Abstract:

The aim of this study is to investigate the influence of the Relative Age Effects (RAE) between the categories in 4,298 swimmers, including men=178, women=105, men=1,298, women=1,190 in the stars 13-15 age category, men=655.4298 (male:2404, female:1894) licensed swimmers has participated on this study. The birth age and gender of the swimmers and the 50 m freestyle swimming technique competition degrees (in seconds) swimming in the Olympic pool were examined. The swimmers have been categorised as quarterly year (QY) and half year (HY) depending on where their birth month landed through out the year. It covers the months of QY1 (January, February, March), QY2 (April, May, June), QY3 (July, August, September), QY4 (October, November, December) and HY1 (January, February, March, April, May, June), HY2 (July, August, September, October, November, December). According to these quarter and half periods, the swimming degrees and birth months of the swimmers were compared. The data analysis has been done by using the SPSS 22 Program. One-way variance analysis (One-Way ANOVA) for the analysis of the interpreter performance difference (One-Way ANOVA) and the detection of swimmers between the distribution of the birthdates were used to determine the chi-square (X2) test. The degree of significance p <0.05 has been adopted.Results of the study found the presence of RAE in children and young swimmers in Turkey but there is no effect on the master category (40-44 years old). This suggests that the is more effective on the young age groups. The RAE should be considered when the candidates are selected for the teams.

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