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Chariots of Silicon
ToddML writes "I just spotted this article at wired.com which talks about the current deficiencies of the U.S. long-distance running program, and more importantly, what is being done about it. An interesting story from both a gadget perspective, and for the source of the program -- private industry."
Soccer. Once the Americans dominate that sport by creating a team of ubermenchen they can finally tell the rest of the World to stop calling it 'football', too.
___
Cogito cogito, ergo cogito sum.
...we had this back in the 70's and it was called The Million Dollar Man. They even made a tv-series about the guy. Fascinating stuff.
If you look at top-sport, everyone is trying new methods, technology to improve performance. Most of the times it works temporarily: until the next Olympic games. After that, competitors copy the methods and the race starts over again. Look at swimming (new swim-suits), speed-skating (clap-skates or how you call them in English), etc.
I think it will become dope if it's harmful for the sporters themselves: it would mean that other sporters must copy this harmful technique to stay competitive.
Why not take it all the way and train in no oxygen? That would really make a difference!
The core feature of this (apart from all the bio-monitoring) seems to be the idea of keeping a whole house at equivalent air pressure to 12,000 feet. This lets the athletes train at sea level, while resting at altitude (which is seen as a 'good thing').
But doesn't it open the athletes up to altitude sickness? Granted, 12,000 feet is low to get this, but it's generally caused as much by the change in altitude as the absolute altitude (So generally if you take a week climbing to 16,000 feet you're much less likely to be afflicted than if you do it in a couple of days). Oddly enough, it affects fit people as much as (or often more than) the unfit, so I do wonder whether they have any problem with this.
Incidentally, I know that 20,000 feet is about half an atmosphere, so I guess they're talking about 2/3 (sea-level) atmosphere at 12,000 feet.
If you were to take two athletes, one white and one black, and trained them in the same manner, you will find that the black athlete will excel in endurance, strength, and power quite a bit beyond the white athlete's performance
-Of course you speak of averages. I know you probably meant to include that, but your reasoning implies that a white person would NEVER beat an african american in any instance, which is simply not true.
The limited pool of black athletes can only be divided so much.... short distance sprinter may be able to become a world-class distance runner...America designates black runners as short distance competitors
-that's just complete and utter bullshit. It's not like the US decides ahead of time which events we want to win, and thus designate athletes accordingly. I run track and I won the pentathlon in my state my senior year, but that does not mean I could have even made it there in the 5K or even the 100 meter dash. It would be pointless to take sprinters like Michael Johnson or Maurice Green and train them for the mile, cause their bodies aren't built for it. Their bodies are meant for explosive , fast twitch motions, Not endurance based distance running which depends much more on the bodies ability to combat lactic acid build up and fatigue.
Look, I agree with you that black athletes are on average (at least the ones that compete) more skillful and talented in their respective sports with similar training regiments. However, this has nothing to do with the prevalence of black sprinters vs black distance runners.
my last sig was too controversial... now, a new and improved useless sig!
ROFL good one dude!!
Brent Jones
Yes, you are absolutely right, I meant on average. Thank you for making the correction.
that's just complete and utter bullshit. It's not like the US decides ahead of time which events we want to win, and thus designate athletes accordingly.
I have to respectfully disagree with this. Though it may not happen at the Olympic level, it sure as hell happens at the collegiate and high school levels. Coaches steer athletes toward events that the athlete would excel at, and away from things that wouldn't help the team in competition. This means that black athletes get steered toward sprinting, and white athletes get steered towards long distance events. From this pool come the world class athletes that we see in the Olympics, and by the time they are chosen to represent the country the statistics bear out the choices the coaches made early on.
I also agree with you on the topic of Johnson and Green being wasted talent in longer distance events. However, just to say that they would waste their talents by running longer distances doesn't mean that they couldn't become excellent distance runners at all. My point was that on the other hand, you couldn't take a marathon runner and turn them into a Michael Johnson.
I have been pwned because my
This is what's wrong with us today. Assuming things about people based on their race or their appearance.
Oh come off your high horse! That's how the human mind works. We try to perceive generalities and rules and we apply those to individuals we meet. We make assumptions about *everybody* we come across. Assumptions are based on probabilities. The thing is to recognize those assumptions for what they are and not hold them as absolute truth. None of us are stereotypes.
