Visual performance of competitive athletes in comparison to nonathletes and recreational athletes

Visual abilities and adaptive reserves in the area of visual motor skills are possible factors influencing athletic performance. They are important for achieving sporting success and are therefore the focus of research. The aim of the work was to investigate whether competitive athletes show better visual performance than nonathletes and whether there are differences between individual and team athletes. In a cross-sectional study, peripheral perception, stereo vision and afferent dynamic vision were tested in 61 men and 61 women aged between 14 and 59 years. According to their sporting activity, they were divided into the control group (nonathletes/recreational athletes; n = 42) and competitive athletes (n = 80) with more than 4 training sessions per week over more than 3 years in the subgroups individual sport (n = 37) and team sport (n = 43). Group differences were tested with the Mann-Whitney U test or Kruskal-Wallis test. The results showed only isolated significant differences with respect to visual abilities. With an average of 74.3 +/- 55.2 angular seconds, the competitive athletes had better depth visual acuity than the control group with 97.2 +/- 79,8 angular seconds (p < 0.05). Peripheral perception tended to be better in competitive athletes compared to nonatletes/leisure athletes. Approximately 2.5% of competitive athletes were ametropic with visual acuity below 0.63. This study highlights the need to test the visual performance of athletes, e.g. in order to draw the consequences for targeted sport-specific training of these functions.