This summer, for the first time in history, Olympic track and field champions will take home more than just gold medals – they will also receive a cash prize of $50,000.
The Olympics have for years enjoyed the purity of amateur competition, where athletes compete for love of the game and national pride, not financial incentives. But after more than 125 years, athletics' international governing body decided it was time to reward the sport's Olympic champions.
World Athletics announced on Wednesday its “landmark decision” to award prize money to every athlete who won a gold medal in each of the 48 track and field events in Paris. (Relay teams share the prize.)
Athletes who win silver and bronze medals will receive tiered cash prizes starting with the 2028 Los Angeles Games, the organization said.
“Although it is impossible to put a marketable value on winning an Olympic medal or the commitment and focus it takes to even represent your country at an Olympic Games, I think it is important that we start somewhere and “The donations our athletes make at the Olympic Games go directly back to those who make the Games the global spectacle they are,” World Athletics President Sebastian Coe said in a statement .
The prize money will come from the share of Olympic revenue that the IOC distributes to World Athletics.
The International Olympic Committee said 90 percent of its revenue would be redistributed to each country's national Olympic committees and the international federations that govern each sport, which then decide how the funds are spent.
“This means the equivalent of $4.2 million flows every day to athletes and sports organizations at all levels around the world,” an IOC spokesman said in a statement. “It’s up to each individual [international federation] And [national Olympic committee] to determine how they can best serve their athletes and the global development of their sport.
World Athletics' move comes amid a shift in the world of amateur sport. In the United States, the NCAA more than two years ago adopted a policy allowing student-athletes to profit from their name, image and likeness. The change has been most noticeable in high-level college football and basketball, where college funding groups can pay star players through sometimes lucrative zero-cost deals.
When the modern Olympic Games began in Athens in 1896, the athletes had to be amateurs; Anyone who ever earned money from competitions was excluded from taking part in the Olympics. For nearly the next 100 years, Olympic athletes competed primarily for the love of the game.
That changed in 1992 thanks to then-IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch, who had a more modern view of the sport, said Matthew Andrews, a history professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who focuses on sports and politics.
“[Samaranch] “I believed that global sports viewers wanted to see the best athletes in the sport – and those were professional athletes,” Andrews said. “We want to see Michael Phelps every four years and watch him grow up. We want Usain Bolt to come back and defend his title to see Simone Biles.”
The 1992 Summer Games in Barcelona opened the doors to the Olympic Games for professionals and brought powerful athletes to global audiences, most notably the Michael Jordan-led U.S. basketball team known as “The Dream Team,” which featured NBA stars.
The only association that refused to accept professionals at the time was boxing.
“[The International Boxing Federation] “I thought a professional athlete could kill an amateur athlete,” Andrews said. Beginning with the 2016 Games, professional boxers will be allowed to compete in the Olympics.
While sponsorships are typically the sole source of income for Olympic athletes, medal winners are often compensated by their country, although the amounts vary. At the 2021 Tokyo Summer Games, the U.S. Olympic Committee paid $37,500 for a gold medal, $22,500 for a silver medal and $15,000 for a bronze medal – amounts that are at the lower end of cash incentives worldwide.
Singapore pays the most, offering a gold medalist $737,000. The island nation has only had one gold medalist: swimmer Joseph Schooling in 2016.
For athletes who compete in sports for which there are no professional leagues and who do not reach the podium at the Olympics, finances can be precarious.
“That's why for a long time we didn't see people competing in more than one Olympics – you had to get a 'real' job,” Andrews said.
Andrews said as much as the Olympics support the ideal of amateurism, brands and other companies have always found ways to funnel money to elite athletes.
“People have always made money,” Andrews said, noting that World Athletics is in the process of formalizing a backdoor practice. “This is more of an open realization and the disclosure of that realization.”
Comments are closed.