We have 20 papers published as a result of our work on the Jamaican Symmetry Project. We began in 1996 with 285 rural Jamaican boys and girls with an average age of 8. 1 reason we chose rural Jamaica is that it is economically disadvantaged, and since we paid all families we recruited for the study, we got an extraordinarily high participation rate. We measured their symmetry from head to toe, including everything from ear length to foot length to their teeth, we X-rayed their hands. We measured them again for symmetry in 2006.

In 2010, we measured their sprinting speeds and – bingo! – knees stood out. There it was, it was incredible, knee symmetry alone strongly predicted sprinting speed. Not ankles, not feet, nor any other part of the body. If your knees were symmetrical when you were 8 years old, then you ran faster when you were 22 years old. That was true for males and females, and for 90m and 180m sprints alike.

This was such a striking finding that we raised the money to study elite sprinters in Jamaica. They are the best in the world. The same variable we isolated in rural Jamaicans held true for elite athletes. Knee symmetry predicted the best of the best runners. We looked at Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, the current top female sprinter in the world, and her knees are so symmetrical we can’t tell them apart.

• Uncategorized