Abstract des Autors

The problem of talent selection is of major significance in top athletics. An investigation of 131 children participating in a promotion program for athletic talents was carried out in order to determine aerobic as well as anaerobic talents. Echocardiographically there was no hint onto a cardiac determination, e.g. an congenital athlete's heart. Since genetic determination of endurance capacity seems to be based mainly on metabolic factors we defined arbitrarily such children as "anaerobic talents", who were able to reach lactic acid concentrations of 10 mmol/l or more, and childen as "aerobic talents", who reached a running speed of 3 m/s or more at the aerobic-anaerobic threshold (3 mmol/l lactate). This hypothesis has to be substantiated in long-term follow-up investigations. The main problem of such trials is the high drop-out-rate. Verf.-Referat