ORIGINAL ARTICLE The determinants of performance in master swimmers: an analysis of master world records P. Zamparo • G. Gatta • P. E. di Prampero Received: 7 November 2011 / Accepted: 19 January 2012 Ó Springer-Verlag 2012 Abstract Human performances in sports decline with age in all competitions/disciplines. Since the effects of age are often compounded by disuse, the study of master athletes provides the opportunity to investigate the effects of age per se on the metabolic/biomechanical determinants of performance. For all master age groups, swimming styles and distances, we calculated the metabolic power required to cover the distance (d) in the best performance time as: E 0 maxR ¼ C  d=BTP ¼ C  v max ; where C is the energy cost of swimming in young elite swimmers, v max = d/BTP is the record speed over the distance d, and BTP was obtained form ‘‘cross-sectional data’’ (http://www.fina.org ). To establish a record performance, E 0 maxR must be equal to the maximal available metabolic power ðE 0 maxA Þ. This was calculated assuming a decrease of 1% per year at 40– 70 years, 2% at 70–80 years and 3% at 80–90 years (as indicated in the literature) and compared to the E 0 maxR values, whereas up to about 55 years of age E 0 maxR ¼ E 0 maxA ; for older subjects E 0 maxA [ E 0 maxR ; the difference increasing linearly by about 0.30% (backstroke), 1.93% (butterfly), 0.92% (front crawl) and 0.37% (breaststroke) per year (average over the 50, 100 and 200 m distances). These data suggest that the energy cost of swimming increases with age. Hence, the decrease in performance in master swimmers is due to both decrease in the metabolic power available ðE 0 maxA Þ and to an increase in C. Keywords Master athletes  Maximum performance  Ageing  Swimming Introduction Human performance is reduced with age; this holds true for both sprint and endurance events and for all competitions/ disciplines. Even if the effects of age are often com- pounded by disuse, the study of master athletes is of great interest because it provides the opportunity to investigate the effects of age per se, the ageing athlete being a model of ‘‘successful ageing’’ (Rittweger et al. 2004; Tanaka and Seals 2008; Lazarus and Harridge 2007). In the literature, longitudinal and cross-sectional studies have addressed the topic of the decline of physiological functional capacity in master swimmers (e.g. Donato et al. 2003; Tanaka and Seals 1997, 2008) investigating how swimming performance decreases as a function of age (and gender) in endurance and sprint events (front crawl). These papers show that peak performance (i.e. swimming speed or swimming time over a given distance) is maintained until about 35–40 years of age, followed by a moderate decline until 50–60 years after which the decline in per- formance is more rapid (especially after 70 years). More- over, these papers suggest that the rate of decrease with advancing age is different in short and in long duration Communicated by Jean-Rene ´ Lacour. P. Zamparo (&) Department of Neurological, Neuropsychological, Morphological and Movement Sciences, Faculty of Exercise and Sport Sciences, University of Verona, via F. Casorati 43, 37131 Verona, Italy e-mail: paola.zamparo@univr.it G. Gatta Faculty of Exercise and Sport Sciences, University of Bologna, via San Vitale 15, 40125 Bologna, Italy P. E. di Prampero Department of Medical and Biological Sciences, University of Udine, Ple. Kolbe 4, 33100 Udine, Italy 123 Eur J Appl Physiol DOI 10.1007/s00421-012-2332-x