The reality is every single track event (men and women) has been won by someone 'african'. The 'west africans' won the sprints and the north and east africans won the distance events. At some point someone will discuss this in public.
Interesting timing on your question
This article was front page of the star this morning...mih mind run on yuh post one time
http://olympics.thestar.com/2008/article/484143Why Jamaica rules in track
Surprisingly, nurture is winning over nature to explain track prowess
August 23, 2008
Comments on this story (12)
Garth Woolsey
Joseph Hall
STAFF REPORTERS
As the Jamaican men's sprint relay team sped away from the field in yesterday's 4x100m Olympic final – completing a near sweep of the sprint medals for the tiny Caribbean country – they also left behind a big question: How could such a small country produce the fastest runners on the planet?
As of February, athletes of West African descent, like those four winning Jamaicans, held 494 of the top 500 times in the 100-metre sprint. During the current Games, Jamaicans have won four individual sprint gold medals, led by Usain Bolt's record-setting Beijing blaze.
The island has a population of 2.8 million in a world of 6.6 billion people, so the obvious conclusion to be drawn is that sprinters of West African descent have a genetic advantage based on ethnic ancestry.
Not so fast!
In the nature or nurture debate that has been a subtext of these Games – where podium positions have seemed allotted along racial lines – the nature theory has actually been losing scientific ground.
Indeed, as genome research increasingly opens our DNA to scrutiny, some sports scientists say it is becoming harder and harder to find any genetic connection between race and prowess in a specific sport.
"There is no genetic evidence to date," argues University of Glasgow sports scientist Yannis Pitsiladis.
"That is not to say genes are not important, but there are no race-exclusive genes to explain this phenomenon," says Pitsiladis, who has made a study of East African athletes and their decades-old domination of long-distance running.
Pitsiladis says ample studies have tried to pin down a racial link to athletic excellence. But, he says, there is no more evidence for this connection than there is for one between ethnicity and intelligence.
"If I had a million dollars I would resolve this issue for good," he said in an email interview. "I'd put the stereotypical view of the natural black athlete (or indeed the intellectually superior white) to rest."
University of Toronto exercise researcher Scott Thomas says that, all the Olympian evidence aside, the debate is still open about race and sports and that the ethno-genetic theory has been losing ground.
"It's looking like there is some genetic component to performance, but it's not race linked," says Thomas, an expert in biomechanics.
For example, Thomas says, there is a "tremendous variety" in the genotypes found in Ethiopian and Kenyan populations, which produce the top distance runners.
And this same genetic variety, he says, "overlaps with varieties we find in other places."
So if the overwhelming empirical evidence of race and sports excellence is not based on genetics, then how to account for West African sprint dominance, East African marathon supremacy or Caucasian prowess in the pool?
Think geography, says University of Western Ontario biomechanics expert Volker Nolte.
He says that lacking a genomic explanation, standbys like the altitude, terrain and cultural environments where athletes were raised and trained are nudging their way back to the scientific forefront.
Look, for example, at Kenyan runners like Martin Lel, who is a favourite to win tomorrow's marathon.
"These people, their high performance centre is in high altitude in Kenya," says Nolte.
Living and training at high altitudes, where the air is thinner, forces the body to produce more oxygen-carrying red blood cells to feed straining muscles, Nolte says.
For the Kenyans, this natural form of "blood doping" is accompanied by a lifelong culture that both promotes – through such things as long-distance runs to school – and values distance running.
The same cultural and geographic explanations may hold true for the sprints and the dominant West Africans, raised and trained within the Caribbean culture.
"Environment is also a social environment," Nolte says. "Here it's an environment that says, `We are terrific sprinters so let's have a system where lots of kids participate, we identify good ones and they're celebrated and they continue on with that.'"
In the nature vs. nurture debate, however, others give the former the inside track on performance.
The theme was explored in a book by American author Jon Entine, first published in 2000 and recently reissued – Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We're Afraid To Talk About It.
"All the articles coming out now mention the unchallenged understanding that genetics plays a significant role in shaping body types," Entine told the Star in a telephone interview from Chicago this week.
"And, athletes of West African ancestry definitely have an edge in the sprints and certain other sports in which quick-burst running and jumping are key. ... We're all born different and we're born different by patterns. Different populations around the world have evolved facing different kinds of environmental and cultural challenges that have shaped how they develop."
