The aim of this study was to examine sport hero/ine’s features and barriers to achieve their status based on students’ viewpoints. 300 students participated and wrote about obstacles of achieving the status of their hero/in through answering open questions. Data were analyzed using descriptive-analytical method and using Van Dijk's theoretical model (2004) in the framework of critical discourse analysis considering macro and micro levels. In describing the sports hero/ine, the women pointed to physical, facial, and behavioral-moral traits, respectively. Also men pay more attention to behavioral-moral, faces and personalities than other traits. The frequency of describing physical, facial, and behavioral-moral traits was significantly higher than other traits. Barriers were divided into 6 classes. Based on the Proportion test, Economic, socio-cultural and personal barriers make the hero's position significantly more difficult than other barriers. Analysis according to macro level of Van Dijk square represented that emphasizing negative properties of Them has the highest frequency among other properties. Participants have used micro strategies of fallacies, victimization, generalization and lexicalization to express barriers. The variables governing the minds of participants and how they are applied in the language suggest that they create inappropriate conditions for making a pattern to be hero/ine.
