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Taiwan's race for sporting success

Thursday, May 23, 2002, Page 14

Taipei Times: In your book, Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We are Afraid to Talk About It, you address "human biodiversity" and "race and sports." What impact does this have for sports in Asia?

Jon Entine: Humans like to move around and fool around. As a result of this, we are truly diverse, biologically and culturally.

However, many of our differences fall into observable or biologically measurable patterns. This is evident in medical research which shows many "racial" patterns in the likelihood of specific diseases.

For example, whites are more likely to contract multiple sclerosis, a disease almost unheard of among Asians.

A condition called primaquine sensitivity is responsible for the intensity of the reaction to certain drugs among African, Mediterranean and Asian men. Another mutated gene accounts for the sensitivity of many East Asians to alcohol. These are all "racial" patterns of a kind.

Reams of genetic and anthropological studies definitively show that heritable characteristics such as skeletal structure, the distribution of muscle fiber types, reflex capabilities, metabolic efficiency, lung capacity, and the ability to use energy more efficiently are not evenly distributed among populations.

"Very many in sports physiology would like to believe that it is training, the environment, what you eat that plays the most important role [in running]," states Bengt Saltin, director of the Copenhagen Muscle Research Center and one of the world's premier sports medical researchers.

`East Asians test out as having the quickest reaction times and natural dexterity, which contributes to their prominence in diving, skating, racquet sports and martial arts. East Asians shine in sports requiring body flexibility -- hence the term "Chinese splits" in gymnastics.' PHOTO COURTESY OF JON ENTINE

"But based on the data, it is `in your genes' whether or not you are talented or whether you will become talented. The extent of the environment can always be discussed but it's less than 20, 25 percent."

Despite the clear ascension of the black athlete in so many sports, athletic performance is not reducible to traditional racial categories of black, white and Asian.

As a result of intermixing and waves of immigration over thousands of years, there are no so-called pure "races."

However, there are some group differences, a consequence of thousands of years of evolution in varying terrains. There is a great deal of overlap in body types throughout the world, but there are clear patterns grounded in genetics.

"Evolution has shaped body types and in part athletic possibilities," explains Arizona State University evolutionary biologist, Joseph Graves Jr., who is black.

"Genes play a major role in this. Don't expect an Eskimo to show up on an NBA court or a Watusi to win the world weightlifting championship.

Differences don't necessarily correlate with skin color, but rather with geography and climate."

Ancestry, not outdated notions of race, circumscribe athletic possibility in performance sports such as track and field, weightlifting, wrestling and swimming. For instance, athletes of West African ancestry (including almost all African-Americans and British blacks) tend to be mesomorphs -- they have defined, muscular physiques, with strong upper and lower bodies.

They have relatively more fast twitch muscle fibers, which provide quick energy, and smaller, more efficient lungs. As a result, they are generally lackluster endurance athletes but dominating jumpers and sprinters -- for example, holding 494 of the top 500 times in the 100m.

Eurasian whites [and] the world's top weight-lifters and wrestlers live in or trace their ancestry from a swath of Eurasia, from Bulgaria through upper Mongolia [and] dominate weightlifting and field events like the shot put because of naturally squatter physiques and more upper body strength -- a biogenetic edge.

East Asians test out as having the quickest reaction times and natural dexterity, which contributes to their prominence in diving, skating, racquet sports and martial arts. East Asians shine in sports requiring body flexibility -- hence the term "Chinese splits" in gymnastics.

East Asians tend to be small with relatively short extremities, long torsos and a thicker layer of fat. They are smaller, shorter endomorphs.

TT: Does this explain Taiwan's underachievement in sports? (It has never won an Olympic gold medal).

Entine: Certainly, in part. Social and cultural factors obviously play a role. But there are not many Olympic sports in which the anatomy and physiology of the Taiwanese are ideally suited.

Baseball -- which is wildly popular in Taiwan -- demonstrates the body-type dilemma. Taiwan is the world power in Little League competition, winning 17 championships. However, it has few prospects for American Major League baseball.

That's because young East Asian teenagers don't generally develop the adult physiques necessary to compete at that level.

The exploits of other East Asian superstars, such as Japan's Ichiro Suzuki and Kazuhiro Sasaki of the Seattle Mariners, are already the stuff of legend, but don't expect this trickle to become a flood -- the body type limitations are just too severe a handicap.

TT: If you were in charge of sports development in Taiwan, what steps might you propose?

