media_artricles :: 2014

Love in the symmetry

Why is Jamaica home to so many of the world’s elite sprinters

Why is Jamaica, with a population smaller than that of Los Angeles, home to so many of the world’s elite sprinters – runners who compete in the 100, 200, 400 and 800-metre races? This was a question from Rutgers University and before reading the rest of the article I started thinking about the answer.

One group of researchers studying Usain Bolt credited chicken nuggets and the humble Jamaican yam for Usain’s speed and prowess. The Daily Mirror confirmed, “The secret weapon behind sprint sensation Usain Bolt’s incredible Olympic 100 metres triumph has been revealed as . . . a diet of chicken nuggets and yams.” In an article titled “Usain Bolt: Training Secrets of the World’s Fastest Man” we found out, “Given Bolt’s love of chicken nuggets and wings, the gold-medal winner’s personal chef has his work cut out to ensure that his body remains rock-hard. One secret weapon: yams.”

The Jamaica Gleaner confirmed this: “Triple Olympic gold medallist Usain Bolt is to running what yellow yam is to Trelawny. Both are top in their class. After years of taking the delicious tuber for granted, at the just-concluded Olympics, yam received almost as much attention as our athletes in Beijing, China, did. Suddenly, everyone wanted to know why Jamaican athletes (particularly Bolt) are so fast. And not wanting to seem boastful, the answer came loud and clear: it’s in the (yam) diet.”

There are some sceptics. One commentator said, “After his (Bolt’s) performance in Beijing, his dad claimed that his performance is due to the ‘Yam’ that he has been eating over the years, but honestly, I personally believe this was meant to be a joke! If this were the case, all Jamaicans would be track stars simply because Yam is one of the staples that is consumed a lot by almost everyone in Jamaica. Another reason this theory doesn’t hold true is due to the fact other Caribbean Islands and other countries as well have been eating Yam and still haven’t been able to produce superb sprinters.”

Bolt himself might say, like a Jamaican Popeye the Sailor Man, “I yam what I nyam” especially if there is some Olyve Oyl around, but Rutgers does not think so. While Victoria’s Secret might be in the higher regions of the anatomy, Bolt’s might be in his knees.

Robert Trivers, an evolutionary biologist and professor of anthropology and biology in the Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences, set out with his colleagues to find out if there was something about the symmetry of their knees that might partly explain this phenomenon. For their study, the researchers measured the knees of 74 elite Jamaican sprinters and a control group of 116 non-sprinting Jamaicans of the same age and sex and similar in size and weight. They discovered that the sprinters’ knees were much more symmetrical than the knees of people in the control group.

“Yes,” my friend said when I told him about speed and symmetry. “But that is old news. First of all, a yam vine is a runner. We all know that. But this symmetry thing, Lord Kitchener find that out a long time before them American scientists.” My friend explained, “Remember when he was making love in a symmetry and when a ghost attack him he take off with a zoom, zoom, zoom? Is a good thing he wasn’t eating yam otherwise he woulda fly!”

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