Annual Athlete Turnover of 36% in Olympic Talent Promotion Programs: A Meta-analysis

Across the world, many national sport systems make extensive strategic investments in talent promotion programs (TPPs). The most common TPPs include youth sport academies and sport federations' junior squads. The central idea of TPPs is (1) to select the most promising talents at young ages (around puberty or younger) and (2) to involve them in a long-term continuous nurturing process to facilitate their performance development, eventually leading to increased senior peak performance. This central idea implies that the population of TPP participants is highly stable across age categories. On the other hand, TPPs sometimes replace deselected athletes with new 'side-entry' athletes (athletes who enter a TPP after its initial age category). Hence, there is athlete turnover-fluctuation in the TPP population through exits of participants and entries of new athletes. This implies that the TPP population is unstable across age categories. The magnitude of annual athlete turnover is thus indicative of the operating principle of TPPs and whether it corresponds to their central idea.

This meta-analysis aimed to provide robust and generalizable evidence on the magnitude of annual athlete turnover in TPPs. It also investigated whether athlete turnover varies between youth sport academies vs federations' junior squads and across ages and sexes.

A systematic literature search was conducted in March 2025 in Web of Science, PubMed, APA PsycINFO, APA PsycARTICLES, and Google Scholar, complemented by snowball search. We searched for original studies that reported annual athlete turnover within TPPs or data needed to compute annual athlete turnover. The search yielded 37 samples, published 2010-25, including 44,287 athletes from all Olympic sports and 42 countries. For each TPP sample and each season-to-season transition, annual athlete turnover was calculated as (number of entries + number of exits) / 2 / total number of current athletes.

The mean annual athlete turnover within TPPs is 36.3%. It is slightly higher in federations' junior squads than youth sport academies but does not differ across ages or sexes.

Most talent selection decisions are revised within two years and, accordingly, more than half of the TPP population is exchanged every two years. Unlike their original idea, the operating principle of TPPs is characterized by frequent selection, deselection, and replacement of youth athletes, resulting in sizeable athlete turnover. We discuss implications regarding inaccurate talent identification and inefficient TPP nurture.

The operating principle of TPPs can be described as follows: TPPs try out many youth athletes and expand that number through sizeable athlete turnover. Most talent-identified youth athletes are deselected again soon and replaced with others who are then tried out.