These grants aim to promote the preparation of Olympic and Paralympic athletes for the 2024 Paris Games
MADRID, 4 Oct. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Council of Ministers has approved this Tuesday the agreement by which the Higher Sports Council (CSD) is authorized the call corresponding to 2022 for aid to the Spanish sports federations (FFDDEE) for the Team Spain programs, which aim to help athletes Olympic and Paralympic teams in preparation for the 2024 Paris Games, for 16 million euros.
According to the CSD, it is a “historic commitment” of the Government for the promotion of all sports, and whose main objective is to intensify the preparation and performance of Spanish athletes to overcome the results achieved in Barcelona’92, which continue being the ‘glass ceiling’ of Spanish Olympics, and continuing to be a world power of the first order in the Paralympic Games.
This economic injection of 16 million for this year, out of a total of 48 million for the remainder of the Olympic cycle until Paris 2024, is nourished by the funds of the ‘Pacts of Viana’, in which it was agreed that part of the income obtained from the commercialization of audiovisual rights of professional football would go to athletes through their federations.
An evaluation commission of the Council will be the one that decides the final list of beneficiaries, always at the proposal of the aforementioned Federations.
“Team Spain is one of the programs that the Council has designed with the greatest enthusiasm and effort throughout this year. Our goal is to revolutionize the Olympic and Paralympic preparation of our athletes who, after all, have a good name of Spain throughout the world, with the most ambitious public budget plan for them,” said the president of the CSD, José Manuel Franco.
“We are going to support with Elite athletics, badminton, basketball, cycling, ice and winter sports, fencing or gymnastics, and so on up to forty disciplines,” he added.
The new sports preparation programs launched by the CSD are divided into two blocks. On the one hand, Team España Elite encompasses Spanish athletes and teams with the possibility of achieving a place among the top eight in the next Games and a podium in the Paralympics.
And, on the other hand, Team España Strategic Interest is aimed at athletes who guarantee the continuity of Spanish successes in non-Olympic specialties, but of great importance in projecting the image of Spain in the world, such as motorcycling or motor racing, among others.
This chapter will also support professional sports such as tennis and golf, apart from ordinary Elite aid, which may receive aid for the development of the elite base based on specific projects presented by their federations.
In this way, in addition to the ordinary financing, the CSD grants through Team España an additional allocation of resources to the federations that also serves to jointly agree on objectives of the highest sporting level for each one of them, thus attending to specific financing and finalist.
The degree of individual need of each athlete and team will be assessed, taking into account aspects such as the need for permanent or occasional concentrations in Spain or other countries; preparation in their usual places of residence; preparation for international qualifying competitions for the Olympic and Paralympic events; or technological requirements or sports equipment, among many others.
