Drinking stories among climbers and older athletes in France and Australia

Despite stories about drinking being the focus of the research with young people, holiday makers, stag tour participants and college fraternities, stories of drinking among sportspeople have not featured significantly in the scholarship, even though alcohol consumption is a central feature in many aspects of sporting cultures and communities. Drawing on qualitative interviews with climbers in France and older athletes in Australia, the paper explores the ways in which drinking stories operate to confer accomplishment of a physical task (such as climbing) and to demarcate belonging to a membership group. In a departure from the literature on drinking stories in contemporary societies, these are not the themes of drinking to excess, transgression or vulgarity that are found in drinking stories by other social groups. When analysed together, however, they offer insights into the meanings ascribed to the social exchanges in drinking and offer important reminders of the consequences for drinking behaviours in sport. That similar themes of drinking stories were found in different sporting and geographical settings alerts us to the importance of drinking talk in sport; its absence in the scholarship highlighting the need to better understand the diversity of drinking in contemporary social life.