Abstract
Athletes’ performances are determined not only by individual abilities but also by environmental states, especially the behavior of competitors. Previous studies suggest that spontaneous interpersonal synchronization occurs when individuals can see/hear each other. Varlet and Richardson (2015) reported spontaneous interpersonal synchronization between Usain Bolt and Tyson Gay in the 100-m race in which Bolt broke the world record and Gay broke the US record. This report suggests that interpersonal synchronization may in some instances enhance an athlete’s performances. Here we report a new case of the potential positive effect of interpersonal synchronization on athletes’ performance. At the men’s 100-m final of the Fuse sprint held in Japan in 2021, the first-place sprinter, Yamagata, broke the Japanese 100-m record, and the second-place sprinter, Tada, set his new personal record. These two sprinters ran side-by-side throughout the race. To investigate whether interpersonal synchronization occurred between the two sprinters, we analyzed the video of the final race, which we compared to the chance level of synchronization determined from the preliminaries in which the sprinters ran in different races. Our results showed that the relative phase between the two sprinters was more consistently attracted towards inphase synchrony in the final race compared to the chance level synchronization determined from the preliminary races. This result supports the hypothesis that spontaneous interpersonal synchronization can occur between sprinters running next to each other. It is noteworthy that both world and Japanese 100-m records were set in races in which the first- and second-place sprinters synchronized their running movements. Our study provides further evidence that suggests interpersonal synchronization could enhance sprinters’ performance.