Expertise in Sports: What Is the Secret Behind World-Class Athletic Success?

Less than 1% of all sports participants ever reach the top and become successful professional athletes. Defining expert performance is one of the greatest conundrums for sports professionals and it tends to be susceptible to subjective biases. Challenges in defining expertise especially arise with sports which, by nature, lack objective criteria for evaluating performance at an individual level. In general terms, an expert in sports is an athlete who is consistent at producing superior performances over an extended period of time. However, rapid rates at which the human physical performance is improving place immense demands on athletes who need to adapt to ever-increasing task requirements in order to make it to the top. The road to sporting success is a complex multidimensional process that arises from the dynamics between the task demands, an athlete, and their environments. To become a top performer, an athlete needs to possess the right mix of various characteristics (i.e. anthropometric, physiological, tactical, technical, and psychological). Most importantly, however, one’s willingness to be actively involved in their own learning process on metacognitive, motivational, and behavioral levels is what differentiates the top athletes from the rest. This chapter explores the meaning of expertise in sport, which the authors illustrate through examples of competitive cycling. They dissect the cycling expert performance and present the core elements needed to develop superior performing abilities in cycling and other sports.