The aspects of sex, age and nationality in winter swimming performance
Zimmermann L, Knechtle B, Oppermann J, Seffrin A, Vancini RL, Barbosa de Lira CA, Gronek P, Hill L, Andrade MS
European review for medical and pharmacological sciences · 2 citations
Review labels
Neutral facts our review recorded about how this study was done. They describe method, never whether we like the result.
How it was studied
- Design
- Cross-sectional study (classified by our AI screen)
- Studied in
- People
- Main outcome
- Health markers and function
Who paid for it
- Funding
- Funding not disclosed
Publication
- Published
- 2022-05-01 · Eur Rev Med Pharmacol Sci · vol. 26 · issue 10 · pp. 3469–3482
- Publisher
- National Institutes of Health
- Cited
- 4 citations · more than 65% of similar papers · 0.6× the field average
- References
- 0 works
- Access
- Open access (repository copy) · CC-BY-SA
- Research areas
- Winter Sports Injuries and Performance · Sports Performance and Training · Physical Education and Training Studies
- Keywords
- Demography, Nationality, Athletes, Age groups, China, Han nationality, Geography, Psychology, Medicine, Biology, Immigration, Physical therapy, Sociology
- MeSH
- humans, water, swimming, adolescent, adult, female, male, athletic performance, young adult, athletes, ethnicity
9 authors
From CH
- L ZimmermannUniversity Hospital Zurich
- B Knechtle
- J Oppermann
- Aldo Seffrin
- R L Vancini
- Claudio André Barbosa de Lira
Abstract
Objective
Winter swimming is a new sport discipline. Very little is known, however, about the sex differences, origin, participation and performance of the world's best winter swimmers. Therefore, the study aimed to investigate sex differences in performance and age. Furthermore, it should be determined which country has the fastest swimmers, the highest numbers of participants and the most successful age group athletes in winter swimming.
Subjects and methods
A total of 6,477 results from the 25 m events of the IWSA (International Winter Swimming Association) World Cups from 2016-2020 was collected from the official website of IWSA. Data were analyzed using a generalized linear model (GLM) with a gamma probability distribution and identity link function. The 25 m events were carried out in head-up breaststroke style, freestyle and butterfly. The nationalities were grouped into six groups, the five nationalities with the highest number of participants in the 25 m competitions and one group with the other nationalities. The mean time of 25 m races by sex and country of the total sample was compared. For the top 10 comparisons, the best ten athletes from the six groups were selected. The mean time of each top 10 groups was compared by sex and nationality.
Results
Men were faster than women for all categories. Swimmers in age group 15-29 years were the fastest, where females were the fastest in age group 15-19 years and males in age group 20-29 years. Women from both Russia and Estonia and men from both Russia and China were the fastest. Both Russian and Chinese males were the fastest in all water categories in the top 10 section in the 25 m events.
Conclusions
In summary, males were faster than females in the IWSA World Cups between 2016 and 2020. The age group of 15-29 years old athletes was the most successful while females had their age of peak performance earlier than males. Russian and Estonian males and Russian females were the overall fastest in the 25 m events in all water categories. Future studies should investigate the optimal anthropometric characteristics of male and female winter swimming sprint athletes and whether there are distinct areas in Russia, Estonia and China, where many international winter swimming athletes originate.
Abstract via Europe PMC. Copyright remains with the authors or publisher.
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