# How Come Tarahumara Indians Don't Dominate Marathons? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 29, 2009, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-come-tarahumara-indians-dont-dominate-marathons/511979 "2009-09-29T15:21:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2009, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-come-tarahumara-indians-dont-dominate-marathons/511979/1 "2009-09-29T15:21:21Z")
Supposedly, the Tarahumara Indians (of Northern Mexico) are the world’s greatest distance runners. they have unrivaled stamina-stories of these people running deer down (the deer dies of exhaustion) are widely circulated. So why don’t these people win all the big marathon runs? Do these people ever get on the Mexican Olympic Teams? ---
**Author:** ![bordelond](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bordelond/32/150_2.png) [@bordelond](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bordelond)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2009, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-come-tarahumara-indians-dont-dominate-marathons/511979/2 "2009-09-29T15:23:53Z")
Don’t forget that a marathon is not merely an endurance contest – it is primarily a contest of speed. Being able to run 26+ miles without tiring isn’t, in and of itself, enough to be competitive. ---
**Author:** ![suranyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2009, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-come-tarahumara-indians-dont-dominate-marathons/511979/3 "2009-09-29T15:30:44Z")
> [@bordelond](#): > > Don’t forget that a marathon is not merely an endurance contest – it is primarily a contest of speed. Being able to run 26+ miles without tiring isn’t, in and of itself, enough to be competitive. Right. Hundreds of people run the Boston Marathon, etc., but there is only one winner. ---
**Author:** ![Anne\_Neville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Anne\_Neville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anne_Neville)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2009, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-come-tarahumara-indians-dont-dominate-marathons/511979/4 "2009-09-29T15:45:15Z")
Do many of them have the money to travel to the places where marathons are held? According to Wikipedia, most of them live a traditional farming and herding lifestyle, which tends not to be one of the world’s more lucrative ways to live. Do they have other interests (such as jobs, kids, farms, etc) that wouldn’t mix well with traveling around the world to compete in marathons? IANAFarmer or herder, much less a traditional Tarahumara farmer or herder, but as I understand it, those aren’t 40-hour a week jobs with two weeks vacation every year, where you can regularly take time off to travel to marathons. Is there discrimination against Native Americans in Mexican society in general, or in Mexican sport? ---
**Author:** ![HorseloverFat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8e8cbc/32.png) [@HorseloverFat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HorseloverFat)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2009, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-come-tarahumara-indians-dont-dominate-marathons/511979/5 "2009-09-29T16:04:32Z")
Human endurance is something special in the animal world. Man has always used the tactic of running animals down with his huge endurance. So the Tarahumara might be extremes of this, but there’s no shortage of people who can run the distance. Now running this distance quickly is an entirely different matter. Marathon running is its own skill. You need to not only condition yourself properly but understand how to have a good start, how to properly pace, how to have a good ending, when and if to hit “the wall”, etc. These elements of training and the desire for competing in the marathon might be missing from the tarahumara culture. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2009, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-come-tarahumara-indians-dont-dominate-marathons/511979/6 "2009-09-29T16:22:22Z")
> [@bordelond](#): > > Don’t forget that a marathon is not merely an endurance contest – it is primarily a contest of speed. Being able to run 26+ miles without tiring isn’t, in and of itself, enough to be competitive. This. Now if it was a matter of fastest 100 mile races, or farthest 24 hour distance, then you might see more third-world endurance runners winning. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2009, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-come-tarahumara-indians-dont-dominate-marathons/511979/7 "2009-09-29T16:27:00Z")
Well, they don’t win ultramarathons either. I’d say it’s a combination of (a) they don’t enter, being poor subsistence farmers, and (b) their endurance is exaggerated. ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2009, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-come-tarahumara-indians-dont-dominate-marathons/511979/8 "2009-09-29T16:34:29Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Well, they don’t win ultramarathons either. I’d say it’s a combination of (a) they don’t enter, being poor subsistence farmers, and (b) their endurance is exaggerated. LeHigh University term paper. [Running Feet.](http://www.lehigh.edu/~dmd1/art.html) ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2009, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-come-tarahumara-indians-dont-dominate-marathons/511979/9 "2009-09-29T16:39:34Z")
Huh. > [@](#): > > In the 1993 Leadville they fared much better. Tarahumaras took first, second and fifth place (Williams 8). The most amazing thing about the indians was their pace. The winner was fifty-five years old and only ran the second half of the race twenty minutes slower than he ran the first! Another thing that shocks the ultra spectators is Tarahumara footwear. They wear sandals called huaraches made out of old tire tread and leather straps. A Tarahumara won Leadville again in 1994. Later that same year in Utah at the Wasatch 100-Mile run, the Tarahumara were part of a controversy. Someone did not pay their entry fees so they weren’t allowed be official runners. They ran unofficially and a Tarahumara was the first to cross the finish line. Okay, maybe not exaggerated. ---
**Author:** ![Contrapuntal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e274bd/32.png) [@Contrapuntal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Contrapuntal)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2009, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-come-tarahumara-indians-dont-dominate-marathons/511979/10 "2009-09-29T16:48:06Z")
[**Born to Run,** by Christopher McDougall.](http://www.amazon.com/Born-Run-Hidden-Superathletes-Greatest/dp/0307266303) ---
**Author:** ![unclelem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ac91a4/32.png) [@unclelem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/unclelem)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2009, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-come-tarahumara-indians-dont-dominate-marathons/511979/11 "2009-09-29T16:51:54Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > Supposedly, the Tarahumara Indians (of Northern Mexico) are the world’s greatest distance runners. they have unrivaled stamina-stories of these people running deer down (the deer dies of exhaustion) are widely circulated. > So why don’t these people win all the big marathon runs? Do these people ever get on the Mexican Olympic Teams? My impression is that the Tarahumara, for the most part, don’t want anything to do with the outside world and its culture beyond what is necessary for survival. Perhaps there just aren’t that many individuals who are interested in the outside world enough to compete in the olympics. From what I’ve seen, it’s a pretty big struggle convincing them to learn spanish, to send their children to school, or even to get them to trust modern medicine or outsider doctors. ---
**Author:** ![Rigamarole](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/77aa72/32.png) [@Rigamarole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rigamarole)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2009, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-come-tarahumara-indians-dont-dominate-marathons/511979/12 "2009-09-29T20:23:09Z")
Short legs. The runners who do really well in marathons usually have long legs.