In a recent communication, Van Damme et al (1) presented a statistical analysis of the performance of world-ranked decathletes, and made inferences about the ability of these athletes to respond uniformly to the demands of the ten events in the decathlon. Their argument was based on an interpretation of the negative correlation in a sample of 600 world-ranked decathletes between the best performance in an event and the overall performance. They used the principle of allocation (2) to argue that excellence in one task may only be attained at the expense of average performance in all other tasks. We present here a complementary view. We considered the 92 decathletes who competed in the last five Olympic games. For this elite sub-sample we found an opposite result to that of Van Damme et al (1): to compete successfully at this level, a uniform, relatively high performance in all individual disciplines is required. KEYWORDS: decathletes, principle of allocation, Olympic Games, performance, elite In a recent paper, Van Damme et al [1] presented a correlation from which they argued that for world-ranked decathletes, increased performance in one task may impede performance in others. Complementing the principle of allocation [2] where excellence in one task can only be attained at the expense of average performance in all other tasks, Van Damme et al [1] found that when analysis of world-ranked decathletes, i.e. decathletes of comparable standards, was conducted, trade-offs became evident between certain traits. Performances in 100m (metres) were found to correlate negatively with speed over 1500m for those athletes scoring over 8000 points (generally accepted as the standard for world class decathletes). They noted that there were contradictions in their results, namely those outliers in their scatterplot that skewed results, thus creating a more severe negative correlation between mean overall performance and maximal performance in a particular discipline. These contradictions may have been caused by differences in the 'general standard' of athletes, masking trade-off effects when the entire population of world class decathletes was analysed. It is unclear whether there existed strong correlations between scoring in different events, or between specialist and uniformly-scoring decathletes. Our approach to this research question is that these 'differences' are deemed negligible through analysis of that sub-group of elite world-class decathletes who have competed in the last five Olympic Games. Performances of these 92 Olympic decathletes have been used to determine how and where points are won by individuals of comparable athletic abilities. Cox & Dunn [3] recently argued that the decathlon should not be biased towards any one event or any group of events such as field events. The athlete who excels at only the long or high jumps should not be more likely to win a decathlon than an athlete who excels at the 100m or 400m, i.e. the points advantage for a top athlete over the other competitors should not favour any particular event or group of events. Anecdotally, decathletes are frequently described as being sprinter/jumper types, or thrower/pole vaulter types, roughly grouping speed and skill levels. Ward et al [4] assessed the validity of grouping such abilities by asking whether it is possible, knowing the performance in one discipline, with a small error, to determine the performance in some other event. Using data from the 5 Olympic Games from 1984 to 2000, they developed a scatterplot matrix for the decathlon, showing the correlation, if any, between disciplines. Highest correlations were found to exist between the discus and shot-put (0.58), 100m and 110metre hurdles (0.54), 100m and long jump (0.48), and 100m and 400m (0.53). Whilst, physiologically and biomechanically, there may be an argument supporting excellence in a group of related events, (natural selection; principle of allocation [2] ) the correlation between this physiological constitution and overall performance in a decathlon event, specifically for Olympic level athletes,
Kenny et al. REF argue that excellence in any individual event at the decathlon competitions may be achieved at the expense of finishing the whole competition with a poorer overall standing.
Determinants of Success in the Olympic Decathlon: Some Statistical Evidence
Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports
Mathematics