Sport in Later Life: Countercultural or the New Ideal? Prof. Rylee Dionigi - Meaningful Sport Series

Opportunities for involvement in sports in later life have increased significantly and many sports around the globe have competitions and categories for Masters/Veteran athletes. At the same time, researchers have explored the experiences and meanings of being an older athlete, showing tensions in individual experiences as well as in shifting social discourse surrounding sport and ageing. We have shifted from ageing-as-decline to active ageing discourses, which provide different imagination of growing old. But are there also some darker sides in the shift towards more positive visions of ageing?

Rylee Dionigi is a professor in of Sport and Exercise Science at Charles Sturt University with expertise in qualitative research as well as sociology of active living and ageing. She has studied Masters sports for over 20 years and shared her insights from this extensive work in the podcast.

Questions explored in the conversation include: How did the cultural discourses shift in the last 20 years? Have athletes' experiences and meanings of sport also shifted at the same time? What are the different pathways to Masters sport and do they map into different relationships with sport? Why are active ageing discourses also potentially problematic?

Interested? You can read more in Prof. Dionigi's works:

Dionigi, R. A. (2015). Pathways to masters sport: Sharing stories from sport 'continuers','rekindlers' and 'late bloomers' In Physical activity and sport in later life (pp. 54-68). Palgrave Macmillan, London.

 

Dionigi, R. A. (2016). The Competitive Older Athlete. Topics in Geriatric Rehabilitation, 32(1), 55-62.

 

Dionigi, R. A. (2017). I would rather die than live sedentary. Topics in Geriatric Rehabilitation, 33(3), 156-161.

 

Dionigi, R. A. (2021). From fascination to revelation: my research journey with older MastersVeteran athletes. In Research Handbook on Sports and Society (pp. 244-259). Edward Elgar Publishing.

 

Dionigi, R. A., & Gard, M. (2018). Sport and Physical Activity across the Lifespan Critical Perspectives. Springer.

 

Gard, M., Dionigi, R. A., Horton, S., Baker, J., Weir, P., & Dionigi, C. (2017). The normalization of sport for older people?. Annals of leisure research, 20(3), 253-272.