Performance trends in Paralympic athletes in sprint, middle-distance and endurance events

Abstract

In recent decades the participation in Paralympic sports has grown exponentially, with an increasing number of countries and athletes attending to these events. However, despite the tremendous growth, only a few studies involving the performance of Paralympic athletes have been published to date. We aimed to investigate and compare the performance trends of men and women in category T54 from sprint, middle-distance and endurance events in Paralympic international events held from 2009 to 2018. Data were extracted from the publicly available IPC database (https://www.paralympic.org/). The male and female athletes in the Paralympic category T54 of the sprints, middle distance and endurance made up the sample. Final analysis included a total of 2097 men and 940 women (n = 3037). The comparison between men and women showed statistical differences in performance with men being faster in all sprint and middle-distance events (p < 0.05). For the endurance events, men are faster in 5000 m, half marathon and marathon (p < 0.05), but there is no statistical difference between men and women in the 10,000 m event (p > 0.05). Linear regression showed differences between men and women in the performance trends from 2009 to 2018 in the sprint, middle-distance and endurance events (p < 0.05). In conclusion, men are faster than women in sprint, middle-distance and endurance Paralympic athletics events. In spite of performance has not improved over the last decade, the performance is distinctly correlated with age in the sprint and middle-distance events (younger and faster) and endurance events (older and faster).

Performance of Athletes With Visual Impairment in Track-and-Field Events at the Paralympic Games, From 1988 to 2016

“…Men had better performances than women, confirming results from other studies in both sports with and without disabilities (de Macedo et al, 2020; Thibault et al, 2010). Our results also show that the track-and-field performance level was related to the level of visual impairment in male athletes.…”

“…One of the few studies on this subject (Grobler et al, 2015) showed a progression of sprint performances (100 and 200 m finals) of athletes with disabilities (visual impairments, amputations, and cerebral palsy) between 1992 and 2012, which largely surpassed the progression of Olympic athletes. More recently, a study focused on the performance of Paralympic athletes from the category T54 (wheelchair competitors or those with spinal cord injuries) concluded that there were no significant changes in their performance between 2009 and 2018 in sprint, middle- and long-distance events (de Macedo et al, 2020).…”

The COVID-19 pandemic impact on the best performers in athletics and swimming among paralympic and non-disabled athletes

“…Exceptional performances are limited by physiological and genetic conditions, economic and environmental contexts and a participant population mostly consisting of athletes with optimized traits 13 . For Paralympic athletes, according to some disciplines, events and classifications, performance has increased slightly or not significantly over the past few years in Track & Field 19,20 and Para swimming 21 . An overall trend for improved Paralympic sprint performances in athletes with lower-limb amputations since 1992 to 2012 was observed with a consequent role played by runningspecific prostheses 22 .…”

Analyzing Intra-Cycle Velocity Profile and Trunk Inclination during Wheelchair Racing Propulsion

“…Performance in WheelChair Racing (WCR) has greatly improved since the emergence of this sport in the 1950s [ 1 ] due to its professionalization and to the technological improvements in wheelchair design and manufacturing [ 2 ]. However, this trend has slowed drastically over the past decade to the point that no significant improvement in performance has been observed between 2009 and 2018 [ 3 ]. Performance in WCR can be defined as the time required to complete a given distance, making the evolution of manual wheelchair (MWC) speed during the race the main outcome parameter to study.…”