Bingeing often the winner's way

Elite sportspeople are twice as likely to be binge drinkers as people who don't play sport, a Otago University study suggests.

The survey of 430 Otago students, more than half of whom had played sport at an international, national or provincial level, found those people reported significantly higher rates of hazardous drinking.

One of the study's authors, Kerry O'Brien, said the survey used a limited sample and he and his colleagues were working on a wider study that would be more revealing and reliable.

In the study elite sportspeople reported significantly higher rates of hazardous drinking than those who didn't play sport, or played at a lower level.

Greater rates of binge drinking were reported by elite international and national sportspeople (59 per cent) than elite provincial sportspeople (56 per cent), non-elite sportspeople (51 per cent) and and non-sportspeople (31 per cent).

Of particular concern to the academics who carried out the survey - Mr O'Brien, Joshua Blackie and John Hunter - was that elite sportspeople reported worse outcomes of drinking.

The elite sportspeople, who played a wide range of team and individual sports, also showed more symptoms of alcohol dependence.

Mr O'Brien said the wider study would explore the reasons elite sportspeople drank.

He said alcohol helped sportspeople release tension and bond with their teammates and alcohol sponsorships consolidated that relationship.

He said having a few drinks after a game was in itself not problematic.

"It's just when you have a lot on one occasion. And of course at the elite level, they get it free.

"They'll go back to the clubs and they'll have free beer provided for them, then they'll go out maybe to a pub and someone will shout them a beer. It's being put into your hand a lot of the time and you feel obliged to drink it."

Dr Mike MacAvoy, chief executive of the Alcohol Advisory Council, said some sporting codes in New Zealand - including rugby - should smarten up their act when it came to dealing with alcohol-related issues.

"We have no issue about people drinking. We're talking about elite sportspeople drinking to excess at the end of a game, making a mess of themselves.

"There are real issues about how this affects your health, what extra training you have to do to burn off the effects of alcohol and the slowing of injury healing, particularly bruising, with the presence of alcohol."

More than half of the students surveyed were enrolled in the Bachelor of Physical Education. The average age of those surveyed was 19.6.