How the Olympics set athletes up for success beyond the podium

NEWS RELEASE
BROCK UNIVERSITY
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While some Olympic and Paralympic athletes are rising to glory at the Paris 2024 Games, others will see their careers come to an end when the torch goes out at the closing ceremony. 

Canadian basketball star Natalie Achonwa, for example, says this will be her fourth — and final — Olympics, and other high-profile athletes are also rumoured to leave the world of competitive sport behind, post-Games.

Brock University experts say the skills honed during a life of sports excellence will set these athletes up for success no matter what their next move is — but the shift to a new career will also come with challenges.

Barry Wright, Dean of Brock’s Goodman School of Business and CEO of the Niagara 2022 Canada Summer Games, says many athletes navigate a shift in identity when retiring from sport, for example.

“You see this with professional athletes, where they will sign their name and their number beside it; it’s who they are,” he says.

As part of the Athlete365 Career+ program, an initiative of the International Olympic Committee’s Athletes’ Commission, Olympians can be granted use of the post-nominal titles OLY or PLY to highlight their unique skill set to future employers.

Philip Sullivan, Brock Professor of Kinesiology, whose research focuses on confidence and mental toughness, says the training Olympic athletes receive helps them develop skills that are helpful both on and off the field of play.

“Sport psychologists work with athletes to consistently create the optimal mental and emotional state for performance,” he says. “This may include working on emotional regulation, concentration, anxiety, confidence, resilience and team dynamics.”

These attributes, he adds, “are valuable and transferable to a wide variety of other contexts and can serve athletes well as they transition out of sport.”

For some athletes, the post-Olympics career path is linear, remaining in the sports industry by taking on roles as commentators or analysts, or moving into coaching, for instance.

“There's a lot of athletes who just love their sports so much because they've invested 10 to 20 years of their life on this one thing that they know so much about. It's hard for them to leave it completely,” says Michael Naraine, Associate Professor of Sport Management.

Other athletes may have a more entrepreneurial mindset, he says, leveraging their Olympic glory into sponsorship deals or moving into consulting or development roles. Some look to careers entirely unrelated to sport, with reports showing that people with sport backgrounds — women, in particular — are likely to find success in leadership or management-type positions.

Wright says while most athletes already have the soft skills needed for success — communication, high emotional intelligence, teamwork and the ability to accept change — obtaining “hard skill currencies” and business-specific, marketable skills is what helps them successfully launch a new career. 

“Athletes are good at identifying what the next goal is, so the question is how do we, as educators, create that next step for them and help them take the skills they have developed into the workplace,” Wright says. “Many elite athletes will have a university degree — as most will have come through a university environment in Canada or the United States — so it’s then a matter of legitimizing all of their skills and translating that into the next practice.”

He adds that success in business also means being fierce and fearless when it’s needed, without compromising respect for others in the process.

“I think sport provides the opportunity to do that, to raise each other to that higher level,” Wright says.

Athletes also have a breadth of life experience that makes them well-rounded employees, too, Naraine adds.

“For companies looking to bring in key diversified staff, they want to look for people who've been in the trenches — and no one's been in the trenches more than someone who's put their body and mental capacity to the limit like an athlete,” he says.

Brock University Associate Professor of Sport Management Michael Naraine, Professor of Kinesiology Philip Sullivan and Goodman School of Business Dean Barry Wright are available for media interviews on the topic.

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