O encerramento da carreira esportiva na Ginástica Artística Feminina do Brasil

Abstract

The high performance athlete's development requires intense work. The road to success is long and athletes integrally dedicate part of their lives to the sport. That is why sport retirement can be traumatic in some cases. This frame can be acute in Women's Artistic Gymnastics (WAG), because athlete's development takes in average 10 years, the specialized training starts early to reach the top and the sport career usually end in adolescence. Understanding this process is essential to rethink the athlete's development. Therefore, this study analyzed 7 Brazilians ex-gymnasts' sport career, who retired from WAG before 20 years old, and it identified factors that contributed to their retirement. We apply a semistructured interview to collect the data and the technique of "Content Analysis" (BARDIN, 2010) to treat it. We identified three themes and their respective categories that represent important stages of gymnasts' sport career: motivation for the beginning in Artistic Gymnastics' (AG) practice; Motivation to remain in WAG; Retirement in WAG. We find intrinsic and extrinsic motivation evidences in athletic initiation. However, we identified more extrinsic influence, mainly by the parents. In the rise of high performance WAG the extrinsic influence by the coaches and the family and the goal to participate of the Olympic Games (OG) were preponderant factors. On the other hand, intrinsic factors, such as "love" for WAG, are fundamental to the gymnasts' engagement in the sport. We analyzed the motivation's behavior throughout the gymnasts' career and we found this process implication in sport career's end. We found out that there is no isolated aspect in the gymnasts' retirement, but the interaction of factors. Furthermore, we analyzed the adaptations and the difficulties in this transition moment and we observed that the lack of planning in the gymnasts' sport career's end. Our results show that there is no perfect moment for the retirement in WAG, because the circumstances define this moment. However, gymnasts should be advised that the sports career is not eternal and that any fact can unexpectedly end the sport life. More importantly, they must be prepared and ready for this moment.