To wonder what Black athletes have....

[CrispyCod]

......that make them so superior in performance. It has to be genetic. I am in awe of them as they appear to glide effortlessly around the track. The Jamaican athletes are just wow! Their speed is just amazing.

I would think its down to all different factors, genetics, social, environmental and hard work and training.

i never really had a problem with the op, i was annoyed by the responses. anyway got toi go the jamaicans are on the track!

I have always taken the physiological reasons for black superiority as scientific fact. I'm willing to accept that is mindless ignorance on my part but, if so, then that is a problem because I think it's the mainstream opinion.

There has to be something though. Look at the 100m semis that have just been run. Not a single caucasian runner. 22 were black and 2 asian. From a good range of countries though so I don't think socioeconomic and cultural reasons can explain it all.

I had a little google and found this article from the BBC about Rift Valley here

Eugenics discussion on BBC1 Olympics now.

Interesting discussion now as well.

Watching with interest!

It must be great to have sprinting as your national sport. Better than football any day!

I'll agree with that.

I know it got talked about a bit further up thread, but I saw a very interesting article a few months ago about the number of black people who drowned after hurricane Catrina (as compared to the percentages of poor whites and other ethnicities in New Orleans) and a general discussion about lower levels of swimming competency amongst the black population in the US as compared to other ethnic groups.

It is a very complex picture - segregation and poverty meaning facilities were often not available (particularly at parental and grand-parent level), fear of water being transmitted down the generations, no tradition of swimming as a leisure activity, swimming being seen as 'acting white' in some neighbourhoods and even a small element to do with hair (basically that, for mothers with chemically straightened hair, sorting it out after a swim was a huge faff, which combined with the other factors meant swimming wasn't as attractive as a leisure activity and mothers were more likely to suggest something else).

Just talking specifically about the low representation of black athletes in the US swimming team, surely the lower swimming levels would mean fewer children at club level, with the corresponding lower levels of high achievers?

A topical issue and a French sports journalist has a new book on it.

*Leclaire concluded that the genes favourable for sprinting are more commonly found in those of West African origin.

There are exceptions, of course, which explains how French sprinter Lemaitre has been able to compete in the same class as the likes of Bolt and fellow Jamaican sprinter Yohan Blake.

?Lemaitre posesses the same genetic combinations that you find in most of the athletes of West African origin. He is the exception that confirms the rule,? Leclaire said.

East Africa, by contrast, is the land of the long-distance runner.

Author John Entine believes genetics also explains the continuing supremacy of Kenya?s runners in long distance races.

?They are short and slender with huge natural lung capacity and a preponderance of slow twitch muscles, the energy system for endurance sports,? Entine wrote on the website blackathlete.net. ?It?s a perfect biomechanical package for long-distance running but a disaster for sports that require anaerobic bursts of speed.?
*

www.france24.com/en/20120805-france-usain-bolt-black-sprinters-dominate-olympics

low representation of black athletes in the US swimming team, surely the lower swimming levels would mean

In terms of swimming there are also differences in bone density and body type. So you have cultural and biological factors:

"?There is a whole body of evidence showing that there are distinct differences in body types among blacks and whites,? said Jones, who specializes in adolescent obesity, nutrition and anthropometry, the study of body composition. ?These are real patterns being described here whether the fastest sprinters are Jamaican, African or Canadian most of them can be traced back generally to Western Africa.?

...Bejan and Jones cite past studies of the human body which found that on average, the center of gravity is about three percent higher in blacks than whites. Using this difference in body types, the researchers calculated that black sprinters are 1.5 percent faster than whites, while whites have the same advantage over blacks in the water. The difference might seem small, Bejan said, but not when considering that world records in sprinting and swimming are typically broken by fractions of seconds.

The center of gravity for an Asian is even more advantageous to swimming than for a white, but because they tend not to be as tall, they are not setting records, Bejan said.

?Locomotion is essentially a continual process of falling forward,? Bejan said. ?Body mass falls forward, then rises again. Mass that falls from a higher altitude falls faster. In running, the altitude is set by the location of the center of gravity. For the fastest swimmers, longer torsos allow the body to fall forward farther, riding the larger and faster wave.?

