Understanding psychological processes and their effect on decision making performance in elite endurance cyclists

Success in elite endurance cycling requires a combination of physiological and psychological attributes. However, compared to physiological processes, much less is known about the psychological processes that govern performance at this level. Over eight chapters, results from five investigations are presented that explore the psychology of elite endurance cycling. Overall, the five studies presented in this thesis provide important new information on the processes governing decision making performance in elite cyclists. Strengths include adequate statistical power to detect medium effects in all experiments, randomisation, multiple manipulation checks in all experiments, the elite nature of the samples, adoption of a single dependent variable within experiments (no opportunity for p-hacking), and high ecological validity of the setting (testing under physiological duress). Limitations include the unavailability of a validated cycling-specific decision making task. The findings of this thesis are likely to be of interest to coaches and sport psychologists working with elite-level performers.