Relatioship between the population size of cities and the sports performance of brazilian swimmers

Objective: Analyse the influence of population size in relation to the number of Brazilian swimming athletes, as well as the chances of having better results,. Methods: The sample was composed of Brazilian male and female swimming athletes, included in the ranking of the Brazilian Confederation of Aquatic Sports (CBDA) between 2013 and 2017. Categorization of cities by population was used, according to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics: Category 1 (> 500,000), category 2 (100,001 - 500,000), category 3 (50,001 - 100,000), category 4 (20,001 - 50,000), category 5 (<20,001). Results: For cities with more than 500,000 inhabitants (category 1) a higher probability was found for a swimming athlete could have high-performance results (OR = 5.53; CI95% = 5.32-5.75). Conclusion: The results of this study demontrated that there is a relationship between population size of Brazilian cities especilly for more populous cities. We suggest that public policies for sport in less populated cities could increase the chances of having high performance in swimming.