The poster was making a point that black athletes are, in general, more accomplished than white athletes. Being white, I could get offended by that, but the thing is that he's probably right. Better genes for that sort of thing, no doubt.
"I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don't always agree with them." -- George H. W. Bush
I don't understand why americans are so concerned about winning at every damn sports competition in the bloody planet.
Let it go! Go... go play with your silly oblongated ball.
jocks... an entire country of them.
MoitaCarrasco "Everyday I beat my own previous record for the number of consecutive days I've stayed alive." - CARLIN
I'm reasonably sure that the "naturally endowed" part is an urban legent. That certain groups of people are more attracted to certains sports has imho more to do with the social status and background. One ball keeps 22 poor children sporting. Results? Lots of very good soccer players with a poor background. Africans, south-americans etc. Same goes for running I guess. all you need is time and a piece of road.
As for what's wrong with people today, it's more that stereotyping is a international sport. Blacks are good athleets, muslims are terrorists etc. etc.
Luckily the world isn't that black and white..
Nobody expects the spanish inquisition!
They should have two categories for sports like distance running and track-and-field, one would be drug- and tech(blood doping, etc)- free, the other would be "anything goes". It would be interesting to see the steroid-charged atomic supermen in the "anything goes" category competing against each other. I wounder how fast we could engineer a human body to run?
Generalisations are bad enough, but generalising inaccurately - I mean, Kenya isn't known for its sprinters. I'd suggest that being largely at high altitude and having a culture of long distance running helps distinctly. Kenyan kids want to be long distance runners in the same way that English kids want to be footballers.
RUN FOREST RUN!
Oh I'm not disputing that at all. Cultural backgound and environment play a huge part. Genetics is a factor as well. Admittedly, all things being connected, environment is a key factor in culling the gene pool.
"I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don't always agree with them." -- George H. W. Bush
I didn't know Jimmy the Greek read Slashdot...
:)
Interestingly, I know a white guy who runs the 800m for his high school's track team. From time to time he'll run the 400m, which is normally dominated by the black guys (African-American is not the PC term anymore, btw).
He won't win the 400, because it's an all out sprint, essentially, and the black guys beat him (although he's close). But put him in the 800 against the same guys, and he'll blow them away in the stretch. Why? Who knows. I'll just keep my simpleton view and say that different people excel in different events and that's it. I'm not going to get into this race discussion.
So men can get pregnant hey...
Physicly (that is in fact) black african races have longer ham strings and are better runners, white nordic people tend to have better strength, got a problem with that, wake up to the real world, were all different just because you don't like someone saying so, it doesn't change the fact.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Did you ever take a good look at those guys after they spent a couple of hours in a car, reflexes on edge 100% of the time, guiding a metal beast through horrible corners at speeds where you have 1/10th of a second to react in order to avoid hitting the guy in front of you, while a burning engine is located right behind you, and you take 3 or 4 G on your neck muscles every time you take a corner? Obviously you never spent 15 minutes in a kart, otherwise you'd know exactly what I mean...
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
I'm not sure whether the parent post is a troll (one reason why I'm posting, not modding) but there is a strong case for saying that [1] yes, genetics are important - look at the success of East Africans, [2] Altitude is important - many of the Kenyans come from the Nandi Hills, the 6,000-8,000 foot highlands that snake along the western edge of the Great Rift Valley of East Africa, but [3] there is no simple correlation between being African and being good at sports, and [4] that there are serious differences between being genetically suited for sprinting and being genetically gifted for endurance (for instance, the proportion of fast-twitch to slow-twitch muscle fibres is fixed at birth), and most black Americans have their genetic roots in West Africa where the gene-pool is more likely to favour sprinting.
See this article for a better explanation of the African connection.
Invade Kenya.
My cross country coach in high school always said that McDonalds was the problem with the distance program at our high school. Perhaps a bit simplistic, but I tend to think that our culture in general tends to lend itself to be against such thing as having a large quantity (and high quality) of high speed marathon and long distance runners. Match that with the low profit margins of becoming a 'professional' runner, and there's little motivation for most people to try. Granted, there are many exceptions to this rule, but none have consistantly broken through to dominate the distance races. I somehow doubt that any technology will overcome a culture's (in this case, the United States) general mentality, no matter how motivated the individuals may be.
