Pain experience in sport had been the subject of increasing research i
n recent years. While sports professionals have generally been found t
o have higher pain thresholds than control subjects the reasons for th
is are not entirely clear. The present study seeks to investigate one
possible explanatory factor, the importance of the popular image of th
e physical activity and of the self-image of its participants, by exam
ining pain experience in professional ballet dancers. Like sports prof
essionals, dancers were found to have higher pain and pain tolerance t
hresholds than age matched controls in the Cold Presser Test. However,
they also reported a more acute experience of the sensory aspects of
the pain. Explanations of this apparent paradox are discussed both in
terms of the neuroticism scores of the two groups and in terms of the
dancers' greater experience of pain and its relationship with physical
activity. The results illustrated the importance of using multidimens
ional measures of pain in this type of investigation.