I've got a theory, and it's sufficiently un-politically correct that you'll never hear it on your mainstream Olympic coverage. Which doesn't make it wrong.
You'll notice as I did while watching a spot of running from London this afternoon that the top guys in the distance events are invariably African. Here's where the Olympics meet Mr. Darwin.
Could it be that hundreds of years of out-running slave hunters has left them genetically pre-disposed to running really far and really fast? Ponder that for a moment.
Mind you, the 10 thousand meter race I just saw was won by a Brit, but he's a "Brit" from Somalia, so that doesn't undermine my thesis one iota.
Black Americans on the other hand seem to excell in the shorter events. Could that be because after they were captured by the slavers, the only people they had to outrun were fat white guys wearing bedsheets? A hundred meters would probably do it - maybe two hundred in a pinch, but by and large there was no need to run miles and miles. If they didn't get you in the first 15 seconds you were long gone.
Ponder that too.
I think I'm onto something here...
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