ABSTRACT
Images of ageing have changed a lot over the past decades. A reconstruction of the public discourses on ageing of the past decades identifies three story lines that give voice to distinct images of ageing: the “retirement,” the “restless age,” and the “productive age” narratives. At the same time, parallel but independent from the emerging active and productive ageing paradigm, the image of sports and physical activities has changed as part of the so-called sportification of society. The chapter develops answers to the questions, whether older people have been part of the sportificiation by presenting empirical data about the development of participation in sport and physical activities of the elderly with respect to cross-sectional and longitudinal studies and a focus on socio-structural influences. The final section sums up the results and puts it in the broader frame of social change and public discourses on ageing in Germany and the active ageing paradigm.
