Abstract
BackgroundThe relative age effect (RAE) is a worldwide phenomenon, allowing sport participation and elite selection to be based on birthdate distribution. Negative consequences include both a narrow, non-optimal elite selection and negative health effects on entire populations. This study investigated the RAE and athletic performance in multiple individual sports in Sweden.MethodsBirthdates of athletes born between the years 1922 and 2015 were collected across 4-month periods (tertiles: T1, T2, T3) from cross-country skiing (N = 136,387), orienteering (N = 41,164), athletics (N = 14,503), alpine skiing (N = 508), E-sports (N = 47,030), and chess (N = 4889). In total, data from 244,560 athletes (women: N = 79,807, men: N = 164,753) was compared to the complete parent population of 5,390,954 births in Sweden during the same years. Chi-squared statistics compared parent and cohort distributions stratified by sport, sex, and age.ResultsA significantly skewed distribution of birthdates was present in all sports, both sexes, and most age groups. The largest RAEs are seen in children where T1 often constitutes 40–50% and T3, 20–25% of the population. In E-sports, an inversed RAE was seen in adults. In most investigated sports, birthdate distribution was correlated to performance in children but not in adults.ConclusionsSkewed birthdate distributions were consistently prevalent in all investigated individual sports in Sweden, both physically demanding and cognitive/skill-based. As sport participation is related to total level of physical activity, both present and future, failing to address the RAE issue at an early age will result not only in a narrow and arbitrary selection for adult elite athletes but also in a negative impact on public health.
Highlights
Selection of future athletes at a young age favors birthdates early in the season, creating a skewed distribution among adult elite athletes in team sports [1]—the relative age effect (RAE)
RAEs are evident in the whole population of athletes and in physical sports alone, while in skill-based sports, this is true for males but not females
Should the RAE here seen in individual and previously in most team sports be disregarded because of the survival of the fittest? Nolan and Howell [66] state that the RAE will continue to exist and raise the question: “why shouldn’t it?” Why should it not be a Darwinian selection in sport at the highest level, and what says that the system of elimination must be fair? our results clearly demonstrate the lack of predictive power in early selection as athletes born early in the year do not perform better compared to their later-born peers
Summary
Selection of future athletes at a young age favors birthdates early in the season, creating a skewed distribution among adult elite athletes in team sports [1]—the relative age effect (RAE). RAE is a well-known and worldwide phenomenon, influencing the acquisition of young athletes for future elite performance [7], but children with elite-level ambition and potential, born late in the season, have an unjustified lower chance of sport participation past puberty [8]. The relative age effect (RAE) is a worldwide phenomenon, allowing sport participation and elite selection to be based on birthdate distribution. Negative consequences include both a narrow, non-optimal elite selection and negative health effects on entire populations. This study investigated the RAE and athletic performance in multiple individual sports in Sweden
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