Has the theory of "racialized" running performance been debunked?, by Steve Sailer

Has the Theory of "Racialized" Running Performance Been Debunked?

Steve Sailer • March 13, 2024

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With the Olympics coming up this summer in Paris only three years after the covid-delayed Olympics in Tokyo, here’s a preprint attempting to debunk my arguments, going back to 1997, that Olympic running performance is related to human biodiversity.

Revisiting Stereotypes: Race and Running

Tade Souaiaiaa, Nabie Fofanah, Rawle De Lisle and Sheena Mason

The athletic achievements of African athletes in global running championships have long been subject to scientific and sociological inquiry. During the 1990s, a popular narrative emerged, suggesting that West African lineage conferred inherent sprinting advantages, and that North, South and East African’s are specialized for longer distances. Part and parcel to this narrative was the enthusiastic belief that it would very soon be substantiated by a genotyping revolution that would enable prognostication of individual athletic potential.

We revisit this hypothesis in the post-genomic era. First, we compare the global running records used to generate the racialist hypotheses with performances over the last twenty years (2004-2023). Focusing on the 100m reveals intriguing trends, including the ascendancy of Jamaica as a sprint powerhouse and the elevation of South African and East Asian sprinters to the global stage, a direct challenge to the racialist paradigm. In line with an in-depth analysis of the influences on elite runners, we build a regression model to predict 100m performance based on environmental and psychological factors.

Next, we direct our attention to 1500m, where the last two British champions have been part of a European resurgence that hasn’t been seen in decades. Examining three different time periods, we identify a thirty year national slowdown (1989-2018). Adapting our model to this time period reveals striking evidence that racial perception has greater impact on performance than racial physiology.

Synthesizing these findings, we introduce a psychocultural hypothesis, positing that interactions between racial perceptions and social dynamics shape the global distribution of running performance. We contrast this hypothesis with the racialist paradigm and propose extending it beyond sport where it offers insight across many domains.

The argument here is basically that if Nature can’t be proved beyond a shadow of a doubt to determine 100% of running results, then Nurture must be 100% responsible and race play no role whatsoever other than stereotype threat.

Personally, I’ve always argued for the interplay of nature and nurture, but the authors and their friends appear to be convinced that that’s cheating: you’ve got to pick one and only one: nature or nurture? Which is it?

As I may have mentioned once or twice over the decades and millennia, in the race for the World’s Fastest Man, the Olympic 100m dash, the eight finalists have been extraordinarily sub-Saharan by ancestry going back to the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. At present, 79 of the last 80 finalists across the last ten Olympics have had at least one parent of primarily sub-Saharan ancestry.

On the other hand, a Chinese guy, Su Bingtian, broke that streak in 2021 by not just qualifying but winning his semifinal with a 9.83, using a spectacular start and then grimly muscling his way over the finish line in first:

Video Link

And the fellow who almost caught him in the semi and won gold in the final with a 9.80, Lamont Marcell Jacobs, has an African American dad but a white mom.

So it could be that sprinting is getting slightly more diverse.

But still … 79 out of 80.

Most of the arguments the authors come up with are either ones that I’ve come up with too, or direct analogies. For example, they argue that countries go through cycles of greatness, such as British middle distance champions Steve Ovett, Sebastian Coe, and Steve Cram in the 1980s, or, with perhaps excessive enthusiasm, the British “Return to Greatness” in the mile since 2019.

I could well believe that an efflorescence of competition could egg runners on to great performances, as in Britain in the 1980s, whereas a decline in competition could sap times, as in America in the same era. Likewise, I wrote in 2004:

Why don’t American distance runners run as fast as they oncendid? It appears to be an instructive interaction of nature and nurture.

The decline has been absolute, not just relative to the rest of the world. From 1965 through 1967, three American high school boys (Jim Ryun [now a GOP Congressman from Kansas], Marty Liquori, and Tim Danielson) ran the mile in under four minutes. It didn’t happen again until Alan Webb did it in 2001. I suspect that what took the air out of the American middle distance balloon was Kenyan Kip Keino beating Ryun at Mexico City in the 1500m in 1968. This was at high altitude, where Keino was at home, so it didn’t seem so bad at first, but then the Kenyans just kept on winning. A huge boom in recreational distance running started in America in 1972 when Frank Shorter won the Olympic Marathon, but it didn’t lead to a new generation of world-class runners. The top endurance talent must have gone into mountain climbing or triathlons or bicycle racing or something else where they didn’t have to
compete with the Kenyans.

Anyway, here are currently the 100 fastest marathon runners of all time. The authors decline to consider marathon running for reasons. But it looks pretty informative to me:

Competitor DOB Nat Ethnicity

Kelvin KIPTUM 02 Dec 1999 KEN

Eliud KIPCHOGE 05 Nov 1984 KEN

Kenenisa BEKELE 13 Jun 1982 ETH

Sisay LEMMA 12 Dec 1990 ETH

Benson KIPRUTO 17 Mar 1991 KEN

Birhanu LEGESE 11 Sep 1994 ETH

Mosinet GEREMEW 12 Feb 1992 ETH

Timothy KIPLAGAT 18 Sep 1993 KEN

Dennis KIMETTO 22 Apr 1984 KEN

Evans CHEBET 10 Nov 1988 KEN

Gabriel Gerald GEAY 10 Sep 1996 TAN

Lawrence CHERONO 07 Aug 1988 KEN

Alexander Mutiso MUNYAO 10 Sep 1996 KEN

Emmanuel MUTAI 12 Oct 1984 KEN

Wilson Kipsang KIPROTICH 15 Mar 1982 KEN

Amos KIPRUTO 16 Sep 1992 KEN

Vincent Kipkemoi NGETICH 03 Jan 1999 KEN

Mule WASIHUN 20 Oct 1993 ETH

Tadese TAKELE 03 Aug 2002 ETH

Deresa GELETA ETH

Getaneh MOLLA 10 Jan 1994 ETH

Bashir ABDI 10 Feb 1989 BEL Somali

Patrick Makau MUSYOKI 02 Mar 1985 KEN

Tamirat TOLA 11 Aug 1991 ETH

Herpasa NEGASA 11 Sep 1993 ETH

Guye Idemo ADOLA 20 Oct 1990 ETH

Morhad AMDOUNI 21 Jun 1988 FRA Tunisian

Dawit WOLDE 19 May 1991 ETH

Stanley Kipleting BIWOTT 21 Apr 1986 KEN

Kinde ATANAW 15 Apr 1993 ETH

Reuben Kiprop KIPYEGO 21 Aug 1996 KEN

Haile GEBRSELASSIE 18 Apr 1973 ETH

Leul GEBRESILASE 20 Sep 1992 ETH

Marius KIPSEREM 17 May 1988 KEN

Asefa MENGSTU 22 Jan 1988 ETH

Bernard Kiprop KOECH 31 Jan 1988 KEN

Geoffrey MUTAI 07 Oct 1981 KEN

Kaan Kigen ÖZBILEN 15 Jan 1986 TUR Kenyan

Barnabas KIPTUM 08 Dec 1986 KEN

Joshua BELET 10 Feb 1998 KEN

Elisha ROTICH 12 Apr 1990 KEN

Ronald KORIR 10 Apr 1991 KEN

Ayele ABSHERO 28 Dec 1990 ETH

Geoffrey KAMWOROR 22 Nov 1992 KEN

Tesfaye ABERA 31 Mar 1992 ETH

Duncan KIBET 25 Apr 1978 KEN

James Kipsang KWAMBAI 28 Feb 1983 KEN

Sammy KITWARA 26 Nov 1986 KEN

Vincent KIPCHUMBA 03 Aug 1990 KEN

Seifu TURA 19 Jun 1997 ETH

Tsegaye MEKONNEN 15 Jun 1995 ETH

Dickson CHUMBA 27 Oct 1986 KEN

Jonathan Kipleting KORIR 20 Nov 1986 KEN

Hayle LEMI 13 Sep 1994 ETH

CyBrian KOTUT 06 Jun 1992 KEN

Hiskel TEWELDE 15 Sep 1986 ERI

Bethwel KIBET 04 Aug 1991 KEN

Tsegaye KEBEDE 15 Jan 1987 ETH

Solomon DEKSISA 11 Mar 1994 ETH

Hailemaryam KIROS 05 Feb 1997 ETH

Haftu TEKLU 21 Jan 2000 ETH

El Hassan EL ABBASSI 13 Apr 1984 BRN Moroccan

Asrar HIYRDEN 25 Nov 1999 ETH

Hillary KIPSAMBU 04 Feb 1985 KEN

Andualem BELAY 05 Apr 1992 ETH

Lelisa DESISA 14 Jan 1990 ETH

Titus EKIRU 02 Jan 1992 KEN

Mekuant AYENEW 24 Oct 1991 ETH

Yemane TSEGAY 08 Apr 1985 ETH

Berhanu SHIFERAW 31 May 1993 ETH

Barselius KIPYEGO 22 Jul 1993 KEN

Stephen KISSA 01 Dec 1988 UGA

Kibiwott KANDIE 20 Jun 1996 KEN

Tadesse TOLA 31 Oct 1987 ETH

Shura KITATA 09 Jun 1996 ETH

Tsegaye GETACHEW 30 Nov 1996 ETH

Dino SEFIR 28 May 1988 ETH

Getu FELEKE 28 Nov 1986 ETH

Abebe NEGEWO 20 May 1984 ETH

Daniel DO NASCIMENTO 28 Jul 1998 BRA Black Brazilian

Feyisa LILESA 01 Feb 1990 ETH

Endeshaw NEGESSE 13 Mar 1988 ETH

Kenneth Kiprop KIPKEMOI 02 Aug 1984 KEN

Mathew Kipkoech KISORIO 16 May 1989 KEN

Chalu DESO 14 Dec 1997 ETH

Abayneh DEGU 01 Dec 1998 ETH

Brimin KIPKORIR 1989 KEN

Gashau AYALE 22 Aug 1996 ISR Ethiopia

Markos GENETI 07 Jun 1984 ETH

Titus KIPRUTO 25 Jun 1998 KEN

Paul TERGAT 17 Jun 1969 KEN

Sammy Kipchoge KORIR 12 Dec 1971 KEN

Jonathan MAIYO 05 May 1988 KEN

Kengo SUZUKI 11 Jun 1995 JPN Japanese

Abdi NAGEEYE 02 Mar 1989 NED Somali

Philemon KIPLIMO 10 Oct 1998 KEN

Bazezew ASMARE 11 Sep 1996 ETH

Amanal PETROS 17 May 1995 GER Eritrean

Gadisa BIRHANU 15 Sep 1992 ETH

Philemon RONO 08 Feb 1991 KEN

It appears to be 1 Japanese, 1 black Brazilian, 2 North Africans, and a whole bunch of East Africans, almost all of them Kenyans or Ethiopians. Among the top 100 all-time marathoners, there are 46 running for Ethiopia and 44 running for Kenya.

What about among the top 100 100 meter men?

