Bank of Maldives (BML) has celebrated the achievement of its ‘sports scholarship’ recipients who represented Maldives, at the recent 11th edition of the Indian Ocean Island Games (IOIG), held in Madagascar.

The country’s national bank held an event to celebrate the athletes, on Wednesday.

Speaking at the event, the bank’s CEO and Managing Director Karl Stumke congratulated each of them on their remarkable achievements and highlighted that it was a big win not only for them, but the Maldives as well.

Stumke went on to express pride in having been able to support the athletes through their sports scholarship initiative.

The BML Sports Scholarship was introduced as part of the series of 12 high impact monthly community initiatives to celebrate the Bank’s 40th anniversary during September 2022.

The initiative carries the purpose of providing support for athletes to achieve their sporting potential through targeted programmes.

BML will be providing fully funded scholarships for top national athletes to train and develop at recognized high performance training centers worldwide, under the initiative. The scholarships will be managed in association with Maldives Olympic Committee (MOC) and are open to all registered national sports associations.

Six recipients of the scholarships were part of the Maldives contingent at IOIG 2023 and four of them claimed medals including Moosa Munsif Ahmed who brought home gold in the Table Tennis mixed doubles event, silver in the men’s doubles event and another silver at the men’s team event. Further, Fathimath Jumana Nimal bagged gold in the Table Tennis women’s team event, alongside Mariyam Ru’ya Ali who won bronze in the athletics women’s 4x100 meter relay.

The fourth athlete is Shuba Mohamed Shareef who claimed silver in the badminton women’s team event.

The Maldives contingent was celebrated during an event held at the Republic Square on Tuesday evening.