Great British medalists: Response to the commentaries.

Abstract

Hardy, Barlow, Evans et al. (2017) reported the findings of a large scale, multi- source, qualitative study that examined the commonalities of, and discriminators between, a group of Super-Elite (SE) and a group of Elite (E) athletes who were matched on gender, sport, discipline, and era. Fifteen research teams who are actively engaged in research in the domain then provided critical commentaries on the target paper. In our response to these commentaries, we briefly remind the reader of the primary findings of the original paper, and then deal with the commentaries under the subheadings: Necessary and Sufficient conditions for elite performance; Mediating and Moderating Variables; Methodological Issues; Omissions; and Alternative approaches. Finally, we discuss the very small number of disagreements that we have with any of the commentaries.