Abstract
In some athletic races, such as cycling and types of speed skating races, athletes have to complete a relatively long distance at a high speed in the presence of direct opponents. To win such a race, athletes are motivated to hide behind others to suppress energy consumption before a final moment of the race. This situation seems to produce a social dilemma: players want to hide behind others, whereas if a group of players attempts to do so, they may all lose to other players that overtake them. To support that speed skaters are involved in such a social dilemma, we analyzed video footage data for 14 mass start skating races to find that skaters that hid behind others to avoid air resistance for a long time before the final lap tended to win. Furthermore, the finish rank of the skaters in mass start races was independent of the record of the same skaters in time-trial races measured in the absence of direct opponents. The results suggest that how to strategically cope with a skater’s dilemma may be a key determinant for winning long-distance and high-speed races with direct opponents.
Highlights
Pacing behavior and decision making on it have been studied in various athletic races [1,2,3,4]
To examine whether strong skaters in long-track speed skating are strong in mass start races, we examined the relationship between the normalized finish rank and the best time for each skater in long-track speed skating
With the linear mixed model (LMM) given by Eq (3), where we replaced Ti by the standardized best time, we found that the influence of the standardized best time in time-trial races on the normalized finish rank was Winning by hiding behind others: An analysis of speed skating data insignificant (β1 = 0.4076, CI: [−1.1781, 1.9999], p = 0.618, n = 73)
Summary
Pacing behavior and decision making on it have been studied in various athletic races [1,2,3,4]. Earlier studies investigated pacing behavior in time-trial races in which interaction between athletes is not considered to be a dominant factor. Pacing behavior abounds in races with direct opponents, such as short-track speed skating [15,16,17,18,19] and marathon [20,21,22]. Tactical positioning has been analyzed in races with direct opponents such as short-track speed skating [15,16,17,18,19, 23,24,25] and cycling [26]. In 500-m short-track speed skating, where approximately four
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