The Large Number of Brazilian’s Runners does not Result in Excellent Performance in World Marathons

Abstract

Despite the number of practitioners it seems that there are few athletes in Brazil with expressive results internationally. Objective: Compare the performance of the Brazilian elite runners in the marathons around of the world. Methods: A retrospective study comparing the time and positions of the Brazilian founders with the main athletes in the world in the 12 main marathons of the world, from 2016 to 2018. Results: Data show that the number of street marathon runners increases in Brazil each year, but our elite marathoners have not achieved lower times (p<0.001), positions far from the main African athletes and poor performance in the majors, worldwide and Olympic Games. Conclusion: Despite physical training, the performance of Brazilian marathoners is not enough to compete with Kenyan athletes and Ethiopians due to the genetic superiority, and physiology, and biomechanics features of Africans. This distance seems to occur due to differences in the metabolic and biomechanical mechanisms that make the running economy of these African marathoners more efficient, so they are almost unbeatable in marathons, because the modality requires a lot of resistance and great cardiorespiratory capacity.