ABSTRACT
The aim of career assistance is to help athletes with various issues related to their careers in and outside the sport. Career assistance emerged during the second half of the 20th century to fulfil athletes’ adaptation needs following retirement from elite sport. Career assistance encapsulates a series of interventions aimed at supporting athletes with their sporting careers and their interaction with other life contexts. Career assistance is often structured into programmes, organized by an institution and mainly intended for athletes. Within this contribution, the emergence and evolution of career assistance programmes around the world is reviewed. Emphasis is placed on the definition of career assistance programmes as a series of preventive/educational interventions structured into programmes, beyond the provision of economic resources and interventions from the crisis-/negative consequences-coping perspective. Career assistance programmes are fundamental resources for athletes who are trying to reconcile sport with academic/vocational and personal contexts.
