Swimming performance index based on extreme value theory

Abstract

The International Swimming Federation has developed a points system that allows comparisons of results between different events. Such system is important for several reasons, since it is used as a criterion to rank swimmers in awards and selection procedures of national teams. The points system is based entirely on the world record of the correspondent event. Since it is based on only one observation, this work aims to suggest a new system, based on the probability distribution of the best performances in each event. Using extreme value theory, such distribution, under certain conditions, converges to a generalized Pareto distribution. The new performance index, based on the peaks over threshold methodology, is obtained based on the exceedance probabilities correspondent to the swimmers’ times that exceed a given threshold. We work with 17 officially recognized events in 50 m pool, for each women and men, and considered all-time rankings for all events until 31 December 2016. A study on the adequacy of the proposed generalized Pareto distribution index and a comparison between the performances of Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps are also conducted.