This study explores a composite vignette of athletes acculturating in a national sport system. The research questions were: What acculturation narratives did the athletes’ construct when they considered the notion of their receiving culture’s national sport system? And within these, what are the key challenges in relation to support that the athletes storied about their receiving culture’s national sport system as they sought to acculturate? The research was framed in critical acculturation (see Chirkov, 2009a, 2009b). The fluid process of acculturation is illustrated using creative nonfiction presenting one unifying voice presented within a composite vignettes (see Spalding & Phillips, 2007). The three themes in the acculturation vignette were as follows: (a) nothing but love—a nationalistic romance, (b) losing my romance with nationalism, and (c) dollars in exchange for newcomer results. This project reveals how immigrant elite athletes can move between distinct narratives that can contradict one another.
Olympic athletes' training environments influence their abilities to develop and excel as Olympians. Our authors considered a Canadian trampoline training environment with a history of developing Olympic medal-winning athletes from the grassroots through to Olympic podium. The sport environment is presented, drawing upon guided walks, through a cursory description in accordance with the Environmental Success Factors model derived from a holistic ecological approach to talent development. This presentation of the Skyriders Training Environment (STE) reveals how environmental factors facilitate Olympic talent development culminating in the highest level of artistic sport performance.
Olympic-medal performances represent peak accomplishments in athlete development. Seanor, Schinke, Stambulova, Ross, and Kpazai identified environmental factors in a high-performance Canadian trampoline sport environment that developed decorated Olympic medalists. The current intrinsic case study was authored to further highlight the idiosyncrasies of a high-performance trampoline environment (re)presenting stories garnered from this localized Canadian sport environment. Through guided walks, a mobile method of conversational interviews, three contextual experts who are engaged in the development of Olympic athletes provided tours of their sport environment. Each contextual expert’s guided walk played out uniquely in relation to his or her ascribed role (i.e., Olympic coach, assistant coach, and Olympic champion). Three main themes were identified through interpretive thematic analysis: creating lift (subthemes: facility design, sport-culture paragons), providing a tailwind (subthemes: establishing athlete–coach partnerships, team interactions), and soaring onto the Olympic podium (subthemes: preparing athletes to be untethered, competitive collaboration). Each theme is presented through three portrait vignettes, with discrete vantages derived from each contextual expert to illuminate the context from idiosyncratic ascribed roles within the environment. These stories create a rich (re)presentation of a high-performance sport environment through the interplay of the contextual experts’ narratives, their surrounding context, and their Olympic-podium accomplishments.
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