Endurance in speed skating: The development of world records

Abstract

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The growing problem of comparing elite sport performances: The Olympic speed skating case

“…Figure 1 shows the progress of the world records on the classical distances, measured in r-times, for both male and female skaters. The steep declines in the graphs are mainly due to technological innovations and, although to a lesser extent, to rink improvements; see Kuper, Sterken [10].…”

“…These factors are called skater specific improvements. Also the fact that talented skaters are now recognized much earlier and accompanied to the top much better than before (see [10]) has resulted in an increase in the size of the talent pool. Figure 2 shows the increase in the number of active skaters world-wide on international top tournaments.…”

“…This new skate led to significant improvements in almost all personal and world records; see Houdijk et al [7]. The effect of the klap skate on world records is discussed in Kuper and Sterken [10], where the world records in 2006 are predicted based on the gains in the first years after the introduction. All predictions turned out to be too pessimistic, meaning that the effect of the klap skate appears to have been underestimated.…”

“…Our model should take care of the property that the skating times cannot decrease indefinitely (e.g., to negative values), but should converge to some lower asymp-tote. A similar problem is faced in Kuper and Sterken [10], where the purpose is to find a number of suitable candidate functions for fitting the development of world records over time. The authors use statistical regression based on biological growth models, namely the Exponential, the Weibull, and the Gompertz curves; see Table 3.…”

“…Of course, since technology, circumstances, and competition level have changed over time, the question of how athletes from the past would thrive in the current environment is not simple to answer directly. The results of such a comparison can be used, among others, to rank baseball players from different eras [1], or to determine potential future world records in speed skating [10].…”