The purpose of the master thesis was to determine which discipline (swimming, cycling, running) has the greatest impact on the final ranking for a certain distance of triathlon. We were also interested whether there is a difference in total time depending on the age and sex of the competitors in the short and long distance triathlon. The sample consisted of 1378 professional triathletes, including 689 men and 689 women who were single race ranked among the top 20 men and women. We used their results from short (Sprint and Olympic distance) and long (Ironman 70.3 and Ironman distance) distance triathlons.
In order to check the first two hypotheses (gender and age have influence on the achieved results), we calculated the arithmetic mean and get the average, on the basis of which we compared the groups with each other (male and female). We found that gender difference exists in total time in all triathlon distances as well as in all the individual disciplines. We have also shown that women are, on average, in all triathlon distances older than men and that the average age of competitors in the long distance triathlon is five years higher than in the short distance triathlon.
In the last two hypotheses, we tested the effect of the three variables (swimming time, cycling time, running time) on the final ranking in triathlon, where regression analysis was used. We found that running and cycling time have the greatest impact on final ranking in long distance triathlon, meanwhile running time has the greatest impact on final ranking in short distance triathlon.
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