ArticleSports medicine - open2021
Darwinian Selection Discriminates Young Athletes: the Relative Age Effect in Relation to Sporting Performance.
Article in Sports medicine - open, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers.
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Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed, 34 citations in OpenAlex.
- Exploring Repro-Timing Harm and Benefit.Bioethics · 2026Article
- Systemic review of the relative age effect in Scottish schooling: a public health imperative for policy reform and equity.BMJ public health · 2026Article
- No relative age effect in professional esports: a cross-national test of selection mechanisms.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Does Birth Month Matter? Effects of Birth Subgroupings on Motor Performance and Ball-Involving Tests in a Youth Soccer Academy.Sports (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Selection of the Extremes - Male Junior and Adult Ice Hockey Success in relation to Relative Age and its Interaction with Biological Maturation.Sports medicine - open · 2025Article
- Can response to ADHD medication be predicted?European child & adolescent psychiatry · 2025Observational
- Relative Age Effect (RAE) According to Norm Values on Anthropometric Performance and Physical Fitness in 9-11-Year-Old Children.Journal of functional morphology and kinesiology · 2025Article
- Relative age of youth swimmers and their sporting performance at the end of the season.PloS one · 2025Article
- Where age doesn't matter: no relative age effects in esports at the professional level.Frontiers in sports and active living · 2025Article
- Tell me your date of birth, and I will tell you how good you are in orienteering.Frontiers in sports and active living · 2025Article
- The Relative Age Effect across an International Soccer Programme in Male and Female Players Aged 12 Years Old to Seniors.Journal of human kinetics · 2024Article
- Assessment of Performance in Youth Soccer Players: Should We Consider the Maturation Status?Journal of human kinetics · 2024Article
- The Relative Age Effect in the Best Track and Field Athletes Aged 10 to 15 Years Old.Sports (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- Early Sport Specialization and Relative Age Effect: Prevalence and Influence on Perceived Competence in Ice Hockey Players.Sports (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- Relative Age Effects in Male Cricket: A Personal Assets Approach to Explain Immediate, Short-Term, and Long-Term Developmental Outcomes.Sports (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- Article
- Influence of the Tertile of Birth on Anthropometric Variables, Anaerobic Parameters and Quantitative Muscle Ultrasound in School Children.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundThe relative age effect (RAE) is a worldwide phenomenon, allowing sport participation and elite selection to be based on birthdate distribution. Negative consequences include both a narrow, non-optimal elite selection and negative health effects on entire populations. This study investigated the RAE and athletic performance in multiple individual sports in Sweden.
methodsBirthdates of athletes born between the years 1922 and 2015 were collected across 4-month periods (tertiles: T1, T2, T3) from cross-country skiing (N = 136,387), orienteering (N = 41,164), athletics (N = 14,503), alpine skiing (N = 508), E-sports (N = 47,030), and chess (N = 4889). In total, data from 244,560 athletes (women: N = 79,807, men: N = 164,753) was compared to the complete parent population of 5,390,954 births in Sweden during the same years. Chi-squared statistics compared parent and cohort distributions stratified by sport, sex, and age.
resultsA significantly skewed distribution of birthdates was present in all sports, both sexes, and most age groups. The largest RAEs are seen in children where T1 often constitutes 40-50% and T3, 20-25% of the population. In E-sports, an inversed RAE was seen in adults. In most investigated sports, birthdate distribution was correlated to performance in children but not in adults.
conclusionsSkewed birthdate distributions were consistently prevalent in all investigated individual sports in Sweden, both physically demanding and cognitive/skill-based. As sport participation is related to total level of physical activity, both present and future, failing to address the RAE issue at an early age will result not only in a narrow and arbitrary selection for adult elite athletes but also in a negative impact on public health.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.