It is undeniable that Africans are overrepresented in certain professional sports as well as other foreign sports. Their frequency is very relevant and frequently linked to sports like football, basketball, and track. For example, 73.9% of the players in the National Basketball Association (NBA) during the 2017–18 season were African Americans (Lapchik, 2018). Furthermore, according to Lapchik (2018), 69.7% of players in the National Football League (NFL) during the 2016–2017 season were African Americans.
A variety of people, including academics and sportswriters, have discussed the apparent under- and overrepresentations of various racial groups in various sports. By the end of 2008, 75% of players in the National Basketball Association (NBA) were African Americans. The most recent National Consortium for Academics and Sports report claims that 65% of National Football League players were African Americans, according to the equality report card.
Nonetheless, around 8.5% of Major League Baseball Players included 29.1% Hispanics of any race, compared to about 16% of the US population, and African Americans, who make up roughly 13% of the population, played. In 2020, the percentage of black or mixed-race players in the National Hockey League (NHL) was less than 5%.
Only 30% of the top 20 global rankings came from Africa, with 50% coming from Europe. In recent times, the number of elite runners from Europe has dropped to 11%, while the number from Africa has increased to 85%, with Kenya accounting for 55% of this increase. As a matter of fact, African runners currently lead the field in street, cross-country, and middle-and long-distance running.
The Europeans’ declining running pace is not the reason for their loss of dominance.
In actuality, Africans move more quickly.
Thus, the query is: What distinguishes Africans from other people globally?
These figures unequivocally demonstrate—a topic that is frequently discussed and contested—that African Americans comprise the majority of professional athletes in these respective sports.
These conversations frequently go farther into explaining why Africans make up the bulk of these leagues. There are two widely accepted hypotheses explaining why Africans predominately participate in sports like basketball, football, running, jumping, and other activities. One theory links this to their genetic makeup, while the other blames their surroundings.
Eddie Tolan became the first person of African descent to win the competition in 1932, and this marked the beginning of a lengthy run of success for black male sprinters. Since then, only five men’s Olympic champions in the event have not come from a large African family.
The Confederation of African Football was established in 1956, and football took off in Africa. Through athletics, pan-Africanism was expressed, albeit it was constrained by FIFA and other Western athletic federations. Nevertheless, black African athletes performed admirably in their various sports at the 1960 Rome Olympics, placing highly at the conclusion of the competition. Africa’s battle for independence was aided by sports, and the continent is now well-known for several sports.
The current African domination in long-distance running is an interesting phenomena that emphasizes the intimate connection between physical prowess and genetics.
In an effort to explain the remarkable success of these runners, a number of factors, including high cardiorespiratory fitness, higher hemoglobin concentration, good metabolic efficiency, muscle fiber composition, enzyme profile, diet, altitude training, and psychological aspects, have been proposed. There’s growing research that suggests genetics could play a role in physical and athletic performance.
A variety of intrinsic (genetic, biological, etc.) and extrinsic (exposure to stimuli, environment, nutrition, technical-tactical training techniques, sport specialization, competition, sociocultural and financial aspects, motivation, career management, scientific support, etc.) factors must be integrated for sports performance.
Athletes and coaches can only influence certain aspects of these, including chronological age and hereditary characteristics, while others, like physiological, psychological, and biomechanical aspects, can only be taught.
Indeed, it has long been hypothesized that genetic background influences athletic potential by dictating the anthropometric, cardiovascular, and muscular traits of adaptation to fitness training. This background makes some people more responsive to physical training, some people with low responsiveness who show little physical aptitude despite instruction, and some people who lack athletic characteristics who are not responsive.
Furthermore, every single variation in human traits, or phenotypes, is the outcome of the interplay between environmental cues and genotype.
For instance, blood flow, muscle fiber size, type of innervation, and lean body mass composition all have a significant impact on muscle and, by extension, athletic performance. In this case, genetic factors account for 50–80% of the interindividual variation in the response of muscle performance to exercise training, which is a dynamic process.
By the 1980s, the worldwide landscape had drastically shifted, with African athletes showcasing their abilities in nearly every sport at that time. Athletes from Europe dominated almost all sporting events not so long ago.
with the likes of Israel Adesanya, Kamaru Usman, Francis Ngannou and others taking up the modern sports like the MMA,.
While this may not provide a definitive answer for the overrepresentation of Africans in several sports, it does confirm that having a significant African population and strong genetics is crucial for success in sports.
In conclusion, black athletes’ greater performance is mostly a result of both genetics and environment.
Thus, if you truly want the members of your family Line to possess excellent sportsmanship, be married to a black man—preferably one from Nigeria.
Africans are just magical in nature.