Athlete atypicity on the edge of human achievement: performances stagnate after the last peak, in 1988

• Published in: PloS one Vol. 5; no. 1; p. e8800
• Main Authors: Berthelot, Geoffroy, Tafflet, Muriel, El Helou, Nour, Len, Stéphane, Escolano, Sylvie, Guillaume, Marion, Nassif, Hala, Tolaïni, Julien, Thibault, Valérie, Desgorces, François Denis, Hermine, Olivier, Toussaint, Jean-François
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Public Library of Science 20-01-2010; Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subjects: Athletes; Evolutionary Biology/Human Evolution; Human health and pathology; Human performance; Humanities and Social Sciences; Humans; Innovations; Internet; Life Sciences; Mathematics/Statistics; Olympic games; Pharmacology; Physiology; Public Health and Epidemiology/Exercise and Sports; Rarefaction; Science; Sport; Sports; Sports history; Stagnation; Swimming; Task Performance and Analysis; Technological change; Tissues and Organs; Trends; France
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0008800

The growth law for the development of top athletes performances remains unknown in quantifiable sport events. Here we present a growth model for 41351 best performers from 70 track and field (T&F) and swimming events and detail their characteristics over the modern Olympic era. We show that 64% of T&F events no longer improved since 1993, while 47% of swimming events stagnated after 1990, prior to a second progression step starting in 2000. Since then, 100% of swimming events continued to progress.We also provide a measurement of the atypicity for the 3919 best performances (BP) of each year in every event. The secular evolution of this parameter for T&F reveals four peaks; the most recent (1988) followed by a major stagnation. This last peak may correspond to the most recent successful attempt to push forward human physiological limits. No atypicity trend is detected in swimming. The upcoming rarefaction of new records in sport may be delayed by technological innovations, themselves depending upon economical constraints.