Entine: As long as "international sports" are equated with high-profile, high revenue American and Olympic sports, it is difficult to expect that Taiwan, or any small Asian country, will emerge as a sports powerhouse.

China, of course, is vast, with huge variations in population, so it will do well in many sports. But there are limits, as genetics circumscribes possibility -- body type matters.

Taiwan could expect to turn out world class athletes in a range of areas. Martial arts and gymnastics are reflective of the regional body type, which is very flexible. Asians also are well suited to do well in sports of agility and grace -- witness the great performances by Chinese diving goddess Fu Ming-xia.

But they don't appear competitive with blacks, or even whites, in most events demanding size and strength.

They also tend to excel at skating, are competitive weightlifters and are excellent wrestlers. And long distance runners. Studies indicate that East Asians have the quickest reaction time, a key skill in ping-pong, badminton and other racquet sports, which are popular in East Asia.

TT: Asian countries have long complained that the Olympics are dominated by Euro- and American-centric sports. Is this a fair comment?

Entine: I think that's true.

Culturally distinctive "Asian" sports do not get the international attention of many other Olympic sports. That reflects the historical domination of the Olympics by Europeans (and more recently by Americans).

That will be difficult to change because revenue drives the Olympic movement and the money in sports is still generated mostly in the US and Europe. But the coming of the Olympics to Asia in 2008 should begin to shift the world axis of interest from West to East.

TT: Norwegian speed skating champion Johann Olav Koss has said, "Genetic engineering is accelerating and it's damaging sports." What is your opinion?

Entine: I don't agree, frankly. Koss' comments reflect a phobia of genetics, and genetic engineering.

In one sense, the concerns are understandable.

Genetic doping and manipulation worries sport officials because they see it as further undermining sports' bedrock ethical principle, fairness -- and doing so in a way that's infinitely harder to regulate than traditional performance-enhancing drugs.

That concern is legitimate, but it runs up against three difficult realities.

First, in the elite world of performance sports like track and field, cycling, power lifting and perhaps swimming, the use of performance-enhancing drugs is already so widespread as to make a mockery of the ideal of the pure, untainted athlete.

Second, in the coming age of the cyber-athlete, detection of genetic enhancement will be all but impossible.

And third, the advent of genetic interventions raises ethical dilemmas for which there are no easy solutions.

Finally, there is the pragmatic point. It seems overwhelmingly likely that, whether we like it or not, many world-class athletes in the future will have "had their genes done" the way they now get their knees scoped -- and no one will know. What can or should we do about that? There are no easy answers to these questions.

The debate over genetic engineering is just beginning: It is certain to rage for years. The Pandora's box is open. There are cyborg athletes among us. We have to understand the genetic revolution, not run from it.

TT: By highlighting racial differences it could be said that you are encouraging racial stereotyping and thereby racism. How would you respond?

Entine: Certainly, racial discussions do make some people uneasy, but in some ways, that's the point of my book.

Much of the book is devoted to the historical debate over human differences. We need to understand the origins of racism, which cannot be done unless we examine our past, as uncomfortable as that may seem to some.

Silence is a form of censorship and unfortunately, it usually results in perpetuating pseudo-scientific notions, such as the"racial superiority" of one population over others.

With the dramatic advances in human genome research, the question today is no longer whether genetic research will continue but to what end.

Popular thinking, still reactive to the historical misuse of "race science," lags behind this new biocultural model of human nature.

I have come to believe that sports offer a non-polemical way to convey this message and depoliticize what has sometimes been a vitriolic debate.

Historically, Asian countries have been the object of extreme and sometimes vicious stereotyping. Such racial generalizations even exist within Asia.

Only by discussing and coming to understand the origins of such views, which sometimes lead to xenophobia, can we hope to reduce racial tensions. This is certainly not a black and white issue.

TT: Asians have gotten taller and bigger as their diets have changed. Do you think there will always be racial differences? Or will there rather be more racial similarities in the future?

Entine: A hundred years, or even a few hundred years, are eye blinks of evolutionary time. The differences we see among populations are grounded in thousands of years of traveling separate evolutionary paths.

Certainly, the human body is somewhat "plastic." As nutrition improves, body types will change. But only within a range. All the nutrition and training in the world cannot turn a Kenyan into a sprinter, a Nigerian into a marathoner or a Taiwanese into the next great long jump or high jump athlete. It just won't happen.

But as humans move around and fool around -- as our nations of race continue to blur -- racial differences will gradually become less pronounced.

On the Net: http://www.jonentine.com
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