Introduction to exercise and well-being after high-performance sport post-retirement perspectives

Retired high-performance sports people's experiences of many aspects of life beyond sport are extremely complex. They are fascinating. Moreover, every time you speak to someone with a high-performance sport background you hear a different retirement story. Some tales are heart wrenching, equally, some are inspiring, but all are unique to the individual storyteller and deeply connected to the cultures they have found themselves within during and after their careers. Living one's life after leaving elite sport has always been an experience laced with difficulty. Indeed, despite decades of research into this phenomenon, challenging experiences continue to be reported for those managing their lives ‘post-sport’. As Foucauldian sports scholars, the authors are well aware that this assumption is laden with pitfalls and dangerous connotations – including for high-performance athletes themselves.