Reading Culture Among Elite Athletes as a Community-Building Practice

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the importance of reading culture among top Slovenian athletes in the context of building a reading community and to emphasize the significance of researching the reading culture of specific groups. We employed qualitative methods: focus groups and observation. The focus groups took place as part of public events and followed pre-determined protocol. Over the course of two years, we conducted 18 focus groups, each with three athletes. Prior to this, we also conduc­ted a pilot study with six participants to test the methodology and content. During the discussions, we recorded the basic characteristics of the participants’ nonverbal communication, and later supplemented the notes with data from video recordings. We found that reading holds a different place in the lives of elite athletes depending on the stage of life, but it is certainly present. They have a rich reading heritage, as they generally come from families of readers; they often use reading as a method of concentration and for acquiring the additional knowledge they need for their own athletic progress; reading is also present as a means of escape. The study’s limitations are related to the time frame (data were collected in 2022 and 2023), and participants were those willing to speak publicly about their attitudes toward reading. The reading culture of male and female athletes is rarely the subject of research in Slovenia and internationally. The paper highlights the importance of elite athletes as reading in­fluencers in relation to the establishment of a reading culture among young people. This is the first study of reading culture among this specific target group in Slovenia.