Objectives: Recent research suggests that experiencing some adversity can have beneficial outcomes for
human growth and development. The purpose of this paper was to explore the adversities that the
world’s best athletes encounter and the perceived role that these experiences play in their psychological
and performance development.
Design: A qualitative design was employed because detailed information of rich quality was required to
better understand adversity-related experiences in the world’s best athletes.
Methods: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 10 Olympic gold medalists from a variety of
sports. Inductive thematic analysis was used to analyze the data.
Results: The findings indicate that the participants encountered a range of sport- and non-sport adversities
that they considered were essential for winning their gold medals, including repeated non-selection, significant
sporting failure, serious injury, political unrest, and the death of a family member. The participants
described the role that these experiences played in their psychological and performance development,
specifically focusing on their resultant trauma, motivation, and learning.
Conclusions: Adversity-related experiences were deemed to be vital in the psychological and performance
development of Olympic champions. In the future, researchers should conduct more in-depth comparative
studies of Olympic athletes’ adversity- and growth-related experiences, and draw on existing and
alternative theoretical explanations of the growth–performance relationship. For professional practitioners,
adversity-related experiences offer potential developmental opportunities if they are carefully and
purposely harnessed.
History
School
Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences
Published in
JOURNAL OF SCIENCE AND MEDICINE IN SPORT
Volume
18
Issue
4
Pages
475 - 479 (5)
Citation
SARKAR, M., FLETCHER, D. and BROWN, D.J., 2015. What doesn't kill me...: adversity-related experiences are vital in the development of superior Olympic performance. Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport, 18 (4), pp. 475 - 479.
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