ABSTRACT
This book has examined the transformation of Welsh rugby union, British distance running and Paralympic sport on two levels: that of the sports organisation and that of the individual elite sporting participant. Each of the case studies lends weight to the thesis that the embodied practice of sport in a professional environment places significant stress on elite sporting participants. Professional sporting participants have better medical provisions than were available to the competitors of yesteryear, but these have come at a price. The relationships between commercialism, medicine and sporting bodies were investigated in order to establish the importance of pain, injury and risk in the contemporary sporting world. This conclusion synthesises the different strands of argument presented throughout the book that professionalising forces in elite sporting performers perceptions' of their bodies have led to changes within the methods of treatment of injury. This has in turn had an impact on the structure of the sports in which they are involved.
