This paper contributes new theoretical and empirical knowledge to a relatively under researched area, that of the experience and management of emotions and mental health of sports workers. Set within the field of interspecies sports work this paper uses auto phenomenography to demonstrate the application of phenomenology within sociology as both a methodological approach and a theoretical framework. It focuses on the personal and working life of a sports worker in horse racing who, through emotional trauma and mental ill health, loses her ‘feel for the game’ (Bourdieu, 1992), the unconscious bodily dispositions and automatic performance that form an integral part of sports work. It examines how practically embodied attitudes and dispositions can return through working with and exercising racehorses. Using the work of Merleau-Ponty my aim is to explore how human-nonhuman animal intercorporeality acts as a catalyst to regaining a ‘feel for the game.’
