From: hillyard@msc.cornell.edu
Subject: Re: Debunking the standard myth was Re: Couple of thoughts..
Originator: hillyard@tiger.msc.cornell.edu
Reply-To: hillyard@msc.cornell.edu
Organization: Cornell-Materials-Science-Center
Date: Sat, 22 Aug 1992 21:14:42 GMT

Sorry about the other post, I'm not sure why it did that.

>Do you have any evidence at all backing up this statement?  Is there any
>scientific data involving kids who trained for jumping from an early age?
>I'm not surprised that an 16-year-old young man is unable to increase his
>jumping ability beyond a certain limit.  But what if the training started
>much earlier?
>
>It's like saying that certain kids are genetically destined to be less
>intelligent than others, without looking into differences in prenatal care
>and diet and environment in the first few months after birth.  It's not
>that easy to separate the effects of genetics and environment -- the old
>nature vs. nurture debate.
>
>Maybe the black folks you refer to who "just naturally jump" spent more
>time, on the average, running and jumping when they were young children.
>Maybe that early training has more to do with how high they jump as adults
>than their genes do.
>
>It may be true that different people have different "genetic ceilings" on
>how high they can jump.  But until you can quote a study -- perferably
>involving identical twins who took part in different activities from a
>very early age -- your statement is just an opinion with nothing to back
>it up.

I've been gone for a week and am somewhat surprised that this thread is
still around.  Anyway, you've got a good point, but it should be noted
that a big difference between running and jumping as compared to intellegence
is that intellegence is impossible to define and measure, and is without
question greatly effected by even an infants early environment.  Running and
jumping, however, are very easy to define and measure--how much they are
effected by early training is debateable.

Anyway, while in Boston I picked up the issue of Runner's World that was
mentioned early in this thread.  I'll post some excerps below.  Not because
I think the magazine is somehow an authority, but just to give an idea on
what is out there, and if you can track down his (few) references it might
give an entrance into the literature if anyone is really interested.  As I
didn't write it don't expect me to defend it.  (Although he used many of
the arguements I used early in the thread)

From the Aug 92 issue of Runners World, without permission.  There are
sure to be typos.  If posted before I'm sorry, as I said I've been gone
a week and articles have scrolled off.

SEH
________________
From
 _Runners World_ Aug 92 pp.89-95
   by Amby Burfoot

[...]

The evidence for a black genetic advantage in running falls into two
categories:  physique and physiology.  The first refers to body size
and proportions, the second to below-the-surface differences in the
muscles, the enzymes, the cell structure and so on.

To appreciate the significance of either, you must first understand that
very small differences between two racial groups can lead to very dramatic
differences in sports performance.  For example, two groups, A and B, can
share 99 percent of the same human genes and characteristics.  They can be
vertually identical.  Nevertheless, if the 1 percent of variation occurs
in a characteristic that determines success at a certain sport, then group
A might win 90 percent of the Olympic medals in that sport.

Over the years, numerous studies of physique have compared blacks of West
African heritage with white Americans and consistently reached the same
conclusions.  Among these conclusions:  Blacks have less body fat, narrower
hips, thicker thighs, longer legs and lighter calves.  From a biomechanical
perspective, this is an impressive package.  Narrow hips allow for efficient,
straight-ahead running.  Strong quadriceps muscles provide horsepower, and
light calves reduce resistance.

Speaking a year ago at the American College of Sports Medicine's symposium
on "Ethnic Variations in Human Performance," Lindsey Carter, Ph.D., observed:
It appears that the biomechanical demands of a particular sport limit the
range of physiques that can satisfy these demands."  Carter, a San Diego
State University professor who has conducted a series of studies of Olympic
athletes, concluded:  "If all else is equal, can a difference in ethnicity
confer advantages in physical performance?  From a biomechanical point of
view, the answer is yes."

A number of direct performance studies have also shown a distint black
superiority in physical tasks such as running and jumping.  Often, the
subjects in these studies were children (for example, fourth-graders in
the Kansas City public schools), which tends to mute the criticism that
blacks outrun and outjump whites because society channels black youngsters
into sports.

[...]

