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Abstract
During the last decades, all para-athletes with disabilities have significantly increased their performance level due to technological progress and human investment, through better training or recovery protocols, medical care and nutritional monitoring. Among these elements, the athlete’s age is one of the determining factors in performance. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of age on maximal performances for para-athletes and wheelchair racing athletes, scaled on able-bodied records. We collected 53,554 results including athlete’s best performance of the year, event, age and disability classification from the International Paralympic Committee competitions between 2009 and 2017 for both female and male para-athletics and wheelchair racing disciplines for a total of 472 sport events in Track and Field (considering each impairment type for each event) and gathered the all-time able-bodied records from the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) at the end of 2017. Maximal performance by age was fitted with the Moore function for each para-athletics and wheelchair racing event. This study finds a similar age-related pattern in maximal performance among para-athletes and wheelchair racing athletes. The age at peak performance varies according to sex, impairment type and event and increases gradually from sprint to endurance events. The best Top 100 performances include a large age range suggesting that performance has probably not been optimized yet for most elite para-athletes and wheelchair racers. The next Paralympic Games of Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024 will certainly offer exceptional performance.
Highlights
There are a number of unanswered questions relating to the components of performance in Paralympic sport
Data (53,554) including athlete’s best performance of the year, event, age, and disability classification were collected for all International Paralympic Committee (IPC1) competitions from 2009 to 2017 for 47 female and male para-athletes and wheelchair events incorporating a total of 472 sport classes
In all Track and Field events, the age-performance relationship showed a similar pattern for both PA and WCA categories in female and male athletes
Summary
There are a number of unanswered questions relating to the components of performance in Paralympic sport. This comment questions the physical capacities of the para-athletes and the technological contribution of prostheses on the evolution of performance (Jones and Wilson, 2009; Weyand et al, 2009; Willick and Lexell, 2014; Dyer, 2015a; Baker, 2016). Since the first 1960 Paralympic Games, an increasing number of athletes with physical, visual or intellectual impairments have participated to elite para-athletic competitions (Dyer, 2015b; Fagher et al, 2016). Beyond the impairment type, para-athletic performance is a complex process including both intrinsic parameters such as genetics, morphology (height and mass) or age and extrinsic factors such as environmental conditions (temperature, humidity, pollution), training methods, nutrition or technology (Berthelot et al, 2015; Blauwet et al, 2016)
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