The optimal range is six to nine thousand feet. In the Andes, for example, the air is too rarefied for the kind of workouts necessary to be a world-class runner. (For evidence of the peculiar Kalenjin lower leg, look up pictures of the great Kenyan miler Asbel Kiprop, a tall and elegant man who runs on what appear to be two ebony-colored pencils.) According to Epstein, there’s an evolutionary explanation for all this: hot and dry environments favor very thin, long-limbed frames, which are easy to cool, just as cold climates favor thick, squat bodies, which are better at conserving heat.ĭistance runners also get a big advantage from living at high altitudes, where the body is typically forced to compensate for the lack of oxygen by producing extra red blood cells. That translates to eight per cent less energy consumed per kilometre. Epstein cites a study comparing Kalenjins with Danes the Kalenjins were shorter and had longer legs, and their lower legs were nearly a pound lighter. Runners from the Kalenjin tribe, in Kenya-where the majority of the country’s best runners come from-turn out to be skinny in exactly this way. That’s why shaving even a few ounces off a pair of running shoes can have a significant effect. A runner needs not just to be skinny but-more specifically-to have skinny calves and ankles, because every extra pound carried on your extremities costs more than a pound carried on your torso. Why do so many of the world’s best distance runners come from Kenya and Ethiopia? The answer, Epstein explains, begins with weight. (Kangaroos have long tendons as well, Epstein tells us, which is what gives them their special hop.) How did he do it? He was blessed, among other things, with unusually long legs and a strikingly long Achilles tendon-ten and a quarter inches in length-which acted as a kind of spring, catapulting him high into the air when he planted his foot for a jump. The next year, after a grand total of eight months of training, Thomas won the world championships. They carry genes that put them far ahead of ordinary athletes.Įpstein tells the story of Donald Thomas, who on the seventh high jump of his life cleared 7’ 3.25"-practically a world-class height.
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The shape of their bodies is optimized for certain kinds of athletic activities. They respond more effectively to training. In “The Sports Gene,” there are countless tales like this, examples of all the ways that the greatest athletes are different from the rest of us. In the 1964 Olympics, he beat his closest competitor in the fifteen-kilometre race by forty seconds, a margin of victory, Epstein says, “never equaled in that event at the Olympics before or since.” In the 1960, 1964, and 1968 Winter Olympic Games, he won a total of seven medals-three golds, two silvers, and two bronzes-and in the same period he also won two world-championship victories in the thirty-kilometre race.
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Mäntyranta, by virtue of his unique physiology, had something like sixty-five per cent more red blood cells than the normal adult male.
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In cross-country skiing, athletes propel themselves over distances of ten and twenty miles-a physical challenge that places intense demands on the ability of their red blood cells to deliver oxygen to their muscles. That accounts for the color of his skin, and also for his extraordinary career as a competitive cross-country skier. His DNA has an anomaly that causes his bone marrow to overproduce red blood cells. Mäntyranta carries a rare genetic mutation. Élite sports is a contest among athletes with an uneven set of genetic endowments and natural advantages.