Abstract des Autors

The aim of the study was to find out whether the use of a wetsuit in the swimming part of races in the triathlon World Cups reduces differences in the starting field and increases the chances of triathletes with lower swimming performance at the overall results of the race. The analysis was carried out in 49 World Cup races held in the years 2005 to 2008 (16 races using the wetsuit and 33 races without the wetsuit). To assess the hypotheses, we used the Student’s t-test for two independent samples with equal variance and effect size (ω2). Hypotheses were verified at the level of significance 0.05. The results did not confirm statistically significant differences or effect size in standard deviations and ranges between the times of athletes in swimming parts of triathlon performed with and without the wetsuit. We may conclude that, in the World Cup races, it was not proved that the wetsuit could help lower performance swimmers reduce their loss after the swimming part and decrease the advantage of high performance swimmers. Verf.-Referat