Relative Age Effects in Athletic Sprinting and Corrective Adjustments as a Solution for Their Removal

Abstract

Relative Age Effects (RAEs) refer to the selection and performance differentials between children and youth who are categorized in annual-age groups. In the context of Swiss 60m athletic sprinting, 7761 male athletes aged 8 – 15 years were analysed, with this study examining whether: (i) RAE prevalence changed across annual age groups and according to performance level (i.e., all athletes, Top 50%, 25% & 10%); (ii) whether the relationship between relative age and performance could be quantified, and corrective adjustments applied to test if RAEs could be removed. Part one identified that when all athletes were included, typical RAEs were evident, with smaller comparative effect sizes, and progressively reduced with older age groups. However, RAE effect sizes increased linearly according to performance level (i.e., all athletes – Top 10%) regardless of age group. In part two, all athletes born in each quartile, and within each annual age group, were entered into linear regression analyses. Results identified that an almost one year relative age difference resulted in mean expected performance differences of 10.1% at age 8, 8.4% at 9, 6.8% at 10, 6.4% at 11, 6.0% at 12, 6.3% at 13, 6.7% at 14, and 5.3% at 15. Correction adjustments were then calculated according to day, month, quarter, and year, and used to demonstrate that RAEs can be effectively removed from all performance levels, and from Swiss junior sprinting more broadly. Such procedures could hold significant implications for sport participation as well as for performance assessment, evaluation, and selection during athlete development.

Faster, higher, stronger, older: Relative age effects are most influential during the youngest age grade of track and field athletics in the United Kingdom

“…Numerous solutions have been proposed to address RAEs, including rotating cut-off dates from year to year (Barnsley et al, 1985), longer (Grondin et al, 1984) or shorter agegroup bandwidths (Boucher & Halliwell, 1991), implementing player quotas/average age schemes (Barnsley & Thompson, 1988), physical classification schemes (Cumming, Lloyd, Oliver, Eisenmann, & Malina, 2017), and educating stakeholders regarding RAEs (Andronikos et al, 2015;Musch & Grondin, 2001). Specific to sprinting, Romann and Cobley (2015) have demonstrated how corrective adjustments could be applied to youth results to remove RAEs from top rankings, however additional research is required to determine if this strategy would work for other athletic disciplines. Furthermore, it is important to emphasise that relative age is a proxy measure for development, which is only accurate at the population level.…”

“…In addition to age, a number of factors have been demonstrated to influence RAEs in track and field athletics. Two studies have investigated the effect of skill level on RAEs in track RELATIVE AGE EFFECTS IN YOUTH ATHLETICS 6 and field; Brazo-Sayavera et al (2016) examined athletes selected to Spanish national federation training camps, while Romann & Cobley (2015) divided athletes who had competed in the 60m sprint into groups on the basis of their seasonal best performance. In both cases, RAEs were higher when examining higher skill level athletes.…”

The Role of a Relative Age Effect in the 12th Winter European Youth Olympic Festival in 2015

“…This system would be more fair, as every athlete would have the chance to be among the relatively older athletes at some point in the talent development process regardless of his or her birth month. Apart from these possible solutions, Romann and Cobley (2015) showed that relative age effects could be effectively removed in athletic sprints by using correction adjustments (linear regression analyses). As this proposal has not been investigated in a winter sport discipline so far, this should be done in future research.…”

Age-ordered shirt numbering reduces the selection bias associated with the relative age effect

“…This is a particular problem in team sports where the indirect benefits of being older are widespread, because talent identification requires scouts or coaches to make subjective judgments of talent that are likely to be influenced by relative age (e.g., soccer, hockey and rugby, as opposed to objective measures such as time ran or distance jumped that can be used in individual sports, see Romann & Cobley, 2015). A number of practical suggestions have been put forward as possible interventions to minimise the selection-induced RAE in team sports, for instance by: rotating the age cut-off date for junior competition; altering the bandwidth of the age-groups; implementing quotas so that selected teams have an even representation of children of all birth-months; and grouping players according to their weight or height rather than age (Barnsley, Thompson, & Legault, 1992;Cobley et al, 2009;Helsen et al, 2012Helsen et al, , 1998Musch & Grondin, 2001).…”