The Belgian Olympic and Interfederal Committee (BOIC), the Belgian Paralympic Committee (BPC), and the elite sport partners work together to offer an “Athlete Career Programme” to Olympians, Paralympians, and elite athletes.
The Athlete Career Programme (ACP) Belgium complements the initiatives of the Belgian sports authorities regarding ‘dual career’ (Sport Vlaanderen ‘Carrièrebegeleiding’ / ADEPS ‘projet de vie’). Our goal is to provide a framework in which athletes can develop their future careers both during and after their elite sports career. The focus is on three pillars: education, skills, and employment.
The Dual Career
When elite athletes choose to combine their sporting career with studies or work, they opt for a dual career. A dual career is challenging but also offers the athlete many benefits, such as the development of transferable skills from one domain to another (e.g., time management, discipline, drive, winning attitude, resilience…), finding mental balance by shifting focus, better social development, and even a longer sporting career.
The Holistic Athletic Career (HAC) model illustrates the athlete’s career and its evolution across different domains (athletic, psychological, psychosocial, academic & professional, and financial). The lines in this model indicate that the age at which transitions occur is only an approximation. Although every athlete’s journey is unique, they often face similar challenges. To help overcome these as effectively as possible, BOIC is committed to supporting its athletes in a holistic way.
The ACP model
Based on the HAC model and recommendations from scientific research conducted by the Vrije Universiteit Brussel with the support of the International Olympic Committee, the ACP model was developed. The purpose of the ACP model is to encourage elite athletes to find their way to appropriate existing Belgian initiatives that can assist in the further development of their dual career.
The ACP Fund (2014 – 2020)
The Belgian ACP Fund was specifically created for Olympic and Paralympic athletes to provide financial support for their further development towards a career after sport. Thanks in part to the support of the Baillet-Latour Fund, this project was highly successful. The ACP Fund operated between 2014 and 2020 and provided annual support of €100,000 to Olympians and Paralympians.
- Olympians and Paralympians who chose (para)medical studies (27%) or sports-related education (27%) were the most frequent beneficiaries of the ACP Fund.
- 72% of the athletes who used the ACP Fund in preparation for Tokyo 2020 achieved a top-8 finish. In addition, four coaches also benefited from ACP Fund support for their Tokyo 2020 preparation, two of whom achieved a top-8 finish together with their athletes.
- Of the entire Tokyo 2020 delegation, 38% of the athletes applied to the ACP Fund to financially support their dual career, and 38% of the athletes who achieved a top-8 finish in Tokyo were previously connected to the ACP Fund.
- Of the 19 top-8 finishes achieved by Team Belgium in Tokyo (places 4–8), 12 can be linked to athletes who used the ACP Fund during their preparation. Furthermore, four of the seven medals won at Tokyo 2020 can be linked to athletes who chose to benefit from this initiative.