Introduction: In the environment of sports with highly intensive training and competition as well as full of discipline, the various possible traumatic episodes may result in individual or collective traumatic memory of athletes. However, there is still a lack of existing research on this topic. Based on the attention to the life course of the competitive athlete, this research puts forward the following two research questions: What is the patterns of individual traumatic memory and the collective traumatic memory of athletes? How does athletes’ individual traumatic memory further connects collective traumatic memory? Methods: The discourse of "collective memory" which was proposed by French sociologist Maurice Halbwachs was used for interpretive analyze the traumatic memory of athletes. Results: Because of the unbearable nature of trauma, traumatic memory of individuals often present broken appearances. Its contents depend on the traumatic events and traumatic situations people has experienced, and the common influencing factors include the attitude of other people, physical injury, environmental system, group joint, failure experience, sense of existence and achievement, etc. Through different media or memory sites, the traumatic memory of individuals can recall and reveal collective memory under the social framework by connecting with the traumatic memory of other people from selection, restatement, regulation, integration and shaping in the process of interaction. This also makes reconstruction possible. Different individuals are influenced by multiple factors such as self-interpretation and social nature, the different perspectives of traumatic memory they provide are showing that the collective traumatic memory appearance is similar to the individual traumatic memory, but it is more complete, stereoscopic and continuous. The continuous development of co-constructedness also shows the dynamic of adjustment of collective traumatic memory appearance. Conclusion: Through Maurice Halbwachs’s social constructive horizon, it can be found that athletes’ collective traumatic memory is affected by traumatic events, self-interpretation and collective co-constructedness in a specific social framework. It is also recalled and revealed through athletes’ exchanges and communications of their individual traumatic memory. The collective traumatic memory and the personal traumatic memory present coexistence and constantly shape the appearances of each other.