Teamwork Makes the Dream Work: Who Should Be Managing Athletes on Matters Related to Sleep?

Optimising sleep health is essential for athlete recovery and performance, but responsibility for managing sleep in high-performance sports is often unclear. Although performance support teams include diverse professionals such as coaches, sport scientists, physiotherapists, sports dietitians, psychologists, and physicians, guidance may be fragmented and inconsistent across training environments and competition schedules. This paper proposes a collaborative multidisciplinary model in which sleep specialists may integrate with existing support staff to deliver unified, evidence-based sleep strategies throughout all phases of athlete preparation. By fostering open communication channels, aligning screening protocols, and coordinating interventions, this model ensures consistent messaging and implementation of sleep initiatives. We also address sleep monitoring via wearable technologies, highlighting device performance and data confidentiality considerations to ensure accurate and ethical use of athlete sleep metrics. Emphasis is placed on creating organisation-wide policies that recognise sleep as an important component to health and performance. Adopting this integrated approach to sleep may enhance overall physical and mental health, reduce injury risk, improve recovery, and ultimately, enhance athletic performance.<p></p>