Mark	WIND	Competitor	DOB	Nat	Ethnicity
9.58	0.9	Usain BOLT	21 Aug 1986	JAM	Caribbean Black
9.69	2	Tyson GAY	09 Aug 1982	USA	African-American
9.69	-0.1	Yohan BLAKE	26 Dec 1989	JAM	Caribbean Black
9.72	0.2	Asafa POWELL	23 Nov 1982	JAM	Caribbean Black
9.74	0.9	Justin GATLIN	10 Feb 1982	USA	African-American
9.76	0.6	Christian COLEMAN	06 Mar 1996	USA	African-American
9.76	1.2	Trayvon BROMELL	10 Jul 1995	USA	African-American
9.76	1.4	Fred KERLEY	07 May 1995	USA	African-American
9.77	1.2	Ferdinand OMANYALA	02 Jan 1996	KEN	Luhya Bantu
9.78	0.9	Nesta CARTER	11 Oct 1985	JAM	Caribbean Black
9.79	0.1	Maurice GREENE	23 Jul 1974	USA	African-American
9.8	1.3	Steve MULLINGS	29 Nov 1982	JAM	Caribbean Black
9.8	0.1	Lamont Marcell JACOBS	26 Sep 1994	ITA	White and African-American
9.82	1.7	Richard THOMPSON	07 Jun 1985	TTO	Caribbean Black
9.83	0.9	Bingtian SU	29 Aug 1989	CHN	Chinese
9.83	0.9	Ronnie BAKER	15 Oct 1993	USA	African-American
9.83	1.3	Zharnel HUGHES	13 Jul 1995	GBR	Caribbean Black
9.83	0	Noah LYLES	18 Jul 1997	USA	African-American
9.84	0.7	Donovan BAILEY	16 Dec 1967	CAN	Caribbean Black
9.84	0.2	Bruny SURIN	12 Jul 1967	CAN	Caribbean Black
9.84	1.2	Akani SIMBINE	21 Sep 1993	RSA	Southern African
9.85	1.2	Leroy BURRELL	21 Feb 1967	USA	African-American
9.85	1.7	Olusoji Adetokunbo FASUBA	09 Jul 1984	NGR	West African
9.85	1.3	Michael RODGERS	24 Apr 1985	USA	African-American
9.85	1.5	Marvin BRACY	15 Dec 1993	USA	African-American
9.85	0.4	Kishane THOMPSON	17 Jul 2001	JAM	Caribbean Black
9.86	1.2	Carl LEWIS	01 Jul 1961	USA	African-American
9.86	-0.4	Frank FREDERICKS	02 Oct 1967	NAM	Southwest African
9.86	1.8	Ato BOLDON	30 Dec 1973	TTO	Caribbean Black
9.86	0.6	Francis OBIKWELU	22 Nov 1978	POR	West African
9.86	1.4	Keston BLEDMAN	08 Mar 1988	TTO	Caribbean Black
9.86	1.3	Jimmy VICAUT	27 Feb 1992	FRA	White and West African
9.86	0.8	Divine ODUDURU	07 Oct 1996	NGR	West African
9.86	1.6	Michael NORMAN	03 Dec 1997	USA	Black-Japanese
9.86	0.2	Oblique SEVILLE	16 Mar 2001	JAM	Caribbean Black
9.86	0.7	Micah WILLIAMS	12 Nov 2001	USA	African-American
9.87	0.3	Linford CHRISTIE	02 Apr 1960	GBR	Caribbean Black
9.87	-0.2	Obadele THOMPSON	30 Mar 1976	BAR	Caribbean Black
9.88	1.8	Shawn CRAWFORD	14 Jan 1978	USA	African-American
9.88	1	Walter DIX	31 Jan 1986	USA	African-American
9.88	0.9	Ryan BAILEY	13 Apr 1989	USA	African-American
9.88	1	Michael FRATER	06 Oct 1982	JAM	Caribbean Black
9.88	0	Letsile TEBOGO	07 Jun 2003	BOT	Southern African
9.89	1.6	Travis PADGETT	13 Dec 1986	USA	African-American
9.89	1.6	Darvis PATTON	04 Dec 1977	USA	African-American
9.89	1.3	Ngonidzashe MAKUSHA	11 Mar 1987	ZIM	Southern African
9.89	0.2	Isiah YOUNG	05 Jan 1990	USA	African-American
9.89	0.8	Kenneth BEDNAREK	14 Oct 1998	USA	African-American
9.89	0.1	Andre DE GRASSE	10 Nov 1994	CAN	Caribbean Black
9.89	1	Ackeem BLAKE	21 Jan 2002	JAM	Caribbean Black
9.89	1.3	Pjai AUSTIN	19 Sep 2000	USA	African-American
9.89	1.8	Courtney LINDSEY	18 Nov 1998	USA	African-American
9.89	0.8	Issamade ASINGA	29 Dec 2004	SUR	Caribbean Black
9.9	0.4	Nickel ASHMEADE	07 Apr 1990	JAM	Caribbean Black
9.9	2	Benjamin AZAMATI	14 Jan 1998	GHA	West African
9.9	1.8	Elijah HALL	22 Aug 1994	USA	African-American
9.9	1.8	Godson Oke OGHENEBRUME	27 May 2003	NGR	West African
9.9	0.9	Cravont CHARLESTON	02 Jan 1998	USA	African-American
9.91	1.2	Dennis MITCHELL	20 Feb 1966	USA	African-American
9.91	0.9	Leonard SCOTT	19 Jan 1980	USA	African-American
9.91	-0.5	Derrick ATKINS	05 Jan 1984	BAH	Caribbean Black
9.91	-0.2	Daniel BAILEY	09 Sep 1986	ANT	Caribbean Black
9.91	0.7	Churandy MARTINA	03 Jul 1984	NED	Caribbean Black
9.91	1.1	James DASAOLU	05 Sep 1987	GBR	West African
9.91	1.8	Femi OGUNODE	15 May 1991	QAT	West African
9.91	1	Julian FORTE	07 Jan 1993	JAM	Caribbean Black
9.91	1	Terrence JONES	08 Nov 2002	BAH	Caribbean Black
9.91	1.8	Shaun MASWANGANYI	01 Feb 2001	RSA	Southern African
9.91	1.1	Rohan WATSON	29 Apr 2002	JAM	Caribbean Black
9.92	0.3	Andre CASON	20 Jan 1969	USA	African-American
9.92	0.8	Jon DRUMMOND	09 Sep 1968	USA	African-American
9.92	0.2	Tim MONTGOMERY	28 Jan 1975	USA	African-American
9.92	-0.2	Seun OGUNKOYA	28 Dec 1977	NGR	West African
9.92	1	Tim HARDEN	27 Jan 1974	USA	African-American
9.92	2	Christophe LEMAITRE	11 Jun 1990	FRA	White
9.92	-0.8	Kemar BAILEY-COLE	10 Jan 1992	JAM	Caribbean Black
9.92	0.9	Jak Ali HARVEY	04 May 1989	TUR	Caribbean Black
9.92	1.4	Udodi Chudi ONWUZURIKE	29 Jan 2003	NGR	West African
9.93	1.4	Calvin SMITH	08 Jan 1961	USA	African-American
9.93	-0.6	Michael MARSH	04 Aug 1967	USA	African-American
9.93	1.8	Patrick JOHNSON	26 Sep 1972	AUS	Australian Aboriginal-Irish
9.93	1.1	Ivory WILLIAMS	02 May 1985	USA	African-American
9.93	1.8	Kemarley BROWN	20 Jul 1992	JAM	Caribbean Black
9.93	1.7	Clayton VAUGHN	15 May 1992	USA	African-American
9.93	1.9	Kim COLLINS	05 Apr 1976	SKN	Caribbean Black
9.93	0.8	Cameron BURRELL	11 Sep 1994	USA	African-American
9.93	1.6	Christopher BELCHER	29 Jan 1994	USA	African-American
9.93	0.8	Cravon GILLESPIE	31 Jul 1996	USA	African-American
9.93	1.9	Arthur CISSÉ	29 Dec 1996	CIV	West African
9.93	-1.2	Reece PRESCOD	29 Feb 1996	GBR	Caribbean Black?
9.93	0.1	Eugene AMO-DADZIE	22 Jun 1992	GBR	West African
9.94	0.2	Davidson EZINWA	22 Nov 1971	NGR	West African
9.94	-0.2	Bernard WILLIAMS	19 Jan 1978	USA	African-American
9.94	1.7	Diondre BATSON	13 Jul 1992	USA	African-American
9.94	1.4	Andrew FISHER	15 Dec 1991	JAM	Caribbean Black
9.94	1	Ameer WEBB	19 Mar 1991	USA	African-American
9.94	0.9	Wayde VAN NIEKERK	15 Jul 1992	RSA	Cape Coloured
9.94	1.6	Jo’Vaughn MARTIN		USA	African-American
9.94	1.3	Gift LEOTLELA	12 May 1998	RSA	Southern African
9.94	0.8	Joseph Paul AMOAH	12 Jan 1997	GHA	West African

Among the top 100 all-time 100 meter men (9.94 or lower), there is one East Asian (Su Bingtian), one white (Frenchman Christophe LeMaitre), one half Austrialian Aborigine and half Irishman (Patrick Johnson), and one Cape Coloured (Wayde Van Niekerk). I believe there are two half-blacks (Jacobs and Jimmy Vicault, although I could be be understating this number).

Update: A reader points out USA sprinter Michael Norman has a black father and a Japanese mother. (Another black-Japanese sprinter, Abdul Hakim Sani Brown, often the anchorman for Japan’s fine 4x100m relay team, is in the second 100 with a personal best of 9.97 seconds.)

Guess the Nilotic marathoner vs. the Bantu 100m man

There is now one East African top man in the 100m, Ferdinand Omanyala of Kenya. Yet, note that he is of the Bantu tribe, which is quite distinct from the Nilotic Luo tribe of former president Obama. Omanyala is much wider and more muscular than the Kenyan Nilotic Kalenjin distance runners, such as marathon great Eliud Kipchoge.

The authors make a big deal about how the fact that there are now five Southern Africans (and one Southwest African, 1990s star Frankie Fredericks of Namibia) somehow disproves the “racialist” perspective that West Africans are better at sprinting and East Africans at distnace running, but the theory was always that sub-Saharans have overall advantages in running speed that are partly specialized by sprint vs distance.

43 of the top 100m men are African-American, 32 are ethnically Caribbean, and 11 of the top 100 are ethnically recent West Africans.

The authors emphasize that West Africans are not as abundant as the theory that West Africa is the motherlode of sprint speed would suggest, but there are obvious nurture differences: life expectancy in Nigeria is only 54 years compared to 74 years in Jamaica.

So, I dunno. It look like, as of 2024, that both Nature and Nurture play significant roles in running performance. But then I’m a bad person, so I would say that, wouldn’t I?

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"Has the Theory of "Racialized" Running Performance Been Debunked?"
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Nachum says:
March 13, 2024 at 10:30 am GMT • 100 Words
“North, South and East African’s”

Glaring grammatical error right there in the second sentence. I’m unable to take any of it seriously after that.

In your previous post you mentioned Bannister, which got me thinking: Could it just be that Africans didn’t have as much chance to compete on an international stage before, say, 1960? (In the 1896 first Olympics, for example, it seems that every last athlete was white.) And no matter what your genes are like, you still need to train, and I also assume that such training wasn’t available to those in the Third World until about mid-century. So you have a British runner breaking the record. I mean, it’s not that non-Africans have gotten *slower*, is it?

• Agree: Frau Katze
Bill P says:
March 13, 2024 at 10:41 am GMT • 200 Words

Synthesizing these findings, we introduce a psychocultural hypothesis, positing that interactions between racial perceptions and social dynamics shape the global distribution of running performance.

In other words it’s magic (or I suppose voodoo is apropos). It’s our thoughts that make blacks faster.

This “magical thinking” suffuses American racial discourse so thoroughly that people barely notice it. It is used to explain just about every disparity that exists.

While it is true that whites may be discouraged from certain sports by black prevalence (e.g. urban high school basketball), this isn’t the case with running, which is not a team sport. What is happening is that competition has gone global, and when white athletes figure out they can’t compete at the international level they either get on with life or choose a sport in which they have a chance of winning.

As an added note on magical thinking, it is odd to see these people who so readily dismiss appeals to the Almighty as primitive superstition ascribing the power to alter the physical world to the thoughts of mere humans. To me this looks like regress to a stone age mentality, and yet here it is in an academic journal…

• Agree: The Last Real Calvinist, kaganovitch
• Replies: @AnotherDad
@Bill P

This “magical thinking” suffuses American racial discourse so thoroughly that people barely notice it. It is used to explain just about every disparity that exists.

Agree.

Steve, this--certainly these clowns--is not worth your time.

The whole "race does not exist" nonsense is deeply bound up in the minoritarian attack--"racists!" --upon America's--ergo the West's--white gentiles, our people, culture, history, achievements. Why we are bad people, who don't even deserve our nation(s). And shouldn't even worry about wonderful diversity streaming across the border making us stronger!

These particularly clowns are just parroting what deeply evil destructive people have already established as orthodoxy. But it's silly on its face.

Yes nurture matters. I notice there's not a single one of these top 100m runners born before I was. Tracks and shoes and training and conditioning are just way better. American blacks are way over-represented relative to West Africans--because white people produce nice stuff, blacks in America get to use. And yes "nurture" includes "psychocultural" factors like some elite white runners seeing the racial landscape and figuring out where to use their talents--or bothering at all. But the gist of it is ... nature. Race is real and race matters. Genes matter--a whole bunch--in every walk of life.
Replies: @Hypnotoad666, @Nachum, @ThreeCranes
, @Erik L
@Bill P
“You can’t coach speed.” -Jimmy Johnson

Agree with your point about it not being a team sport in the way that basketball is. If you went to a mostly white high school and had world class speed, this fact would be obvious from gym class. It would also be obvious that this would be a fairly effortless way to get a scholarship to college.

If there were a lot of white people who had potential to hold world records in sprints, we would know it.

The skewed numbers Steve reports for top top top level sprinters are astounding. People who aren't used to statistical analysis of human populations just don't get how incredibly unlikely this is.
Replies: @Ganderson
, @Anonymous
@Bill P
Well, some white runners can win international competitions, particularly in the middle distances. Last year's 1500m World Athletics Championship podium:
1. Josh Kerr (Scotland)
2. Jakob Ingebrigtsen (Norway)
3. Narve Gilje Nordås (Norway)
Norway currently has two all-time great runners: the aforementioned Jakob Ingebrigtsen (middle distance Olympic and multiple-time World gold medalist) and Karsten Warholm (400m hurdles world record holder.) Kristian Blummenfelt (triathlon Olympic gold medalist/Ironman world record holder) also deserves a mention.
The greatness of Yugoslavian athletes is often discussed on this forum, but I think Norwegians edge them out for the Best White Athletes title. Yugoslavs excel at team ball sports: basketball, soccer, water polo. So do Norwegians--Erling Haaland is as great a soccer player as any Yugoslav has ever been--but they also frequently have strong competitors in all kinds of individual sports: tennis (and table tennis), golf, cycling, climbing, strongman. And they of course historically dominate winter sports. All this despite a population below 6 millon. They even stand out in weird niche semi-sports: the greatest "freestyle footballers" are brothers from Norway. And the greatest chess player is Magnus Carlsen (yeah, they have a lot of brains too.)
Replies: @Bill P, @BB753
, @nebulafox
@Bill P
If there's one thing I know, it's that I don't know much.
Eddy Wobegon says:
March 13, 2024 at 11:51 am GMT
But how many of these fastest men were born as women? Huh?

I’ll bet a bunch of them were.

• Replies: @Truth
@Eddy Wobegon
!

(Hmmmmm...)
Altai4 says:
March 13, 2024 at 12:09 pm GMT • 600 Words
The standard of work and training to become an Olympic athlete is staggering. So before it was more, who really is the most naturally talented. Today it is more talent + training.

And just because black guys are overall obviously better 100m sprinters writ large doesn’t mean a really good non-Bantu couldn’t appear too, it’s just statistically less likely in their populations. Depending on how much LD or population-specific mutations are at play, we don’t know.

But an elephant in the room here is that drugs can make you really, really, really good at the 100m.

And while the turning of a blind eye at Usain Bolt’s insane times (Remember when he won at Beijing and slowed down at the end to strut?) due to a combination of him being so charismatic and being so lean (The image of most steroid abusers being they can’t help but put on more muscle in places you wouldn’t think they were training very hard, ala his infamous team mate Yohan Blake, AKA “The Beast” who looked exactly like all the mid 90s roided freak 100m runners) meant he was spared any incongruity at the idea that nobody before or since has even come close to his times except guys who were doping.

So people were able to reach those times and create a smooth distribution to Bolt-land but only by using PEDs.

So the Chinese guy’s time should invite discussion because it looks like 9.80 is about the limit in terms of not running with PEDs.

Table of fastest 34 times ever.

https://tomnew.medium.com/usain-bolt-lance-armstrong-and-the-duck-test-303b7b891e7e

https://track-stats.com/drug-100m-the-fastest-men-and-their-bans

Table of fastest 10 men ever, orange means they’ve been caught at least once for doping. Both Carter and Greene have been since this was made.

Greene was never caught but was forced to admit to paying another athlete 10k to buy drugs, but claims innocence of knowing what he was buying which either makes him the dumbest person alive or an obvious lie. He says he was buying them for his friends…

But it is suspicious that both Green and Bolt were parts of teams and eras in their countries when their programs were massively doping. Jamaican’s golden era ended when their drug testing regime came under scrutiny. And why would the Jamaicans taint their naturally talented athletes by hiring the Doctor Mengele of sports? Why hire a disgraced doper as your programme doctor except to dope? Surely if you naturally had such dominant athletes you’d have no problem getting a legitimate expert.

