Discovering potential Olympic champs
Identifying athletic talent has become a science for sports organizations
With millions of young athletes participating in competitive sports across the country, how easy is it to recognize the ones with the potential to win gold? And when that diamond in the rough is spotted, what does it take to develop his or her talent into that of a future champion?
Identifying athletic talent has become a science, with hundreds of research publications devoted to determining what type of physical and mental attributes are necessary to excel at the elite level. Speed, endurance, strength, power, body type (slim, medium or large builds) and height are, for the most part, inherited, while other desirable physical characteristics such as flexibility, co-ordination and reaction time are also thought to be strongly influenced by genetics.
Then there are the non-physical attributes that are considered important to athletic talent — like coachability or learnability, rate of improvement, persistence, attitude to training, self-confidence, mental toughness, motivation, resilience and commitment. They, too, to some extent at least, are inherited — which suggests that Olympians are indeed born with the traits necessary for success.
In an attempt to consolidate all that we know about athletic talent, Vladimir Issurin from the Elite Sport Department of the Wingate Institute in Israel analyzed data from 186 scientific publications representing a cumulative field of 98 Olympic champions, 656 international medal winners, 2,243 elite athletes and 908 elite and sub-elite youth athletes.
The article, published in last month’s Sports Medicine, reported that most sports organizations have a comprehensive checklist of physiological attributes they feel are precursors to success in their sport, including the identification of personality traits and psychological strengths elite athletes should possess. Yet, despite this methodical approach to scouting athletic talent, the rate of success in predicting the achievement level of young talent prior to hitting puberty falls between 20 and 65 per cent. This far-from-stellar statistic makes it clear that not only does natural athletic talent need to be identified, it also needs to be nurtured.
Most countries, including Canada, have some type of multistaged athlete development program that starts with building fundamental skills and transitions toward a greater emphasis on skill acquisition, fitness and other performance-related attributes. The question is, how long does it take to develop superior talent and what kind of environment is critical to success?
Data gathered by Issurin concluded that, with the exception of certain individual sports that demand early skill development (gymnastics, diving, tennis, swimming, etc.), most Olympians spend two to four years playing two or three other sports before specializing in their sport of choice. And in sports such as sprinting and rowing, where late development is common, athletes typically spend four to six years playing one to three other sports. This time is often referred to as the “sampling years.”
Once the groundwork of early development has been completed, specialization begins. For endurance, power and combat sports, evidence suggests it takes four to seven years of sport specialization and 3,000 to 7,000 hours of deliberate practice to be among the world’s best athletes. But for athletes in sports that demand specialized skill development beginning before puberty, 10 or more years of sport specialization and more than 10,000 hours of deliberate practice is needed.
During that development phase, other characteristics of future champions start to show themselves, including the propensity to fit in extra workouts beyond those prescribed for the rest of the team or training group.
It was also noted that gifted athletes were given more freedom and opportunities to work on their skills as compared with their teammates or peers.
Other important variables of success listed by Olympians included training environment, training partners, medical support and the acquiring of psychological skills that allow them to excel in high-stress situations. They also gave a shoutout to their families for creating an environment that fostered achievement, confidence and motivation.
Clearly, the making of an Olympian requires more than an inherited set of athletic gifts. Finding more athletes like Penny Oleksiak — the teen swimmer from Toronto who surprised the world by winning four medals, including one gold at the 2016 Summer Olympics — requires a comprehensive and evidence-based strategy that takes into account the importance of both nature and nurture.