La respuesta en salud mental de España ante el riesgo por evento natural

Nowadays many skaters are active in the international skating circuit. As we will see in this section, new tournaments, aging, and globalization of the sport have led to an increase of participants at the international tournaments. We will also see that, in the last twenty years, skaters participate in an increasing number of international races during the season. This section only uses the data from male skaters, but all conclusions hold for women as well.

The number of participants at tournaments

The participation level at the various tournaments is depicted in Figure 2.4. For each tournament, the total number of competitors per season is plotted. The participation levels of the professional championships (see, Section 2.2.2) in 1973 and 1974 are not

included. Figure 2.4 shows that the number of participants at the six tournaments

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Figure 2.4.Total number of participants per tournament

not only varies between tournaments but changes over the seasons as well. The fluctuation over the years is partly caused by changing ISU regulations. For most tournaments, the ISU has established a time limit and a restriction on the number of participants. The rules itself have changed quite a bit over the years causing changes in the participation levels.

During the early years of speed skating, i.e., the period 1893-1914, the number of participants at WAChs fluctuates around fourteen, with the exception of 1889 and 1905 with eight and five participants, respectively. Due to the lack of good inter-national transportation most participants came from the organizing country. This changed in the period 1922-1952, in which the number of participants increased to an average of 25. After that period, until 1999, this number never went below 32 with a maximum of 48 in 1962. In 1999, mainly due to the increased interest from televi-sion and the commercial world, the ISU restricted the number of participants to 24.

The number of participants at the EChs has always been slightly below the number at the WAChs. Between 1893-1914 it varied between 4 to 16, and from 1950 until now a steady 30 skaters compete. Since 1948 the 10000m of both allround tournaments is only skated by a restricted number of participants, namely the best ranked skaters after three distances. From 1948 to 1955, only 12 skaters were allowed to skate the 10000m; in 1956 it was raised to 16, whereas in 1993 the ISU restricted it again to 12.

The total number of participants at the seven Olympic Winter Games of the last twenty years remained almost the same. Although in 1994 the restricted number of 10000m competitors dropped from 32 to 16, this is not explicitly seen in Figure 2.4 as most 10000m skaters also skated the 5000m. The number of skaters participating at WSDCh, which replaces the Olympics during non-Olympic years, is lower than the number of participants at Olympics. The ISU has set a maximum of 24 per distance, instead of the 32 for the Olympics. The number of participants at WSCh varies every year between 32 and 40, with the exception of 2006 when 49 skaters competed.

Finally, in the left panel of Figure 2.4, it can be seen that the number of skaters in

WCC increases from 128 in 1986 to 209 in 2007, merely due to the introduction of the so-called B-group in 1996, consisting of more or less sub top skaters.

Number of observations per skater

In Section 2.3.5 we have analyzed the number of participants per tournament. How-ever, to a large extend the WACh, the ECh, and later on the new tournaments have more or less the same participants. For example, in 2006, 11 of the 33 skaters were present at both the ECh and the WACh. Until the introduction of the new tourna-ments, for each distance, the number of international meetings between the skaters remained constant; after the introduction the figures changed somewhat.

In Figure 2.5 this is illustrated by the average number of international races per skater per distance, which is plotted for all skating seasons. Until 1970, the year of the first World Sprint Championships, for each distance, this average varies between one and two races with an average of 1.5 races per skater, because in the non-Olympic years of this period the ECh and WACh were the only international tournaments.

So the 500m, 1500m, 5000m and 10000m could maximal be skated twice a year until 1970.

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1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Number of observations per skater

500m 1000m 1500m 5000m 10000m

Figure 2.5.Observations per skater per distance

The introduction of the WSChs slowly divided the skate population into two groups, namely sprinters and allrouders, and slightly increased the average on the two shortest distances to two races per skater. This number increased further to an average of five, when the World Cup Competition was added to the skating calendar in 1986. Nowadays the sprinters skate nine to ten 500m’s on average, whereas the pure allrounders remain to skate at most two 500m’s. The WCC also increased the number of observations per skater on the 1500m and 5000m to an average value of 3.5. Note that the number of observations for the 10000m did not increase much after 1980, due to the fact that the 10000m’s are skated only once or twice during a World Cup season.

