ArticlePloS one2023
Corrective adjustment methods for relative age effects on French young swimmers' performances.
Article in PloS one, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed.
- Effects of oxygen uptake kinetics on 100-m and 800-m front crawl performance in pubertal swimmers.BMC sports science, medicine & rehabilitation · 2026Article
- Talent Identification: Time to Move Forward on Estimation of Potentials? Proposed Explanations and Promising Methods.Sports medicine (Auckland, N.Z.) · 2025Review
- A survival analysis of dropout among French swimmers.Frontiers in sports and active living · 2025Article
- Relative age of youth swimmers and their sporting performance at the end of the season.PloS one · 2025Article
- Relative Age Effects and Place of Early Development Constrain Male Youth Italian Swimmers' Developmental Experiences.Sports (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Relative age effects in track-and-field: Identification and performance rebalancing.Frontiers in physiology · 2022Article
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Authors and funding
10 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundThis study aimed to identify a Relative Age Effect (RAE) among French young swimmers and apply corrective adjustment procedures to rebalance performances according to categories and events.
methods5,339,351 performances of French swimmers aged 10 to 18 were collected between 2000 and 2019. Birth quarters distribution was examined according to competitiveness level ('All', 'Top50%', 'Top25%' and 'Top10%'), event and age category. A linear relationship between the distribution of performances and calendar days provides a calibration coefficient allowing to rebalance performances by considering the effect of RAE for each event. Then, adjusted performances are recalculated using this coefficient, the initial performance and the relative age.
resultsProportion of swimmers born in the first quarter was higher than the proportion of those born in the last quarter for all events and strokes (p < 0.01). RAE increases with the competitiveness level for all events. Indeed, among 'All' 12 years old 50m freestyle swimmers, the proportion born in the first quarter is 30.9% vs 19.2% in the fourth quarter, while among the "Top10%", 47.5% were born in the first quarter vs 10.3% in the last one. (p-value < 0.01). In average, each day represents a gap of 0.008 second, resulting in a difference of almost 3 seconds over a year. This tool is validated by comparing swimmers who have performed at least twice in a season. It provides a day by day rebalancing method for all swimming events and age categories.
conclusionsRelative age effect is present among French young male and female swimmers, and is strengthened by competitiveness level. A new corrective adjustment procedure to rebalance performances considering categories and events is proposed and validated. By applying such a tool, we are able to reveal the full potential of swimmers and make it possible to compare them at the same relative age.
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