and vertical jump (7 out of 8 studies) and long standing jump (in 6 out of 10 studies). Dr David Hunter from the Ohio University studied differences in anaerobic performances between black and white males aged 16-17 years matched for height and weight. Although he found no differences in the maximal power output during the so-called Wingate test (a laboratory test on a cycle ergometer), when the results were expressed in W/kg body weight (12.65 W/kg in blacks vs. 12.62 W/kg in whites), there were clear differences in performances of the "real world", i.e. 40 y dash (4.81 vs. 5.03 sec.) and especially in vertical jump (56.2 cm vs. 50.7 cm). Although the results were distorted by a higher % of fat in whites, the differences didn't disappear even when the fat percentage was statistically removed. The discrepancy between laboratory and field tests probably lies in the incapability of mechanical tests to cover the capacity to store elastic energy (the energy that is stored in muscle and tendons during a pre-stretch). As stated above, black Americans have long, sinewy calves that can store more elastic energy both during jumping and running. Other physical differences like leg length or calf/thigh length ratio must also be taken into account. Moreover, blacks achieved better absolute power output in the Wingate test (884,6 W vs. 862,3 W), which suggests that the calculation in W/kg may be distorted by a higher percentage of leg muscle in blacks. In other words, they have higher % of muscle that creates the movement and less body weight that must be overcome. Therefore, the relationship between the performance and body weight may not be linear.
Laboratory studies agree with these findings. In 1986, a team of Canadian scientists from the University of Quebec led by dr Pierre Ama examined differences in muscle fiber proportion in thighs of 23 white Canadians and 23 black Africans from Cameroon, Senegal, Tchad, the Ivory Coast, Zaire and Burundi. The muscle of Africans really contained higher ratio of the fast-twitch muscle fibers (67,4 vs. 59,1 percent=8,3% difference), but the difference in the proportion of the IIb type was quite small (19,7 vs. 17,1 percent). However, West African subjects had 50% higher activity of anaerobic enzymes involving in work of short duration. A study done at University of Tennesee in 1997 found similar trends between 14 white and 14 black college students, but the difference was smaller (60,5 vs. 55,1 percent=5,4% difference), which could - in theory - result from the above mentioned admixture of white genes in the black American population (in my opinion, the sample was not perfectly representative, which was apparent from the unusually low difference in aerobic capacities between the two groups). In summary, the research shows that ïnterracial differences of this sort may exist, but they are not too much higher than usual sampling error (8%). When we also consider the huge interindividual variability in the muscle fiber proportion in humans, the difference in sprinting ability should not be abyssal. There is everytime a big overlap of individual capacities. However, as the practical tests shows, average differences are clearly visible and when we will be getting towards the extreme sprinting ends of the bell curve of both populations, where Olympic sprinters are recruited from, the number of potential black talents will get bigger and bigger, while the number of potential white champions will get smaller and smaller.
Muscle fiber composition of thigh muscle (vastus lateralis)
(after Ama et. al 1986, Duey et al. 1997)
I %
IIa %
IIb %
23 West Africans
32,6 (14-48)
48,6 (27-72)
19,7 (8-39)
14 African-Americans
39,5 ± 11,5
40,0 ± 8,4
22,8 ± 9,8
23 white Canadians
40,9 (23-61)
41,9 (24-55)
17,1 (7-38)
14 white Americans
44,9 ± 8,5
36,6 ± 6,9
18,3 ± 9,6
But why is there such a sudden break between the 400 and the 800 m? Aren't these West African runners only "lazy"? However, this phenomenon can be easily explained from the view of sports physiology. After 1 minute of intense muscular work the ratio of aerobic and anaerobic energy changes very dramatically. While a quarter miler obtains only 25-30 percent of all produced energy by aerobic ways (from glucose oxidation), a half-miler obtains this way 50-60 percent and a miler as much as 70-80 percent. West African populations obviously hit biological limits: lower number of slow-twitch muscle fibers that produce energy during long muscular work, lower capacity of the cardio-respiratory system (15-20 percent lower lung capacity, 5-10% lower VO2 max., lower concentration of hemoglobine), lower muscle capillarization and thus generally lower aerobic fitness. In the 400 m you still can run at high oxygen debt, but in longer races it is impossible without "breathing". Notoriously known weak endurance capabilities of the African-American population are repeatedly confirmed in various tests of resistance to fatigue and aerobic ability.
The mystery of East African runners
While Nigerians, Ghanians or African-Americans are one of the worst endurance runners in the world, the opposite is valid for the inhabitants of North, East and South Africa - and especially for Kenyans. Since the Olympic Games in Mexico City 1968 Kenyan runners have won 43 Olympic medals altogether, and among them 15 golds. They achieved a legendary success especially at the Olympics in Soul 1988, where they won at all distances from the 800 m to the 5000 m. Kenyans also hold more than one third of all-time performances at middle or long distances. However, it is only a little known fact that athletic talent in this country is not evenly distributed. Nearly three quarters of the Kenyan international success is produced by runners coming from a 3-million population of the Kalenjins, forming only about 12 percent of the Kenyan population. It is interesting that even among Kalenjins the distribution of sports tailent is not homogenous: One of the six major tribes, called Nandi, having only about 500.000 people, contributes to the international triumph by one half. At the same time, other parts of Kenya by far don't produce such a number of excellent athletes.
Surprisingly, a similar situation, although not in such a manner, exists in neighbouring Ethiopia, where the majority of the world-class athletes comes from the Cush*tic Oromo tribe and a disproportionate number of them was born in a mountaineous province Arsi, south-east of the capital Addis Abeba. It is interesting to note that Ethiopans anthropologically belong to the so-called mixed Ethiopian type that has arised from a long-term, thousand years' lasting mixing between local black populations and Caucasian (Semitic, Cush*tic) groups coming from Arabia. Modern genetic research shows that Ethiopans posess about 40-50 % Caucasian genes.
The research of endurance runners is complicated by a wider number of factors that determine performance. The most important of them are the so-called maximal oxygen uptake (VO2 max. or the maximal amount of consumed oxygen that can be utilized by the body for energy production, which is limited especially by cardiac output that distributes oxygen from the blood to working muscles), running economy (economy of oxygen consumption resulting especially from anthropological parameters like physical slenderness or thin legs) and physiology of skeletal muscles determining the so-called "lactate threshold", i.e. the percentage of oxygen consuption or speed at VO2 max., when lactate begins to accumulate in the runner's blood and soon or later causes inhibition of muscular work. Lactate threshold depends on a variety of factors including % of slow fibers, the amount and density of mitochondria, oxidative enzymes, capillarization etc.
