Longitudinal Assessment of Swimming Performance in the 200-m Freestyle Event

All published articles of this journal are available on ScienceDirect.

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Longitudinal Assessment of Swimming Performance in the 200-m Freestyle Event

M. J. Costa1 , 2 J. A. Bragada2 , 3 D. A. Marinho2 , 4 V. M. Reis1 , 2 A. J. Silva1 , 2 , * Open Modal T. M. Barbosa2 , 3
Authors Info & Affiliations
The Open Sports Sciences Journal • 20 May 2010 • RESEARCH ARTICLE • DOI: 10.2174/1875399X010030100092

Abstract

The aim of this study was to track and analyze the 200-m Freestyle performance stability throughout elite swimmer's career. 29 Portuguese male top-50 were analyzed for seven consecutive seasons between 12 and 18 years old. Best performances were collected from ranking tables. Longitudinal assessment was performed based on two approaches: (i) mean stability was analyzed by descriptive statistics and ANOVA repeated measures for each season followed by a post-hoc test (Bonferroni test), (ii) normative stability was analyzed with self-correlation (Malina, 2001) and the Cohen's Kappa tracking index (Landis and Koch, 1977). There was a 200-m Freestyle performance enhancement from children to adult age. The overall career performance prediction was moderate. The change from 13 to 14 years can be a milestone, where the ability to predict the final swimmer's performance level strongly increases.

Keywords: stability, prediction, tracking, performance, elite swimmers.