MADRID, 16 Oct. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The ‘LaLiga Scholarships: Extraordinary Champions’ is the new initiative of LaLiga, together with Ackermann International, created to help world champion athletes in their disciplines to be able to train for the future after their professional retirements, within the options offered by LaLiga Business School.
To choose the beneficiaries of the scholarships, “the profiles of the athletes are evaluated, their professional interests, their skills and experience are identified with the aim of recommending the best option within the range of master’s degrees and MBAs” offered by the academic branch of the employer.
For this first edition, the six participating Olympic athletes are the karateka Sandra Sánchez, the snowboarder Regino Hernández, the handball players Eli Pinedo and Raúl Entrerríos, the athlete Concha Montaner and the triathlete Mario Mola, all of them already retired.
In addition to the six athletes, the executive general director of LaLiga, Óscar Mayo, attended the event to present the project; the director of Institutional Relations, José Montero; and the director of LaLiga Business School, José Moya.
Mayo stressed that “the day after” for a professional athlete “is an important step and sometimes it is dizzying,” so “you have to prepare.” “We always say that LaLiga is Spain’s brand and we have the opportunity to give them this opportunity too and we don’t doubt it,” he declared.
Also from the employers’ association, Montero expressed that they were thinking “exactly” about carrying out “an educational training program” for athletes. “They had to have a personal development program in their sports career, and from here we will design a series of 3 workshop sessions and then coaching and leadership sessions that we understand will end up shaping the program. educational,” he explained.
In the selection process, a first screening was carried out among 800 athletes, to reduce the list of these to “130 medalists.” Thus, LaLiga emphasized that the selection process was never “by hand”, but rather followed “an eligibility model.”
“A mathematical formula that weighs a series of variables such as the complexity of the sport, its activity on social networks, the personal status of each player and each athlete, whether they are active or retired, their employment status and the ability of the sport to generate income,” confirmed Montero.
In the case of Mario Mola, he confessed that they called him from LaLiga to inform him of this new initiative, which he received “with great joy and motivation.” “It is the hope to continue growing, to continue improving and without a doubt I am very happy to be part of this project with these wonderful athletes,” argued the former athlete.
For her part, Sandra Sánchez addressed the compatibility of elite sport and training, confessing that she has experienced “different stages”, given the demands that allowed her to lead the world karate ranking for six years. “I had to choose whether to pass the subject or go to the World Cup, because the two things were not compatible,” she concluded.