Sex differences in youth elite swimming

English version

Autoři: Jonathon W. Senefeld ^aff001; Andrew J. Clayburn ^aff001; Sarah E. Baker ^aff001; Rickey E. Carter ^aff002; Patrick W. Johnson ^aff002; Michael J. Joyner ^aff001
Působiště autorů: Department of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, United States of America ^aff001; Department of Health Sciences Research, Mayo Clinic, Jacksonville, Florida, United States of America ^aff002
Vyšlo v časopise: PLoS ONE 14(11)
Kategorie: Research Article
prolekare.web.journal.doi_sk: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0225724

Souhrn

Background

The timing and magnitude of sex differences in athletic performance during early human development, prior to adulthood, is unknown.

Objective

To compare swimming velocity of boys and girls for all Olympic-length freestyle swimming events to determine the age of divergence in swimming performance.

Methods

We collected the all-time top 100 U.S. freestyle swimming performance times of boys and girls age 5 to 18 years for the 50m to 1500m events.

Results

Swimming performance improved with increasing age for boys and girls (p<0.001) until reaching a plateau, which initiated at a younger age for girls (15 years) than boys (17 years; sex×age; p<0.001). Prior to age 10, the top 5 swimming records for girls were 3% faster than the top boys (p<0.001). For the 10^th-50^th places, however, there were no sex-related differences in swimming performance prior to age 10 (p = 0.227). For both the top 5 and 10^th-50^th places, the sex difference in performance increased from age 10 (top 5, 2.5%; 10^th-50^th places, 1.0%) until age 17 (top 5, 7.6%; 10^th-50^th places, 8.0%). For all places, the sex difference in performance at age 18 was larger for sprint events (9.6%; 50-200m) than endurance events (7.1%; 400-1500m; p<0.001). Additionally, the sex-related difference in performance increased across age and US ranking from 2.4% for 1^st place to 4.3% for 100^th place (p<0.001), indicating less depth of performance in girls than boys. However, annual participation was ~20% higher in girls than boys for all ages (p<0.001).

Conclusion

The top 5 girls demonstrated faster swimming velocities and the 10^th-50^th place girls demonstrated similar swimming velocities than boys (until ~10 years). After age 10, however, boys demonstrated increasingly faster swimming velocities than girls until 17 years. Collectively, these data suggest girls are faster, or at least not slower, than boys prior to the performance-enhancing effects of puberty.

Klíčová slova:

Hemoglobin – Age groups – Androgens – Testosterone – Sports – Human performance – Swimming – Puberty

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