A recurrent‐events survival analysis of the duration of Olympic records

One of the main motivations for participants in high‐level sports competitions is setting records. This paper explores the duration of athletic events records since the Modern Olympic Games have been held. Due to the lack of independence between the duration of these records, the use of traditional survival analysis was ruled out and a novel approach for recurrent events was used. No significant differences have been found either between the duration of records of men's and women's events or between individual and team events. There seem to be differences in the duration of records in some specific categories like track and field events. Both the gap between the Olympic record and the contemporaneous world record and the amount that the Olympic record improves increase the risk of the records being broken. The results obtained confirm that the model may reduce the uncertainty about the number of records expected in the next Olympic Games.