MES900: It is highly probable that the interest in sports retirement began with explicit requests from coaches and national sports: Research Methods in Exercise and Sport Studies Assignment, NIE, Singapore

It is highly probable that the interest in sports retirement began with explicit requests from coaches and national sports associations in response to athletes’ transition issues after retiring from elite competitive sports. Furthermore, it must be considered that in modern sport, certain athletes have evolved into individuals with respectable followings on social and mass media, which might raise their societal importance. Some of their adaptation issues have led to a common perspective in some quarters that retirement from elite sports can be associated with adjustment issues in everyday life

Sports psychology has been investigating athletes’ retirement from the sport from the late 1960s to the present moment. Various psychological and social changes occur in the athlete’s life when planning for retirement and during the retirement phase. Athletes face substantial obstacles during the transition as they strive to deal with a variety of complex emotions, negotiate a transformation in their identity, and deal with disturbances in their social networks.

In this study, the research aim will be to investigate a group of 15-20 Singaporean elite athletes, comparing and contrasting their perspective perspectives on sports retirement with their ten-year retrospective assessments of their experiences in the retirement phase.

From a long-term retrospective perspective, this technique allows us to comment on factors influencing both the fulfillment of athletes’ initial retirement expectations and the effectiveness of initial plans and actions. We will investigate how following dual occupations affect the retirement process by considering distinct trajectories in terms of athletes’ career compatibility.

Since the late eighties, there has been an increase in the number of studies on career termination, development, or transitions (Kiuppis&Stambulova, 2020). However, there has been a lack of studies done on athletes’ retirement from sports from a longitudinal perspective. Therefore, this study aims to conduct a prospective and retrospective interview of elite Singaporean athletes from both team and individual sports and to investigate how athletes with dual careers have an impact on their retirement processes.