Abstract
The road to the top is never easy. Here, we tested whether the career progression of elite men's and women's singles badminton players can be predicted by the age of first debut impression on the world stage and the time spent to make it top 150. We extracted and analyzed publicly available data on BWF from October 2009 to October 2022, constructing equivalent fractions to model both time and age to test the predictive linear regression model with Bayesian inference after adjusting for anthropocentric variables. Findings support that the age of first debut impression on the world stage predicts career-high rankings in fluctuating trajectories of over one hundred and twenties world-class elite badminton players. Furthermore, we found that the Matthew effect may not be the case for explaining early-career success in badminton players at a young age, while nature outweighs nurture in future athletic-career success trajectories. The potential relative age effect and early specialization in sports are also discussed.