[Strive for excellence and addiction to body movement: a risk model in high-level athletes]

Champion athletes strive to attain a personal goal defined by a socially constructed image of psychomotor performance to be accomplished at the moment of the championship celebration. This intrapsychic process is initiated by a transformation of the body, programmed and controlled by repeated training. The athlete's body becomes accustomed to ritualized obsessive movements, favoring the feeling of self-fulfillment solely during muscular effort (contraction/relaxation, displacement). This social goal of excellence implies personal adaptation involving an addictive link to movement: a mechanism uniquely valid in high level sports. Twelve years experience in psychological support of high-level athletes participating in Olympic sports has led to an analysis of this adaptive mechanism and a proposed psychopathological model of its invasion of the athlete's psychic economy.