Sport provides many youth participants with a central life project, and yet very few eventually fulfill their athletic dreams, which may lead them to disengage from sport entirely. Many studies have explored the processes of athletic retirement, but little is known about how youth athletes actually reconstruct their relationship with sport and embodiment postretirement. The authors explored these issues in the story of “Pilvi,” a Finnish alpine skier who disengaged from sport in her late adolescence. Employing an existential-phenomenological approach, they conducted six low-structured interviews with Pilvi, combined with visual methods, and identified key themes relating to the body, space, culture, and time. Their findings highlight the difficulty of building a new relationship with sport and the often restrictive cultural horizons of sport and exercise culture that limit the “possible selves.” The authors discuss the significant implications for applied practitioners helping youth athletes and effectively supporting them in leaving their sport.

体育为许多青年参与者提供了中心生活项目，但很少有最终实现他们的运动梦想，这可能导致他们完全脱离运动。许多研究都探索了运动退休的过程，但是对于青年运动员如何真正重建他们与体育运动和退休后体现的关系知之甚少。作者在芬兰滑雪者“皮尔维”（Pilvi）的故事中探讨了这些问题，皮尔维在青春期后期脱离了运动。他们采用一种存在现象学的方法，对皮尔维进行了六次低结构的访谈，并结合了视觉方法，并确定了与身体，空间，文化和时间有关的关键主题。他们的发现凸显了与体育运动建立新关系的困难，以及体育运动文化的局限性，这限制了“可能的自我”。作者讨论了应用实践者帮助青年运动员并有效支持他们退出体育运动的重大意义。