-->PONE-D-25-06170-->-->Modelling of performance prediction by analysis of elite swimmers’ anthropometry, peak performance age and age-related performance progression-->-->PLOS ONE

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Reviewer #1: Yes

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Reviewer #1: Yes

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Reviewer #1: No

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Reviewer #1: A review of the manuscript titled:

Modelling of performance prediction by analysis of elite swimmers’

anthropometry, peak performance age and age-related performance progression

The manuscript presents an interesting study on the developmental progression of sports performance of world-class swimmers. The study is enriched by a comparison of basic somatic indicators of two generations of swimmers, which should be better explained.

In this manuscript, interesting conjectures are briefly discussed, without an attempt to deepen the literature, which makes these considerations shallow, burdened with subjectivity, although often accurate.

Precise, specific suggestions for organizing the content and necessary changes are below.

Specific comments:

Abstract

What did the authors have in mind when writing the sentence in lines 17-19? Please change, explain.

Introduction

Lane 43 There are more current considerations and studies on the development of young swimming talents in the literature, and this is an important issue. Therefore, omitting important references, with one Spanish one, is a simplification.

Lines 46-50 Reference to publications and specific tests - water and general - land in the prediction of swimming efficiency and development would be justified, the reviewer notes the omission of relevant literature considerations that exist.

Lines 51-53 Similarly, only one citation was used for authors from 2022. For example, a year earlier, one publication precisely on the topic of mediation between maturation, body physicality, and performance in female swimmers was published in the same journal, in others as well, later this year as well, which concerns swimming, not perception through other sports as in the manuscript.

Line 72, The insert regarding the aging aspect of swimming, is unnecessary without further involvement in this study.

Lines 76-79 the authors should have introduced at least some information regarding somatic changes of the new generation vs. the previous one instead of mentioning aging of swimmers, because aging itself is not the subject of considerations in this work.

2. Materials and Methods and Results

Lines 95-96 PPA, height and weight analysis was performed on the same subjects as the swimming results, or was some other historical analysis of a similar group used? Please explain.

Lines 128 - 222 This data should be inserted in an orderly manner into tables, and the progression of results as curves on charts. However, the attached charts should be of higher quality, because they are simply illegible.

4. Discussion

Lines 285 - 287 please explain what is important?

In lines 288-297 the focus should be on the results rather than considering the effectiveness of the prediction model used.

Lines 309 – 310 “The 100m BK female swimmers were the only 100m swimmers who were heavier than their 50m counterparts in all men’s and women’s swimming strokes.” - Please clarify.

Lines 322 – 323 References to biological age, puberty in girl swimmers and impact on athletic performance should be implemented.

Line 324 “free style” > freestyle

Similarly in line 337, without references to contemporary literature related to muscle mass and body composition of young swimmers.

Only somewhere around line 350-4 should considerations regarding the perfection of the prediction model be included to structure the discussion, reflecting on increasing anaerobic capacity, experience, perhaps pace distribution, etc.?

Line 358 (…) in multiple disciplines or in different swimming stroke races

Line 359 “history of swimmers (training age)“ > training experience, years of experience

Lines 361 - 363, if there is a mention of an age difference resulting from differences in the day, week, month in a given year, there should be a mention and a more current swimming reference to the differences in biological age.

References

References should be supplemented according to the suggestions for the appropriate sections of the manuscript.

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Reviewer #1: Yes:  Marek Strzała

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-->PONE-D-25-06170R1-->

Modelling of performance prediction by analysis of elite swimmers’ anthropometry, peak performance age and age-related performance progression

-->PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Gorzi,

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 submit your revised manuscript by Sep 07 2025 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: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols . Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols .

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Mário Espada, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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 #2: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #3: (No Response)

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-->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 #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: I Don't Know

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-->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 #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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-->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 #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: 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 #2: Congratulations on conducting the study. It advances the knownlege in the area. I understand that it is ready for publication.

