Race Factors Affecting Performance Times in Elite Long-Track Speed Skating
in International Journal of Sports Physiology and PerformanceClick name to view affiliation
Analysis of sport performance can provide effects of environmental and other venue-specific factors in addition to estimates of within-athlete variability between competitions, which determines smallest worthwhile effects.
Purpose:
To analyze elite long-track speed-skating events.
Methods:
Log-transformed performance times were analyzed with a mixed linear model that estimated percentage mean effects for altitude, barometric pressure, type of rink, and competition importance. In addition, coefficients of variation representing residual venue-related differences and within-athlete variability between races within clusters spanning ~8 d were determined. Effects and variability were assessed with magnitude-based inference.
Results:
A 1000-m increase in altitude resulted in very large mean performance improvements of 2.8% in juniors and 2.1% in seniors. An increase in barometric pressure of 100 hPa resulted in a moderate reduction in performance of 1.1% for juniors but an unclear effect for seniors. Only juniors competed at open rinks, resulting in a very large reduction in performance of 3.4%. Juniors and seniors showed small performance improvements (0.4% and 0.3%) at the more important competitions. After accounting for these effects, residual venue-related variability was still moderate to large. The within-athlete within-cluster race-to-race variability was 0.3–1.3%, with a small difference in variability between male (0.8%) and female juniors (1.0%) and no difference between male and female seniors (both 0.6%).
Conclusion:
The variability in performance times of skaters is similar to that of athletes in other sports in which air or water resistance limits speed. A performance enhancement of 0.1–0.4% by top-10 athletes is necessary to increase medal-winning chances by 10%.
Noordhof, Mulder, and de Koning are with the Faculty of Behavioral and Movement Sciences, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, MOVE Research Inst Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Hopkins is with the Sport Performance Research Inst New Zealand, AUT University, Auckland, New Zealand.
© 2023 Human Kinetics