Background. The popularity of using virtual reality in various areas of life is growing steadily every year. The use of virtual reality in sports, including sports of the highest achievements, has both advantages and disadvantages that will be considered in this paper.

The Objective is to study main aspects of using virtual reality in sports, including the historical aspect of the method, the main current areas of using the method, the existing advantages and limitations of the method for using in sports practice, including sports of the highest achievements.

Results and conclusions of the study. It is shown using virtual reality technologies in sports has a whole range of advantages, including removing restrictions imposed by real sports: preventing sport injury; creating environmental conditions (weather, humidity, rivalry, etc.), lack of dependence on sport equipment, weather or location, and the ability to engage in hard-to-reach and expensive sports accordingly. However, there are a number of problems that make it difficult to use virtual reality in sports, in particular, using sport equipment and assessing skill transfer.