Beijing Notebook: White Guys Still Can't Run

by Amby Burfoot

On the eve of the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games, I wrote a long article for Runner's World called "White Men Can't Run." The article predicted that athletes of African heritage would win every running event in Barcelona, from the 100 meters to the marathon, 11 events in all. I was wrong. Spain's Fermin Cacho won the 1500, Germany's Dieter Baumann the 5000, and Korea's Hwang Young Cho the marathon. However, if you leap ahead just one year to the 1993 Stuttgart World Championships, I hit the mark, at least if you give me Noureddine Morceli of Algeria.

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The reason for this striking development, I noted in the Runner's World article, is that runners of West African heritage seem particularly well-suited for power events like the sprints, while their skinny brethren from East Africa win most of the distance races. Further, West Africans are lousy marathoners, and East Africans are lousy sprinters. (This isn't a character judgment; it's a statistical fact.) It's as if someone drew a line down the middle of the continent and said, "All sprinters to the west, all distance folks to the east."

In March 2007, writing in New Studies in Athletics, Italian Luciano Barra took a look at the increasing dominance of African runners and its potential impact on the economics of track. Barra's worried about falling TV ratings for track in Europe, where five countries--England, Germany, Italy, France, and Spain--pay large sums for TV rights to the major track meets. Through most of the last century, all five were relative powerhouses on the world track scene, and brimming with citizens eager to follow their nation's success stories. In this century, not so much.

In his article, Barra, general secretary of the Italian Athletic Federation for 20 years, produced a chart showing the percent of medals in the middle and long distances that have been won by African men over the recent decades. It reads like this: 1970s, 19.4 percent; 1980s, 28.9 percent; 1990s, 67.5 percent; 2000s (so far), 74.4 percent. He goes on to present a 7-point "Marshall Plan" to reverse the trend.

It's a lame plan, and it won't work. What we've got here, whether you like it or not, is a tidal wave. What Nature put in, legislation can't remove.

The problem is so knotty, on so many different levels, that few bring it up. If you even mention it, you risk being called a racist, or at least someone abetting racists. No matter that no one has ever produced any associations between running speed and the truly important human qualities, from intelligence to ethical behavior. No matter that medical science is every day uncovering genetic differences among peoples. I'm immersed in the Olympics right now, but didn't I just read that someone has identified genes that make certain people more susceptible to nicotine addiction?

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Make no mistake about it: The top Olympic athletes are genetic freaks. They're at the 99.9th percentile of whatever physical talents lead to success in their sport. I almost wrote "their chosen sport," but I don't believe the best athletes choose their sports. I believe their sports choose them. The basketballers are freakishly tall, the weight lifters abnormally thick, and the little girl gymnasts so tiny that controversy breaks out over their (lack of) age.

I don't follow swimming closely, but I know that everyone's writing about Michael Phelps. And I notice that most of the articles eventually mention his extraordinary body characteristics--his unusually long and flexible anatomy. It just so happens that Phelps's body is uniquely shaped for powering through water. That came first. Then came the lifetime of killer workouts. But I'm sure other swimmers train just as hard as Phelps. His workouts alone aren't the reason for his bucket full of gold medals. Keep it simple, stupid: The body came first.

The same is no doubt true for Kenenisa Bekele, Ethiopia's astonishing world record holder at 5000 and 10,000 meters, and the defending champion in the Olympic 10,000. The same but with a difference: You can't see Bekele's advantage, because it's hidden deep in his muscle fibers, perhaps in the mitochondria themselves, the so-called "cellular power plants" of human muscle.

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Over the years, I've met almost no American scientists willing to wade into this quagmire. It's seriously politically incorrect. You have to go outside the U.S. to have a candid discussion. Almost two decades ago, a gracious Canadian, Claude Bouchard, introduced me to many of his early findings. Bouchard, now executive director of the Pennington Biomedical Research Center at Louisiana State University, is the acknowledged world expert in the field of genetics and sports/fitness. South Africa's Tim Noakes has often been drawn to countervailing positions on important topics like heart disease, hydration, heat illness, and performance success among endurance athletes. If you say "Yes," Tim says "Wait just a minute." He has also made important contributions to our knowledge of African marathon success.

In recent years, a Spanish researcher, Alejandro Lucia, has been doing the most original work on genetics and distance running success. He's the authority on the physiology of Tour de France riders, and five years ago told me that Lance Armstrong and Chris Carmichael were simply smarter than European riders. He was referring to their decision that Armstrong would push lower gears at higher frequencies than previous Tour riders. In his lab, Lucia had proven this the more efficient approach. He explained to me that Europeans were too tradition-bound to see the light.

Lucia and colleagues have been able to conduct exhaustive laboratory and treadmill tests on one of the world's great distance runners, Eritrea's Zersenay Tadesse, third in the Athens Olympic 10,000 and winner of the World Cross-Country Championship in 2007. Two years ago, the Lucia group published a study comparing Tadesse and several of his Eritrean teammates to elite Spanish runners. The two groups had about the same aerobic capacity--very high--but the Eritreans had a superior running economy, which seemed to be based on specific anatomical distinctions: overall body leanness, long lower legs, and skinny lower legs. Like Phelps, the Eritreans had bodies built for success in their sport. Many exercise physiologists consider running economy the most important factor in distance running achievement.

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This year, in fact just two weeks ago, Lucia dug deeper in a paper that was published by the British Journal of Sports Medicine and titled: "Unique among unique. Is it genetically determined?" This time the research team extracted actual DNA from Tadesse, eight world-class Spanish runners who had finished in the top 20 of the World Cross-Country Championships at least once, and two other East Africans who were as good as the Spanish but not as good as Tadesse. Prior to conducting the experiment, the researchers picked seven genes that they believe are associated with endurance success, and hypothesized that Tadesse would have more of these genes than the other runners.

Here's what they found, from their paper: "The only athlete with the theoretically more suited genotype for attaining world-class endurance running performance was the case study subject." In other words, Tadesse appears to have a genetic advantage when it comes to running 10,000 meters and farther. [Note: The paper never identified Tadesse by name, but said the case study subject was an Eritrean winner of the 2007 World Cross "long race." It didn't take a Sherlock Holmes to deduce who this is.]

Lucia and friends are careful to add that an Olympic runner needs more than just good genes. Environment can help a lot, i.e., living at high altitude. Nor does anyone become an endurance champion without "rigorous, programmed sports training." We all know this to be true. At the same time, it doesn't change the power of the Lucia conclusion. There are a number of factors involved in endurance success, and one of them is choosing your parents very carefully. If you're East African, you appear to have better odds in the parent-selection lottery.

My interest in this subject springs from no darker place than human curiosity. I see what I see, and I would like to comprehend it better. I came into marathoning during the Abebe Bikila era, ran against a talented but unknown Ethiopian, Sebsibe Mamo, back in my college days--he beat me a few times, I beat him a few--and was lucky enough to go through a lot of physiology testing in my 20s. The diversity of the human body and human physiology fascinate me. The Olympics still thrill me. The quest to understand continues.

In Beijing the track competition begins on Friday. And once again I'm wondering: Will any white runners win gold at these Olympic Games?

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