This paper develops a method to determine if the United States’ Olympic sports program is improving on an individual sport basis. In addition, the probabilistic likelihood of a U.S. Olympic sports team reaching the medal podium was investigated. The research presented in this paper focuses on U.S. Men’s Ice Hockey (a head-to-head sport), ...

The aim of this work is to determine functional dimorphism (F(max)Nd/DoHG(iso)) and model characteristics at maximal isometric hand grip force (F(max)HG(iso)) in top level female athletes. 275 top level female athletes were tested from Taekwondo, Synchronised Swimming, Track and field, Table tennis, Volleyball, Karate, Skiing, Handball, well-trained students (students of the Academy for Crimina...

A prevailing theory (and practical application) is that elite performance requires early childhood skill development and training across various domains, including sport. Debate continues whether children specializing early (ie, training/competition in a single sport) have true advantage compared with those who sample various sports early and specialize in a single sport later (adolescence). Re...

For the determination of ground reaction forces in alpine skiing, pressure insole (PI) systems and portable force plate (FP) systems are well known and widely used in previous studies. The purposes of this study were 1) to provide reference data for the vertical component of the ground reaction forces (vGRF) during alpine skiing measured by the PI and FP systems, and 2) to analyze whether the d...

Everyone with an interest in the history of sport or of sports medicine is familiar with the story of Dorando Pietri, the man who was first across the finishing line in the Olympic marathon at the 1908 games held in London, but who was subsequently disqualified for receiving assistance. Figure 1 shows Pietri being attended to after he collapsed on the track a few hundred yards short of the fini...