Differences between Kenyan and white runners were studied by the team of dr Bengt Saltin from the Danish Institute of Sports Sciences in Copenhagen. The Danes didn't find any fundamental differences neither in the size, nor in the composition of muscles (about 72,5 percent of the slow fibers in Kenyans and something below 70 percent in Scandinavians). Further, senior Kenyan runners had more blood-carrying capillaries in their thighs, but Kenyan juniors had less density of capillaries than Scandinavians, which can be explained by their more intense training.
However, although Kenyans - on the average - had neither higher levels of hemoglobine in the blood, nor higher VO2 max., some of them reached higher values of VO2 max. than the best Scandinavians (as much as 85 ml oxygen per kg of body weight in minute). This may result from their active living style in altitude enhancing capacity of the cardiovascular system. This was apparent, when the scientists measured VO2 max. in town boys, who had values between 47-52 ml/kg.min and 45% slow-twitch fibers (practically the same numbers like in European contemporaries), but village boys, who usually run or walk to school, reached 56-62 ml/kg.min and had 52,5% ST fibers in their thighs. Some teenagers that just started regular training had even 80 ml/kg.min, which is absolutely extraordinary for this age. However, in general, VO2 max. couldn't be the solution. The biggest difference was in the body type: Kenyan runners were smaller, lighter (170-175 cm/55-60 kg), had very slender, „bird-like" legs and very long, extremely thin levers. These anthropological characteristics enabled them to „fly through the running motion" much easier than it was in Danes, who „pulled heavily into the ground". No wonder that Kenyans ran more economically, which means that they consumed less oxygen at a given speed and were more resistant to fatigue during a treadmill test. Further investigation ("The Kenya Project") confirmed these differences even in previously untrained adolescent boys, who passed a running training and subsequently were compared to similarly trained young Danes. Again, there were no differences in VO2 max. and lactate threshold, but the young Kenyans achieved 10% better time due to 10% better running economy. A more detailed analysis revealed that this running economy is mainly caused by their slender calves. It is worth note that Kenyan runners have extremely long legs (trunk/height ratio below 50%), but their European counterparts in long distances usually have much shorter legs (about 52,3%), with short calves. This difference certainly isn't accidental and suggests that it would be wrong to choose potential European long distance runners according to the Kenyan physique. European legs have more muscle and thicker fat layers, which means that they would be too heavy to move if they had the Kenyan length. The natural selection thus prefers runners with somewhat short legs and shorter calves, which maximally compromises the need for a sufficiently long stride with low weight of legs and running economy.
Physiological profile of top Kenyan and top Scandinavian runners (after Saltin et al. 1995)
BMI=body mass index (index of slenderness, kg body weight:m² body height). Note that Scandinavians have practically the same values of VO2 max. like Kenyans and when the values are expressed in more exact allometric scaling ((ml/kg¾min.), the Scandinavians are even better. However, Kenyans are about 8-9 cm shorter and 6-10 kg lighter.
Height/weight
(cm/kg)
BMI
(kg/m²)
VO2 max.
(l/min.)
VO2 max.
(ml/kg.min.)
VO2 max.
(ml/kg¾min.)
Kenyans-middle distances (4)
174,1/61,5
20,29
4,47
72,9
203,6
Scandinavians-middle dist. (3)
182,3/67,3
20,25
5,08
75,5
216,1
Kenyans-long distances (6)
170,8/56,1
19,23
4,42
79,9 (85,5)
218
Scandinavians-long dist.(6)
179,7/66,4
20,56
5,23
78,3 (83)
226,1
Studies of runners from South Africa
Besides Kenyans and Ethiopans, the third African powerhouse of long-distance running is South Africa. Although less internationally successful than Kenyans or Ethiopans, black South African runners seem to be clearly superior to white South Africans in long distances. The reason of their dominance was repeatedly investigated during the last decade since 1989. The key finding was that black runners are significantly smaller and lighter than their white counterparts (168-172 cm/56-59 kg vs. ~181 cm/~70 kg). This is a part of explanation for their success, because they were more economical than whites in tests on a treadmill. But that's not everything. The black runners had surprisingly low values of VO2 max. (much lower than whites). This finding was confirmed in every study that measured this factor. So why were they so much better? The reason lies in peculiar physiological characteristics of their muscles. The black runners have quite high percentage of fast-twitch fibers (not much less than 50%), which is very unusual for a long distance runner. However, despite that they had very high lactate threshold and extremely high activities of oxidative enzymes that correlated with their resistance to fatigue. Scientists still debate, if these elevated enzyme levels are a result of more intense training of Africans in altitude or some genetic response to this training. One study documented this feature even in black runners, who lived and trained at sea level and untrained control subjects from the same region had the same activity of these enzymes like white South Africans. This reasearch thus shows that these higher levels of enzymes may not be genetically determined and may not result from training in high altitude. In any case, it seems that aboriginal South African endurance runners also strongly rely on anaerobic metabolism. The unusually high percentage of fast fibers is accompanied by high activity of an enzyme called phosphofructokinase (PFK), whose activity is usually lowered in distance runners. This is obvious from the fact that the level of this enzyme in black and white control subjects was almost the same, while in the white runners it was much lower than in the black runners. The researchers speculate that this shift towards anaerobic metabolism may reflect higher running speed of black South Africans during intense trainings.
What's the conclusion?
Firstly, it doesn't seem that Kenyans posess any mysterious running tailent. The key to their success seems to lie almost entirely in their better running economy. The rest of their performance (high lactate threshold and VO2 max.) is achieved by immensely hard training or by their active living style, respectively. (No surprise for those, who already emphasized it earlier.) On the other hand, influence of altitude or mountaneous terrain can't be excluded due to the fact that there exists practically no world class Kenyan runner from coastal lowlands. At least for the purpose of training, the Kenyans from highlands must benefit from it. But what's behind the discrepancy between the running achievement of the Kalenjins and the rest of Kenya? The Kalenjins theirselves deny that the Nandis would be somehow exceptionally gifted for running. Their dominance may simply result from their longer running tradition created by the first Kenyan Olympic winner Kip Keino. This assumption can be supported by the recent emergence of other Kalenjin tribes like the Marakwets (Moses Kiptanui) or the Keyios (Daniel Komen, Bernard Barmasai). In spite of it, some genetic factors can't be excluded. For example, at the most known high school that has become famous thanks to upbringing young sports tailents, St. Patrick's High in Iten, 18 out of 25 studying running hopes were related to some of the top athletes. Is running talent somewhat inherited within certain families? Moreover, many authors that studied living style of African runners deny the traditional theories that Kenyan running stars had run to school during their childhood. For example, Haile Gebrselassie really ran to a school 10 km far, but his most serious competitor, Kenyan Paul Tergat, walked to a school that was 800 meters from his home.
