ABSTRACT
To succeed at the top level of sport, athletes must negotiate and overcome a wide range of challenges. Withstanding and adapting to this array of stressors is necessary if athletes are to fulfill their sporting potential and gain the competitive edge. Notwithstanding the phenomenal levels of resilience required to thrive in elite sport, athletes will inevitably struggle with difficulties at times. Although adversity is usually distressing and sometimes traumatic, the athletes who reach the pinnacle of global sport will also likely find a way to, at least in part, positively change and grow in some way from such hardship. Indeed, it is often the stress-related growth and resilience exhibited by the world’s best athletes that separates them from their rivals. This chapter focuses on elite athletes’ experiences of stress-related growth and resilience. The emphasis is on how the world’s best performers differ in some pivotal psychosocial respects from others competing at the highest level in terms of how they grow following adversity, develop their resilience beyond their pretrauma functioning, and deliver superior performance.
