Prioritising health in high-performance sport: stakeholder insights into athlete attrition in the pathway

Abstract

Introduction: How high-performance pathway systems (HPPSs) influence premature athlete attrition is poorly understood, and attrition rates are relatively unknown. The literature primarily focuses on understanding athlete attrition factors from intrapersonal (intrinsic) or interpersonal (extrinsic relationships) perspectives. Limited research investigates the environmental, system or broader societal athlete attrition factors. We used a complex systems approach – operationalised through a socioecological framework to: 1) gain a system-wide perspective on factors influencing athlete attrition from a high-performance sport system (HPSS), and 2) identify what a sample of system-wide stakeholders and past athletes consider the most important and feasible attrition factors to address to retain talented athletes.