In Table 2.2, the average number of observations per skater per tournament is given. Obviously, the allround tournaments have an average of around 3.5

observa-tions, since each participant skates the 500m, 1500m, and the 5000m, and only the best 12 or 16 skate the 10000m, which is in most cases about 50% of the total group.

For the WSCh this figure is somewhat higher, namely around 4, because, in principle, every sprinter skates both the 500m and the 1000m twice.

Table 2.2.Observations per male skater per tournament Tournament # races Tournament # races

OG 2.2 WSCh 3.8

WACh 3.4 WSDCh 2.0

ECh 3.4 WCC 7.5

Olympic participants skate on average 2.2 distances; most sprinters participate in the 500m and the 1000m, while long distance specialists participate in the 5000m and the 10000m. On the 1500m, skaters from both groups compete against each other. For the World Cups, we see from Table 2.2 that the average number of observations lies around 7 or 8 observations. However of all tournaments, the World Cup average fluctuates the most over the seasons and between the skaters. Especially between sprinters and long distance skaters the difference can be very large. During one World Cup weekend, sprinters skate, as in the WSChs, both the 500m and 1000m twice, whereas a long distance skater has only one distance race. The results show that, on average, sprinters skate around 10 through 12 World Cup races per season, and long distance skaters skate only 5 through 7 races.

Countries and participation numbers

In the previous two paragraphs, we have seen an increase in the number of active skaters and observations per skater over the years. Also the number of countries has increased. In Figure 2.6 two graphs are presented, namely, the total number of coun-tries active in at least one of the six major tournaments per season (indicated by the black line), and the percentage of skaters from the six skating countries present at the WAChs (indicated by the gray dotted line). These 6 countries are Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, USA, Finland, and the combination of Russia and the USSR, which are the top 6 best represented countries during WAChs over the years. The graph of the total number of active countries shows an upwards trend until 1999 when it starts to decline. In the period 1892-1914, around five to seven countries were active, whereas currently skaters from over 25 different countries compete. The decline after 1999 can be explained by the fact that the participation level at World Allround Championships was lowered from 32 to 24.

The overall increase in active countries also influenced the number of skaters per country present at WAChs. The gray dotted line of Figure 2.6 show that between 1892 and 1940 most skaters at the WAChs are from the top six counties. Especially Norway, Sweden and Finland are highly present. Due to the growing number of countries, the ISU allowed only five skaters per country in the period 1945-1972, and

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20 30 40

Seasons

Number of active countries

0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1

Percentage

Number of active countries in all tournaments Percentage of skaters of top six countries in WACh

Figure 2.6.Number of countries active in speed skating (black line), and percentage of total participants at WACh of the top six countries (grey dotted line) for men.

after 1972 only four. Since 1972 no country is represented by more than five skaters.

Figure 2.6 also shows that in the last thirty years, the increase in numbers of countries (increasing trend of the black line) correlates negatively with the percent-age of skaters from the top six countries (decreasing gray dotted line). As more and more countries become active, fewer places are available for the top countries. The number of active skaters per country is also growing steadily, around 1900 an ac-tive country had, on average, four acac-tive skaters in the international tournaments, where in 2010 this number has increased to seven active skaters. The introduction of the World Sprint Championships, the World Cup Competition and the World Single Distance Championships are the main reason for this increase.

The combination of the growing number of countries seen in Figure 2.6 and the growing average number of active skaters per country leads to a growth in the total number of active skaters. This may have, as Gould hypothesis describes, an impact on the GPL and competition level. Due to the fact that there are limited starting tickets for the major tournaments, only the very best compete and difference will become smaller. On the other hand, the limitation is also made per country. Some countries have many skaters that belong to the top, but can only sent their very best ones and let other countries sent less talented skaters to the tournament. So due to the country restrictions not always all the best skaters are present at the major tournaments. Meaning that the competition level is not as high as it could be and that the effect of the increasing in population with respect to Gould’s hypothesis is harder to identify as we do not observe all top performances.