A cross-national comparison of the transition out of elite sport of Swiss, Danish and Polish athletes

Abstract

Retirement from elite sport is considered a major life-changing experience for athletes and thus has attracted career researchers since the late 1960s (Hill & Lowe, 1974; Lerch, 1982; Mihovilovic, 1968; Svoboda & Vanek, 1982). Early studies have described the end of an athletic career as a traumatic event and therefore, have mostly focused on negative outcomes. Later studies have revealed an alternative view where athletes may feel relieved from the heavy burden of their athletic commitment (e.g. Coakley, 1983; McPherson, 1984; Sinclair & Orlick, 1993). Nowadays, athletic retirement is no longer seen as a single event, but as a process-oriented transition in which a ‘whole career’ and ‘whole person’ approach is applied (Stambulova, Alfermann, Statler & Côté, 2009; Wylleman & Lavallee, 2004). Recently, there has been an increased focus on contextual factors that are related to the athlete’s career development and transitions. These factors have been studied at the meso-level (i.e. talent development environment; Henriksen, Stambulova & Roessler, 2010) and at the macro-level (i.e. nation/culture and sports system; Kuettel, Boyle & Schmid, 2017; Park & Lavallee, 2015; Stambulova, Stephan & Jäphag, 2007; Tshube & Feltz, 2015). Furthermore, comparative studies have shown that applying a cultural-sensitive approach can help to increase the knowledge about the influence of the context on the transition process of elite athletes (Si & Lee, 2007; Stambulova & Ryba, 2013, 2014). In this paper, we, the authors intend to contribute to a better understanding of the contextual influence on athletic retirement by examining and comparing the transition out of elite sport for former Swiss, Danish, and Polish athletes.