So I’m not so sure the Chinese guy was legit given that 9.80 ceiling for non-dopers. Outside Bolt who is so far away from everybody else but he is affable, not arrogant and charming and lean so we just ignore what we’d find impossible to ignore in another sport. It’s hard to just look at times anymore. But there are over 1.2 billion people in China (Albeit a lot less proportionally in their physical prime right now due to the 1 child policy), if the government trawled hard enough I’m sure they could find the exception that proves the rule.
ScarletNumber says:
March 13, 2024 at 12:16 pm GMT • 100 Words

The argument here is basically that if Nature can’t be proved beyond a shadow of a doubt to determine 100% of running results, then Nurture must be 100% responsible and race play no role whatsoever other than stereotype threat.

Scott Alexander refers to this motivated reasoning as Isolated Demands for Rigor, i.e. when a hypothesis goes against your preferred world-view, you won’t believe it without an impossible level of proof, and you might not believe it even then. Meanwhile, if a hypothesis reinforces your priors, you will believe it at first glance.

• Agree: ic1000, res, Twinkie
Barnard says:
March 13, 2024 at 12:52 pm GMT
I would bet the likelihood of the Chinese sprinter being on PEDs is higher than 98.75%. It doesn’t sound like they even considered that possibility.

• Agree: Frau Katze
• Replies: @Mr Mox
@Barnard
If we go back to year 2000, one in five of the world population were Chinese.
Surely, if race play no role in running (apart from marathon, they tell us) we should've seen a bunch of Chinese sprinters bringing home medals for their country, right?
As a matter of fact, China seems to have won more Olympic medals in walking than running.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Olympic_medalists_for_China
Damn those Asians, be it IQ or running, they just insist on ruining The Narrative!
, @Anon
@Barnard
This is not a confounding variable.
Garth says:
March 13, 2024 at 12:53 pm GMT
It is almost as extreme among women.

In the marathon 80% of the top 100 times are of either Ethiopian or Kenya origin.

In the 100m 77% are of West African descent – counting African-American, Caribbean and West African as West African descent.
sb says:
March 13, 2024 at 1:17 pm GMT
The Australian Patrick Johnson has a Melanesian mother (what Australians call Torres Strait Islander) which is a different race to Aborigine (a bit more intelligent for starters)
He broke 10 seconds only once and many question that time’s accuracy (which happened in Japan)
TWS says:
March 13, 2024 at 1:23 pm GMT
I’ll get out the turtle shell rattle and chicken blood. Olympics here I come!
Couch scientist says:
March 13, 2024 at 1:56 pm GMT
And then there are those nations who aren’t even in the conversation. Has the cultural running revolution just not reached Central America yet? Potential powerhouse Hindu sprinters are concencentrating on cow racing?
ThreeCranes says:
March 13, 2024 at 2:19 pm GMT
Shoulder to the boulder they begin, again, their grim task of rolling their lumpy rock up the hill.
AnotherDad says:
March 13, 2024 at 2:34 pm GMT • 200 Words
@Bill P

Synthesizing these findings, we introduce a psychocultural hypothesis, positing that interactions between racial perceptions and social dynamics shape the global distribution of running performance.

In other words it's magic (or I suppose voodoo is apropos). It's our thoughts that make blacks faster.

This "magical thinking" suffuses American racial discourse so thoroughly that people barely notice it. It is used to explain just about every disparity that exists.

While it is true that whites may be discouraged from certain sports by black prevalence (e.g. urban high school basketball), this isn't the case with running, which is not a team sport. What is happening is that competition has gone global, and when white athletes figure out they can't compete at the international level they either get on with life or choose a sport in which they have a chance of winning.

As an added note on magical thinking, it is odd to see these people who so readily dismiss appeals to the Almighty as primitive superstition ascribing the power to alter the physical world to the thoughts of mere humans. To me this looks like regress to a stone age mentality, and yet here it is in an academic journal...
Replies: @AnotherDad, @Erik L, @Anonymous, @nebulafox

This “magical thinking” suffuses American racial discourse so thoroughly that people barely notice it. It is used to explain just about every disparity that exists.

Agree.

Steve, this–certainly these clowns–is not worth your time.

The whole “race does not exist” nonsense is deeply bound up in the minoritarian attack–“racists!” –upon America’s–ergo the West’s–white gentiles, our people, culture, history, achievements. Why we are bad people, who don’t even deserve our nation(s). And shouldn’t even worry about wonderful diversity streaming across the border making us stronger!

These particularly clowns are just parroting what deeply evil destructive people have already established as orthodoxy. But it’s silly on its face.

Yes nurture matters. I notice there’s not a single one of these top 100m runners born before I was. Tracks and shoes and training and conditioning are just way better. American blacks are way over-represented relative to West Africans–because white people produce nice stuff, blacks in America get to use. And yes “nurture” includes “psychocultural” factors like some elite white runners seeing the racial landscape and figuring out where to use their talents–or bothering at all. But the gist of it is … nature. Race is real and race matters. Genes matter–a whole bunch–in every walk of life.

• Replies: @Hypnotoad666
@AnotherDad

These particularly clowns are just parroting what deeply evil destructive people have already established as orthodoxy.

Academics are obviously highly incentivized to get published and cited. But apparently getting cited for being silly and wrong also counts. In short, social science seems to resemble Twitter -- it's all about engagement.
, @Nachum
@AnotherDad
American blacks also benefit from athletic scholarships and other targeted funding Africans don't generally have access to.
, @ThreeCranes
@AnotherDad

"Genes matter–a whole bunch–in every race of life."

FIFY
LG5 says:
March 13, 2024 at 2:39 pm GMT
A Scott Alexander Adjacent Article by Eliezer Yudkowsky in Less Wrong.
Erik L says:
March 13, 2024 at 2:52 pm GMT • 100 Words
@Bill P

Synthesizing these findings, we introduce a psychocultural hypothesis, positing that interactions between racial perceptions and social dynamics shape the global distribution of running performance.

In other words it's magic (or I suppose voodoo is apropos). It's our thoughts that make blacks faster.

This "magical thinking" suffuses American racial discourse so thoroughly that people barely notice it. It is used to explain just about every disparity that exists.

While it is true that whites may be discouraged from certain sports by black prevalence (e.g. urban high school basketball), this isn't the case with running, which is not a team sport. What is happening is that competition has gone global, and when white athletes figure out they can't compete at the international level they either get on with life or choose a sport in which they have a chance of winning.

As an added note on magical thinking, it is odd to see these people who so readily dismiss appeals to the Almighty as primitive superstition ascribing the power to alter the physical world to the thoughts of mere humans. To me this looks like regress to a stone age mentality, and yet here it is in an academic journal...
Replies: @AnotherDad, @Erik L, @Anonymous, @nebulafox
“You can’t coach speed.” -Jimmy Johnson

Agree with your point about it not being a team sport in the way that basketball is. If you went to a mostly white high school and had world class speed, this fact would be obvious from gym class. It would also be obvious that this would be a fairly effortless way to get a scholarship to college.

If there were a lot of white people who had potential to hold world records in sprints, we would know it.

The skewed numbers Steve reports for top top top level sprinters are astounding. People who aren’t used to statistical analysis of human populations just don’t get how incredibly unlikely this is.

• Replies: @Ganderson
@Erik L
I think Jimmy’s wrong, at least to the extent that you can most likely coach people to be faster, but you’re also not going to turn Alex Karras into Herb Washington. (Showing my age there!)

Hockey remains overwhelmingly white; the occasional Mike Grier, PK Subban, and Kyle Okposo notwithstanding. A friend of mine, a retired DI coach once told me that he thought the reason so many good players came out of the Upper Midwest was genetic. Applies to Scandinavia, at least Sweden and Finland, too. In Canada there’s a huge nurture component- in Canada you can turn on late night TV and listen to a discussion between Farley Mowatt and Margaret Atwood about who’s gonna win the Stanley Cup. Same phenomenon in Finland. Finland and Canada are the only countries where hockey is #1- even in Russia and Sweden it’s at best 1A after soccer.

Even so, the NHL (and a bunch of D I college teams) went all in on Blackety Black Month. The Bruins even retired Willie O’Ree’s number, pretty much because he is black; UMass played the “Black National Anthem” before their games. (Not just hockey, but hoops and lax, too- and lax is even whiter than hockey.)
Pop Warner says:
March 13, 2024 at 3:20 pm GMT • 200 Words
The real reason they want to deboonk the racialist argument is because if they do come out and admit that West Africans are superior sprinters based on genetics, they might have to admit that other traits like intelligence are genetic as well. As much as they want to say blacks are superhuman gods and simply better than us, better judgment dictates that they can’t make this argument as it can go both ways. And a lot of these “academics” have made a career out of crafting complex dogma to explain why almost all cornerbacks are black or why trillions of dollars won’t close the scholastic achievement gap (cabal of racists! implicit white supremacy! lead pipes!)

As far as the dominance of Jamaica in recent years, their doping standards aren’t nearly as stringent as America’s. While I assume every country (not just Russia) dopes as much as they can get away with, Jamaica probably has a crafty regime that they can handwave by saying they’re poor. It also makes me suspicious of the Chinese runner since some of their world-class weightlifters have failed drug tests in recent months, but maybe he is just an outlier.

• Replies: @William Badwhite
@Pop Warner

if they do come out and admit that West Africans are superior sprinters based on genetics, they might have to admit that other traits like intelligence are genetic as well.

Not at all. Everyone knows that evolution stopped at the neck. :)
Hypnotoad666 says:
March 13, 2024 at 3:39 pm GMT • 200 Words

we introduce a psychocultural hypothesis, positing that interactions between racial perceptions and social dynamics shape the global distribution of running performance.

Well, that sounds very scientific /s. These guys obviously have advanced degree in blah, blah, blah. In no sport is success so obviously genetic-based as running — and especially sprinting. You just strap on your shoes and whoever’s leg muscles move faster for ten seconds wins.

When West and East Africans, respectively, are 100,000% over-represented, the Bayesian prior for genetic superiority is pretty overwhelming. Of course, if you really insist on talking about “psychosocial” issue those exist everywhere and always. (“What makes a kid try out for track, why do some cultures value certain events more than others, blah, blah”).

The only interesting questions at this point is to isolate the physical mechanisms (fast-twitch muscle fibre metabolism and oxygen uptake in hemoglobin, etc), and to try to identify the associated genes.
tyrone says:
March 13, 2024 at 3:43 pm GMT • 100 Words

a Chinese guy, Su Bingtian

with a population of around 1.4 billion there’s bound to be one fast guy and China is adept at finding him…….the West Africa ,East Africa running axis is a nose on your face thing …..nature ,nature ,nature,………all forms of animal/plant husbandry people are meanwhile beavering away using genetics to improve their bloodlines.
ic1000 says:
March 13, 2024 at 3:44 pm GMT • 300 Words
I was struck by the second of these two sentences in the Abstract:

During the 1990s, a popular narrative emerged, suggesting that West African lineage conferred inherent sprinting advantages, and that North, South and East African’s are specialized for longer distances. Part and parcel to this narrative was the enthusiastic belief that it would very soon be substantiated by a genotyping revolution that would enable prognostication of individual athletic potential. [Italics in original]

The part that’s true is the claim that various people did predict variations of “it’ll soon be possible to analyze a person’s genotype and say something about their athletic potential.” The dates of their references 12-19 are 2013 (peer-reviewed), 2007 (p-r), 2004 (essay), 2003 (p-r), 2008 (e), 2000 (e), 1993 (e), and 1999 (p-r).

The part that’s false is the notion that such “enthusiastic beliefs” were “part and parcel” of the idea that human biodiversity (a term unmentioned by Souaiaia et al) is a useful lens for looking at athletic performance. HBD is an explanatory framework. An analogy: Darwin promoted the idea of Natural Selection because it made sense of stuff that he observed, not because he enthusiastically believed in a yet-to-be-invented discipline.

The part that’s funny is that fellow travelers of Souaiaia et al are in positions of power in the biomedical establishment (e.g. the NIH, Scientific American), and are doing everything possible to obstruct, defund, and outlaw research that might shed light on the influence of genotype on an individual’s human potential.

If these true believers truly believed, they’d be eager to see those deluded HBD’ers’ investigations founder on the rocks of The Blank Slate.

But for reasons that are as mysterious as they are unfathomable, that’s not how it’s playing out.

• Replies: @Hypnotoad666
@ic1000

An analogy: Darwin promoted the idea of Natural Selection because it made sense of stuff

As weak as it is, the current pathetic rearguard defense of the Blank Slate seems to be: "Specific genes for the trait haven't been identified yet, So checkmate."

This is like saying you have refuted natural selection because Darwin didn't know how DNA works.
Replies: @res
Hypnotoad666 says:
March 13, 2024 at 3:48 pm GMT • 100 Words
@AnotherDad
@Bill P

This “magical thinking” suffuses American racial discourse so thoroughly that people barely notice it. It is used to explain just about every disparity that exists.

Agree.

Steve, this--certainly these clowns--is not worth your time.

The whole "race does not exist" nonsense is deeply bound up in the minoritarian attack--"racists!" --upon America's--ergo the West's--white gentiles, our people, culture, history, achievements. Why we are bad people, who don't even deserve our nation(s). And shouldn't even worry about wonderful diversity streaming across the border making us stronger!

These particularly clowns are just parroting what deeply evil destructive people have already established as orthodoxy. But it's silly on its face.

Yes nurture matters. I notice there's not a single one of these top 100m runners born before I was. Tracks and shoes and training and conditioning are just way better. American blacks are way over-represented relative to West Africans--because white people produce nice stuff, blacks in America get to use. And yes "nurture" includes "psychocultural" factors like some elite white runners seeing the racial landscape and figuring out where to use their talents--or bothering at all. But the gist of it is ... nature. Race is real and race matters. Genes matter--a whole bunch--in every walk of life.
Replies: @Hypnotoad666, @Nachum, @ThreeCranes

These particularly clowns are just parroting what deeply evil destructive people have already established as orthodoxy.