Although the existence of such a genetic potential must be taken into account, what about Ethiopian runners? Are they also endowed with some special genes, when they recently beat Kenyans at the international level? Their success clearly results from the combination of their slender physique and altitude, too. The only difference between Kenyans and Ethiopans is now in quantity, not in quality. The Kenyans may have a long advance in athletic development due to enthusiasm of European trainers-monks from religious schools (and possibly due to contribution of a relatively well-functioning and qualified government, a positive heritage of the British colonial system). One must also take into consideration that Kenya is a country with mixed population and although Kenyan Bantu tribes may be mixed and anthropologically closer to the Nilotic physical type, they may not posess adequate physical and physiological prerequisites for distance running like the "pure" Nilotic Kalenjins. This may be supported by the fact that the national Kenyan record in the 100-200 m is not held by a Kalenjin, but a sprinter from a Bantu tribe.
As for black South Africans, they are a very peculiar ethnicon markedly different from East Africans. Obviously, more research is needed to elucidate the strange paradox between their low VO2 max., high oxidative capacity and quite high percentage of fast fibers. From the genetic view, they came into being as a result of mixing between indigenous Sans and Bantu tribes, which may have contributed to the creation of a mixed physical type with "West African" cardiorespiratory system and fibres and "South African" body build. This can also explain, why they are internationally competetive in such different races like the 800 m and the marathon, but not in the 1500-10 000 m, where high VO2 max. is a decisive factor.
What does the high running economy of Kenyans and other Africans mean for runners from other parts of the world? The news are not too optimistic. If a European runner with an average running economy wants to match Kenyans in their strongest distances (3-10 km), he must posess about 10% higher VO2 max. to compensate the difference in efficiency (providing he has comparably high lactate threshold). If we consider that today's average of VO2 max. in the 5-10 km is about 80-85 ml/kg.min., he must posess VO2 max. close to 90 ml/kg.min. or even higher. In reality, he wouldn't need such a high value, because elite distance runners are already a selected group different from the average population and the difference in economy between the best Africans and the best Europeans is certainly lower than 10% (the difference between the best East African and the best North European - Jon Brown - in the 10 km is 1 minute, which is only 3,65%). However, a value around 90 ml/kg.min. should be a minimum. Such numbers (up to 94 ml/kg.min.) are very rare in runners or cyclists, but they are frequent in ski-runners, who stimulate their cardiac output by incorporating a much larger muscle mass during movement. So should European runners train on skis? During winter, it could be a very good supplemental activity, but the effect of such training is doubtful due to differences in movement patterns. However, there is another choice: training in hilly terrain. It is well documented that orienteers have surprisingly high VO2 max. values, very close to top distance runners, although the volume of their training is lower. It undoubtedly results from a much intense stimulus during running in difficult terrain. It seems to me that training in hills is the only way, how to achieve a permanent improvement of VO2 max., because traditional training on track soon leads to plateau and the effect of altitude is only temporary. Furthermore, training in hills can also partly improve running economy.
Even if these conditions were achieved, there is another problem: to push our chosen runner into an immensely hard work lasting for many years - without any guarantee that one day he will be able to defeat his African opponents and get few bucks for his life-long effort. It is clear that it won't be easy. Many potential talents in Europe don't care about track, because they don't believe that they could compete with black Africans. I don't wonder that they don't want to risk it, because they can find their sports chances in many other endurance sports like cycling, triathlon, rowing, swimming etc. On the other hand, Kenyans can't be too choosy. „What people can't understand is that it is very hard to compete with somebody who knows that his only chance to earn living is running," wrote a young Kenyan in an internet discussion. „Ninety percent of all Kenyan runners belong to this cathegory." Training dosages of African runners are often unimaginable. Scientists compared training regimens of white and African runners and they found that although some of the white runners ran the same mileages like Africans, African runners ran at much higher intensity. Kim McDonald, an American agent and coach of Kenyan runners, who died some time ago, says: „You will find few Americans that are willing to train hard. You will find few Brits that are willing to train hard. But as a group, nobody can't match the Kenyans. A victory in the Boston marathon is a chance for them to return home and support their families." And a veteran British coach Frank Horwill adds: "Trotting around the countryside ....., notching up 100 miles per week, is not the formula for running excellence. A steadier diet of faster, harder running will be required to match up with the Kenyans."
What about North Africans and others?
In the end, we can't forget North Africans (Moroccans and Algerians). To my knowledge, there exist no studies explaining with their running success (but no wonder, because they are not enough black). The first thing that comes on one's mind is the combination of their body type (that is slender than that of Europeans) with the contribution of reasonable altitude. Not too surprisingly, North Africans primarily excel in the mile, which is the strongest distance of Caucasians, but they are more successful than Europeans in longer distances like the 5000 m, which undoubtedly results from their more economical physique. The influence of altitude may be the most important factor considering that we practically know no world-class runner from neighbouring lowland Tunisia. (But there are also difficulties: For example, what about Hicham El Guerrouj, who was born in Rabat, at sea level?) Further, I know that at least Moroccans have a very sophisticated system of talent selection, so the number of their excellent runners is no chance. Some people also speculate about the contribution of North African genes to the running talent of Portuguese and Spaniards. This is interesting and I think that there may be a kernel of truth in it. However, I think that the most satisfactory answer to all these problems is the slender physique of Mediterranean populations, which can be indirectly confirmed by very good performances of Italians in long distances. By the way, Portuguese and Spaniards are the smallest and most subtle of all Europeans.
