Stakeholders’ perceptions of athletic career pathways in Paralympic sport: from participation to excellence

Abstract

Athlete development in parasport is a complex domain. Evidence on the developmental trajectories of para-athletes is necessary to examine the critical determinants of specific para-athlete development models. Underpinned by the existing athlete development models to gather insights into the different developmental phases, this study explored how athletic career pathways in parasport are developed by identifying and describing disability-specific characteristics that influence each developmental phase. Para-athlete development was explored through the lens of 32 stakeholders from the Brazilian parasport context who participated in semi-structured interviews. Results ratified the complexity and individuality of para-athlete development, highlighting that the differences according to impairment groups, an early or late start in the sport and the classification, have implications for the development of the phases of athletic pathways in parasport. The findings lend weight toward the need for models other than those traditionally used for able-bodied athletes; rather, para-athlete development models need a disability-specific approach.

Keywords:

• Parasport
• para-athlete pathways
• para-athlete development models
• classification

Acknowledgement

The authors thank the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) and the Brazilian Paralympic Committee (CPB) for their support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 Parasport and Paralympic sport is currently being used in the literature as synonym of sport for athletes with an impairment (Wareham et al. 2018) and throughout this paper the term parasport will be used, as it is defined by the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) as ‘all sport for athletes with an impairment whether they feature on the Paralympic programme or not’ (International Paralympic Committee 2017, 36).