The role of distance learning study for the Croatian top level athletes

Altogether 352 categorized female athletes participated in the research; most of them were in the age of 18 to 21 years. With the purpose to determining interests and attitudes of top athletes in education system, a specially designed questionnaire was prepared for this study. Categorized athletes are excellent students and very successful in coordinating their sports and school obligations. Mostly they speak one or two foreign languages, they are familiar with today´s information and communication technologies, and they have interest to use this knowledge in their formal education. The athletes´ success serves an important social function in our society, and when it comes to their career it is in the national interest to support them in education with programmes that allow athletes to be more flexible in their studies. In contribution to that, an interest and need to make new education programmes for entrepreneurship has been determined. With the purpose to establish the new E-study for athletes we have made the proposal of the Operational activities model. This model have to be implemented in the process of creating new educational distance learning program that particularly suites to meet the needs of athletes and other special educational groups who cannot be involve in regular academic process.