Obstacles and facilitators for Career Transition of Iranian Olympic Athletes from Sport to Social Life

The aim of this article is to study, and recognize the facilitators and obstacles to transition of Olympic athletes from sports career to social life. Given the previous researches conducted in this area, the high-performance athletes often face challenges to have their sports career in combination with education or job together, as success at the highest level of sports performance, requires practicing in high-intensity trainings as well as participating in great number of competitions home and abroad. The International Olympic Committee has provided repetitive recommendations to support, and help determine athletes’ conditions in this concern in every country. The research method in this study is qualitative, and applied grounded theory was used with Straus and Korbin (1998-2014) approach by MAX QD software 2020. The Statistical population of this research is composed of individuals with rich experience in Olympic sports of country, and knowledge relevant to research topic which is considered as the most important feature of the samples who included renowned directors, coaches, athletes and experts in sports sciences. The total number of samples till theoretical saturation came to 19 people. The initial codes were 644 cases, and after studying the overlaps, and determining the components, 103 codes, and 15 components were formed in two blocks of obstacles and facilitators. According to the present research, the major facilitators for sports champions of our country are, the role of athlete himself, and his growth environment while the sports organizations’ structure of the country, management, and the society’s expectation from sports champions, are amongst the major obstacles for them