Liu Xiang wins the gold medal in 110m hurdles and sets a new Olympic record of 12.91 seconds.
I have to admit that if there is one article I dislike from T-Mag, it’s “Speed Demons”.
The Americans are still undoubtly the dominating force in track & field (as witnessed by the 1,2,3 finishes by American runners in the 400m final) but
at least this goes to show that athletic success can be attributed to more than just your racial background and God-given genetics.
The Chinese woman who won the 75+ kg weightlifting and set a world record was great too. I’ve always been a bit peeved with people who attribute explosive sporting ability to a genetics because “he’s black”. It’s undermining to the athletes from other racial backgrounds and it’s undermining to black athletes as it can suggest that they didn’t have to work as hard to get to where they are…
I said it before that speed demon artcile was wrong catorgizing blacks/african men and women as the fast man on earth. Now, are they going to say Asain men and women have the same make up or sturcture that african american male/female have. I just think it has more to do with participation, and the sheer diffrence in the type of sports they play.
I read an article that the top 200 times for the 100m (prior to Athens)were all held by black atheletes that whose ancestors had originally come from West Africa.
[quote]spiderman739 wrote:
I read an article that the top 200 times for the 100m (prior to Athens)were all held by black atheletes that whose ancestors had originally come from West Africa.
Food for thought.[/quote]
The same is true for almost all running events. Because one Caucasian and one Asian got the gold in two (of many) running events does not disprove there are small genetic differences in subpopulations that do not have unlimited gene flow with other populations.
Everyone in the Olympics is a genetic freak. That is a fact. Everyone in the Olympics (except the USA basketball team) are genetic freaks that train exceptionally hard and exceptionally smart. So if we assume we already have the outliers in every population in regards to genetic potential and training intensity, then no nation with a large population should ever have an edge over any other nation. If all genetics were more or less equal, then the results every Olympics would be more or less random. However, Africans, or their descendents, win nearly every medal in every running event. What, there are no white guys in America that like to run and want to be in the Olympics? Sure there are. Jeremy Wariner, for example. In fact, he may well turn out to be the fastest 400m runner of all time. But every other guy medalling in that race, or close to medalling is not white. Wariner won because of super freaky genetics. But the fact that there are simply no other white guys winning those races suggests that Wariner’s freaky genes are much rarer among whites than blacks.
The other thing to keep in mind is that the differences we are talking about are relatively small. We’re talking about maybe .5 seconds on average that separates an elite white sprinter from an elite black sprinter. They both train equally. 0.5 seconds is due, not to environment, but a very small genetic difference, probably a single allele. There have been many, many genes found with differeing frequencies among human populations. It is nothing surprising. That people would then assume that genes for muscle fiber composition, for instance, would be invariable over every human population, while every other gene varies, is being willfully ignorant of population genetics. It can’t happen. Either all genes vary in sub-populations with limited gene flow or no genes vary (except due to mutation). You can’t invoke some new laws of genetics because it suits your politically correct ideology.
We can turn the problem around–why are there no blacks winning medals in swimming? Sub-saharan Africans on both coasts have historically sailed. There are lakes and rivers in Africa. People there do swim. They just don’t produce any Michael Phelps. Oh yeah, I forgot Zimbabwe won a couple medals in swimming. Ummm, Kirsty Coventry is a white girl who swims for Auburn. By the racial equality argument, Zimbabwe shouldn’t need to import little blonde girls to swim for them. Africans ought to be able to swim as fast as whites. Yet, swimming is dominated by Europeans and East Asians. Pick your sport and there is generally ethnically determined favorites due to SMALL genetic differences. Sure, it sucks if your genes conspire against you being an elite swimmer or sprinter, but them’s the breaks.
I agree with you rg73, and am glad someone has sated it as well as you did. Why are people afraid of having such views? Is it because they might have a problem with having to admit that blacks are somehow superior to whites…
Also, how many white guys do you know that even TRY to be good sprinters? Most just give up before they even start. Whatever happened to hard work?
Maybe black people ON AVERAGE have better genetics for athletics. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t any white people who don’t have equal or better genetics than most blacks.
I think that saying African decendent people are on average genetically predisposed to run faster than anglo-saxons people is about as racist as saying that Pygmy warriors are genetically predisposed to be shorter than anglos.
On the other hand, its probably just as important to point either of the above statements out because they are both so blatantly obvious.
The fastest 50 freestyler I ever personally met was a black dude. 2nd is the fastest that came out of our school last year… 21.12 in the 50 yd. He was white. But they had a lot of similarities, such as both being 6’4"+, 180 lbs. +, 8% bf -, and stuff like that. I don’t think that depends on race, I think it’s more the individual’s genetics.
Personally, I think the reason blacks don’t dominate swimmers too is because they’re culturally predispositioned towards playing basketball and running, while in the US at least, swimming is seen as a “white sport”. It’s just a lack of African American participation. Out of the boys and girls swimming and diving teams, there are only two kids from minority groups.
At an entire quad meet today, I saw maybe a handful of competitors today who were black. There’s this kid who I’ve been friends with since we were little kids at my school, Dimitrius, and I think he’d tear it up at swimming. But he’s all basketball.
