Baker, J., Wattie, N., & Schorer, J. (2015). Defining expertise: a taxonomy for researchers in the acquisition of skills and expertise. In J. Baker & D. Farrow (eds.), Routledge handbook of sport expertise (pp. 144-155). London: Routledge. Kelly, A. L., Erickson, K., Pierce, S., & Turnnidge, J. (2020). Youth sports and COVID-19: contextual, methodological and practical considerations.

Frontiers of Sport and Active Life, 2, 584252 doi.org/10.3389/fspor.2020.584252. Professionalism has also been used in a dichotomous way to differentiate the abilities of cohorts of athletes. For example, in a recent meta-analysis of genetic association in football (McAuley et al., 2020b), the importance of competitive level of play was assessed by categorizing cohorts into professional and non-professional. Professional cohorts were classified as players who were specifically described in the studies as professional-level players, while non-professional cohorts were classified as players who played at the semi-professional, amateur or youth level. The authors noted that this particular method of categorization, as opposed to elite versus non-elite, was chosen to circumvent the problematic classification problem of “elite” and reduce heterogeneity between studies. However, this rough classification raises similar issues, as there are still significant differences in performance levels between professional football leagues (e.g. the English Premier League versus the second English football league). This is also the case at the professional level in many individual sports (e.g.

participation in the European Tour versus the Alps Tour of golf). Therefore, using a professionalism dichotomy, it is still difficult to objectively quantify sample capacity and, therefore, to relate results to certain performance levels (McAuley et al., 2020b). Baker, J., Wattie, N., & Schorer, J. (2019). A proposed conceptualization of talent in sport: the first step on a long and winding path. Psychologie von Sport und Bewegung, 43, 27-33 doi.org/10.1016/j.psychsport.2018.12.016. High-performance sport straddles the upper echelons of professional sport; In the field of professional sports, the elite classes of the sport, especially in North America, are known as major leagues. On the other hand, elite competitors at the Olympics or World Games may be part-time or dependent on government subsidies in some minority sports. Similarly, student-athletes, especially in varsity sports, often perform very well, even if they are nominally amateurs.

The harsh (and often surprising) reality is that the individuals and level of practice that occur in elite level sports are not “elite” by default. As mentioned in a previous article, @@simply use of labels such as “High Performance” (or “Elite”) does not make it @@. The term elite must be earned. Even at the highest level of competition in professional and Olympic sports, there are crucial elements that set the true elite apart. Success in sport requires a variety of physical factors that many athletes aspire to. While some variables such as ambition, motivation, and mental strength are difficult to quantify for research purposes, measures of height, mass, strength, speed, acceleration, agility, and strength are identifiable and measurable. At many levels, measures of physical performance distinguish high-performance athletes from those who are not.8,34,37,63,79,83 Unfortunately, success cannot be defined solely by measures of physical performance. Baker, J., Schorer, J. and Wattie, N. (2018).

Talent Compromise: Problems in identifying and selecting talent in sport. Quest, 70(1), 48–63 doi.org/10.1080/00336297.2017.1333438. In another recent example exacerbated by the 2019 coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic (see Kelly, Erickson, Pierce & Turnnidge, 2020 for an overview), lockdown restrictions have resulted in the suspension of sports activities below the “elite level” in the UK. This led to widespread confusion in many communities, as the guidelines were vague and applied inconsistently. For example, one element of the UK government`s definition of an “elite athlete” was the requirement to be “16 years of age or older.” In youth football, however, male academies in categories one and two were allowed to continue to offer from the under nine age group, while academies in categories three and four were only allowed to continue offering with people aged 16 and over (The Football Association, 2020). Perhaps most importantly, all women`s academies in each age group were suspended, while only the top two leagues in the women`s football pyramid were allowed to continue (compared to the top six in men`s football). In Northern Ireland, this issue was even more confusing because any athlete participating in a “professional league or competition” was considered “elite”. The term “elite” has been used inconsistently in research and undermines the external validity of results regarding the characteristics and prerequisites of high performance.

In addition, the way the word “elite” is applied in practical contexts can be problematic and send unintended messages and exacerbate existing biases in sport. It is unlikely that there will be an external consensus on a new overarching definition of “elite” in the near future. Therefore, we call for more transparency in the description of samples so that readers can more effectively determine their personal classifications, thus allowing for a better synthesis of research and practical interpretations. The success of childhood and adolescent sports is influenced by a variety of sport-specific physical and physiological factors.3 Although exercise-specific performance variables lead to future success for some young children and adolescents,3,66 A more comprehensive analysis suggests that the interaction between genetic and training factors promotes maximum performance.88 Much of the research in exercise psychology and sports medicine is motivated by the needs of elite athletes rather than mass athletes. Doping in sport is more common at elite levels, and research into performance-enhancing substances has been motivated by continued success, although the practice is completely illegal at almost every level of the game. In addition to these research-related questions, we need to better understand the power of the word “elite” in the context of athlete development and performance. Most dictionaries describe “elite” as superior to an individual`s peer group. However, the use of this term in practical contexts often ignores the possibility (or likelihood) that an athlete`s position may change over time as they and their peer group evolve. It seems that the inconsistency in the application of the term “elite” in the scientific literature has now also manifested itself in the practical field. Anecdotal evidence suggests that an English Premier League football academy has an “under-five elite” who are “treated like professionals” and train more frequently (three times a week) than the other two age-appropriate lower skill groups (Austin, 2019). In fact, research in youth sport contexts suggests that treating youth groups in this way has lasting consequences for both the athletes involved and the excluded (Bergeron et al., 2015).

While individual sports generally measure performance using quantifiable variables (e.g., distance times, height, and length), this is often not possible in team sports, where performance is underpinned by a variety of intrinsic and extrinsic factors, without an isolated performance measure being able to measure overall performance level on its own (Baker, Wattie and Schorer, 2015). As a result, the capacity of team athletes is often derived from their current level of competition, whether from an international or national perspective. While this categorization method seems reasonable, it does not take into account the respective differences in performance standards between countries and leagues around the world.