INTRODUCTION

Talent is “an individual’s potential for success in a domain” (p. 3) with talent identification referring to “early recognition (relative to being an adult)” of that potential and talent development being concerned with nurturing of the potential, through attention to the provision of appropriate training and resources” (p. 5). This book is billed as offering “a comprehensive synthesis of current knowledge in talent identification and development in sport” (Backcover). The editors are researchers from Canada, UK and Germany.

THEORETICAL AND CONCEPTUAL MODELS FOR UNDERSTANDING TALENT IDENTIFICATION AND DEVELOPMENT

There are chapters on whether genes predict potential (Joseph Baker), the role of psychology in talent development (Aine MacNamara and Dave Collins), environmental influences on talent development (Sean Horton), the numerous pathways to sport expertise – best exemplified by Jean Côté’s Developmental Model of Sport Participation (Damian Farrow), and talent development from the perspective of “athletes as complex neurobiological systems” (Ian Renshaw, Keith Davids, Elissa Phillips and Hugo Kerhervé).

OVERVIEW

The editors - Joseph Baker, Steve Cobley and Jörg Schorer – state that their overarching purpose is to inform a ‘better’ system for talent identification and development in sport (p. xviii). This book is recommended as a text for modules on talent identification and development in sports science and coaching degrees at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. A starting point for such modules that adopt this book could be the chapter from Ian Renshaw and his colleagues:

Traditional approaches tend to overemphasize anthropometric and physiological measures so that potentially talented individuals are initially excluded or deselected from programmes, due to limited assessments of talent potential based on current performance. In this chapter we argue that the focus in sport needs to eschew early identification of expert athletes towards the development of skilled, highly adaptive performers. (p. 64)