Analysis: There are lessons for parents and coaches from the different pathways which Irish athletes haven taken to get to the Olympic Games
Sarah Healy is heading to her second Olympic games. Her potential was obvious in an outstanding schools athletics career during which she won six consecutive titles. Winning gold over 1500m and 3000m at the 2018 European Athletics U18 Championships, her story is that of a "teen sensation" converting into a serious international talent.
Jack Raftery is heading to his first Olympics. As he recently posted on social media, his school’s cross country experience was not quite as glorious, finishing outside the top 100 in multiple years. He summed up his journey to this point concisely: "never great as a kid, took my time to find my event. On the plane to Paris."
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From RTÉ Radio 1's Today with Claire Byrne, who are ones to watch for Team Ireland in Paris? With RTÉ commentator Greg Allen, broadcaster Cathal Mullaney and editor of The Local Paris, Emma Pearson
Neither story is unique as high performance athletes take a myriad of different routes to reach the top. Perhaps cycling legend Peter Sagan summed it up best in his autobiography My World: "a hundred careers could yield a hundred different books…everybody has a story. Mine isn’t more important than anybody else’s, but it is different. Just like everybody else’s story is different from mine, and different from each others".
How many of these stories involve success as a young adolescent? In 2018 we published an analysis of over 130,000 performances from youth track and field in the UK between 2005 and 2015. Only a minority of the top 20 ranked senior athletes had been ranked in the top 20 as under 13s: just 9% of males and 13% of females.
The graph below shows the times run for the 800m by 101 women for whom data was available at both ages 12 (horizontal axis) and at age 19; the red line indicates the qualifying time for the 2023 European U20 Championship 800m. In the bottom left you see the teen sensations, thosae athletes who had always performed at the top of their age group. But notice also that many of the athletes who would go on to achieve the qualifying time for major championships were not amongst the top athletes at age 12.
It is important to also emphasise the data which is not on this graph. Less than 30% of athletes who had been top ranked at under 13 were still listed anywhere on the national rankings by under 20. Many athletes, of all performance levels, drift away from sport through the teenage years for a variety of reasons. Athletes also transition into track and field from other sports. A study of 221 track and field athletes (within a broader study of 2,838 Olympians) reported an average starting age in the sport of 13, and an average age of specialising in that sport of 17 years. Performances at age 12 tell us very little about what performances could be at age 20.
In the years since our research, other sport scientists have further examined the relationship between youth and senior success. Studies of Italian jumpers, sprinters and throwers have similarly shown that less than a quarter of the top-level adult athletes were top-level at the age of 16. A study of female distance runners from the Czech Republic revealed that the majority of the all-time best female distance runners in the under 16 and under 18 age grades did not better their personal best after the age of 20.
Similarly, an analysis tracked individual performance trajectories of German international level middle-distance runners from the age of 14 until their top performance. 40% of male middle-distance runners who would progress to represent Germany internationally as seniors had not run fast enough at age 16 to meet the national association standard to earmark them as having potential for the future. Indeed, this group included a future Olympic champion.
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Research finding that performances during early adolescence do not accurately reflect future potential is not restricted to track and field. In cycling, the competitive success rate of U-15 cyclists could not predict success at adult age, while adult performances in swimming could not be predicted based on athletes' best performances at ages younger than 16 years. Indeed, a systematic review of 21 studies featuring 13,392 athletes published earlier this year concluded that "junior performance has very little, if any, predictive value for senior performance".
Why are performances during early adolescence such a poor predictor of later success? The timing of maturation – the adolescent growth sport – appears to be an important part of the answer. Two 13-year-olds might be the same age, but an early developer could be physically equivalent to a 15-year-old, while a late developer could be physically equivalent to an 11-year-old.
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The extent to which maturation can influence performance in youth sport was recently demonstrated in research led by Fionn Fitzgerald on two inter-county Gaelic football academies. An over-representation of early developers was observed in all age groups from Under 14 to Under 16, while no players were classified as late developers in the two oldest age groups. This bias towards early developers is consistent with research at national level in Irish soccer and with international studies on track and field athletes.
The clear message for parents and coaches is not to read too much into the performances of young adolescents as both stellar and mediocre performances can be misleading about future potential. Instead, emphasise providing opportunities for as many children as possible to enjoy competing and feel like they are progressing.
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The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
