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Elite athletes: how to achieve the best retirement

A research project carried out by Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and Universidad Europea have analyzed the professional opportunities and the integration into the labor market of retired athletes who were involved in the Olympic Games.

The final results, funded by the Spanish Olympic Committee and carried out by a team of researchers from Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) and Universidad Europea (UE), reveal that elite athletes who pursue a dual career contribute positively to the integration into the labor market at the end of their sports career.

The obtained findings, which have been published in the Plos One journal, support the relevance of a holistic view of the development of a sports career that reflects an interaction between the sports domain and the academic/vocational domain.

Sports retirement is a hard transition for elite athletes since they have to search for resources to integrate into society after an intense sports career. Could we say that choosing exclusive dedication to sports can be harmful to long term financial and labor interest?

In this sense, two female researchers from Psychosocial Research Group in Sports at UPM along with a UE researcher have carried out a research study about the dual career of elite athletes. The concept of a dual career was coined by the European Union and refers to elite athletes who work or study while pursuing a high-perform sports career.

The Spanish regulation RD 971/2007 on high-performance athletes sets the measures to boost a dual career of elite athletes. Among these measures, we find changes in class groups, changes of exams due to official competitions or file transfer in case of change of residence.

The team of researchers developed a cross-sectional study based on an ad hoc questionnaire conducted to 228 former athletes who were involved in diverse Olympic Games. According to the results, athletes who followed a dual career with studies had a higher educational level after the retirement than those devoted solely to sports and those who followed a dual career with work.

Gender differences were not found. Athletes who followed a dual career path (with studies or with work) perceived the transition out of sports more positively than those who focused solely on sports. The athletes who followed a dual career with studies achieved higher monthly incomes than the other two groups. The gender wage gap was apparent in the qualified Olympic athletes’ group, probably due to a higher presence of part-time women workers.

Based on these results, Cristina López de Subijana, a UPM researcher involved in the study, suggests “the support program are important to increase the rate of athletes who follow a dual career while performing their sports career. Thus, elite athletes would be more qualified after their sports life”.


Reference bibliography:

Barriopedro, M., López de Subijana, C., y Muniesa, C. (2018) Insights into life after sportss for Spanish Olympians: Gender and career path perspectives. PLoS ONE, 13(12): e0209433.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0209433

European Commission. (2012). EU guidelines on dual careers of athletes: Recommended policy actions in support of dual careers in high-performance sportss. Brussels: Sportss Unit, European Commission. Education, Culture and Sportss. Recuperado de: http://ec.europa.eu/sportss/library/documents/dual-career-guidelines-final_en.pdf

Real Decreto 971/2007, de 13 de julio, sobre deportistas de alto nivel y alto rendimiento.

https://www.boe.es/buscar/doc.php?id=BOE-A-2007-14231

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