Claude Bouchard, Ph. D., of Laval University in Quebec City, is perhaps
the world's leading sports geneticist, as well as a foremost expert in the
genetics of obesity.  When the _New England Journal of Medicine_ published
a Bouchard study on human obesity two years ago, it made headlines around
the world for its finding that degree of fatness and locale of fat deposition
(hips, whast, etc.) was largely determined by heredity.

Bouchard achieved these and many of his other remarkable results through
carefully controlled studies of twins who live in and around Quebec City.
From such experiments, he has determined the "hereditability" of many
human traits, including some relating to athletic performance.  Bouchard
has shown, for example that Anaerobic power is from 44 to 92 percent inherited,
while max VO2 is only 25 percent inherited.  From these finding, we might
quickly conclude that sprinters are "born" but distance runners are "made",
which, loosely, is what track observers have always thought about sprinters
and distance runners.

What "makes" distance runners, of course, is their training, and Bouchard has
also investigated "trainability".  It's surprisingly easy to do.  You simply
gather a bunch of out-of-shape people, put them on the same training program
and follow their progress according to certain key physiological measures.
The results are astonishing.  Some subjects don't improve at all or take a
long time to improve; some improve almost instantly and by large amounts.
This trainability trait, Bouchard has found, is about 75 percent inherited.

This means that potential for distance running success may be just as
genetically determined as potential for sprinting success.  Which is why
many coaches have been saying for years that the best way to improve your
marathon time is to "choose you parents carefully".

Bouchard is now examing physiological differences between white French
Canadians and black West Africans, both culled from the student population
at Laval.  In on study, the only one of its kind ever performed between
these two groups, the researchers compared muscle-fiber percentages.
The West Africans had significantly more fast-twich fibers and anaerobic
enzymes than the whites.  Exercise physiologist have long believed that
fast-twitch muscle fibers confer an advantage in explosive, short-duration
power events such as sprinting.

Two Bouchard disciples, Pierre F. M. Ama and Jean-Aime Simoneau, next decided
to test the two groups actual power output in the lab.  On a 90-second leg
extension test (basically the same exercise we all do on our weight benches),
the black and white subjects performed about equally for the first 30 seconds.
Beyond 30 seconds, the whites were able to produce significantly more power.

[the two figures not reproduced on the net for obvious reasons, given as
 sources of the figures.  Ama, _Journal of Applied Physiology_, 1986 and
 Ama, _Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise_, 1990]

This experiment failed to show what the researchers expected--that West
African blacks should be better sprinters.  It may, on the other hand, have
shown that these blacks generally wouldn't perform well in continuous events
lasting several minutes or longer.

Of course, a leg extension test isn't the same thing as the real world of
track and field.  In particular, it can't account for any of the biomechanical
running advantages that blacks may have.  Which could explain the curious
findings of David Hunter.

Two years before Ama and Simoneau publish their study, Hunter completed his
Ph.D. requirement in exercise physiology at Ohio State University by writing
his thesis on "A Comparison of Anaerobic Power Between Black and White
Adolescent Males."  Hunter began by giving his subject--high schoolers from
Columbus--two laboratory test that measure anaerobic pewer.  These tests
yielded no differences.

Then he decided to turn his subjects loose on the track.  There the blacks
sprinted and jumped much better than the whites.  These results apparently
disturbed Hunter, an African-American, whose dissertation concluded that
the laboratory results (no differences) were more significant that the real-
world results (big differences).
                         Whites      Blacks
       Margaria Test    113.36     113.11 kg-meters/sec
       Wingate Test     862.3      884.6 watts
       Vertical Jump    19.96      22.13 inches
       40-yard Dash     5.033      4.813 seconds
          source:  David W. Hunter, Ph.D. 1989

In attempting to balance his results, Hunter noted that a 1969 study in the
journal _Ergonomics_ found that blacks actually had less anaerobic power than
whites.  What he failed to point out, and perhaps even to recognize, was
that the _Ergonomics_ study compared a group of Italians with a group of
_Kenyans_.  Indeed, many of the Kenyan subjects came from the Nandi and 100,000 genes that determine human makeup, only one to six regulate skin color,
so we should assume almost nothing about anyone based on skin color alone.
West Africans and East Africans are both black, but in many physical ways they
are more unlike each other than they are different from most whites.

[...]
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