Survival Versus Attraction Advantages and Talent Selection in Sport

Athlete selection (often referred to as talent selection) reflects the end point of what is a complex decision-making process coaches, administrators, and/or scouts use when deciding who remains and who is removed from a sample of potential athletes. In this paper, we conceptualize athlete selection as an evolutionary process where selection pressures (e.g., performance demands, system limitations) influence the value of one trait/characteristic over another. Athletes are selected either through demonstrating enhanced performance (survival advantages) or by having characteristics that are desirable to the coach/recruiter making the selection (attraction advantages). Based on these varying pressures, our understanding of whether profiles of current athletes represent the actual elements of performance necessary for success or simply those most needed for selection at key points in athlete development is extremely limited.