Reviewer #3: This is a sound paper and with some further attention, could be a welcome addition to peer-reviewed evidence on the topic.

ABSTRACT

Line 35: “Both male and female more recent swimmers were shorter, lighter and, in particular, younger than their former counterparts in most events.” Without preceding content outlining the nature of the comparison, this makes little sense as presented. I.e. you do not allude to a “more recent” vs “less recent” (I suppose) comparison being an aim/part of methods.

INTRODUCTION

Well written, nothing to add.

METHODS

Mostly minor issues for consideration.

Line 118-119: Can you explain in a little more detail how you determined whether a swimmer was deemed former or recent?

Line 122-123: double semi-colon and no closing bracket.

Line 124: grammar… missing a “were included”?

Line 131-132: A little more detail is needed when you refer to data being “excluded by boxplot”… be more specific if you can.

Line 145-148: Can you add a citation to support your division of training and test set according to the 90:10 split you have adopted? Only because 80:20 would be more conventional.

Stat analysis: can you clarify the model used with the panel data models (i.e. fixed effects, random effects, other?). Were any assumptions checked (e.g. autocorrelation)? Re. the 18 observations, can you add how these were identified…randomly I guess? What statistics were used to evaluate the model fit (e.g. RMSE, AIC/BIC etc.). With so many independent samples t-tests executed, the authors are encouraged to consider protection against type I errors.

Table 1 suggests some missing data (i.e. gaps), how were these dealt with (statistically) exactly?

RESULTS

Line 153 and others: I feel presentation of your confidence intervals needs attention. E.g. “CI=.0040 .0566” would be better presented as “0.0040 to 0.0566”… repeat throughout results were applicable.

Line 152: you report an effect size here but there has been no mention of their use in the methods – can you go back and provide the details? I.e. are these partial eta-type ES stats or Cohen’s d? details about what is deemed small-large etc need adding too.

Line 154-155: “…and approaching significance for BF swimmers (P=0.53).”… this p-value is not approaching significance…missing zero? Regardless, it is not significant hence my suggestion is to remove this point (and any others about near significance like lines 164-169, 190-195). The results are already rather long, with many differences to comprehend, so this would aid interpretation for the reader.

Line 195: Linked to the above I guess, “were insignificantly heavier” in essence means they were not (statistically) heavier!

Lines 227-232: Suggest removal of all this content. Avoids repetition (i.e. we already know female differences from previous few lines), the details are cumbersome and many link to above comment re. non-sig. findings.

Performance progression modelling: Can you provide an indication of the model fit for each presented equation? Perhaps add them to the figures themselves.

DISCUSSION

First paragraph is more akin to a results subsection. Suggest re-write whereby you synthesise the key findings (i.e. that certain factors were of significance or not) rather than essentially listing every finding as you have.

Line 323: When stating 13/17 & 16/17 being lighter, this is based upon averages not the statistical findings hence it is exaggerated. Suggest re-writing with the numerator based on sig diffs only.

Line 341: Replace “It seems” with “It is plausible”.

Lines 373-374: This statement contradicts your panel data which regularly cited rt-1 and rt-2 (less often) as significant factors. Perhaps I have missed something here, but regardless, the point you are making needs attention so readers are not left confused. Indeed, on lines 401-403 you state “last year’s records in all events and last 2 years’ records in men’s 50m BT and women’s 100m BK, 100m BT, 200m BT and 200m BF, and weight in 100m BK, are important for predicting performance”.

General: for all the work that has gone into the production of the panel analysis, you have not overly discussed these findings. I.e. the balance of attention is on your comparisons (recent/former, male/female, t-test comparing events etc) with less emphasis on these plots, what they demonstrate and how that might aid practitioners. Can you do so?

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Modelling of performance prediction by analysis of elite swimmers’ anthropometry, peak performance age and age-related performance progression

PONE-D-25-06170R2

Dear Dr. Ali Gorzi,

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.

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Kind regards,

Mário Espada, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE