To date, there has been little research into the relationship between violent behavior and the practice of sport in young adolescents (both girls and boys) in the general population. Indeed, sport is often recommended as a means of prevention and an alternative to violence in adolescence. For this reason, we studied this issue in a representative sample of 14-16 year-olds (ESPAD 99).

Among this sample, boys practised some form of extra-curricular sport more than girls (75% vs. 57%), this practice being more intensive (13% boys vs. 4% girls practising sport more than 8 hours per week outside of school) and more “competitive” (14% vs. 4% taking part in national and/or international events). Boys also exhibited more violent behavior than girls, including stealing (mean 0.91 for boys vs. 0.49 in girls), fighting (mean 1.71 in boys vs. 0.49 in girls) or serious offences (mean 0.66 in boys vs. 0.34 in girls).

Taking part in competitions was found to be highly associated with violent behavior. In particular, competition at a national or international level was associated (in decreasing order of significance) with fighting (OR = 2.35), serious offences (OR = 1.78) and stealing (OR = 1.58), after adjustment for age, gender, father's educational level and type of school attended.

The practical implications of this study are that it is important to moderate one's judgment about the positive effects of sport in reducing youth violence, to be attentive to violent acts perpetrated in stadiums and to better analyze the eventual beneficial effects of sports clubs.