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Comment by chongli | Hacker News Reader

The vast majority of the top runners in the Olympic and other world-class marathons are well under 6 feet tall, with most closer to 5 feet tall. Sprinters, on the other hand, are well over 6 feet. Are you suggesting distance running makes people shorter?

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That is not the truth. While generally not over 6 feet tall, the Olympic distance runners had a very normal height distribution. One of the shorter, Hillary Bor, is still 5' 7".

Olympics aren't a great test for this. Look at top marathon runners size over time.

http://www.runnersworld.com/sweat-science/the-incredible-shr...

That kinda says what I'm saying, top marathoners/distance runners are of average height (around 5'7").

Average height for Japan, maybe, but not really anywhere in the Western world. Average height in the Netherlands is over 6 feet, for example.

Still not closer to 5 foot tall. I don't know how or why this is still an argument. Marathon runners are not 5' tall. That's tiny. And average height in the Netherlands is right at 6'.

Netherlands is an extreme outlier (world's tallest people). 5 foot 7 is actually standard in my country and even on the tall side for my continent, South America (although better diet is fixing that). It's also tall for Asia and Africa.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_average_human_height_w...

Eliud Kipchoge, winner of the gold medal in Rio, is 5'5.5". That's closer to 5 feet than it is to 6.

Yep, and the other two guys were both over 5'8". Actually, out of every distance event, 2/3 of the medal winners were over 5'8".

Feyisa Lilesa is 5'9" Galen Rupp is 5'11" Mo Farah is 5'9" Bernard Lagat is 5'8" Matt Centrowitz is 5'9" Paul Chelimo is 5'11" Tamirat Tola is 5'11" Taoufik Makhloufi is 5'9" Nick Willis is 6' Evan Jager is 6'2" Mahiedine Mekhissi-Benabbad is 6'3"

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