On that note, if you did test all these groups of performance-matched runners, and you still find differences, then youвЂ™ve found something really fascinating, because youвЂ™ll have shown that the same performance can be the result of many different вЂњinputвЂќ characteristics, and thereвЂ™s not one thing that predicts performance. This should, I hope, be relatively obvious. I strongly suspect that if Galen Rupp, or Chris Solinsky, or even the Brownlee brothers, or any one of the fifty world class white middle- and long-distance runners, were included in the control group, the differences would disappear. The true control group, to whom the elite Kenyans should be compared, however, is a group of performance matched athletes from Europe, or America, or perhaps even Ethiopia/Uganda/Eritrea. It is thus incomplete, not incorrect, and requires that elite white runners and sedentary Kenyans be included in the results, which would complete the picture and allow a broader conclusion. All it does, for now, is provide evidence that Kenyan athletes possess musculo-tendinous qualities that are likely beneficial for distance running, but it has not yet shown that these characteristics do not exist the world over. But you cannot extrapolate this study into the debate about Kenyan running dominance. Perhaps most crucially, it identifies yet another physiological attribute of elite athletes вЂ“ high tendon elasticity. So, I donвЂ™t mean to be too critical of the research, I think itвЂ™s sound and provides very interesting data. Top An incomplete picture, but not necessarily wrong What you donвЂ™t know, of course, is whether the athlete becomes elite because of highly elastic tendon, or whether the tendon elasticity improves with training вЂ“ thatвЂ™s an answer for a longitudinal study. If however you ask вЂњWhat physiological characteristics may set elite athletes apart from sedentary folk?вЂќ, then you can point to this study as providing evidence of another factor that ALL distance runners, not just Kenyans, need to possess. If you ask вЂњWhat makes the Kenyans so good?вЂќ and you answer вЂњThey have elastic calf musclesвЂќ, then youвЂ™d be making the mistake of over-applying the finding of this research. So a lot depends on what your question is. You are not so much measuring the advantage of Kenyans, as you are the advantage possessed by people who train and are athletic, and you could read the entire research paper, inserting the word вЂњeliteвЂќ every time you see вЂњKenyanвЂќ and it would make just as much sense. If you take what are clearly crucial factors for performance in highly performing athletes, and compare them to the same factors in untrained people, you are destined to find a difference that has nothing to do with ethnicity or race, and everything to do with performance. The real problem with this study, at least in terms of its definitive application to the question of Kenyan running ability, is that it makes an unfair comparison. The muscle tendon unit of highly trained, international caliber athletes, is optimized to favor efficient storage and recoil of elastic energy when compared to people who are inactive and untrained However, you could just as easily have concluded as follows The Kenyan MG muscleвЂ“tendon unit is optimized to favor efficient storage and recoil of elastic energy. To illustrate, the authors make the following conclusion in the paper: And if you donвЂ™t match the groups correctly, then the conclusions you reach will be entirely misdirected, and this is what I would suggest is happening in this research study. When performing a comparison between two groups like this, itвЂ™s very important to know what you have to match. What the study is NOT, however, is any kind of proof of what makes Kenyan runners so good compared to European/Caucasian runners.ДЄnd herein lies the catch. Top What the study does NOT show Kenyans are great becauseвЂ¦

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