Looking back to move forward: Recently retired Olympians’ perspectives of factors that contribute to and undermine athlete well-being.

Abstract

The demands of Olympic-level sport create a unique array of factors that can influence athlete well-being. This qualitative study examined the perceptions of Canadian Olympians in relation to factors they believe contributed to, or impaired, their well-being over the course of their sport careers. Twelve recently retired Canadian Olympic athletes from a variety of winter and summer sports participated in the study. Participants were categorized as recently retired if they competed at one or more Olympic Games since 2010. For the study, Olympians participated in individual semistructured interviews, each of which was transcribed verbatim and subject to thematic analysis. An interpretivist approach underpinned this study. The results included nine lower order themes that were subsumed within three higher order themes. These included interpersonal (i.e., coach athlete relations, support team, training environment), national sport federation (NSF) operations (i.e., finances, planning, communication), and intra-individual (i.e., resultsfocused mindset, identification with elite sport norms, feelings of isolation vs. connectivity) factors that participants felt contributed to, or undermined, their well-being during their elite sport careers. When taken together, the results of this study point to the complexity of factors that potentially influence Olympic-level athlete well-being as well as unique insights from Olympic athletes into interpersonal, NSF operations, and intraindividual factors that are worthy of more scrutinized investigation. Implications for future research and applied practice are discussed.

Adaptation to life after sport for retired athletes: A scoping review of existing reviews and programs

“…Our analyses of review articles from the academic literature illustrate that possessing a high athletic identity is consistently associated with difficulties in transitioning into life after sport. Among elite athletes, it is not uncommon for their social networks, career ambitions, physical goals, psychological stimulation, and sense of self-worth to be distinctly tied to their sport [ 5 , 36 ]. It is thus understandable that when an athlete’s competitive sporting life concludes, not only do they lose their sport, but athletes also substantially alter and may lose a core aspect of their personal identity [ 43 , 44 ].…”

“…Across the synthesized literature is a consensus that retiring athletes are at a particularly high risk of experiencing cognitive impairment , mental health issues , and osteoarthritis complications [ 6 , 7 , 36 ]. These clinical findings suggest that not only should athlete retirement programming focus on helping athletes prepare for subsequent career transitions and make sense of their athletic career in relation to their personal identity, but they should also include interventions to address these specific health issues.…”

“…Several approaches can be used to examine individuals' retirement experiences, including approaches from the field of social gerontology where retirement is seen as a career transition that results in the termination of paid work [24][25][26], and a shift to a new career after a long period of employment in a different field [27][28][29]. Other theoretical work sees retirement as a transitional process [30][31][32] or even an event that occurs through several stages [33,34] In sport science, athletic retirement has been conceptualized in a way that emphasizes emotional and social well-being [35][36][37], as well as non-athletic career planning [14,38].…”

Understanding experiences of and influences on well-being in elite para-sport: A qualitative exploration of U.K. para-athletes.

“…A subjectivist epistemology reflected the view that knowledge is developed through interpretation of our interactions with the world and does not exist independently from it. An interpretivist approach therefore allowed us to gain a deeper understanding of elite para-sport athletes' views and experiences with regard to well-being and aligns with other similar studies in this area (e.g., Sauvé et al, 2022). We also sought to acknowledge how the background and positionality of the research team may also have shaped our interpretation of the data.…”

It Takes a Team – Enhancing Student-Athlete Health and Well-Being Through an Interprofessional Approach

“…Intrapersonal factors also have a significant impact on perceived athlete-wellbeing. Sauve and colleagues identify a number of individual factors that elite athletes ascribe as influencing their wellbeing, which we will expand to the context of university student-athletes [10]. First, athletes whose mindset focuses purely on results and winning tend to see direct relationships between success, selfworth, and consequently, well-being.…”