Academics are obviously highly incentivized to get published and cited. But apparently getting cited for being silly and wrong also counts. In short, social science seems to resemble Twitter — it’s all about engagement.
Hypnotoad666 says:
March 13, 2024 at 4:01 pm GMT • 100 Words
@ic1000
I was struck by the second of these two sentences in the Abstract:

During the 1990s, a popular narrative emerged, suggesting that West African lineage conferred inherent sprinting advantages, and that North, South and East African’s are specialized for longer distances. Part and parcel to this narrative was the enthusiastic belief that it would very soon be substantiated by a genotyping revolution that would enable prognostication of individual athletic potential. [Italics in original]

The part that's true is the claim that various people did predict variations of "it'll soon be possible to analyze a person's genotype and say something about their athletic potential." The dates of their references 12-19 are 2013 (peer-reviewed), 2007 (p-r), 2004 (essay), 2003 (p-r), 2008 (e), 2000 (e), 1993 (e), and 1999 (p-r).

The part that's false is the notion that such "enthusiastic beliefs" were "part and parcel" of the idea that human biodiversity (a term unmentioned by Souaiaia et al) is a useful lens for looking at athletic performance. HBD is an explanatory framework. An analogy: Darwin promoted the idea of Natural Selection because it made sense of stuff that he observed, not because he enthusiastically believed in a yet-to-be-invented discipline.

The part that's funny is that fellow travelers of Souaiaia et al are in positions of power in the biomedical establishment (e.g. the NIH, Scientific American), and are doing everything possible to obstruct, defund, and outlaw research that might shed light on the influence of genotype on an individual's human potential.

If these true believers truly believed, they'd be eager to see those deluded HBD'ers' investigations founder on the rocks of The Blank Slate.

But for reasons that are as mysterious as they are unfathomable, that's not how it's playing out.
Replies: @Hypnotoad666

An analogy: Darwin promoted the idea of Natural Selection because it made sense of stuff

As weak as it is, the current pathetic rearguard defense of the Blank Slate seems to be: “Specific genes for the trait haven’t been identified yet, So checkmate.”

This is like saying you have refuted natural selection because Darwin didn’t know how DNA works.

• Replies: @res
@Hypnotoad666

As weak as it is, the current pathetic rearguard defense of the Blank Slate seems to be: “Specific genes for the trait haven’t been identified yet, So checkmate.”

And that seems to transition to "but you can't explain all of the variance for the trait" as specific genes are found.
Dutch Boy says:
March 13, 2024 at 4:12 pm GMT • 100 Words
My impression: sprints (40m to 400m) are dominated by sub-Saharan blacks (and their progeny). Middle distances (800m to 1500m are a mix of races). Long distances (5000m and up are dominated by East Africans The obvious implication is that success in various running events is affected by the different average muscle composition and physiological parameters among the races and sub-races of mankind. Nurture would affect the outcomes only at the margins. A particularly dedicated training regimen would improve the times of a runner but would not seriously affect the distribution of outcomes by race (e.g., you will get an occasional non-black outstanding sprinter but he will be an outlier among an otherwise nearly all black competitors). As in other sports, athletes will gravitate to the events/positions that maximize their chances for success.
deep anonymous says:
March 13, 2024 at 4:24 pm GMT • 100 Words
After reading Mr. Sailer’s two tables, showing at a glance the huge over-representation of certain racial/ethnic backgrounds in sprinting and distance running, I had to chuckle because this post comes immediately after a post entitled, “I Refute It Thus!” These tables are nearly as solid as the rock Dr. Johnson was kicking.
res says:
March 13, 2024 at 4:25 pm GMT • 100 Words
@Hypnotoad666
@ic1000

An analogy: Darwin promoted the idea of Natural Selection because it made sense of stuff

As weak as it is, the current pathetic rearguard defense of the Blank Slate seems to be: "Specific genes for the trait haven't been identified yet, So checkmate."

This is like saying you have refuted natural selection because Darwin didn't know how DNA works.
Replies: @res

As weak as it is, the current pathetic rearguard defense of the Blank Slate seems to be: “Specific genes for the trait haven’t been identified yet, So checkmate.”

And that seems to transition to “but you can’t explain all of the variance for the trait” as specific genes are found.
lamont cranston says:
March 13, 2024 at 4:37 pm GMT
As speed goes the last white to lead the SEC in rushing was Wayne Jones in 1973. Until last year when the guy from Missouri did it.

• Replies: @Sam Hildebrand
@lamont cranston

Until last year when the guy from Missouri did it.

MIZ…
YetAnotherAnon says:
March 13, 2024 at 4:41 pm GMT • 100 Words
I know it’s a bad thought to have, but could there be any chance that Su Bingtian’s spectacular start was assisted in some way – the biochemical equivalent of a JATO pack?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JATO

What exactly are the biomechanics of the start as compared to the sprint, where fast twitch muscle fibre seems very important?

The Olympics are highly prestigious, a great nation needs its great heroes, and there’s a long, long history of “by any means necessary”. It’s amazing how many current women’s Olympic records were set in the 1980s, either by Soviet, US or East German ladies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Olympic_records_in_athletics#Women’s_records

• Replies: @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms
@YetAnotherAnon
Yes he's on roids. The swimmers and boxers are on roids as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlZyHtbueQU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwcnMUaPtmU

The Japanese national record holder is on roids too

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9vXLMmKo9o

You can tell because their physiques all look like this

https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/wrestler-john-cena-appears-ring-270813068.jpg
, @Ola
@YetAnotherAnon

What exactly are the biomechanics of the start as compared to the sprint, where fast twitch muscle fibre seems very important?

The biomechanics are poorly understood, but the East Asians seem to experiment with them more (and more successfully) than other nations. Look, for example, at Japan’s Shuhei Tada who lately seems to be on the verge of falling over during acceleration in all his 60m races. He also looks very unimposing for a world-elite sprinter (a well-developed upper body is more crucial to 100m than to 60m)

But the key difference between the start and top-speed sprinting concerns relative strength. The start is all about relative strength and consequently favors short people. But tall people with lower relative strength compensate for lower acceleration with a longer acceleration, which means they reach the same max speed but later.

This is because a full contraction of a long muscle takes longer but also does more work (transfers more energy) than an equally strong short muscle ("equally strong" meaning it has the same cross-sectional area and therefore produces the same amount of force.)

Another aspect of height is that the scaling of the body is not uniform. The long bones often grow in the middle so that the lever arms of muscles do not elongate proportionally. This makes the levers more suited for top speed than for strength and acceleration.
Nachum says:
March 13, 2024 at 4:41 pm GMT
@AnotherDad
@Bill P

This “magical thinking” suffuses American racial discourse so thoroughly that people barely notice it. It is used to explain just about every disparity that exists.

Agree.

Steve, this--certainly these clowns--is not worth your time.

The whole "race does not exist" nonsense is deeply bound up in the minoritarian attack--"racists!" --upon America's--ergo the West's--white gentiles, our people, culture, history, achievements. Why we are bad people, who don't even deserve our nation(s). And shouldn't even worry about wonderful diversity streaming across the border making us stronger!

These particularly clowns are just parroting what deeply evil destructive people have already established as orthodoxy. But it's silly on its face.

Yes nurture matters. I notice there's not a single one of these top 100m runners born before I was. Tracks and shoes and training and conditioning are just way better. American blacks are way over-represented relative to West Africans--because white people produce nice stuff, blacks in America get to use. And yes "nurture" includes "psychocultural" factors like some elite white runners seeing the racial landscape and figuring out where to use their talents--or bothering at all. But the gist of it is ... nature. Race is real and race matters. Genes matter--a whole bunch--in every walk of life.
Replies: @Hypnotoad666, @Nachum, @ThreeCranes
American blacks also benefit from athletic scholarships and other targeted funding Africans don’t generally have access to.
Alfa158 says:
March 13, 2024 at 4:42 pm GMT
Steve, how many fingers am I holding up?
“Uh, four”
ZZZZZZZZZZ
“OW!! OK, five! It’s five!”
I don’t think you really believe that.
ZZZZZZZZZZ

• LOL: ThreeCranes
Anonymous[165] • Disclaimer says:
March 13, 2024 at 4:53 pm GMT • 100 Words
Might throw Jakob Ingebrigtsen into a kind of nordic celtic anglo periphery which is expected to dominate from about 800-5000 meters in the Olympics as it has, him specifically at the longer distances, the last 3 years. Many of them Scots born training in US, winning at the even more prestigious World Championships which track athletes regard as the best field. Definitely a cultural aspect of running around the rural trails there historically.

These mens much larger bodies make it exceptionally hard to haul the weight at any distances above 5K however.
obwandiyag says:
March 13, 2024 at 5:16 pm GMT
I think that, when you factor in steroid levels, all will become clear.
Muggles says:
March 13, 2024 at 5:39 pm GMT • 300 Words
From the “study” text:

we introduce a psychocultural hypothesis, positing that interactions between racial perceptions and social dynamics shape the global distribution of running performance.

Did anyone in this study bother to define “psychocultural” for us?

And this:

striking evidence that racial perception has greater impact on performance than racial physiology.

How could “racial perception” (or any “perception”) which means “the state of being or process of becoming aware of something through the senses.” be responsible for noting that Africans/African heritage DNA appears to result in extraordinary performance superiority in certain kinds of running races?

Very odd that Tade Souaiaiaa, Nabie Fofanah, Rawle De Lisle and Sheena Mason (who seem to have African or African inspired names) seem to support a theory which says, in essence, that Black! superiority in some kinds of foot racing is merely an illusion of ‘perception” and “psychocultural” bias.

Odd to see this self-hating Black! authored study be celebrated

Does ordinary perception, like at the quantum mechanics level, alter the location, just by looking at a Kenyan racer besting everyone else, nearly all of the time?

So the theory here is, “if you see an East African winning a race, by looking at the winner they simply become East African” even even they are Thai? So if we don’t “perceive” their race/ethnicity then results are just randomly distributed across humanity?

If some White group of researchers argued that the Black! dominance of NBA basketball by Blacks! was merely a perception issue with “psychocultural” bias, would this be celebrated as some sort of “anti racist” research?

Some questions must not be asked…

• Replies: @Reg Cæsar
@Muggles

Did anyone in this study bother to define “psychocultural” for us?

A C.P. Scott said (maybe) of television, "The word is half Greek, half Latin. No good can come of it."
Anonymous[256] • Disclaimer says:
March 13, 2024 at 5:50 pm GMT • 200 Words
@Bill P

Synthesizing these findings, we introduce a psychocultural hypothesis, positing that interactions between racial perceptions and social dynamics shape the global distribution of running performance.

In other words it's magic (or I suppose voodoo is apropos). It's our thoughts that make blacks faster.

This "magical thinking" suffuses American racial discourse so thoroughly that people barely notice it. It is used to explain just about every disparity that exists.

While it is true that whites may be discouraged from certain sports by black prevalence (e.g. urban high school basketball), this isn't the case with running, which is not a team sport. What is happening is that competition has gone global, and when white athletes figure out they can't compete at the international level they either get on with life or choose a sport in which they have a chance of winning.

As an added note on magical thinking, it is odd to see these people who so readily dismiss appeals to the Almighty as primitive superstition ascribing the power to alter the physical world to the thoughts of mere humans. To me this looks like regress to a stone age mentality, and yet here it is in an academic journal...
Replies: @AnotherDad, @Erik L, @Anonymous, @nebulafox
Well, some white runners can win international competitions, particularly in the middle distances. Last year’s 1500m World Athletics Championship podium:

1. Josh Kerr (Scotland)
2. Jakob Ingebrigtsen (Norway)
3. Narve Gilje Nordås (Norway)

Norway currently has two all-time great runners: the aforementioned Jakob Ingebrigtsen (middle distance Olympic and multiple-time World gold medalist) and Karsten Warholm (400m hurdles world record holder.) Kristian Blummenfelt (triathlon Olympic gold medalist/Ironman world record holder) also deserves a mention.

The greatness of Yugoslavian athletes is often discussed on this forum, but I think Norwegians edge them out for the Best White Athletes title. Yugoslavs excel at team ball sports: basketball, soccer, water polo. So do Norwegians–Erling Haaland is as great a soccer player as any Yugoslav has ever been–but they also frequently have strong competitors in all kinds of individual sports: tennis (and table tennis), golf, cycling, climbing, strongman. And they of course historically dominate winter sports. All this despite a population below 6 millon. They even stand out in weird niche semi-sports: the greatest “freestyle footballers” are brothers from Norway. And the greatest chess player is Magnus Carlsen (yeah, they have a lot of brains too.)

• Replies: @Bill P
@Anonymous
Hey, I'm partial to Norwegians (my wonderful grandma was one of them), but they have arguably the most physical fitness-oriented culture on earth, so it would be interesting to see how much nurture can contribute to results by studying Norway. It's kind of like the Jamaica of Europe in that they punch way above their demographic weight when it comes to Olympic medals, but genetically they are very much like their neighbors in Sweden, Denmark and Britain who get more modest results.
Replies: @Anonymous, @Anonymous
, @BB753
@Anonymous
Hum, Yugoslavia no longer exists. It's a mess of 7 different countries now, thanks to the State Department.
EddieSpaghetti says:
March 13, 2024 at 6:03 pm GMT
Of the top 5 sprinters listed only Usain Bolt has not been caught and/or suspended for matters concerning PED’s. So, obviously, nurture via PED’s is an important factor in determining success at the highest level of sprinting.
DinduNuffins says:
March 13, 2024 at 6:28 pm GMT • 200 Words
….Fifty Eight Straight Years of Gold Medals in Basketball…WHITE MEN in the US used to dominate: basketball. 2004…..Then U.S. Blacks get Bronze….The US had a solid 80 year track record of winning the GOLD MEDAL in basketball. NO sportsman in the entire world is paid as much as an American Black is paid to play BASKETBALL. Our Black professional basketball players competed against AMATEUR White basketball players. The media mania of US Black basketball players has no parallel. Corporate sponsorship of Blackball exceeds that of all corporate sponsorship for soccer in the entire rest of the world. Only has-been athletes in the countries whose WHITE players BEAT us play basketball, while the real athletes there play soccer. Few if any other countries permit professionals to play in an Olympics event which was DESIGNED for amateurs, not professionals. The children in no other country grow up playing, seeing, talking about, and virtually force fed basketball. The White men who beat our huge Black basketballers were SHORT. The US has the world’s best, if not only, basketball coaches. No sportsman in the world has better basketball equipment, training, and experience than an American Black. Our Blacks were backed by a multi-trillion dollar affirmative action infrastructure which NO MAN anywhere else on the planet benefits from, proof positive once and for all that affirmative action is a multi-trillion dollar FAILURE.
Anon7 says:
March 13, 2024 at 6:58 pm GMT
“We revisit this hypothesis in the post-genomic era.”

