Highland Games as serious leisure: becoming a Masters athlete

Abstract

In a context of successful ageing discourse, a growing number of older adults are turning to competitive sport. The phenomenon known as Masters sport is a form of serious leisure that challenges stereotypes of ageing. Contemporary research has explored how individuals become Masters athletes in a variety of sports, focusing upon on the mainstream sports of running, swimming and tennis. Research has yet to explore how people become involved in activities that have less universal appeal. This article begins filling this gap by examining how Masters athletes became involved in the Highland Games, a sport contextualised by its links to Scotland and its diaspora. A pragmatic theoretical approach lending from three existing models is used to make sense of how people enter the Games. Drawing on semistructured life history interviews with 19 Masters athletes, this case study details two pathways to the Highland Games. The article describes how, unlike previous research, most athletes enter the sport later in life and are either drawn to competition through an emergent identification with Scotland or a diversification of bodily dispositions that existed before Games participation. The article concludes that theoretical flexibility is required to understand better the socio-cultural factors that influence Masters sport participation.

What is transcendental information? A conceptual paper

“…They not only bring joy and pleasure to the participants, but also provide a wide range of personal and social benefits. Personal enrichment, self-actualization, self-expression, enhancing self-image, self-gratification and forming identification are just a few examples from a long list of benefits (Ryu & Heo, 2017;Miller, 2018;Lee & Ewert, 2019;Bowness, 2020). Experiencing positive psychological wellbeing and transforming the lives of participants are other findings reported in the literature (Iwasaki, 2007;Lee & Payne, 2016;Heo et al, 2018).…”

Becoming and being a masters athlete: Class, gender, place and the embodied formation of (anti)-ageing moral identities

“…There is a developed sociological literature that examines the links between identity, embodiment and ageing for competitive older athletes (Bowness, 2020;Dionigi et al, 2013;Dionigi et al, 2011;Phoenix and Tulle, 2018;Pike, 2011;Tulle, 2008;Wheaton, 2019). For example, research on veteran elite runners (Tulle, 2007(Tulle, , 2008, Masters swimmers (Stevenson, 2002;Pike, 2011), older natural bodybuilders (Phoenix, 2010) and surfers (Wheaton, 2019) highlights how physical activity and competitive sport in older age challenge dominant constructions of ageing as biomedical decline (Dionigi, 2013).…”

“…Once discouraged, or even seen as dangerous, Masters athletes are now considered exemplars of ‘successful’ or positive ageing – as models of not only how we can age but how people should age (Gard and Dionigi, 2016; Gard et al, 2017; Dionigi et al, 2011). Masters athletes challenge traditional ideas of ageing as bodily decline and frailty and capture policy initiatives to increase physical activity later in life (Bowness, 2020; Tulle, 2008; Phoenix and Tulle, 2018). Although physical activity and sporting participation declines with age, major multi-sporting events like the Australian and World Masters Games have increased in popularity, and there are more older athletes competing in physically demanding and competitive sports such as running, cycling and tennis (Dionigi and Gard, 2018; Bowness, 2020).…”

“…Masters athletes challenge traditional ideas of ageing as bodily decline and frailty and capture policy initiatives to increase physical activity later in life (Bowness, 2020; Tulle, 2008; Phoenix and Tulle, 2018). Although physical activity and sporting participation declines with age, major multi-sporting events like the Australian and World Masters Games have increased in popularity, and there are more older athletes competing in physically demanding and competitive sports such as running, cycling and tennis (Dionigi and Gard, 2018; Bowness, 2020). There is a need to deepen understanding about the social processes and structures that underpin how people become Masters athletes, their embodied experiences of training and competing and how these experiences influence the moral formation of ageing identities.…”

Refereeing as a Postathletic Career Option

“…Though the Career Contingencies Model did not originate in a sport setting, it has since been used to study involvement in a variety of sports settings and populations, including sports officials (Furst, 1991), Masters swimmers (Stevenson, 2002), and the Masters Highland Games (Bowness, 2019). Furst (1991) used the model to identify how sport officials became initially involved and why they continued officiating, which is particularly relevant as nearly all officials begin officiating as a part-time job or avocation and not a full-time career endeavor.…”