Abstract des Autors

Twenty-four cross-country skiers of the 3 Italian National teams were tested at the beginning (June) and at the end (November and first days of December) of training which preceded the competitive season. The experimental protocol was based on walking up on a treadmill using poles at 7.5 km/h with 0ø, 2ø, 4ø of slope and then at 8.0 km/h with increasing slope until the subject was exhausted. The slopes were changed every 3 min. The maximal O2 uptake (VO2max), the O2 uptake corresponding to 4 mM and 2 mM of capillary lactate concentration [LA]cap, the heart frequency (HR) at the anaerobic threshold ([LA]cap=4 mM), the duration of the whole test and the slope corresponding to the anaerobic threshold increased significantly (p<0.0001). On the other hand both the HR and the [LA]cap corresponding to the 10ø slope walk decreased significantly. Norwegian gold medalists had better VO2max and training adaptation than the Italian ones. The predictive power of the lab tests on racing performance were evaluated by regressing the average velocity during a 15 km race (V) against test results. The VO2max had the highest predictive power and this variable was able to explain 51% of the agonistic performance variability. A slightly less predicting power was observed in the case of other variables, except HF al the 10ø slope walk. Verf.-Referat