UR TV CAST

That isn’t an issue of skin colour or race; it’s an issue of biology. Of course, whatever the natural inheritance, there still has to be a lot of training and luck to ensure that it finds its way to the champion’s podium.So what about an answer to the question, do black men run faster? The evidence suggests that we’ve simply been asking the wrong question. We’re so used to thinking in terms of black and white and employing the terminology in everyday language, that we unthinkingly attach these categories to the sports results. Scientifically, it turns out to be meaningless.What champions such as Linford Christie, Michael Jordan, Daley Thompson and Marion Jones have is genetically unique If it weren’t, there would be a lot more of them around In fact, they show us how important individuality is.

We should get away from race-defined success and celebrate the individuality of a champion.Britain is a much more mixed place than it was when my generation was growing up. All of us, white, black and – increasingly – brown, now have the chance to release ourselves from this bondage of racialised history The prize is one that all our children deserve to share. A timely recognition that, although in our differences we are many peoples, the message from science is loud and clear: we are but one Human Race.Kurt Barling reports on ‘The Faster Race’ (BBC2), Thursday, 9.40pm. Talk about vanishing house sparrows, and reports of their local survival, should lead us to ask questions about ourselves and our own survival. Being concerned about both, I am moved to put two and two together. When I was a 21-year-old, in 1925, my response to the mad urge of that age-group was to make a complete bird census of Kensington Gardens I counted, among other species, 2,603 house sparrows.

The mania persisted, and counts in future years showed that their numbers were declining quite fast. Lately the collapse has been almost total, and it has been matched in places all over Britain. Talk about vanishing house sparrows, and reports of their local survival, should lead us to ask questions about ourselves and our own survival. Being concerned about both, I am moved to put two and two together. When I was a 21-year-old, in 1925, my response to the mad urge of that age-group was to make a complete bird census of Kensington Gardens I counted, among other species, 2,603 house sparrows.

The mania persisted, and counts in future years showed that their numbers were declining quite fast. Lately the collapse has been almost total, and it has been matched in places all over Britain.
What could be the reason? At the time, it seemed most likely that the rapid replacement of horse traffic, with its spreading about of waste grain, must be the answer This may well have first triggered the decline. But its persistence till today presents a fresh mystery, which leads me over from my ornithological to my human ecology interest as well.I had always been aware that this clever, enterprising bird, originally a colonist of Europe from Asia, was keenly aware of the gains it could make by attaching itself closely to the spreading human settlements and crops. By this means it could even expand from its native hot climates to the chillier and wetter northern lands. Human beings came to regard the bird’s passion for our company as a community of spirit, beyond a mere accidental link.

And they were right! A main reason why house sparrows banded together to seek our neighbourhood was their odd shared passion for chirping (rather than chatting) together about this and that. They also loved inspecting and even grooming one another, and simply showing off.Many other small birds had feeding habits that kept them busy picking up insects from dawn to dusk. Sparrows, whose chicks also ate mainly insects, realised early that this would leave them with no time for sparrowing among themselves. Looking around, they discovered that this odd human animal not only had similarly demanding habits but was also given to dropping about useful amounts of food that sparrows could happily glean and live upon. So they learnt quickly to translate into sparrow talk: “Bob’s your uncle!”But, unremarked by us, these observant birds avoided a number of human links. Of our animals, they loved our horses but had no time for our cows, sheep or dogs, and were quite terrified of our cats. In our settlements they avoided the most closely built-up, especially the high sites, being choosy about the mix of suitable buildings, sunny raised perches and accessible surfaces in open spaces.