Sport talent identification and development (TI and TD) in youth continues to attract strong interest among coaches, sport scientists and sport administrators. TI for sport in youth with the anticipation of future elite level sport achievement is both an art and a science, and is strongly influenced by within athlete and extraneous-to-athlete factors (ecosystem of support or the lack of). The returns from investment on current TI and TD models of sport in youth are subpar in that few continue in the sport to achieve podium positions at the elite sport level in adulthood. Why, where and how one succeeds in sport, and what that success means to the athlete and stakeholders are dependent on the culture and context of the country. We advocate harnessing the power of sport to help in youth development, to be holistic in its nurturance, to allow for individual idiosyncratic expressions of the athletes, to provide for talent transfer across sport, and to facilitate key stakeholders to 'join' hands to work for the common interest and understanding for as many youth and adults so as to provide them with opportunities through support and coaching to compete at the different levels of competition in sport. Governments, policy makers and administrators of sport must decide, within their specific circumstances, if TI and TD in sport in youth is serving a meaningful purpose and is a viable return on investment; in short, is it mission possible or is it… a quest for the Holy Grail for a podium finish in elite level sport competition?

The results of the research indicate varying effects of naps between sport-specific performance measures. Napping had no effect on shooting performance while a negative effect existed in 20-m sprint performance, potentially due to sleep inertia. Considering these findings, some caution is warranted when advocating naps for adolescent athletes.

Adolescents are predisposed to poorer quality of sleep and experience shortened sleep durations, with these trends being more pronounced amongst Asians. Even though sleep is crucial for athletic recovery, there is a dearth of literature on the sleep patterns of Asian adolescent athletes. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of different intensities of sports training on sleep patterns in adolescent athletes, and to describe novel sleep data and daytime sleepiness amongst Asian adolescents who were high-level athletes. Those athletes (age 14.8 ± 0.9 years) in higher-intensity sports showed significantly more deep sleep, less light sleep and wake time after sleep onset. Actigraphically determined bedtimes and waketimes were significantly delayed on weekends, when mean total sleep time was also significantly longer. There was a large effect for an increased daytime sleepiness in high-intensity sport athletes. These findings highlight the phenomenon of social jet lag in Asian adolescent student-athletes.

There was a negative impact of sleep debt on student-athletes' psychomotor performance.

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