<p>This article aims to identify the social representations elements of athlete from Facebook users. To that end, the participants were asked to write the first five words that came to their minds when thinking about the aforementioned term. The sample has 203 participants aged between 18 and 61 years. Data analysis was based on the structural approach of social representations and were performed with EVOC and IRAMUTEC softwares. The results showed that people tend to associate the figure of the athlete to the idea of health, even though in reality, athletes suffer injuries in a daily basis and often perform behaviors that are not considered healthy. We concluded that there are inconsistencies in the elements found here when the athletes reality is taken in consideration, and these inconsistencies may be explained by the influence of media in shaping these representations.</p>