Better trained or simply born to run? SHORTLY AFTER the teenage
Grenadian athlete Kirani James streaked away with the 400 metres
in the Olympic final on Tuesday night, BBC presenter John
Inverdale turned to his studio guests and posed a potentially
incendiary question. “It’s simplistic I’m sure,” he suggested to
former Olympic champions Michael Johnson and Denise Lewis, “in a
way there is a certain resignation that Ethiopians and Kenyans
will dominate distance running and you suddenly see West Indian
heritage athletes dominating the 400 metres. What does that say
to runners in this country?” Johnson, the greatest 400 metres
runner of all time, was uncharacteristically equivocal in his
answer. “You can’t buy into the clichés and the sweeping
generalisations about what makes an athlete successful.
Certainly genealogy plays a part in it. It doesn’t mean that if
you are of African descent that you are going to dominate
sprints and those who aren’t won’t.” The notion that some ethnic
groups might be genetically pr