Analyzing Top-Level Athletes’ Activities to Identify Their Transversal Competencies for Career Transition

Abstract

Because of a lack of performance or their age, top-level athletes often have to rebuild their professional future outside the sports sector and without any substantial diploma. The experiences and activities of this population may differ greatly from those of regular career transition-seeking people. Therefore, understanding these specificities and identifying the transversal competencies of top-level athletes is a challenge if we are to provide efficient career guidance for their transition. To do this, 43 top-level athletes underwent semistructured interviews. A content analysis highlighted 15 themes and 240 transversal activities of the interviewed top-level athletes, showing that it is possible to identify transversal activities in the daily lives of top-level athletes that match other careers. This allowed us to create a matrix able to join the activities and regular occupations listed in the ROME job directory of France Labor. We discuss the implications of these results for initiatives such as digital career guidance tools.

Introduction

The Particular Case of Top-Level Athletes

Among the individuals involved in a career transition project, one group in particular undergoes this process at a particularly early stage: top-level athletes. Because of a lack of performance, age, or injury (Carapinheira et al., 2018; Guiot & Ohl, 2007; Park et al., 2013), they must rebuild their professional future away from a focus on athletic performance and must do so with limited support (i.e., traditional programs are mostly seen as modules to be checked off rather than opportunities to develop useful competencies for professional future; Brown & Macdonald, 2011); often, they face this challenge while lacking any substantial qualifications. After having invested an enormous amount of resources—both physical and emotional—in their athletic careers (Guiot & Ohl, 2007; Lavallee et al., 2012; Voorheis et al., 2023), career transition is a particularly difficult break (Bilard et al., 2003; Kuettel et al., 2017; Park et al., 2013; Vickers & Morris, 2022; Voorheis et al., 2023). Indeed, they perceive sports as a predominant factor in their identity (Bell et al., 2018; Brewer & Petitpas, 2017; Cabrita et al., 2014; Haslam et al., 2024; Kuettel et al., 2017; Park et al., 2013; Vickers & Morris, 2022; Voorheis et al., 2023), so much so that the term “athletic identity” has emerged in the scientific literature to refer to “the degree to which individuals identify with the athlete role” (Brewer et al., 1993, p. 237). The stronger the athletic identity of top-level athletes, the more likely they are to experience difficulties in investing in their new careers (Bell et al., 2018; Brown & Macdonald, 2011; Park et al., 2013; Voorheis et al., 2023; Wylleman et al., 2004). Thus, athletes’ career transition disrupts their identity and worldview (Guiot & Ohl, 2007; Silver, 2021). A career transition, which is synonymous with moving from the status of a valued individual to that of an ordinary individual (Haslam et al., 2024; Javerlhiac et al., 2010; Voorheis et al., 2023), is often a source of anxiety and even psychological distress for top-level athletes (Guiot & Ohl, 2007; Kerr & Dacyshyn, 2000; Matsankos et al., 2020; Van Raalte & Andersen, 2007; Voorheis et al., 2023), although some report an enrichment of their identity (Cabrita et al., 2014; Guiot & Ohl, 2007).

Numerous models have been proposed to explain the difficulties that top-level athletes face during their career transitions. For example, some authors compare athletic retirement to “traditional” retirement (Voorheis et al., 2023), with the idea that the end of an athletic career causes a significant and definitive loss of role and usefulness (Haslam et al., 2024; Silver, 2021), which can lead to a form of social rejection because of negative social evaluation and feelings of isolation (Taylor & Ogilvie, 1994; Voorheis et al., 2023; Warriner & Lavallee, 2008). This social rejection affects top-level athletes’ identity and commitment to their new career and can lead to psychological distress (Kerr & Dacyshyn, 2000; Van Raalte & Andersen, 2007; Warriner & Lavallee, 2008). Building on this work, the conceptual Model of Adaptation to Retirement (Taylor & Ogilvie, 1994) proposes a number of factors that distinguish a healthy career transition from one that could lead to distress. These factors include individual factors and subjective experiences with (1) reasons for withdrawal (e.g., age, injuries, free choice to retire), (2) factors related to adaptation (e.g., developmental experiences, identity, sense of control, social identity), and (3) available resources (e.g., coping strategies, social support, retirement anticipation; N. B. Stambulova & Samuel, 2020). The model is divided into five stages: (1) cause of sport withdrawal, (2) personal experiences, (3) coping strategies, (4) quality of adaptation, and (5) interventions in the event of difficulties. This model directly reflects the findings of the literature, which reports difficulties that affect all top-level athletes regardless of their country, but with very different experiences depending on these factors (e.g., top-level athletes who have prepared for retirement tend to have higher cognitive, emotional, and behavioral readiness than those who have not prepared for retirement; Alfermann et al., 2004). Significant differences exist among top-level athletes regarding the reasons for retirement (e.g., injury), the preparation for retirement (e.g., early in career, at the end of career), the emotional responses to the end of the career (e.g., sense of renewal, depression), the coping strategies used (e.g., distraction, problem management), and the time required to adjust (e.g., less than 3 years, 10 years; Alfermann et al., 2004; N. Stambulova et al., 2007). These factors play an important role in other major models of career transition in sport psychology, notably (1) Stambulova’s Athletic Career Transition Model, which postulates that transitions should be understood as active coping processes in which top-level athletes try to respond to clearly identified demands from their environment (e.g., finding a new job, reorganizing their schedule, creating a new network, rethinking their identity) by drawing on both internal and external available resources that facilitate coping (e.g., motivation) while addressing potential barriers (e.g., lack of knowledge) and (2) Samuel and Tenenbaum’s (2011) Scheme of Change for Sport Psychology Practice framework, which focuses on how top-level athletes cope with both positive and negative disruptive career events that create career instability (e.g., not being selected for a team, losing motivation, winning a championship; N. Stambulova et al., 2007; N. B. Stambulova & Samuel, 2020). These two models have recently led to the creation of the Integrated Career Change and Transition Framework by Samuel et al. (2020), which, based on the two previous models, posits that the transition processes faced by top-level athletes are initiated by change-events that may trigger multiple simultaneous and/or interrelated transitions that may require competing demands (N. B. Stambulova & Samuel, 2020). Top-level athletes need to understand the significance of the transition, its valence (i.e., positive or negative), and the degree of control they have over the situation, to identify existing barriers and mobilize available resources (N. B. Stambulova & Samuel, 2020). In this context, they may avoid the new situation, experience a crisis transition and need psychological intervention (N. B. Stambulova & Samuel, 2020).

