Professor, Dr. Hab. V.S. Yakimovich                                                        
Associate Professor, Dr.Hab. V.A. Ovchinnikov
Volgograd Academy of Russian Internal Affairs Ministry, Volgograd

Keywords: personal best result of season, Olympic Games, World Athletics Championships.

Introduction. Specialists are aware of the main purpose of training any elite athlete both in the long-term and annual cycle as showing their personal best results during his or her most important competitions [1, 2, 3]. Olympic Games and World Championships play this role for the athletes. The first ones are held every four years; the second ones take place the year before the Olympics and next year. All the other competitions of the season are considered to be lead-in and intermediate, they are geared to train an athlete for reaching the peak of his sport performance before the main start. Do the top level athletes and their coaches manage to solve this difficult problem? The answer to this question can confirm the opinion of most experts, that modern coaches have knowledge and master elite athletes' training and status control technologies quite good. The answer can also disprove the opinion and show the failure of sport science in solving the major training problems.

Objective of the work was to analyze the elite athletes’ training process management efficiency. It is necessary to reveal the presence or the lack of compliance of the athletes’ personal best results in the season with  the main competitions, that are Olympics Games and World Championships.

Research methods and organization. The main source of information was the official score sheets of the athletes’ competitions during the Olympics 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012, during the World Championships 2001, 2003, 2005, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2013, 2015, as well as the world’s athletes top lists during the period of 2000-2015 presented on the official website of the IAAF. The results have been processed by the methods of descriptive mathematical statistics.

Results and discussion. The conducted study has shown, that the average percentage of men’s Olympic champions demonstrating their personal best results in individual sports, i.e. except the relays, is 45,5 %. The index is slightly higher among women’s champions and equals 61,9 %. The ranking of the Olympic medalists is similar. Thus, if only 39,2 % of the men’s athletes on the average show their personal best results in the season exactly at the Olympics, the women’s medalists have better results being 53,0 %.

The percentage ratio of men’s champions at the World Athletics Championships is practically the same as at the Olympics (46,0 %). But there are less medal winners demonstrating their personal best results at the World Championships than at the Olympics (33,5 %). The women’s athletes' indices are lower both among champions (52,0 %) and medal winners (36,2 %).

If the champions and medal winners of the World Championships are taken together, i.e. men and women’s athletes, the number of athletes with their personal best results in the season is less than a half among the champions (48,9 %) and almost one third among the medal winners (34,8 %).

At the last four Olympics the men’s champions always, i.e. 100 % of the cases, demonstrated their personal best results in 200m and 400m Hurdles, and in Triple Jump too. The women’s champions managed to have such a success in 400m Hurdles and Triple Jump. Besides, the women’s champions always demonstrated their personal best results in 100m Hurdles and High Jump during this time period.

The men’s medalists of the Olympics 2000-2012 have no such achievement at any athletic event as the champions do. As for the women’s Olympic champions in Athletics, they showed their personal best results of the season at three events being 800 metres, 10000 metres and 3000 metres steeplechase.

Neither champions nor medalists have ever shown their personal best results at two men’s athletic events (1500m and 3000m Hurdles) at the latest four Olympics. According to that the percentage ratio of these athletes is 0. As for the women’s 5000m Olympic champions, they are the only ones who have never demonstrated their personal best results at these competitions during the period of 2000-2012.

The women’s champions managed to show their personal best results only at one out of ten events (Heptathlon) at the World Athletics Championships 2001-2015. Men’s champions, men’s medalists and women’s Olympic Athletics medalists have not had such achievements.

Nevertheless, there is high percentage of the athletes who succeeded in performing their best at some athletic events during the Olympic year exactly at the Olympics. Among the men’s champions it happened to be 400m Hurdles and Triple Jump – 87,5 %, i.e. seven of eight. As for the women, they achieved such results only in 400m Hurdles.

The men’s champions at the World Championships and at the Olympics have never shown their personal best results in 1500m and 3000m hurdles, but the medal winners managed to demonstrate their maximum fitness at these events in exceptional cases. However, men’s and women’s champions and medalists have never shown their personal best results in 5000m during eight World Championships since 2001.