Maybe it should be the “Post-genomic era”. Isn’t it just more genteel, more polite, to complement everyone and their performance?

“A little praise is not only merest justice but is beyond the purse of no one.” – Emily Post
William Badwhite says:
March 13, 2024 at 7:26 pm GMT
@Pop Warner
The real reason they want to deboonk the racialist argument is because if they do come out and admit that West Africans are superior sprinters based on genetics, they might have to admit that other traits like intelligence are genetic as well. As much as they want to say blacks are superhuman gods and simply better than us, better judgment dictates that they can't make this argument as it can go both ways. And a lot of these "academics" have made a career out of crafting complex dogma to explain why almost all cornerbacks are black or why trillions of dollars won't close the scholastic achievement gap (cabal of racists! implicit white supremacy! lead pipes!)

As far as the dominance of Jamaica in recent years, their doping standards aren't nearly as stringent as America's. While I assume every country (not just Russia) dopes as much as they can get away with, Jamaica probably has a crafty regime that they can handwave by saying they're poor. It also makes me suspicious of the Chinese runner since some of their world-class weightlifters have failed drug tests in recent months, but maybe he is just an outlier.
Replies: @William Badwhite

if they do come out and admit that West Africans are superior sprinters based on genetics, they might have to admit that other traits like intelligence are genetic as well.

Not at all. Everyone knows that evolution stopped at the neck. 🙂
Bill Jones says:
March 13, 2024 at 7:36 pm GMT • 100 Words
If any of these clowns need a stem cell transplant they’ll hopefully NOT change their tune, I hope they die.

If you become ill with a blood cancer or other disease that requires a stem cell transplant, here’s an uncomfortable fact: Your race matters. Diversity is a strength in much of life, but it’s a curse when finding a stem cell donor match.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/race-matters-when-a-patient-needs-a-stem-cell-or-marrow-transplant/2013/08/05/51abdf04-f2d9-11e2-ae43-b31dc363c3bf_story.html

• Thanks: Frau Katze
• Replies: @Sir Didymus
@Bill Jones
Race is rarely a strength, but it is nice to see the WaPo at least partially admit that there is a connection between biology and race.
Mr Mox says:
March 13, 2024 at 8:21 pm GMT • 100 Words
@Barnard
I would bet the likelihood of the Chinese sprinter being on PEDs is higher than 98.75%. It doesn't sound like they even considered that possibility.
Replies: @Mr Mox, @Anon
If we go back to year 2000, one in five of the world population were Chinese.
Surely, if race play no role in running (apart from marathon, they tell us) we should’ve seen a bunch of Chinese sprinters bringing home medals for their country, right?

As a matter of fact, China seems to have won more Olympic medals in walking than running.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Olympic_medalists_for_China

Damn those Asians, be it IQ or running, they just insist on ruining The Narrative!
Bill P says:
March 13, 2024 at 8:25 pm GMT • 100 Words
@Anonymous
@Bill P
Well, some white runners can win international competitions, particularly in the middle distances. Last year's 1500m World Athletics Championship podium:
1. Josh Kerr (Scotland)
2. Jakob Ingebrigtsen (Norway)
3. Narve Gilje Nordås (Norway)
Norway currently has two all-time great runners: the aforementioned Jakob Ingebrigtsen (middle distance Olympic and multiple-time World gold medalist) and Karsten Warholm (400m hurdles world record holder.) Kristian Blummenfelt (triathlon Olympic gold medalist/Ironman world record holder) also deserves a mention.
The greatness of Yugoslavian athletes is often discussed on this forum, but I think Norwegians edge them out for the Best White Athletes title. Yugoslavs excel at team ball sports: basketball, soccer, water polo. So do Norwegians--Erling Haaland is as great a soccer player as any Yugoslav has ever been--but they also frequently have strong competitors in all kinds of individual sports: tennis (and table tennis), golf, cycling, climbing, strongman. And they of course historically dominate winter sports. All this despite a population below 6 millon. They even stand out in weird niche semi-sports: the greatest "freestyle footballers" are brothers from Norway. And the greatest chess player is Magnus Carlsen (yeah, they have a lot of brains too.)
Replies: @Bill P, @BB753
Hey, I’m partial to Norwegians (my wonderful grandma was one of them), but they have arguably the most physical fitness-oriented culture on earth, so it would be interesting to see how much nurture can contribute to results by studying Norway. It’s kind of like the Jamaica of Europe in that they punch way above their demographic weight when it comes to Olympic medals, but genetically they are very much like their neighbors in Sweden, Denmark and Britain who get more modest results.

• Replies: @Anonymous
@Bill P
I don't disagree! (Though I'm not so sure there aren't meaningful genetic differences between Norway and its neighbors: it has a quite different geography than them which plausibly could have led to recent selection for traits relevant to athletic success. And how many Brits or Danes have you seen who look like Erling Haaland?) But, I also don't think the role of culture should disqualify them from Best White Athletes contention. It's also good to remember that the propensity to defer gratification and grind away at things that lack much financial/social benefit (immediate or in general) is itself a heritable trait much more common in the WEIRD parts of Europe.
Replies: @Bill P
, @Anonymous
@Bill P
Well they are the richest real white country in the world if thats what you mean.

Never world beaters historically except in the winter sports.

Ingebrigtsen is the classic example of training to use 2/3 lest steps than his competitor to make up for his lack of speed

Whiteman won the WAC in 2022

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcRrBYx2XG8
Bill Jones says:
March 13, 2024 at 9:09 pm GMT
For those newcomers to this universe, here’s a good starting point on how things are in the real world.

https://www.humanbiologicaldiversity.com/
Anonymous[256] • Disclaimer says:
March 13, 2024 at 9:18 pm GMT • 100 Words
@Bill P
@Anonymous
Hey, I'm partial to Norwegians (my wonderful grandma was one of them), but they have arguably the most physical fitness-oriented culture on earth, so it would be interesting to see how much nurture can contribute to results by studying Norway. It's kind of like the Jamaica of Europe in that they punch way above their demographic weight when it comes to Olympic medals, but genetically they are very much like their neighbors in Sweden, Denmark and Britain who get more modest results.
Replies: @Anonymous, @Anonymous
I don’t disagree! (Though I’m not so sure there aren’t meaningful genetic differences between Norway and its neighbors: it has a quite different geography than them which plausibly could have led to recent selection for traits relevant to athletic success. And how many Brits or Danes have you seen who look like Erling Haaland?) But, I also don’t think the role of culture should disqualify them from Best White Athletes contention. It’s also good to remember that the propensity to defer gratification and grind away at things that lack much financial/social benefit (immediate or in general) is itself a heritable trait much more common in the WEIRD parts of Europe.

• Replies: @Bill P
@Anonymous

And how many Brits or Danes have you seen who look like Erling Haaland?)

None than I can think of, but in high school I did have a Swedish friend, a Geat from Vastergotaland IIRC, who had that look.

Norway has a diversity of phenotypes. You have people like Karsten Warholm, who looks very British/Celtic, Erling Haaland, who looks indigenous WHG Scandinavian/Germanic, and Magnus Carlsen, who has more of an eastern European look IMO. Broadly speaking you could say Warholm represents the people who introduced R1b lineage, Haaland I and Carlsen R1a.
Ghost of Bull Moose says:
March 13, 2024 at 9:36 pm GMT
Maybe the authors would care to make it interesting.

I’ll take sub-Saharan origin in all running events and they can have everyone else on earth.

I like my odds.
BB753 says:
March 13, 2024 at 9:58 pm GMT
@Anonymous
@Bill P
Well, some white runners can win international competitions, particularly in the middle distances. Last year's 1500m World Athletics Championship podium:
1. Josh Kerr (Scotland)
2. Jakob Ingebrigtsen (Norway)
3. Narve Gilje Nordås (Norway)
Norway currently has two all-time great runners: the aforementioned Jakob Ingebrigtsen (middle distance Olympic and multiple-time World gold medalist) and Karsten Warholm (400m hurdles world record holder.) Kristian Blummenfelt (triathlon Olympic gold medalist/Ironman world record holder) also deserves a mention.
The greatness of Yugoslavian athletes is often discussed on this forum, but I think Norwegians edge them out for the Best White Athletes title. Yugoslavs excel at team ball sports: basketball, soccer, water polo. So do Norwegians--Erling Haaland is as great a soccer player as any Yugoslav has ever been--but they also frequently have strong competitors in all kinds of individual sports: tennis (and table tennis), golf, cycling, climbing, strongman. And they of course historically dominate winter sports. All this despite a population below 6 millon. They even stand out in weird niche semi-sports: the greatest "freestyle footballers" are brothers from Norway. And the greatest chess player is Magnus Carlsen (yeah, they have a lot of brains too.)
Replies: @Bill P, @BB753
Hum, Yugoslavia no longer exists. It’s a mess of 7 different countries now, thanks to the State Department.
Sir Didymus says:
March 13, 2024 at 10:11 pm GMT
The left has a religious belief that there is no biological basis for race and they will gladly die before abandoning that belief. As in the case of every other religion, facts are meaningless.
Sir Didymus says:
March 13, 2024 at 10:16 pm GMT
@Bill Jones
If any of these clowns need a stem cell transplant they'll hopefully NOT change their tune, I hope they die.

If you become ill with a blood cancer or other disease that requires a stem cell transplant, here’s an uncomfortable fact: Your race matters. Diversity is a strength in much of life, but it’s a curse when finding a stem cell donor match.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/race-matters-when-a-patient-needs-a-stem-cell-or-marrow-transplant/2013/08/05/51abdf04-f2d9-11e2-ae43-b31dc363c3bf_story.html
Replies: @Sir Didymus
Race is rarely a strength, but it is nice to see the WaPo at least partially admit that there is a connection between biology and race.
Sir Didymus says:
March 13, 2024 at 10:18 pm GMT
On the subject of race, the left always reminds me of that Chesterton quote about how when men stop believing in God, they will believe in anything.
Sam Hildebrand says:
March 13, 2024 at 10:52 pm GMT
@lamont cranston
As speed goes the last white to lead the SEC in rushing was Wayne Jones in 1973. Until last year when the guy from Missouri did it.
Replies: @Sam Hildebrand

Until last year when the guy from Missouri did it.

MIZ…
ThreeCranes says:
March 13, 2024 at 11:00 pm GMT
@AnotherDad
@Bill P

This “magical thinking” suffuses American racial discourse so thoroughly that people barely notice it. It is used to explain just about every disparity that exists.

Agree.

Steve, this--certainly these clowns--is not worth your time.

The whole "race does not exist" nonsense is deeply bound up in the minoritarian attack--"racists!" --upon America's--ergo the West's--white gentiles, our people, culture, history, achievements. Why we are bad people, who don't even deserve our nation(s). And shouldn't even worry about wonderful diversity streaming across the border making us stronger!

These particularly clowns are just parroting what deeply evil destructive people have already established as orthodoxy. But it's silly on its face.

Yes nurture matters. I notice there's not a single one of these top 100m runners born before I was. Tracks and shoes and training and conditioning are just way better. American blacks are way over-represented relative to West Africans--because white people produce nice stuff, blacks in America get to use. And yes "nurture" includes "psychocultural" factors like some elite white runners seeing the racial landscape and figuring out where to use their talents--or bothering at all. But the gist of it is ... nature. Race is real and race matters. Genes matter--a whole bunch--in every walk of life.
Replies: @Hypnotoad666, @Nachum, @ThreeCranes

“Genes matter–a whole bunch–in every race of life.”

FIFY
J.Ross says:
March 13, 2024 at 11:02 pm GMT
OT — YET STILL ANOTHER case of Boeing going boing. Apparently this is the fifth in a week and it’s only Wednesday.
https://www.irishstar.com/news/us-news/boeing-777-makes-emergency-landing-32342032
Bardon Kaldian says:
March 13, 2024 at 11:12 pm GMT
OT- Stockholm by night

Very few coloreds
Anonymous[165] • Disclaimer says:
March 13, 2024 at 11:26 pm GMT • 100 Words
@Bill P
@Anonymous
Hey, I'm partial to Norwegians (my wonderful grandma was one of them), but they have arguably the most physical fitness-oriented culture on earth, so it would be interesting to see how much nurture can contribute to results by studying Norway. It's kind of like the Jamaica of Europe in that they punch way above their demographic weight when it comes to Olympic medals, but genetically they are very much like their neighbors in Sweden, Denmark and Britain who get more modest results.
Replies: @Anonymous, @Anonymous
Well they are the richest real white country in the world if thats what you mean.

Never world beaters historically except in the winter sports.

Ingebrigtsen is the classic example of training to use 2/3 lest steps than his competitor to make up for his lack of speed

Whiteman won the WAC in 2022
mc23 says:
March 13, 2024 at 11:35 pm GMT
Staggering numbers. A subset of Ethiopians and Kenya are to marathon running as Border Collies are to dog agility contests.

Could’ve make that into analogy question on the old SAT test. One way to weed out the Woke.
DinduNuffins says:
March 14, 2024 at 12:38 am GMT
6464543
Ok so post it. Stop being cucks
Reg Cæsar says:
March 14, 2024 at 1:08 am GMT

Tade Souaiaiaa

World Hog Calling Champion, 2023.

No picture of Tade here, for some reason: https://www.downstate.edu/faculty/index.html?page=11
Reg Cæsar says:
March 14, 2024 at 1:17 am GMT
@Muggles
From the "study" text:

we introduce a psychocultural hypothesis, positing that interactions between racial perceptions and social dynamics shape the global distribution of running performance.

Did anyone in this study bother to define "psychocultural" for us?
And this:

striking evidence that racial perception has greater impact on performance than racial physiology.

