The topography explains it all. https://geology.com/articles/east-africa-rift.shtml
tl;dr The people of that area in East Africa naturally live close to sea level, however there are easily accessible elevations changes that distance runners have trained on for probably centuries. It turns out that training at high altitudes and recovering at low altitudes provides a tangible and demonstrable advantage compared to just single elevation training.
The school of thought has generally changed.
Live high, train low is now the prevailing methodology.
This can’t be the whole story, otherwise we’d see places like Chile, Peru, and India competing too
India? the sea and the himalayas are too far apart to compare.
Yeah like the other commenter said this isn’t it, nobody is commuting up and down 10,000’ on a regular basis, especially in antiquity. Just because different elevations “look close” on a map means nothing.
Far more likely is this is a concentrated population of folks with highly desirable traits for distance running.
That’s good. I thought the map was being racist
The map is being racist by labelling Canada, Morocco and USA but not the super-relevant African countries. I’m baffled by that…
Like, I don’t think it’s intentional but how does that happen?
Those Ethiopian and Kenyan runners live and train at high altitude, when they compete at lower elevations where there’s more oxygen, they have a dramatic edge over other runners.
I’d wager we would see the same effect if athletes from Bhutan, Nepal and/or Tibet decided to compete in long-distance running.
Thanks for adding context.
This is why the US Olympic Training Center is in Colorado.
Genetically I imagine the Africans have a more advantageous stride than the Asians?
Africa is more diverse than the rest of the world put together.
Which particular Africans are you referring to?
As OP and not the poster you are asking, I’ll answer this one:
Ethiopians and particularly Sudanese (then zooming in even more specifically - the Nuba tribe) are known for being among the tallest people in the continent today.It was right around this area where the Kush people of the Nile Valley Civilization flourished in antiquity. The Kush are described by accounts of the era as being taller than any other Mediterranean groups.
Relative genetic isolation since then results in that they were tall then, and they are tall now. Some of this genetic heritage must have also spread down to Kenya in the interim.
Not to say the biomechanics are equal, but Cheptegei the current 10K record holder is 5’6” / 1.67m. So it’s not like an Usain Bolt situation. And for the marathon, Mo Farah is 5’9”.
I remember hearing during the Olympics them actually talk about how much of a freak Bolt is to be so tall and so fast. Most runners are on the shorter side. For those that watch the NFL you’ll know that being tall and fast is what makes people DK Metcalf such a freak of nature when sprinters are actually usually smaller, like Tyreek Hill. It’s less about stride length and more about power put into the ground which is easier for shorter legs.
If you watch Bolt run you’ll notice he doesn’t actually hit his peak until way after the other runners during the 100m. He has said before iirc that he’s actually a more natural 200m runner rather than a 100m runner. On the 100 he barely gets to his top speed before the finish. That’s what makes his 100m records truly so phenomenal, he’s not really built for that race but was still so much faster than everyone else on the track.
It’s not out of the realm of possibility that a runner from Nepal being Asian and therefore statistically likely to be shorter than someone born in Africa, could be a record breaking runner. Of course this is all about sprinting but over longer distances the longer lankier bodies prevail, better momentum.
tldr: short legs go zoom, long legs go long.
Hell yeah Wisconsin
Also a region with good coffee. There must be a correlation…
I wonder how much caffeine doping goes on before races. It sure as hell gives me tons of energy
More likely the altitude helps with training & coffee growing, but a little caffeine never hurt
Djibouti getting left out
Time for a Djibouti call.
Crazy that most of them come from the same place as our earliest ancestors from 200.000 years ago. Must be a magical place.
the ones in America are ethnically the same ones in Africa
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Who are you talking about? Galen Rupp? Grant Fisher? Chris Solinsky?
https://trackandfieldnews.com/tfn-lists/u-s-all-time-list-men/#10k
In a way, we are all from Africa, so he still has a point.
Sorry to be the guy that brings controversial issues to this thread. But this kind of thing is exactly why the “trans women have a biological advantage in sports” argument holds no water. (Other than the fact its almost entirely untrue)
People from this region have a biological advantage in their sports, several orders of magnitude more of an advantage than trans women have. But no one is calling for these people to be banned from sports.
I think we should add biological in front of male and female just to remove any confusion…
That’s what AMAB (assigned male at birth) and AFAB (assigned female at birth) are for.
So now we now have to add A M/F AB (sport here) just to appease y’all?
Sorry to be that guy, but this picture gives us no evidence that the advantage of these people is biological and not the result of other factors such as culture or environment.
several orders of magnitude more of an advantage than trans women have.
Have there even been studies which can back up this claim¿? Hell have there even been studies which even measure how much of an advantage having smaller calves and ankles gives¿?
9 Conclusion There is no firm basis available in evidence to indicate that trans women have a consistent and measurable overall performance benefit after 12 months of testosterone suppression. While an advantage in terms of Lean Body Mass (LBM), Cross Section Area (CSA) and strength may persist statistically after 12 months, there is no evidence that this translates to any performance advantage as compared to elite cis-women athletes of similar size and height
They’re resorting to saying “trans women are stronger than their competitors, but how do we even know that being stronger is advantageous in sport???”
You need to work on your reading comprehension. XD
Do you think that an advantage in terms of strength translates to any performance advantage?
I think that “maybe” having an advantage in terms of strength is an admission that the research is incomplete.
The document is full of admissions that the research is incomplete.
Did you mean ‘yes’. Because the article you share concludes that trans women have no advantage which is greater than other biological advantages
the article you share concludes that trans women have no advantage which is greater than other biological advantages
Noit doesn’t. You are misrepresenting it, or misuing the word ‘concludes’. It never says anything like “we conclude’ that there is no advantage”. The actual conclusion is on p40-41 and can more honestly be phrased as “we cannot conclude that there’s a definite advantage. Strength is a possible exception, but how do we even know strength is relevant to sport?” (“Additional biomarkers (such as handgrip strength, hip angle, bone density) have been used uncritically in positivist biological studies to demonstrate cis men’s purported biological advantages over cis women, but there is not sufficient evidence these measures are salient to the question of trans women’s participation.”)
There are tall asians, but there are no testosterone flooded women.
On an unrelated note, can i turn off reply notifications to posts ?
Yes the famously Asian country of Kenya.
Turning off reply notifications depends on what platform/app you are using to access, but you can turn them off on all platforms by deleting your account.
Got a problem with examples ? Ok, i’l dumb myself down for you.
There are really short Kenyans.
Did i said something that hurt you so much that you want me to delete my acc ?
Do you really think that cis women can’t have naturally high testosterone levels? And especially not higher than trans women, who literally have their testosterone levels controlled by medications?
Learn to behave.
And as naturally high as men ? Probably not. (Hence the “floded”)
Remember Caster Semenya?
If you can dodge a bullet, you can dodge a ball homie