From Oxford to Hawaii Ecophysiological Barriers Limit Human Progression in Ten Sport Monuments Fran c¸ois-Denis Desgorces1,2*, Geoffroy Berthelot1, Nour El Helou1, Vale´ rie Thibault1, Marion Guillaume 1 , Muriel Tafflet3, Olivier Hermine1,2,4, Jean-Franc¸ ois Toussaint1,2,5 1 IRMES, Institut de Recherche Me´dicale et d’Epide´miologie du Sport, INSEP, Paris, France, 2 Universite´ Paris Descartes, Paris, France, 3 INSERM U909, universite´ Paris Descartes, IFR 69 Paris Sud Universite´, Villejuif, France, 4 Service d’he´matologie H oˆpital Necker and CNRS UMR 8147, Paris, France, 5 CIMS, H oˆtel-Dieu, Assistance Publique - H oˆpitaux de Paris, Paris, France Abstract In order to understand the determinants and trends of human performance evolution, we analyzed ten outdoor events among the oldest and most popular in sports history. Best performances of the Oxford-Cambridge boat race (since 1836), the channel crossing in swimming (1875), the hour cycling record (1893), the Elfstedentocht speed skating race (1909), the cross country ski Vasaloppet (1922), the speed ski record (1930), the Streif down-hill in Kitzb u¨hel (1947), the eastward and westward sailing transatlantic records (1960) and the triathlon Hawaii ironman (1978) all follow a similar evolutive pattern, best described through a piecewise exponential decaying model (r2 = 0.9560.07). The oldest events present highest progression curvature during their early phase. Performance asymptotic limits predicted from the model may be achieved in fourty years (2049632 y). Prolonged progression may be anticipated in disciplines which further rely on technology such as sailing and cycling. Human progression in outdoor sports tends to asymptotic limits depending on physiological and environmental parameters and may temporarily benefit from further technological progresses. Citation: Desgorces F-D, Berthelot G, El Helou N, Thibault V, Guillaume M, et al. (2008) From Oxford to Hawaii Ecophysiological Barriers Limit Human Progression in Ten Sport Monuments. PLoS ONE 3(11): e3653. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0003653 Editor: Alejandro Lucia, Universidad Europea de Madrid, Spain Received August 28, 2008; Accepted October 14, 2008; Published November 5, 2008 Copyright: 2008 Desgorces et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Funding: The authors have no support or funding to report. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. * E-mail: Francois.Desgorces@univ-paris5.fr Introduction World records (WR) highlight the progression of human performance. Our group recently analyzed WR from 5 measur- able Olympic disciplines and demonstrated a major global fading in WR progression following a piecewise exponential decaying pattern [1]. Track and field, weight lifting or swimming competitions take place in a finite context with standardization of competitive fields, controlled environmental factors and major influence of physiological capacity on performance whereas outdoor sports are usually considered to be more influenced by environmental conditions, material or technical constraints. Therefore, outdoor events among the oldest and most popular have been ignored by previous studies that have analyzed human performance evolution [1,2]. Performance depends on trainable variables (related to physiology, psychology, biomechanics, tactics) and other factors beyond the athlete’s control (genetics, environment, climatic conditions) [3]. Environmental factors may modify results according to the discipline rules, mobility milieu (snow, ice, water, air), motion type (running, cycling, skiing, swimming) or duration of the event. As a result, International Federation of Rowing Associations, as well as other federations do not provide world records, though events ‘‘best times’’ are available [4]. We hypothesized that performance evolution of outdoor sports events would also follow a piecewise exponential decaying pattern. Materials and Methods Ten outdoor events among the most popular in the world, performed in non motorized sports and presenting large variations in duration, longevity, competitive circumstances and frequency were analysed (Table 1). The Oxford-Cambridge rowing race is challenged since 1829, with an unchanged course against the streams of the Thames from ‘‘Putney to Mortlake’’ since 1845 [5,6]. The Vasaloppet is a Swedish long distance cross-country skiing race held on the first Sunday of March between the village of Sa¨len and town of Mora for 90 km [6,7]. Since 1909 the speed skating race ‘‘Elfstedentocht’’ takes place in the canals of the Dutch Friesland when ice freezes over the 200 km route around Leeuwarden [6,8]. The record of transatlantic crew sailing eastward from New-York ‘‘Ambrose Light’’ tower to English ‘‘Lizard Point’’ (5417 km) was first set by Charlie Barr’s crew in 1905 but the record has only been challenged for a few decades starting with Eric Tabarly [6,9]. The oldest solo ocean race is challenged sailing transatlantic westward every four years from Plymouth to New England (Newport or Boston, orthodromic track: 5185 km) starting with Sir Francis Chichester in 1960 [6,9]. The speed ski record is challenged since 1930 in varied places (Portillo, Chile; Silverton, USA; Les Arcs, France) and determined in a timing zone 100 meters long [6,10]. The hour cycling record is accounted as firstly challenged outdoor in Paris since 1876 and registered by the International Cyclist Union (ICU) and the PLoS ONE | www.plosone.org 1 November 2008 | Volume 3 | Issue 11 | e3653