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mightgeist

Listed below are comments made by mightgeist between Saturday, 23rd August 2008 and Saturday, 23rd August 2008.

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The secrets of Jamaica's sprint success 7:07pm on 23 Aug 2008 The one thing that might have assured all of the genuine nature of Bolt's celebration was the reaction of his competitors. Even the American crew smiled and gave it up for Bolt. If you know American sprinters, you'll know that that behaviour is not in the blood, except as it comes down to the most appropriate American expression... "Game Recognize Game" They wouldn't shake hands with a cheat.
The secrets of Jamaica's sprint success 6:45pm on 23 Aug 2008 For all of the expected claims of fast-twitch fibres and predisposed gene pools, the logic and science once again fails those who purport this as the tipping factor for success.

We've been here before with the "Kenyan secret." Yet upon examination of the training and actually training with the Kenyans, other world class runners found that they had never put in the volume or relative intensity of training that the Kenyans regularly did. Nor did the group training structure fit what they were used to.

So, this is not to say that you may not be right about fast-twitches and gene pools, but simply to say that that opinion is light years from any type of longitudinal validation that also equalizes for training methods, equipment, and coaching. In that light, it could well be that fast-twitch fibres could be necessary but not remotely sufficient for multiple gold medals. If we want to claim this science, we can't do so in a fashion that take a holistic scientific approach versus pulling anecdotal, even true factors and raising them up to causality.

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