Chuso García Bragado, OAFI Foundation and Kern Pharma award the first García Bragado-OAFI-Kern Pharma scholarships to promising future athletes

– The scholarships will help 6 young athletes from our country to develop their sports career in an optimal and healthy way.

– The award ceremony took place this Tuesday at Kern Pharma’s headquarters in Terrassa (Barcelona).

The Osteoarthritis Foundation International (OAFI), the pharmaceutical laboratory Kern Pharma and the Olympic athlete Jesús Ángel García Bragado awarded the first García Bragado – OAFI – Kern Pharma Scholarships on Tuesday, June 28. The scholarships, awarded to 6 promising young athletes at the laboratory’s headquarters in Terrassa (Barcelona), aim to promote the values of sport among young people and to encourage the practice of safe and healthy sports among future athletes in our country. 

In Spain, it is estimated that 31% of elite athletes may suffer from osteoarthritis after suffering an injury. The high level of competitive training is one of the major risk factors for suffering from this disease, and prevention is key to take into account in training. Moreover, only 65% of injured athletes are able to return to sport after injury.

In this context, the García Bragado – OAFI – Kern Pharma scholarships have been promoted in response to the need to instil in young people the importance of practicing a healthy sport that respects joint health, helping young athletes to develop their sporting careers in the best possible conditions.

I Edition of the García Bragado – OAFI – Kern Pharma Scholarships

The first edition of the García Bragado – OAFI – Kern Pharma scholarships has counted as part of the committee of experts in charge of the selection of the scholarship profiles with Chuso García Bragado, Olympic athlete and world champion in race walking; Dr. Josep Vergés, founder and president of OAFI; Dr. José María Villalón, head of the medical services of Atlético de Madrid and patron of OAFI; and Manuel Garrido, general director of Kern Pharma.

The selected athletes, aged between 12 and 16, belong to the athletics clubs Salesianos de Barcelona; Escuelas Deportivas (Catalonia); Grupo Deportivo Covadonga (Asturias) and Colegio Tajamar (Madrid). All of them are promising young athletes who have already been recognized in the specialties of hammer and javelin throw, triple jump, indoor track, cross country and outdoor. 

For the athlete García Bragado, setting up these scholarships has meant “laying the seed for the beginning of an action that we hope will have a long future, thus being able to reach more children and more families every year, who have opted for this sport as a choice for their personal growth”.

For his part, Dr. Vergés stressed that “one of the pillars of OAFI is the care of joint health from childhood, being able to prevent diseases such as osteoarthritis in our athletes from an early age . It is therefore an honour for us to be able to carry out an initiative like this”. 

For Manuel Garrido, CEO of Kern Pharma, collaborating in these scholarships means “reaffirming our commitment to sport because sport is health and it is always accompanied by values such as effort, commitment and the desire to excel, which are our values as a company. We also like to support young talent because we are also a very young laboratory compared to the rest of the pharmaceutical industry and we know that with determination and dedication great goals can be achieved. We are proud to provide these scholarships so that promising young athletes can continue to develop their sporting careers and win more titles”.