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Abstract
The relative age effect (RAE) is a common phenomenon observed in youth sports and is characterized by a significant over-representation of athletes born close to the date of selection. However, there is a lack of research on RAE in world-class track and field athletes and it is not clear if this effect persists into adulthood. Thus, this study examined for the first time the prevalence and magnitude of RAE at world class level in all track and field disciplines. Birthdates of 39,590 athletes (51.6% females) ranked in the International Association of Athletics Federations top 100 official lists between 2007 and 2018 season of Under 18, Under 20, and Senior categories were collected. Under 18 and Under 20 athletes born in the first week of the year are about 2 to 3.5 times more likely to be included in the top-100 ranking than the athletes born in the last week of the year. RAE was overall larger in male compared to female athletes. In some disciplines (e.g., throwing events) RAE persists in Senior category. These findings suggest that in some disciplines relatively younger athletes may have less chances of reaching world-class performances even in the adulthood. Governing bodies should reflect upon their policies for athlete support and selection to minimize the RAE.
Highlights
In sports systems, young athletes are generally grouped according to their birth year with the purpose to provide equal opportunities and experiences during competitions (Cobley et al, 2009; Kearney et al, 2018)
As a result of the assignment to categories based upon chronological age, athletes born close to the cut-off date of selection are supposed to be advantaged in sports performance (Smith et al, 2018) and in the process of talent identification, because they are older than their peers born far from the cut-off date
The Poisson regression analysis quantifies the magnitude of the relative age effect (RAE) through the Index of Discrimination (ID) which consists in the relative odds of being selected for an athlete born in the first vs. the last week of the competition year (Table 1)
Summary
Young athletes are generally grouped according to their birth year with the purpose to provide equal opportunities and experiences during competitions (Cobley et al, 2009; Kearney et al, 2018). In accordance with the maturation-selection hypothesis, relatively older athletes may have more favorable anthropometric and physical characteristics in comparison with relatively younger peers (Cobley et al, 2009; Lovell et al, 2015; Romann and Cobley, 2015). As a result of the assignment to categories based upon chronological age, athletes born close to the cut-off date of selection are supposed to be advantaged in sports performance (Smith et al, 2018) and in the process of talent identification, because they are older than their peers born far from the cut-off date. The RAE was first observed in Canadian ice hockey (Barnsley et al, 1985) and subsequently in many other team sports, such as soccer (Steingröver et al, 2017; Brustio et al, 2018; Cumming et al, 2018; Doyle and Bottomley, 2018; PeñaGonzález et al, 2018), Australian football (Haycraft et al, 2018), basketball (Arrieta et al, 2016), and rugby (Till et al, 2010), as well as in individual sports, such as swimming (Cobley et al, 2018) alpine ski (Müller et al, 2016; Bjerke et al, 2017) wrestling (Fukuda et al, 2017), and track and field (Romann and Cobley, 2015; Brazo-Sayavera et al, 2017, 2018; Kearney et al, 2018; Romann et al, 2018)
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