Athletes confessions: The sports biography as an interaction ritual

Abstract

Commercialisation of emotions is not a new phenomenon (Hochschild, 1983) but in Denmark there is a new general trend to tell and sell personal stories in the media. Personal deprivation and crises are also major topics in sports media. This paper focuses on sports biographies as a book genre that is reviving in popularity. The paper approaches the topic through the biographies of one Danish athlete: the former professional cyclist, Jesper Skibby, who writes about his doping disclosure and shares his personal dilemmas as a former elite sportsman. The thematic text analysis orientates around social interactions, emotions and personality constructions. Inspired by micro sociology with a Durkheimian flavor of Goffman (1967) and Hochschild (1983Hochschild ( , 2003, themes including 'face work', 'interaction rituals' and 'emotions management' are discussed. The analysis claims that sharing personal information in the media is not only a means of confession and reclaiming status but is also business and management -on an intimate level. Telling the story of the corrosion of a sporting character has become a hot issue, entertainment and not least a commercial commitment.

Cycling alone: Team Sky’s difficult quest for credibility during the 2015 Tour de France

“…But Froome’s obligation to manage mistrust and to claim that his performance was not a deception is, however, very different from that of asylum seekers (Rogers et al, 2015) or elderly people (Brossard, 2017). Indeed, Froome’s credibility depends on a more complex institutional arrangement for the valuation of his sincerity, as is the case for confessions in sports (Thing and Ronglan, 2015). This explains why the analysis of interactions needs to be connected to the history of cycling and other actors such as the media.…”

Civilising processes and doping in professional cycling

“…In that regard, they provide a means to situate the changes in habitus historically. Autobiographies have acted as sources of data for others examining issues within the sociology of sport (see Sparkes, 2004;Thing and Ronglan, 2014) and within figurational studies as part of a broader data set (see Dolan, 2009a). The autobiographies were selected primarily to attain temporal variation so that the experiences, attitudes and feelings of cyclists from different generations could be considered.…”

Taking sporting autobiographies seriously as an analytical and pedagogical resource in sport, exercise and health

“…According to Stewart, Smith and Sparkes (2011), 'despite providing a potentially rich source of data within the field of sport-related-studies, published autobiographies have, to date, been a neglected resource ' (p. 582). In support of this view, Thing and Ronglan (2014) state that, 'To our knowledge, sociological analyses of sports biographies as texts have hardly been conducted' (p. 1). There are various reasons for this state of affairs that we will now discuss.…”

“…These revolve around the production of sporting autobiographies as a 'commercial commitment' (Thing & Ronglan, 2014) by publishers for the purposes of profit, and the fact that many are 'ghost-written' or co-authored (often with a commissioned journalist). In their own ways, both of these problems are presumed to undermine the alleged 'unmediated authenticity' that Smith and Watson (2010) note are reputed to exist when the author or narrator of the autobiography is the person who lived the experiences described (also see Couser, 2001).…”