Author(s): TOYODA, T., KIYOHIDE, A., AKI, A., Institution: NIHON UNIVERSITY, Country: JAPAN, Abstract-ID: 1862

INTRODUCTION:
The world's top track and field athletes regard the Olympic Games as the most important competition and aim to deliver their peak performance. In order to perform at the highest level in the competition, it is essential to attain "sport form ".
The Olympic Games have been held every four years. However, due to the COVID-19, the Tokyo Olympics cycle and the Paris Olympics were changed. These changes may have influenced athletes' performance of the Games.
The purpose of this study was to clarify the effects of varying Olympic cycles on competitive performance.
METHODS:
Performance of long jump and high jump at the Rio de Janeiro, Tokyo, and Paris Olympic Games were analyzed.
"Performance Achievement Rate," "Peak Appearance Rate," were compared between each Olympics.
The data used in this study will be obtained from the World Athletics official website.
RESULTS:
Regarding the performance achievement rate, the two-way ANOVA revealed no significant interaction for either men or women. However, a significant main effect of event was observed.
Post hoc multiple comparisons showed that, for both men and women, the high jump demonstrated a significantly higher Performance Achievement Rate than the long jump.
Regarding the Peak Appearance Rate, men’s results showed a significant difference between the Rio de Janeiro and Paris Olympic Games, whereas no significant differences in women.
CONCLUSION:
The Olympic cycles were no effect on performances at the Olympics.
In this study, athletes who competed in the Olympics were defined as world-class athletes. However, previous studies focused on finalists or medalists (Fujimitsu, 2013; Sugibayashi, 2009). Therefore, when focusing on finalists or medalists, the performance achievement is expected to be higher.
Focused on the Jumping events, they are combination movements consisting of running and jumping. Although long jump and high jump have the similar fundamental movement structures, they can be classified the “absolute speed–strength type” and the “relative speed–strength type” when focusing on physical fitness elements Aoyama, 2022). Previous research has reported a long jump need to high approach speed (Kariyama et al., 2011). Athletes with “generalization of tension” causes speed impairment. In contrast, in the high jump, the generalization of tension is less likely to occur. Thus, high jumpers could be achieved more stable level of competitive performance.

In track and field jumping events, variations in the duration of the Olympic cycle did not influence competitive performance at the Olympic Games.
However, even within the same category of jumping events, differences were observed in the level of competitive performance at the Olympic Games between the “absolute speed–strength type” and the “relative speed–strength type” as classified by Aoyama (2022).
Therefore, when evaluating the performance of jumping events, it may be necessary to distinguish between the absolute speed–strength type and the relative speed–strength type.