Introduction

This book is an anthropological study of the impact of commercialism on the professionalisation of sports medicine. In particular, it examines how the embodied practice of sport in a professional environment places stress on elite sporting participants. These individuals have better medical provisions than were available to the competitors of yesteryear. But they come at a price. The book investigates the relationship between commercialism, medicine and the body, in order to establish the importance of pain, injury and risk in the contemporary sporting world. Ethnographic case studies of Welsh rugby union players, British distance runners and a sample of Paralympians at the last four Paralympic games highlight the ways in which distinctive cultural environments in the process of transformation to professionalism have different approaches to the management of pain, injury and risk. The provision of sports medicine is, in a sense, a tool used by sports administrators and club officials to fast-track elite sporting performers (often prematurely) back into competition. In spite of the cultural differences, however, all three cases illustrate the fact that in an era of elite professional sport the health and well-being of the participant is ultimately a personal responsibility.