Am building up to a big post on West vs East European character and one of the unusual contentions I'll make is that differences in personality are related to athletic differences: Slavs being more muscular, but like American blacks more likely to break down over long distances.
I recorded the nationalities of Europe's top 50 marathon and 1500m guys and they do show a West European bias, the Spanish doing especially well, which is probably relevant to their success in soccer. These figures show top runners per million in countries with 3+ names. 
It has became very apparently recently that Norwegians, like white Marathon record Sondre Moen, have by far the strongest lungs in Europe. The top 4 VO2 max scores in history are Norwegian training4endurance.co.uk/physiology-of-…
It's a testament to how powerfully VO2 predicts endurance that the .best American score ever was produced was Greg LeMond, the only American to win the Tour de France without using EPO. It was Lance Armstrong's relatively low V02 that set LeMond on his trail in the 90's
From a 1991 paper: "Of 13 racial groups whose lung function data were analysed, the highest VC (vital capacity) and the highest value for relative sitting height were found in Eskimos followed by Scandinavians, Caucasians, Koreans and American Indians." erj.ersjournals.com/content/erj/4/…
Whereas East African runners are obviously lean, Norwegians have a distinctively square build; their larger ribcages housing their huge lungs, similar to Andean highlanders. This is Jakob Ingebrigtsen, one of three Norwegian brothers to have run the mile in less than 3:50
In addition to just the build, Scandos have loud voices that can be scary on the rare occasions they actually yell. Think Max Van Sydow narrating the Skyrim trailer....DRAGONBORN! or since Norwegians are #1 in this department, Bill Fagerbakke:
The increased vital capacity of the lungs seen in Eskimo and Scandinavians seem like all the world like an adapation to breathing in cold environments, which makes it sort of a mystery why Russians apparently haven't adapted in the same way. I'll get to that, but later
