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Study aim: To analyse the distribution of effort in the 800 m event at the IAAF World Athletics Championships in London 2017 (outdoor, 44 men, 45 women) and in Birmingham 2018 (indoor, 9 men, 14 women).

Study aim: To apply a recently proposed dynamical systems model to simulate, for the first time, the heart rate (HR) response to exercise of time-dependent intensity.

The purpose of this study was to assess the veracity of the Court of Arbitration for Sport's assertion that sex-differences in athletic performance in elite-standard track and field competition is of the order of 10-12%. Exponential curves were fitted to the data of selected track and field events of the finals of all IAAF World Championships and Olympic Games from 1983 to 2016. For each curve, the coefficient of determination R2 was calculated, in combination the corresponding 95% confidence intervals for the curve constants. Sex-differences were evaluated via differences in the fitted curves between men and women. Mean performances of winners, as well as overall performance means of all participants, were also analyzed. The calculated sex-difference was 8.2 ± 1.0% - 11.8 ± 2.1% for sprints, 10.3 ± 3.3% - 12.8 ± 4.0% for middle and long-distance events, 9.7 ± 2.9% - 13.1 ± 2.9% for relays and 14.2 ± 2.2% - 25.0 ± 4.4% for jumps. This study therefore confirms that the percentage difference accepted by the CAS is appropriate for elite-standard track and field events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a method of modeling the basin of attraction as a three-dimensional function describing a two-dimensional manifold on which the dynamics of the system evolves from experimental time series data. Our method is based on the density of the data set and uses numerical optimization and data modeling tools. We also show how to obtain analytic curves that describe both the contours and the boundary of the basin. Our method is applied to the problem of regaining balance after perturbation from quiet vertical stance using data of an elite athlete. Our method goes beyond the statistical description of the experimental data, providing a function that describes the shape of the basin of attraction. To test its robustness, our method has also been applied to two different data sets of a second subject and no significant differences were found between the contours of the calculated basin of attraction for the different data sets. The proposed method has many uses in a wide variety of areas, not just human balance for which there are many applications in medicine, rehabilitation, and sport.