Elite athletes: what lessons for the future can be learned from their responses to the social disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic?

In mid-March 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic was declared, disrupting established routines and impacting every aspect of our lives. Sport as a social phenomenon was no exception. On the one hand, with the suspension and postponement of competitions and the various restrictions, the pandemic seemed to stop time, destroying the previously familiar ways of functioning of the sports sector, and forcing it to constantly reinvent, restructure and adapt. On the other hand, the changed situation highlighted the problems and inequalities that sport had faced long before and that the pandemic had mostly exacerbated, but not caused. In this review article, we identify the lessons and insights the pandemic has brought, especially for elite athletes. Because many scientific articles have emerged in connection with the pandemic, we select and review them according to our focus on elite athletes and summarise their findings. We then use those findings to derive guidelines that can serve top athletes as a tool in potentially similar situations in the future. Our proposed guidelines are divided into macro-, meso-, and micro-social levels, encompassing national and international, organizational and individual perspectives.

Narrowing the Definition of Social Inclusion in Sport for People with Disabilities through a Scoping Review.

The concept and practice of social inclusion in sport are still undefined, causing confusion both in the field of sport policy and practice. According to the United Nations (UN), a conceptual and analytical work on what constitutes inclusion is needed. Therefore, this study aims to define social inclusion in sport for people with disabilities by reviewing the existing literature. Using a scoping review framework, articles related to a possible definition of social inclusion in sport or to the elements of this definition were reviewed. For the eighteen (18) articles selected, the focus was on 152 statements, which were grouped into 6 main categories, namely: policy (29), fundamental conditions (28), key elements (30), soft skills (20), field gaps (31), and best practices (14). Ten keywords were extracted from each of the six categories using the free online program cortical.io. All 60 keywords were then compared with each other. After deleting the duplicates, 24 keywords remained, which were classified into five major categories: (1) key people, (2) key environments, (3) key ways to use, (4) key benefits, and (5) key barriers, in order to create a descriptive definition of social inclusion in sport for people with disabilities that can contribute to the goals of the UN 2030 Agenda. In addition to the definition, relevant issues were also raised for in-depth discussion and further research.