Understanding Violence in Sport
Sport is generally associated with positive experiences such as enjoyment, personal development, achievement, teamwork, health and social connection. Nevertheless, sport can also provide a setting in which athletes and other participants experience behaviours that threaten their physical or psychological safety, dignity and well-being. These behaviours are often described using different terms, including violence, interpersonal violence, harassment, abuse, maltreatment, and non-accidental violence. The lack of consistent terminology can make it difficult for athletes, coaches and other members of the sport community to recognise exactly which behaviours constitute violence.
Importantly, violence in sport should not be understood as referring only to physical assault. The World Health Organization definition, adopted by the 2024 IOC Consensus Statement, describes violence as the intentional use of physical force or power, whether threatened or actual, that results in, or has a high likelihood of resulting in, physical injury, psychological harm, impaired development or deprivation. The reference to power is particularly important in sport because harmful behaviour may occur without physical contact. A coach, athlete support person, administrator, teammate or other individual may use authority, status, knowledge, control over selection, access to competition, or social influence in ways that harm another person (Tuakli-Wosornu et al., 2024).
For the purposes of safeguarding in sport, the 2024 IOC Consensus Statement recommends the overarching concept of interpersonal violence (Tuakli-Wosornu et al., 2024). Interpersonal violence refers to the intentional use of physical force or power against another person by an individual or a small group of individuals. It may be perpetrated by different people, may occur face-to-face or online, and may take several different forms. This umbrella concept is useful because it allows apparently different behaviours, such as physical assault, humiliation, sexual harassment, bullying or neglect, to be understood as related forms of harmful interpersonal behaviour rather than as completely separate problems.
Definition of Violence in Sport
The contemporary IOC framework identifies four principal categories of interpersonal violence: physical violence, psychological violence, sexual violence, and deprivation or neglect (IOC, 2017). For educational purposes, violence in sport can therefore be defined as (Tuakli-Wosornu et al., 2024; IOC, 2017):
Violence in sport refers to interpersonal behaviours involving the intentional or harmful use of physical force, power, authority or influence against another person that cause, or have the potential to cause, physical injury, psychological harm, sexual harm, impaired development or deprivation. It includes physical violence, psychological violence, sexual violence and harassment, and neglect, as well as related manifestations such as bullying, hazing and grooming. Violence may involve contact or non-contact behaviours, may occur once or repeatedly, and may take place face-to-face or through digital and online environments.