The Ecological Model of Sprinting Determinants of Jamaican Athletes

Introduction: Studies have found that athletes from certain regions enjoy unparalleled success on track and field events and usually dominate the sprint events at the Olympics and World Championship Games. Historically, Jamaican men athletes dating back to 1952 have held world records in the 100m and 200m sprints and the 4x100m, 4x200m and 4x400m relays. In spite of the prowess of Jamaican athletes in the sprinting events at the Olympics or World Championship Games, a study has never been conducted on using the ecological model to examine these athletes. Objectives: The aim of the study is to show how an established ecological track and field model can impact the performance of athletes. The ecological model was used to identify environmental determinants and influences that interacted to affect participation of athletes from Jamaica at the Olympics and/or World Championships Games (elite games). Materials and Methods: The original number of athletes who initially participated was 120 but was collapsed to 63 because of incomplete information from some of the athletes. All the athletes had represented Jamaica at international games including the Olympic and World Championships Games (elite games), the Commonwealth Games, the Pan American Games, Junior World Championships, World Youth Championships and the CARIFTA Games. The athletes were divided into three groups based on athletic disciplines: sprint (s: 100-400m, n=40), jump and throw (j/t: jump and throw, n=13), and middle distance (md: 800-3000 m, n=10). Although Jamaica is not usually successful internationally in middle distance events (800-3000m), these athletes were included in the study to investigate the possibility of disproportionate number of athletes originating from a particular geographical area being the result of an abundant prominence of athletics in that area. The groups were further sub-divided into those who represented Jamaica at the Olympic Games and the World Championships (elite games) and those who represented Jamaica at other international games such as Pan-American, Commonwealth, World Junior Championships, World Youth Olympics, World University Games and the CARIFTA Games (sub-elite games ). Each participant was given a questionnaire. The questionnaire used was written in English and modeled off studies done on world class athletes from Kenya and Ethiopia. Questions were simple and were explained to those who could not easily understand. The questions were designed to obtain the following information. Determinants were: domicile characteristics of the sexual partners of the athlete's parents, locality of athlete's grandparents, intra island migration pattern of athlete, school which the athlete attended and county in Jamaica where an athlete lived. Important influences were: place of birth, age and athletic discipline. In the track and field ecology model, county or place of birth in Jamaica influenced whether an athlete was selected to participate in elite games. Place or county where an athlete resides determined whether an athlete was likely to medal in the elite games. The data were entered, stored and retrieved using the Statistical Packages for the Social Sciences, Version 22 for Windows. The level of significance that is used to determine statistical significance is less than 5% (0.05) at the 2-tailed level of significance. Cross tabulations were used to indicate statistical associations and binary regression was used to check for influence of independent variables on a dependent variable.