Julia Topart, Émilie Lemelin, Véronique Boudreault, Sylvie Parent

Canada continues to invest time, money, resources, and space to address safety concerns in sport; however, issues – new and reoccurring – persist. A roadblock in our pursuit of ‘safe sport’ is the fact that safety is a contradiction in sport. More specifically, safety is defined as the absence of risk, and yet, organized, competitive sport requires individuals (i.e., athletes, coaches, etc.) to intentionally expose themselves to and assume some risk(s). The misalignment in our understandings and practices of safety in sport, coupled with the fact that ‘safe sport’ currently carries tremendous emotional and symbolic value in public consciousness, continues to obstruct our abilities to meaningfully address safety – or the lack of – in sport. Thus, the purpose of this study was to explore safety, and by extension, risk, in sport within policies and/or formal documents of a provincial sport governing body in effort to understand how the concepts are negotiated, leveraged, and implemented. Thirty-three sport policies (i.e., Harassment Policy, Concussion Management Policy, etc.), guidelines/protocols (i.e., Blue Card Implementation Protocols, Air Quality Guidelines, etc.), and forms (i.e., Child Protection Incident Report Form, Playing up Form, etc.) were analyzed. Findings demonstrate that safety and risk are conceptualized differently within and across the documents. The reader’s understanding and perceptions of safety, and by extension, risk, were assumed; further adding to the muddiness surrounding ‘safe sport’. This study offers both theoretical and practical insights on the complexities of safety in sport, which, in turn, may inform more robust policies and safety practices.