ABSTRACT
The role of injury and pain in the professional sporting context has been examined in the two previous chapters in order to establish the important use to which sports medicine has been put in trying to minimise their occurrence and severity. When pain and injury occur, the elite sporting participant has several options: to give up the sport; to let the body heal naturally with minimal medical intervention; or to actively rehabilitate the injured area with the advice of a sports medicine expert. Unfortunately, decisions with regard to what to do with an injured body are not always the concern simply of the sporting participant alone but may affect a large number of individuals within the participant's social network (Nixon 1992, 1993b). The social environment surrounding every patient-performer may heavily influence decisions made in times of pain, and with each choice comes a degree of risk. Risk in the context of the sporting community refers to the danger of any structural or emotional damage as a result of participation in sporting activity by an elite sporting participant. In other words, risk is a product of sporting participation. The choice to continue in sport through the use of sports medicine—which is employed in the professional sporting environment—may appear to be limiting risk, but the use of sports medicine can often mean that the sport is already embedded in a particular risk culture.