How could "racial perception" (or any "perception") which means "the state of being or process of becoming aware of something through the senses." be responsible for noting that Africans/African heritage DNA appears to result in extraordinary performance superiority in certain kinds of running races?
Very odd that Tade Souaiaiaa, Nabie Fofanah, Rawle De Lisle and Sheena Mason (who seem to have African or African inspired names) seem to support a theory which says, in essence, that Black! superiority in some kinds of foot racing is merely an illusion of 'perception" and "psychocultural" bias.
Odd to see this self-hating Black! authored study be celebrated
Does ordinary perception, like at the quantum mechanics level, alter the location, just by looking at a Kenyan racer besting everyone else, nearly all of the time?
So the theory here is, "if you see an East African winning a race, by looking at the winner they simply become East African" even even they are Thai? So if we don't "perceive" their race/ethnicity then results are just randomly distributed across humanity?
If some White group of researchers argued that the Black! dominance of NBA basketball by Blacks! was merely a perception issue with "psychocultural" bias, would this be celebrated as some sort of "anti racist" research?
Some questions must not be asked...
Replies: @Reg Cæsar

Did anyone in this study bother to define “psychocultural” for us?

A C.P. Scott said (maybe) of television, “The word is half Greek, half Latin. No good can come of it.”
Reg Cæsar says:
March 14, 2024 at 1:34 am GMT • 100 Words

A reader points out USA sprinter Michael Norman has a black father and a Japanese mother. (Another black-Japanese sprinter, Abdul Hakim Sani Brown, often the anchorman for Japan’s fine 4x100m relay team, is in the second 100 with a personal best of 9.97 seconds.)

What contributes more to an extra-long career– stamina, or longevity? Blacks are weak in one of these but strong in the other. The Black-Japanese Sachio Kinugasa broke Lou Gehrig’s streak record. (And– thanks to his never having benched himself for a labor action– still holds it.)
China Japan and Korea Bromance of Thr... says:
March 14, 2024 at 2:06 am GMT • 100 Words
@YetAnotherAnon
I know it's a bad thought to have, but could there be any chance that Su Bingtian's spectacular start was assisted in some way - the biochemical equivalent of a JATO pack?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JATO
What exactly are the biomechanics of the start as compared to the sprint, where fast twitch muscle fibre seems very important?
The Olympics are highly prestigious, a great nation needs its great heroes, and there's a long, long history of "by any means necessary". It's amazing how many current women's Olympic records were set in the 1980s, either by Soviet, US or East German ladies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Olympic_records_in_athletics#Women's_records
Replies: @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms, @Ola
Yes he’s on roids. The swimmers and boxers are on roids as well.

The Japanese national record holder is on roids too

You can tell because their physiques all look like this
nebulafox says:
March 14, 2024 at 2:11 am GMT
@Bill P

Synthesizing these findings, we introduce a psychocultural hypothesis, positing that interactions between racial perceptions and social dynamics shape the global distribution of running performance.

In other words it's magic (or I suppose voodoo is apropos). It's our thoughts that make blacks faster.

This "magical thinking" suffuses American racial discourse so thoroughly that people barely notice it. It is used to explain just about every disparity that exists.

While it is true that whites may be discouraged from certain sports by black prevalence (e.g. urban high school basketball), this isn't the case with running, which is not a team sport. What is happening is that competition has gone global, and when white athletes figure out they can't compete at the international level they either get on with life or choose a sport in which they have a chance of winning.

As an added note on magical thinking, it is odd to see these people who so readily dismiss appeals to the Almighty as primitive superstition ascribing the power to alter the physical world to the thoughts of mere humans. To me this looks like regress to a stone age mentality, and yet here it is in an academic journal...
Replies: @AnotherDad, @Erik L, @Anonymous, @nebulafox
If there’s one thing I know, it’s that I don’t know much.
pirelli says:
March 14, 2024 at 2:18 am GMT • 200 Words

Next, we direct our attention to 1500m, where the last two British champions have been part of a European resurgence that hasn’t been seen in decades.

Middle distance running (800, 1500, mile) has shown more racial parity at elite levels over the last 50 years than sprints or long distance (ie, less SSA dominance).

It wasn’t just the Chariots of Fire era Brits in the 1980s.* A Norwegian, a German, and a Russian took Olympic gold in the 800 in 1996, 2000, and 2004, respectively, and MENA athletes have often been dominant in the 1500 and mile (Hicham El Guerrouj, Noureddine Morceli, Taoufik Makhloufi…)

I have a pet theory as to why this is… when I was running the 800 and 1600 in high school, the general consensus was that those races, and in particular the 800, were the most “painful” races in track and field. In the 800 you’re basically sprinting the whole way. No human group seems to have *really* evolved to run like that, so middle distance running ability is going to correlate less with a particular physique and more with… I dunno, pain tolerance, sheer determination, insanity? Or maybe the relative parity is just a coincidence. And the Kenyans have been pretty dominant lately.

*Yes, I know the movie’s about the 1924 Paris Olympics, but it was made during a time of widespread British enthusiasm for track and field largely arising from the success of Sebastian Coe and Co.
Anon[189] • Disclaimer says:
March 14, 2024 at 3:25 am GMT
@Barnard
I would bet the likelihood of the Chinese sprinter being on PEDs is higher than 98.75%. It doesn't sound like they even considered that possibility.
Replies: @Mr Mox, @Anon
This is not a confounding variable.
SF says:
March 14, 2024 at 3:28 am GMT • 100 Words
Meanwhile, the death of Nex Benedict, a biological woman who identified as something else despite a very feminine appearance, has been found to be suicide from overdose of benadryl and Prozac. Sexual dysfunction among women is one of the known side effects of Prozac. But of course, the media are attributing the death to the indirect effects of discrimination against trans people instead of questionable medication of a teenager.
JohnnyWalker123 says:
March 14, 2024 at 3:39 am GMT

According to recent data, African and Central Asian men currently have the highest average reported levels of testosterone.

This makes them the most masculine men on the planet. pic.twitter.com/h1uGZdkLnP

— OK Then (@okaythenme) March 13, 2024

• Replies: @res
@JohnnyWalker123
The original source has some methodology information.
https://testosteronedecline.com/testosterone-data/
JohnnyWalker123 says:
March 14, 2024 at 3:46 am GMT

https://t.co/Mz3S28nSuZ
You read it first at https://t.co/SotSteUUHZ. The re-shoring/friend-shoring charade turned Mexico into an extension of China's industrial machine. pic.twitter.com/ktoHkG0y7D

— David P. Goldman (@davidpgoldman) March 13, 2024
JohnnyWalker123 says:
March 14, 2024 at 3:46 am GMT

Bookmarked. When I’m asked why I’m sceptical on the India Rising story, this will come in handy.
Until India feeds, houses, educates all its children more equitably, it is discounting its future growth. https://t.co/nlWffyeRoE

— Kathleen Tyson (@Kathleen_Tyson_) March 13, 2024

This is crazy stats. If 0.3% contributes to 80% of taxes, something is really really wrong. pic.twitter.com/lLyzgBPCuw

— Rahul Raj (@x_rahulraj) March 13, 2024

😑😑
India spends:
Education – 2.9%
Healthcare – 2.1%
Science – 0.8%
Transportation – 1.7%

China spends:
Education – 15%
Healthcare – 8%
Science – 4%
Transportation – 4%

We Indians will not be able to compete with China even on multiplication tables, forget the vishwaguru BS. pic.twitter.com/gWRZUr35kM

— JD ജെ. ഡി. (@jillsdaniel) March 9, 2024

Fascinating.

In a country of 1408 million people, there are only 46.3 million people (3.28% of the population) who have salaried jobs in the formal sector, able to regularly contribute to their Employee Provident Fund.

Of these, only half earn enough to pay income tax, and a mere one-tenth of them contribute to 80% of income tax collected. That too not by choice but by compulsion, because of tax deducted at source for their salary bracket.

This is a policy choice and a desired outcome for the state.

The leaders of post-Partition “independent” India were so traumatised by rural taxation and famine at the hands of foreign tyrants and occupiers, and so antagonistic to native systems of taxation and governance as ‘Manuvadi’ and ‘regressive’, that they were scared of creating a bottom-up ecosystem of formal employment, thinking that to the ‘subaltern’ social strata, taxation is always and automatically ‘oppression’.

But this misses the fact that paying taxes is an essential form of identity-building and nation-building – it gives people a sense of ownership over the state institutions, which means they can demand better service delivery from the state and more people-oriented policies.

In its absence, the masses are instead reduced to begging (in the case of the silent majority, who like sheep, blow on the grass to ask its permission before grazing upon it) or extorting (in the case of the violent minority who honed their skills during foreign minority rule and Abrahamic Apartheid) their mai-baap feudal MP/MLA/DM for access to state patronage.

This meant the Nehruvian elites created socialism for the rich and anarcho-capitalism for the poor.

Instead of being able to fund universal housing, healthcare, and pensions for all citizens, like actual socialist countries, these were treated as feudal privileges that the state would grant to representatives of collective identities, as a form of state patronage to rent their loyalty.

This is also why reservations are seen as the panacea to all electoral ills – because government jobs are not about serving the country or achieving policy goals, it is about the king distributing titles, salaries, and pensions, to keep his vassals and tributaries loyal.

And then intellectuals complain, ‘why do these Indians take three baths a day and keep their homes spotless, but then go walk about in filthy streets, are they stupid?’, disregarding that owing to these policy choices, the state lacks the funds or incentive to deliver basic services while the public rarely developed a sense of ownership over public property.

Which is why they neither have well-funded public services at the grassroots, nor any pride or incentive in looking after public spaces as their own.

In fact, in a perverted form of Gandhian passive resistance, some people find great joy in breaking anti-littering rules, seeing them as ‘unjust oppression’ from a state that never did anything for them, and the state foolishly encourages this, feeling pride that the public are ‘smashing Brahmanical patriarchal norms’ such as hygiene and cleanliness. 🤡

• Replies: @Steve Sailer
@JohnnyWalker123
I sometimes add [More] tags to good but excessively long comments. This is a rare time when I deleted the [More] tag so that more people would see Ruchir Sharma's analysis.
Ola says: • Website
March 14, 2024 at 3:51 am GMT • 200 Words
@YetAnotherAnon
I know it's a bad thought to have, but could there be any chance that Su Bingtian's spectacular start was assisted in some way - the biochemical equivalent of a JATO pack?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JATO
What exactly are the biomechanics of the start as compared to the sprint, where fast twitch muscle fibre seems very important?
The Olympics are highly prestigious, a great nation needs its great heroes, and there's a long, long history of "by any means necessary". It's amazing how many current women's Olympic records were set in the 1980s, either by Soviet, US or East German ladies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Olympic_records_in_athletics#Women's_records
Replies: @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms, @Ola

What exactly are the biomechanics of the start as compared to the sprint, where fast twitch muscle fibre seems very important?

The biomechanics are poorly understood, but the East Asians seem to experiment with them more (and more successfully) than other nations. Look, for example, at Japan’s Shuhei Tada who lately seems to be on the verge of falling over during acceleration in all his 60m races. He also looks very unimposing for a world-elite sprinter (a well-developed upper body is more crucial to 100m than to 60m)

But the key difference between the start and top-speed sprinting concerns relative strength. The start is all about relative strength and consequently favors short people. But tall people with lower relative strength compensate for lower acceleration with a longer acceleration, which means they reach the same max speed but later.

This is because a full contraction of a long muscle takes longer but also does more work (transfers more energy) than an equally strong short muscle (“equally strong” meaning it has the same cross-sectional area and therefore produces the same amount of force.)

Another aspect of height is that the scaling of the body is not uniform. The long bones often grow in the middle so that the lever arms of muscles do not elongate proportionally. This makes the levers more suited for top speed than for strength and acceleration.

• Thanks: YetAnotherAnon
Mr. Anon says:
March 14, 2024 at 3:59 am GMT • 200 Words
OT, but related: this has got to be the purest, most-highly concentrated form of NPR BS – a program called Code Switch:

In the world of medicine, race-based diagnoses are still very real

“We’ve probably said it a hundred times on Code Switch — biological race is not a real thing. So why is race still used to help diagnose certain conditions, like keloids or cystic fibrosis?”

https://www.npr.org/2024/03/13/1197955918/race-in-medicine-andrea-deyrup

Also recently featured was this gem:

This right wing conspiracy theory about eating bugs is about as racist as you think

“”I will not eat the bugs” became a meme on 4chan and emerged in conservative talk shows and political speech. But why has it gained traction? In this week’s Code Switch, Gene Demby and NPR reporter Huo Jingnan dive into the sprawling conspiracy theory behind it. Proponents of the theory lean on the anti-semitic trope that “global elites” have a plot to control the masses — in this case under the guise of climate change solutions — by forcing them to eat bugs.”

https://www.npr.org/2024/03/06/1197955874/code-switch-bug-eating-03-06-2024?ft=nprml&f=510312

It’s hard to imagine something better documented than the clearly enunciated wish of globalist institutions that we “Eat ze bugs”. But then a “conspiracy theory” is anything that an NPR announcer has been told is bad think. And why is the phrase “global elites” an anti-semitic trope?

• Replies: @deep anonymous
@Mr. Anon

"And why is the phrase 'global elites' an anti-semitic trope?"

I thought it was a canard? LOL

It seems to fit the usual pattern--only our overlords are allowed to notice things in public. A little like another anti-semitic "conspiracy theory"--the Great Replacement. We're lunatics for noticing, but Michelle Goldberg can write about it enthusiastically.
, @ic1000
@Mr. Anon
NPR Code Switch reporters Gene Demby, Jess Kung, Leah Donnella, Christina Cala, Xavier Lopez, Dalia Mortada, B.A. Parker, Lori Lizarraga, and Veralyn Williams introduce this week's guest:

We've probably said it a hundred times on Code Switch — biological race is not a real thing. So why is race still used to help diagnose certain conditions, like keloids or cystic fibrosis? On this episode, Dr. Andrea Deyrup breaks it down for us... She says that while race-based health disparities are very real, the idea that our bodies are genetically different based on race is simply not.

Depressingly,

Dr. Deyrup is a professor of pathology at Duke University, as well as the course director of the Duke medical school pathology course.

Perhaps Demb et al. would enjoy learning about BiDil. Or perhaps not.
An ignorant reporter is a happy reporter.
Replies: @res
Bndey says:
March 14, 2024 at 5:00 am GMT
Every world record for strength is held by a white man of northern European descent.
International Jew says:
March 14, 2024 at 6:47 am GMT • 100 Words
Not to dispute anything that’s been said here, but I saw an amusing aspect of the cultural side of track. At a track meet for junior highschoolers in Oakland, California, that I attended, they ran about ten heats of the 50 and 100, but only one of the 800, and none of anything longer.
Steve Sailer says: • Website
March 14, 2024 at 7:27 am GMT
@JohnnyWalker123
https://twitter.com/Kathleen_Tyson_/status/1767920933979709881

https://twitter.com/x_rahulraj/status/1767755901325189340

https://twitter.com/jillsdaniel/status/1766414081819599195

Fascinating.

