just correction of fact and clarification., Sorry folks for intruding upon this fascinating discussionwith my OT contribution,but I would like to make a correction. That honour belongs to CK Yang of Taiwan who was also known as the Iron man of Asia
Thanks for the details. However, I suggest we avoid putting too much attention on individual achievement (Liu Xiang) and a specific category (Marathon or Half Marathon) when discussing Genetics or Training because the subject is about probability and distribution over a large population.From memory, In his book “The way of the Runner” Adharanand Finn said that the Japanese love and a great participants in road running with a lot of very fast times posted in the half marathon. Their main objective is to participate as part of a corporate relay team in the “Ediken” which is run over 135 miles. After achieving this goal, continued interest in running starts to wane. I think that’s why we may never see the Japanese run as good as they might.