You're only as smart as your brain.
What you are saying is drastically over simplified, and largely wrong!
On average there are differences in muscle composition between whites and blacks. Blacks tend to have more muscles of the fast twitch variety, which contract very quickly, and are well suited to things like running and jumping. Whites tend to have more slow twitch muscle fibers whisk are well suited to things like weightlifting, cycling and swimming. This only accounts for a small portion of the difference.
The main difference is cultural. In America the high profile sports are basketball, baseball, and American football, the fact that these sports are so popular causes many of the gifted athletes to want to do these sports; we don't have someone allocating America's great athletes to different sports, they allocate themselves. Now in many parts of Africa, there is only one sport (unless you are one of the social elite), that sport is running (think about it, if you were extremely poor, what sport could you afford to do). Running in Africa is a way of life, school children run to and from school further than many of us drive to work. Running is the way out of poverty there, poor children dream of being world class marathoners, the same way many poor Americans dream of NBA careers.
Wish me luck, my first Marathon is on October 13th...
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
It's pretty normal behavior for a geek to be ashamed about it as well...
It's how we are made.
If you cant beat 'em, spend loadsamoney out-teching them.
Whats the frigging point of having impeccably fair races, drugs testing, etc., when countries can do this sort of thing, giving athletes an unfair advantage over poorer nations' competitors? Granted, the results have yet to be seen but I doubt it will make them any worse athletes. The winning seems to count more than the sportsmanship and fairness.
A bit like U.S. foreign policy, then :-|
Ali
Ph33r m3!!!
Other than that, the term "african-american" is a VERY bad term. What would you call a person of african decent, who's family have lived in England for three generations, when you describe him/her to someone else? African-american would be completely off base.
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It's okay to call a white guy for both white and caucasian, but not okay to call a person of african decent anything that can come close to describing their basic features, other than calling them african-american, or "of african decent". I know plenty of black people (here in Europe) who are pissed off every time they're described af "of african decent" because they're not - they're from Sri Lanka, but to you or me they don't look much different than someone from Nigiria. They prefer the term black (or as one of them said "pigmentedly challanged"). Using such terms doesn't mean I'm a racist, and I wish people would pull their head out of their asses and realise that.
But then again, PC-people are probably just intellectually, gravitationally and cosmeticly challanged
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
There appears to be no problem that someone won't try to solve by throwing huge amounts of money at it. Except maybe curing parasitic diseases in Africa.
And here is the thing that you cannot do in football. Out tech them! There is no tech to football. You could give a team more endurance, but at the end of the day it relies on the individual, team and trainer.
Otherwise Brazil would not dominate the way it does. Brazil has no tech, just cut throat competition and the football lifestyle. I watched how Brazilian players are trained and it starts when they are seven or eight. It is in their "blood". The truly elite players in football, live, breath and eat football. And more often than not they come from poor areas, eg Zidane...
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Scanning the story, I thought it was talking about telephones, and was wondering why all the posts weren't offtopic. Ahh, must be too early in the morning :-)
Even if it's not cheating, doesn't it miss the point? I mean, why watch a marathon with real people? Why don't we just invent robots to do it for us, and then make it a true technology race? Oh, because that wouldn't be fun and the rich countries would always win. Hmm.
its as simple as that, baseball players do it, and their breaking more records than ever, plus, their not stopping them so it must be legal.
$.02 charged
I want 2D games back.
There are some real aggregate genetic differences between people of different ethnic backgrounds. People of European descent never have sickle-cell anemia. This is because the genes that cause this disease are never beneficial in the European climate. Having one copy of the allele that causes sickle cell anemia provides better resistance to malaria, while two makes you deathly ill - so many people of African origin have inherited one allele from their ancestors because of the prevalence of malaria in their ancestral environment.
Many genetic disorders are far more common in a particular ethnic group, sickle cell anemia is just the most striking example. There's a genetic disorder that almost exclusively affects people who are ethnically Jewish and are born to two ethnically Jewish parents. The name escapes me.
