With the Future in Mind is a joint program of Olympic Solidarity (OS) and the ITTF. Since its inception it has been a core component of the Athletes Development Model, supporting athletes the world over in the pursuit of their Olympic Dream. This year, the beneficiaries are split into three cohorts:
- Paris 2024: ITTF support for athletes with the immediate goal to qualify for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
- Next Generation: ITTF support for rising youth athletes.
- OS Youth Athlete Development: OS support for rising youth athletes from OS targeted NOCs (National Olympic Committees).
The scholarships are intended to pave the High Performance pathway for the selected athletes by enabling them to attend high quality training camps and compete at the most suitable events. The educational component of the scholarship program provides up-to-date and highly applicable know-how to coaches and Member Associations via modern educational methods.
In addition, scholarship holders will benefit from bespoke packages by Stupa Analytics, the world’s first AI based table tennis analytics app, offering match analyses and trend profiles to the beneficiaries.
During the last scholarship cycle, all 16 of the supported athletes under the Tokyo 2020 program made their Olympic Dream a reality.
With The Future in Mind is not the only program assisting athletes on their road to the Olympic Games; Olympic Solidarity offers further Olympic Scholarships for Athletes Paris 2024 to a group of athletes through their NOC specific support.
“The WFIM is a well- established program, and in its more than 15 years of existence, hundreds of players benefitted from this unique kind of assistance, many of them reaching the world top level, for example Hugo Calderano, Adriana Diaz, Darko Jorgic, Lily Zhang and many more. The incentive aims at addressing, in a customised way, the specific needs of the most promising players worldwide. We are pleased that Olympic Solidarity that has been our partner from the Program’s very beginning recognised its outcomes and therefore decided to continue with the cooperation. We are thankful for that, and together we look forward to contributing to the new heights of this generation of supported players.” Polona Čehovin, ITTF High Performance & Development Director.
Please see here for the list of 2022 WTFIM scholarship holders.*
* Two nominations remain to be confirmed pending the results of the 2022 ITTF-Africa Youth Championships, to be held in Tunis (TUN) 21-27 July 2022.