The Curious Case of Tokyo: Performance Development in Athletics

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Abstract

Introduction The COVID-19 pandemic had a significant impact on elite sport, including the postponement of Tokyo 2020 (Evans et al., 2020), which was announced only four months before the original start. This affected athletes' periodisation plans, which were aligned with the summer of 2020, leading to new demands in maintaining performance levels. The present study compares the last two Olympic cycles and the potential impact of periodisation (and periodisation interruption), taking into account individual developments and performance-related factors at Level 1 (timing) and Level 2 (athlete: age, gender) in athletics. Method For this purpose, all worldwide competition results (excluding all-around & relays) on at least national level since London 2012 and until Tokyo 2020 were considered. The performance curves of the last two Olympic cycles were analysed using a hierarchical multi-level model, whereby individual prerequisites (random intercept) and developments (random slope) were modelled (Kramer et al., 2021). Results N=2,417 top athletes* (51.51% male) recorded a total of N=52,045 results since August 2012. In the conditional growth model, logLik=-59.974, p Discussion The present multilevel analysis provides information on individual performance developments in international athletics. Although performance increased less steeply in the pre-Tokyo cycle compared to the pre-Rio cycle, it also shows higher variability there. Further analyses in relation to doping prevalence, competition characteristics, covid limitations and developments per macrocycle are presented and discussed. Literature Evans, A. B., Blackwell, J., Dolan, P., Fahlén, J., Hoekman, R., Lenneis, V., McNarry, G., Smith, M., & Wilcock, L. (2020). Sport in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic: towards an agenda for research in the sociology of sport. European Journal for Sport and Society, 17(2), 85-95. Kramer, T., Valente-Dos-Santos, J., Visscher, C., Coelho-e-Silva, M., Huijgen, B. C. H., & Elferink-Gemser, M. T. (2021). Longitudinal development of 5m sprint performance in young female tennis players. Journal of Sports Sciences, 39(3), 296-303.

Speakers from the University of Münster

van Meurs, Edda

Professorship for Sport Psychology (Prof. Strauß)