In all the frameworks presented, the adaptation methods used and the resources mobilized are likely to have a major impact on the management of the transitions experienced by athletes. Thus, we understand that interventions designed to act on cognitions, emotions, the social environment, and the organization of retirement help readjust the quality of the career transition. However, these interventions must be tailored to cultural specificities, as highlighted in the Ecological Model of Human Development (Bronfenbrenner, 1979), which, adapted to sport by Wylleman (2004, as cited in N. Stambulova et al., 2007), suggests that the elite sport climate is structured by different levels that can influence the transition process differently depending on the country, based on “a macro-level (e.g., size of the country, population, level of welfare), meso-level (e.g., quality of sport-specific guidance, athletic infrastructure, media attention, public support for elite athletes), and micro-level (i.e., the athlete’s psychosocial situation)” (N. Stambulova et al., 2007, p. 104, see Figure 1). In France, for instance, top-level athletes rarely receive financial support sufficient to enable them to focus exclusively on their athletic careers (N. Stambulova et al., 2007). As a result, they typically hold part-time jobs, and upon the conclusion of their athletic careers, they often lack specialized career transition support (N. Stambulova et al., 2007). Consequently, many athletes either transition their part-time job into a full-time position or pursue careers related to sport (i.e., 66.7% of former athletes, N. Stambulova et al., 2007). In this challenging process, where French top-level athletes receive minimal psychological support (N. Stambulova et al., 2007), they often have to rely on the primary employment support institution in France, France Labor (translation of the French name “France Travail”). However, this institution does not make use of the relevant literature or provide targeted interventions that address the factors that may influence the quality of career transitions for top-level athletes.

Figure 1.

Graphic illustration of the theoretical frameworks used in the study combining career transition models (Stambulova’s Athletic Career Transition Model, Samuel and Tenenbaum’s Scheme of Change for Sport Psychology Practice framework) and the ecological approach (Bronfenbrenner).

Employment Support in France

France Labor is the institution responsible for providing job seekers with support in finding employment in France. France Labor offers its beneficiaries a wide range of activities targeted at different stages of the construction of a professional project and process of professional integration (i.e., competencies assessments, workshops to help define a project, workshops to support the development of autonomy, assessment of jobseekers’ professional competencies and abilities, workshops for writing a curriculum vitae, job-search activity reviews, redirection to training courses tailored to jobseekers’ professional projects; Balzani et al., 2008; Fougère et al., 2010; Mokrani, 2021). Although France Labor counselors partly rely on digital tools, the core of their work remains verbal exchange and the adaptation of jobseekers’ projects according to their needs (Pillon, 2015a, 2015b). The support provided by France Labor is mainly based on an assessment of beneficiaries’ level of autonomy, which leads to them being directed at a support program tailored to their career plan, resources, and job-seeking competencies (i.e., assignment to one of the three types of support offered: “monitored,”“guided” or “reinforced”; Pagoni & Fischer, 2020).

