Understanding cycle tourism experiences at the Tour Down Under

Abstract

Sport tourism experiences are subjective and emotional, laden with symbolic meaning. This study explores the experiences of participants who adopted the multiple roles of both an active participant and event spectator, within the parameters of one chosen sporting event. A professional cycling race event, the Tour Down Under (TDU) in South Australia was chosen for this investigation, and twenty face-to-face individual interviews were conducted with cycle tourists. The three main themes emerging from the data were the interaction of people and temporary spaces on a sport tourism 'stage'; the co-creation of authentic personal experiences and meanings; and identity reinforcement and the development of a sense of belonging. Consequently, a model for understanding sport event tourism experiences is proposed. The findings suggest that providing tourists with authentic and memorable experiences lies at the heart of what constitutes sport tourism. Whilst the results demonstrate that cycling events provide the individual with a sense of belonging or membership to a wider social group, they also illustrate that there is a continued need for more focused and nuanced approaches towards understanding sport tourism experiences that reflect the ever-increasing diversity and complexity of the interaction between sport, events and tourism.

Experiences of amateur athletes’ non-participating entourage at participatory sport events

“…Our findings indicate that, for NPE, experiencing the sense of community was an appealing feature of participatory sport events, and conversely that NPE are critical to the co-creation of communitas through their interactions with other NPE on the sidelines. These findings resonate with studies of spectators at major professional cycling events such as the Tour de France (Lamont, 2014;Shipway et al, 2016) which demonstrated that spectators' collective roadside practices led to the production of communitas within liminal spaces celebrating shared values around their sport.…”

“…Event researchers have emphasised the importance to event goers of the social aspects of event experiences (Chalip, 2006;Lamont, 2014;Shipway, King, Lee, & Brown, 2016).…”

Understanding Event Sport Tourism Experiences of Support Partners: A Research Note

“…Collective participatory roadside antics and the buzzing carnivalesque atmosphere generated by tour group cyclists at the Tour de France and the Tour Down Under have been objects of focus within recent studies on active sport tourism (e.g. Lamont, 2014;Shipway et al, 2016), yet limited research has explored tourism experiences of participants' entourage.…”

Ocio serio e identidad social. Elementos para un análisis sociológico de la participación popular en pruebas deportivas de fondo

“…Siguiendo con la perspectiva psicológica, Jaenes et al (2009) han analizado los tipos de personalidad que se asocian con la participación en eventos como el maratón, mientras que Fernández Macías et al (2015) han analizado el conocido como «estado de flow» en maratonianos/as. En el mundo del ciclismo Shipway et al (2016) han analizado la participación en una prueba que combina el ciclismo activo (de carretera) con el de espectador, desde la perspectiva del ocio serio. Siguiendo en esta línea, y desarrollando el concepto de «deporte serio» (serious sport), Getz y MacConnell (2011) han analizado el desarrollo de una «carrera» dentro del ciclismo de montaña, mientras que Fairley et al (2011), aplicando un marco conceptual más cercano al turismo, han utilizado el concepto de «nostalgia» para comprender la implicación y participación en determinados viajes/eventos.…”