Assessment of Sprint Parameters in Top Speed Interval in 100 m Sprint—A Pilot Study Under Field Conditions

Improving performances in sprinting requires feedback on sprint parameters such as step length and step time. However, these parameters from the top speed interval (TSI) are difficult to collect in a competition setting. Recent advances in tracking technology allows to provide positional data with high spatio-temporal resolution. This pilot study, therefore, aims to automatically obtain general sprint parameters, parameters characterizing, and derived from TSI from raw speed. In addition, we propose a method for obtaining the intra-cyclic speed amplitude in TSI. We analyzed 32 100 m-sprints of 7 male and 9 female athletes (18.9 ± 2.8 years; 100 m PB 10.55–12.41 s, respectively, 12.18–13.31 s). Spatio-temporal data was collected with a radio-based position detection system (RedFIR, Fraunhofer Institute, Germany). A general velocity curve was fitted to the overall speed curve (v(base)), TSI (upper quintile of v(base) values) was determined and a cosine term was added to v(base) within TSI (v(cycle)) to capture the cyclic nature of speed. This allowed to derive TSI parameters including TSI amplitude from the fitted parameters of the cosine term. Results showed good approximation for v(base) (error: 5.0 ± 1.0%) and for v(cycle) (2.0 ± 1.0%). For validation we compared spatio-temporal TSI parameters to criterion values from laser measurement (speed) and optoelectric systems (step time and step length) showing acceptable RMSEs for mean speed (0.08 m/s), for step time (0.004 s), and for step length (0.03 m). Top speed interval amplitude showed a significant difference between males (mean: 1.41 m/s) and females (mean: 0.71 m/s) and correlations showed its independence from other sprint parameters. Gender comparisons for validation revealed the expected differences. This pilot study investigated the feasibility of estimating sprint parameters from high-quality tracking data. The proposed method is independent of the data source and allows to automatically obtain general sprint parameters and TSI parameters, including TSI amplitude assessed here for the first time in a competition-like setting.