ABSTRACT

The path to and transition into the senior elite ranks is successfully mastered by only a tiny minority of athletes. And the question arises: what distinguishes those who make it to the top from those who give up prematurely? Which resources, which abilities, which environmental supports are necessary to cope with the ever increasing demands of elite sports? For a long time, there has been growing interest in talent identification and development in elite sport. Athletic talent was seen from related but different perspectives, namely the biological, psychological, and social. From the biological perspective, talent refers to an athlete’s innate potential or giftedness. The psychological perspective views talent as the athlete’s acquired abilities, competencies and skills that facilitate athletic performance and help achieve athletic excellence in the chosen sport. Finally, talent can be understood in relation to interactions in the specific talent development environment (Stambulova, 2009). Each of these perspectives guides how coaches or sport psychology practitioners work with athletes and additionally each of these perspectives is related to dropout. Along these lines, dropout is related to how coaches and significant others understand talent. In this chapter, we do not outline a biological perspective related to dropout (for an overview see Martindale & Mortimer, 2011), but instead focus on psychological and social factors.