[Competent aging with sports].

This contribution deals with the significance of sports for competence in old people. It presents evidence for positive effects of sporting activities on the solution of self-development tasks, like maintaining social participation in old age, pursuing one's own interests, or on keeping active in general, as well as on indices of life-satisfaction like the feeling of well-being, emotional adjustment, or a sense of self-control. In its second part, the paper develops a series of recommendations concerning the motivation of aging persons to sports and the realization of sporting activities for them.