High-performance sport systems: Current developments and future challenges

A growing number of nations have started to invest in high-performance sport, which has resulted in an intensifying 'global sporting arms race'. As a result, it is expected that nations will face higher costs to maintain or increase success in the future. In this chapter, we review literature on high-performance systems to identify key characteristics of high-performance sport policy. We then turn to developments in these policies in the last three decades. These developments are seen to evolve in three waves: (1) Increasing Competition, Increasing Medal Cost and Homogenisation of Elite Sport Policies, (2) Diminishing Returns to Scale and Increasing Prioritisation by Nations and (3) From Systems to Outcomes: The Societal Impact of Elite Sport, and Changing Innovation and Technologies. Finally, we present a research agenda for high-performance sport systems. This agenda is characterised by new ways of achieving and defining success.