Studia Kinanthropologica 2022, 23(2):75-82 | DOI: 10.32725/sk.2022.011

Relative age effect at Czech elite swimmers in U12 category

A. Agricola1, M. Bozděch2, A. Křehký1, P. Schlegel1, I. Růžička1
1 Univerzita Hradec Králové, Pedagogická fakulta, Katedra tělesné výchovy a sportu
2 Masarykova Univerzita, Fakulta sportovních studií, Katedra kineziologie

The Relative Age Effect (RAE) is phenomenon that strongly influences youth sport development. The RAE refers to a disproportionately high percentage of athletes born early in the calendar selection year. Number of studies, especially in team sports, has proved this fact. However, there is still a lack of studies in individual sports, such as swimming, which makes it impossible to have a sufficient understanding of the RAE problem in a given sport. The aim of our study was to verify RAE in young elite swimmers (n = 202) who participated in Czech Republic U12 Championships (1) in male and female samples (2) according to swimming disciplines and distances (3) and performance (times in individual disciplines) between individual quartiles /semesters of birth. The analysis was performed with the use of adequate statistical (chi-square test, Mann-Whitney U test) and effect size (effect size index w and effect size index r) tests. The analysis showed a significant RAE only in the whole sample (p = 0.015, w = 0.228, ES = medium), in sex distribution RAE was not present. A significant RAE, in the division according to swimming disciplines and swimming distances, was found in males in the breaststroke /100m/ (p = 0.001, w = 0.763, ES = large), breaststroke /200 m/ (c2(3) = 13.196, p = 0.004, w = 0.663, ES = large) and in the individual medley /200 m/ (c2(3) = 12.214, p = 0.007, w = 0.638, ES = large). In females, there was a significant RAE in freestyle /50m/ (p < 0.001, w = 0.774, ES = large) and freestyle /100m/ (p = 0.001, w = 0.751, ES = large). Analysis of performance differences between research categories (Si) in the form of time in disciplines, showed a statistically significant difference between the dependent variables (sex, distance, discipline) by different independent variables (Si) only in case of female sample: freestyle /100m/ (p = 0.011), individual medley /100m/ (p = 0.028), butterfly /200m/ (p = 0.015) and individual medley /400m/ (p = 0.002).

Keywords: birthdate, swimming, gender, performance, distance, discipline

Received: November 7, 2022; Revised: December 10, 2022; Accepted: December 22, 2022; Published: January 11, 2023  Show citation

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Agricola A, Bozděch M, Křehký A, Schlegel P, Růžička I. Relative age effect at Czech elite swimmers in U12 category. Studia Kinanthropologica. 2022;23(2):75-82. doi: 10.32725/sk.2022.011.
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