(Beyond) the field of play: contrasting deterministic and probabilistic approaches to talent identification and development systems

Talent identification and development systems (TIDS) adopt a deterministic perspective (i.e. athletes' future state/performances can be predicted by observations of their initial state/performance), which encourages early identification and specialisation in sport. In this framework, the main aim of sport systems is to enhance predictability and reduce uncertainty, by investigating the causal relationship between entering a talent pathway and becoming an expert performer. Generally, athletes who display ideal body proportions and attain certain performance standards in early developmental stages are labelled as talented (i.e. they display the potential to succeed) and are selected by TIDS, which afford them a superior developmental opportunity (i.e. better training facilities, certified coaching staff, and higher competition levels), to realise their potential. A deterministic approach, thus, (a) sees talent as a fixed capacity, whereby future successful athletes can be identified early (i.e. early identification); and (b) considers entering at an earlier age in a talent pathway a pre-requisite for sporting success (i.e. early specialisation). Contrary to deterministic expectations, recent research has highlighted how being considered talented from the early stages does not guarantee a better likelihood of successfully achieve senior sporting success. In this paper, taking ideas from ecological anthropology, a new probabilistic approach is proposed which considers TIDS as a process (i.e. being talented is about remaining responsive to what you could become), dialogical (i.e. athlete selection and development are not done in isolation, but both influenced by sociocultural constraints), and open-ended (i.e. unpredictability related to future outcomes). If sport systems embrace the uncertainty of developmental pathways and join with the conversation across and within TIDS to support systemic change. We conclude by proposing four key foundations of any probabilistic TIDS: give sport back to kids, ethos of amateurism, delaying selection processes, and early diversification.