This article provides an analysis of the ways in which European Union Member States have sought to address the educational needs of elite young sportspersons. Drawing on fieldwork by 25 research teams led by the authors and undertaken on behalf of the European Commission, it reflects the European Union's increasing concern with protection of the rights of young athletes. Our focus in this paper is on higher education and its adaptation to accommodate the delivery of education to elite athletes. The review of policy descriptions undertaken highlighted three principal categories of policy initiative within the university sector namely the development of academic services, elite sporting provision, and postathletic career preparation. The findings of the study underlined the variability of response in national systems to the demands placed on elite young sportspersons. This has been more broadly linked to the relationship between general welfare ideologies in nation states, and the positions adopted in relation to education of their young athletes.We characterise these positions in a four-fold typology: (i) a state-centric provision backed by legislation, (ii) the state as a facilitator fostering formal agreements between educational and sporting bodies, (iii) National Federations / Sports Institutes as facilitator / mediator engaging directly in negotiation with educational bodies on behalf of the individual athlete, and (iv) a 'laisser faire' approach where there are no formal structures in place. Crucial to an evaluation of the systems summarised in the typology is an understanding of what these policy systems are seeking to achieve. This may be expressed in terms of a balance between the roles, rights and responsibilities of the main stakeholders including the athlete, the university, the Member State and the European Union.

a b s t r a c tObjectives: Within Great Britain, increasing numbers of elite sport performers are attending higher education institutions. The current study presents an exploration of the transitional experiences of these individuals at a specific British university. Wylleman and Lavallee's (2004) developmental model on transitions faced by athletes and Stambulova's (1997Stambulova's ( , 2003) athletic career transition model were used to provide the theoretical foundation of inquiry. Design and method: An instrumental case study design was adopted to provide an in-depth analysis of student-athletes' experiences at a university. The case university was selected based on its provision of elite sport support services. To acquire a holistic understanding, interviews were conducted with current and recently graduated student-athletes from the university, and focus groups were run with university staff (viz. administrators, coaches, and support staff). Qualitative data were analyzed using a thematic framework approach. Results: Elite student-athletes at the British university were found to experience simultaneous athletic, academic, psychological, and psychosocial transitions. To overcome the transitional demands, studentathletes were found to draw on a variety of internal (e.g., self-awareness) and external (e.g., academic flexibility) resources and to implement coping strategies (e.g., seeking social support). Potential barriers to successful transitions were also identified (e.g., parental overprotection). Conclusions: These findings advance the limited existing literature on British university student-athletes' transitional experiences and suggestions are provided for how other universities can enhance provision for their elite student-athletes.

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The issue of athlete 'dual careers' in Two principal rationales exist for the protection of athletes' access to education and vocational training, namely (a) a rights-based discourse in which athletes are seen to be denied access to education and vocational training which are protected for other workers or citizens; and (b) a performance-based discourse in which the athlete's ability to perform in athletic terms is enhancedby virtue of their access to educational opportunities. The paper reviews the relevance of these two rationales, and argues that although the EU engagement with dual careers might rest not on a sports competence but on prior competences relating to workers' rights and the protection of minors, the identifying of a performance rationale for supporting dual careers may be important in terms of engaging coaches and administrators

In the literature on Olympic legacies and impacts there is a dearth of materials that specifically address the issue of Olympic impact for non-hosting regions. The literature tends to deal with impacts at a national level, or at a hosting-city region level, neglecting in large part the degree to which benefits can be leveraged by non-hosting regions. A further limitation identified in the literature is a failure to engage in detailed formal evaluation of policy implementation where assertions of potential policy impact are based on untested assumptions. This study is intended to address both of these concerns. It presents an empirical, 'bottom-up' application of a Realist Evaluation framework to assess the impact of a policy initiative -Workplace Challenge -aimed at leveraging enhanced sports participation in a non-hosting 'region' 1 -Leicestershire -in the period leading up to the 2012 Games. In doing so it seeks, to identify which causal mechanisms worked within this particular context to produce the observed outcomes. The evaluation 2 results demonstrate that the programme represented a positive approach to fostering regular engagement with sport and physical activities for some groups in some types of organisations; and that awareness and motivational factors associated with the London 2012 Games are, in this case, linked (albeit weakly) to an increase in sport and physical activity participation for specific groups taking part in the programme in particular organisational contexts.

This article provides a four-fold typology of comparative sports policy studies: Type 1, Seeking Similarities, is a nomothetic approach seeking law-like generalization; Type 2 is Describing Difference, an ideographic approach seeking to capture the specificity of policy systems; Type 3, Theorizing the Transnational, goes beyond the nation-state as the unit of analysis to fuse global and local levels of explanation; and Type 4, Defining Discourse, seeks to analyze ways in which policy discourse defines the reality of the policy problems it seeks to address. The authors underline the ontological and epistemological assumptions of such approaches that are often only implicit, and they employ selected examples to illustrate the contribution to knowledge of the different approaches.

Although there has been a rapid growth in the globalisation of sport and its delivery to world markets, nevertheless there is a variety of models of sport-business whose characteristics are the product of local histories, local political and sporting cultures, local economic conditions and so on. This paper does not seek to deny the increasingly obvious impact of globalisation on professional sport, but rather it seeks to articulate the ways in which such global phenomena are locally mediated in professional soccer systems in five countries, to identify and to explain local responses to global pressures. The five examples include the oldest professional football system, that of England, and a second contrasting European system, France, together with three relatively recently established professional football systems in Japan a developed capitalist economy, Algeria, which is developing a post-socialist sports economy, and China which is experimenting in sport as in other areas with a 'socialist market economy'. The resultant evolution of professional sporting systems represents distinctive configurations of stakeholders in what are in effect contrasting business models, and reflects a situation of 'diminishing varieties and increasing contrasts', in contrast to the claims made by Elias in relation to global cultural phenomena.

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