On the whole, Kenyans appear to blessed with an extraordinarily high slow fast twitch/fast twitch muscle ratio. You cannot take someone with a lot of fast twitch muscle and turn them into a good marathoner; it just can't be done. Try this at home: jump as high as you can without bending your knees substantially. If you can't get more than six inches off the ground, your genes will never let you be a great sprinter, even if you started training at six and had all the training in the world. The colder you ancestors' climate, the more likely you are flunk, which makes the Kenya thing kind of weird.
But except in these corner cases, this stuff doesn't matter. A white person can be a great athlete, and a black person can be a brilliant scholar. Sadly, some people seize on these relatively trivial differences to make a case that are ancestry is far more important than it really is. Just because a particular group of people can or can't jump very high (on average) doesn't mean they should be treated any differently.
great to see corporate industry wasting shareholder's money.
oops, sorry, i'm mimicking american conservatives incorrectly. i'm only supposed to short-sightedly criticise all gov't spending as waste, not corporate spending. damn, never could get the hang of shutting down 99.9% of my neurons to reach that level...
US Citizen living abroad? Register to vote!
We can't feed, clothe or house a large segement of the US population. WHY IN THE HELL do we need to spend millions of dollars on "long distance running deficiencies." Why don't we instead subsidize cock enlargments for the entire nation, just so we can say ours are the biggest. Someone should tell Nike about the rest of the world.
--Should work--
The "light" shoe is great for other sports but once you start running (and especially train) long distances their shoes break down a lot faster than Asics and New Balance. I got a pair of Kayanus (sp?) from Asics and I swear they look like I haven't put on half the miles I have. Plus it seems that Nike's running shoes are designed for someone with a perfect foot unlike half the population who pronates or supinates.
What I really hate are these companies like Foot Locker and Champs whose employees have no clue about the sport they support. With running shoes look should be the last thing you are looking for. It should all be comfort. The fact that some company designed a shoe for some athlete does not mean that I have the exact same foot as this athlete.
I have found that The Running Room (which is a chain in Canada) seem to have the most knowledgable staff. Course this may be because they specialize but at least their main criteria for a good shoe is not how pretty it is.
First of all genetic variations between people groups across the various regions of the 2nd largest continent in the world are nearly as large as that of humanity across the entire globe. So your second sentence is a meaningless gross generalization.
Secondly, athletic prowess is also poorly defined. This article is about one particular event: long distance running. No one seems to comment on the dominance of Slavs in power lifting or Slavs and East Asians in gymnastics and diving. These are also basic sports in that they emphasize excellence in one particular area: power or flexibility, while not requiring the level of training in technique of sporst such as golf or baseball where good hand eye coordination can compensate for a difference in power. At this point I will make the obligatory mention of the lack of success of Kenyans at events shorter than 800m.
Third of all, anyone paying attention to the standings at world class competitions will note the rise of competitiveness of South Koreans and Mexicans at 10000m and longer events, Morroccans at events from 1500m to 10000m, Eastern Europeans in the Decathlon and so on.
Which brings me to my next point, we are discussing world class performances here. By definition this requires a level of training and commitment that most people are not willing to achieve. Excellence at the world class level depends on many factors: equipment, training and and taking advantage of whatever genetic advantages one has. Since Bikila's breakthrough at the Rome Olympics, there has been a concerted effort among East African nations to provide top athletes for the long distance events. This has led to national programs that identify, support and promote the best available talent on a scale that the US Olympic effort has only recently begun to match. Note that the original "African" long distance champions were Ethiopians who are as distinct from the current crop of Kenyans as a Swede is from an Italian when compared visually. No one was complaining when the US had a running obsession in the 70's and regularly produced long distance champions. There is no reason to suspect Kenya's current dominance, which I predict will fall to Mexico within a decade, is any different.
As for taking advantage of genetic heritage; any American whose family has been here for more than 3 generations can likely trace portions of their genetic heritage to ancestors from virtually any part of the globe. This is especially true of "African" Americans as they usually have ancestors originally from Europe at some point in their bloodline. The primary example is Tiger Woods who's ancestry is almost equally divided among Asian, European, African and Native Americans. As it becomes easier for population groups to intermingle Woods is going to be the rule rather than the exception.
