76 Chapter 4 and environmental factors, to provide additional insights into the development of pacing behavior in the 100m and 200m freestyle events. Practical application The effect of age and race experience on pacing behavior as reported in the present study are relatively small compared to that of task defining characteristics such as race duration or stroke type (Menting et al., 2019a). However, in a 200m freestyle, an average 0.16% difference in velocity distribution per 50m section (the difference between a 12 and 18-yearold male swimmer as calculated using the models in the present study) constitutes 0.20s. In a sport where 0.01 of a second can be the difference between winning and losing, a 0.20s difference in velocity distribution in every 50m section can indeed have a very real impact on competition performance. Using the formula provided in the present study, coaches could determine whether their swimmers are on track of developing the pacing behavior necessary to achieve the elite performance level. One point of notice should be made to this approach: the road to elite performance is not always linear and pacing is only a part of the skillset necessary to reach the top (Elferink-Gemser et al., 2011). In addition, it has been established that to pace adequately, athletes need to match their personal performance capacities to the task demands. Seeing as there is variation in each swimmer’s performance capacities, a slightly different pacing behavior could be optimal for each swimmer. It is therefore important to take the outcomes of the formula from the present study as a starting point and take an individualized approach to the development of each swimmer. Within this approach, coaches are advised to provide the swimmers with opportunities to experiment with variants of their established pacing behavior (Elferink-Gemser & Hettinga, 2017). Introducing variability would provide swimmers with the opportunity to discover a more optimal match between their personal performance capacities and the task demands (Shea & Kohl, 1990). Coaches could induce this variation by providing augmented feedback via tools such as a stopwatch, pacer clock, wearable metronome, underwater lights or smart goggles (McGibbon et al., 2020). Demonstrating this method, a recent study reported that a three week training program in which adolescent swimmers were provided with feedback on their own pacing behavior was effective in increasing 400m freestyle performance (Tijani et al., 2021). Subsequently, practice of the new variation of pacing behavior could be further increased by gradually taking away sources of feedback and adding environmental factors such as opponents, therefore training the swimmers to maintain their capability of decision-making regarding effort distribution in a more realistic competitive environment (Menting et al., 2019b; McGibbon et al., 2020). Conclusion The current large-scale study is the first in its kind in that it investigates the pacing behavior of swimmers from five continents over a period spanning the last twenty years. The rigorous
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