With the 28th Olympic Games about to start, who would put a bet on a white athlete winning the 100 meters? Certainly not the American writer Jon Entine. "The complete domination of the 100 meters by people of West African origin means no white man will ever again win the event. It simply won't happen," said Entine, when promoting his book "Taboo: Why Black Athletes Are Better and Why We're Afraid to Talk About It" (PublicAffairs; 2001).
It is not easy to discuss the issue of black domination of certain athletics events. When Roger Bannister, an English neurologist and the first man to break the 4-minute mile, said in 1995 that "black sprinters and black athletes all seem to have certain natural anatomical advantages," he was condemned as a racist.
But the question remains: Has natural selection in parts of Africa predisposed black people to be better at modern athletics?