Abstract
The world of elite sport has become increasingly professionalised involving a multitude of staff with more or less specialised skills (in terms of sports performance preparation, sports administration and the economic valorisation of performance) and from different sectors (public, private market and non-market). Based on interviews conducted with elite athletes and their staff, this article aims to describe the complexity of the athletics market and the ways in which athletes interact and form networks in order to produce a ‘double performance’ − sporting and economic. It provides information on the ways the various networks of staff are constituted to cross the resource-holding organisations and the ways in which tasks and professional identities are distributed. Through this lens, we examine the power relations that are (re)played out as a function of the value and position of the staff in the athletic market and the adaptations of the athlete-coach relationship from a diachronic and synchronic perspective. In doing so, we hope to contribute to the understanding of how athletes make careers in athletics through the development of reticular collective action.