Jun

23

I think it says something that China's best marathon record time ranks it 24th out of countries and India's best time is 2:12:00 rank it the 60th fastest country.

USA is 3rd in population but 4th best marathon time.
 

These two country's populations dwarf the rest, with these 2 added into the top 60 countries by time there is 0 correlation. Without them there is R sq of 20%

I believe this has more to do with the size of government than it does with the population size. To have 4 times the population of the USA, how many times must the individual be squashed to keep order.

I have heard that you have a better chance becoming a pro ball player when you are from a small community than when you are from a big city. I don't know if this is true. Would like to see the stats. However looking over the data for marathoners it looks like you have a better chance of being world contender if the population is less than 100 million.


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  1. Anand on June 24, 2011 12:27 am

    I am not sure if you have visited / have in depth knowledge with respect to China or India. Especially with regards to the comment size of the government / the individual must be squashed to keep order.

    I can definitely talk about India and I also hazard a guess the same reasoning might hold true for China too.

    In India marathon is not a top sport. It is Cricket. A far far distant second could be football. Marathon might not even feature in the top 100 sports.

    Of course as a consequence, the entire support infrastructure, like coaching, training schools, sports knowledge, hero figures, media coverage are practically non existent for marathon or any other sport for that matter. So you have world record holders in the field of Cricket coming from India.

    Take China. Like any Olympic / World Cup tournament shows Chinese are world beaters / unbeatable in many of the sports like Badminton, Table Tennis, Gymnastics etc etc. In fact, their growth in this domain is far more incredible than any other country in the recent past. Would you conclude that big government is the reason for such performance in these sports?

    Linking a performance / non-performance in one sport to the country's political scene is akin to drawing a line through one single point. You can draw the line whichever way you want.

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