Using sport to cope with cystic fibrosis
Résumé
After a relatively normal childhood, people suffering from cystic fibrosis reach a stage where they are progressively confronted with increasingly crippling functional limitations. Some of them, nonetheless, regularly undertake physical and/or sporting activity. It is thus interesting to examine the process of commitment to a practice that is based on the idea of progress and often exceptional performance by the body but which, for these people, makes the decline of their physical capacities particularly salient. A qualitative survey combines participant observation with 35 semi-directive interviews with sportsmen and sportswomen with cystic fibrosis. Their commitment to sport, constructed by/with the family, is initially first aimed at maintaining a form of control over their identity but progressively becomes a means of controlling the illness trajectory. A lung transplant, when possible, relaunches the practice in relation to its initial interests.