Swimmers Among 10 Athletes From Ghana To Receive IOC Olympic Solidarity Scholarship

The Ghana Olympic Committee (GOC) has presented scholarships to 10 of its athletes to aid in their preparation to qualify for the 2024 Olympic Games, including two swimmers.

The scholarship, which will be funded by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), will see the athletes receive $750 a month to be put towards training costs. The athletes began receiving the monthly payments in January and will continue to do so until the end of the Olympics next summer.

Swimmers Abeku Jackson and Kaya Adjoa Forson were among the athletes to receive the scholarship, which also saw three boxers, two weightlifters, two athletics athletes and one judoka receive the scholarship.

“This money is not for your personal use or for you to buy the latest phones and dresses,” said GOC President Ben Nunoo Mensah. “It is meant to support your training and activities towards your qualification to the Olympic Games in Paris come 2024.

“As you have already been told, at the end of every quarter, your progress and expenditure would be evaluated and whoever is not able to make accounts of the money given would be withdrawn from the scholarship,” he said.

Jackson represented Ghana in the pool at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, placing 45th in the men’s 100 butterfly (53.45).

Unilez Takyi also swam for Ghana at the Games on the women’s side, placing 57th in the 50 free.

Both swimmers were selected to the Games based on the IOC’s universality qualification process, a system that allows a nation with no swimmers under the Olympic qualification times to enter up to one man and one woman at the Games.

The universality system typically requires swimmers to have competed at the most recent World Aquatics Championships in order to be selected.

At the 2022 World Aquatics Championships, Jackson placed 37th in the men’s 50 fly (24.37) and 44th in the 100 fly (54.67), while Forson finished 51st in the women’s 100 free (1:03.19) and 67th in the 50 free (29.25).