Einleitung

Predicting an athlete's future performance is largely based on the idea of a talent formula, hypothetically grounded in pure scientific evidence and consisting of a number of predictors. Although this approach has increased our knowledge of what might distinguish highly talented athletes from their less skilled counterparts, our knowledge regarding how to predict future success in sport is rather limited. First, we try to define what talent is. Second, we focus on the process of talent development. Then we present a list of potential predictors identified in talent research followed by same discussion of the time frames over which these predictors have been evaluated to get an idea of out how long we might confidently use them. Finally, we highlight some of the problems we have identified in our talent selection systems. These research topics are followed by recommendations or ideas for the practitioners that might help improve our skill at predicting future success in sports. In addition, a rowing coach writes about the practical work of talent identification and development by describing The British Rowing World Class Start (WCS) talent identification scheme. (gekürzt und erweitert)