The Costs of the Win-at-all-Cost Culture in High Performance Sport

Heightened media scrutiny and growing public awareness, has led to increased research focusing on maltreatment in sport (Willson et al., 2022b). The Masculinity Contest Culture (MCC) framework has been effective in exploring the elite sport context and its connection to athlete health and safety (Monton et al., 2023). This study sought to deepen our understanding of how MCC is enacted in sports contexts, and how it relates to athlete outcomes. We used semi-structured interviews with retired, female, national team athletes (n=30). Results indicated that the MCC norm of show no weakness was enacted by a low tolerance for error, suppression of emotion and concealing of mental health struggles, while the MCC norm of strength and stamina was represented by a pattern of athletes playing through injury and illness. The MCC norm of dog-eat-dog was exemplified through toxic levels of competition, athlete hierarchy and a feeling that athletes were replaceable, whereas the MCC norm of put work first was represented by as a sole focus on sport. In addition to the four MCC norms cited in the literature, a win-at-all-costs justification emerged as an overarching theme across all four norms. MCC was enforced by coaches and athletes through rewards and punishment which had devastating consequences for athletes, including stress, diminished self-esteem, body image and disordered eating, difficulty with interpersonal relationships and burnout.