Finally, anyone who has actually been to Japan as opposed to recieved "wisdom" from the popular culture will note that Japanese adolescents are on average much closer in height to other people groups than Japanese adults. Naoko Takashi, the Nagano Olympic Marathon Champion, is 1.62m or 5' 3" tall, this is 1" below the average height for a woman. Not exceptionally short or tall. Furthermore, elite long distance runners tend to be shorter than average so this is not an interesting case at all. From pictures her legs don't appear to be disproportionately short, in fact they seem long but she's pretty skinny so it's hard to tell.
In some circles it has become fashionable to blame genetics for one's circumstances. Also there is usually an unspoken corollary to the athletes of African descent have a genetic advantage argument. That of course is that African's are genetically predisposed to having a lesser IQ, or other quantifier linked to intelligence. The truth is the situation is far more complex that simply asking where one was born in an attempt to identify their capability at any particular endeavour. In nearly any meaningful test, the variation in performance of any group of humans is so large as to render the ability to predict the performance of an individual impossible.
And yes, there are of course some obvious physiological caveats; stride length, ratio of upper body mass to lower body mass, hemocrit etc. as to whether one is capable of a world class performance in long distance or not. But again, there are individuals from every region of the globe who meet the necessary criteria.
As for your mention of the Asic Kayanos - Asics, Saucony, Mizuno and the other small brands cleaned up the serious running market years ago. The Kayano is probably the best all around running shoe for advanced runners.
Nike will continue to build junk - they want you to buy new shoes every four months. This is why serious runners who have a choice won't touch them anymore.
What is wrong with you people??!?!
...faster, stronger ... we have the technology
Remember, a truly wise man never plays leapfrom with a unicorn
...nike running shoes have always done me pretty well. of course, i have a damn near perfect landing, so i don't need any real support so to speak, and the damn things tend to break/pop/fall apart on me after ~600 miles, but they're actually one of the only shoe brands i've found that don't make my shins/knees/hips/back hurt. shame the quality sucks so badly, though.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
I like your points. I don't know enough about sports physiology to know whether this high-tech approach to running [arguably the lowest tech sport ] will succeed--I guess no one does. At the very least it signifies that the US distance running culture is turning its attention to the marathon and not just whining about it as much.
The racially-based arguments around why 'Americans' get their asses kicked at long distances are pretty absurd. In the US, we have a deep, deep gene pool that should pretty well ensure that certain individuals of any generation could be competitive at the marathon distance. To over-hype the genetics of Kenyans is to diminish the personal achievements of the runners themselves. Currently the men's world record is held by a Moroccan-born American citizen. As of last year, when he got his citizenship, Khalid Khannouchi has as much "American" genetic material as anyone, and probably as little Kenyan genetics as most.
People who complain about the physical genetic superiority of a race they don't belong to (e.g. excuse-spewing complacent white slackers complaining that blacks are stronger) need to either hit the gym more often, hit the track more often, or shut up and eat their potato chips. In the '30s these racial arguments were put forward to explain the higher than expected numbers of elite Jewish basketball players. Shaddup already.
'American' marathoners got handed their asses time and time again by smart, highly-motivated INDIVIDUALS. Even the 8k mentioned in the article is a race demanding not just technical ability, physical gifts beyond muscle-twitch [gait and other factors], but strategy--strategy about how to get yourself through 4.97 miles fast. You need to know a lot about your body to run 8k fast, you need to be able to monitor the body's telemetry closely and respond accordingly. I've never won an 8k, but I've beaten certain snide individuals in the 8k, and you need to know a certain amount about what their bodies are capable of as well. To toss this all off as genetic disposition is to miss most of the race.
Lastly, in response to the "why bother doing this" mentality, I'd format a proper response, but I've got to work on overclocking my processor so I can eke out a few more meaningless megahertz, then I've got to figure out why Eterm's transparency stopped working.
