How much does race have to do with athletic performance?

I do not care at all what the racial background of any global running champion or medallist may be.

One of the reasons I love watching top level running is because it is a sport where athletes from all nations have a chance to succeed given that training hardly requires expensive training facilities, in contrast to other individual sports which certainly advantage richer nations such as swimming, cycling and rowing.

Gone are the days up the 1960s when the sport was dominated by the Americans, Europeans, Australians and New Zealanders

But, I want to challenge recent comments to a piece I wrote on The Roar where it was stated “If you aren’t born East African, you are miles behind the pack to start with, and no amount of funding is going to bridge the gap to be competitive … Same with sprinting. Rohan Browning – he is a nice fellow, but he’s not making any final of the Olympics or World Championships. He has to bust his gut to run 10.01 in a heat when the West African background sprinters were coasting next to him to cruise through”.

Then there was another comment on the story.

“Unless you are the most freakish of genetic freaks (Sally Pearson, Christophe Le Maitre, Dafne Schippers), if you aren’t of west african heritage, you aren’t making it in modern professional athletics”.

Such a view is not unique. Jon Entine’s provocative 2000 book Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports And Why We’re Afraid To Talk About It, also suggested that the best sprinters will always be found among people of West African descent and that the finest endurance runners are more likely to come from East Africa.

The scientific research does highlight some general differences found between the physical traits of people based on their racial background.

For example, 1986 research into muscle fibre by the French-Canadian exercise physiologist Claude Bouchard, when sticking long needles into the thighs of volunteer West African and French-Canadian students, found that West Africans were twice as likely as the French-Canadians to possess more of the larger fast-twitch fibres.

Other studies have pointed to the lower body-fat percentage of African Americans compared to whites, the advanced motor skills of black infants, and the greater body density and levels of plasma testosterone of people of African descent.

However, I support the 2000 argument of Andrew Anthony who argued that there is no “hard evidence, still less proof, that any population group – or rather elite athletes from within that group – is genetically better suited to running faster or jumping higher. In other words, no one has isolated a gene or genes for advanced athletic performance”. 

Now, I don’t really get into the subject of genetics, albeit that logic tells anyone that natural ability is going to help any athlete succeed assuming they also have the dedication to train hard and the aright guidance.

Rather, I choose to look at recent results that certainly complicate the notion that a certain race has genetic advantages that cannot be matched.

Gold medalist Usain Bolt of Jamaica. (Photo by Patrick Smith/Getty Images)

Looking at the two most recent Olympic Games (OG), still the most sought after global championships by athletes in terms of prestige and sponsorship, there have been quite a few runners with European backgrounds that have won medals, albeit they still only win a small minority of medals given there are eleven running (and hurdling) events each for men and women.

At the 2020 OG, five medals were won by male athletes with European backgrounds: bronze 200m (Christophe Lemaitre France), bronze 800m (Clayton Murphy USA), bronze 1500m (Nick Willis New Zealand), silver 3000m steeplechase (Evan Jager USA), and bronze marathon (Galen Rupp USA).

Of the female running events: silver 200m (Dafne Schippers Netherlands), bronze 1500m (Jennifer Simpson USA), silver 400m hurdles (Sara Petersen Denmark), and bronze 3000m steeplechase Emma Coburn USA).

At the 2020 Olympics, held 2021, four medals: bronze 800m (Patryk Dobek Poland), gold 1500m (Jakob Ingebrigtsen Norway), bronze 1500m (Josh Kerr Great Britain), and gold 400m hurdles (Karsten Warholm Norway).

Of the females, five won medals: silver 800m (Keely Hodgkinson Great Britain), silver 1500m (Laura Muir Great Britain), bronze 400m hurdles (Femke Bol Netherlands), silver 3000m steeple (Courtney Frerichs USA), and bronze marathon (Molly Seidel USA).

If there was such an immense genetic advantage for those with east or west African backgrounds, as claimed above, then there would be far fewer athletes of European racial background winning global medals.

While the above-cited 1986 research may indicate that West Africans were twice as likely as Europeans to have a higher percentage of the larger fast-twitch fibres, simple mathematics indicates that there will still be many individual athletes of European racial background who may possess the right potential to succeed in running.

In addition to Christophe Lemaitre (France) winning the 2016 OG 200m bronze, another Frenchman of European racial background won gold at the 800m at the 2017 World Athletics Championship (Pierre-Ambroise Bosse).

