Age of peak performance in Olympic sports: A comparative research among disciplines
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14198/jhse.2016.111.03Keywords:
Olympic sports, Peak performance, Decimal age, Regression treesAbstract
This research aimed to study the ages of peak performance in Olympic sport disciplines, and to distinguish age groups among them. The ages (in decimal years) of athletes with the best performances at the 2012 Summer Olympics were considered (n = 3548). A total of forty sport disciplines were included; the athletics events were classified in six disciplines: Sprint, Middle-distance, Long-distance, Combined, Jumping and Throwing. A full statistical summary was produced. A regression tree was proposed for each gender to discriminate groups of sport disciplines according to age. The ages ranged from 14.0 to 52.8 years. The 72% of the athletes aged between 20 and 30 years, and the 99% aged below 40 years. The mean ages for men and women were 27.0 and 26.2 years, respectively. The regression tree analysis generated four groups of sport disciplines in men, and five in women. In men, the mean ages of the groups were: Group 1 = 24.4, Group 2 = 25.9, Group 3 = 28.0 and Group 4 = 30.8. In women, the mean ages of the groups were: Group 1 = 19.9, Group 2 = 22.7, Group 3 = 24.6, Group 4 = 26.5 and Group 5 = 28.3. The combat, gymnastics and swimming disciplines located mostly in the youngest groups in men; a similar tendency was evidenced in women, except for the combat sports. Apart from Combined, all athletics disciplines located in the groups 4 and 5 in women. On the contrary, these disciplines sited mainly in the groups 1 and 2 in men. All game and nautical sports placed in the two eldest groups in both genders, excluding women Water Polo.Downloads
References
Breiman, L., Friedman, J. H., Olshen, R. A., & Stone, C. J. (1984). Classification and regression trees. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth International Group.
Bompa, T. O. (1999). Periodization: Theory and methodology of training. 4th ed. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics, pp. 17-18.
Elmenshawy, A. R., Machin, D. R., & Tanaka, H. (2015). A rise in peak performance age in female athletes. Age (Dordr), 37(3), 9795. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11357-015-9795-8
Harre, D. (1982). Principles of sports training: Introduction to the theory and methods of training. 1st ed. Berlin: Sportverlag, pp. 11-14.
Hollings, S. C., Hopkins, W. G., & Hume, P. A. (2014). Age at peak performance of successful track & field athletes. Int J Sports Sci Coach, 9(4), pp. 651-661. https://doi.org/10.1260/1747-9541.9.4.651
Hunter, S. K., Stevens, A. A., Magennis, K., Skelton, K. W., & Fauth, M. (2011). Is there a sex difference in the age of elite marathon runners? Med Sci Sports Exerc, 43(4), 656-664. https://doi.org/10.1249/MSS.0b013e3181fb4e00
International Olympic Committee (2015). Official website. Retrieved March 2015, from http://www.olympics.org.
James, G., Witten, D., Hastie, T., & Tibshirani, R. (2013). An introduction to statistical learning with applications in R. New York, NY: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7138-7
Kovalchik, S. A. (2014). The older they rise the younger they fall: Age and performance trends in men's professional tennis from 1991 to 2012. J Quant Anal Sports, 10(2), pp. 99-107. https://doi.org/10.1515/jqas-2013-0091
Malcata, R. M., Hopkins, W. G., & Pearson, S. N. (2014). Tracking career performance of successful triathletes. Med Sci Sports Exerc, 46(6), 1227-1234. https://doi.org/10.1249/MSS.0000000000000221
Matveyev, L. (1981). Fundamentals of sports training. Moscow: Progress Publishers, pp. 31.
Morgan, D. P. (2006). The essential guide to SAS dates and times. Cary, NC: SAS Institute Inc., pp. 93.
Platonov, V. N. (1997). General theory of athletes' preparation in the Olympic sports. Kiev: Olympic Literature, pp. 54.