Nike is trying to solve a problem they helped create. Marathon running is very demanding on the body. Many experts say that a person can't run more than 2 competitive marathons per year without seeing a degradation in performance. It just takes too long for the body to recover.
Nike and the fitness industry in general, capatilized on the salad days of US marathoning in the 70's and early 80's, promoting it and profiting from its popularity. One thing that happened was that marathon racing (and other track and field sports) became quasi-professional. Athletes were allowed to accept prize and appearance money, and if it was laundered through a "training fund," they would still be eligible for the Olympics as an amateur. Nike was one of the big corporate sponsors who supplied the prize money.
For the top marathoners, it became profitable to run 4 or 5 marathons a year. Just showing up meant a paycheck. This type of schedule quickly started taking its toll, and US marathoners stopped being competitive on the world stage. As US atheletes' performance dropped, the sport's popularity nosedived as well, and marathon running has never recovered.
Don't forget that Friday is Hawaiian shirt day.
While it has been shown that training at altitude helps an athelete compete at altitude, I don't believe there is much evidence showing that training at altitude helps performance at sea level. So, while training in Denver would help an athelete compete at the Mexico City Olympics, it wouldn't offer significant advantages at the LA Olympics.
Don't forget that Friday is Hawaiian shirt day.
The equipment in the house removes some of the oxygen to simulate the oxygen levels found at an altitude of 12,000 feet. The air pressure remains the same, however.
-Mike_L
and my point was that if you have perfect feet, nike's running shoes are actually really nice, even though the construction sucks.
i ran a loooong (~15-mile) slow workout in shox a few months ago, they actually seemed pretty nice - they have the same resilient feel as Air shoes, but without any of the squishiness. The impact absorbtion is much stiffer - not a harder percieved impact, it just seems there's less "give" with just as much "softness" (runners, you know what i mean). my legs felt pretty fresh afterwards, too; if the things weren't like $130 i'd consider investing in a pair (nothing to pop!)
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
So you are willing to say that genetics plays a part in the performance of an athlete, but are not willing to say that the West African heritage of American black does not have any bearing over their numbers on the American Olympic track and field team? I think you are mistaken.
It is true that athletes at the world class level must have a sense of dedication and training par excellence, but to discount the role of genetics in achieving success is foolhardy. Training of a genetically unendowed athlete will most certainly make him better, but it will never raise him to the level of excellence necessary to seriously compete at the upper echelon of athletic competition. To achieve that level the athlete must have a combination of dedication, training, coaching, facilities, and a genetic predisposition to excellence in the field. My point was that on average blacks have this genetic predisposition in greater numbers than whites, regardless of the availability of the other factors in their environment.
Even in women's figure skating, a sport conspicuously dominated by whites and asians, we see this. Arguably the most athletic women's skater is not Kwan or Kerrigan or Slutskaya. It's undoubtedly Surya Bonaly whose athleticism is unmatched by any other skater on the ice. Her only problem is a reluctance to fire her coach who is unable to teach her grace and fluidity which are both needed to excel at figure skating.
Likewise, cultural differences can account for an athlete choosing one sport over another. Hence, Brazilians tend to gravitate towards soccer, Kenyans towards long distance running, and Chinese and former Soviet states to gymnastics. Each of these fields have top class coaches and facilities for training and they can cull the cream of the crop from the many athletes who compete at lower levels. Given the accessibility to training facilities that Americans enjoy, Africans would most certainly gain a substantial lead over Americans in almost every Olympic event.
I have been pwned because my
No, what I'm saying is that extrapolating from the performance of the small and exceptional population of world class athletes to determine attributes of the population as a whole is fallacious. Otherwise one arrives at the paradoxical situation of African Americans being both the best and worst sprinters in the American population as a whole. How is that? Because being disproportionately poor, African Americans share disproportionately in the afflictions associated with poverty in America, one of which is a predilection for diabetes and obesity. So African Americans are simultaneously among the most obese, least athletic and also produce the most world class sprinters among American people groups. Given that a genetic propensity for heart disease and other ailments also seems to be part of the legacy of genes from West Africa one must decide what the situation is, are African Americans predisposed to sprinting glory or couch potato ignominy?
