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Abstract
The growth law for the development of top athletes performances remains unknown in quantifiable sport events. Here we present a growth model for 41351 best performers from 70 track and field (T&F) and swimming events and detail their characteristics over the modern Olympic era. We show that 64% of T&F events no longer improved since 1993, while 47% of swimming events stagnated after 1990, prior to a second progression step starting in 2000. Since then, 100% of swimming events continued to progress.We also provide a measurement of the atypicity for the 3919 best performances (BP) of each year in every event. The secular evolution of this parameter for T&F reveals four peaks; the most recent (1988) followed by a major stagnation. This last peak may correspond to the most recent successful attempt to push forward human physiological limits. No atypicity trend is detected in swimming. The upcoming rarefaction of new records in sport may be delayed by technological innovations, themselves depending upon economical constraints.
Highlights
Sport performances may cease to improve during the XXIth century, possibly due to physiological limits [1] and interactions between genomic [2] and environmental parameters [3]
Measurement of the Atypicity We focused on the atypicity of each best performances (BP) using a set of specific descriptors: d1 measured its relative distance to all other performances during the year, d2 was the ‘‘durability’’ of a BP over the years before it is beaten by another performance and d3 characterized the weight of each BP over all other performances for each event during the Olympic era
The changes of incline in the track and field (T&F) curve are mostly related to World Wars I and II (WWI, WWII) or changes in event timing methods, improving measurement accuracy, which is especially important over short events
Summary
Sport performances may cease to improve during the XXIth century, possibly due to physiological limits [1] and interactions between genomic [2] and environmental parameters [3]. The progression of top athletes’ performances remains unknown for quantifiable sport events We hypothesize that such an evolution mirrors our social and historical development [4] and symbolize our quest for the Citius. The present study is based on the analysis of a large scope of sport performances as an indicator of our species’ physiological maxima. It encloses the human physical potential and may be seen as a complement to direct laboratory measurements on a sample of elite athletes [7]
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