Discriminating performance profiles of cycling disciplines

Abstract

The aim of this study was to document the athletic profiles of adolescent and young adult high performance cycling athletes and to investigate to what extent different cycling disciplines can be discriminated from each other based on a generic test battery. A total of 243 adolescent (12.0- 15.99 y) and 63 young adult (>=16 y) male cyclists from road cycling, track cycling, cyclo-cross, and mountain bike (MTB) participated in the study. All participants performed four anthropometric, five physical, three motor coordination, and two cycling-specific tests. Using discriminant analyses, the young adult athletes could be correctly classified to their discipline for 80.7%. Track cyclists outperformed the other disciplines in explosive and coordinative skills while for cyclo-cross, and particularly MTB, the performance on the shuttle bike test seemed to be a distinctive variable. Road cyclists however, showed a significant overlap in performance characteristics with the other disciplines. In spite of the less pronounced discriminative character in the adolescent cycling population (51.0%), the discriminative characteristics are in line with the results of the young adults. This study allows to orient cyclists towards their best-fitted discipline in young adulthood. The relevance of these findings for coaches, experts and federations with respect to early/late specialization, and talent orientation are discussed.

Is Motor Coordination the Key to Success in Youth Cycling?

“…Staff, Gobet, Parton 8 indicated that a later engagement in the development of expertise resulted in faster motor learning and development. This is in line with the previous findings of Mostaert, Laureys, Vansteenkiste, Pion, Deconinck, Lenoir 25 , who suggested that there is no need for early specialisation within cycling as the different cycling profiles of high performing adolescents between 12.0 and 15.99 years of age (road, track, cyclo-cross, and mountain bike) could only be correctly discriminated for 50.1%.…”

“…The highest score (peak frequency) was recorded for one attempt. The maximal cadence test has an intra-class correlation of 0.936 (95% CI 0.863 -0.970) 25 .…”

“…In other sports such as gymnastics, soccer, and volleyball, this low-resource assessment approach has been related to future success in sports 24 . Recently, Mostaert, Laureys, Vansteenkiste, Pion, Deconinck, Lenoir 25 showed that general motor coordination (measured using the KTK3 test battery), in combination with measures of anthropometry, physical performance, and cycling-specific tests, could accurately (80,7%) discriminate between young adult athletes of different cycling disciplines. However, it is not clear if motor coordination could also contribute to talent identification in youth cycling.…”

Result-based talent identification in road cycling: discovering the next Eddy Merckx

“…For a general overview of these factors we refer to Atkinson et al (2003), Faria et al (2005b, a) and Phillips and Hopkins (2020), and we refer to Lucia et al (2003) for an overview of the physiological aspects in the Tour de France. For scouts, these studies could be of interest since they could help to identify the relevant physiological measures that are required to excel at a later age (Svendsen et al 2018;Menaspà et al 2010), or to orient cyclists towards their best discipline (see Mostaert et al 2020).…”

Toward an Anthropometric Pattern in Elite Male Handball

“…In elite sport, the anthropometric indices have a major impact on performance [ 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 ] and additionally, there are other factors, such as the preparation level [ 23 , 24 , 25 ], specific preparation [ 26 , 27 , 28 ] and competition experience [ 29 , 30 ], that influence elite sport outcomes.…”