Sleep Quality in Team USA Olympic and Paralympic Athletes

Adequate sleep is crucial for elite athletes' recovery, performance readiness, and immune response. Establishing reference ranges for elite athletes enables appropriate contextualization for designing and targeting sleep interventions.

To establish sleep-quality reference ranges for Olympic and Paralympic cohorts using the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) and explore differences based on sex and sport types.

Team USA athletes (men = 805, women = 798) completed the PSQI as part of a health-history questionnaire. Descriptive statistics were used to create reference ranges and linear models, and χ2 test of independence determined differences in PSQI global and component scores between sex, games, season, and participation.

Six hundred thirty-two (39.43%) athletes reported poor sleep (PSQIGlobal ≥ 5). Men displayed later bedtimes (P = .006), better global PSQI scores, shorter sleep latency, less sleep disturbance, and less use of sleep medication than women (all P < .001). Winter Games participants had later bedtime (P = .036) and sleep offset time (P = .028) compared with Summer Games athletes. Team-sport athletes woke earlier than individual-sport athletes (P < .001). Individual-sport athletes were more likely to have low (P = .005) and mild (P = .045) risk for reduced sleep duration than team-sport athletes.

These data provide PSQI-specific reference ranges to identify groups at greatest risk for poor sleep, who may benefit most from targeted sleep interventions.