Strategies to Support Developing Talent

The high performance unit within the Swiss Federal Institute of Sports Magglingen (SFISM) is chartered with supporting talented athletes via its collective inputs to students, athletes, coaches and national sporting federations. This is achieved by drawing upon the multi-disciplinary expertise of practitioners in the areas of sports medicine, recovery and rehabilitation, training science, sports psychology, nutrition, endurance and power physiology, strength and conditioning, and data management. This critical mass of specialists provides opportunities to collaborate “broadly” across a specific talent theme (e.g. on what basis should we select future sporting talent?), as well as the provision of sufficient content expertise to provide “deeper” knowledge and insights related to these interdisciplinary discussions (e.g. how can we account for biological maturity?). Therefore, this paper presents an example of the “broad” interdisciplinary work undertaken by SFISM to improve talent selection, and the complementary “deep” work used to investigate biological maturation as one component of this process. New and ongoing projects will continue to harness the collective potential of the multidisciplinary experts to better understand the processes of talent identification, selection, and development at the broadest and deepest levels. Our collective ability to support Switzerland’s best and brightest talent will require us to maximise the considerable expertise of the many stakeholders which influence and impact on development

Association analysis of ACE and ACTN3 in Elite Caucasian and East Asian Swimmers

PURPOSE: Polymorphic variation in the angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) and alpha-actinin-3 (ACTN3) genes has been reported to be associated with endurance and/or power-related human performance. Our aim was to investigate whether polymorphisms in ACE and ACTN3 are associated with elite swimmer status in Caucasian and East Asian populations. METHODS: ACE I/D and ACTN3 R577X genotyping was carried out for 200 elite Caucasian swimmers from European, Commonwealth, Russian and American cohorts (short and middle distance, SMD ≤ 400 m, n = 130; long distance, LD greater than 400 m, n = 70) and 326 elite Japanese and Taiwanese swimmers (short distance, SD ≤ 100 m, n = 166; middle distance, MD: 200 - 400 m, n = 160). Genetic associations were evaluated by logistic regression and other tests accommodating multiple testing adjustment. RESULTS: ACE I/D was associated with swimmer status in Caucasians, with the D-allele being overrepresented in SMD swimmers under both additive and I-allele dominant models (permutation test p = 0.003 and p = 0.0005, respectively). ACE I/D was also associated with swimmer status in East Asians. In this group, however, the I-allele was overrepresented in the SD swimmer group (permutation test p = 0.041 and p = 0.0098 under the additive and the D-allele-dominant models, respectively). ACTN3 R577X was not significantly associated with swimmer status in either Caucasians or East Asians. CONCLUSIONS: ACE I/D associations were observed in these elite swimmer cohorts, with different risk alleles responsible for the associations in swimmers of different ethnicities. The functional ACTN3 R577X polymorphism did not show any significant association with elite swimmer status, despite numerous previous reports of associations with 'power/sprint' performance in other sports.Additional co-authors: Jason Gulbin, Viktor A. Rogozkin, Ildus I. Ahmetov, Nan Yang, Kathryn N. North, Saraslanidis Ploutarhos, Hugh E. Montgomery, Mark E.S. Bailey, and Yannis P. Pitsiladi

To be or not to be: an investigation into the factors affecting the development of athletes who have been identified through talent detection

The identification and development of talent for high performance sport is a complex and widely discussed issue. Athletes are typically identified from within the sport of interest (talent selection), and less commonly identified from outside the sport (talent detection) (Vaeyens, Lenoir, Williams & Philippaerts, 2008; Williams & Reilly, 2000). Despite the opportunities and efficiencies that talent detection can provide (Bullock, Gulbin, Martin, Ross, Holland & Marino, 2009), processes underpinning the identification and development of talent detection athletes and the viability of systemic talent detection programs have received modest attention within the scientific literature. Therefore, the aim of this study was to examine the characteristics of a successful talent detection program and to investigate why some talent detection athletes transition successfully into high performance sport, while others do not. A case study approach was adopted using flatwater kayakers detected through the Australian National Talent Identification and Development Program. Athletes were matched in pairs based on age, gender, sporting history, kayaking commencement date, training environment, and physical and physiological capacity. The key differentiating factor within each pair of athletes was their highest level of achievement in kayaking with one athlete reaching Australian team representation and the corresponding pair-matched athlete not progressing to the international level. Athletes and their coaches participated in semi-structured interviews and retrospective kayaking performance and physical testing data was used to complement interview findings. Procedures specific to thematic analysis were adopted to analyse the interview data while performance and testing data was analysed using the statistical package SPSS (version 17). Major themes relating to factors that facilitated and constrained the success of talent detected flatwater kayakers will be presented. Discussion will focus on concepts and recommendations to improve talent identification and development practices

