MONICA IHEAKAM
Nigerian Olympics bound professional athletics athletes have till May 31, 2020 to apply for the grant from the International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF) and the International Athletics Foundation (IAF).
A welfare fund of $500,000 was launched by the sport’s governing body in conjunction with the IAF to support professional athletes experiencing hardship due to the Coronavirus pandemic.
According to the IAAF, the need for the deadline was to enable the IAAF make payments to the successful athletes by June 2020.
Rolling out the guidelines, the body said only athletes who had qualified for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics by meeting the entry standards and those that had not had any anti-doping rule violations would be eligible for the grants.
So far, seven Nigerian track and field athletes had qualified for the Olympics, which had been postponed till 2021.