CHRISTIAN ATHLETES AND THE CULTURE OF ELITE SPORT - DILEMMAS AND SOLUTIONS

One underreported issue in the research on Christian athletes has been the difficulties these athletes experience in living with the demands and expectations of the dominant culture of elite, competitive sport. Data were derived from in-depth interviews with 31 elite athletes (23 males and 8 females), who were also professing Christians and associa ted with the evangelical organization, Athletes-in-Action. The athlete s reported that it was by tuning to or returning to an evangelical Chr istian faith that they were better able to cope with their problems an d with the demands of the culture of elite, competitive sport. Discuss ion of these findings included a consideration of Coakley's (1994) mod el ''of conflict, doubt, and resolution,'' which attempts to represent the conflicts experienced by Christian athletes in elite sport, and t he approaches they take to assuage these conflicts.