Matteo Campagna
ITEN
Menu
Menu

An annual calendar with more control competitions and fewer selection competitions brings better results at the major events

1 study · archers measured

ForContextAgainst20202022202420262020, for2020, context
Each circle is a study: its position gives the year, its row whether it is for, against or context, its size how many participants it measured. Light circles are studies on other populations or without archers.

There is only one paper on this question, and it is a chronicle rather than a comparison. A Ukrainian group goes back over twelve seasons of the national recurve team, from 2007 to 2018, and splits them into three ways of building the year according to the type of events on the calendar. Between 2007 and 2013 control events dominate, and the best results fall in that period: Ruban's individual Olympic gold in 2008, won from third place in qualification, and the men's team's fourth place at the same Games. In 2014 and 2015 control and selection events prevail together, three or four a year according to the text, and the men's team wins the first European Games but fails to earn a place at the 2016 Games. From 2016 to 2018 selection events rise to four to six a year and the authors describe a decline, with one exception that matters: in 2016 itself the women's team wins the European Championships that awarded Olympic places, and Marchenko wins the individual event, while the table for those years also records a first place for Ivanytskyy at a world championship in 2016, which the text does not discuss. The paper reports no statistical test and does not say how many athletes it covers; the sentence describing the first period gives four figures for three categories of event; and the three periods change along with everything else, namely who was on the team, the coaches, the rules and the international calendar. So there is evidence in favour, but it is the story of a single national team, in which the best period rests above all on one individual Olympic gold.

Also phrased as: "too many selection events"; "control competitions before the main event"; "planning the competition season"; "competition calendar and results"; "selection trials and peaking"

In practice

The usual line is that a season full of selection events wears archers down before the competition that counts, and that it is better to get there with few selections and plenty of events used as tests, where a poor round costs nothing.

Evidence

Status history

  1. 1990 Not studied In the registry's bibliography nobody had yet compared different ways of building a national archery team's competition calendar. The idea that few selections and plenty of test events lead to better results at the major events belonged to practice, with no data to put it to the test.
  2. 2020 Reported A Ukrainian group goes back over twelve years of the national recurve team, from 2007 to 2018, and splits the seasons into three ways of building the year. Between 2007 and 2013 control events dominate, and the best results fall there, with Ruban's individual Olympic gold in 2008 and the men's team's fourth place. In 2014 and 2015 control and selection events prevail together: the men's team wins the first European Games and the women's team is third, but the men fail to qualify for the 2016 Games. From 2016 to 2018, with selection events in the majority, the authors describe a decline, although in 2016 the women's team wins the European Championships that awarded Olympic places. It is a narrative with no statistical test, on a single national team, with the number of athletes not given and periods that also differ in the team and the rules: there is evidence in favour, and it is as limited as evidence gets.
Cite
APA

Campagna, M. (2026). An annual calendar with more control competitions and fewer selection competitions brings better results at the major events (Version 2). In Evidence Registry. Retrieved 16 October 2026, from https://matteocampagna.com/en/registry/competition/competition-calendar-control-selection-events

BibTeX
@misc{campagna2026_calendariogarecontrollorisultati,
  author = {Campagna, Matteo},
  title = {An annual calendar with more control competitions and fewer selection competitions brings better results at the major events},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {Evidence Registry, matteocampagna.com},
  url = {https://matteocampagna.com/en/registry/competition/competition-calendar-control-selection-events},
  note = {Version 2; accessed 2026-10-16}
}

Other claims in this domain

See all claims on competition and scoring