WORLD NEWS | Bhutan Olympic Committee increases stipends and benefits for national athletes

thimpu [Bhutan]June 9 (ANI): The Bhutan Olympic Committee has decided to increase allowances and benefits for national athletes in six sports to promote the sport and help retain potential athletes, Bhutan Live reported.

The six priority sports are athletics, archery, boxing, judo, football and taekwondo. The revised athlete rights guidelines were approved at the BOC General Assembly last week.

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Dorji Khando is a taekwondo athlete and has been a national athlete for the past six years. To date, he has won seven medals in different international and domestic competitions. He is a full-time taekwondo athlete and lives in the dormitory of the Bhutan Taekwondo Federation.

Dorji gets a monthly allowance of Nu (Ngultrum) 15,000. While not having to spend the rent, he said the money is not enough to maintain a nutritious and healthy diet, which ultimately affects an athlete’s performance, according to The Bhutan Live.

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“One of the areas that is most beneficial to us is the quality of nutrition and diet that we can afford. I think that is also an area where other countries have the greatest advantage over us. So increasing the allowance will help us improve our diet and in turn, improve our performance ,” Dorji said.

According to the Bhutan Olympic Committee, national athletes did not have fixed salaries until 2015. The commission first set athlete allowances in 2015 at N$15,000 per month for full-time athletes and N$7,500 per month for part-time athletes.

With the recently approved revised allowances and benefits for athletes, full-time athletes in priority programs will receive Nur 25,000 per month and part-time athletes will receive Nur 10,000.

According to Bhutan Live, the news made the idea of ​​making a living out of sports seem more realistic to young people like Tshering Yangchen, a 20-year-old undergraduate student.

“In the current situation, I wouldn’t consider Taekwondo as a career because the stipend I’m getting now is only Nu 7,500. However, if our stipend increases, I might consider Taekwondo as a career because then I can come to Sustains me and motivates me to continue my hobby.”

The BOC said it also lost several promising young athletes who had withdrawn from sports for other opportunities. It hopes the increase in stipends will go some way towards retaining them. According to Bhutan Live, revised allowances and benefits for athletes in priority sports will come into effect in November. (Arnie)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the body of content may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)