ABSTRACT
Nurturing a talented young distance runner into a successful senior is a challenging task. However, the timing of specialisation in the sport and the volume of specific running training utilised at various stages of growth and maturation is more controversial. It is understandable how a coach or parent seeking to maximise a young athlete's performance potential might encourage intensive training in a single sport on a year-round basis from an early age. Chronic exposures to highly stressful and professionalised sporting environments at a young age are unlikely to be effective at nurturing talented performers into future elite athletes. Young athletes are frequently pressurised into specialising in distance running from an early age in the belief that this is the best long-term approach to achieve success as a senior athlete. Radiographic skeletal age assessment perhaps represents the gold standard in measurement of maturity status, but it is costly, is time-consuming and requires specialist equipment.
