The European Union financed with around 400,000 euro the project called ‘Paralimits’ (Dual Career of Students-Athletes with Disabilities as a Tool for Social Inclusion), which will be led by UCAM Universidad Católica de Murcia,  This is the first time that a research on a dual career for athletes with disabilities is promoted from Brussels. The work, that will be developed during thirty months, aims at adapting the UCAM-COE model of dual career to elite athletes with disabilities to promote their social integration and to support their inclusion in the labour market.

UCAM is accompanied in this work by the ONCE Foundation (Spain), the European Athlete as Student Network (Malta), the “Foro Italico” University of Rome (Italy), the Polytechnic Institute of Viseu (Portugal), the National University of Physical Education of Bucharest (Rumania), the University of Limerick (Ireland) and the Collective Innovation (Norway), as well as by the European Paralympic Committee.

Antonio Sánchez Pato, main researcher of the project and dean of the Faculty of Sports, points out that the first step will be to “detect the needs and obstacles for the athletes-students with disabilities when it comes to combining their sports and university activities”, as well as to test the work that is already being carried out by entities that work with people with disabilities.

Once all the information has been collected, the researchers will develop a guide to promote the dual career among athletes with disabilities, they will create an innovative course for the training of university staff as sports mentors specialised in athletes-students with disabilities and they will publish a European Manual to be used as a tool to spread the project to other interested agents. The work will end with the creation of the Observatory on Dual Career, Disability and Sports in order to give continuity to the milestones achieved and to preserve the positive impact of this model beyond the end of the project.

The experience of the UCAM - COE model

UCAM Universidad Católica de Murcia and the Spanish Olympic Committee have already been working with athletes with disabilities on equal terms, as it is demonstrated in the cases of Gerard Descarrega (Paralympic athletics champion with a degree in Psychology) or Sarai Gascón (who won six Olympic medals and is a student of the Bachelor’s Degree in Pre-primary Education) among others. Now is the time to study in-depth, improve and export this model by keeping in mind the differential factors.