Ferriz-Valero Alberto, Montiel-Bontmatí Javier, Østerlie Ove, Caraça-Valente Juan Pedro, Mínguez-Viñambres Alberto, Esteve-Ibáñez Héctor
Department of General Didactic and Specific Didactics, Physical Education and Knowledge Advancement (PEAK) Research Group, University of Alicante, Alicante, Spain.
Department of Teacher Education, Research Group Digital Technology in Physical Education and Sport (DiTePES), Trondheim, Norway.
Front Sports Act Living. 2025 Mar 13;7:1558135. doi: 10.3389/fspor.2025.1558135. eCollection 2025.
Orienteering is a sport where participants must choose the best route between control points marked on the map, combining it with their displacement capacity. It combines endurance running with mental capacity. As in other sports, age can be a determinant in defining differences among youth runners. In this research, the hypothesis is that older orienteers will show better performance than younger orienteers within the same competitive group, for both girls and boys. Overall, official results of the FEDO (Spanish Federation of Orienteering) in long and middle-distance events, from 2005 to 2023, have been analyzed (sprint format events were excluded). Different categories from ten to twenty years of age for both sexes were included, and each category was divided into two years (1Y, 2Y) and two semesters (1S, 2S) within each year, creating four independent variables from the combination of year and semester (1Y1S, 1Y2S, 2Y1S, and 2Y2S). A total of 7,731 entries were examined, 4,318 were boys and 3,109 were girls. Descriptive statistics were analyzed for each variable, showing the mean and standard deviation. Normal distribution was confirmed for all variables ( > 0.05). Results showed a significant performance difference in favor of older orienteers in the youngest categories (U-10, M/F-12, M/F-14, and M-16), with these differences disappearing as age and performance increased (M/F-18 and M/F-20). These findings support the research hypothesis and align with other studies where age-related differences have also been found in other sports.
定向越野是一项运动，参与者必须在地图上标记的控制点之间选择最佳路线，并结合他们的位移能力。它将耐力跑与思维能力结合在一起。与其他运动一样，年龄可能是界定青年跑步者差异的一个决定因素。在这项研究中，假设是在同一竞争组中，年龄较大的定向越野运动员将比年龄较小的运动员表现更好，无论男女。总体而言，分析了2005年至2023年西班牙定向越野联合会（FEDO）在长距离和中距离赛事中的官方成绩（短跑项目被排除）。纳入了男女10至20岁的不同组别，每个组别在每年内又分为两年（1Y、2Y）和两个学期（1S、2S），通过年份和学期的组合创建了四个独立变量（1Y1S、1Y2S、2Y1S和2Y2S）。共检查了7731条参赛记录，其中4318条是男性，3109条是女性。对每个变量进行了描述性统计分析，显示了均值和标准差。所有变量均确认呈正态分布（>0.05）。结果显示，在最年轻的组别（U-10、M/F-12、M/F-14和M-16）中，年龄较大的定向越野运动员表现出显著优势，随着年龄和成绩的增加，这些差异逐渐消失（M/F-18和M/F-20）。这些发现支持了研究假设，并与其他在其他运动中也发现年龄相关差异的研究一致。
