Outliers in Irish Athletics

dna_leri

Anyone read the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell?

I have not (yet) but am interested in some of the reported theories.

Gladwell identifies that 70 percent of the Canadians in the National Hockey League were born in the first half of the calendar year. The reason given is that youth hockey programs initially accept all boys born in a given year and then select the best players for the best teams. Boys born just after the Jan. 1 cutoff date are older, and hence bigger and stronger, on average, than boys born later in the year. That makes them more likely to be selected for the elite teams, where they get the best coaching and play the most games, compounding their early advantage.

Gladwell calls this phenomenon the "Matthew Effect" after this Biblical passage: "For unto everyone that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance. But from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath." The effect allegedly occurs in many other sports around the world.

Having some involvement in juvenile athletics, I could see the possibility that this might happen here. So I had a look at some dates of birth (DOB) for Irish international male athletes, based on IAAF biographies published on the website.

There were 198 DOBs listed, some athletes have none listed. Of these 20 had the DOB 1st January - Eureka the Matthew effect! However that's just too unlikely, more likely that they did not have accurate DOB for these athletes and entered Jan1 as a default for the year.

If these 1st Jan DOBs are ignored, then we find that 25% of athletes were born in the first qtr of the year and 52% in the first half of the year - no Matthew effect there!

If we just take athletes born after 1979, which would include most of the current crop of elites, the picture is much the same: 24% in first 3 months and 48% in first 6 months. So there is no evidence for this phenomenon in Irish athletics and we don't get another reason to bash the AAI!

Any others have evidence or theories on this ?

BTW the best months to be born for athletes were January, November & June with over 20 in each. The worst month is September with only 7. The best dates to be born are 17 June and 3 Aug, with 3 athletes born on each of these.

thirtyfoot

I similar study was done on that Colin Jackson programme on BBC before the Olympics last summer. A large proportion of British olympic greats down the years have been born in winter as was Jackson.

BeepBeep67

Saw the BBC prog on Jackson - couldn't believe how little he ate during competition season for an explovise runner - less than 1k cals per day I think.

fleck

It all depends on under age cut off dates. For the community games it was july and that was the main competition for us at a very young age.

hunnymonster

I am a December birthday and my cousin a January. He was always running against kids up to a year younger than him, and me against kids up to a year older. I was (and still am) a short-stop so it made a huge difference when we were 9! I'm still bitter and twisted about it :-) Not sure how long the effect lasted though, I was winning stuff by the time I was a teenager so I guess it levels out pretty young?


Don't get me started on another cousin who was born on a saints day and never had to go to school on her birthday :-)