sports Article The Age in Swimming of Champions in World Championships (1994–2013) and Olympic Games (1992–2012): A Cross-Sectional Data Analysis Beat Knechtle 1,*, Nicola Luigi Bragazzi 2,3, Stefan König 4, Pantelis Theodoros Nikolaidis 5, Stefanie Wild 4, Thomas Rosemann 4 and Christoph Alexander Rüst 4 1 Gesundheitszentrum St. Gallen, St. Gallen 9001, Switzerland 2 Department of Health Sciences (DISSAL), School of Public Health, University of Genoa, Genoa 16132, Italy;
[email protected] 3 Department of Neuroscience, Rehabilitation, Ophthalmology, Genetics, Maternal and Child Health (DINOGMI), University of Genoa, Genoa 16132, Italy 4 Institute of Primary Care, University of Zurich, Zurich 8091, Switzerland;
[email protected] (S.K.);
[email protected] (S.W.);
[email protected] (T.R.);
[email protected] (C.A.R.) 5 Department of Physical and Cultural Education, Hellenic Army Academy, Vari 16673, Greece;
[email protected] * Correspondence:
[email protected]; Tel.: +41-0-71-226-93-00 Academic Editor: Eling de Bruin Received: 29 December 2015; Accepted: 22 February 2016; Published: 4 March 2016 Abstract: (1) Background: We investigated the age of swimming champions in all strokes and race distances in World Championships (1994–2013) and Olympic Games (1992–2012); (2) Methods: Changes in age and swimming performance across calendar years for 412 Olympic and world champions were analysed using linear, non-linear, multi-level regression analyses and MultiLayer Perceptron (MLP); (3) Results: The age of peak swimming performance remained stable in most of all race distances for world champions and in all race distances for Olympic champions.