Dual-Track Careers for Para-Athletes

Background Despite the EU guidelines on dual careers for athletes, it is a challenge nowadays for athletes in EU Member States to combine their sports career with their studies with a view to employment after their sports career ends. In particular, people with disabilities usually face more barriers to combining sports careers and studies both in terms of issues related to society (such as accessibility and social acceptance) and issues that the disability itself creates for the athletes. Objectives The mission of the present project accords with the quest for “fairness” expressed in the 2010 Code of Sports Ethics. The project partners agreed that cross-disciplinary research should be implemented for the first time regarding the dual careers of talented and elite athletes with disabilities in their countries and an online course that would provide athletes with disabilities with knowledge and ideas for entrepreneurship as vocational rehabilitation. Implementation The project started on schedule in January 2020 and was completed in September 2022, 9 months behind schedule. The delay was solely due to the pandemic and the spread of the corona virus, a fact that shocked and uncoordinated the operation of the organizations participating in the consortium. However, all actions and deliverables were implemented as planned except for the second transnational project meeting which was implemented online. Achievements The first output was the Research Report on Dual Careers for talented and elite para-athletes in seven countries (Greece, Italy, Bulgaria, Ireland, Serbia, Croatia, Sweden). The second output was the creation of a handbook with good practices on how those countries support athletes with disabilities. The last 2 deliverables were the creation of an online platform for the provision of online courses and the implementation of an online course related to the entrepreneurship for para-athletes.