Škegro, D. and Čustonja, Z.: Analysis of the best woman’s results in the Olympic... Acta Kinesiologica 7 (2013) 1: 66‐70 66 ANALYSIS OF THE BEST WOMEN’S HIGH JUMP RESULTS IN THE OLYMPIC GAMES HISTORY Dario Škegro and Zrinko Čustonja Faculty of Kinesiology, University of Zagreb, Croatia Original scientific paper Abstract The aim of the investigation was to analyse women’s high jump performances in the Olympic Games’ history. Analysis covers results of the gold, silver and bronze women medallists in Olympic high jumping. The possibilities of forecasting performances on the polynomial linear regression basis were commented. The dynamics of results progression was explained. Analysis was based on the results of 60 women athletes, winners of the gold, silver or bronze medal at the Olympic Games since 1928 in Amsterdam until 2012 in London. Key words: high jump, history of Olympic Games, regression analysis, best results Introduction Monitoring the results achieved at the Olympic Games or at other main sports competitions can offer numerous answers to the issues of the structure and effects of sport training process, efficiency of learning technical and tactical elements in certain sporting discipline, new technologies influence, quality of new diagnostic procedures application and development of sports results themselves through history. Historically, the development of sports results is important for tracking progression in and determination of developmental characteristics of athletes pertaining to certain sports through observing great sport competitions like the Olympic Games, World and European Championships and other main competitions. Analysis of result development is especially suitable in athletics’ disciplines since sport achievements have been measured exactly. Competitions in athletics are held worldwide under standardized conditions, determined by the IAAF rules (IAAF, 2011). The results/achievements are obtained highly objective, with no impact from referees. Therefore, ranking of competitors in athletics’ disciplines is based on highly precise measurements. Numerous recent research studies give coaches and athletes valuable feedback on the previously mentioned issues. Scientifically based analyses and forecasting in certain sporting disciplines is founded on the already existing insights into stable regularities of the sport in question (Harasin, 2002; Lepers, 2008; Milinović, Milanović and Harasin, 2008; Chiu and Salem, 2010). By analysing sports results it is possible to determine general principles of achievement development of individuals. These general principles enable sport practitioners to determine probable achievements of individual athletes and also of sport discipline in general (Wazny, 1978). Also, development of the results and records in sport is a reliable way to get an insight into potentials of human body (modified to Lippi et al., 2008). Women’s high jump competition is a part of the official Olympic program since the 1928 Olympic Games in Amsterdam, Holland. Number of competitors on these Games was 3014 from 46 countries of the world, and only 290 of them were women (Platonov and Guskov, 1997). The first woman gold medallist in this discipline was a Canadian athlete Ethel Catherwood. Her winning result was 159 centimetres (Wallechinsky, 2000). Since then till the London Olympic Games in 2012 this athletics’ discipline has become very popular, as can be seen in the Games and other great sport competitions. The main goal of this investigation was to establish trend of result development in women’s high jump at the Olympic Games tournament. Also, the authors wanted to discuss possibilities of predicting results for the competitions to come. Methods In this investigation sample of participants is comprised of the winners in woman’s high jump competitions at Olympic Games since 1928 in Amsterdam, Holland until 2012 in London, United Kingdom. In 20 Games that were held until today, there were 60 gold, silver and bronze medallists. Consequently, the sample of participants is 60 athletes’ winners of Olympic medal in woman’s high jump competitions at the Olympics. The data used in this investigation were collected from “The Complete Book of the Olympics” (Wallechinsky, 2000). Since all the results from the Olympic Games were not contained in this book, the rest of the data was collected from the official web site of the Olympic Movement, www.olympic.org. The collected data was analysed and processed using statistical program STATISTICA 9.0 at the Faculty of Kinesiology, University of Zagreb. The trend of result development was analysed to determine whether a successive change of the results had a linear or curvilinear flow.