Employee-Athletes: Exploring the Elite Spanish Athletes' Perceptions of Combining Sport and Work

Abstract

Researchers have studied the athletes' dual careers with the aim of helping them to combine the sport and the academic–vocational sphere. Most of this research has addressed the study–sport combination, but there is a lack of studies on the work–sport combination. The main objective of this research was to explore the subjective perceptions of Spanish elite athletes when attempting to combine their careers as professional athletes with a second profession or trade. Further, this study aims to identify the access to facilitating resources and the perception of obstacles and barriers to the development of a dual career. A qualitative approach was chosen to address these research questions. Interpretative phenomenological analysis was carried out on a sample of 18 elite athletes, and the data were collected using semi-structured interviews based on a set of superordinate and subordinate categories. The results showed that the athletes interviewed possessed valuable resources such as the transference of sports values to the work sphere. However, important barriers were highlighted such as the perception of sport institutions as absent entities in the work–sport combination. Thus, the study of this type of dual career seems to be one of the challenges facing the interested scientific community for the coming years.

Dual Career Development Perspective: Factors Affecting Quality of Post-sport Career Transition of Employed Olympic Athletes

“…We are aware that the sample size is a limitation of our study. However, participants are elite and Olympic athletes, and the sample is comparable to other similar studies on elite athletes’ DC ( Tshube and Feltz, 2015 ; Defruyt et al, 2020 ; Moreno et al, 2021 ; Vickers and Morris, 2021 ).…”

“…First, more studies focus on DC of athletes and related factors, but they were not directly studied regarding the performance in their post-sport career employment. Therefore, in contrast to previous studies ( Stambulova and Wylleman, 2019 ; Fuchs et al, 2021 ; Moreno et al, 2021 ), which have addressed the study-sport combination, this study includes the work-sport combination, specifically, the socioeconomic status of retired elite athletes in their post-sport career employment in which the social class concept was used ( Erikson and Goldthorpe, 1992 ; Smith et al, 2013 ). Second, DC support practice in Slovenia showed that although athletes often have the appropriate education levels, which directly shows successful DC mechanism in education, it does not guarantee successful employment.…”

“…Thus, the research aimed to examine (a) the impact of factors contributing to the quality of the post-sport career transition in Slovenian elite and Olympic athletes and (b) the social-class position and employment status of these athletes after their sports career termination. Most previous DC research addressed the study-sport combination, but there is a lack of studies on the work-sport combination ( Stambulova and Wylleman, 2019 ; Fuchs et al, 2021 ; Moreno et al, 2021 ). Some studies ( Vickers and Morris, 2021 ) suggest there is no research focusing on athletes’ pathways after graduating from a university and the factors underpinning their decisions.…”

La formación universitaria en grados de Ciencias de la Salud de los atletas del equipo olímpico y paralímpico español de Tokio 2020

“…En otros también se analizan las características de diversos programas de apoyo al estudiante-deportista en el sistema universitario [19], así como al rendimiento en etapas académicas preuniversitaria y universitaria de los atletas en formación [20] o la transición a la universidad de las mujeres deportistas de alto rendimiento [26], entre otros. Resaltan también aquellos estudios que se enfocan en la importancia de la futura inserción laboral de los deportistas [21,63] una vez finalizada su etapa de máximo rendimiento.…”

Spanish Pre-Olympic Athletes’ Motivations and Barriers to Pursuing Dual Career as a Function of Sociodemographic, Sport and Academic Variables

“…No previous studies have analyzed the perception of the dual career of athletes who work at the same time that they train and study, but these findings could be explained as a result of the substantial decrease in available time that student-athletes have when they start the dual career ( Aquilina, 2013 ; Guirola Gómez et al, 2018 ). It is true that elite athletes who train and work experience an even more reduced time availability when they start studying, but they develop a greater number of competencies related to time management and adaptability that is transferred between work, academics, and sports ( Crespo Celda and Crespo Dualde, 2016 ; Moyà et al, 2017 ; Moreno et al, 2021 ; Reyes-Hernández et al, 2021 ), as compared to athletes who only trained. Therefore, student-athletes who do not work suffer more drastic changes when starting the dual career because they must reorganize their available time in order to devote enough of it to achieve their academic goals.…”