ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the connections between sport, ageing and spirituality and identifies avenues to start studying this topic in future work. It explores some conceptual and cultural issues surrounding ageing and sport in later life. The shifting understandings of ageing from an utterly negative process to a project of ageing 'successfully' hardly capture the potential for older athletes to accept embodied ageing and yet find new insight and affirm meaning in their sport life projects. The chapter discusses a spiritual perspective grounded in developing self-acceptance and inner integrity which could offer an alternative framework for understanding sport in later life. Many scholars in gerontology have sought to challenge the ageist attitudes of Western societies and save us from the "misery perspective" of old age. However, few sport psychology scholars have studied ageing athletes' experiences, let alone from a spiritual perspective.
