“I think I became a swimmer rather than just someone with a disability swimming up and down:” paralympic athletes perceptions of self and identity development

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to explore the role of swimming on Paralympic athletes’ perceptions of self and identity development.

Method: A hermeneutic phenomenological approach was taken. During semi-structured interviews, five Paralympic swimmers (aged 20–24 years) were asked questions about their swimming career, perceptions of self, integration, and impairment. Interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim.

Results: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis yielded three superordinate themes: (a) “One of the crowd”; none of the participants viewed themselves as disabled, nor as supercrips; these perceptions stemmed from family-, school-, and swimming-related experiences, (b) “Becoming me”; participation in swimming facilitated self- and social-acceptance, and identity development, and c) “A badge of honor”; swimming presented opportunity to present and reinforce a positive identity.

Conclusions: Swimming experiences enabled the participants to enhance personal and social identities, integrate through pro-social mechanisms, and to develop a career path following retirement from competition.

Implications for rehabilitation

• Offering equal sporting opportunities for people with/without physical disability can help facilitate social integration and act as a buffer against stigmatization.

• Our research suggests that participation in sport had afforded the participants a heightened sense of self-concept, independence, ability and corresponding pride.

• When working with individuals with physical disabilities, rehabilitation professionals could utilize sport as a means of increasing an individual’s feelings of independence, confidence and normalization.

• As such, part of rehabilitation should be to ensure opportunities for sport participation for people with physical disability are available for people of all ages.

Keywords:

• Paralympic sport
• lived experiences
• congenital disability
• qualitative research

Disclosure statement

The authors report no declarations of interest.