Supporting elite athletes in a new age: experiences of personal excellence advisers within Australia’s high-performance sporting environment

Traditional career assistance programs focused on the provision of vocational and educational support for elite athletes. Following a recent shift towards the provision of holistic support services for these athletes, the purpose of this research was to explore the newly developed Personal Excellence (PE) adviser role within Australia’s high-performance sport system. The current investigation was exploratory in nature and examined the PE role, adviser experiences and essential services provided by these advisers in supporting Australia’s elite athletes. Utilising an interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA), six individuals (M \ua0=\ua047.0, SD\ua0=\ua028.6) who were employed in a PE position within Australia’s National Institute Network participated in this study. In analysing the data according to IPA guidelines, six superordinate themes were identified: a) rationale for change; (b) program architecture; (c) essential services; (d) fundamental skills and qualities; (e) limiting factors; and (f) future opportunities. Consistent with IPA conventions, a thematic map was generated to illustrate the relationship between these factors. As the first empirical study of the PE program, this paper makes a valuable contribution to understanding the role of support programs in the elite sporting landscape and enhances the growing evidence-base on the provision of career assistance and wellbeing programs for elite athletes