Obviously, such French studies highlighting supposed genetic differences does not deter French runners from all racial backgrounds from dreaming and then succeeding at the global level, as also evident by Marie-José Pérec (born on the West Indian island of Basse-Terre in Guadeloupe) winning many global golds: 1991 WC 400m, 1992 OG 400, 1995 WC 400m and 1996 OG 200m and 400m.

Even in the US sprints, where the vast majority of top performers do indeed have West African backgrounds in terms of their ancestry, there are some Americans with European racial backgrounds that do very well.

At last weekend’s US championship, this included Abby Steiner and Jenna Prandini who ran first and third in the female 200m final.

Who is to say that the US cannot produce some excellent male sprinters of European backgrounds again, as was the case with Jeremy Wariner who won many global 400m medals including gold and silver at the 2004 and 2008 OG and WC gold in 2005 and 2007 along with silver in 2009?

While top American sprinters of European backgrounds have not represented the US in either the 100m or 200m for many decades, who is to say that this is never going to happen given it is occurring with regard to American women.

During 2022, Mathew Boling, having joined the elite list of athletes that have broken 10.0 for the 100m and 20 seconds for the 200m, finished 6th in the 200m final at last weekend’s US championships.

Ato Boldon, a four-time Olympic medalist sprinter and an NBC Sports analyst, while noting the attention he was getting because of his skin color in 2019, actually called Boling as “one of the best high school athletes that we’ve seen ever” in 2019 when he ran a 10.13-second wind-legal 100 meters; a 20.55-second 200 meters; a sub-45 second 400-meter relay split; a long jump of 26 feet 3 1/2 inches; a 9.6-second split in the 4×100 relay”.

As noted by Baylor University’s Clyde Hart in 2004, someone who coached both the great Michael Johnson and Jeremy Wariner who won three OG 400m golds and a silver from 1996 to 2008.

“White kids think that it’s a black kid’s sport, that blacks are superior” and that “there are plenty of white kids with fast-twitch fibers” but choose not to do track to the point where they “want it badly enough”.

There are a whole lot of factors that may explain running success that go beyond any notion that certain athletes with certain racial backgrounds have immense genetic advantages.

For example, tougher testing by World Athletics has exposed a lot of Kenyan athletes cheating after lax testing protocols for years.

Superstar Kenyan athletes may have been long cited for their genetic prowess in a country where running is seen as a way out of poverty, but those caught include the 2016 Olympic women’s marathon champion Jemima Sumgong, the former world marathon record holder Wilson Kipsang, the 2011, 2013 and 2015 world 1500 metres gold medallist Asbel Kiprop, and the 2017 1500m gold medallist Elijah Manangoi.

Rohan Browning is Australia’s hope in the 100-metre sprint. (Photo by Matthias Hangst/Getty Images)

Supposed genetic superiority is also complicated by the reality that many other great black African champions are neither east or west African.

In the case of the sprints, two of the greatest ever come from southern Africa.
Namibia’s Frankie Fredericks won four OG silvers in the 100m and 200m (1992 and 1996 OG), and at 200m at world championships (WC) won gold in 1993 and silver 1991, 1995 and 1997.

South Africa’s Wayde van Niekerk, the current 400m world record holder, won gold in the 400m at the 2016 OG and 2015 and 2017 WC, along with silver in the 200m at the 2017 WC.

There are also the many north African athletes, not of negroid backgrounds, that have also won many OG and WC medals in recent decades.

And, increasingly we may see many more champions of missed racial backgrounds, thus also complicating any assertion of superior racial superiority in terms of explaining running success.

For example, the 2016 1500m gold medallist Matthew Centrowitz (USA) has a father of Jewish and Irish ancestry while his mother is from Guyana, while the 2020 100m gold medallist Marcell Jacobs (Italy) has an African American father and Italian mother.

To conclude, results speaks for themselves.

Global medals in the many different running events can and are won by many nationalities with many different racial backgrounds, thus supporting the contention that running success will never be explained by racial genetic background alone.

As Dr Yannis Pitsalidis pointed out in 2012, when working at the University of Glasgow’s Institute of Cardiovascular and Medical Sciences, “It is estimated that the level of genetic diversity between human populations is not large enough to justify the use of the term ‘race’. If “race” as a biologically valid term doesn’t hold water, nor would the idea of athletic superiority between them”.