Sports Engineering Research Group, Sport & Physical Activity Research Centre, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, UK.
Department of Sport, Exercise & Rehabilitation, Faculty of Health and Life Sciences, Northumbria University, Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK.
Eur J Sport Sci. 2023 May;23(5):693-702. doi: 10.1080/17461391.2022.2069513. Epub 2022 May 22.
In short-track speed skating, tactical positioning is essential for success as the race format (head-to-head) prioritises finishing position over finishing time. At present, our understanding of this phenomenon is based on measuring the similarity between athletes' intermediate and final rankings. However, as this approach groups athlete performances across races, each lap's estimate of tactical importance ignores the athlete-opponent interactions specific to each race. Here, we examine the utility of race-specific athlete-opponent interactions for investigating tactical positioning. Using intermediate and final rankings of elite 1,000 m short-track speed skating competitors collected from 2010/11-2017/18 (n = 6,196, races = 1,549), we compared the current method to a novel approach that accounted for race-specific athlete-opponent interactions. This approach first applied the current method to each race independently before using these values to form (1) discrete, empirical distributions of each lap's tactical importance and (2) race-specific tactical positioning sequences. Our results showed that accounting for race-specific athlete-opponent interactions provided a higher measurement granularity (i.e. level of detail) for investigating tactical positioning in short-track speed skating, which better captured the complexity of the phenomenon. We observed 61 different tactical positioning behaviours and 1,269 unique tactical positioning sequences compared to the current approach's nine-point estimates of tactical positioning importance. For this reason, we recommend that researchers and practitioners account for race-specific athlete-opponent interactions in the future as it offers a deeper understanding of tactical positioning that will enhance both strategic and tactical decisions.We compare the current approach for investigating tactical positioning to a novel approach that accounts for race-specific athlete-opponent interactions.We show that accounting for race-specific athlete-opponent interactions provides a higher measurement granularity (i.e. level of detail) for investigating tactical positioning in short-track speed skating.We demonstrate that this increased measurement granularity can facilitate a deeper understanding of tactical positioning by (1) producing theoretically-more-correct point estimates of tactical positioning importance, (2) enabling more rigorous statistical analyses into the effect of athlete-environment interactions on tactical positioning behaviour, and (3) allowing sequential analyses that capture the progressive relationships between laps.We recommend that researchers and practitioners account for race-specific athlete-opponent interactions in future investigations, as the findings will enhance analyst, coach, and athlete preparation for the strategic and tactical decision-making process essential for success in short-track.
在短道速滑中，战术定位对于成功至关重要，因为比赛形式（一对一）优先考虑终点位置而不是完成时间。目前，我们对这种现象的理解是基于测量运动员中间排名和最终排名之间的相似性。然而，由于这种方法将运动员的表现分组到各个比赛中，因此每个回合对战术重要性的估计忽略了每个比赛中运动员与对手之间的特定相互作用。在这里，我们研究了特定于比赛的运动员与对手相互作用在调查战术定位中的效用。我们使用 2010/11 年至 2017/18 年期间收集的精英 1000 米短道速滑运动员的中间排名和最终排名（n=6196，比赛=1549），将当前方法与考虑特定于比赛的运动员与对手相互作用的新方法进行了比较。该方法首先独立应用于每个比赛，然后使用这些值形成（1）每个回合战术重要性的离散经验分布，以及（2）特定于比赛的战术定位序列。我们的结果表明，考虑特定于比赛的运动员与对手的相互作用为研究短道速滑中的战术定位提供了更高的测量粒度（即详细程度），从而更好地捕捉了现象的复杂性。与当前方法对战术定位重要性的九点估计相比，我们观察到了 61 种不同的战术定位行为和 1269 种独特的战术定位序列。出于这个原因，我们建议研究人员和从业者在未来考虑特定于比赛的运动员与对手的相互作用，因为它提供了对战术定位的更深入理解，这将增强战略和战术决策。