In a country of 1408 million people, there are only 46.3 million people (3.28% of the population) who have salaried jobs in the formal sector, able to regularly contribute to their Employee Provident Fund.

Of these, only half earn enough to pay income tax, and a mere one-tenth of them contribute to 80% of income tax collected. That too not by choice but by compulsion, because of tax deducted at source for their salary bracket.

This is a policy choice and a desired outcome for the state.

The leaders of post-Partition "independent" India were so traumatised by rural taxation and famine at the hands of foreign tyrants and occupiers, and so antagonistic to native systems of taxation and governance as 'Manuvadi' and 'regressive', that they were scared of creating a bottom-up ecosystem of formal employment, thinking that to the 'subaltern' social strata, taxation is always and automatically 'oppression'.

But this misses the fact that paying taxes is an essential form of identity-building and nation-building - it gives people a sense of ownership over the state institutions, which means they can demand better service delivery from the state and more people-oriented policies.

In its absence, the masses are instead reduced to begging (in the case of the silent majority, who like sheep, blow on the grass to ask its permission before grazing upon it) or extorting (in the case of the violent minority who honed their skills during foreign minority rule and Abrahamic Apartheid) their mai-baap feudal MP/MLA/DM for access to state patronage.

This meant the Nehruvian elites created socialism for the rich and anarcho-capitalism for the poor.

Instead of being able to fund universal housing, healthcare, and pensions for all citizens, like actual socialist countries, these were treated as feudal privileges that the state would grant to representatives of collective identities, as a form of state patronage to rent their loyalty.

This is also why reservations are seen as the panacea to all electoral ills - because government jobs are not about serving the country or achieving policy goals, it is about the king distributing titles, salaries, and pensions, to keep his vassals and tributaries loyal.

And then intellectuals complain, 'why do these Indians take three baths a day and keep their homes spotless, but then go walk about in filthy streets, are they stupid?', disregarding that owing to these policy choices, the state lacks the funds or incentive to deliver basic services while the public rarely developed a sense of ownership over public property.

Which is why they neither have well-funded public services at the grassroots, nor any pride or incentive in looking after public spaces as their own.

In fact, in a perverted form of Gandhian passive resistance, some people find great joy in breaking anti-littering rules, seeing them as 'unjust oppression' from a state that never did anything for them, and the state foolishly encourages this, feeling pride that the public are 'smashing Brahmanical patriarchal norms' such as hygiene and cleanliness. 🤡

Replies: @Steve Sailer
I sometimes add [More] tags to good but excessively long comments. This is a rare time when I deleted the [More] tag so that more people would see Ruchir Sharma’s analysis.

• Thanks: JohnnyWalker123
deep anonymous says:
March 14, 2024 at 9:45 am GMT • 100 Words
@Mr. Anon
OT, but related: this has got to be the purest, most-highly concentrated form of NPR BS - a program called Code Switch:

In the world of medicine, race-based diagnoses are still very real
"We've probably said it a hundred times on Code Switch — biological race is not a real thing. So why is race still used to help diagnose certain conditions, like keloids or cystic fibrosis?"
https://www.npr.org/2024/03/13/1197955918/race-in-medicine-andrea-deyrup

Also recently featured was this gem:

This right wing conspiracy theory about eating bugs is about as racist as you think
""I will not eat the bugs" became a meme on 4chan and emerged in conservative talk shows and political speech. But why has it gained traction? In this week's Code Switch, Gene Demby and NPR reporter Huo Jingnan dive into the sprawling conspiracy theory behind it. Proponents of the theory lean on the anti-semitic trope that "global elites" have a plot to control the masses — in this case under the guise of climate change solutions — by forcing them to eat bugs."
https://www.npr.org/2024/03/06/1197955874/code-switch-bug-eating-03-06-2024?ft=nprml&f=510312

It's hard to imagine something better documented than the clearly enunciated wish of globalist institutions that we "Eat ze bugs". But then a "conspiracy theory" is anything that an NPR announcer has been told is bad think. And why is the phrase "global elites" an anti-semitic trope?
Replies: @deep anonymous, @ic1000

“And why is the phrase ‘global elites’ an anti-semitic trope?”

I thought it was a canard? LOL

It seems to fit the usual pattern–only our overlords are allowed to notice things in public. A little like another anti-semitic “conspiracy theory”–the Great Replacement. We’re lunatics for noticing, but Michelle Goldberg can write about it enthusiastically.
ic1000 says:
March 14, 2024 at 11:16 am GMT • 100 Words
@Mr. Anon
OT, but related: this has got to be the purest, most-highly concentrated form of NPR BS - a program called Code Switch:

In the world of medicine, race-based diagnoses are still very real
"We've probably said it a hundred times on Code Switch — biological race is not a real thing. So why is race still used to help diagnose certain conditions, like keloids or cystic fibrosis?"
https://www.npr.org/2024/03/13/1197955918/race-in-medicine-andrea-deyrup

Also recently featured was this gem:

This right wing conspiracy theory about eating bugs is about as racist as you think
""I will not eat the bugs" became a meme on 4chan and emerged in conservative talk shows and political speech. But why has it gained traction? In this week's Code Switch, Gene Demby and NPR reporter Huo Jingnan dive into the sprawling conspiracy theory behind it. Proponents of the theory lean on the anti-semitic trope that "global elites" have a plot to control the masses — in this case under the guise of climate change solutions — by forcing them to eat bugs."
https://www.npr.org/2024/03/06/1197955874/code-switch-bug-eating-03-06-2024?ft=nprml&f=510312

It's hard to imagine something better documented than the clearly enunciated wish of globalist institutions that we "Eat ze bugs". But then a "conspiracy theory" is anything that an NPR announcer has been told is bad think. And why is the phrase "global elites" an anti-semitic trope?
Replies: @deep anonymous, @ic1000
NPR Code Switch reporters Gene Demby, Jess Kung, Leah Donnella, Christina Cala, Xavier Lopez, Dalia Mortada, B.A. Parker, Lori Lizarraga, and Veralyn Williams introduce this week’s guest:

We’ve probably said it a hundred times on Code Switch — biological race is not a real thing. So why is race still used to help diagnose certain conditions, like keloids or cystic fibrosis? On this episode, Dr. Andrea Deyrup breaks it down for us… She says that while race-based health disparities are very real, the idea that our bodies are genetically different based on race is simply not.

Depressingly,

Dr. Deyrup is a professor of pathology at Duke University, as well as the course director of the Duke medical school pathology course.

Perhaps Demb et al. would enjoy learning about BiDil. Or perhaps not.

An ignorant reporter is a happy reporter.

• Replies: @res
@ic1000

Perhaps Demb et al. would enjoy learning about BiDil. Or perhaps not.

Reality does not map well to your split. Here is Demby interviewing Angela Saini in 2019.
https://www.npr.org/transcripts/740072055

SAINI:
...
One of the examples I look at in the book is hypertension. So hypertension is one of the most racialized diseases in the world. In the U.S., it is treated as a black condition because black Americans have it to a - at much higher rates than other groups. In the U.K., it's so racialized that one of the national health bodies here defines in its guidelines that if you are black and under the age of 55, you will be given a different pill for hypertension than if you are white and under 55. So you are giving...

DEMBY: Wow.

SAINI: ...People different treatments based on their skin color. And is this justified?

So Demby enjoyed learning about one version of the BiDil story. But whether or not that constitutes "learning about BiDil..."
Replies: @ic1000
Shale boi says:
March 14, 2024 at 12:57 pm GMT • 100 Words
I first read about this in a (reasonably famous) old Runner’s World article. Just wondering, Steve, did they write about it first or you? (Nothing snarky, just want to understand the chain of influence.)

Also, any chance you have a link or cite for that old article? I can’t find it by Googling. Since “race” has two meanings in Runner’s World context.
Ganderson says:
March 14, 2024 at 1:37 pm GMT • 200 Words
@Erik L
@Bill P
“You can’t coach speed.” -Jimmy Johnson

Agree with your point about it not being a team sport in the way that basketball is. If you went to a mostly white high school and had world class speed, this fact would be obvious from gym class. It would also be obvious that this would be a fairly effortless way to get a scholarship to college.

If there were a lot of white people who had potential to hold world records in sprints, we would know it.

The skewed numbers Steve reports for top top top level sprinters are astounding. People who aren't used to statistical analysis of human populations just don't get how incredibly unlikely this is.
Replies: @Ganderson
I think Jimmy’s wrong, at least to the extent that you can most likely coach people to be faster, but you’re also not going to turn Alex Karras into Herb Washington. (Showing my age there!)

Hockey remains overwhelmingly white; the occasional Mike Grier, PK Subban, and Kyle Okposo notwithstanding. A friend of mine, a retired DI coach once told me that he thought the reason so many good players came out of the Upper Midwest was genetic. Applies to Scandinavia, at least Sweden and Finland, too. In Canada there’s a huge nurture component- in Canada you can turn on late night TV and listen to a discussion between Farley Mowatt and Margaret Atwood about who’s gonna win the Stanley Cup. Same phenomenon in Finland. Finland and Canada are the only countries where hockey is #1- even in Russia and Sweden it’s at best 1A after soccer.

Even so, the NHL (and a bunch of D I college teams) went all in on Blackety Black Month. The Bruins even retired Willie O’Ree’s number, pretty much because he is black; UMass played the “Black National Anthem” before their games. (Not just hockey, but hoops and lax, too- and lax is even whiter than hockey.)
res says:
March 14, 2024 at 4:59 pm GMT
@JohnnyWalker123
https://twitter.com/Kdenkss/status/1767867332985311248
Replies: @res
The original source has some methodology information.
https://testosteronedecline.com/testosterone-data/
res says:
March 14, 2024 at 5:12 pm GMT • 200 Words
@ic1000
@Mr. Anon
NPR Code Switch reporters Gene Demby, Jess Kung, Leah Donnella, Christina Cala, Xavier Lopez, Dalia Mortada, B.A. Parker, Lori Lizarraga, and Veralyn Williams introduce this week's guest:

We've probably said it a hundred times on Code Switch — biological race is not a real thing. So why is race still used to help diagnose certain conditions, like keloids or cystic fibrosis? On this episode, Dr. Andrea Deyrup breaks it down for us... She says that while race-based health disparities are very real, the idea that our bodies are genetically different based on race is simply not.

Depressingly,

Dr. Deyrup is a professor of pathology at Duke University, as well as the course director of the Duke medical school pathology course.

Perhaps Demb et al. would enjoy learning about BiDil. Or perhaps not.
An ignorant reporter is a happy reporter.
Replies: @res

Perhaps Demb et al. would enjoy learning about BiDil. Or perhaps not.

Reality does not map well to your split. Here is Demby interviewing Angela Saini in 2019.
https://www.npr.org/transcripts/740072055

SAINI:
…
One of the examples I look at in the book is hypertension. So hypertension is one of the most racialized diseases in the world. In the U.S., it is treated as a black condition because black Americans have it to a – at much higher rates than other groups. In the U.K., it’s so racialized that one of the national health bodies here defines in its guidelines that if you are black and under the age of 55, you will be given a different pill for hypertension than if you are white and under 55. So you are giving…

DEMBY: Wow.

SAINI: …People different treatments based on their skin color. And is this justified?

So Demby enjoyed learning about one version of the BiDil story. But whether or not that constitutes “learning about BiDil…”

• Replies: @ic1000
@res
If I were black and had life-threatening hypertension, I wouldn't want to be a patient of Dr. Demby. But that's just me.
Replies: @Corvinus
OilcanFloyd says:
March 14, 2024 at 5:43 pm GMT • 100 Words
Is the difference in speed between blacks and others as great as the difference in cognitive ability?

Are blacks faster on average, or just faster at the elite level? I played sports in SEC territory and there was always one or two black guys on my teams who were a step or two faster in a straight line, but most didn’t stand out. Granted, I never played with or against someone like Herschel Walker or Deion Sanders, but they are extreme outliers among blacks.
ic1000 says:
March 14, 2024 at 7:21 pm GMT
@res
@ic1000

Perhaps Demb et al. would enjoy learning about BiDil. Or perhaps not.

Reality does not map well to your split. Here is Demby interviewing Angela Saini in 2019.
https://www.npr.org/transcripts/740072055

SAINI:
...
One of the examples I look at in the book is hypertension. So hypertension is one of the most racialized diseases in the world. In the U.S., it is treated as a black condition because black Americans have it to a - at much higher rates than other groups. In the U.K., it's so racialized that one of the national health bodies here defines in its guidelines that if you are black and under the age of 55, you will be given a different pill for hypertension than if you are white and under 55. So you are giving...

DEMBY: Wow.

SAINI: ...People different treatments based on their skin color. And is this justified?

So Demby enjoyed learning about one version of the BiDil story. But whether or not that constitutes "learning about BiDil..."
Replies: @ic1000
If I were black and had life-threatening hypertension, I wouldn’t want to be a patient of Dr. Demby. But that’s just me.

• Replies: @Corvinus
@ic1000
Speaking about hypertension…

From 2023.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9838393/

Multiple factors contribute to racial and ethnic disparities in hypertension treatment and control, key among them being SDoH including constrained access to consistent healthcare, low health literacy, lower socioeconomic status,
neighborhood/environment stability, and reduced access to healthy food. These factors are compounded by other barriers to hypertension management including inadequate treatment intensification related to clinical inertia and biologic factors such as salt sensitivity (Fig. 2) [11, 12]. Importantly, these factors differ greatly across racial and ethnic populations.

