PONE-D-20-03338

Contribution from cross-country skiing, start time and shooting components to the overall and isolated biathlon pursuit race performance

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr Sandbakk,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

Manuscripts needs deep revising. Please, address issues raised by Reviewers 1 and 2.

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Luca Paolo Ardigò, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Additional Editor Comments:

Manuscripts needs deep revising. Please, address issues raised by Reviewers 1 and 2.

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Partly

Reviewer #3: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: Yes

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: The authors present interesting data about how different components affect the biathlon pursuit performance. The paper is mostly clearly written, relatively easy to follow and is likely of importance for coaches and athletes in the biathlon sport. However, in overall, the results section is a bit messy, sometimes hard to follow.

Specific comments:

Abstract

L38 - standing shooting positions.

L41 - shooting performance. This includes shooting time and accuracy. I would use the penalty time here as well as you have done in the main text.

L46 - Start time (i.e. sprint race performance)

L46 - explainED 80%.

L53 - pursuit race PERFORMANCE.

Introduction

Mostly clearly written and logical. Comments:

L59 - prone and standing shooting positions

L59-62 - Yes, biathlon is an Olympic winter sport but here it is a little bit confusing as e.g. single-mixed relay is not included in the Olympic program. Revise this sentence.

L63 - I would add Dzhilkibaeva et al. 2018 here as well.

L79 - 20% longer lap distance between shots?? Do yo mean shootings? Or Shooting stations?

L93 - In addition, good shooting and... what is meant by good shooting? Fast, clear or both?

L99 - just a curiosity - how could organizers benefit from the results of this study?

L100-105 - You should define the shooting time and range time here (or in the Introduction somewhere).

Methods

L107-114 - Add information which seasons were included in the analysis (this information is in the abstract)

L123 - range time excluding shooting time. This is sensitive for the outcome of your study. As shooting time is taken manually, there is a source of error. Let say, a true shooting lasts 25 seconds, +/- 2 seconds error in manual measurement means almost 10% error. When you also extract this value from the range time which is "correctly" measured using the timing-chip system, you will get a double error (error in range time as well). I understand this approach from regression analysis point of view, but you must at least mention this complex of problems in the discussion.

Results

Interesting you point out that basically you must start within top 5, at least top 10, to have a chance to win the pursuit race. Good! However, consider revising the text in the results section. It is sometimes difficult to follow and one must read the same sentence a couple of times to understand what do you mean.

L157 - remove (bib1)

L164 - women (F) - should be women (W) (also in the figure 1)

L165 - Pearson correlation; add 'analysis'

Discussion

L211 - maybe add "in both sexes"

L227-230 - add 'in sprint'

L233-L240 - maybe add something about pacing & drafting here.

L243 - frequency of shootings? frequency of shooting tasks?

L252-253 - maybe revise to "...(5), individual (3), and according to the present results, in pursuit races.'

L273 - 60-70% in both sexes?

L279 - bigger - change to larger.

L287-288 - Furthermore, penalty time... of the variance in the isolated pursuit race result. You have not shown data for this conclusion. You have presented that shooting 3 and 4 explained 70-90% of the variance in total penalty time (L177).

Reviewer #2: The paper proposes an approach to evaluate the impact of several explanatory variables, like start and penalty time, on overall and isolated biathlon pursuit performance. The authors use stepwise linear regressions to identify the most important predictors. Furthermore, they use correlation analyses to examine the linear relationships between start time (penalty time, course time, shooting time, range time) and overall (isolated) pursuit race time behind. Particularly, they focus also on the differences between male and female biathletes. Additionally, they describe the relationship between sprint and pursuit races.

In general, the paper discusses an interesting topic but it partially lacks of correct descriptions and applications of statistical methods. Until now, the manuscript needs to be revised because there are fundamental issues which undermine the quality of the paper severely. Furthermore, the interpretation and discussion of the results should be expanded. I recommend a major revision of the manuscript.

You can find the major and minor comments in the attached file.

Reviewer #3: The article submitted for review covers important and current issues of determinants of sport results. Structure of the work is correct. It includes original research problem, which is characterized properly and transparently. Statistical methods chosen well. The work is written well.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: No

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: review.pdf

PONE-D-20-03338R1

Contribution from cross-country skiing, start time and shooting components to the overall and isolated biathlon pursuit race performance

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Sandbakk,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

==============================

Please, one further effort to address further minor revisions requested by reviewers.

==============================

Please submit your revised manuscript by Aug 06 2020 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

• A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
• A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
• An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Luca Paolo Ardigò, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

Please, one further effort to address further minor revisions requested by reviewers.

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

**********

2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Partly

**********

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: N/A

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: I'm happy with the revision the authors have made. I have only one minor issue:

L343: "Extracting the shooting time from Range time" You propose that the error marginal is 1 sec but when thinking of pursuit competition and within the races you have been studying, there is definitively several cases when there are quite a many biathletes approaching and/or leaving the shooting line at the same time. This means that it is impossible for the volunteers to push "several buttons" at the same time. I agree that the error is random, but I suggest to revise the last sentence in methodological considerations. Something with style: "However, the error is random but this possible error needs to be considered when interpreting the of the present study."

Reviewer #2: First of all, I want to thank the authors for the detailed answers to the comments of the first review. The authors have revised their manuscript precisely. Nonetheless, there is a major limitation of the analysis and it would be appreciated if the authors would add the limitation in their manuscript for publication. The added methodological considerations section is a first step to pick up the limitations of the analysis. But I think one major limitation, which was also mentioned in the first review, should be clearly communicated to the reader. As for each race, an individual regression model is fitted, the results are only valid for this race. Thus, no generalization on the basis of the regression results holds, which means that the results should be interpreted conservatively. Your answer in the first review is correct: ''As the results are provided now, the reader can evaluate if 23/38 races with start time being the most important factor among men is many or few races. If a more general result was to be provided, the results in model outcome 2 would affect the results in model outcome 1 and vice-versa.". For this reason, I think an additional paragraph should be added to the methodological considerations section that clarifies the limitation and ensures that the reader doesn't make wrong conclusions.

Additionally, the independent variables are likely to have high correlations (although no multicollinearity statistics are provided), which could bias the results. Thus, it would not clear which variable contributes to the dependent variable. This could invalidate the statements on the importance of certain variables. For this reason, it is necessary to check if this problem arises. Should this be the case then the authors have to find a solution to this problem because as mentioned above it would lead to wrong conclusions. Otherwise, they should emphasize that no problem on the basis of correlation exists.

To sum up, I appreciate the changes in the manuscript. The authors should clearly mention the problem of generalization in their manuscript and they should check if the problem of high correlations between the independent variables exists. For this reason, I recommend a minor revision if the problem of high correlations does not occur.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.]

While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.

Contribution from cross-country skiing, start time and shooting components to the overall and isolated biathlon pursuit race performance

PONE-D-20-03338R2

Dear Dr. Sandbakk,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

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Kind regards,

Luca Paolo Ardigò, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Congratulations for your interesting study.

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

**********

2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: I would like to thank the authors for a great work with this manuscript which hopefully will help the coaches and athletes in biathlon.

Reviewer #2: I am very appreciated that the authors add my previous comments to their methodological considerations. Finally, I have no further review comments and I recommend to accept the manuscript for publication.

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No