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Purpose – To outline new research on the ways in which older athletes incorporate drinking practices into their social and sporting identities. Drawing on research with older Australian athletes, the chapter asks us to re-imagine the sport–alcohol nexus to include new sites and subjects that can shed light on wider articulations of the pleasurable and problematic relationships between sport, alcohol and social identity.

Design/methodology/approach – In the first part of the chapter, key themes in sport and ageing research are discussed. In the second, issues of alcohol, older age and sporting identities are considered, drawing on research at the 2017 Australian Masters Games. This sets the scene for a fuller discussion and analysis of some of the missed opportunities in alcohol and sport research, and their implications for sport and social policy, health promotion and social care more broadly.

Findings – The chapter reveals several under-developed opportunities in a broader research agenda on sport and alcohol, including the role alcohol plays in conferring membership and belonging to the sporting communities of older athletes. The chapter suggests that a recalibration of popular understandings of sport, ageing and alcohol – both as separate and as inter-related concerns – may provide an opportunity for addressing wider social concerns with ageing more broadly.

Research limitations/implications – Discussion of ageing and alcohol, through the lens of sport, has important implications for an analysis of drinking practices and in sport, and for sport and social policy, health promotion and social care.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate National Hockey League (NHL) expansion draft decisions to measure divestment aversion and endowment effects, and analyze bias and its affect on presumed rational analytic decision making.

A natural experiment with three variables (age, minutes played and presence of a prior relationship with a team’s management), filtered athletes that were exposed or protected to selection. A machine learning algorithm trained on a group of 17 teams was applied to the remaining 13 teams.

Athletes with pre-existing management relationships were 1.7 times more likely to be protected. Athletes playing fewer relative position minutes were less likely to be protected, as were older athletes. Athlete selection was predominantly determined by time on ice.

This represents a single set of independent decisions using publicly available data absent of context. The results may not be generalizable beyond the NHL or sport.

The research confirms the affect of prior relationships on decision making and provides further evidence of measurable sub-optimal decision making.

Decision making has implications throughout human resources and impacts competitiveness and productivity. This adds to the need for managers to recognize and implement de-biasing in areas such as hiring, performance appraisal and downsizing.

This natural experiment involving high-stakes decision makers confirms bias in a setting that has been dominated by students, low stakes or artificial settings.

This chapter explores the role of informal sport in the development of top-level Icelandic athletes. The approach is explorative and intended to develop an empirically grounded theory. We conducted semistructured interviews with 10 Icelandic elite athletes. Our analysis suggests that the development of free play may be of central importance to the development of elite athletes. Free play offers the opportunity to foster intrinsic motivation, mastery of skills, flow, craftsmanship, and aesthetic experience. We suggest that these qualities are important in the development of top athletes, especially in their early sport career. Our analysis also highlights the importance of unsupervised informal peer interaction. A pool of unsupervised peer networks can serve as a prerequisite for the development of informal sport that may promote qualities that are desirable for the development of top-level athletes. Our analysis further suggests that the contribution of informal sport depends on how it interacts with other elements in the social context and its relationship to formal sport.

The purpose of this paper is to perceive the perspective of Portuguese and Czech’ talented athletes regarding: the main reasons pointed to drop out of sport, putting into analysis motivational factors; the conciliation of School and Sport, and how the organization of schools and sports contexts are articulated in relation to the training and promotion of students, athletes and citizens; and the contributions (positive/negative) of sports to daily life and society.

This study uses a qualitative approach to interview eight talented athletes from different sports that had to drop out the practice of sport and explores their narratives regarding experiences and the relational dynamics between sports contexts and schools.

Athletes identify factors that led to drop out: the coach profile or the methodology and dynamics of practicing/training; time consuming; and the impossibility of reconciling sports with school/job. Athletes can identify the sport’s culture, self-development and health being as positive contributions of sports, whereas injuries were referred as the main negative factor of sport. As proposal of changes, athletes referred to the need of a more professional organization of the sport contexts and to more proximity between school policies and sport policies allowing conciliating both.

One limitation that could be pointed to this research is the difference between the Czech and Portuguese socio-cultural and political situation, not only in the concept and organization of sports activities (since scholar years) but also in the general society. This difference could have more visibility when interpreting the data that led to this fact referred above.

It is recommended a more proximity relationship between researchers and the contexts of practice (sport contexts) being that it is important that these contexts should have feedback from the investigations carried out. Only in this way coaches, federations and confederations can be aware of the motivational factors that lead to talented athletes drop out, and make a greater investment in initial formation of the coaches and propose policies that try to establish partnerships with schools or professional contexts which could help the management of athletes’ times outside of sport.

Departing from the athletes’ feelings, concerns and motivations related to sport and the reasons that led to their drop out, we argue for the definition of public policies, in both countries, that promote non-discrimination of young people who wish to maintain a path linked to sports in articulation with other areas of their lives.

The purpose of this paper is to research comprehensively into the development pattern of the world's 110‐meter hurdles of the coming two years. It aims to provide a detailed reference to the preparation of the 2012 London Olympics.

The paper uses the GM (2, 1) model, GM (1, 1) model, GM (1, 1) residual fixing model, and the method of recursive compensation by grey numbers of identical dimensions.

