Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Genetic Factors For Why Black Males Are The Best Runners In The World


I highly recommend following article by Jon Entine titled “The DNA Olympics -- Jamaicans win sprinting 'genetic lottery' -- and why we should all care” published on 8/12/2012 in Forbes Magazine. Same author has also written a book about this subject.

The Record

“The trends are eye opening: Athletes of African ancestry hold every major male running record, from the 100 meters to the marathon. … Over the last seven Olympic men’s 100-meter races, all 56 finalists have been of West African descent.  Only two non-African runners ... have cracked the top 500 100-meter times.”

The Sprinters

“For decades, …Jamaica, Cuba, Trinidad and Tobago, Saint Kitts, Barbados, Grenada, Netherlands Antilles and the Bahamas in the Caribbean and Nigeria, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Senegal and Namibia in western Africa, as single countries, have each produced more elite male sprinters than all of white Europe and Asia combined.”

The Long-Distance Runners

“While terrible at the sprints, runners [from east Africa like] Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda and Somalia, along with a sprinkling of North and Southern Africans, regularly dominate endurance running.”


Genetics Still In Its Infancy

“Genetically linked, highly heritable characteristics such as skeletal structure, the distribution of muscle fiber types (for example, sprinters have more natural fast twitch fibers, while distance runners are naturally endowed with more of the slow twitch variety), reflex capabilities, metabolic efficiency and lung capacity are not evenly distributed among populations. Do we yet know the specific genes that contribute to on the field success? No, but that’s not an argument against the powerful role of genetics in sports. We do not yet know all the factors that determine skin color, but we know that genetics determines it. Slowly, geneticists will link human performance, including sports skills, to our DNA and more specifically to our ancestral roots—populations.”

No comments: