In an Olympic first, gold medalists on the Paris 2024 Video games will obtain pay for play.
Monitor and area is to grow to be the primary sport to introduce prize cash on the Olympics with World Athletics saying it can pay $50,000 to gold medalists in Paris.
The transfer, introduced on Wednesday, is a symbolic break with the beginner previous of the Olympics in among the video games’ most-watched occasions.
The governing physique of athletics stated it’s setting apart $2.4m to pay the gold medalists throughout the 48 males’s, girls’s and blended occasions on the observe and area programme for this yr’s Paris Olympics. Relay groups will cut up the $50,000 amongst their members. Funds for silver and bronze medalists are deliberate to start out from the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles.
World Athletics President Sebastian Coe informed reporters that the transfer is supposed “to recognize that the revenue share that we receive is in large part because our athletes are the stars of the show”.
The prize cash will come out of the share of Olympic income that the Worldwide Olympic Committee (IOC) distributes to World Athletics.
Nonetheless, the transfer may upset the stability of energy within the Olympic motion forward of the Paris Video games. Coe stated World Athletics gave the IOC “a heads-up” of its intentions solely on Wednesday morning, shortly earlier than it printed its announcement.
In response, the IOC stated it was as much as every sport’s governing physique to resolve find out how to spend its share of Olympic income.
“The IOC redistributes 90% of all its income, in particular to the National Olympic Committees [NOCs] and International Federations [IFs],” the IOC stated in an announcement. “This means that, every day, the equivalent of $4.2 million goes to help athletes and sports organizations at all levels around the world. It is up to each IF and NOC to determine how to best serve their athletes and the global development of their sport.”
The fashionable Olympics originated as an beginner sports activities occasion, and the IOC doesn’t award prize cash. Nonetheless, many medalists obtain funds from their international locations’ governments, nationwide sports activities our bodies or sponsors.
America Olympic and Paralympic Committee awarded $37,500 to gold medalists on the final Summer season Video games in Tokyo in 2021. Singapore’s Nationwide Olympic Council guarantees $1m for Olympic gold, a feat achieved solely as soon as thus far by a Singaporean competitor.
In sports activities like tennis and golf, the Olympic event is the one time in a season that {many professional} gamers compete at no cost with medals on provide however no prize cash. Coe didn’t wish to speculate on whether or not different occasions may observe observe and area’s lead.
“I’ve always made it a point not to speak on behalf of other sports,” Coe stated.
There’s no signal but of some other Olympic sport providing prize cash.