ABSTRACT
Swimming is a very technical sport with high training loads. Talented swimmers are selected at a fairly young age. This selection is mostly based on performances in chronological age groups. This strategy can be problematic as it does not take into account the effects of biological maturation on performance. However there is little evidence available about the relationship between the level of sport career success and the maturity status of a swimmer at the time of selection, partly due to problems with the assessment of the maturity status. Skeletal maturity may be the best method to assess maturity, however, it is invasive, costly and requests expert ratings which make this method hard to implement in talent identification programmes. Therefore, researchers developed other, non-invasive methods to determine maturity in athletes (Malina et al., 2012). This study determined interrelations among invasive and non-invasive indicators of biological maturation and related maturity status at time of selection of a Belgian swimming sample with the success of their swimming career.
