Jamaicans smash relay record - and why they're so dominant

Friday, August 22: Another sprint, another world record smashed by Jamaica. The Caribbean island’s relay team ran a phenomenal 37.1 seconds today to win gold in the 4x100m final. The team of Nesta Carter, Michael Frater, Usain Bolt and Asafa Powell destroyed the previous best time of 37.4 seconds set by the US, finishing almost a second ahead of the minor medallists, Trinidad & Tobago and Japan.

Today’s victory capped a track and field meeting where Jamaica has totally dominated the shorter events. Earlier in the Games, Bolt ran faster than anyone ever before in winning both the 100m and 200m finals – the first sprint double since Carl Lewis in 1984. Also, the podium for the women’s 100m was an all-Jamaican affair, and Veronica Campbell-Brown took gold in the 200m.

So what makes Jamaicans so fast? Like most African-Americans, Jamaicans are descended from West Africans. In 2004, a study of the best 500 times ever recorded in the 100m revealed that 495 of them were by runners of West-African descent – and there are anatomical reasons for this dominance.

West Africans have many more of the “fast-twitch” muscle fibres that help fast sprinters become very fast, and 70 per cent of Jamaicans, compared with 60 per cent of black Americans, have a strong form of a gene called ACTN3 which produces a protein to make these muscles move even quicker. The rest of us simply don’t have this gene.

Nurture also plays a role. Nina Shen Rastogi writes on Slate.com how “track and field has historically held a high place of honour in Jamaican culture”. The yearly high school athletics competition, ‘Champs’, is an event of comparative national importance to Britain’s FA Cup Final. Most of the talented students then go abroad, but the island’s University of Technology is now a much more professional training camp than it was 30 years ago. It was on the track and in the weight room there that Usain Bolt learnt his craft.

FIRST POSTED AUGUST 22, 2008