Objectives\ud \ud Sport and exercise psychology has recently expanded into how it can be utilized to enable social missions like activism. No research, however, has examined activist identities among disabled, elite athletes. This article is the first to engage with this new and complex issue by examining narratives of activism amongst elite athletes with impairment and their adoption/rejection of various activist identities.\ud \ud Methods\ud \ud Thirty-six people were recruited using maximum variation and criterion-based purposive sampling strategies. Data was collected using interviews and fieldwork observations (e.g., observation and social media material). The large data set was rigorously analyzed using a narrative thematic analysis.\ud \ud Results\ud \ud All participants adopted an athletic identity and an athletic activist identity. A small group also adopted a political activist identity that was concerned with challenging disablism. The athletes’ reasons for adopting or eschewing activist identities are identified and connections made to organizational stressors, interpellation, feeling, emotional regulation, narrative, habitus, health and wellbeing. Also revealed is the impact that sporting retirement had on activist identity construction.\ud \ud Conclusions\ud \ud The article makes a novel research contribution by revealing two different activist identities within the context of disability sport and what social functions each identity might serve. It also significantly develops knowledge by revealing various organizational stressors experienced by disabled athletes, the importance of embodied feelings and emotional regulation in activist identity construction, the damage that social oppression can have on wellbeing following sporting retirement, and the positive possibilities retiring may have for developing different identities. Practical suggestions are as well offered

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Drawing on interviews with 25 athletes with disabilities and para-sport participants (coaches, volunteers, and supporters), and on posts and comments made on a multiauthored blog discussing Paralympic sport, this article addresses how individuals advocate on behalf of disability sport. Our findings indicate that athletes and their allies adopt different styles of advocacy ranging in tone from more congenial (honey) to more confrontational (vinegar). In selecting what strategy to employ, advocates take into consideration their assessment of the perceived effectiveness of the strategy as well as the potential for backlash. We discuss our findings in light of Stake and Rosu's definition of advocacy as a "fundamental act of human being" and within the context of the historically tumultuous relationship between disability rights advocacy and elite sport systems.

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Drawing on data from in-depth interviews with 35 men and women aged 73-91, this article examines the ways in which older adults with multiple chronic conditions talk about and prepare for death and dying. While the focus of the original study did not include questions concerning the end-of-life, the majority of our participants made unprompted remarks regarding their own and others' mortality. The participants discussed the prevalence of death in their lives as it related to the passing of significant others, as well as their own eventual demise. Additionally, the men and women expressed hopes and fears about their impending death, in particular with respect to prolonged pain and suffering, institutionalisation, and a loss of mental acuity and independence. Many of our participants also described their end-of-life plans, which included making funeral arrangements, obtaining living wills, and planning their suicides. They further reported a number of barriers to their planning for death, including a lack of willingness on the part of family members to discuss their wishes as well as a scarcity of institutional resources and support. We discuss our findings in relation to the extant research concerning older adults' experiences of death and dying, as well as Glaser and Strauss' (1971) theory of status passage and Marshall's (1986) conceptualisation of authorship and the legitimation of death.

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OBJECTIVE: To explore the retirement experiences of elite para-athletes. Athletic retirement has long been of interest to sport psychologists. With a few exceptions, little attention has been paid to the retirements of elite athletes with disabilities. The research that has been done on para-sport was conducted in the late 1990s and the context of Paralympic sport has changed in the interim. DESIGN: An online survey was distributed to retired para-athletes (n=60) and qualitative interviews were conducted with a purposive sub-sample (n=13). SAMPLE: The sample included 48 Paralympians (21 had medalled at the Paralympic Games) and 12 internationally competitive para-athletes. The group included 39 males and 21 females and was diverse in age (22 to 77 years of age), impairment history and impairment type (35 acquired impairments and 25 congenital impairments), and sport (24 different para-sports). METHODS: Guided by a subjective and transactional epistemological framework, data was thematically analyzed. RESULTS: Although most para-athletes leave sport for the same reasons as their able-bodied peers, certain reasons for retirement, such as declassification, are unique to para-sport. Para-athletes facing these types of retirements had particularly difficult transition experiences and could benefit from additional support. Para-athletes also reported that the increasing professionalization of para-sport, combined with uncertainty about post-sport employment opportunites for people with disabilities, made it more difficult to retire. CONCLUSIONS: Understanding the experiences of retirement that are unique to para-sport will permit sport psychologists and other practitioners to provide better and more targeted support to para-athletes.

Our understanding of handbike configuration is limited, yet it can be a key determinant of performance in handcycling. This study explored how fourteen handcycling experts (elite handcyclists, coaches, support staff and manufacturers) perceived aspects of recumbent handbike configuration to impact upon endurance performance via semi-structured interviews. Optimising the handbike for comfort, stability and power production were identified as key themes. Comfort and stability were identified to be the foundations of endurance performance and were primarily influenced by the seat, backrest, headrest and their associated padding. Power production was determined by the relationship between the athletes' shoulder and abdomen and the trajectories of the handgrips, which were determined by the crank axis position, crank arm length and handgrip width. Future studies should focus on quantifying the configuration of recumbent handbikes before determining the effects that crank arm length, handgrip width and crank position have on endurance performance.