Public service schemes help avert two-tier sport

Sports programmes run by Austria’s armed forces, police, customs and justice services provide elite athletes with financial security and career options, helping prevent a two-tier sports system, ORF Vorarlberg reports.

Alessandro Hämmerle, a snowboard cross athlete, has been a soldier at the Armed Forces Sports Centre for 13 years. He has won two Olympic gold medals and was recently named the armed forces’ athlete of the year. He is one of about 500 athletes in the military programme, which covers around 45 sports. In Vorarlberg, 31 athletes are supported: 26 men and five women, including ski jumper Eva Pinkelnig and luger Thomas Steu.

The justice service supports 29 athletes, three of them from Vorarlberg: skier Ariane Rädler and her fellow skiers Magdalena Egger and Leonie Zegg. The programme also provides training as a prison officer, giving athletes a professional qualification and opportunities for advancement after their sporting careers. Rädler was among the athletes nominated for sportswoman of the year and won gold in the Olympic team event.

The police programme supports 70 athletes, including four from Vorarlberg: alpine skiers Patrick Feurstein and Johannes Strolz, ski cross racer Sonja Gigler and luger Yannik Müller. The police say the scheme allows athletes to combine their profession with elite sport and offers a range of career options afterwards.

Customs supports 34 athletes, including alpine skier Katharina Liensberger and wrestler Lukas Lins from Vorarlberg. They can complete basic training while competing and are assured a job after their sporting careers.

Manuel Hofer of the Olympiazentrum Vorarlberg said the programmes provide athletes with an income, pension contributions and insurance. Without that support, he said, the financial demands of many sports could deepen a divide between athletes who can afford to compete and those who cannot.