World Athletics fund to assist professional athletes

May 04, 2020 Sports

World Athletics, together with the International Athletics Foundation (IAF), late last month launched a US$500,000 fund to support professional athletes experiencing financial hardship due to the coronavirus pandemic.
World Athletics President Sebastian Coe, who also chairs the IAF, said the fund would be used to assist athletes who have lost most of their income in the last few months due to the suspension of international competition while the world combats the global health emergency.
Established in 1986 to support charitable causes involving athletics, the International Athletics Foundation, under the Honorary Presidency of Prince Albert II of Monaco, has allocated resources from its budgets for 2020 and 2021 to assist athletes in need through this process.
Coe will chair an expert multi-regional working group to assess the applications for assistance, which will be submitted through World Athletics’ six Area Associations.
Head of the Athletics Association of Guyana (AAG), Aubrey Hutson, welcomed this initiative and vowed that his body will do all that is possible to ensure that Guyanese athletes get to benefit as much as possible from the fund.
Hutson further highlighted that, “Quite a few of our athletes who are out of college and have taken up athletics as a career, we consider them as professionals as well. I’ve already began contacting a few athletes in relation with this World Athletics funding and we (the AAG) are trying to see how we can assist them. We are trying to ascertain how the coronavirus has affected them and their plans they would’ve have for 2020.”
“To this end we will put forward our report to World Athletics to see what can be done for our athletes but before that, we are trying to broaden our base to get in contact with as many athletes because the last thing we want is to make a submission then leave somebody out.”

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