What Results Achieve the Best Youth Athletes When They Became Seniors? Evidences from a Portuguese Female Artistic Gymnastics 40 Years’ Period

The main purpose of this study was to examine the competitive pathways of the Portuguese female artistic gymnasts who achieved the first places in the earlier stages of their competitive categories, trying to understand how they were able or not to achieve the same level of competitive results over time. Further, it also was purpose of this study to analyze if there existed differences on that according to the level of performances reached by them at the beginning of their sport competitive careers. Therefore, were examined the sporting careers of all of the 282 female athletes who were classified at least once in the top six places of all national competitions organized by the Federation of Gymnastics of Portugal between 1971 and 2011 in the various existing categories (i.e., 10-11, 12-13, 14-15 and 16+ years old). Contrary to what it was found in most studies carried in other sports across several countries and sports, this study showed that a high percentage of the athletes who won the competitions at the beginning of their careers did it over again along their careers until the category of seniors, showing a high stability of the obtained results and a high longevity career. Therefore, it seems to suggest that the responsible persons by their sport training process (i.e., coaches and other club’s staff) are very efficacious in identifying the more talented female gymnasts and/ or to support them along their sporting careers, also stressing the importance of investigating the strategies adopted to achieve it.