Accounting for relative age effect in sports performance assessment: Developing age-adjusted performance corridors...

Area of Science:

• Sports Science
• Biostatistics
• Youth Athlete Development

Background:

• The relative age effect (RAE) influences physical performance in young athletes.
• Accurate assessment of RAE is crucial for talent identification and development in sports.
• Existing methods may not fully capture the non-linear relationship between age and performance.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate a novel statistical approach for accounting for RAE in youth athletes' physical performance.
• To establish personalized performance progression curves and corridors for elite young athletes.
• To address non-linearity in age-related performance progression.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of 50m sprint times from 1715 elite French youth rugby union players.
• Application of linear mixed models with log transformations to handle non-linearity.
• Development of performance corridors and personalized progression curves using confidence intervals.

Main Results:

• The novel statistical approach effectively accounted for RAE in physical performance.
• Performance corridors were established, integrating chronological and relative age.
• Personalized progression curves enabled accurate tracking of individual athlete development over time.

Conclusions:

• Advanced statistical methods offer valuable insights into performance assessment and RAE.
• The developed approach provides a personalized framework for monitoring athlete progression.
• This methodology enhances the understanding of age-related physical development in elite youth sports.