Over the past thirty years there has been a marked increase in writings that have identified the potential of sport to act as a vehicle for experiencing the religious and mystical dimension of life. The ex-athlete and philosopher of sport Howard Slusher (1967, 127) was one of the first to suggest that ‘within the movements of the athlete a wonderful mystery of life is present, a mystical experience that is too close to the religious to call it anything else’. Indeed, modern athletes often describe self-transcendent experiences using ‘religious and spiritual metaphors’ that seem to point to a supernatural origin. This is personified by the Catholic priest Thomas Ryan (1985, 115), who recounts what for him was an ecstatic ‘moment of prayer’ while skiing in the Canadian Rockies:

On one occasion I took the lift up to the very peak and crossed over the top, gliding down into the back bowl. Within seconds I discovered myself completely alone in the vast expanse of space, with the jagged peaks towering above me, no other skier in sight not a sound to be heard. I stood transfixed for a while. The scriptures use the word “theophany” for such moments when the divine is experienced breaking through and transfiguring natural events with a sense of the sacred. When I finally pushed off with my poles, I did so slowly and deliberately, with a sense of one touched by the Holy and visited with awe. Even now, months later, I can recall that experience and those feelings with astonishing clarity. I have no other word for it than mystical – a level of experience I am convinced we are called. It is primarily a question of refining our inner and outer senses to the presence of the Holy, daily in our midst.