The researchers said this evolution of body types and increased speeds can be predicted by the constructal theory, a theory of natural design developed by Bejan that explains such diverse phenomena as river basin formation and basis of animal locomotion.

Jones said that the differences in body densities between blacks and whites are well-documented, which helps explain other health differences, such as the observation that black women have a lower incidence of osteoporosis than white women because of the increased density of their bones.

Swimmers, Jones said, tend to come from Europe, and therefore tend to be white. He also pointed out that there are cultural factors at play as well, such as a lack of access to swimming pools to those of lower socioeconomic status.

www.pratt.duke.edu/news/speediest-athletes-its-all-center-gravity

I watched a programme a few weeks ago about the Kenyan middle distance running success. It was primarily about the Irish coach who runs a running school/running camp in the Rift Valley as detailed here;

www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/aug/08/david-rudisha-colm-oconnell-kenya?newsfeed=true

Read this for more info, Rudisha broke the 800m world record last night......

The coach said in his opinion, the inherent success is down to (in no particular order):

The kids run everywhere so pretty much it's their fitness from childhood
Altitude of the Valley
It's a way out of poverty, running success = help for their families
They are all highly motivated
Group running = v competitive atmosphere (prob a bit like the Jamaican sprinting success, lots of role models to aspire to?)

That's pretty much it, it was refreshing to listen to a most humble irishman on all the now world beating runners he's coached on their way to Olympic success.

Ugh
ugh
ugh
ugh

why can people keep INANE STUPID SHIT like this this is their heads?

reading some of the comments here my toes are curling

yet another thread with mainly white middle class women coming out with a shit loads of stereotypes and calling it "intelligent discussion"

cringe

well, are you? the never ending stream of offensive ignorance that is posted, without thought, is amazing. you are not ashamed of yourselves at all, white people seem to swan through life without having to analyse or think before they open their mouths. where is the logic in any of the comments here?

Have a look back. There is science involved. Not psuedo eugencs science but actual science.

There are some experiments you cannot do, but there are populations you can study and ask why?

For instance iif you wanted to get thousands of southern europeans, have them breed with thousands of africans and thousands of native americans it would be an unethical experiment - not to mention taking decades - so if you want to investigate a population that looks like that you look at Brazil because that is the genetic make up of Brazillians, it is the most mixed on the planet.

Genetesists have looked at whether pale skin, blond or red hair and blue or green eyes have an evvoloutionary explanation. It seems they do.

The question with the Johnson programme was simple, why are so many sprinters descended from slaves? Is there a reason?

Of course there are other reasons, diet, coaching, opportunities etc. The shape of sprinters has changed over the last 4 decades or so. Cinder tracks required light / slim runners, modern tracks allow heavier, more muscular runners to compete.

I'm quite aware of the racism that occurs between many black africans and black Jamaicans (yes there are white Jamaicans). I used to teach in an international college and there would be african students at one side of the room, Caribean students at the other and in the middle all the other students. It made teaching equalitya nd diversity fun.

Back to the genetics. Some populations are more prone to some diseases / conditions, knowing this and that treatments may be tailored to someone rather than a general one size fits all is vitally important to the next generation of drugs.

The majority of people in the world are lactose intolerant. Your ability to process alcohol is genetic. In Europe people purified water by changing it to alcohol, they Europeans also drink milk as adults, in china they purified water by making tea. If you are European you probably have the genetics that make you able to produce the chemicals to process alcohol and lactose, if you are Chinese you probably don't (There are of course exceptions). Most Native american reservations ban alcohol because it has such a devastating effect.

Sickle cell disease is unusual in Europeans, if it does occur it is usually people from the South Eastern Mediteranian.

Please stop thinking of this as an issue of racism. Genetics are fascinating, the study of genetics is ggoing to revoloutionise medical treatment in this century.

Medicine has only in the last 50 years started to record 'normal racial variants', ie noticing things that are normal in one population but not another. It makes for more acurate diagnosis and treatment.

