The impact of co-acting competitors on shooting performance in elite biathletes

ABSTRACT

Grounded in social facilitation theory, this study examined the impact of co-acting competitors (i.e., opponents) on elite biathletes’ shooting performance based on World Cup competition data. To this end, the impact of the number as well as the mean overlapping time with co-acting competitors at the shooting range on both shooting time and shooting accuracy was assessed. Competition data of World Cup races from 2005 to 2020 were analysed. This included 115 mass start and 195 pursuit events of a total of 758 elite biathletes amounting to 57.251 shooting bouts equivalent to a total of 286.255 shots. Data was analysed using a fixed effects model. Results revealed two main findings: First, the more co-acting opponents were present at the shooting range, the shorter (i.e., better) was shooting time. However, more co-acting opponents were also associated with decreased shooting accuracy in mass start, but not in pursuit. Second, a longer temporal overlap with co-acting opponents negatively affected biathletes’ shooting time. There was no effect on shooting accuracy. To conclude, the present study provides first evidence for a link between co-acting competitors and shooting performance in elite biathletes by analysing ecologically valid, real world data.

KEYWORDS:

• Biathlon shooting
• social facilitation
• presence of others
• opponents
• competition analysis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ We did not consider the social context predictor of supportive vs. non-supportive audience (Harb-Wu & Krumer, 2019) in our analyses as there is no evidence indicating that it predicts shooting performance in head-to-head competitions (i.e., mass start).

² Based on the comparison of estimates’ confidence intervals, we merely observed gender differences for the predictor number of shooting block on shooting time in mass start. The effect followed the same direction, but coefficients showed that shooting block explained more variance for women than for men.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.