Aug 01, 2024 07:00:00

At what age do athletes peak?

In order for athletes to perform well on a big stage such as the Olympics, they need many years of training and talent, but in addition to that, it is also important that they are able to reach their peak as athletes at the time of the competition. In a new paper, a research team from

the University of Waterloo in Canada reports the results of a statistical analysis of the age at which track and field athletes reach their peak.

Peaks and primes: Do athletes get one shot at glory? | Significance | Oxford Academic
https://academic.oup.com/jrssig/article/21/3/6/7686552

At what age do Olympic athletes peak? | Waterloo News | University of Waterloo
https://uwaterloo.ca/news/media/what-age-do-olympic-athletes-peak

At what age do Olympic athletes perform their best? - Earth.com
https://www.earth.com/news/at-what-age-do-olympic-athletes-perform-their-best/

The 'track and field' events investigated by the research team include sprinting, long-distance running, jumping, throwing, etc. For many athletes, the career performance can be represented by a normal distribution ( bell curve ) that is shaped like a bell around the mean, and after reaching an individual peak at a certain age, performance gradually declines.

'Unlike sports like soccer or tennis, which have high-profile competitions outside of the Olympics, the Olympics are the ultimate stage for track and field athletes to compete against each other,' said David Awosoga , lead author of the paper and a master's student in data science at the University of Waterloo. 'Because the Olympics only come around once every four years, athletes need to be careful about when and how they train to maximize their chances of qualifying for the Olympics and bring themselves to their peak.'

The research team collected performance data by age for all athletes who had competed in individual track and field events at the 1996

Atlanta Olympics and beyond, and analyzed factors such as gender, nationality, event, length of elite training, and whether the Olympics were held that year.

As a result, it was found that the average age at which track and field athletes participated in the Olympics has been consistently 'just under 27 years old' for both men and women over the past 30 years. 'Interestingly, our study also showed that the median age at which athletes peaked was 27 years old,' Awosoga said. According to the research team, there was a 44% chance that an athlete's peak would occur after the age of 27, and that this figure decreased over the years.

In addition, co-author of the paper, undergraduate student Matthew Chou, said, 'But it wasn't just age that affected an athlete's peak. What's really exciting is that we found that whether or not a year was an Olympic year helped predict an athlete's performance.' In other words, athletes who participated in the Olympics were able to peak in the year the Olympics were held.

While this study is purely theoretical, the team believes that the results could be useful for both athletes and fans. 'Our main takeaway is that we've established a list of variables that can help predict when you're going to peak,' Awosoga said. 'While we can't change the year of the Olympics, genetics, or nationality, we can change the way we train to match these biological and external factors.'