Eventually we get to another question: Why are there almost no world-class runners from other parts of the world? There exist regions with similar altitude and with populations racially related to North Africans like the Near East or Afghanistan. Maybe we will see good athletes from there, when running with Kalashnikov - which is the favourite sports discipline of people in these regions - will be estabilished as an Olympic sport. There is hardly any chance to see them on track until the wild situation in this region calms down and benighted governments fall or open their countries to the modern world. On the other hand, it is quite understandable, why we don't see any Quechua or Sherpa running the Chicago marathon - chronical adaptations to extreme altitude (3000 m and more) have a negative impact on muscle oxidative capacity, because they lead to the reduction of mitochondria. In fact, these people may be one of the worst endurance runners in the world. The only example of running potential outside Africa, East Asia and Europe show Mexican Indians, who live on a resonable altitude comparable with East African highlands. For example, Arturo Barrios is the fastest non-African runner in the 10 km. Personally, I would be curious, what changes we will see in distance running in the future.
Blacks are faster and whites are stronger?
Despite the apparent dominance of black runners and also bodybuilders, white athletes still dominate disciplines that lay premium on upper body strength like athletic throws, weighlifting, powerlifting or wrestling. It seems that this phenomenon can also be explained in biological terms: Scientific research shows that while West Africans may have more developed muscles of limbs, whites tend to have more muscle on the trunk. But muscles of the trunk are a limiting factor in strength disciplines. Moreover, long arms and legs (i.e. long levers) are bad for weightlifters, because they influence the amount of produced force. If we take into consideration that the best weightlifters have trunk/height ratio about 54-55%, it is no wonder that blacks have little chance in lifting. Their linear stature is actually the absolute opposite of a weighlifter's quadratic physique. The performance in lifting also depends on other factors like muscle architecture or the place of the attachment of tendons on the bone, but racial differences of this sort haven't been extensively studied so far.
Jelena Dokič: A Slavic woman with enormous upper body strength
It is true that longer arms of blacks can be advantageous in throws like discus, but they may be disadvantaged by relatively long legs and shorter trunk, a factor impeding stability and total body strength. Still, there should be no reason, why blacks couldn't excel in the javelin throw, where strength compromises with speed and technical factors. Since performance in the javelin is most influenced by releasing speed, the answer may lie here. In any case, further research in this area would be necessary, but it is quite foolish to expect that some white researchers would be interested in it. One must take into consideration that strength is markedly influenced by the level of physical activity and such differences may not be detectable in untrained persons. In fact, I have found only one study that tried to give an answer to this question (Fields, Bemben, Mayhew 1997), but the results were not too illuminant. The sample was not well chosen (white subjects were almost 9 kg lighter and had 4,4 kg less lean muscle tissue) and most of the discovered results was "non-significant". Black persons performed significantly better in leg press (164,9 vs. 156,8 kg), but that's not surprising. However, it's interesting to note that despite having less lean muscle tissue, whites performed "non-significantly" better in bench press (91,2 vs. 84,9 kg), which confirms the findings about different muscle mass distribution. Whites also produced more strength on the cross-sectional area of muscle (cm²), which may suggest more advantageous lever system, among some other things. In any case, it would be useful to continue in this research, because the differences in strength between blacks and whites must be abyssal. In 2003, there was only one black powerlifter competing at the world championship in middle or heavy cathegories (Tony Harris from USA) and he finished 4th in the 110 kg cathegory, 80 kg behind the winner and 177,5 kg behind the strongest man at the competition, which would mean 22nd place total. It is worth note that the number of black powerlifters was higher in late 90's, but they began to disappear, when Russians and Ukrainians showed on the scene and practically gained control of the sport.
A person acquianted with the world of powerlifting would certainly called my attention to examples like Anthony Clark, Daisuke Midote or James Henderson, non-white bench-pressers of the world class competing in the heaviest cathegory (above 125 kg). However, I think it is no chance that these persons appear just here in the heaviest cathegory, because it's their enormous obesity that enables them to move the bar through a really very symbolic distance (Henderson: 195,5 cm/175,5 kg!). The fact that you won't find almost any world class Asian or African-American in lower cathegories only confirms this assumption. A rare example of the past was American weightlifter and powerlifter Mark Henry, who was an excellent dead-lifter, but less successful in weightlifting.
In connection with this topic it is important to notice the naive opinions of white people, who often confuse the "athletic appearance" of blacks with strength and athletic abilities. In fact, the ripped muscles that we see on their bodies have nothing to do with any athleticism and result from less levels of body fat that is furthermore concentrated internally or in the subscapular region (below shoulder-blade) and effectively reveals "athletic proportions" with wider shoulders and narrower hips. This can be benefical in body building or in modeling, but it certainly has no influence on the movement of a barbell.
However, why do blacks dominate boxing, a sport, where upper body strength is necessary? Outstanding boxers are also characterized by high aerobic and anaerobic capacity, longer arms (for reach) and shorter legs (for stability), but their proportions are generally very variable. This is a confusing mix of "advantages" and "disadvantages"! Perhaps the most reasonable explanation (better than "long arms", "thicker skull" and even nonsense like "dancing ability") lies in the social origin of prominent boxers. In the 19th century, box was dominated by Irs, who lived in workmen's quarters of English towns. In the first half of the last century, the richest source of boxing talents in America was Italian and Jewish immigrants from suburban ghettos. Today American box is dominated by Mexicans in lighter and by African-Americans in heavier cathegories. As one American recently told in the internet forum of IAAF, „nobody except Mexicans, black Americans, Africans and East Europeans is willing to smash his face because of a tiny chance that he will become a superstar in boxing."
The debate about „black athletic superiority"
A book called TABOO:Why black athletes dominate sports and why we´re afraid to talk about it that was published in the beginning of the last year in the United States, caused a stir. Its author, Jon Entine, a former TV producent, who once successfully collaborated at a TV document of NBC The Black Athlete: Truth and Fiction, quotes words of tennis legend Arthur Ashe, who expressed to such a question short time before his death: „The results are excellent. Nothing sort of stellar. Culture can't explain it. I must believe that there is something that gives us - blacks - an edge." No wonder that books of this sort are published in the overseas, where black sportsmen make up about 80 percent of NBA, 65 percent of the National Football League and roughly one third of the baseball MLB, despite that blacks make up only 13 percent of the North American population. Frankly, reading TABOO was a very memorable experience for me, because it is rare to read such a childishly biased book exuberating by simple-minded demagogy. As one could expect from a book written by a journalist, science is secondary; the primary intention is to catch the attention in the public by a sensational and provocative topic. Therefore, unpleasant facts are carefully eliminated and the main thesis is supported by a goulash of effective half-truths and skilfully darned gaps. Furthermore, TABOO contains virtually no data and the author probably plays a game with the reader, if he finds any reasonable conclusion under tons of worthless lumber. If I didn't get it for free from my friend, I would return it back. But back to our topic.
