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Along with the national government's expectation transformation, administrative system reform, economic transition, social demand structure's upgrading and population change, these negative effects are turning increasingly obvious and thus become huge powers that push the reform of traditional elite sports development mode forward. Against this background, in order to make this reform better adapted to China's reality and future development, the chapter suggests that Chinese traditional elite sports development mode should shift its driving forces of development from single to multiple, change its administrative system from government-oriented to society-oriented, develop its training concepts from instrumentalism to humanism, improve its construction of development from unbalanced to balanced and alter its effectiveness of development from extensive to intensive so as to achieve sustainable development.

This chapter analyzes the campaign against race norming in the 2013 National Football League (NFL) concussion settlement that caregivers of retired players designed, and it considers how their collective action throws new light on activism in sport. While there is a substantial literature on how individual athletes engage in protest, less work has focused on how families – partners, children, siblings, and parents – of athletes organize as a group to answer back to anti-Black racism in professional sport. I argue that a group of spouses used their position as caregivers to shame the NFL, the presiding judge of the settlement, Class Counsel, and even the Department of Justice into acknowledging not only individual suffering from traumatic brain injury but also of the distribution of that suffering across households. Specifically, the wives group expanded definitions of risk and damage to include not only individual illness but also family and group suffering and demanded inclusion of gendered and racialized aspects of social care. Through their campaign, the group recast what is considered protest in the world of sport and who has the ability to access an activist subjectivity.

To examine some of the complex relationships that exist between sports work and mental health and illness.

This chapter draws upon prevalence data, athlete testimonies, and theoretical works to examine: (1) the prevalence of depression and suicide in professional sport and the wider society; (2) athlete experiences of depression and suicidal ideation, particularly among men; and (3) some of the key sociological ideas which might help to explain experiences of mental health and illness in professional sports work.

Although there are plentiful data on the societal prevalence of depression and suicide, increasing interest in the mental health of professional athletes (and other types of sports workers) has occurred largely in response to individual or clusters of often publicly known, sometimes high profile, cases rather than in response to systematic empirical grounded data. Athlete experiences of mental illness are shown to be related in complex ways to various constraints associated with their public and private lives, to the constraints of their interdependency networks, and to experiences of shame which can have a series of deleterious acute and chronic health costs.

Since much of what is currently known about the links between sports work and mental health and illness is derived from largely psychological studies and media-led or autobiographical accounts, more sociological research is needed to better understand the costs of mental health of working in often very public and highly pressurized, medicalized, scientized, and performance-focused performance sport settings.

To examine the relationship that athletes establish with their bodies within sport and through their transitions out of sport, with a special focus on risk, injury and pain.

This chapter is an explanatory review of the literature focusing on the embodied and sensory experiences of athletes as they depart sport.

This chapter explores definitions and conceptualizations of the retirement process, highlights how the body is experienced during the sporting exit (as fragile and out of control) and makes connections between how bodily breakdown during sporting exits impacts an athlete’s sense of self and identity.

Through practical recommendations, this chapter highlights some of the ways in which psycho-education and an expanded focus on the body could be useful to athletes as they attempt to reconcile their new lives and bodies post-sport.

Most professional athletes are broke financially within a short few years after they stop playing. It is easy for outsiders to place the blame squarely on the athlete himself. This rush to judgment, however, is not entirely accurate. Black student-athletes who have the talent and ability to play professional sports are hyper-focused on getting to the next level, and the system around them is built to accommodate that focus. A lack of educational, financial, and legal structures creates a dynamic that sets the athlete up for failure. This chapter will focus on the legal and financial realities that Black males face when transitioning into and out of professional sports. In order to shift the current paradigm, this chapter will also provide solutions for both the athlete and the coaches, friends, family members, and agents who surround the athlete, in order to empower the athlete to positively impact himself, his family, and his community.

To outline the paradoxes and contradictions inherent in debates about sport, alcohol, and addiction. It appears that a growing number of sportspeople suffer from addiction to alcohol and other drugs while at the same time alcohol use is widely sanctioned and celebrated in sport. The high-profile falls from grace are a public display of a more insidious, problematic relationship to drugs and alcohol in sport, yet cultural change is often difficult given long standing associations between sport and alcohol.

In the first part of the chapter, the key themes in the drugs, alcohol, and sport debate (notably health and ethics) are discussed. In the second part, some of the relationships between sport and alcohol, such as sponsorship and the cultural sanctioning of particular forms of drinking and masculine identities are examined. In the third, the issues of drug and alcohol addiction and recovery, and the implications for sport and sporting identities are discussed.

The chapter reveals the tensions that underpin the social contexts of drug and alcohol use and misuse in sport. The chapter suggests that a recalibration of popular understandings of masculinity in sport may provide a safe space through which to share battles with alcohol and addiction.

Discussion of the paradoxes and contradictions inherent in the relationships between sport and alcohol have important implications for a discussion and analysis of addiction and alcohol in sport, and for sport and social policy, health promotion, and social care more broadly.