Analysis offemale runners tactical behaviors during 5000 meters races at the IAAF World Championships 2022
The objective of the study was to investigate the features of the tactical behaviors during 5000 meters races at the IAAF World Championships 2022. The results of the women's 5000 meters running race analysis from the official website of IAAF World Championships 2022 were considered. Using the cluster analysis, all athletes in the first round and final races were divided into groups with similar dynamics of running speed. Then, a one-way analysis of variance was used to assess the significance of speed differences in each of the sections of the distance between the selected groups of athletes and a two-sample t-test was used to pairwise compare the speed indicators in each of the pairs of the groups under consideration. It was found that the group of leaders in each of races differed in smaller than in the middle and outsiders groups in the relative speed of running at the beginning of the distance and its more pronounced increase in the finish segment. The group of outsiders, on the contrary, had the highest values of relative running speed at the first and second thousand meters of the distance and its lowest values at the finish segment, in which it never reached the average running speed over the distance. Athletes from the middle group in the analyzed races started running with a relative speed higher than that of the leaders, but less than that of the outsiders, and finished it with a speed less than that of the leaders and greater (or equal) than that of the outsiders.