French book examines why black sprinters dominate the Olympics

The last 25 holders of the world record for the 100-metre race have all been black and data compiled in 2007 revealed that 494 out of the 500 best-ever 100-metre sprint times are held by athletes primarily of West African origin.

Despite the glaring statistics, most scientists, authors and journalists avoided any quest for an explanation out of a fear of being accused of racial stereotyping.

But, in 2010, French author Jean-Philippe Leclaire, a former editor in chief of popular French sports newspaper "L’Equipe", took it upon himself to examine the evidence. Inspired by the emergence of white French sprinter Christophe Lemaitre and by American author Jon Entine's book “Taboo: Why black athletes dominate sport and why we’re afraid to talk about it”, Leclaire decided to dedicate a year and a half of his life to breaking that taboo.

Over 361 pages, Leclaire examined the link between sporting performance and country of origin.

He studied a range of existing theories, including one that points to the so-called “innate muscle” makeup of black sprinters and another that argues that the supposed greater length of Kenyan runners’ femurs gave them an advantage. Other arguments revolved around the apparent thinner skin and lighter internal organs of black athletes.

By the end of his research, Leclaire was left in no doubt. For him, “athletic performance is largely determined by genetics and specifically ACTN3, the so-called ‘sprint gene’”.Leclaire concluded that the genes favourable for sprinting are more commonly found in those of West African origin.

Matthew Syed, author of the book "Bounce: The Myth of Talent and the Power of Practice" points out that a host of West African countries including Ivory Coast, Senegal, Congo and Angola have never produced an Olympic sprint champion because according to the director of the Copenhagen Muscle Research Institute, Bengt Saltin, believes an athlete's “environment” can account for 20 to 25 percent of his speed.

“Just because some black people are good at something does not imply that black people in general will be good at it,” Syed told the BBC.