I submit that the reason people of African descent are dominant at athletics at this moment is simply because they participate more and are willing to commit to a higher level of training than relatively wealthier people who tend to make other life choices. This is a periodic phenomenon and as the Chinese sports machine cranks up to Soviet style levels we are going to see world class competitors from China in all sports. This is not because the Chinese do or do not have a special genetic inheritance, merely that they are willing to exploit their inheritance. Given that most regional groupings of humanity of size greater than 1000 share 88% of the total genetic variation of all humanity discounting for the founder effect in groups like the Mormons the Chinese have access to plenty of world class athletes in nearly any sport, it's merely a task of identification and support of these athletes. Of course that explanation is too obvious, subtle and undramatic so when the great red sports machine gets cranking your moronic ABC commentator will of course pick up on the assinine racial difference and attempt to "explain" Chinese competitors based on some loosely grounded theory of genetics, or blame drugs.
Another example of commitment is the German bobsledding program. Christoph Langen may be one of the best athletes the world has ever seen with a 350+ pound bench press and a 40" vertical leap he could have been one of the greatest running backs the NFL had ever seen if he didn't drive bobsleds. Naive American coaches subconciously believing in racial theories of perfomance attempted to improve the US bobsled team by recruiting African American sprinters and running backs to no avail. Amazingly all the drivers remain white, kind of like the white quarterback syndrome the NFL is only starting to recover from. The point here is simply that all world class bobsledders, German or not are great athletes and your chances of finding one in any region of the world are roughly equal. Of course, you'll respond with your anecdote about Vonetta Flowers. But that's my point, Langen, Flowers, Bonaly et. al. are all just anecdotes. They are the 6 sigma deviants in humanity and are not representative of anything but ultimate physical human potential.
As for Bonaly, athletic as she is, the only women's skater to attempt a quad in competition is the white, Jewish Sasha Cohen. Had Mary Lou Retton put on skates I'm pretty sure she could match Bonaly flip for flip and jump for jump.
Without that ability to control for economics and perform a proper experiment one can of course only do statistical analyses. I submit that there is simply a minimal level of investment required to be competitive at the world level in any sport. As the wealthiest country the US can meet this level in many sports. Were the playing field economically level then the result would probably be that medal counts would reflect relative population sizes.
Are you a track and field athlete or have you ever competed as one? I have, I know that from an early age in the US, coaches play favourites with athletes based on personal prejudices that may or may not have a basis in fact. If one is encouraged from an early age to pursue the dream of being a track star, as Jackie Joyner-Kersee and Gail Devers were, while others are told to concentrate on other activities like many of the excellent athletes who decided to concentrate on academics and end up at Ivy League institutions, like Bill Bradley, then of course it will look like African Americans are better athletes. I am not a world class athlete but I was reasonably fast enough (10.7 100m) to be a competitive high school athlete and I know how the sports machine works at the lowest levels. If you have a racial theory of athletic performance then I suggest you test it against the performance of junior high school aged children, before most external forces have changed the playing field. I think that you will find the best performances are proportionately divided among the races.
Finally, note that most of the Kenyan long distance runners come from a relatively small tribe in an isolated part of the country. In fact many of them are cousins. If there is any genetic effect, it's the founder effect: they share the genes of one particular individual which have propogated through the population because of relative isolation. Mormons, Jews and Icelandics show the same traits, having genetic trees that very quickly trace back to a very small set of common ancestors. There probably is a similar population somewhere in the 350 million residents of the US. The Mexicans attempted to exploit the habits of one of their indigenous tribes who put high value on long distance running ability, and the Mexican and Morroccan programs are probably the best challengers to the Kenyans. But for the rest of us, who share bloodlines drawn essentially from the entirety of the globe, we cannot benefit from a founder effect. I myself have ancestors only three generations back who come from, Europe, Africa and the Native Americans of the Caribbean basin. Although to the ignorant I'm sure you can guess what my appearance is. So yes, genetics play a component, but in general, especially now that so many previously isolated populations have mixed there is too much variation between individuals within a population group no matter how you divide the group to account for large performance differences. Furthermore genetic studies indicate that even isolated groups retain a large amount of genetic variation as long as they were separated from a larger group rather than founded by a very small population.