Entine broke down some of the statistical evidence in an article published this past February.
"Genetically based, anatomical differences help explain why athletes of primarily West African ancestry hold 97 per cent of top sprint times," he wrote, "including 494 of the top 500 100-metre times, yet are not very good at endurance sports, which requires a much different physiology.
"The body type of whites falls in between West African descended and East African athletes. They have more natural upper-body strength, which contributes to their domination of weightlifting, field events such as the shot put and hammer (whites hold 46 of the top 50 throws), and the offensive line in football. Where flexibility is key, East Asians shine, such as in diving and some skating and gymnastic events."
Recent reports have cited unpublished research being done by the University of West Indies in collaboration with the U.K.'s Glasgow University, suggesting, according to Britain's Daily Mail, "fast men have a special component called Actinen A in their fast twitch muscles, which determine whether humans are sprinters or plodders."
Entine said "that's not new," adding many genetic factors – not only the one cited – can determine an athlete's potential makeup.
"There's a lot of serendipity, pure luck, at work here with the confluence of so many Jamaican runners (sprinters) right now. At future Olympics you're going to see runners distributed through people of West African ancestry, distributed through different populations whether it's other Caribbean communities or the U.S. or Canada, France, Britain, whatever. Again, it's serendipity you see such a high concentration of Jamaicans."
In his book, Taboo, Entine writes: "The evidence speaks for itself. Humans are different. No amount of rhetoric, however well motivated, can undermine the intriguing kaleidoscope of humanity. It's time to acknowledge and even celebrate the obvious: It's neither racist nor a myth to say that 'white men can't jump.' "
Entine said this week that he has faced criticism for his work but less of it as time goes on. "Sports – running in particular – is a perfect laboratory," he writes in Taboo.
"Athletic competition offers a definitiveness that eludes most other aspects of life. The favoured explanation for black athlete success – a dearth of opportunities elsewhere and hard work – just do not suffice to explain the dimensions of this expanding monopoly. The decisive variable cannot be found in modern culture but in our genes – the inherent difference between populations shaped by thousands of years of evolution.
"This is, of course, dangerous territory. Fascination about black physicality, and black anger about being caricatured as a lesser human being, have been part of the dark side of the American dialogue on race for more than a century."
Australian researcher Daniel MacArthur argues there may be a rush to oversimplify as science continues to work the genetic frontiers. MacArthur has done extensive research on Actinen A, more accurately termed ACTN3. He gives credit to nurture, as well as nature.
"The ACTN3-centred argument ... dismisses the importance of Jamaica's impressive investment in the infrastructure and training system required to identify and nurture elite track athletes, the effects of a culture that idolizes local track heroes, and the powerful desire of young Jamaicans to use athletic success to lift themselves and their families out of poverty."
Of course elite athletes are genetically blessed, all experts agree.
This is especially true in the amount and distribution of the "twitch" fibres that make up the human muscle mass.
Human muscle tissue comes in two varieties: "fast twitch" or white fibres that account for speed and power, and "slow twitch" or red fibres that fuel endurance.
Laid down in the distant past – when humans were hunters, gatherers and often themselves hunted – the genetic blueprint would dictate a ratio of about 60 per cent slow twitch and 40 fast twitch in the average musculature, Nolte says.
"We needed red twitch fibres, 100,000 years ago, to give us the ability to walk long, long distances from one berry area to another one," says Nolte, who coached the men's coxless fours rowing team to an Olympic silver in 1996.
"And we also needed the fast twitch fibres because you either had to run away from an animal or get after it to catch it."
In elite runners, however, the distribution is genetically skewed, Nolte says, with sprinters possessing as much as 50 or 60 per cent fast twitch fibres and marathoners an even greater preponderance of the slow twitch variety.
From this genetic base, a combination of innate talent, cultural and physical environment and, most importantly training, will determine an athlete's position on the podium, Nolte says. "You find white guys with lots of fast twitch fibres and you'll find also white guys who can run a long time."
It's ultimately training, Nolte says, that will push an elite athlete to the top. "Yes you need the talent, no doubt about it, body size, muscle fibre composition and such things.
"But you also need the training environment and only these together makes outstanding athletes."
ah beginning to wonder if Liburd is the only journalist lurker to read this board
