Studia Kinanthropologica 2023, 24(2-3):43-49 | DOI: 10.32725/sk.2024.002

The relative age effect in Czech orienteering runners

A. Agricola, M. Poloprutská, I. Růžička
Univerzita Hradec Králové, Pedagogická fakulta, Katedra tělesné výchovy a sportu

The Relative Age Effect (RAE) is a phenomenon that strongly affects the sports development of youth. RAE refers to the disproportionately high percentage of athletes born at the beginning of the calendar (selection) year in sports selections. In recent years, there has been an increase in studies related to this issue, even in less popular sports. The number of studies in these sports is often insufficient, which hinders a comprehensive understanding of the RAE issue. The aim of the presented study was to determine the presence of RAE among the top orienteering male and female athletes (n = 469) in the categories of pupils, juniors, and youth (age categories U12–U20) in the Czech Republic. The data was obtained from the Orienteering Information System (ORIS). Based on the birthdate, the runners were categorized into quartiles (Qi) and semesters (Si). The resulting data was compared with the expected data for the individual parts of the year. The analysis was conducted using the Chi-square test (χ2 test) in the Goodness-of-Fit version. The results showed that in the entire sample, more runners were born in the second half of the year. Similarly, this was the case in the individual categories, except for the age category U16 and U18. In the category U16, more athletes were born in the first half of the year, which was the only exception, and in the category U18, the distribution of birthdates within the semesters was balanced. However, in the entire sample and in none of the individual categories, the statistical significance of the results was confirmed (p > 0.05). The achieved results may be influenced by several factors, with one of these factors likely being the fact that it is a non-Olympic sport and is still relatively marginal in the Czech Republic. For this reason, it appears that the influences that support RAE are not so significant as to significantly affect the presence of this phenomenon.

Keywords: birthdate; individual sport; orienteering; gender; performance

Received: November 20, 2023; Revised: December 29, 2023; Accepted: January 22, 2024; Published: February 15, 2024  Show citation

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Agricola A, Poloprutská M, Růžička I. The relative age effect in Czech orienteering runners. Studia Kinanthropologica. 2023;24(2-3):43-49. doi: 10.32725/sk.2024.002.
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