Towards an expanding horizon: a systematic critical review of research on dual careers in sport and work

A substantial number of elite athletes need to work alongside their athletic careers, yet limited research has focused on working-athletes. Instead, dual career (DC) research, including 19 reviews, has focused almost exclusively on student-athletes. To improve the understanding of how to support working-athletes, we aimed to: (a) summarize the research on working-athletes’ DCs, (b) identify key contributions, and (c) provide recommendations for future research. To this end, we employed a critical systematic review of research on working-athletes’ DCs, using the introduction of the term DC as our starting point and the seven postulates outlining the pursuit of DC excellence as our critical lens. Through our review we identified 30 articles, which were appraised, synthesized, and critically analyzed. Our review indicates that research on working-athletes’ DCs is growing, with pioneering authors making important contributions to understanding how to support working-athletes. Still, research gaps and future challenges remain. We have provided recommendations (e.g. terminological coherence) to guide researchers in addressing these gaps and challenges and advance understanding of how to facilitate working-athletes’ pursuit of DC excellence, helping them become winners in both the short and long run.