Despite top-level athletes often being appreciated by recruiters for a wide variety of positions, including jobs outside the athletic world, France Labor does not currently have a system dedicated to this population that would allow them to identify and promote their non-athletic competencies, that is, transversal competencies, to potential employers. In using the term non-athletic competencies, we are referring directly to transversal competencies, as defined by Raj et al. (2020) as follows: “Transversal competencies are essential skills, values, and attitudes that contribute to the learners’ holistic development by making them capable of adapting according to the needs and changing demands in different situations and conditions” (p. 350). As stated by the UNESCO, these competencies are “skills that are typically considered as not specifically related to a particular job, task, academic discipline or area of knowledge and that can be used in a wide variety of situations and work settings (e.g., organizational skills)” (UNESCO-UNEVOC, n.d). These competencies can be categorized into six main groups: (1) critical and innovative thinking, (2) interpersonal skills, (3) intrapersonal skills, (4) global citizenship, (5) media and information literacy, and (6) others (e.g., physical health; UNESCO-UNEVOC, n.d). Not being able to identify these various competencies is particularly damaging given that top-level athletes who are aware of the competencies they acquire through their involvement in sports and who use them in their professional transition find it easier to transition (e.g., by promoting specific competencies developed through their sport, such as team spirit and leadership skills, Matsankos et al., 2020; Richardson & McKenna, 2017). Top-level athletes are regarded as a population with transferable qualities that are reflected in their careers: refined leadership, perseverance, communication skills, the ability to surpass themselves, dynamism, the ability to multi-task with focus, a good sense of teamwork, a taste for performance, and so on (Coffee & Lavallee, 2014; Coffey & Davis, 2019). For example, some groups are developing recruitment campaigns aimed at top-level athletes, such as Allianz, which has developed an “Athletes and Careers” program “tailored to athletes with experience in high-level sports, regardless of discipline, and who are interested in the finance and insurance sectors” or Mercialys, which has put former top-level athletes in management positions: “this is the recruitment policy adopted since 2009 by Mercialys, the Casino Group property company specializing in shopping centers” (Collectif Shapers, 2014; Lecompte, 2014). Moreover, it seems that, in recruitment, athletic performance is sometimes seen as a guarantee that individuals possess a certain number of abilities, such as “a strong motivation to excel in the pursuit of challenging goals, the humility to put the group ahead of individual needs, the ability to be pushed out of their comfort zone with stretch development, a strong engagement with their work and the people around them, the determination to overcome setbacks and obstacles,” which can translate in the workplace as various transferable qualities that recruiters are seeking like self-management, integrity, confidence, team working, business and customer awareness, problem solving, planning, communication, decision-making, application of numeracy and application of information technology (Coffee & Lavallee, 2014, p. 2). Furthermore, organizations such as the National Institute of Sport, Expertise, and Performance are also very active in the professional integration of top-level athletes after an athletic career. Although they have tried to establish competency frameworks for the competencies acquired by top-level athletes during their athletic careers to promote them for their career transition, the competency frameworks that have been developed are still not considered exhaustive enough to be used for this purpose.

Hence, although support for the transition of non-top-level athletes is often based on the identification of competencies in non-France Labor programs, the breakdown of competencies is still too rarely taken into account in models relating to the quality of career transition for top-level athletes. However, it seems that the “competence factor” can play a role in the quality and fluidity of the transition, even though top-level athletes, who are far removed from the concepts of traditional recruitment, often do not have the CV codes, the notions of competences, and so forth. If they are unable to identify their own non-athletic competencies, they could face difficulty when it comes to matching their profile with the recruitment expectations associated with more traditional professions—or at least those unrelated to sports.

Aim of the Study

The present study was designed to break down the activities of the top-level athlete profession to extract all the valuable competencies on which they could draw to work on their CVs and careers. That is, our ambition was to reinterpret athletic activities to extract competencies that could be reused in non-athletic contexts. It was also a matter of semantizing (i.e., putting into words, see Kjell et al., 2019) the mobilization of competencies in the specific experiences of the professional activity of top-level athletes, with this semanticization being essential for the acquisition and development of knowledge and competencies. As a result, the main objective of the present study was to develop a matrix of associations between top-level athlete activities and extra-athletic occupations listed in the France Labor job directory, which could serve as a basis for the construction of digital services providing an operational response to top-level athletes’ support.

Method

Participants

The study mobilized three groups of participants: (1) the first group consisted of top-level athletes who were interviewed using semi-structured interviews, (2) the second group included top-level athletes who completed qualitative questionnaires with the same questions as the first group (i.e., open sections to be filled in), and their responses were combined with those of the first group in the Results section, (3) the third group comprised top-level athletes who participated in a focus group to assess the alignment between the activities and competencies identified and compiled into a directory based on the responses from the other two groups.

Thirty-five top-level athletes participated in the interviews on a voluntary basis (M_age = 29.43, SD_age = 4.81, % women = 54.29, % men = 45.71). To these participants were added eight top-level athletes who directly completed an online qualitative questionnaire adapted from the semistructured interview grid which featured the exact same questions (M_age = 29.63, SD_age = 5.24, % women = 37.50, % men = 62.50). The participants had the following aspects:

• three had already undergone a career change following a career in a top-level sport (as a trainer, coach, or company director);

• seven were already receiving guidance in the development of their career transition project (i.e., competencies identification and training) or had already started the transition process. For many of them, the support was provided by companies specializing in top-level athletes’ career transition and was based on competencies identification and personality tests;

• eight had already undergone competency assessments;

• three were working part-time, mainly to prepare for a career change (physical education teacher, property manager, social worker);

• 34 had a A-level diploma and 1 a BTEC First diploma/GNVQ Foundation (NVQ Level 1) diploma; and

• 60% had completed higher education.

Ten top-level athletes were recruited to participate in the focus group (M_age = 30.17, SD_age = 6.02, % women = 40, % men = 60).

Materials and Procedure

Because of Covid-19, the interviews (semistructured) were conducted via videoconference with the top-level athletes. We asked each athlete at the start of the interview if we had their consent to process and use their data for scientific publications. After getting their approval, we ticked a box in our interview grid and started with the first part of the interview which was designed to gather socio-demographic information about participants (i.e., age, gender, career as a sportsman/sportswoman, training, and qualifications). They were invited to talk freely about who they were and their career paths. Second, the top-level athletes were asked to mention experiences that they felt were particularly representative of their professional athletic activity. Their experiences were broken down into activities, and they were asked to explain the different tasks involved in these activities. If the respondents could not spontaneously mention any experiences or activities, the interviewer gave examples of categories of experiences (e.g., championships, coaching, mobility, captaincy, communication marketing, nutrition health, data management, legal and administrative, etc.). At the end of the questionnaire and interview, the respondents were also asked to list the competencies they felt they had acquired during their athletic careers.