Nachwuchsförderung und Talentselektion im Schweizer Fussball

Nachwuchsförderung und Talentselektion werden in der Schweiz als zentrale Komponente der Spitzensportförderung angesehen. In Zusammenarbeit des Bundesamts für Sport mit der Eidgenössischen Hochschule Magglingen ist es dem Schweizerischen Fußballverband gelungen, mit PISTE ein Talentselektionsinstrument in allen Altersstufen anzuwenden. Wir präsentieren einen „breiten“ interdisziplinären Ansatz am Beispiel der Nachwuchsförderung und Talentselektion im Fußball

ACTN3 Genotype Is Associated with Human Elite Athletic Performance

There is increasing evidence for strong genetic influences on athletic performance and for an evolutionary “trade-off” between performance traits for speed and endurance activities. We have recently demonstrated that the skeletal-muscle actin-binding protein α-actinin-3 is absent in 18% of healthy white individuals because of homozygosity for a common stop-codon polymorphism in the ACTN3 gene, R577X. α-Actinin-3 is specifically expressed in fast-twitch myofibers responsible for generating force at high velocity. The absence of a disease phenotype secondary to α-actinin-3 deficiency is likely due to compensation by the homologous protein, α-actinin-2. However, the high degree of evolutionary conservation of ACTN3 suggests function(s) independent of ACTN2. Here, we demonstrate highly significant associations between ACTN3 genotype and athletic performance. Both male and female elite sprint athletes have significantly higher frequencies of the 577R allele than do controls. This suggests that the presence of α-actinin-3 has a beneficial effect on the function of skeletal muscle in generating forceful contractions at high velocity, and provides an evolutionary advantage because of increased sprint performance. There is also a genotype effect in female sprint and endurance athletes, with higher than expected numbers of 577RX heterozygotes among sprint athletes and lower than expected numbers among endurance athletes. The lack of a similar effect in males suggests that the ACTN3 genotype affects athletic performance differently in males and females. The differential effects in sprint and endurance athletes suggests that the R577X polymorphism may have been maintained in the human population by balancing natural selection

Loss of IL-15 receptor α alters the endurance, fatigability, and metabolic characteristics of mouse fast skeletal muscles

IL-15 receptor α (IL-15Rα) is a component of the heterotrimeric plasma membrane receptor for the pleiotropic cytokine IL-15. However, IL-15Rα is not merely an IL-15 receptor subunit, as mice lacking either IL-15 or IL-15Rα have unique phenotypes. IL-15 and IL-15Rα have been implicated in muscle phenotypes, but a role in muscle physiology has not been defined. Here, we have shown that loss of IL-15Rα induces a functional oxidative shift in fast muscles, substantially increasing fatigue resistance and exercise capacity. IL-15Rα–knockout (IL-15Rα–KO) mice ran greater distances and had greater ambulatory activity than controls. Fast muscles displayed fatigue resistance and a slower contractile phenotype. The molecular signature of these muscles included altered markers of mitochondrial biogenesis and calcium homeostasis. Morphologically, fast muscles had a greater number of muscle fibers, smaller fiber areas, and a greater ratio of nuclei to fiber area. The alterations of physiological properties and increased resistance to fatigue in fast muscles are consistent with a shift toward a slower, more oxidative phenotype. Consistent with a conserved functional role in humans, a genetic association was found between a SNP in the IL15RA gene and endurance in athletes stratified by sport. Therefore, we propose that IL-15Rα has a role in defining the phenotype of fast skeletal muscles in vivo