As we saw in previous paragraphs, Arthur Ashe is right. West African populations really posess a marked advantage in sprinting and jumping, factors that have a significant impact on performance in many sports. The other thing is that these predispositions play a decisive role only in sprinting and jumping or other related sports, and not in team sports, where an individual performance depends on a wide variety of factors. Thus it is not surprising that muscle fiber composition in these games is not too much different from the average. The competing athlete must reach a certain level of overall physical condition that is sufficient for the maximal expression of his psychomotor skills. Being reasonably good in all physiological demands is better than to daze in one or few and fail in the rest. Some physical and physiological differences may contribute to detectable overrepresentation of certain ethnic groups at certain, very specific positions in the game, but due to the extreme variability of performance factors it's extremely risky to start any "genetic" debate concerning the game in general. Moreover, the same physical tests that showed superiority of black children in sprints found no differences in tests of agility (sprints with changes of direction), which probably results from the long-legged African physique that impairs stability and coordination. This finding is very interesting, because team sports (especially such like football/soccer, handball, rugby or even American football) rely more on the combination of speed and agility rather than on pure speed. Thus it is not desirable to imply results of flat sprints on the "game speed". Speed with changes of direction and linear sprinting speed are two very different abilities.
An important thing that one must consider is that TABOO bases its "persuasive" arguements mainly on traditional American sports, whose popularity in the rest of the world is comparable with underwater chess. In fact, the answer to the "overrepresentation" of North American blacks in American sports is much easier than Entine's sociobiological philosophizing. In the case of track and field, it's clear that white Americans don't bother to participate in this sport. The pure stats are enough to show us that here they are one of the most underperforming nations in the world. The whole planet is still waiting for the first white American, who will be able to cross the magic 8-meter bareer in long jump and gets the athletic capacity of his 200-million population within eyeshot of tiny European countries like 2-million Slovenia (perhaps there was already somebody like that, but nobody in the world knows him). The same is valid for triple jump. The fact that Jenny Adams is the first American white woman, who has ever competed in sprints, is virtually grotesque. One would be curious if the recent emergence of talented sprinters like Little, Woody, Potter, Wariner or Steele is only a temporary thing, or white Americans begin to take their athletic participation seriously.
The second main cause of the overrepresentation of blacks in American sports is socioeconomic. It's politically incorrect to present any data, because they are very unpleasant, and, naturally, you won't find them in Entine's book: about 50% black Americans (or even more?) are unemployed; American prisons are composed of approximately 50% black men; about 50% black basketball players in college teams come from families, whose annual income lies below the official level of poverty; about 1 out of 3 young black Americans has a criminal record... The last statistics is really unimaginable and makes one's flesh cree. But this is entirely enough for the explanation of black dominance in American boxing. And these stats can also explain the "natural" inclination of African-Americans towards sports in general. Sports gave them a chance to create their own culture in the American society. The arguement that there are more poor white people than poor black people certainly isn't persuasive, as the example of boxing shows. In a predominantly white society, being poor with the black skin is obviously very different from being poor with the white skin.
Although it is clear that black basketballers generally have important physiological and also physical advantages (e.g. long limbs), the situation in modern basketball tell us that the cause of black dominance in NBA will be close to the cause of their dominance in track and field. Although American media may still continue in their agitation about "natural athleticism" of black basketball players, it's a clear fact that their superior genes begin to degenerate, when they are now exposed to serious competition from Europe. And Europeans now gradually penatrate among the best scorers in the league, where, according to Entine (2000), "not one white player has finished in recent years" (TABOO, p. 19). And NBA is still where NHL was in late 80's. So the future could bring us even some surprises.
I think that it's a natural and logical development, because all the propaganda eagerly spread in the United States was created by medial dilettantes, who have no serious idea about the physiology of the sport. Black Americans began to dominate this sport mainly because white Americans had almost completely left it in early 90's, very probably due to neverending brainwashing concerning their athletic incapability that they hear again and again from the media. Let's take a quotation from an internet forum, where Mr. Entine presented "well-researched" data from TABOO, p. 252:: "Top volleyball players [in America] top out at 50 percent or so. NBA players regularly exceed that with Spud Webb jumping more than 66 percent of his height -- 42 inches [107 cm] (he's 5 feet, 7 inches [170 cm/61 kg]). There is a test called the Sargent test, which measure jump and reach. The greatest Sargent result ever was recorded by former Utah Jazz star Darrell Griffith (aka Dr. Dunkenstein) who jumped 48 inches [122 cm] - that's 63 percent of his 6-4 [193 cm] frame. No white and certainly no Asian has ever come close."
I add that dr. LeVeau and dr Krugh, who measured Michael Jordan's jumping ability, found a much more modest number - 35,9 inches (91,3 cm). However, when he was tested during a jump from running, he achieved 45,8 inches (116 cm). I do hope that now it's clear to you, where all those incredible numbers cited by Entine come from. They are mystifications often spread by NBA stars and don't concern a true vertical jump (the Sargent test), but "a dunk jump", i.e. jump from running. In fact, according to one trainer, who seriously measured NBA players, they usually achieve results between 70-85 cm (28-34 in). Why not more? Count with me: An average NBA player measures 200 cm (6'7), which means that he has a vertical reach of about 255 cm (8'4). To touch the hoop of the basket, he needs a very mediocre jump of 50 cm (1'8). If you take an average basketball player with a decent jump of, say, 75 cm, it means that during a jump from running he jumps about 100 cm and has hands approximately 355 cm above the ground, i.e. 50 cm above the hoop.
Yes, the better anaerobic abilities of blacks - together with their somewhat faster motor development - may give them an important advantage during adolescence, because they can reach a sufficient performance level about 0,5-1 year faster than white kids. This probably explains, why black kids in racially mixed countries succeed in basketball (and some similar sports) more than their white contemporaries (and why the best white players come outside such countries). Naturally, due to their overall predispositions (and the fact that they live in US, the country, where NBA is played) black players will probably prevail in the game even in the future, but some people still can't understand that basketball is not sprinting. Higher percentage of people physiologically suited to the sport is no guarantee of a comparably high percentage of skilled people that will be able to compete in the sport at the elite level. Team sports are much more variable than individual sports.
If there is any team sport, where jumping ability is really critical, then it's volleyball. Top class volleyball players regularly jump 90-100 cm (and they are white). But even here the comparison is not easy and fair: volleyball players usually test vertical jumps with a 3-4 step advance, which increases the final height by cca 10-15 cm. This means that US volleyball team that achieved an average of 94,2 cm before 1984 Olympics actually jumped only 80-85 cm. But this is still higher than the presumable average of NBA players.