Lack of access to healthy food options and the presence of food deserts are important components of SDoH that contribute to the racial inequities in BP management and control. In particular, lack of access to affordable, healthy, and nutritious food has been linked to poorer health outcomes, with food insecurity associated with a 14 to 77% increased risk of hypertension [13]. One cross-sectional study of 930 rural participants found that food insecurity was associated with a 77% increased odds for hypertension (p = 0.001) and 51% increased odds for diabetes (p = 0.038) [14]. Recent programs, such as the GOFRESH initiative in Boston, have attempted to mitigate limited access to healthy food caused by “food deserts” that disproportionately impacts minority communities by delivering nutritious groceries to Black residents [15]. This program specifically aims to deliver groceries that meet Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) criteria, a diet associated with significant reductions in systolic blood pressure (SBP) among NH Black adults (− 7 mm Hg) [16, 17]. The program’s high cost, estimated at approximately $500 per month, limits its expansion [15]. The confluence of the limited availability and high cost of healthy food are major barriers to dietary drivers that can help to reduce disparities in hypertension control.

Limited healthcare access is another major SDoH barrier that impedes an individual’s ability to achieve BP control. Uninsured and underinsured medical coverage status has been implicated in lower BP control among racial and ethnic minorities in the USA. In an analysis of 2013 data from over 120,000 participants in the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, antihypertensive medication adherence was significantly lower among those who were underinsured (OR 0.83, 95% CI 0.76–0.89) or uninsured (0.39, 0.35–0.43) compared with adequately insured individuals [18]. Similarly, data from 21,664 NHANES (2011–2018) participants showed that absence of a routine healthcare location/facility and/or lack of insurance was associated with a 43 to 82% lower prevalence of controlled BP [19]. Importantly, higher rates of inadequate or non-existent insurance coverage were disproportionately identified among racial and ethnic minorities, with an uninsured prevalence of 26.5% among Hispanic adults, 15% among NH Black adults, and 9% among NH White adults [18]. A recent analysis of 1600 Asian Americans living in Southern California who self-reported lack of insurance also experienced elevated BP [20]. Unfortunately, even when people have physical access to care, their ability to utilize it may be limited by language barriers. Individuals who indicated low English proficiency (defined as completion of a survey in a language other than English or with an interpreter) during an NHANES interview experienced higher rates of uncontrolled BP (OR 1.47, 1.07–2.03) than those with higher English proficiency [21]. Collectively, this demonstrates that lower insurance coverage and lack of healthcare access are important contributors to racial and ethnic disparities in BP control [19].
Bill P says:
March 14, 2024 at 9:45 pm GMT • 100 Words
@Anonymous
@Bill P
I don't disagree! (Though I'm not so sure there aren't meaningful genetic differences between Norway and its neighbors: it has a quite different geography than them which plausibly could have led to recent selection for traits relevant to athletic success. And how many Brits or Danes have you seen who look like Erling Haaland?) But, I also don't think the role of culture should disqualify them from Best White Athletes contention. It's also good to remember that the propensity to defer gratification and grind away at things that lack much financial/social benefit (immediate or in general) is itself a heritable trait much more common in the WEIRD parts of Europe.
Replies: @Bill P

And how many Brits or Danes have you seen who look like Erling Haaland?)

None than I can think of, but in high school I did have a Swedish friend, a Geat from Vastergotaland IIRC, who had that look.

Norway has a diversity of phenotypes. You have people like Karsten Warholm, who looks very British/Celtic, Erling Haaland, who looks indigenous WHG Scandinavian/Germanic, and Magnus Carlsen, who has more of an eastern European look IMO. Broadly speaking you could say Warholm represents the people who introduced R1b lineage, Haaland I and Carlsen R1a.
Truth says:
March 15, 2024 at 3:58 pm GMT
@Eddy Wobegon
But how many of these fastest men were born as women? Huh?
I'll bet a bunch of them were.
Replies: @Truth
!

(Hmmmmm…)
Corvinus says:
March 16, 2024 at 4:38 pm GMT • 300 Words
We’ve been through this before, Mr. Sailer. Bears worth repeating.

Here is a study that NOTICED the biological angle regarding the differences in black and white athletes.

https://www.livescience.com/10716-scientists-theorize-black-athletes-run-fastest.html

Speaking about location, Kenya has won an astonishing 63 medals at the Olympic Games in races of 800m and above (21 gold!), since 1968.

It turns out it is not Kenya as a whole that usually emerged victorious, but individuals from a region in the Rift Valley called Nandi. So context matters here, since an argument could be made that distance running is a Nandi phenomenon. The success of “black” distance running is concentrated in a decidedly small area, with the vast majority of the continent under-represented.

When it comes to the sprints, why has Africa not dominated? The combined forces of several nations (e.g. Guinea-Bissau, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Togo, Niger, Benin, Mali, the Gambia, Ghana, Gabon, Senegal) have not won a single sprinting medal (to my knowledge) at the Olympics or World Championships; rather, it has been the Jamaicans and the Americans.

Just because some black people are good (or bad) at something does not imply that black people in general will be good (or bad) at something. Training, funding, and past success ALL play a role here.

Is there not far more genetic variation WITHIN than BETWEEN racial groups?

Moreover, the Great Rift Valley ranges in elevation from c. 1,300 ft (395 m) below sea level (the Dead Sea) to c. 6,000 ft (1,830 m) above sea level in south Kenya. So the higher elevation there is similar to Boulder. Thus, the subset of the Kenyan population who strive to be runners train in an area that offers a comparative advantage. That is the exact strategy used by Scott Fauble.
Corvinus says:
March 16, 2024 at 4:44 pm GMT • 500 Words
@ic1000
@res
If I were black and had life-threatening hypertension, I wouldn't want to be a patient of Dr. Demby. But that's just me.
Replies: @Corvinus
Speaking about hypertension…

From 2023.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9838393/

Multiple factors contribute to racial and ethnic disparities in hypertension treatment and control, key among them being SDoH including constrained access to consistent healthcare, low health literacy, lower socioeconomic status,
neighborhood/environment stability, and reduced access to healthy food. These factors are compounded by other barriers to hypertension management including inadequate treatment intensification related to clinical inertia and biologic factors such as salt sensitivity (Fig. 2) [11, 12]. Importantly, these factors differ greatly across racial and ethnic populations.

Lack of access to healthy food options and the presence of food deserts are important components of SDoH that contribute to the racial inequities in BP management and control. In particular, lack of access to affordable, healthy, and nutritious food has been linked to poorer health outcomes, with food insecurity associated with a 14 to 77% increased risk of hypertension [13]. One cross-sectional study of 930 rural participants found that food insecurity was associated with a 77% increased odds for hypertension (p = 0.001) and 51% increased odds for diabetes (p = 0.038) [14]. Recent programs, such as the GOFRESH initiative in Boston, have attempted to mitigate limited access to healthy food caused by “food deserts” that disproportionately impacts minority communities by delivering nutritious groceries to Black residents [15]. This program specifically aims to deliver groceries that meet Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) criteria, a diet associated with significant reductions in systolic blood pressure (SBP) among NH Black adults (− 7 mm Hg) [16, 17]. The program’s high cost, estimated at approximately $500 per month, limits its expansion [15]. The confluence of the limited availability and high cost of healthy food are major barriers to dietary drivers that can help to reduce disparities in hypertension control.

Limited healthcare access is another major SDoH barrier that impedes an individual’s ability to achieve BP control. Uninsured and underinsured medical coverage status has been implicated in lower BP control among racial and ethnic minorities in the USA. In an analysis of 2013 data from over 120,000 participants in the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, antihypertensive medication adherence was significantly lower among those who were underinsured (OR 0.83, 95% CI 0.76–0.89) or uninsured (0.39, 0.35–0.43) compared with adequately insured individuals [18]. Similarly, data from 21,664 NHANES (2011–2018) participants showed that absence of a routine healthcare location/facility and/or lack of insurance was associated with a 43 to 82% lower prevalence of controlled BP [19]. Importantly, higher rates of inadequate or non-existent insurance coverage were disproportionately identified among racial and ethnic minorities, with an uninsured prevalence of 26.5% among Hispanic adults, 15% among NH Black adults, and 9% among NH White adults [18]. A recent analysis of 1600 Asian Americans living in Southern California who self-reported lack of insurance also experienced elevated BP [20]. Unfortunately, even when people have physical access to care, their ability to utilize it may be limited by language barriers. Individuals who indicated low English proficiency (defined as completion of a survey in a language other than English or with an interpreter) during an NHANES interview experienced higher rates of uncontrolled BP (OR 1.47, 1.07–2.03) than those with higher English proficiency [21]. Collectively, this demonstrates that lower insurance coverage and lack of healthcare access are important contributors to racial and ethnic disparities in BP control [19].

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Competitor	DOB	Nat	Ethnicity
Kelvin KIPTUM	02 Dec 1999	KEN
Eliud KIPCHOGE	05 Nov 1984	KEN
Kenenisa BEKELE	13 Jun 1982	ETH
Sisay LEMMA	12 Dec 1990	ETH
Benson KIPRUTO	17 Mar 1991	KEN
Birhanu LEGESE	11 Sep 1994	ETH
Mosinet GEREMEW	12 Feb 1992	ETH
Timothy KIPLAGAT	18 Sep 1993	KEN
Dennis KIMETTO	22 Apr 1984	KEN
Evans CHEBET	10 Nov 1988	KEN
Gabriel Gerald GEAY	10 Sep 1996	TAN
Lawrence CHERONO	07 Aug 1988	KEN
Alexander Mutiso MUNYAO	10 Sep 1996	KEN
Emmanuel MUTAI	12 Oct 1984	KEN
Wilson Kipsang KIPROTICH	15 Mar 1982	KEN
Amos KIPRUTO	16 Sep 1992	KEN
Vincent Kipkemoi NGETICH	03 Jan 1999	KEN
Mule WASIHUN	20 Oct 1993	ETH
Tadese TAKELE	03 Aug 2002	ETH
Deresa GELETA		ETH
Getaneh MOLLA	10 Jan 1994	ETH
Bashir ABDI	10 Feb 1989	BEL	Somali
Patrick Makau MUSYOKI	02 Mar 1985	KEN
Tamirat TOLA	11 Aug 1991	ETH
Herpasa NEGASA	11 Sep 1993	ETH
Guye Idemo ADOLA	20 Oct 1990	ETH
Morhad AMDOUNI	21 Jun 1988	FRA	Tunisian
Dawit WOLDE	19 May 1991	ETH
Stanley Kipleting BIWOTT	21 Apr 1986	KEN
Kinde ATANAW	15 Apr 1993	ETH
Reuben Kiprop KIPYEGO	21 Aug 1996	KEN
Haile GEBRSELASSIE	18 Apr 1973	ETH
Leul GEBRESILASE	20 Sep 1992	ETH
Marius KIPSEREM	17 May 1988	KEN
Asefa MENGSTU	22 Jan 1988	ETH
Bernard Kiprop KOECH	31 Jan 1988	KEN
Geoffrey MUTAI	07 Oct 1981	KEN
Kaan Kigen ÖZBILEN	15 Jan 1986	TUR	Kenyan
Barnabas KIPTUM	08 Dec 1986	KEN
Joshua BELET	10 Feb 1998	KEN
Elisha ROTICH	12 Apr 1990	KEN
Ronald KORIR	10 Apr 1991	KEN
Ayele ABSHERO	28 Dec 1990	ETH
Geoffrey KAMWOROR	22 Nov 1992	KEN
Tesfaye ABERA	31 Mar 1992	ETH
Duncan KIBET	25 Apr 1978	KEN
James Kipsang KWAMBAI	28 Feb 1983	KEN
Sammy KITWARA	26 Nov 1986	KEN
Vincent KIPCHUMBA	03 Aug 1990	KEN
Seifu TURA	19 Jun 1997	ETH
Tsegaye MEKONNEN	15 Jun 1995	ETH
Dickson CHUMBA	27 Oct 1986	KEN
Jonathan Kipleting KORIR	20 Nov 1986	KEN
Hayle LEMI	13 Sep 1994	ETH
CyBrian KOTUT	06 Jun 1992	KEN
Hiskel TEWELDE	15 Sep 1986	ERI
Bethwel KIBET	04 Aug 1991	KEN
Tsegaye KEBEDE	15 Jan 1987	ETH
Solomon DEKSISA	11 Mar 1994	ETH
Hailemaryam KIROS	05 Feb 1997	ETH
Haftu TEKLU	21 Jan 2000	ETH
El Hassan EL ABBASSI	13 Apr 1984	BRN	Moroccan
Asrar HIYRDEN	25 Nov 1999	ETH
Hillary KIPSAMBU	04 Feb 1985	KEN
Andualem BELAY	05 Apr 1992	ETH
Lelisa DESISA	14 Jan 1990	ETH
Titus EKIRU	02 Jan 1992	KEN
Mekuant AYENEW	24 Oct 1991	ETH
Yemane TSEGAY	08 Apr 1985	ETH
Berhanu SHIFERAW	31 May 1993	ETH
Barselius KIPYEGO	22 Jul 1993	KEN
Stephen KISSA	01 Dec 1988	UGA
Kibiwott KANDIE	20 Jun 1996	KEN
Tadesse TOLA	31 Oct 1987	ETH
Shura KITATA	09 Jun 1996	ETH
Tsegaye GETACHEW	30 Nov 1996	ETH
Dino SEFIR	28 May 1988	ETH
Getu FELEKE	28 Nov 1986	ETH
Abebe NEGEWO	20 May 1984	ETH
Daniel DO NASCIMENTO	28 Jul 1998	BRA	Black Brazilian
Feyisa LILESA	01 Feb 1990	ETH
Endeshaw NEGESSE	13 Mar 1988	ETH
Kenneth Kiprop KIPKEMOI	02 Aug 1984	KEN
Mathew Kipkoech KISORIO	16 May 1989	KEN
Chalu DESO	14 Dec 1997	ETH
Abayneh DEGU	01 Dec 1998	ETH
Brimin KIPKORIR	1989	KEN
Gashau AYALE	22 Aug 1996	ISR	Ethiopia
Markos GENETI	07 Jun 1984	ETH
Titus KIPRUTO	25 Jun 1998	KEN
Paul TERGAT	17 Jun 1969	KEN
Sammy Kipchoge KORIR	12 Dec 1971	KEN
Jonathan MAIYO	05 May 1988	KEN
Kengo SUZUKI	11 Jun 1995	JPN	Japanese
Abdi NAGEEYE	02 Mar 1989	NED	Somali
Philemon KIPLIMO	10 Oct 1998	KEN
Bazezew ASMARE	11 Sep 1996	ETH
Amanal PETROS	17 May 1995	GER	Eritrean
Gadisa BIRHANU	15 Sep 1992	ETH
Philemon RONO	08 Feb 1991	KEN