If you take the individual results into consideration, first of all you should mention the most outstanding athlete of our time, who is Usain Bolt. At two Olympics 2008 and 2012 he won 100 Metres and 200 Metres demonstrating his personal best results in the season herewith. But it did not happen all the time at the World Championships. Thus, he did not manage to show his 200m best result in Osaka 2007, although U. Bolt won the silver medal. Having become a 200m champion in Daegu 2011 Usain Bolt showed his personal best result 13 days later in Brussels improving the record by 0,14. Nevertheless, this athlete won both sprint races at the World Championships 2009, 2013, 2015 and demonstrated his maximum fitness.

Conclusions. 1. The average number of the world-class athletes (champions and medal winners of the Olympics and the World Championships), who have demonstrated their personal best results during the main competitions of the season for the last 15 years is not more than 50%. Based on the theory of probability we consider this result to be quite random.

2. The athletes succeed to show their maximum fitness at some events during Olympics and World Championships. This happens most often in 400m Hurdles and Triple Jump. What is more, this characterizes the performance of both men and women. But the situation is just opposite in 5000m. Elite athletes have never managed to run faster at the main competitions than at other less important competitions, both before and after the main start for the last 15 years.

3. The elite athletes’ training process management efficiency was found far enough from its possible maximum – irrespective of the athletes’ nations of origin. This means that the opinion on the modern coaches being highly skilful and knowledgeable in the elite athletes’ training technologies and perfect in the athletes’ fitness control and management in the training process are not grounded enough in fact. Only a few very seldom cases may be found of some top-ranking athletes being prudently managed in their training process so that they repeatedly came to the main track and field events of a few seasons on peaks of their sport form (e.g. Usain Bolt). Therefore, prudent process management is possible albeit for a vast majority of athletes and coaches it still poses an insurmountable theoretical and practical problem, and this problem may be one of the main reasons for many athletes making resort to doping.

.References

1. Kazikov I.B. Sovremennaya sistema podgotovki rossiyskikh sportsmenov k uchastiyu v Igrakh Olimpiad (Modern Olympic training system for Russian athletes) / I.B. Kazikov. – Moscow: Fizkul'tura i sport, 2004. – 231 p.
2. 2. Fat'yanov I.A. Otsenka perspektiv povysheniya urovnya konkurentosposobnosti v marafonskom bege na krupneyshikh mezhdunarodnykh sorevnovaniyakh (Assessment of perspectives of marathon competitiveness level improvement during major international competitions) / V.P. Cherkashin // Sovremennye problemy nauki i obrazovaniya. – 2014. – № 1. – p. 8.
3. 3. Filimonova S.I. Metapredmetny podkhod: novy vzglyad na metodologiyu podgotovki sportsmenov v mnogoletnem protsesse (Metasubject approach: new approach to athletes' long-term training methodology) / G.N. Germanov, I.A. Sabirova // Teoriya i praktika fiz. kultury. – 2015. – № 1. – P. 100-101.

Corresponding author: professor091@rambler.ru

Abstract

Objective of the work was to analyze the elite athletes’ training process management efficiency. The official score sheets of the Olympic Games and World Championships were subject to analysis. The study showed that the elite athletes including the Olympic and World Champions and medal winners scored their personal best results in the top-ranking competitions of the season only in 50% of the cases for the last 15 years.

The elite athletes’ training process management efficiency was found far enough from its possible maximum – irrespective of the athletes’ nations of origin. This means that the opinion on the modern coaches being highly skilful and knowledgeable in the elite athletes’ training technologies and perfect in the athletes’ fitness control and management in the training process are not grounded enough in fact. Only a few very seldom cases may be found of some top-ranking athletes being prudently managed in their training process so that they repeatedly came to the main track and field events of a few seasons on peaks of their sport form (e.g. Usain Bolt). Therefore, prudent process management is possible albeit for a vast majority of athletes and coaches it still poses an insurmountable theoretical and practical problem, and this problem may be one of the main reasons for many athletes making resort to doping.