Women's tennis has huge numbers of East European players.

They (or more often their parents) see it as a way to fame and riches. They've all watched Sharapova and the women who went before her and said if we have a little talent and work hard we can do that.

sashh

yopur comments are intelligent, and based on science

the OP and some responses, were not

thats the differenhce

porcamiseria

Thanks for calling me intelligent - I'm off to get a chufty badge now

Could it be, that these athletes have just worked really hard in their training in order to ahieve at a high level. Do you have to diminish their achievements by questioning why they are so good. Why cant they just be good. There is an underlying current of prejudice in this thread coated with the pretence of wanting to know why Black athletes do so well. White British athletes have been dominating the cycling in the Olympics and no one has raised the question why this is a predominantly White sport, people just accept that they work hard and are producing the results. Running is one sport that you can do for free, it is not possible to price someone out of it because you dont need to spends lots of money on lessons and sports equipment. Someone stated earlier that there is a issue with sports teachers as they would push certain children into specific sports based on racial bias, i think this is sometimes true. Personally i would like sport to be pushed more in this country in schools. Also it makes me roll my eyes when people say my husband is Black or my best friend is Black, my child is mixed race, just before some ignorance rolls out of their mouth. Guess what none of that gives you a free pass. Also Black people can be racist too towards other Black people, so if your husband says Black runners run fast because they have big nostrils he is a fool. This thread has made me realise how far as a society we still have to go when it comes to racism, racial equality and prejudice, as it is much more subtle and ingrained in people.

Completely agree shera04 - what I was trying to get at upthread but put far more eloquently than I :)

Just to say that I was watching the TV Olympic coverage when this question was asked of Colin Jackson, Michael Johnson and Denise Lewis - they were not at all comfortable with the answer being as simplistic as black=good at speed - they seemed to suggest that there many more variables feeding into why black athletes dominate in this field.

So many variables for success in anything are to do with nurture not nature that it is over-simplistic to put achievement purely down to genetics!

Ssssh

But don't you think environmental factors have a far larger part to play than any 'predisposition' to be good at sprinting? No development occurs without an environment.

We are not taking about predisposition to glaucoma for instance, bit the environmental and cultural factors which push people of one ethnicity towards a certain behaviour.

Again, would you argue that the lack of women at boardroom level is due to some innate factors? Or that the huge overreoresentatipn of young black men in prison in the US is due to some genetic predisposition?

No of course you wouldn't.

What we are looking at is a unique individual born with many, many possibilities. Social factors shape a child's brain through plasticity, some switches as never turned on, others are activated by the environment in which they develop. And this shapes the subjects children choose at Alevel and it shapes the sports which certain youngsters are more likely to take part in.

There was a fascinating Horizon programme which explored the controversial findings of the 1960's that black people scored lower on IQ tests, while Asian and Caucasian subjects scored more highly. It was assumed this was due to some innate capability. New research shows that all IQ is, is a test of how well you can do the test and that children developing within certain cultures will absorb concepts which help them in IQ tests. It is subtle, but it is there. Therefore IQ is nothing to do with ethnicity, in fact it is the wrong question to ask.

I see a similarity in the question being asked in the op.

I think that it is often a problem that people see traits as inherent in a race rather than recognising that certain racial groups develop certain characteristics as a response to environmental factors as sassh as mentioned with milk and alcohol for example.

Beta Thalassemia and Sickle Cell disease offer some protection against Malaria so it is not surprising that both of these diseases are more commonly found in populations that are exposed to Malaria as they increase your chances of surviving to reproductive maturity. These are diseases that are found across very large geographical areas and diverse populations.

White skin offered a biological advantage in Northern Europe because white skin needs lower levels of sunlight to make Vitamin D and some researchers believe that with the switch to farming the amount of Vit D in the diet dropped making synthesis from sunlight more important.

I get the impression that the population is becoming more homogeneous than it was a couple of hundred years ago so I wonder what the discussion will be in 100 years time.

I think one of the reasons the sprinters you see are so fast and so brilliant is because they have trained very very hard for it. Real, measurable endeavour always trumps spurious genetic theories.