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Sports Medicine
Published in: Sports Medicine 8/2016

Open Access 01-08-2016 | Review Article

The Great British Medalists Project: A Review of Current Knowledge on the Development of the World’s Best Sporting Talent

Authors: Tim Rees, Lew Hardy, Arne Güllich, Bruce Abernethy, Jean Côté, Tim Woodman, Hugh Montgomery, Stewart Laing, Chelsea Warr

Published in: Sports Medicine | Issue 8/2016

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Abstract

The literature base regarding the development of sporting talent is extensive, and includes empirical articles, reviews, position papers, academic books, governing body documents, popular books, unpublished theses and anecdotal evidence, and contains numerous models of talent development. With such a varied body of work, the task for researchers, practitioners and policy makers of generating a clear understanding of what is known and what is thought to be true regarding the development of sporting talent is particularly challenging. Drawing on a wide array of expertise, we address this challenge by avoiding adherence to any specific model or area and by providing a reasoned review across three key overarching topics: (a) the performer; (b) the environment; and (c) practice and training. Within each topic sub-section, we review and calibrate evidence by performance level of the samples. We then conclude each sub-section with a brief summary, a rating of the quality of evidence, a recommendation for practice and suggestions for future research. These serve to highlight both our current level of understanding and our level of confidence in providing practice recommendations, but also point to a need for future studies that could offer evidence regarding the complex interactions that almost certainly exist across domains.
Footnotes
1
Studies of genuinely world-class (i.e. super-elite) athletes are under-represented in sport. At the same time, definitions of ‘elite’ athletes in research vary widely, from regional juniors (non-elite athletes, according to our definitions) through to Olympic gold medal winners (super-elite athletes). As well as attempting to clarify these distinctions, our reasoning for differentiating super-elite from merely elite athletes was the appreciation that there may be subtle yet fundamental differences between athletes who reach international level and those who achieve Gold at Olympic or world level. Such differences would be of great importance and relevance to sporting organizations, tasked with the role of converting elite performers into world’s best.
 
2
The GRADE system may be used for rating quality of evidence in reviews and guidelines and grading strength of recommendations. The system classifies the quality of evidence into one of four levels: high, moderate, low and very low. Because randomized controlled trials (regarded as the highest rating within the GRADE system) over multiple years are rarely possible in elite sport, we re-calibrated the quality and strength of research evidence by effectively inflating GRADE quality ratings by one point.
 
3
Our reviews were based on non-exhaustive literature reviews (using Web of Science and Google Scholar in combination with UK Sport’s archives, and the authors’ personal archives). Indeed, many unpublished reports that we considered could not have been considered in a systematic review. Thus, the conclusions are our criterion-based judgments, which we believe aligns with Sports Medicine’s mission to provide an authoritative, balanced, comprehensive, fully referenced and critical review of the literature.
 
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Metadata
Title
The Great British Medalists Project: A Review of Current Knowledge on the Development of the World’s Best Sporting Talent
Authors
Tim Rees
Lew Hardy
Arne Güllich
Bruce Abernethy
Jean Côté
Tim Woodman
Hugh Montgomery
Stewart Laing
Chelsea Warr
Publication date
01-08-2016
Publisher
Springer International Publishing
Published in
Sports Medicine / Issue 8/2016
Print ISSN: 0112-1642
Electronic ISSN: 1179-2035
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s40279-016-0476-2

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