The COVID-19 pandemic has brought many disruptions to individuals’ everyday lives and caused wide-ranging, drastic effects on their well-being, mental health, and physical health. This study sought to validate the Dark Future Scale (DFS) and examine its reliability and validity in Turkish. The present study also examined the relationship between fear of COVID-19, dark future anxiety, and resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic in Turkey. Four hundred and eighty-nine Turkish athletes (mean age = 23.08 ± 6.64) completed measures on fear, anxiety, resilience, and demographic information. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses revealed that the DFS had a one-factor solution with good reliability. Fear of COVID-19 significantly predicted resilience and future anxiety. Furthermore, resilience significantly predicted anxiety and mediated the effect of fear of COVID-19 on future anxiety. The findings have important implications for improving mental health and developing the resiliency of athletes during public health crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

Athletes with fear of failure are at risk of developing the symptoms of a wide range of psychological problems, including burnout. Understanding the risks and protective factors of athletes’ psychological health is an essential step in tailoring strategies and interventions to promote athletes’ psychological and mental health. This study examined the mediating roles of resilience and extrinsic motivation in the relationship between fear of failure and burnout among Turkish athletes. The study included 335 young athletes (93.4% males) whose ages ranged from 18 to 55 years (M = 24.95, SD = 8.22). Participants completed the self-reported measures of fear of failure, resilience, extrinsic motivation, and burnout. The analysis revealed that fear of failure had significant predictive effects on resilience, extrinsic motivation, and burnout. Resilience and extrinsic motivation also had significant predictive effects on burnout. The mediation analysis results showed that both resilience and extrinsic motivation partially mediated the effect of fear of failure on athlete burnout. The findings of the study provide a better insight into the underlying mechanisms between fear of failure and athlete burnout by considering resilience and extrinsic motivation as mediators. These results suggest that the adverse impact of fear of failure on athlete burnout can be mitigated by cultivating resilience and hindering extrinsic motivation.

This study aims to investigate the Interleukin (IL)-6 rs1800795 and peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor alpha (PPARA) rs4253778 polymorphism distributions in the relatively faster and slower subgroups of national cross-country skiing athletes and to identify advantageous genotypes for endurance performance. IL-6 is an inflammatory mediator that is effective in muscle tissue hypertrophy, repair, and the immune system. On the other hand, PPARA transcription factor is a molecule associated with fatty acid, sugar metabolism and inflammation formation. Total of 30 professional cross-country skiing athletes were examined in three groups as athletes, female athletes, and male athletes. DNA of the participants were isolated from blood and genetic polymorphisms were determined by RT-PCR. Athletes were divided into two subgroups as faster and slower referring to their “1-kilometer cross-country skiing time averages (CCSTA)”. Polymorphism distributions in these subgroups were analyzed statistically with Fishers exact test and descriptive tests. In addition, the 1 km-CCSTA values of the genotypes were determined by descriptive statistical methods and the time advantages were calculated. It was determined that the combination of IL-6 rs1800795 GC and PPARA rs4253778 GG genotypes was observed to be more prominent among the faster categories of cross-country skiing competitors, particularly in the athletes and male athletes categories, and it had a time advantage at 1 km-CCSTA. The GC genotype (p= 0.0098) and C-allele (p=0.0398) of IL-6 rs1800795 polymorphism were detected at a higher rate in the fast subgroup in male athletes. These genotypes may support endurance performance.

The Effects of Short-Term Intensive Exercise on Levels of Liver Enzymes and Serum Lipids in Kick Boxing Athletes

Studies in sport genetics have increased nowadays and the identification of genotype and allelic distributions of candidate genes in different athletes has provided important information to sports scientists. One of the candidate genes studied in sports genetics is the hypoxia-inducible factor 1-alpha (HIF1A) gene, which is associated with the endurance phenotype. In our study, we aimed to determine the genotypic and allelic distribution of HIF1A rs11549465 polymorphism in Turkish Elite Ski Runners. 34 (23 male, 11 female) athletes were included in the study, and 1 cc of blood samples taken for routine analysis after the approval of the ethics committee was used for DNA isolation. The commercial kit was used for DNA isolation and genotyping was performed by Real-time PCR method. The number and percentage of CC, CT and TT genotypes of the HIF1A rs11549465 polymorphism were 24 (72.72%), 8 (24.24%) and 1 (3.03), respectively. In male skiers CC, CT and TT genotype numbers and percentages were determined as 17 (55.51%), 4 (12.12%) and 1 (3.03%) respectively. In female, CC and TT genotypes were determined as 7 (21.21%) and 4 (12.12%). We detected no TT genotype in female athletes. When we look at allel numbers, C allele was determined as 56 (84.84%) and T allele was determined as 10 (15.15%). This is the first study on HIF1A rs11549465 polymorphism on Turkish elite ski runners. The higher prevalence of CC genotype and C allele in the athlete group is similar to the previous studies on different groups of athletes. We believe that this study will be an important reference for further studies.

The purpose of this study was to determine the talent selection methods applied to athletes involved in different sports branches in Turkey. The research population consisted of 724 volunteer athletes who were active in sports clubs in thirty seven different cities of Turkey. Semi-structured interview form was used as data collection tool. It was determined that no talent test was applied to 512 (70.72%) of 724 athletes who participated in the study and 212 (29.28%) were put to talent test methods by their coaches. Of 212 athletes who were put to talent test, 41 (5.66%) were observed for their physical characteristics, 59 (8.14%) for their competitions, 75 (10.35%) for their basic motor skills (speed, strength, endurance, coordination, balance, flexibility and agility) and 37 (5.11%) for their technical capacities in competitions. As a result; it is estimated that the application of physical, mental, physiological, body composition and genetic tests all together while determining the talent selection in sports will be the most effective method to detect talented athletes.