[Anthropometric characteristics and skeletal maturity of male Venezuelan swimmers]

Knowledge of the morph-physiological conditions of young athletes, it of the utmost importance for planning better trainning programs and to identify those characteristics that lead to a better performance. This paper aims to classify a group of 114 male Venezuelan swimmers of the Miranda State contingent, aged between 7.00 and 18.99 years old, based on their anthropometric characteristics and skeletal maturity. For this purpose multivariate methods: Analysis of Principal Components (APC) and the Automatic Classification were employed. Anthropometric variables followed the International Society for the Advancement of Kinantropometry (ISAK) guidelines. Skeletal maturity and five indexes of body composition: brachial, crural, cormic and acromiale-iliac indexes, were additionally considered in the analysis. Three groups emerged very well defined and homogenous within and between groups. The first group identifies the younger swimmers with the smallest values in corporal dimensions. The second group comprises those swimmers characterized fundamentally by a greater development of the bicrestal diameter. In the third group, greater values of the anthropometrical variables were found, that shaped the typical profile of the swimmers, mainly characterized by a trapezoidal trunk. Most of the swimmers are advanced in skeletal age related to chronological age. This clustering of the swimmers permits a suitable way to identify the bio-morphological characteristics of the athletes.