Alexis Okeowo, Newsweek, June 20, 2009
A growing number of international runners are leaving their homelands for an unlikely destination: Mexico. Though the U.S. still boasts more foreign transplants, Mexico’s high altitude, easier visa process and cheaper cost of living are luring some of the sport’s leading figures, including Kenyans Isaac Kimaiyo, Lazarus Nyakeraka and Patrick Nthiwa. Mexico also taxes race winnings by 14 percent, compared with 33 percent in the U.S., which Nyakeraka says makes it a “better option” for runners who send race earnings to family back home.
{snip}
Yet even as Mexico tries to package itself as a sporting suburb of the U.S., it’s facing one major drawback: racism. African runners complain of constant taunts from fans upset that the newcomers are beating out homegrown favorites. Coaches have complained to officials, to no avail. Last year Kenyan runners won 85 percent of the country’s domestic long-distance races. But organizers have started limiting the number of prizes that Africans can win, regardless of how well they place. In races abroad, all of Mexico’s runners are equal, but at home, it seems that some are more equal than others.
Original article
(Posted on July 2, 2009)
Comments
Pardon the stereotype, but if you’re short, obese and horribly deficient in nutrients, and don’t exercise a lot, you’re not going to win many marathons.
Of course Mexico can afford to tax winnings at 14% instead of the US rate of 33%. They don’t have to support all those ILLEGALS… at least not anymore.
Also, does anyone find it humourous that Mexico has affirmative action against Africans? I wonder how long it will be before Mexicans are demanding the same in the US. After all, if Hispanics are now 13% of the population then they should be 13% of the NBA as well.
Genetics are likely the main factor, it’s not like Africa is known for its great nutrition.
Yes, a lot of it is genetics. But actually, a fair amount of the domination you see in long distance events by Africans is in fact due to the incredible drop-off in participation by Europeans, which started in the mid 80’s as interest in the sport amongst youngsters tailed off while enthusiasm for soccer and other activities sky-rocketed like no one had ever seen. At the time, briefly, Mexico started to produce some of the world’s best marathoners and was starting to make an impact on the track - then that country really fell apart and the promise that started to show disappeared almost instantly. Now most of the best runners all come from Kenya, Ethiopia, Morocco and Algeria. Nature and nurture, genetics and culture. While these places have much higher percentages of talented people for distance running than most other regions, the dominance you see is ‘exaggerated’ by others not competing in great numbers, sometimes not at all. It’s similar to what we see in boxing now. There were always talented whites, but in fact from the late 19th century on, the overall numbers of whites actually interested in getting into the sport full time with its demands was continuously dropping. Couple that with hungry blacks and others taking to it, and for decades we saw very few white champs. Now from 150 lbs up through heavyweight, whites hold 17 of 21 championship belts. Most of this is because of the large influx of European fighters. The number of white fighters out there is in fact still dwarfed by the number of competing blacks and latinos (despite the white hating press grasping at straws to play down white success), but that number of whites is far higher than it’s been in over 100 years. This fact is rarely brought up. I suspect that the only reason whites don’t have a higher share of the belts under 150 lbs is the fact that most whites on average are just too big. The latinos dominate those divisions quite handily. It’s interesting that possibly the best “pound for pound” boxer right now is Asian (Manny Pacquiao). Whites tend to dominate MMA but that’s a different story.
While blacks have genetic gifts in some areas of speed, many observers in the know were aware that whites generally have far better muscular strength (especially upper-body) and endurance than blacks overall. (Even Steve Sailer pointed out years ago that based on physiological testing, there should have been a lot of white boxing champs - now he has them) The genetic traits that favor whites have now become evident in many fights where whites tend to show more power and endurance - able to overcome in many instances early flash knockdowns, while the blacks who do win here and there rely on generally better hand speed and fast footwork - or biased decisions from, eh, PC “influenced” judges. The pendulum can swing in any sport. We’ll see this in other sports and events - and political situations ; ) - more frequently over the next few years.
After that long winded spiel, I’d have to say I side with the Mexicans on this. Many people all over the world are tired of Africans (and others) competing for their “national” teams. It happens here in the US and it just doesn’t seem right.
Mexicans have their own immigrants which they don’t like either.
“Yet even as Mexico tries to package itself as a sporting suburb of the U.S., it’s facing one major drawback: racism. African runners complain of constant taunts from fans upset that the newcomers are beating out homegrown favorites.”
These PC types use the word “racism” to mean mean about everything but its true meaning. “Racism” translates to racial superiority or the premise that someone of another race is inferior.
What this PC oddball means, who wrote the story, is that Mexicans are biased in favor of their own people, which is EXACTLY how every race on earth reacts. It’s perfectly normal. Except, of course, to a mind-controlled zombie who has been brainwashed into the cult of the rainbow utopia fantasy.
I would not want to see a ‘Vietnamese’ Olympic basketball team if it was all African.
We Americans can learn valuable lessons from the Mexicans. Like clamping limits on the number and compensation of Latin American baseball players in the US.
And hauling the NBA and NFL into court for favoring blacks over whites, including letting blacks go to ridiculous “colleges” that are nursery schools, or letting blacks graduate “high school’(right) and then play pro sports where a white practically always has to play two or three years at an NCAA approved college and maintain a 2.0 GPA(which whites often do and blacks often don’t).
As for the Africans, everyone (including multinational sponsors) should boycott them if they run for nations other than their citizenship nation. Nike has wrecked sports.
Let them run for their own East African and North African teams. But they wanted independence from Europe. They got it. Let Britain run Kenya again and exploit its resources, and you can run for Kenya.