In 2012, the strongest athletes of 110‐meter hurdles are predicted to be: USA athlete Oliver, USA athlete Ash and Cuba athlete Robles. Liu Xiang has the possibility of winning the medal in the 2012 London Olympics.

Because every athlete is an individual that grows up gradually, there are two characteristics in his information: continuity and incompleteness. We can use the grey system methods.

The paper successfully applies the grey prediction to the case study in the field of competitive sports.

Purpose – The purpose of this exploratory research study was to bring the experiences of women in contact sport to the forefront of the discussion of gender and sport. The findings that I present here focus on the unique group of six female martial artists between the ages of 40 and 44 and the similarities and differences that emerged in comparison with the younger group of female rugby players and martial artists.

Methodology – A Standpoint Feminist approach was used through in-depth interviewing in a nonprobability purposive sample. The sample consisted of 15 female rugby players and 15 female martial artists.

Findings – In many ways, women in the younger and older groups have similar perceptions about the body and femininity. However, age may produce different perceptions about femininity in terms of gendered life stages. Age also appears to influence women's perceptions about femininity being an issue for athletes. In terms of the body, several of the women in the older group did begin comparing their older body to their younger body, although all mentioned weight.

Limitations – The research concentrated on only two contact sports, future research should be expanded. In addition, only 30 participants were interviewed in Canada. Future research should include a larger number of participants in an international sporting environment. This would increase generalizability.

Originality – This research presents an opportunity to explore age differences in sporting experiences, a topic whose coverage is limited in the literature.

Turnover of employees is a key challenge for companies. The same is true for sports clubs that must set appropriate incentives to decrease their athletes’ turnover intention. As salary caps and team budgets restrict monetary incentives, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of organizational support on turnover intention of professional team sports athletes.

The paper applies a combined approach of qualitative and quantitative research and considers the specific requirements of European professional team sports. First, a qualitative study investigates organizational support in team sports and identifies relevant non-monetary incentives. Second, a quantitative study tests the effects of the identified organizational support incentives on turnover intention using a unique data set of professional team sports athletes. Third, a moderation analysis measures possible effects of age.

Through the qualitative study, three relevant non-monetary incentives could be identified in the context of professional team sports: integration of family (IOF), second career support, and private problem support. The subsequent quantitative study of football, ice hockey and handball athletes assesses the effectiveness of the identified incentives. All three incentives negatively influence athletes’ turnover intention, while IOF has a substantially stronger negative effect on turnover intention for younger athletes.

The findings indicate the importance of organizational support to decrease athletes’ turnover intention. Although money is relevant, sports clubs also need to address non-monetary incentives to decrease their athletes’ turnover intention.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse differences in sociodemographic and sporting characteristics, health-behaviours, and food intake of athletes using and not using nutritional supplements (NS).

High-performance Portuguese athletes from 13 sports completed a NS usage questionnaire, assessing information on sociodemographic (sex, age, height, weight, athlete’s, and parental education level), health-related (smoking, daily time of sleeping, walking, and sitting), and sporting (type, number of international performances, weekly hours of training and weekly hours of gym) characteristics; and a semi-quantitative food-frequency questionnaire (86 items), regarding the previous 12 months.

From the 241 athletes (66 per cent males, 13-37 years), 64 per cent reported NS use. Supplement usage was associated with age 18 years (odds ratio (OR) 2.57, 95 per cent; confidence interval (CI) 1.17-5.65), performing individual sports (OR 5.45, 95 per cent; CI 2.49-11.93) and > 2 h gym/week (OR 2.42, 95 per cent; CI 1.15-5.11), a higher consumption of meat (OR 2.83, 95 per cent; CI 1.36-5.90), eggs (OR 2.53, 95 per cent; CI 1.07-5.96), and yogurt (OR 2.24, 95 per cent; CI 1.08-4.62), and a lower intake of processed meat (OR 0.32, 95 per cent; CI 0.15-0.72), vegetable oils (OR 0.35, 95 per cent; CI 0.17-0.74), margarine (OR 0.37, 95 per cent; CI 0.18-0.76), chips (OR 0.22, 95 per cent; CI 0.10-0.48), and fast food (OR 0.42, 95 per cent; CI 0.19-0.91).

Athletes using NS had different characteristics from non-users, and seemed to have healthier and more sports-oriented food choices. Our findings may help sport and health professionals to identify an alleged or future NS user, enabling the development of a timely and self-directed supplement scheme.

To investigate the motivations of clients attending leisure centres/clubs. It is noted that training programmes for instructors tend to neglect this, particularly in relation to the gender and age of clients.

In this study 460 recreational athletes including equal numbers of males and females in the two age groups, 17‐27 years and 37‐84, were interviewed and given a short questionnaire concerning their motives for taking part in activities in leisure centres/clubs.

It was found that both gender and age influenced motivations to participate and reasons for leaving.

The need for instructors to be made aware of the very different motives driving recreational athletes to attend clubs was stressed, if client wastage is to be reduced.

This study shows that gender and age variables influence motivations for participation, with marked differences in motivations between males and females. This article pin‐points areas that instructors need to take into account when training and will be of interest to instructors in the leisure business.