What do we really know about elite athlete development? Limitations and gaps in current understanding

The last few decades have seen a considerable increase in research attention to issues related to talent identification, skill acquisition, early sport specialisation and ‘safe’ athlete development.1 2 In parallel, those working in high-performance sport are regularly tasked with creating evidence-based policies to inform both injury prevention and sports performance programmes for developing athletes.3 4 Several recent reviews have emphasised the limitations and gaps in our understanding of these processes.1 3 Not recognising these gaps undermines the complexity of what athletes, practitioners and other stakeholders manage in their daily environments. In this article, we emphasise five key research limitations that destabilise the evidence base regarding elite athlete development and discuss the associated clinical implications.

Difficulties in prospective tracking of athletes across the considerable time frame required for athlete development means that much of the long-term, developmental evidence in this area comes from retrospective designs. However, because it focuses on those who emerge at the end of the athlete development pathway, this type of research design limits our understanding to those who were able to ‘survive’ the system (akin to a ‘healthy worker effect’).5 This design tells us nothing about why athletes leave the elite …

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