The Tribune

By BRENT STUBBS

Senior Sports Reporter

bstubbs@tribunemedia.net

NINE athletes from tennis, swimming, athletics and judo will benefit from the Bahamas Olympic Committee’s Solidarity Scholarship Programme for the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

BOC secretary general Romell Knowles said they were able to secure around $158,000 in grants of $780 per month to assist female tennis player Simone Pratt, swimmers Arianna Vanderpool-Wallace and Joanna Evans, female judo sensation Cynthia Rahming and track and field athletes Shane Jones, Lathone Collie-Minns, Shaunae Miller, Ryan Ingraham and Raymond Higgs.

Efforts were also made to have at least one of the three potential gymnasts included, but Knowles said her application was submitted a bit too late.

“Every two years prior to the Olympic Games, the host country grants to the Olympic Committee scholarships to athletes with the view of them participating at the Olympic Games,” Knowles said. “We presented some six athletes and we were successful in getting nine athletes, the most we have ever had in the Bahamas.”

The scholarship grants, according to Knowles, will help the athletes with their training, nutrients, travel to and from meets and will be retroactive to September 1. They will be completed one month before the start of the Rio Olympics in 2016.

Sometime next week, Knowles said the BOC will announce the recipients of the Continental scholarships that they will also be awarding to athletes, associations and federations with the view of getting more athletes qualified for those events like the CAC and the Pan American Games, which leads to the Olympic Games.

“It’s an incentive for the athletes to want to do good so that they can get the scholarships,” Knowles said. “It’s not like the subvention programme (offered by the government) where you get on and you don’t have to report. The athletes on the scholarship programme will have to report every four months before the scholarship is cancelled.

“And if they get injured to the point where they can not compete at the Olympic Games, the scholarship is terminated.”

Making the announcement, Knowles said the only requirement that the BOC expects for the athletes to meet is to provide a comprehensive report on how the monies are spent.

“You have to compete at the international level at a very high level,” said Knowles of the athletes who received the grants. “Even though we have made the applications, the recommendations have to be approved by the international federation for that sport, in conjunction with the Olympic committee.”

Rahming, fresh off her appearances at the Commonwealth Games in July in Glasgow, Scotland and the Youth Olympic Games in Nanjing, China in August, said the scholarship could not have come at a better time.

“As you know, I’m in the Bahamas and so I have to travel everywhere to compete,” said Rahming, who noted that the grant will not just help in her travel expenses, but to take care of her total preparation, including her training and food.

Her next meet is scheduled for Saturday in Barbados. But after the experience she gained in Glasgow and Nanjing, Rahming said she’s looking forward to getting better and her goal is not to stop until she qualifies for Rio de Janeiro. She said the scholarship will certainly go a long way in helping her to achieve her goal.