Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) President Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Sabah of Kuwait on Monday highlighted the importance of the career transition from elite athlete to the general workforce.
"One of the main concerns of the modern Olympic movement was assisting full-time athletes in their quest to find a suitable, sports-related job once they decide to retire from competition," Sheikh Ahmad said in his speech at the 2014 International Sports Relations Foundation Forum held in Seoul, according to a press release from the OCA.
The OCA President said that the late Juan Antonio Samaranch, in his role as President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), had laid the foundations for this career transition by encouraging athletes to participate in the decisions of the Olympic movement.
"After you become a star athlete and then need to move into the workforce, this is a very important topic," he told the audience, which included several IOC members, government officials and other stakeholders in the Olympic sports movement. "The future for them will be as a coach or in the technical side of sport, but for the majority of athletes it will be out to normal life. I hope this foundation will be supportive, through government and the Olympic movement, of retiring athletes." For his part, the foundation's president and IOC member Moon Dae-sung, said he plans were under way to hold a one-and-a-half-year residential course for athletes in South Korea with the support of major South Korean conglomerates in the hope of finding them a suitable job back in their own country on retirement from competition. Sheikh Ahmad is in South Korea for the 17th Asian Games being held in Incheon.
Source: KUNA