Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was performed on 89 female athletes (26 handball players and 63 track and field athletes) to investigate the association between lumbago, degenerative disks (DD) and herniated intervertebral disks (HID). Longitudinal scans of the lumbar vertebrae were obtained with a slice thickness of 7.5 or 10 mm in the sagittal plane. DD were diagnosed by their low signal intensity, and HID by protrusion of the intervertebral disk at the level of L1/2 to L5/S1. In all subjects, the prevalence rate of DD was 31.5%. The subjects with lumbago had a higher prevalence of DD than those without lumbago (P<0.05). The subjects with DD had a higher prevalence of HID than those without DD (P<0.01). The phenomenon was prominent specifically in L4/5 and L5/S1. None of the subjects had HID without DD.