The growing problem of comparing elite sport performances: The Olympic speed skating case

• Bertus Talsma ; Gerard Sierksma ^[1] ; Marcel Turkensteen ^[2]
  1. [1] University of Groningen

     University of Groningen

     Países Bajos

     
  2. [2] Aarhus University

     Aarhus University

     Dinamarca

     
• Localización: Journal of Human Sport and Exercise: JHSE, ISSN-e 1988-5202, Vol. 12, Nº. Extra 3, 2017 (Ejemplar dedicado a: 11th World Congress of Performance Analysis of Sport, 16-18 November 2016. International Society of Performance Analysis of Sport. Alicante, Spain), págs. 892-907
• Idioma: inglés
• Enlaces
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• Resumen

  • The increased performance densities in the top of elite sports, sometimes mutual contest results are within the error margins of the measuring systems, has caused major problems in comparing performances and deciding on winners. In case of Dutch speed skating, the pool of highly competitive athletes is large, and, since there is a limit on the number of Olympic participators per country, the Olympic selection procedure is obviously a precarious affair. Because more than 100 years of data is available, we are able to study in this respect the well-known Gould hypothesis: When the sport matures, the variation in performance, especially at the top, decreases, and extreme events, where one athlete outperforms all his competitors, become rarer. Since Gould’s hypothesis only holds with ‘unchanged rules of the game’, several data corrections, for example on the introduction of the klap skate, are needed. A major goal of this paper is to analyze the possible role of Gould’s hypothesis concerning the growing performance densities for top speed skating.