Navigating the systemic labyrinth: the dual-track breakthrough of student-athletes under China's “Integration of Sports and Education”

Introduction: Although dual career (DC) development has received growing international attention, the psychosocial experiences of high-level student-athletes (HLSAs) within China's evolving Integration of Sports and Education (ISE) context remain underexplored. Methods: This study adopted an interpretivist qualitative design and used Reflexive Thematic Analysis to examine retrospective developmental accounts from 19 Chinese HLSAs admitted to university through the high-level sports team pathway. Results: Athletic achievement expanded access to higher education but did not automatically secure stable competence, legitimacy, or belonging across academic and athletic settings. Effort often remained within HLSAs' control even when its returns became uncertain because of injury, bodily limits, competitive conditions, and fluctuating performance, requiring athletes to recalibrate causal expectations and perceptions of what could still be changed. Institutional support, recognition, and opportunities also varied with athletic standing, making the quality of integration psychologically consequential beyond the formal coexistence of sport and education. Discussion: These findings conceptualize DC as a process of conditional inclusion. Chinese HLSAs navigate a systemically structured but psychologically experienced labyrinth, in which breakthrough occurs when athletic achievement is transformed from an entry credential and performance identity into a broader basis for competence, belonging, self-redefinition, and future possibility. Effective ISE therefore requires developmental conditions that allow sporting achievement to open educational opportunities without defining the limits of student-athletes' subsequent academic, personal, and career development.