Tomas Peterson
Dept. of Sport Sciences, Malmö University
Per Wollmer
Clinical Physiology, Skåne University Hospital, Lund University
This article discusses the recruitment of pupils into a secondary school with a physical activity profile in Sweden. Two cohorts of girls and boys were studied longitudinally between the age of 13 – 15 (n=156). They were accepted into education in fierce competition (the number of the applicant was 437). The selection criteria were sport merits, not school marks. Thus the aim of running the school, besides the general curriculum, is sport talent identification and talent development. One of the aims of the longitudinal and multidisciplinary research project Malmö Youth Sport Study (MYSS) is to establish who the chosen ones are, and to relate the result out of different factors – gender related, physiological, psychological and sociological. The article concludes that a number of social and socio-economic factors clearly influence the talent identification: the socioeconomic status and amount of sport capital of the parents, the pupils’ marks, and their birth month.
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TOMAS PETERSON is Senior Professor at Malmö University. His research areas include sport and social entrepreneurship, the professionalization of Swedish football, selection and ranking in Swedish children’s and youth sports, the relation between school sport and competition sport, equal health, and sport policy.
PER WOLLMER is Professor of Clinical Physiology and Nuclear Medicine at Lund University. His research interests include lung physiology, exercise physiology and physical activity in children.
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