Searching for the elusive gift: advances in talent identification in sport

- Exciting new multi-disciplinary studies offer unique insights to talent identification.
- Emergent statistical approaches help to uncover the best predictors of future performance.
- The widespread condemnation of genetic testing for talent identification in sport.
- New approaches are emerging to counteract biases in talent identification.
- Growing interest in talent identification in para sport.

The incentives for sport organizations to identify talented athletes from a young age continue to grow, yet effective talent identification remains a challenging task. This opinion paper examines recent advances in talent identification, focusing in particular on the emergence of new approaches that may offer promise to identify talent (e.g., small-sided games, genetic testing, and advanced statistical analyses). We appraise new multi-disciplinary and large-scale population studies of talent identification, provide a consideration of the most recent psychological predictors of performance, examine the emergence of new approaches that strive to diminish biases in talent identification, and look at the rise in interest in talent identification in Paralympic sport.