The Olympic Games transition: a narrative review and a conceptual model

Participation in the Olympic Games (OGs) represents the pinnacle of an elite athlete’s career, often accompanied by a spectrum of emotions – including euphoria, flow, pride, and a sense of meaning – as well as negative experiences such as disappointment, frustration, anxiety, and a lack of purpose. Over the past decade, research on athletic careers has increasingly recognized the OGs as a longitudinal career transition encompassing multiple phases and meta-transitions, including qualification/selection, preparation, participation, and the post-Games period. However, no review has yet addressed the full scope of the OGs transition, and no conceptual model has been developed to account for this complex experience. This article addresses this gap by pursuing two objectives: (a) to provide a narrative review of the OGs transition, and (b) to introduce a new framework – the Olympic Games Transition Model (OGT model) – which captures the change events, career pathways, and associated adaptation processes within the OGs transition. Our research questions were: (a) What are the transitional experiences of elite athletes throughout their Olympic journeys? (b) Can specific transitions and phases be identified as career pathways? (c) How do athletes perceive these transitions? (d) How do elite athletes emotionally respond to the transition’s demands and barriers? (e) How do athletes adapt to these demands and barriers? The findings underscore the scarcity of quantitative, comparative, predictive, and longitudinal research in this area. The review highlights the complex and dynamic emotional nature of the OGs experience and its potential impact on athletes’ well-being. The OGT model offers researchers and practitioners a comprehensive framework for understanding athletes’ change events, career pathways, and adaptation processes.