It would not surprise me at all if genetics plays a large role. The only point I'm making is about inferring information about the mean/median of a distribution by observing only it's far tails.
In fact, I'd speculate that across the US population, black sprinting ability is probably lower than that of whites. Black women are disproportionately overweight/obese and are likely to lower the average for blacks. Looking solely at olympic level data points would never reveal this.
(As far as I'm aware, this latter effect is minimally related to genetics.)
The only point I'm making is about inferring information about the mean/median of a distribution by observing only it's far tails.
That's the same point I'm making, but I come to the opposite conclusion. I think that in the absence of contradictory information one should prefer simple inferences to complex ones (Occam rephrased). Thus I'd look first to the mean, then to the variance, and only then consider that only one of the groups has a multi-modal distribution.
I do think our "overcompensation" for race affects our conclusions here (mine included). If one were to find that the winners shared some other trait other than skin color, I don't think there would be nearly the same desire to find alternative explanations. But this doesn't mean that these alternatives are not useful to consider, and quite possibly correct.
In fact, I'd speculate that across the US population, black sprinting ability is probably lower than that of whites. Black women are disproportionately overweight/obese and are likely to lower the average for blacks. Looking solely at olympic level data points would never reveal this.
(As far as I'm aware, this latter effect is minimally related to genetics.)