Integration Into the ROME Job Directory

France Labor’s job directory, called ROME, which can be translated as Operational Directory of Jobs and Occupations, contains 11,000 job titles grouped into 532 job descriptions known as “ROME codes.” An internal matrix links these ROME codes to competencies listed in the ROME job directory (N = 408). These competencies are assigned to occupations using the interrater agreement method (e.g., Rollet et al., 2022). We followed the same methodology to integrate the activities extracted from the thematic analysis into the competency framework. Four occupational psychologist judges were asked to assign ROME competencies to each activity extracted from the thematic analysis. These judges were selected for their methodological expertise in ROME competencies and their knowledge of top-level athletes. To ensure that their opinions were impartial, they did not participate in the other parts of the methodology. An interrater reliability analysis was conducted to assess the consistency among the four occupational psychologist judges who matched competencies to the 240 activities derived from the thematic analysis. The judges initially assigned 25 competencies from the 408 competencies in the ROME job directory. To quantify the level of agreement among the judges, Fleiss’ kappa was calculated (Gisev et al., 2013). The analysis yielded a kappa value of κ = 0.516 (z = 71.1, p < .001), indicating moderate agreement according to the benchmarks established Landis and Koch (1977; Gisev et al., 2013; McHugh, 2012). To enhance the reliability of the competency assignments and address the observed discrepancies, we opted to resolve disagreements through consensus discussions among the judges for each divergent experience–competence association as several studies have shown that consensus discussions can improve interrater reliability and lead to more accurate data (Hill et al., 2005). This methodology was used to supplement the calculation of the kappa coefficient (1) for the sake of consistency with the job–competencies associations already included in the ROME job directory and (2) given the weight of each of these associations in the practical use of the correspondence matrix created with the top-level athletes (i.e., each association can lead to a career option).

Confronting Associations with a Panel of Top-Level Athletes

We confronted the list of themes extracted from the thematic analysis and the activity–competencies associations with 10 top-level athletes who had not participated in the study in the form of a focus group. The purpose of this focus group was (1) to check the degree of saturation of the themes addressed, (2) to identify, if necessary, new themes to be explored by means of a future interview campaign, and (3) to check the relevance of the competencies associated with the activities.

Results

The collected data were analyzed using King’s (1998) thematic analysis method (i.e., “template analysis” method), according to the themes established a priori when the interview grid was created. This analysis led to the selection of experiences, themes, and activities based on their exemplarity to a certain trend of opinion, as well as the level of information they offered regarding our objective of creating a base of experiences and activities relevant to top-level athletes.

The top-level athletes interviewed mentioned a total of 65 experiences, which they divided into 240 activities over the course of the interviews. On average, each experience was divided into eight activities. Content analysis then led us to group these experiences into 15 themes (see the summary table in the Supplemental Material, Table 1).

Training—Physical Preparation

The training theme was addressed by 12 of the 43 participants. The particularities of this theme are (1) that it was systematically addressed first by the top-level athletes who tackled it and (2) that it gave rise to a highly saturated evocation of experiences in our sample (i.e., three different experiences for 12 occurrences). The top-level athletes who addressed this theme described their activities (cf. Supplemental Table 2) as being dependent on a high degree of self-discipline and highly sensitive to career seniority. First and foremost, this theme is associated with a body of knowledge belonging to the Exercise Science field, such as anatomy, effort cycles, aerobic and anaerobic principles, and so on. On the other hand, the mention of transfer to civilian life is associated only with a transfer of motivational competencies (e.g., tenacity, effort tolerance, self-discipline, etc.). This theme suggests that training, as an integral part of top-level athletes’ lives, is recognized as a source of knowledge, mainly because of the high level of technicality it requires and the knowledge transmission mechanisms at work between coaches and top-level athletes. However, it is only perceived as transferable to civilian life through the resilience it provides to top-level athletes during their athletic careers.

Analysis

The theme of analytical competencies was addressed by 18 of the 43 participants, with a highly saturated evocation of experiences (i.e., three different experiences addressed). The top-level athletes who addressed this theme described the majority of activities (cf. Supplemental Table 3) as stemming from the transmission of knowledge and/or responsibilities from their coaches (e.g., performance analysis, sensor data analysis, technical gestures breakdown). These activities also seem to be conditioned by the level of autonomy the top-level athlete has in preparing for competition. The top-level athletes mentioned a low perception of the transferability of these activities to extra-sports life, apart from professional activities in areas related to top-level sports (i.e., physical preparation and coaching of amateur athletes, sports training, etc.). However, some top-level athletes mentioned the interest of employers in extra-sports fields in the potential of top-level athletes in terms of managerial competencies, as supported by their experience in the theme under analysis.

Administrative

The topic of administrative work was addressed by 11 of the 43 participants, with a moderately saturated evocation of experiences (i.e., four different experiences). This theme was addressed by a small part of the sample because many top-level athletes receive assistance in this area from their club or training center, sometimes from a very young age (i.e., <16 years). The top-level athletes who reported experiences in this area described activities (cf. Supplemental Table 4) involving administrative management of the personal sphere (i.e., managing residence permits during international mobility, housing-related administrative formalities, tax returns, etc.), but also administrative management of the professional sphere, either directly or through managerial tasks (i.e., choosing, changing and managing advisors, reading contracts). These activities are associated with a set of thematic knowledge (i.e., law and regulations) and technical and managerial competencies (e.g., negotiation, representation, etc.). The perceived transferability of these activities to life outside of sports was reflected disproportionately between the personal and professional spheres. Although in the personal sphere top-level athletes were able to project themselves into understanding and negotiating employment contracts, as well as dealing with public administration, these projections into the professional sphere were limited to union representation for only three top-level athletes.