R Core Team (2015). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. Available at: http://www.R-project.org.
Smith, D. J. (2003). A framework for understanding the training process leading to elite performance. Sports Med, 33(15), pp. 1103-1126. https://doi.org/10.2165/00007256-200333150-00003
Valcke, J. (2010). Olympic Football tournaments, London 2012 - Men's and women's tournaments. Circular no. 1218. Consulted 27 May 2015. Available at http://resources.fifa.com/mm/document/affederation/administration/01/18/04/45/circularno.1218-olympicfootballtournamentslondon2012-mensandwomenstournaments.pdf.
Verkhoshansky, Y. (2002). Teoría y metodología del entrenamiento deportivo [Spanish translation]. Barcelona: Paidotribo, pp. 21.
Wikipedia: The free encyclopedia. (2015). FL: Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Retrieved March 2015, from http://www.wikipedia.org.
Wolfrum, M., Knechtle, B., Rüst, C. A., Rosemann, T., & Lepers, R. (2013). Sex-related differences and age of peak performance in breaststroke versus freestyle swimming. BMC Sports Sci Med Rehabil, 5:29. https://doi.org/10.1186/2052-1847-5-29
Wood, R. J. (2015). Equestrian at the Olympics. Consulted 14 March 2015. Available at http://www.topendsports.com/events/summer/sports/equestrian.htm.
Zahradník, D., & Korvas, P. (2012). The introduction into sports training. Brno: Masaryk University, Chapter 2.
Downloads
Statistics
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2016 Journal of Human Sport and Exercise
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Each author warrants that his or her submission to the Work is original and that he or she has full power to enter into this agreement. Neither this Work nor a similar work has been published elsewhere in any language nor shall be submitted for publication elsewhere while under consideration by JHSE. Each author also accepts that the JHSE will not be held legally responsible for any claims of compensation.
Authors wishing to include figures or text passages that have already been published elsewhere are required to obtain permission from the copyright holder(s) and to include evidence that such permission has been granted when submitting their papers. Any material received without such evidence will be assumed to originate from the authors.
Please include at the end of the acknowledgements a declaration that the experiments comply with the current laws of the country in which they were performed. The editors reserve the right to reject manuscripts that do not comply with the abovementioned requirements. The author(s) will be held responsible for false statements or failure to fulfill the above-mentioned requirements.
This title is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).
You are free to share, copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format. The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms under the following terms:
Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
NonCommercial — You may not use the material for commercial purposes.
NoDerivatives — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you may not distribute the modified material.
No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
Notices:
You do not have to comply with the license for elements of the material in the public domain or where your use is permitted by an applicable exception or limitation.
No warranties are given. The license may not give you all of the permissions necessary for your intended use. For example, other rights such as publicity, privacy, or moral rights may limit how you use the material.
Transfer of Copyright
In consideration of JHSE’s publication of the Work, the authors hereby transfer, assign, and otherwise convey all copyright ownership worldwide, in all languages, and in all forms of media now or hereafter known, including electronic media such as CD-ROM, Internet, and Intranet, to JHSE. If JHSE should decide for any reason not to publish an author’s submission to the Work, JHSE shall give prompt notice of its decision to the corresponding author, this agreement shall terminate, and neither the author nor JHSE shall be under any further liability or obligation.
Each author certifies that he or she has no commercial associations (e.g., consultancies, stock ownership, equity interest, patent/licensing arrangements, etc.) that might pose a conflict of interest in connection with the submitted article, except as disclosed on a separate attachment. All funding sources supporting the Work and all institutional or corporate affiliations of the authors are acknowledged in a footnote in the Work.
Each author certifies that his or her institution has approved the protocol for any investigation involving humans or animals and that all experimentation was conducted in conformity with ethical and humane principles of research.
Competing Interests
Biomedical journals typically require authors and reviewers to declare if they have any competing interests with regard to their research.
JHSE require authors to agree to Copyright Notice as part of the submission process.
