Psychosocial and sports profile in high-performance Argentine athletes with motor disabilities and intention to continue practicing sports in the future

The growth in the participation of athletes with disabilities in competitive sport has driven numerous emerging investigations on athletes with disabilities with the purpose of optimizing their development, training and performance environments. To contribute to this objective, 31 federated athletes with motor disabilities from Argentina, men and women, completed questionnaires on "Perceived competence", the "Passion Scale" by Vallerand et al. (2003), the "Flow short scale" by Fernandez et al. (2015), and the "Future practice intention scale". In addition, the results were complemented with six interviews. According to the results of this research, athletes reported feeling passion for sport, mainly of a harmonious type, experiencing frequent or deep episodes of flow, and having a moderately high perceived sport competence. Their intention to continue practicing sport was very high and their intention to continue competing was high. Learning what motivates athletes with physical disabilities to reach the level of high competence could provide a broader understanding of the factors that influence participation, development and experience in parasport. Intervention strategies aimed at improving participation and sports performance in adapted sport should consider creating favorable environments to promote harmonious passion and positive experiences that enable permanence in sports practice and the benefits derived from it.