The frequency and performance trends of European countries in the U18 and U20 rankings for 1500 m and 3000 m between 2009-2020

Abstract

We purpose to determine the nationality of the European middle-distance athletes under 18 years (U18) and under 20 years (U20) during the last decade, to verify the participation trend for each country, and to assess whether the place of competition can be associated with the athletes ranking position. The sample comprised 902 European male runners, ranked among the best finishers from 2009 to 2020. The athletes were divided into two categories (n_U18 ​= ​266; and n_U20 ​= ​636) of two distances (n_{1 500 ​m} ​= ​397; n_{3 000 ​m} ​= ​505). The Mantel test was used for participation trend and the Chi-square test (χ²) was used to verify differences between the ranking position and the place of competition. For both distances, the highest number of athletes were from Spain (n = 127), followed by Turkey (n = 62) and Great Britain (n = 50). No significant trends were shown for most of the countries, in both distances. A positive trend was shown for Slovenia (i.e., 3000 ​m) over the years. A non-significant association was verified between the countries and the ranking position, as non-significant differences were proved for the place of competition. This information may be useful to guide athlete development programs in each country.

Keywords

Young athletes / Track and field / Middle-distance / Performance

Funding

The authors declare that no funds, grants, or other support were received during the preparation of this manuscript.

Submission statement

Our work submitted has not been published previously, is not under consideration for publication elsewhere, its publication is approved by all authors and tacitly or explicitly by the responsible authorities where the work was carried out, and, if accepted, it will not be published elsewhere including electronically in the same form, in English or in any other language, without the written consent of the copyright holder.

Data availability

Datasets analyzed during the current study are available in the https://european-athletics.com/historical-data/top-list/season.

Authors’ contribution

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by Mabliny Thuany and Thayse Natacha Gomes. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Mabliny Thuany and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Ethical approval

The institutional review board of St Gallen, Switzerland, approved this study (EKSG 01/06/2010). Since the study involved the analysis of publicly available data, the requirement for informed consent was waived.

Conflict of interest

Beat Knechtle is an Editorial Board Member for Sports Medicine and Health Science and was not involved in the editorial review or the decision to publish this article. The authors have no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose.

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