Coaching

Coaching was mentioned by 3 of the 43 participants, with a very low saturation of experiences (i.e., three different experiences). Similar to the administrative work theme, the low representation of the coaching theme seems to be explained by the almost systematic dependence of top-level athletes on external assistance. Apart from the participants who discussed this topic in detail, a large majority of top-level athletes reported that they delegated all their tasks to the staff at their club or training center (e.g., coaches, physical trainers, etc.). Among the activities discussed in detail (cf. Supplemental Table 5), we find the activity of following a coach’s instructions, which is linked to behavioral or cognitive competencies such as attendance and memorization. The other activities developed in this theme relate to replacing the coach and are associated with technical planning competencies (e.g., training, nutrition, rhythms, etc.), which have the particularity of mobilizing a large number of activities from other themes (i.e., training, mental preparation, administrative, health, injuries, etc.). For these activities, transferability to extra-sports professional life is particularly salient for top-level athletes who have tackled them, relying on the ability to collaborate and adapt quickly to multiple work situations.

Mental Preparation

The theme of mental preparation was addressed by 7 of the 43 participants, presenting a saturated evocation of experiences (i.e., two different experiences). The activities associated with these experiences (cf. Supplemental Table 6) involves tasks performed independently with a high degree of expertise and are strongly associated with behavioral and cognitive competencies (e.g., mental imagery, concentration, communication). Their transferability to extra-sports life is strongly associated with the top-level athlete identity and with a priori assumptions about the top-level athletes’ advantage over ordinary people in life outside of sports. More specifically, this projection translates into a perception of a greater ability to concentrate and a taste for high goals.

Public Image

The theme of public image was addressed by a majority of the participants (i.e., N = 34), here with a low saturation of experiences (i.e., eleven different experiences). Although the top-level athletes we met differed in terms of their notoriety, even those who reported not being known to the general public reported seeking to build a public image, not only to serve an individual purpose, but also to “represent” the club or team. Therefore, public image management seems to be part of a collective process to which top-level athletes contribute individually. This theme is associated with activities carried out with varying degrees of autonomy, depending in particular on the top-level athletes’ degree of celebrity (cf. Supplemental Table 7). Although for top-level athletes with a high level of celebrity, the competencies associated with these activities are essentially managerial, they are more of a technical nature for top-level athletes with more modest levels of celebrity (e.g., social network management, video editing and photography, negotiation, press relations, etc.). Transferability to extra-athletic life is a matter of abstract projections for top-level athletes with high levels of fame, who apply the positive externalities to these activities more to the theme of financial investments. In contrast, for top-level athletes with more modest levels of celebrity, the transferability of these activities to professions in the audiovisual or community management fields is high, representing the most concrete level of projection in the sample.

Formation

The theme of formation was covered by 9 of the 43 participants, with a low saturation of experiences (i.e., four different experiences). A peculiarity of this theme is that it was only mentioned by top-level athletes at the beginning or end of their athletic careers. At the beginning of an athletic career, the associated activities (cf. Supplemental Table 8) belong to the field of career guidance and formation in parallel with the top-level athletes’ athletic career, whereas at the end of one’s athletic career, the activities reported belong to the field of adult vocational training and transmission. The competencies associated with these two target groups relate to technical formation competencies (e.g., planning and knowledge acquisition) and behavioral and cognitive competencies (e.g., attendance, memorization, and cognitive flexibility). The transferability of experiences from these themes to life outside of sports is exclusively associated with the knowledge and competencies resulting from the formation activities experienced or carried out.

International

The international theme was discussed by 22 of the 43 participants, with a fairly saturated evocation of experiences (i.e., four different experiences, cf. Supplemental Table 9). This theme is mostly approached through the lens of foreign languages—the competencies that underpin almost all the activities extracted here. Given this association with the use of languages, this theme seems to be easily perceived as transferable to life outside sports in other professions requiring the use of languages mastered thanks to the top-level athlete career.

Health

The theme of health was broached by a majority of the participants (i.e., N = 34) and presents a saturated evocation of experiences (i.e., six different experiences). This theme seems to be central to the life of a top-level athlete, presenting homogeneous characteristics among top-level athletes at the beginning and end of their athletic careers. The activities evoked under this theme (cf. Supplemental Table 10) are associated with a majority of technical competencies (e.g., nutrition, prevention, physiological assessment) but show a perception of transferability to non-athletic professional life restricted to aspects of lifestyle hygiene (i.e., maintaining physical and psychological health).

Club Change

The theme of club change was tackled by 26 of the 43 participants, with a low saturation of experiences (i.e., six different experiences). This theme includes activities that are mainly supported by the behavioral competency of adaptability and marginally underpinned by technical competencies in the field of negotiation (e.g., contract negotiation, role negotiation; cf. Supplemental Table 11). The perceived transferability of this competency to professional life is limited to behavioral aspects (i.e., adaptability and collaboration).

Club Life

The theme of club life was addressed by 3 of the 43 participants, here with a low saturation of experiences (i.e., three different experiences, cf. Supplemental Table 12). This theme is approached independently of the themes of administration or coaching because of singular experiences such as prolonged evolution in highly multinational clubs or the need to help a teammate in difficulty. Although this theme is similar to these two comparable themes (i.e., administrative work and coaching) in terms of the competencies that underpin the activities involved (i.e., technical and behavioral competencies in the field of assistance), it is dissociated by a strong projection into the extra-athletic world via the association with social support professions or collaboration in a multicultural context.

