“Should I stay or should I go?” Is there a use by date on coach-athlete relationships? Shifting, temporal and contextual notions of power-relations within track and field athletics

In high-performance sport, the coach–athlete relationship is often framed as central to athlete development and well-being. Yet, such relationships are dynamic, contested, and deeply embedded within broader sociocultural and institutional landscapes. This study critically reconsiders how athletes experience and interpret these relationships in UK high-performance track and field athletics. Drawing on poststructural and postmodern theory and sensibilities, this research explores how athletes navigate, resist, and engage with complex power relations. Semi-structured interviews with twelve high-performance athletes were analysed through a Neo-Foucauldian lens producing a paired extended vignette. Findings suggest that dominant model-based approaches to coach-athlete relationship research are both limited and limiting, and ignore complex social dynamics. Power is shown to be fluid, temporal, relational, and non-possessive, challenging traditional conceptualisations of power. This work contributes a theoretically rich and empirically grounded reconceptualisation of coach–athlete dynamics, offering new ways to understand how power operates in high-performance sport.