The More Participation the Longer Sports Career?: Based on the Characteristics of the World Outstanding Track and Field Athletes

The short career length of athletes has been an important factor restricting the development of track-and-field sports in China for a long time. Currently, there is no convincing conclusion yet as for the study on the characteristics of competition of athletes during their career summit and the following stages, especially its relationship with the career length. The competition performances and related data between 1993 and 2017 of 1 351 outstanding track-and-field athletes who participated in international competitions from 1993 to 2004 are analyzed, with the Cox regression method used to find the competition participation factors. The result shows that: younger athletes with inferior performance tend to have a lower risk of retirement, also, a longer athletic career, a superior or later-come best-performance plays an important role in prolonging the career length, the participation program during the accumulative phase of competition peak has a limited effect on the career length, and the participation program during the explosive phase of competition peak and its maintaining phase affects it significantly. Therefore, the participation program during the explosive phase of competition peak should be designed differently: sprint athletes could increase their attendance frequency for competition thus to decrease the risk of retirement, and the same purpose could be achieved by reducing the frequency of participation for special athletes in middle-distance running, long-distance running, jumping and throwing.