Has Covid-19 pandemic influenced the performance of top-class triathletes in the Sprint and Olympic dis-tance of the ITU World Triathlon Championship Series?

Abstract

The ITU World Triathlon Championship Series (WTS) is the top championship for triathlon in Sprint (SPD) and Olympic distance (OD). The influence of COVID-pandemic on triathlon is not yet clear. The aim of the present study is to provide a comprehensive analysis of the effect of COVID-19 pandemic on performance in the WTS focusing on male and female categories and the SPD and OD. The Student's t-test for independent samples comparing sex and distances was used for normal variables, whereas the Mann-Whitney U-test was used for non-normal variables. The analysis of the OD revealed significant changes in all the studied variables for either sex. In this distance, men improved more in cycling performance and final performance than women (p values ˂0.001). The SPD displayed significant changes in performance in most of the analyzed variables. In this distance, men showed greater change values in swimming and cycling performance (p values ˂0.001) whereas women showed them in running performance (p value ˂0.001). The analysis of relative changes across the different distances revealed important significant differences in almost all variables. The variable with a larger effect size was the final performance (3.728; 12.605; 3.006). In overall, SPD shows better values of changes than OD in swimming, running performance and first transition phase (p values ˂0.001; ˂0.001; 0.001) but it is on the way around for the cycling and running performance (p values ˂0.001). These results suggest that triathletes participating in WTS in both sexes were able to not only maintain but also improve their final performance level despite COVID-19 pandemic. Keywords: SARS-CoV-2, World Championship, swimming, cycling, running, transition.