And aren’t they supposed to be “amateurs”? I know “amateur” track is lucrative, but officially these machines aren’t on a salary but get ‘promotional’ income.
Mexicans are just about the most racist folks on Earth except the Koreans. For years they wouldn`t let blacks migrate. They have worked dilegently to erase their Spanish blood genes. The population is returning to it`s Aztec roots.
While blacks have genetic gifts in some areas of speed, many observers in the know were aware that whites generally have far better muscular strength (especially upper-body) and endurance than blacks overall. (
I really couldn’t care less one way or another. I’m not a sports nut. I’m perfectly happy to concede an advantage to blacks in some areas of athletics. Our sports obsessed (as well as entertainment obsessed) society is being distracted from the most important fact—that whites have the obvious edge in IQ, ability to maintain a civilization, inventiveness, etc. Why quibble over who can jump higher or run faster? Running a race is the most petty of trivialities compared to running a civilization.
It is funny watching the results of blacks defending every race but caucasians.When the Chinese,mexicans,turks and every other ethnic and racial group are elbowing each other and blacks for power in the former united States,the blacks are going to wonder why all the other groups are so insensitive to their needs and concerns.The other groups will not be vexed by the guilt complex whites suffer from and will tell blacks to bug off.
Charles B. Tiffany, Mexico took plenty-o-money from the U.S. recently (and they want $501 million this year). I don’t know about what they got prior to the years mentioned in the report (linked below), but I’m sure it wasn’t zero.
I do have to wonder why we give them anything, with the billions Mexicans workers here send home.
Source:http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/101444.pdf
In other words Mexicans are normal, and understand that a nation should exist to protect the culture and that some sports should be more than just entertainment, they should be community celebrations. Will Durant on the decline of Greece: Greeks, who had once been a nation of athletes, became now a nation of spectators, content to witness rather than to do.
To Charles B. Tiffany:
You claim that Mexico has never taken a cent in aid from the U.S. government. I beg to differ. There are several instances, but Ill mention three rather recent ones.
In the mid-1980’s Mexico had that devastating earthquake, that leveled parts of Mexico City. They took our aid then.
In the 1990’s when Mexico and the rest of Latin America had that financial melt-down, they took our aid.
The Mexican government takes money and guns from us, in order to fight their drug cartels.
There have doubtless been other times that Mexico has taken our aid, and that doesn’t include charitable aid from churches, relief agencies and other non-profit organizations.
To Tim in Indiana:
You have a valid point about running a civilization being much more important than running a marathon. Have you ever noticed how many black mayors of cities regard building sports stadiums as the most important form of “urban renewal” for their burgs?
Not providing jobs, better schools, services or safer streets. But building new sports arenas. Coleman Young, especially; comes to mind.
Soprano Fan:
Not just black city politicians. A few years ago, there was a plan to close the old building of a large public high school in Chicago, and split it into three smaller schools to be based at three smaller but less old buildings in the city. The “community activists” were outraged. One of the “community activists,” a city bureaucrat, demanded a new state of the art high school building with everything. When he listed the details of a “state of the art comprehensive high school,” he said these things: a football field with easy to maintain field turf and adequate bleacher space, with concession stands, a baseball field, a track, and an olympic-sized swimming pool.
Not one mention of a chemistry lab, physics lab, or any thing closely remote to what I once heard was supposed to be the mission of the public education system, I think it had something to do with imparting knowledge. Which is ironic, because the reason why the CPS wants to shut down the big school and create three smaller ones from it is that the big school is about the worst academically speaking in the city. To be honest, all that would do is to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic.
The Kenyans and Ethiopians have been the best distance runners in the world since they burst upon the scene in the 1960s. It is really the only thing they do well as a whole, but you have to give them credit. The vast majority of their world-class runners are born and raised at altitude, which I think is the primary reason for their success.
Europe, and to a lesser extent the US, had plenty of their own elite distance runners during the 60s, 70s and 80s. But we’ve become increasingly sedentary over the last generation and nowadays only a handful of white runners can compete in the long distances with the Africans. But a rebirth is possible, as a previous poster mentioned with boxing.
Mexico actually had some very good distance runners in the late 80s and early 90s but most of that talent has dried up as well. I think it’s a bit ironic that the Mexicans are up in arms about the Africans taking home all the prize money in Mexican road races. The Mexicans, together with the Africans, did the same thing to road racing in the United States in the early 90s. Eventually many promoters stopped offering prize money and today most road races in the US are little more than fun runs.
Mexico actually had some very good distance runners in the late 80s and early 90s
Like Peurto Rico would have a pretty good baseball team too, IF the good ones weren’t playing for an American team…When an athlete from Africa makes a mark, he seems automatically to end up in the U.S. someone explain that.
Tim in Indiana wrote at 10:40 PM on July 3:
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Tim, there has been an organized effort to use sports - via the promotion of blacks - and the deliberate exclusion of whites (as has now been proven by those looking into the NFL and MLB for example) in order to attack the confidence of white youth, and to mold the minds of white youth to worship non-white ‘stars’, especially blacks. The worship of top athletes may be silly to many, but it’s a fact that many youngsters of all stripes get wrapped up in this. Thus sports was seen as another way to attack and at the same time brainwash whites.
The bottom-line is from the 100 meters dash through the Marathon athletes of Africans ancestry disproportionately dominate. China did not win one medal in Track and Field in the last Olympic Games. Track and Field is the most basic test of athletic ability thus how could we consider them as true Olympians?
Asia did well in the last olympics in weightlifting.