Sure, it's no chance that Cubanese women achieved a lot of success in this sport. But the female side is often influenced by a lack of serious competition, because women don't incline towards sports like men and they are not ever willing to undergone a body-deforming training (see also the persisting dominance of WNBA-women contrasting so strikingly with the recent results of the American Bad Dream's Teams). If we look at men's volleyball, the white players of Brazil, the contemporary leading world power in this sport, have 17 cm lower spike height and about 10 cm lower vertical jump height than Russia, the second best team in the world in 2002. In fact, if we predicted performance of Brazilians from such athletic statistics, they would belong to the biggest outsiders in the game. So even in volleyball, there are still other important variables than vertical reach influencing performance!
Let's laugh with/to Jon Entine
White players (in NBA)...wonder, what kind of future they have...guard Jon Barry, son of Hall-of-Famer Rick Barry, believes he is the last of a "dying breed". Only the demand for mutant giants of any background is likely to forestall a near total wash-out of nonblacks (in NBA) in coming years (p. 20).
Comment: Written in 2000, before OG in Sydney. Sure, I would rather wait even several coming years (several seasons of NBA, several Olympics and world championships). Judging from the recent results, one could say that men's basketball is a white sport and natural athletes from NBA should find refuge in American football, because this is a sport that nobody is seriously interested in. Here their physical superiority wouldn't be exposed to any serious threat. But who knows...
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That familiar trend is readily apparent in the world's most popular team sport, soccer. Nigeria won the Olympic medal in 1996 and qualified two years later for the World Cup...Even in England, which was slow to allow foreigners and has a black population of less than 2 percent, 1 in 5 professional soccer players in the premier division is black (p. 20).
Comment: Nigeria deservedly won a gold medal at the Olympics, where the best players refuse to go, and two years later qualified for the World Cup, where they got a warming from Denmark 1:4 in the round of 16 and went home. No African team has ever got further than into the quarterfinals and despite the flood of African players into the English and French league, it seems that the gap between African national teams and the rest of the world is rather getting bigger. England has a black population of less than 2 percent, but black professionals in the Premier League are mostly foreign legionaries from former English colonies or European countries like France or the Netherlands (but I admit that this statement may not result from Entine's poor knowledge of soccer; it may be another of his numerous and intentional demagogic tricks). According to one source, the percentage of "native" black Englishmen in English professional competitions is about 13%, which may be exaggerated, but it changes little. Nobody can forbid black kids to play soccer, if they want to play it. They make up about 10% of all youngsters playing in soccer preparatory schools. As far as I know, their socioeconomic stats are comparable with those in America. By the way, the share of the black population in London, where they have the easiest access to big clubs, is about 13%.
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Although the overall numbers of blacks in baseball do not approach those in football or basketball, the stars are disproportionaly black (p. 22).
Comment: Although the total number of registered ice hockey players in Canada and US is far, far higher than in the rest of the world combined, the stars in NHL are disproportionally Europeans. About 7 out of Top 10 most productive players of NHL are Czechs, Swedes, Russians or Slovaks. A good suggestion for another scientific research of baseball historian Bill James.
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Britain's middle distance running glory is gone for good. Don't expect a return to glory!...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... While Coe's best time ranks third on the all-time list, Cram is at 39, Elliott stands at 45, and Ovett's best ranks 341 (an article published in a British magazine in August 2001, when two Europeans won a world gold and a bronze in the 800 m).
Comment: Yes, when you use time statistics to make the numbers as big as possible, it looks much more differently than when you use the all-time list of best athletes: Coe is 2, Borzakovskiy 6, Bucher 7, Rodal 8, Cram 16, Elliott 19, Baala 25, Czapiewski 29... and Ovett 86. By the way, Ovett performed better in the 1500 m, where he still appears in the 28th place (September 2003). Even after 18 years, Cram is still 12 and Coe 13 in the 1500 m, not saying that at least one „natural athlete" from Africa with better times was loaded on drugs. Even today, Cram and Coe with their personal bests would belong to the absolute elite both in the 800 m and the 1500 m and there is no doubt that in races with El Guerrouj, they would be even faster. This can be shown on the example of FermÃÂn Cacho (the only European fool of 90's, who wasted his time on track and reached Coe's and Cram's calibre), who broke Cram's European record and has collected quite an interesting collection of medals from the Olympic gold in Barcelona 1992 to silvers in 1993 and 1997. By the way, Entine doesn't explain, why those superior East Africans now don't have enough innate potential to become the elite of the elite and win a gold in a middle distance race. In August 2001 Entine's brain obviously began to serve out. This is the most perverse example of his vicious, criminal demagogy.
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Top volleyball players [in America] top out at 50 percent or so. NBA players regularly exceed that with Spud Webb jumping more than 66 percent of his height -- 42 inches [107 cm] (he's 5 feet, 7 inches [170 cm/61 kg]). There is a test called the Sargent test, which measure jump and reach. The greatest Sargent result ever was recorded by former Utah Jazz star Darrell Griffith (aka Dr. Dunkenstein) who jumped 48 inches [122 cm] - that's 63 percent of his 6-4 [193 cm] frame. No white and certainly no Asian has ever come close. (an internet forum, where Mr. Entine presented "well-researched" data from TABOO, p. 252)
Comment: See my explanation above.
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"To the degree that it is a purely scientific debate, the evidence of black superiority in athletics is persuasive and decisively confirmed on the playing field. Elite athletes who trace most or all of their ancestry to Africa are by and large better than the competition." (Jon Entine, TABOO)
Comment: See graphs below. Don't you know some good American head doctor?
Eventually, there are examples from two more sports - baseball and American football. It is hard for me to comment all the statistics presented in the book, because I have no idea about its rules and I don't know any eccentric, who would be interested in it. However, the "overrepresentation" of people from the Carribean is no surprise considering their socioeconomic motivation. Moreover, as recent examples show (Barry Bonds), the rampant drug use in MLB (Major League Baseball) and other American professional sports largely washes out possible racial differences and makes "a level playing field" even for those, who don't have physical capacities for it. Frankly, I don't understand the arguements presented on p. 24-25, where the author, citing words of Mr. James, actually tells us that physical differences and pre-professional statistics can't explain bigger success of black players in MLB. I would suggest to make the same research in NBA and NHL. Perhaps if Mr. Entine and Mr. James joined their intellectual capacities, they would come to a conclusion that "Europeans are better athletes, because they are born better athletes, which is to say that it is genetic, or that they are born equal and become better athletes". It could be a big relief for all those depressed white Americans, who sit on the bench. (A note: I wouldn't wonder that "white Hispanics" are not successful in professional sports; 7 cm difference in height is really too much.)
