Lachlan Giles has just announced that he will be in charge of $100,000 USD fund that has been created to help the growth of Jiu-Jitsu in Australia. The fund has come into existence thanks to a donor who has chosen to remain anonymous, and Giles is in charge of distributing the funds in any manner he sees fit. The amount converts to $146,676,94 in AUD and he’s already confirmed how around half of the full amount will be given out. He’s laid out a number of different criteria that can be found fully below, but it essentially boils down to active competitors in the country who are succeeding at the highest levels in the world’s most prestigious tournaments.
Lachlan Giles has said that there’s no restrictions on what the athletes can spend the money on, but it’s easy to see several ways that this could help develop Jiu-Jitsu in Australia. Athletes could use it to help cover the cost of travelling to compete at major tournaments, maybe support themselves for a while to train full-time, or conduct a lengthy training camp at somewhere like B-Team Jiu-Jitsu or other excellent teams in the US. They could even use it to open their own gym in a smaller area that doesn’t currently have one, or any other number of endless possibilities.
It’s a fantastic opportunity that Lachlan Giles has been able to secure for high-level Jiu-Jitsu competitors in Australia and it will no doubt be a huge boost to the sport there. Giles is one of the most successful BJJ competitors to ever come from the country and he’s not alone in wanting to support the development of the sport there, as Craig Jones has also been hard at work helping homegrown athletes. It’ll be interesting to see what effect this kind of boost will have to the local Jiu-Jitsu community in Australia, and how Giles chooses to allocate the other half of the fund.
Lachlan Giles announced the news of the $100,000 fund that he’s received to help the growth of Jiu-Jitsu in Australia, and explained how he’ll be giving out the first half to active high-level grapplers in the country, in a recent post to the Australian BJJ Community group on FaceBook:
