After the triumph: an anthropological study into the lives of elite athletes after competitive sport

The decision to retire from competitive sport is an inevitable aspect of any professional sportsperson’s career. This thesis explores the afterlife of former professional rugby players and athletes (road running and track) and is situated within the emerging sub-discipline of the anthropology of sport. I consider the elite sports culture within which athletes apply their sporting trade and show how the everyday life of elite athletes is shaped by the mass media and a culture of individualism. The elite sports culture informs how athletes perceive their bodies after sports retirement. By drawing on the notion of the sports body as a machine I show that professional rugby players disregard the potential future ailments that they may live with once their rugby careers are over. The importance of social networks established during their sporting careers is also explored with specific reference to the role that schools and universities play in promoting social capital. The research, moreover, hopes to contribute to knowledge about the afterlife of sportspeople by considering the interconnectedness between elite athlete’s private decision to retire from sport and the public representation of their sporting lives through sport heritage practices. The study of sports heritage in South Africa has been a largely neglected and hitherto closed field of study. The study concludes that the material culture of South African former sport heroes enables them to live on near perpetuity, as they become symbolically immortalised through sport heritage practices Conceptually this thesis draws on the theory of social capital, the body, the notion of symbolic immortality, and the politics of memory and heritage practices. Empirically, sport museums as expressions of heritage are investigated with specific reference to the preservation of South African rugby heritage at the Springbok Experience Museum in Cape Town and an analysis of the Comrades Marathon House museum in Pietermaritzburg. Besides these, I also visited places where the material culture of former South African sport heroes are exhibited. These included the houses of sports collectors, community sport museums, corporate sport museum, sport stadia and sport heritage exhibitions at prominent South African rugby schools and universities. Semi – structured interviews were conducted with former professional rugby players, athletes and sport heritage practitioners. Participant observation at sport events that commemorated sportspeople of the past also substantiate the findings. Primary sources drawn from the South African Rugby Board’s archives contributed to the understanding of rugby heritage practices prior to the professional era.