Michael Nurok
For top Kenyan runners the real competition is not international – it occurs at national level, where local runners are forced to compete against arguably the best distance runners in the world.
A quick look at the International Amateur Athletics Federation World Cross Country Championship records shows Kenyan junior and senior men placing first for the past 10 years, and the women for the past seven. Similar results are being achieved in other long-distance and middle-distance events.
The story becomes even more intriguing when one realises that all of those Tanuis, Kiruis and Kiptanuis come from a tiny subsection of the Kenyan population. In fact, more than 70% of Kenya’s top runners come from less than 20% of the total Kenyan popula tion. If that isn’t gobsmacking enough, new research has suggested that even within this highly concentrated sub-population, there may be specific families where running ability is inherited.
So who are these Kenyans? They come from the Kalenjin-speaking population and live at about 2 000m altitude in Kenya’s Rift Valley, one of the country’s poorest regions. Most survive by farming. In order to get anywhere, locals are forced to walk or run.
There are many populations in the world that live at high altitude in similar poverty. But none of these populations turn out great runners. And one would expect running ability to be distributed evenly amongst the Kalenjin people. This, however, is not the case. Many of the top runners are related: Richard Chelimo and Ismael Kirui, both international record-holders, are brothers. Moses Kiptanui, another world record-holder, is their cousin.
A recent study conducted by myself, with Professor Tim Noakes and Professor Alan Morris of the University of Cape Town, demonstrated that an overwhelming majority of Kalenjin schoolchildren who voluntarily participated in school athletics are related to other Kenyan runners. The same was not true of Kalenjin schoolchildren who did not participate in running. This finding suggests that within this already concentrated population there may be specific families where running ability is concentrated.
The question becomes whether this ability is inherited on a biological or social basis. There are good arguments for both. Noakes and colleagues have been able to show that many top athletes demonstrate “superior fatigue resistance”. And the finding of a high degree of interrelatedness among Kenyan runners lends credence to a biological explanation.
There are also convincing social explanations. In a poor rural community where international athletes stand to bring home fortunes, the motivation to run is huge. Great runners have been coming out of the Rift Valley for decades and this has given birth to a culture of running among the Kalenjin-speaking people.
It is plausible that young male and female runners meet each other at competitions, fall in love, and produce a second generation with further running potential – a running love story. Researchers at the University of Cape Town are now exploring both bio logical (the search is on for a distance-running gene) and social explanations.
Some may find a rich irony in this kind of racial research coming out of South Africa, a country with an appalling track record of racism. But it is precisely this kind of study that may finally put an end to more conventional racist ideas. Genetic resea rch has consistently shown more diversity in African populations than in any other. Researchers at Yale University were able to demonstrate more g enetic variation in a small population from Zaire than in all other non-African populations.
Despite this, the terms “black” or “African” continue to be used unproblematically.
Doctors often make a diagnosis and select drug therapies on the basis of a patient’s skin colour and because a particular study may have shown that “black populations” have a high incidence of a certain disease and respond well to a specific drug. These studies are usually based on a specific African population, not a cross-section of all African populations.
Even more insidious are ideological works masquerading as science, such as Richard J Herrnstein and Charles Murray’s The Bell Curve, which argues that people of African origin demonstrate inferior intelligence.
None of this makes any sense given the incredible genetic diversity found in Africa. When one speaks of “black” or “African” populations one needs to be even more specific than when speaking of any other population. So, granted, there may be a degree of mediocrity in African populations when averaging all Africans together – but this is true of any population. The take-home message is, that among African populations, there are more areas of excellence than in non-African populations – many waiting to be discovered. The Kenyan runners are simply a case in point.