Championships

The championships theme was addressed by 18 of the 43 participants, with a low saturation of experiences (i.e., four different experiences, cf. Supplemental Table 13). This theme is associated with activities (cf. Supplemental Table 13) and underpinned by technical competencies in the field of foreign languages and coaching, as well as behavioral competencies in the field of perseverance. This theme is also unique in that it represents a block of activity that top-level athletes are familiar with in other areas of their profession but whose context seems sufficiently central and differentiating to be addressed in a dedicated moment. However, this theme is hardly associated with life outside sports, apart from the competitive advantage that a top-level athlete might have over a non-top-level athlete for a particular position when both candidates have equal competence.

Captaincy

The theme of captaincy was addressed by 16 of the 43 participants, with a highly saturated evocation of experiences (i.e., three different experiences). This theme was only mentioned by top-level athletes with experience as team captains. The activities associated with it (cf. Supplemental Table 14) relate to the technical and behavioral competencies associated with management (e.g., explanation of tactical schemes and distribution of roles). The transferability of this theme to professional life outside of sports also seems to be associated with a perception of potential performance in managerial tasks.

Financial Investments

The topic of financial investments was raised by 4 of the 43 participants, with a very saturated evocation of experiences (i.e., one experience). This theme seems to be strongly associated with the degree of assistance received by top-level athletes or with their level of career advancement: top-level athletes with a high level of assistance (i.e., clubs, coaches, advisors) or young top-level athletes do not distinguish this theme from that of administrative work, whereas top-level athletes who are very autonomous or at the end of their top-level athlete career perceive this theme as being central and independent of administrative work. For the concerned top-level athletes, the activities associated with this theme (cf. Supplemental Table 15) seem to be related to the technical competencies of knowledge of financial markets and investment methods (e.g., financing, profitability calculations, etc.). The transferability of this activity is not perceived as a relevant issue by the concerned top-level athletes, who associated it with a part of their extra-athletic career cohabiting with their athletic career. Therefore, they did not associate the activities of this theme with a possible extra-athletic career but with a financial investment career that they can pursue in parallel with any other possible career.

Injuries

The theme of injuries was mentioned by 10 of the 43 participants, with a moderately saturated evocation of experiences (i.e., three different experiences). This theme is a subcomponent of the health theme for most of the top-level athletes, whereas it is a separate theme for the 10 top-level athletes who mentioned it and who differ from the rest of the sample in their shared experience of an athletic career interrupted by (1) serious injury or (2) repeated injury. For them, the activities associated with this theme (cf. Supplemental Table 16) seem to involve an ability to diminish the importance of sports, underpinned by behavioral competencies such as perspective-taking, self-discipline, or emotional stability. The transferability of the activities in this theme is circumscribed to dimensions of toughness compared with the perceived toughness of non-top-level athletes or top-level athletes who have not suffered injury.

Integration Into the ROME Job Directory

The four judges matched competencies to activities from the thematic analysis, assigning an initial set of 25 competencies from the 408 competencies in the ROME job directory. Interjudge agreement led to a reduction from the initial 25 competencies to 15 competencies, all of which qualified as “behavioral competencies” in the ROME nomenclature. Thus, each activity was associated with a minimum of three and a maximum of six ROME competencies. Correspondence analyses with all the occupations then revealed an association with 480 of the 532 occupations in the database, with a minimum of one common skill.

Confronting Associations With a Panel of Top-Level Athletes

The focus group participants did not identify any themes that might be missing from the tool for a more comprehensive understanding of top-level athlete careers. On the contrary, it emerged from the focus group that the themes of (1) financial investments and (2) international were not necessarily representative of top-level athlete careers. The focus group participants unanimously felt that the competencies associated with these activities were representative of their athletic careers.

Discussion

Objectives and Main Results

We interviewed 35 top-level athletes to discuss the specifics of their activities and identify the transversal and transferable competencies they acquired over the course of their careers. The present study enabled top-level athletes to break down their professional activity into a set of experiences and activities underpinned by competencies that make the achievements of top-level athletes’ career paths empirically compatible with a large number of professions outside the world of sports. The interviewed top-level athletes reported 65 experiences, which were divided into 79 activities. We then used thematic analysis to group these experiences into 15 themes with common features and differentiating elements. Our analyses showed that the themes associated with the core of athletic activity (e.g., physical preparation, injury management) were generally perceived as not very transferable or transferable only in terms of identity (i.e., competitive advantage of the top-level athlete identity over nonathletes), whereas themes associated with peripheral experiences in the life of the top-level athlete (e.g., public image, international) were perceived as directly transferable by projection into professions for which these activities are central.