The final example of the black athletic superiority in TABOO is the growing presence of blacks in bobsledding, and a long story (3 pages) about black athletes in the American team that ends with an essay about how Americans missed a world medal by 0.2 second... which must be meant as a joke, otherwise one could die from laughing. At present I really don't see many sports dominated by black athletes, as Entine phantasized four years ago (2000). Their international domination in men's basketball is probably lost forever (but at least, they still dominate NBA; the other thing is, how long); the current champion in professional heavyweight boxing is white and Olympic stats also don't tell us anything about any domination of black boxers in this sport. And as for their domination in American football - who cares? I must add that I am wise enough to know that things can (again) change, but the current state is really far, far from the phantasmagoric world that Entine painted in his book. Eventually, we get to the widespread athletic mythology that deserves a special chapter.
"The black domination in track and field"
In fact, if something like this has ever existed, it lasted only several years in the early 90's. The apparent decline of European athletics at this time was not caused only by the emergence of African runners, but also by the changed political and economical situation in post-communistic East European countries. When we look at medal statistics, we can see that at the same time the trend changed its course and in the combination with a weak generation of North American athletes (mainly jumpers) it is responsible for a declining curve of black medal winners in the last years. In 2001, the medal bilance of white athletes returned back on the level of 1988 and the bilance of athletes of West African ancestry fell on the lowest level since mid 80's. Still, some people continue in writing articles about the "dominance of black athletes in track and field" and to make the biggest possible impression, they often use statistics from WC 1991. The persisting „domination" of black athletes at international meetings is something different, because from many reasons the competition is never complete here. Moreover, it's rather a contest for the best manager, not for the best athlete. (The self-destructive nomination politics of Kenyans would also change little on the results, because in races like the 800 m and the 1500 m they currently aren't the leading world power). At the last world championship in Paris 2003 white athletes collected 30 medals, which is more than athletes of West and East African ancestry together (24).
Above: "The black domination in track and field" at world championships and Olympics expressed by numbers.
Medal statistics by point value of medals (3-2-1) at the most important athletic events since 1987 (except walk and relays). "East Europe" doesn't include Eastern Germany.
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Statistics in female athletes. As we can see, the statistics is currently almost exactly on the same level like in men.
Point value of medals (3-2-1). A note: in 1993, triple jump was added; hammer throw in 1999.
As one can see from the graphs, international success of white runners dropped by cca 50% in late eighties and reached the lowest level in history between 1988-1996. The quality has again increased since, but it still isn't much higher than in the mid 80's. Currently white runners collect roughly 15% medals in all 11 running events. Since this state has interesting causes, we should look at them in a more detailed way.
Historical stats tell us persuasively that white runners improved their times until mid 80's, but in late 80's and early 90's there occured a sudden break and their times at all distances fell below the level of the seventies (!). At the same time, runners from Kenya and other African countries flooded track and began to "dominate". These changes are very marked especially in middle distances (800+1500 m). Ironically, the times of Africans were the same or a bit worse than those of white runners one decade ago. But the downfall of "white" times was so deep that there virtually existed no serious competition and Africans certainly were not willing to leave track because of those few second-class white competitors, who remained in the sport. The immediate consequence of the European downfall and the "African dominance" was a ten years' stagnation in middle distances (1985-1995). In 1996, a second break came, this time a positive one for whites: their times again started to improve and soon got close to the level of mid 80's. However, in the meantime Africans got the sport onto a higher level, so the differences largely persisted. Since 2000, the times of whites have again improved a bit (although in the average they still aren't noticeably higher than 20 years ago), and times of Africans slightly declined. The consequence of these changes was a marked disappearance of Kenyans and other sub-Saharan Africans from top medal positions in middle distances (since 2000 they have won only 1 out of 8 middle distance titles; whites won 3, North Africans 4).
But what's behind the sudden decline in mid 80's? Was it a psychological influence of the devastating emergence of Africans? I would like to remark that the same, what happened in the 800/1500 m in mid 80's, actually occured in the 3000 m steeplechase as early as one decade before. It makes sense, because the 3000 m steeple was the first distance, where Kenyans started to excel and set world records (Jipcho, Rono). Thus we could expect that the dropout of whites started earlier here - more exactly, in late 70's. To illustrate the degree of "participation" of Europeans in steeple today, let's compare the best times of 70's with the current European record: As early as in 1976, the Swede Anders Gärderud ran 8:08.02. This time - once a world record - still guarantees him 31st place in the all-time list. By the way, Gärderud's personal best in the 1500 m was 3:36 something. Today, Simon Vroemen from the Netherlands holds the European record 8:06.91 (2002). Yes, this is really no error: during the last 28 years European steeplers have improved by 1.11 sec.(!). What a paradise for the Kenyans! No wonder that the 3000 m steeple remains the only distance, where they still preserve their hegemony. A similarly "quickened" decline is apparent in the 400 m, which apparently resulted from the coming of black Americans. (I don't have enough data for the 100 and 200 m, but from general tendencies I think that the changes were exactly the same). Thus, like in the case of NBA or NFL, whites simply left a sport that blacks began to enter in great masses. This is really an interesting psychosociological fact that we should have on our minds, before we start any biological discussions.
However, the striking downfall in early 90's is apparent in all distances and may have a common cause. Was it the start of the "screen generation" of European children, who began to sit in the front of their computers playing video games? Or was it the consequence of growing financial offers in European soccer as some people think? I don't have enough information to judge it. In any case, I don't doubt that today's situation in track doesn't reflect real racial differences in running even remotely. Especially distances like the 400 m are strongly underdeveloped from the European side. There has been no improvement since mid 70's! In the 100 m, 800 m and 10 000 m the times have been stagnating since mid 80's. And even improvements in other distances are actually exceptions of exceptions, because they were mostly done by individuals, who otherwise have no serious competition in Europe. I would like to remark that especially the "domination" of Africans in the 800 m is quite funny, because even after 23 years, there was only one African that broke Coe's world record. During the last decade, they found here a real oasis without serious competition, which can be seen from their markedly high numbers in the all-time stats that can't be explained physiologically. If you can think reasonably, you must acknowledge that if (Caucasian) North Africans consistently defeat Kenyans in the mile, there can be no idea about any "superiority" of Kenyans over Europeans in the 800 m! Hopefully this situation will change in the near future.
