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. 2019 Mar 20;16(6):1019.
doi: 10.3390/ijerph16061019.

Celebrating 40 Years of Ironman: How the Champions Perform

Lucas Pinheiro Barbosa  1 , Caio Victor Sousa  2   3 , Marcelo Magalhães Sales  4 , Rafael Dos Reis Olher  5 , Samuel Silva Aguiar  6 , Patrick Anderson Santos  7 , Eduard Tiozzo  8 , Herbert Gustavo Simões  9 , Pantelis Theodoros Nikolaidis  10 , Beat Knechtle  11   12
Affiliations

Celebrating 40 Years of Ironman: How the Champions Perform

Lucas Pinheiro Barbosa et al. Int J Environ Res Public Health. .

Abstract

We aimed to determine which discipline had the greater performance improvements in the history of Ironman triathlon in Hawaii and also which discipline had the greater influence in overall race time. Data from 1983 to 2018 of the top three women and men of each year who competed in the Ironman World Championship were included. In addition to exploratory data analyses, linear regressions between split times and years of achievement were performed. Further, a stepwise multiple linear regression was applied using total race time as the dependent variable and split times as the independent variables. Both women and men significantly improved their performances from 1983 to 2018 in the Ironman World Championship. Swimming had the largest difference in improvements between men and women (3.0% versus 12.1%, respectively). A negative and significant decrease in each discipline was identified for both women and men, with cycling being the discipline with the greatest reduction. The results from the stepwise multiple regression indicated that cycling was the discipline with the highest influence on overall race time for both sexes. Based on the findings of this study, cycling seems to be the Ironman triathlon discipline that most improved overall race times and is also the discipline with the greatest influence on the overall race time of elite men and women in the Ironman World Championship.

Keywords: cycling; endurance; running; swimming; triathlon.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Dispersion and non-linear regression of overall race time performances in the Ironman World Championship from 1983 to 2018 of women and men. Gold trophies represent the champion in each year.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Dispersion and non-linear regression overall race time performances between the top three finishers and the chasing group (4th to 10th place finishers) from women and men in the Ironman World Championship from 1983 to 2018.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Dispersion and linear regression of split-times performances in the Ironman World Championship from 1983 to 2018 of women.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Dispersion and linear regression of split-times performances in the Ironman World Championship from 1983 to 2018 of men.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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