IT sounds crazy. Run like hell, leap onto a metal tray and hurtle head first down a winding, icy track at around 120 kilometres per hour. Anyone wanting to compete in the new Olympic sport of “skeleton” will clearly need a lot of nerve. But they may also require something else to win that elusive gold medal – the right kind of body. That is why talent scouts in Australia – a country not renowned for its snow and ice – are turning to science to help them pick athletes with the best chance of excelling at skeleton in the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy.
Such talent identification, or talent ID for short, can make all the difference to a country’s performance in elite sports. It relies on the fact that particular types of body suit particular sports. While sporting success obviously depends on more than physicality alone, a person’s height, weight and relative proportions can all make a difference. Communist countries such as China, the USSR and eastern bloc nations were the first to recognise this and actively seek out athletes with the right attributes. Today, sports scientists everywhere are turning to 3D measurements, body scanning and computer models. Australia pioneered the approach with a talent ID programme dating back to 1989. Now other countries including New Zealand, Japan and the UK are getting in on the act.
Talent ID works best in sports where build is crucial, such as rowing where a person’s height and reach are key. The sport of skeleton may also fit the bill because a fast start is crucial, meaning athletes who can develop leg power in the bent-over running position may have the edge. In mainstream sports, the scientific analysis of body proportions can complement the usual process of talent spotting by experienced coaches. But it really comes into its own in minority fields, where analysis can highlight individuals with the potential to go all the way. Sometimes, as in the skeleton trials, such analysis is used to identify key athletes who are already competing in one sport but would do well in another. At other times talent ID can direct promising youngsters into appropriate areas. Testing even has a role in team sports, ensuring players are playing in the position best suited to their skills. And it can help individual athletes optimise their training.
Advertisement
So how does it work? Tests on younger athletes – aged 12 years and upwards – are usually quite general. Researchers look at things like speed, endurance, height, weight and body proportions. In older athletes, the tests tend to reflect the needs of specific sports. The physics of certain sports make particular demands that are best met by different builds. To find out which traits are important, scientists compare the mean characteristics of athletes in a particular sport with those of the general population and with athletes from other disciplines. They also compare athletes of varying levels of achievement within the same sport as well as looking at how bodies have changed over time. It turns out that the key to fitting bodies to sports lies in four attributes: height, weight, limb length and body fat (see “Sporting bodies”).
“The physics of certain sports make particular demands that are best met by different builds”
The science of measuring these body proportions, or anthropometry, has moved on a bit since the days of tape measures and calipers. Today, researchers are increasingly using scanners that map the body surface and give them 3D images of an athlete’s shape These allow them to make much more extensive and precise measurements than before. They can calculate the cross-section of limbs to study muscle mass, for example, or work out the body’s surface area. “It gives you a much more sophisticated picture of the body,” says Tim Olds of the Centre for Applied Anthropometry at the University of South Australia in Underdale.
Some studies are broad ranging. Olds’s team, for example, uses 3D scans to measure body volume and estimate body density. This gives them a picture of an athlete’s body composition – how much body fat and muscle they have. Greg Whyte, director of science and research at the English Institute of Sport and his team have gone even further. They are peering inside the bodies of athletes to get an even more accurate picture of their body fat content using DEXA scanning, a form of X-ray scanning originally developed to assess bone density. The idea is to optimise body fat for each individual’s needs – a kind of bespoke body composition engineering.
Other studies focus on specific sports. Olds and his colleagues are using scans to work out the best posture a cyclist should adopt to minimise air resistance and drag. A second group at the Western Australian Institute of Sports in Claremont has scanned the body of a swimmer, to better model the dynamics of how the body flows through the water. Of course this approach will not guarantee star quality in an athlete. Skill, agility, decision-making and attitude all play a role and are very difficult to measure. In swimming, for example, the ill-defined quality of “aquatic feel” is essential. And in many sports including swimming, kids must start young to have the best chance of success, yet it is very hard to predict how their undeveloped bodies will mature.
Nevertheless, identifying the athletes most likely to succeed can provide a competitive edge and is especially crucial for countries with small populations. Australia has some 2.7 million 10 to 19-year-olds who form the pool of talent for the next generation of sports superstars. That sounds like quite a lot until you consider that the US has 41.7 million children of the same age group and China has a colossal 228 million. Big nations can afford to sit and wait for their Olympians to turn up – but not places like Australia. “It’s just not an option to let the cream rise to the top,” says Jason Gulbin, director of talent ID at the Australian Institute of Sport in the Australian Capital Territory.
Which is why, at the end of September, Gulbin and his AIS colleagues found themselves presiding over a talent-spotting camp testing 27 female athletes for their potential at skeleton. The women, all selected for their speed, scurried around pushing sleds while scientists observed their acceleration, power and posture. “We chose skeleton because it is a relatively new sport and a lot of countries out there are still trying to figure it out,” he says. It may be a tall order to prepare the athletes for the Turin Winter Olympics in 16 months, but Gulbin is spurred on by the news that the UK is getting its own team together for Vancouver in 2010. “Of course,” he quips, “if we can steal a march on the Poms, that makes it all a bit more motivating.”
Height of success
Sporting bodies
There are four key elements to sporting success:
HEIGHT: Male basketball players are a good 36 centimetres taller than the average man. Rowers, too benefit from being tall, as do swimmers, whose extra height gives them an advantage at the start, turn and finish, and means they need less power to travel a given distance. Lofty tennis players can deliver a sharper angle on their serves – a key factor in the modern game. But short people have the upper hand when it comes to acceleration and agility. They make good sprinters but can also excel at long-distance running because they generally have less weight to carry and can cool off more effectively because of their large surface area in relation to body volume. Short bodies and limbs are also easier to spin fast and flip through curves, which is why most gymnasts, figure skaters and ballet dancers are smaller than average.
WEIGHT: Massive athletes do best in throwing events and short duration events like sumo wrestling and super-heavyweight lifting – especially if that extra mass is largely muscle. While the average man weighs about 76 kilograms, sumo wrestlers can weigh as much as 263 kilograms. Vasily Alexyev, who set 80 weightlifting records in the 1970s and won Olympic gold twice, was a bruiser tipping the scales at more than 160 kilograms. Daintier athletes fare best at sports such as ultra-distance running and gymnastics, where their superior power to weight ratio gives them an advantage.
LIMB LENGTH: Long limbs act like long levers, especially if you have a short torso, giving rowers and swimmers a long stroke length. Gangly arms are good for catching the ball in water polo. They give you more reach if you are a boxer – although ideally, you will also have short legs to keep a low centre of gravity. But long arms are a disadvantage for sports needing strength, such as weightlifting. Having shorter levers – including short forearms – makes these sports easier because you lift a weight through a shorter distance.
BODY FAT: Too much fat is a handicap for most sports because it means an athlete is carrying extra weight that does not contribute to sporting performance. The only exception is in ultra-distance swimming where fat acts as a buoyancy aid and insulator. But some fat is essential for health, especially in women where too little fat is associated with losses in bone density and fertility. Elite athletes can keep a close eye on their body fat levels by measuring the thickness of folds of skin at various points over their bodies.