The graphs above show the average time of top 5 runners in each 5 years according to racial origin (European/white and West African or East African). The best time of a white runner ("Europe max.") is also added. The value of the average in Europeans between 1991-1995 on the graph "400 m" must have been estimated, because there was not enough data.
The two graphs below (800+1500 m) show the development of average times of top 10 performers in each year since 1970. Similarly like in the graphs above, I added average times of top 5 performers in each 5 years according to racial origin.
Race and sport
(To be continued...)
Women compete otherwise
We don´t have to count numbers of statistics to find out that the differences in women are less than in men. Why? Firstly, cultural factors limit the participation of African women, but this situation recently changes for the better. Further, this difference results from the nature of sports as a substitution for men´s combats. Therefore, women are less „ambitious" in sports than men and the pool of athletes is deprived of potential tailents that preferred other career. Anthropological differences between women of different races are smaller as well: Women produce 20-times less levels of testosterone (thus they also have less muscle and in all sports, where strength plays a role, the differences are smaller, because strength can be trained) and, on the contrary, a female hormone estrogene supports the formation of very similar levels of fat. By the way, there also allegedly exist less differences in the length of limbs! And eventually, the racial statistics are complicated by doping. The use of male hormones and anabolic steroids causes dramatical improvement of performance in female athletes.
A review from Jon Entine
Sources
Black sprinters and the anthropology of West African populations
P.F.M. Ama, J.A. Simoneau, M.R. Boulay, O. Serresse, G. Thiériault, C. Bouchard: Skeletal muscle characteristics in sedentary Black and Caucasian males, Journal of Applied Physiology, 5/1986; p. 1758-1761
P.F.M. Ama, P. Lagasse, C. Bouchard, J.A. Simoneau: Anaerobic performances in black and white subjects, MSSE, 4/1990
P.F.M. Ama, S. Ambassa: Buoyancy of African black and European white males, American Journal of Human Biology, 9/1997
L. Gerace et al.: Skeletal differences between black and white men, American Journal of Human biology, 6/1994
Bradley C. Nindl, William J. Kraemer, Wesley H. Emmert, Scott A. Mazzetti, Lincoln A. Gotschalk, Margot Putukian, Wayne J. Sebastianelli, John F. Patton: Comparison of body composition assesment among lean black and white male collegiate athletes, MSSE, 5/1998
Robert M. Malina: Racial and ethnic variation in the motor development and performance of American children, Canadian Journal of Sports Sciences, 1988; p. 136-143
Takashi Abe, James B. Brown, William F. Brechue: Architectural characteristics of muscle in black and white college football players, MSSE, 10/1999
Kenneth J. Ellis, Steven A. Abrams, William W. Wong: Body composition of a young, multiethnic female population, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 1997; p. 724-31
W.J. Duey, D.R. Bassett jr., D.J. Torok, E.T. Howley, V. Bond, P. Mancuso, R. Trudell: Skeletal muscle fibre type and capillary density in college-aged blacks and whites, Annals of Human Biology, 4/1997
N.A. Ponthieux, D.G. Barker: Relationships between race and physical fitness, Research Quaterly, No. 4/1965
Jose Antonio, Chris Street: Speed Demons - The domination of sport by blacks, http://www.testosterone.net/html/5speed.html
Bruce Ettinger, Stephen Sidney, Steven R. Cummings, Cesar Libanati, Daniel D. Bikle, Irene S. Tekawa, Kimberly Tolan, Peter Steiger: Racial differences in bone density between young adult black and white subjects, Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, 1997; p. 429-434
Kenyans and Ethiopans
Marco Tartaglia, Giuseppina Scano, Gian Franco de Stefano: An anthropogenetic study on the Oromo and Amhara of Central Ethiopia, American Journal of Human Biology, 8/1996
B. Saltin, C.K. Kim, N. Terrados, H. Larssen, J. Svedenhag, C.J. Rolf: Morphology, enzyme activities and buffer capacity in leg muscles of Kenyan and Scandinavian runners, Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports, 5/1995
B. Saltin, C.K. Kim, N. Terrados, H. Larssen, J. Svedenhag, C.J. Rolf: Aerobic exercise capacity at sea level and at altitude in Kenyan boys, junior and senior runners compared with Scandinavian runners, Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports, 5/1995
Alon Eliakim, Dan Nemet, Louis Shenkman: Serum enzyme activities following long-distance running: Comparison between Ethiopian and white athletes, Israel Journal of Medical Sciences, 11/1995
Black South Africans
Adéle R. Weston, O. Karamizrak, A. Smith, T.D. Noakes, Kathryn H. Myburgh: African runners exhibit greater fatigue resistance, lower lactate accumulation and higher oxidative enzyme activity, Journal of Applied Physiology, 3/1999; p. 915-923
Andrew N. Bosch, Brian R. Goslin, Timothy D. Noakes, Steven C. Dennis: Physiological differences between black and white runners during a treadmill marathon, European Journal of Applied Physiology, 1990; p. 68-72
Pieter Coetzer, Timothy D. Noakes, Barry Sanders, Michael I. Lambert, Andrew N. Bosch, Toni Wiggins, Steven C. Dennis: Superior fatigue resistance of black South African endurance runners, Journal of Applied Physiology, 4/1993; p. 1822-27
Adéle R. Weston, Z. Mbambo, Kathryn H. Myburgh: Running economy of African and Caucasian distance runners, Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, 6/2000, p. 1130-4
General articles
Tim Noakes: Why do Africans run so swiftly?, South African Journal of Science, 11-12/1998
David R. Basset, jr. and Edward T. Howley: Limiting factors for maximum oxygen uptake and determinats of endurance performance, MSSE, 1/2000; p. 70-84
Ward-Smith, A.J.: Aerobic and anaerobic energy conversion during high-intensity exercise, MSSE, 12/1999, p. 1855-1860
Scientific American: Building the Elite Athlete, September 2000, especially pp. 90-97 (Gary Taubes: Deconstructing the Taboo), 98-103 (Reinout van Wagtendonk: Unlikely Domin-ation)
Jesper L. Andersen, Peter Schjerling, Bengt Saltin: Muscle, genes and athletic performance, Scientific American, September 2000
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