Photo: A.Julfalakyan’s archive

The winner of World and European Championships, silver medalist of the Olympic Games Arsen Julfalakyan returned from IOC International Athletes’ Forum with an important mission to accomplish.

Together with 79 other high profile athletes he got acquainted with the main points of IOC Athletes’ Commission’s new “All In” Strategy at the Olympic Museum in Lausanne. He also participated in a number of important discussions and meetings.

Julfalakyan told Mediamax Sport about new ideas and plans for future.

Saturated agenda

I spend very exciting and saturated 3 days in Lausanne. We discussed current issues in the sector within the frames of the conference, held once in 2 years. Everything was organized in a way that we were able to deal with a large amount of information without getting bored.

Photo: A.Julfalakyan’s archive

The event involved 157 participants of the Olympic Games with 98 medalists, 45 champions and 20 multiple champions.

Smooth transition from sport to work

The majority of programs were aimed at teaching athletes how to smoothly move from sport to normal life. We have plenty of examples of sportsmen with sociological issues, who suffered alcohol addiction after leaving sports.

The athletes should understand that there is way to succeed after leaving sports, though it requires a lot of hard work. There are many opportunities, which we just have not yet used.
We have discussed programs and employment opportunities at various organizations, got acquainted with international experience on supporting athletes after the end of career.

Progress in Armenia

I am very interested in incorporating international experience in Armenia. I remarked that despite the fact that Armenia has not yet signed the relevant agreement and does not have the opportunity to finance those programs, we still have high profile athletes, active in the Olympic Movement, so they should also be involved more.

First of all, I offered to translate the programs in Russian to make them available to 200m market, since not everyone speaks English.

I also mentioned that Armenia needs to organize certain trainings for informing athletes about those chances. We could choose the most important and successful sports in Armenia (wrestling, boxing, weightlifting and judo) and develop in that direction.

“The program of Olympics Solidarity, which finances us 1,5-2 years before the Olympics, possesses huge amount of money, which we cannot use. 

I will introduce our program to discussion and if they like it, we will get the financing. I will do my utmost in the deadlines provided to achieve the most favorable result.

We need to propagate among our talented athletes aged 15-17 to learn English language, work hard and be educated.

I was able to negotiate with the organization on financing 1-2 athletes so that they could get an education at any European or American university.  Just imagine, they can receive around USD 100k. They will learn and train at the same time, only the army will be an issue.

I do not know who to apply to, so I call on all athletes aged 15-17 with intermediate level of English, medalists of European and World championships with the desire to learn, to show up. You will have all the opportunities to train and succeed.

Other important issues

We have also discussed the advantages and disadvantages of combining sports with education and work on certain example, showing that athletes concentrated only on sports had a number of difficulties in their career. We also showed how people with various interests succeeded in the field.  

On the first day IOC President Thomas Bach told us about the doping issue, and what they are going to do with Russians. He spoke about the manipulations they used to change the samples. I would have never imagined something like this could happen.

Those meetings gave me a lot, and now I am going to use what I have learned to help our athletes. I realize the volume of work that I will have to accomplish, but I am committed to putting all the efforts necessary to succeed in this pursuit.

Hasmik Babayan