SKILLED COPING AND SPORT: PROMISES OF PHENOMENOLOGY

Phenomenology holds much potential to make meaningful contributions to research on sport. In this paper, I argue that concepts such as equipment, habit and readiness-at-hand will help to uncover heretofore unexamined strands of athletic embodiment. Through an examination of the work of Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Hubert Dreyfus I take some initial steps towards outlining not only the promises of phenomenology for the study of sport, but also what such an undertaking might entail. In conclusion I highlight the consequences for sport research that flow from phenomenology and offer suggestions for how sport scholarship might benefit from its incisive manner of discerning skilled coping.