Pursuing Olympic Dreams just got a whole lot harder for many USA athletes with the news that Home Depot is ending it’s Olympic sponsorship program.
I personally know several athletes that without this program wouldn’t have had the time to train to make the Olympic team. While I never utilized the program myself, I was fortunate enough to have been be able to work at Teach For America and train, but finding a situation like this is very hard and I got extremely lucky.
It’s truly amazing how the US does so well at the Olympics considering the tiny amount of support many sports receive here financially while many of our counter-parts in Europe are fully government funded. I’m not for the government stepping in to fund our teams, but it’s just already hard for so many people to do this and it especially hurts the smaller sports and lower-income athletes that benefited from this program.
(Reuters) The company currently employs 98 people in the Olympic Jobs Opportunities Program, in which it had been a sponsor since 1992.
After March 2, those athletes will no longer receive full-time benefits. They can remain in their part-time jobs, apply for full-time positions, or discontinue their employment at Home Depot.
http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE5076X120090108?sp=true
(Reporting by Karen Jacobs; editing by John Wallace)