Implications of the Study

The content (in terms of activities and competencies) derived from our approach constitutes a significant contribution of the present study. As mentioned in the introduction, top-level athlete competency frameworks are few and far between and are often considered non-exhaustive. In addition, although these competency frameworks present interesting competencies that sometimes overlap with the competency framework developed in the present study (e.g., goal setting, focus, team building, motivation, resilience, time management, confidence, discipline, and responsibility, evaluation, coaching–self-coaching, problem solving; Van Raalte et al., 1992, cited by Matsankos et al., 2020), competency frameworks developed by the scientific community may appear outdated (sometimes dating back some 30 years, like that of Van Raalte et al., 1992), contain competencies that are sometimes relatively broad or vague (e.g., creativity, leadership, in the referential of Matsankos et al., 2020), or fail to take into account the competencies developed in areas such as literacy and financial management, international relations, or public image management that are included in our competency framework (i.e., that may be useful for top-level athletes who are transitioning into entrepreneurship; for an example see Ramos et al., 2022). In this sense, the content produced as part of our study constitutes a valuable contribution as it could provide research interested in top-level athletes’ career transitions with a novel corpus of linguistic elements, hence enabling the study of how top-level athletes perceive their professional activities and their transferability in different career transition paths. With employers increasingly interested in transversal competencies (Goggin et al., 2019), a better understanding of the transferability of top-level athletes’ competencies should foster their application in other professional contexts, thus supporting their future employability (Goggin et al., 2019). Recent literature highlights several strategies that might facilitate this transfer, including focusing on the need and willingness to consciously transfer, improving and reinforcing non-sport competencies, creating a positive coach-athlete relationship, debriefing and peer debriefing to get athletes to reflect on the process, and conducting team imagery sessions (Sebri et al., 2020). Future studies could assess athletes’ transferable competencies using tools such as the Athlete Competency Questionnaire for Employability developed by Smismans et al. (2021), so that athletes can then apply these strategies to the identified competencies. This would involve identifying the most valuable competencies for athletes, as Coffey and Davis (2019) attempted to do in their work on identifying transferable competencies that athletes could use on the labor market. There are similarities between our studies, particularly in the content of the competencies they identified (i.e., teamwork/collaboration, commitment, goal setting, time management, conflict resolution, perseverance, integrity and attitude, accountability, leadership, relationship building, listening, decision-making). These competencies are also similar to those identified in the literature by Cross and Fouke (2019), who developed a Scholar-Athlete toolkit that includes the following transferable competencies: teamwork, work ethic, commitment, leadership, time management, and physical and emotional health. However, Coffey and Davis (2019) extracted these competencies without matching them to the activities that athletes are likely to engage in, which compromises the identification of these competencies based on the activities that athletes engage in during their athletic careers. Therefore, our competency framework complements this study by providing this missing link.

From a practical point of view, the present study has shown—in our opinion—the importance of allowing people who are helped to list their competences to start their reflection with a description of their daily life. Our results show that top-level athletes can follow different reflective paths to arrive at a common destination in terms of the competencies developed and careers pursued. For example, the theme of championships includes many activities similar to those of the international theme, but a top-level athlete might not think of describing their foreign language communication activities outside the description of his competition activity. Therefore, as a practical implication of this study, we suggest that, when supporting top-level athletes in identifying career transition pathways, it is important to avoid saving themes by grouping or selecting them to maximize their chances of evoking the full range of activities they have undertaken during their athletic careers. In addition to career transition support, another practical implication of the present study is to encourage communication with top-level athletes on the competencies they share with all other professions (i.e., extra-sports) through testimonials or job descriptions adapted to top-level athlete competencies. Among other things, this would show top-level athletes that, although they manage their professional careers differently depending on the sport they practice (e.g., table tennis players tend to focus exclusively on their athletic careers, while fencers almost always pursue dual careers, preparing for their career transitions alongside their athletic careers by attending academic courses; Cartigny et al., 2020; Javerlhiac et al., 2010), their transversal competencies can be similar. Moreover, we believe that the content derived from the current study could be taken into consideration when constructing top-level athlete competency frameworks, provided that its limitations are taken into account such as the fact that the framework we propose is exploratory at this stage and unlikely to be generalizable beyond this particular context.

Study Limitations and Perspectives for Future Research

Although the corpus of competencies resulting from the current study represents a significant contribution, its relative limitations should be mentioned. We believe that this corpus has an important limitation in that the notion of behavioral competence involves a significant level of generality (1) from a language perspective and (2) from a transferability perspective. In fact, it limits the concrete projection into precise professional activities and does not take into account the distance between two professions in terms of technical competencies. Solely focusing on the association between top-level athlete activities and civilian professions regarding behavioral competencies could have counterproductive effects by suggesting to top-level athletes professions that are contextually too far removed from the activities carried out during their athletic careers or that require too much training time. Under these conditions, top-level athletes would probably continue to project themselves primarily in occupations whose core activity is a peripheral activity of top-level athletes (e.g., sports communication or coaching, fields massively invested by top-level athletes; Guiot & Ohl, 2007), which would severely limit the practical scope of the current study. Therefore, we strongly recommend that work be carried out in collaboration with France Labor to directly associate the technical competencies of the professions referenced in the ROME job directory with the competencies associated with the activities identified in the present study. This work could consist of assigning a set of technical competencies from the ROME job directory to the activities in the present study by operational experts from several economic sectors. By harmonizing these assignments using the interjudge agreement method, we could then directly associate each experience of a top-level athlete with all the occupations in the ROME job directory, ranking these associations in order of relevance. However, such a project would have to be combined with a measurement of the contextual distance between the various associated occupations because the principle of contextualization is crucial to the notion of competence (Le Deist & Winterton, 2005). This type of project could also lead to the development of more general frameworks, as the framework we have proposed is purely exploratory at this stage and is unlikely to be generalizable beyond this particular context.

