The aims of this study were to talent transfer, rapidly develop, and qualify an Australian female athlete in the skeleton event at the 2006 Torino Winter Olympic Games and quantify the volume of skeleton-specific training and competition that would enable this to be achieved. Initially, 26 athletes were recruited through a talent identification programme based on their 30-m sprint time. After attending a selection camp, 10 athletes were invited to undertake an intensified skeleton training programme. Four of these athletes were then selected to compete for Australia on the World Cup circuit. All completed runs and simulated push starts were documented over a 14-month period. The athlete who eventually represented Australia at the Torino Winter Olympic Games did so following approximately 300 start simulations and about 220 training/competition runs over a period of 14 months. Using a deliberate programming model, these findings provide a guide to the minimum exposure required for a novice skeleton athlete to reach Olympic representative standard following intensified sport-specific training. The findings of this study are discussed in the context of the deliberate practice theory and offer the term "deliberate programming" as an alternative way of incorporating all aspects of expert development.

Background: We have recently reported that spontaneous internal desynchronization between the locomotor activity rhythm and the melatonin rhythm may occur in rats (30% of tested animals) when they are maintained in constant dim red light (LL dim ) for 60 days. Previous work has also shown that melatonin plays an important role in the modulation of the circadian rhythms of running wheel activity (R w ) and body temperature (T b ). The aim of the present study was to investigate the effect that desynchronization of the melatonin rhythm may have on the coupling and expression of circadian rhythms in R w and T b .

The newly discovered multi-oscillatory nature of the mammalian circadian clock system and the cloning of the genes involved in the molecular mechanism that generates circadian rhythmicity have opened new approaches for understanding how mammals are temporally organized and how the mammalian circadian system reacts to the lack of normal synchronization cues. In the present study we investigated the effects of long-term exposure to constant red dim light on the pattern of the expression of Period 1 in the suprachiasmatic nuclei of the hypothalamus and of Arylalkylamine N-acetyltransferase(Aa-nat) in the retina and pineal gland. Our data demonstrate that Period 1 mRNA expression in the suprachiasmatic nuclei of the hypothalamus was not affected by exposure to constant red dim light for 60 days, whereas Aa-nat mRNA expression in the retina and in the pineal gland was significantly affected, since in some animals (20–30%) Aa-nat mRNA levels were found to be higher during the subjective day. A circadian rhythm of serum melatonin and locomotor activity was present in all the animals tested. In 4 animals serum melatonin levels were high during the subjective day. Our data suggest that long-term exposure to constant red dim light may induce desynchronization between the circadian rhythm of locomotor activity and serum melatonin levels.

The study of how the retina processes the photic information required for the entrainment of the circadian system is an exciting new topic in retinal neurobiology. We have recently shown that in RCS/N-rdy rats melanopsin mRNA levels are dramatically reduced (about 90 %) and melanopsin immunoreactivity cannot be detected in the retina of these rats at sixty days of age. Although RCS/ N-rdy rats are a widely-used model to investigate mechanisms of photoreceptor degeneration, no study has investigated circadian photoreception in these animals. The aim of this study was to examine circadian photoreception in RCS/N-rdy + (rdy + ) rats homozygous for the normal rdy allele and age-matched RCS/N-rdy (rdy) homozygotes with retinal dystrophy. No differences between RCS/N-rdy and rdy + were observed in light-induced phase shift of locomotor activity at the three light intensities used (1×10 -3 , 1×10 -1 , and 1×10 1 μWcm -2 ). Surprisingly, we observed that in RCS/ N-rdy the free-running period of the circadian rhythm of locomotor activity was shorter (P < 0.01) than in rdy + , thus suggesting that photoreceptor degeneration may affect the free-running period of the locomotor activity rhythm. Classification termsSensory and motor system

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