Catch the feeling of Flying : Guided walks through a trampoline Olympic development environment

• Olympic podium performances represent peak accomplishments in athletes’ developments. Seanor, Schinke, Stambulova, Ross, and Kpazai (2017) identified environmental factors within a high-performance Canadian trampoline sport environment that developed decorated Olympic medalists. The current intrinsic case study was authored to further highlight the idiosyncrasies of a high-performance trampoline environment (re)presenting stories garnered from within this localized Canadian sport environment. Through guided walks, a mobile method of conversational interviews, three contextual experts engaged in Olympic athlete development provided tours of their sport environment. Each contextual expert’s guided walk played out uniquely inrelation to their ascribed role (i.e., Olympic coach, Assistant coach and Olympic champion). Three main themes were identified through interpretive thematic analysis: 1) creating lift (sub-themes: facility design; sport culture paragons), 2) providing a tailwind (sub-themes: establishing athlete-coach partnerships; team interactions), and 3) soaring onto the Olympic podium (sub-themes: preparing athletes to be untethered; competitive collaboration). Each theme is presented through three portrait vignettes, with discrete vantages derived from each contextual expert to illuminate the context from idiosyncratic ascribed roles within the environment. These stories create a fulsome (re)presentation of a high-performance sport environment through the interplay of the contextual experts’ narratives, their surrounding context, and their Olympic podium accomplishments.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Psykologi -- Tillämpad psykologi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Psychology -- Applied Psychology (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Olympic champion

high-performance

talent development environment

holistic ecological approach

trampoline

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