Abstract des Autors

One might still argue that just as the educational system is an opportunity structure designed by adults to enable young people to achieve across a range of academic and vocational disciplines the elite youth sport system offers parallel opportunities in relation to a sporting career. However, a less positive assessment is that rather than elite youth sport systems providing an opportunity for talented young people to realise their potential it treats them as factors of production in an increasingly profit-oriented industry with the consequence that young people are vulnerable to exploitation and abuse of their rights as children (David 2005). Drawing on research in Norway and the UK the aim of this chapter is to examine the contemporary context of elite youth sport with an emphasis on the identification and analysis of interests of selected stakeholders that shape the development of elite youth sport systems. The underlying hypothesis of the analysis is that elite youth sport occupies a contested policy space. The data on which the analysis is based were collected partly through the analysis of documents produced by national sports organisations, but primarily through a series of interviews with senior officers within national sports organisations with a direct responsibility for elite youth sport. In Norway interview data were gathered from the sports of gymnastics, swimming and cross-country skiing and also from a senior officer in the elite sport department (Olympiatoppen, OLT) of the Norwegian Olympic and Paralympic Committee and Confederation of Sports (NOC). The UK data were gathered from interviews with senior development staff in the sports of cycling, gymnastics and swimming, plus an interview with a senior officer in the British Olympic Association (BOA). (geändert)