From the Junior to the National Swim Team: A Mileston Take Home Point: From the 87 finalists at the 2nd FINA World Junior Swimming Championships roughly 75% did not participate in any major event during 2012 or 2013. The shift from the junior to the national swimming team is one of the most challenging milestones in a swimmer’s career. Indeed there are evidences that the ability to predict swimming performance increases sharply around such chronological ages (Costa et al., 2011). The 4th FINA World Junior Swimming Championships are being held at this moment in Dubai. A question crossed my mind: what did happen to the swimmers that participated in previous editions of this competition. They will be competing at top-level, attending to major championships a few years later or not? Let’s consider an Olympic cycle. Since coaches have a long term view in what concerns to training design and periodization of talented and world-ranked swimmers, at least 3-4 seasons (i.e. an Olympic Cycle) (Costa et al., 2009) might be needed to have some clues. So, it was decided to do a retrospective analysis of what happened to the finalists of the 2nd FINA World Junior Swimming Championships (held in Monterrey, 2008). This analysis looked at which of these swimmers competed in the 2012 Olympic Games year and, the recent, 2013 World Championship, or both major competitions. The aim was to analyze and describe how many of the 2nd FINA World Junior Swimming Championships finalists also participated in the London 2012 Olympic Games and Barcelona 2013 World Championships, a little bit more than 4 years later (i.e., an Olympic cycle later). 2nd FINA World Junior Swimming Championships results were retrieved from the FINA website (fina.org). All swimmers participating in any individual race final were identified (8 finalists per event; 17 individual events). Several swimmers participated in more than one event (a total of 87 male swimmers participated at least in one final). London 2012 Olympic Games and Barcelona 2013 World Championships results were collected from a database (swimrankings.net) for each one of the 87 junior finalists identified. From the 87 finalists at the 2nd FINA World Junior Swimming Championships roughly 75% did not participate in any major event during 2012 or 2013. Hence, twenty-one and twenty-three of the 2008 finalists got at least one seed in the 2012 Olympic Games or 2013 World Championship, respectively. Of the 21 swimmers participating at the Olympic Games, 16 did participate at least in one prelim (i.e., 17th place and following ones), two in a semifinal (9th-16th place), three in a final but without a spot on the podium (i.e., 4th-8th place) and no swimmer was medalist. This trend improves at the World Championship, but still only eight swimmers participated at least in one prelim (i.e., 17th place and following ones). Of these participants, fourteen got a seed in more than one prelim, eight in a semifinal (9th-16th place), four in a final without a spot on the podium (i.e., 4th-8th place), three were medalists, however none reached to the highest spot on the podium. This data suggests that the drop-out rate from junior to national team is quite high (approximately 75%). Some further investigation is needed to gather insight if they drop out the sport or continue to race and are not selected for the national swim team though. Nevertheless, those that are able to get a spot on the national team roster seem to be able to reach top-level spots even though their improvement is slow but steady and consistent. To caution, this is a retrospective analysis, therefore, caution extrapolating the phenomenon here described for any other generation of junior swimmers, including the ones participating right now at the 2013 Dubai edition. One might consider as main limitations of this descriptive analysis: (i) only individual races were assessed as relays are not included; (ii) data reported might not be representative of what happened to women (it seems that they reach the career’s peak earlier than men); (iii) some swimmers that did not participate in 2008 finals might have raced in one or both major competitions and were not considered for further analysis.
Posted on: Fri, 30 Aug 2013 12:05:23 +0000