WCC-PPT Protocol: Talent Identification References Male-Endurance Cyclists per Continent (2013-2016)

Abstract

Introduction World Cycling Centre (UCI-WCC) offers training and development, with three permanent groups in the Olympic disciplines of road, track and BMX, in order to leverage their sporting careers. Human, material, and financial resources could become limiting factors when performing talent identification (TID) programs. Consequently, we have designed a test, World Cycling Centre – Power Profile Test (WCC-PPT), which can provide coaches around the world with relevant information about the physical potential of their cyclists and an initial benchmark thanks to a simple but reliable protocol, might become an asset for the cycling industry (Gonzalez-Tablas et al., 2016). Power Profile Test (PPT) assesses a cyclist’s maximum capacity to produce power over durations that are strongly related to physiological capacities required to perform in specific cycling events (Quod et al. 2010; Novak et al. 2017).  Purpose: The aim of this study was to generate new references to help coaches identifying potential talented male-endurance cyclists around the world, creating groups per continent.  Methods A total of 469, international level endurance male cyclists from 89 countries of Africa, America, Asia, and Europe completed the WCC-PPT. The data used for analysis were collected over a 3-year period (2013-2016), at the UCI-WCC, its Satellite-Centers and its collaborators. WCC-PPT was performed on an air-braked cycle ergometer (WattBike Ltd, Nottingham, UK), that is consider to be reliable and validity for talent identification purposes (Bellinger & Minahan, 2014; Hopker et al., 2010), with the UCI-WCC standardized protocol (Gonzalez-Tablas et al., 2016).  Continuous variables are summarized by mean, 75th and 90th percentiles.  Results Anthropometrical characteristics and WCC-PPT results for male-endurance cyclists are presented in Table 1. Conclusion The WCC-PPT has been successful to create a large and reliable database, that will allow the cycling community to generate power outputs benchmarks to identify talented male-endurance cyclist all over the world.  It is important to continue working and increase the number of cyclists tested around the world to create relevant references per gender and age groups. Further research will be done to evaluate the reliability and validity of this test for TID purposes as well as to create new databases with more number of cyclists tested.