Nerve Endings Firing Away

Yet another Kenyan won yet another marathon. It was the expected finish to the New York Marathon, with the fifth Kenyan victorious ending since 1997. Slate had this interesting introspection on the amazing trend of Kenyan dominance in long distance running. Call it genetics, lung power or merely a long running tradition that inspires generations of runners that continue to dominate track in an increasingly competitive sports field. If you think of it, every nation has managed to hone a specialty sport into excellence wherein they churn out consistent performers year after year. They have supposedly discovered the tricks of the trade. The Americans are invincible in basketball in addition to a ton of other games. But considering the amount of money they pump into training and facilities, they are the glaring exception to single-sport dominance.

When you control for fiscal attributes, many nations yet manage to come out on tops. Kenyan dominate the long distance, Cubans dominate boxing, Iranians dominate wrestling, Australia dominates cricket, Russia dominates gymnastics (China is fast catching up though), Brazil dominates soccer, Indonesia dominates badminton and I can go on and on citing umpteen examples. Can India claim dominance in any particular sport? We could say so few decades ago when Dhyan Chand inspired us to an unprecedented eight Olympic golds until astroturf proved to be our chink in the armor. Chess can stake a claim but Vishy apart, we haven’t exactly set the chequered board on fire. Oh yeah, I nearly forgot kabaddi but then again, not everyone has really heard of the game. So calling India consistent world kabaddi champions is like considering Marlins world baseball champions, notwithstanding their claim for the same. Maybe a little bit of research in national performance in a particular sport might prove insightful.