We also identify other research perspectives related to the fact that the themes identified in the present study testify to the compartmentalization of top-level athlete profiles, an element that it seems appropriate to consider when apprehending a career path. Although no theme seems to divide top-level athletes based on their discipline, contrary to what might have been suggested by collective belief and research opposing team sports and individual sports (Nia & Besharat, 2010; Pluhar et al., 2019), we note distinctions on (1) the level of competition, (2) the level of popularity of top-level athletes with the general public, and (3) the level of advancement of top-level athletes in their careers, which seem more appropriate. These three distinctions explain the vast majority of disparities in theme distribution density in our sample. We note that the level of competition and popularity are distinctive elements that have already been mentioned in the literature (e.g., popularity can facilitate the career transition of top-level athletes who can launch products that leverage their personal brand; “There are differences related to titles—‘national champion’ does not have the same recognition or durability as ‘Olympic champion’ or ‘world champion’—and others related to disciplines. Highly mediatized practices can more easily allow athletes to settle for long-term management of their image and economic capital,” p. 393, Guiot & Ohl, 2007; Murdoch & Hong, 2024; Walsh & Williams, 2017). In our view, the results of the focus group also point in this direction because the themes questioned during this exchange were precisely those whose appropriation is conditioned by these career particularities. If we decided to retain these themes following the focus group, future research could increase the precision with which we were able to describe these particular cases because these are also the themes with the lowest saturation scores; hence, this increases the likelihood that new interviewed top-level athletes—of a similar profile to the top-level athletes who addressed the low-saturation themes—could bring out new experiences and activities. However, the level of saturation of experiences within themes proved satisfactory for the more shared themes, suggesting that increasing the number of top-level athletes interviewed would not significantly contribute to the breakdown of the experiences they grouped together.

Digital Support Tools for Professional Integration Based on the Identification and Valorization of Competencies in France

When we recontextualize the results presented in the current article, they fall within the growing recognition of top-level athletes competencies on the European scale (Matsankos et al., 2020). The French Ministry of Sport and the Olympic and Paralympic Games have clearly understood the importance of taking into account the transversal and transferable competencies of top-level athletes in their career transition. In particular, they expressed their intention to make the sports sector a privileged field for the recognition of experience through certifications attesting to the recognition of competencies acquired through experience (Service Public, 2021). The aim is to prioritize the sports sector within the new public service for the recognition of experience through certification, thereby offering future beneficiaries sports diplomas and certifications on a new simplified platform introduced in 2023 by the Ministry of Sport and the Olympic and Paralympic Games (Ministère des Sports et des Jeux Olympiques et Paralympiques, 2023). This system relies, among other things, on Diagoriente, a digital tool designed to support the identification of transversal competencies and professional integration. Developed by the digital public service of the same name, this tool can be used to identify and map the competencies that beneficiaries are likely to mobilize in their future positions based on the activities they have carried out (Houtin et al., 2021). The competencies described in the tool are based on the RECTEC framework, a project funded by the European Union to facilitate the professional integration of low-skilled workers by creating a freely available online competency framework, and once identified by a user, can be matched with relevant on-the-job immersion options (Houtin et al., 2021; Rectec Practical Guide, June 2019). Several qualitative and quantitative studies carried out on the Diagoriente tool have confirmed its relevance in identifying competences and promoting their valorization (Houtin et al., 2021, 2023) and, more generally, in facilitating support (Reyssier & Touraille, 2023). People who have used the Diagoriente tool have appreciated it, particularly its module for identifying competencies based on previous personal and professional activities (Houtin et al., 2023). The tool also seems to enable users to take an active stance in the construction of their professional projects (Houtin et al., 2023). The competency map generated by the tool is seen as a valuable vector for the valorization of users, enabling them to summarize their career path, thus facilitating the production of supports aimed at professional integration (e.g., CV, cover letter; Houtin et al., 2023). Although there is currently no version of Diagoriente specifically tailored to top-level athletes, the corpus developed in our study represents a gateway to the integration of competency frameworks developed for top-level athletes. This kind of tool will make it possible to offer top-level athletes personalized support from the start and throughout their careers, which could include identifying and raising awareness of the transversal competencies that top-level athletes so desperately need, identifying new career paths that top-level athletes are unaware of or do not know they can apply for, and suggesting professional immersion to gain new professional experience and bring new projects to fruition. Furthermore, this continually evolving digital tool could be adapted in the future to specifically address the various factors identified in the Model of Adaptation to Retirement, the Athletic Career Transition Model, the Scheme of Change for Sport Psychology Practice framework and the Integrated Career Change and Transition Framework. This adaptation could help modulate the impact of these factors on the quality of top-level athletes’ career transitions while incorporating a module for psychological support. By integrating these tools throughout top-level athletes’ careers, we will be able to provide them with relevant and tailored support, both at the beginning of their careers and after several years—periods that present different challenges (Bell et al., 2018; Cabrita et al., 2014; Vickers & Morris, 2022).

Conclusion

In the absence of any prior competency-based projection work, top-level athletes prefer to enter professions whose main activity matches a peripheral activity in the top-level athletes’ lives (e.g., communication, finance, or coaching) because these are the professions into which they can project their own competencies.

However, the sum of the competencies associated with each of their experiences could make their profiles relevant to professions in many other fields, which would become accessible through short training courses. Future work should focus on top-level athletes’ reception of guidance and training proposals based on their competencies to formulate recommendations for adapting adult vocational training paths that could become available to them.

In this respect, linking the experiences described here to the occupations in the ROME job directory via the technical competencies in this database seems a relevant approach because it allows us to create direct bridges between competencies that top-level athletes know they have mastered and occupations to which they are not aware they could access. Exploiting these transversal and transferable competencies, especially in the context of new initiatives involving digital tools (e.g., Diagoriente), should facilitate the career transition of top-level athletes.