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.
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.
The school of thought has generally changed.
Live high, train low is now the prevailing methodology.
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?
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
Crazy that most of them come from the same place as our earliest ancestors from 200.000 years ago. Must be a magical place.
Hasn’t there been an older skeleton found in Morocco now?
Would explain the three dots there.
No it wouldn’t
Yea but imagine if it did
Djibouti getting left out
Time for a Djibouti call.
Hell yeah Wisconsin
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.
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.
Genetically I imagine the Africans have a more advantageous stride than the Asians?
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.
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.
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.
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”)
If you can dodge a bullet, you can dodge a ball homie
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