The normalization of sport for older people?

ABSTRACT

Opportunities for older adults in Western countries, particularly women, to participate in physically demanding, competitive sports have increased since the 1960s. Now, coinciding with the neoliberal shift in social policy, older adults live at a time when physical activity is highly encouraged through ‘healthy or active ageing’ discourses in media, policy policies and the sport/exercise sciences. This study sought to understand how 63 Masters athletes (aged 60 and over) explain their participation in sport and, in particular, the extent to which they use neoliberal language of personal moral responsibility and economic efficiency to explain their own participation and the non-participation of older adults in sport. While degrees of moral talk were evident in the older athlete responses, in almost all cases, non-participation in sport was seen as irrational and in need of explanation. Overall, our findings suggest that older people’s participation in sport has been, or at least is in the process of being, normalized among participants in Masters sport. We discuss how this changing idea about sport and ageing might reshape social policy, as well as social relationships, between older people and the state and between different groups of older people.

KEYWORDS:

• Ageing
• Masters athletes
• Masters sport
• neoliberal
• qualitative

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Michael Gard is an Associate Professor in the School of Human Movement and Nutrition Sciences at the University of Queensland. His research centres on how the human body is and has been used, experienced, educated, measured and governed. His work includes projects on the science of obesity, the history of sport, the uses of digital technology in health and physical education, and the sexual and gender politics of dance education.

Rylee A. Dionigi is an Associate Professor in the School of Exercise Science, Sport and Health at Charles Sturt University (CSU), Bathurst. She has published widely in the fields of leisure studies, ageing, health and physical activity, exercise psychology and sport sociology. She has expertise in qualitative research methods and extensive knowledge on the personal and cultural meanings of leisure in later life. Overall, her work offers a critique of health promotion trajectories across the lifespan and calls for an acceptance of diversity and difference in older age.

Sean Horton is an Associate Professor in the Department of Kinesiology at the University of Windsor, Canada. Sean’s research interests lie primarily in the area of skill acquisition and expert performance, both in young people and as individuals age. His most recent work has focused on older adults and the extent to which high levels of performance can be maintained into the latter stages of life.

Joseph Baker is a Professor in the School of Kinesiology and Health Science at York University, Canada. His research examines the factors affecting skill acquisition and maintenance across the lifespan, ranging from issues constraining high-performance athlete development to determinants of successful ageing.

Patricia (Patti) Weir is a Professor in the Department of Kinesiology at the University of Windsor. Her research is focussed on factors affecting skill acquisition and expertise across the lifespan, with specific interest in older adults and Masters athletes and the role of physical activity and engagement on successful ageing.

Claudio Dionigi is a Faculty Liaison Librarian at CSU, Bathurst, Australia. He has a research Honours in history with a focus on political movements and resistance to neoliberalism. He was a 2016 CSU University Medal recipient. He has a Masters of Applied Science in Library and Information Management from CSU, Australia and an Honours degree in history and political theory from York University, Canada.

ORCID

Rylee A. Dionigi http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8346-9610

Joseph Baker http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5686-1737

Additional information

Funding

This research presented in this manuscript was supported by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Insight Grant.