The thin, oxygen-deprived air in mountainous Kenya has required that lungs adjust to cope with this deficiency. As a result, Kenyans can process sparse amounts of oxygen into energy at an abnormally high rate. This means that when you and i are busy writing our wills in a 10K, they're collecting trophies. NPR ran an interesting story this morning describing how many of those prominent distance runners in Kenya are defecting to other countries in pursuit of lucrative training stipends. When i say 'lucrative', of course, i mean they make enough money to live (one representative runner has been offered $1000/month for the remainder of his life from Qatar, compared to the $1000 that many runners subsist on over an entire year in Kenya). Although the United States, Denmark, Finland and other wealthy, western countries have certainly gathered their share of these incredible athletes, a sizeable majority have jumped across the Red Sea to oil wealthy Gulf states such as Qatar and Bahrain. I'm guessing both money and locality contribute here.

The influx of international athletes into the US and other countries is nothing new. The NBA alone has a slew of players from other countries: Manu Ginobli (Argentina), Yao Ming (China), and let us not forget Manute Bol (Sudan...who apparently tried to start a DC area night club with some of his funds and failed miserably...and also only weighed 185 lbs upon entering the NBA...the guy was 7'7 for the love of god!). [Bonus: here's a list of international athletes taken in the 2005 NBA draft.] The difference with Kenya's defecting runners is that most of the athletes must change their citizenship in order to collect funds from their adopted nations. What does this mean for the Olympics? Does it mean that countries can essentially 'buy' teams?

We're heading towards a day when races essentially disappear as international travel and opened-mindedness (hopefully) accelerate and augment miscegenation throughout the world. Given long enough, the underlying racial component inherent in the Olympics will largely become a thing of the past. If one race or group of people has a genetic predisposition to excel at a particular sport, their seeds will someday spread across the globe. Therefore, although i don't like the idea of poor countries losing their most valuable assets, I think this is just the beginning of a much larger movement that, mostly, bears great promise for equal opportunity and remuneration.

this comes from someone whose idealistic bent sees more trouble than triumph in nationalism and, governance issues aside, would like to see an eraser wipe away those arbitrary divisions on geo-political maps. Imagine (sorry, had to). Every fourth August I spend hours staring at a television trying to keep up on all the juicy competitions (minus baseball and softball in London). The Olympics are incredible and i can't wait for Turin and Beijing, but I can't help but think that the nation-oriented structure of the games will need revision at some point in the future. At the very least, i think we'll have to focus less on the country and more on the individuals themselves in order to really understand how the best became the best. Athletes should have free-reign, just as any other human being, to improve their lives by defecting to another country. whether or not they support the development of their homeland afterwards, where their families and history remain, is another question they'll have to face themselves. I can only hope they'd answer in a certain way.