Carreira esportiva: o esporte de alto rendimento como trabalho, profissão e carreir

Abstract

It is perceived that the search for the understanding of the sports (or non-sporting) career has a traditionalist perspective, focused on competencies, and little is evidenced on the subjective and individual aspects of conscious and / or driven decision making. This article was aimed to understand the characteristics of high performance sport as a professional career. The qualitative methodology was chosen with in-depth interviews with six former highperformance athletes, analyzed by the categorical content analysis technique. It was concluded that high-performance sport is in fact a professional career, sometimes not seen that way, either for the periods of life in which the career is initiated, developed and closed, and also for the fact of being accredited to sports practice a playful characteristic linked to innate talent.