Explained: Paris 2024 track & field gold medal winners will get paid – why is this significant and what does Neeraj Chopra say about it?

When a track and field athlete stands on the top of the Olympic podium in Paris this summer, a gold medal will not be their only prize. For the first time, they will also be rewarded with a cheque.

On Saturday, World Athletics announced a cash prize of $50,000 (approx Rs 41.6 lakh) for each gold medal winner at the Paris Olympics, which begins on July 26. Four years later, at the Los Angeles Games, all three medal winners will receive monetary benefits in addition to a medal, the global body announced.

With this decision, the body headed by British track and field legend Sebastian Coe partially shattered one long-standing myth that is often romanticised about the Olympics – that the athletes, unlike in other sports, are amateurs.

A new milestone for our sport 🏟️

World Athletics becomes the first international federation to award prize money at the Olympic Games.

Take a look at some of the other major athletics milestones at the Olympics.

Press Release 🔗 https://t.co/8OZAwlJy5W pic.twitter.com/luNjZ9lhHP

— World Athletics (@WorldAthletics) April 10, 2024

Shattering the amateur image

In tennis, football or cricket, athletes are paid to play matches and rewarded with hefty bonuses and cash prizes based on their performances. Sportspersons competing at the Olympics are held to a higher standard and expected to maintain the tradition where they compete to uphold the ‘spirit’ of the Games. This concept was put forward by Frenchman Pierre de Coubertin, the father of the modern Olympics, who said that amateurism was essential to the Olympic movement.

For half a century, it remained like that. The International Olympic Committee even punished athletes who were caught receiving money. One of the classic examples of this remains that of the USA’s Jim Thorpe. The pentathlete and decathlete was stripped of his gold medals in the two events in 1912 after it was found that he received tiny payments from a baseball player two years before the Olympics.

Gradually, over the decades the IOC loosened its position on the issue of Olympic athletes not getting paid at all. The shift began in 1971 when it was alleged that the Soviets financially supported their athletes and by the time the 1992 Olympics came, the concept was done away with after the USA fielded its ‘Dream Team’ – some of the world’s highest-paid athletes who played in a professional league.

Yet, till today the athletes do not get directly paid for turning up or winning at the Olympics, unless it’s from their sponsors or the respective governments. This has been a friction point for a while.

World Athletics introduces prize money for Olympic gold medallists at Paris 2024, and all medallists from LA28.

— World Athletics (@WorldAthletics) April 10, 2024

How federations are funded

For years, it’s been held that while almost everyone else involved in the Olympic movement make money off it, the key actors – athletes themselves – aren’t paid for their roles. Even the Olympic bosses – from the IOC president to members to executive board officials – make between $450 to $900 per day while on official business.

The IOC said it redistributes 90 percent of the billions of dollars it makes in revenue back into sport. However, an Inside The Games report suggested that a fraction of it goes back to athletes. A major chunk of the money is distributed among the international federations and other IOC operations.

The International Federations are placed in different brackets, depending on their performance at a Games that is determined using various parameters, and the revenue is distributed accordingly.

For instance, according to a 2019 report in the Olympic watchdog website Play The Game, athletics, gymnastics and aquatics were placed in Group A and were entitled to receive $40 million each from the IOC. The lowest category was E, where golf, modern pentathlon and rugby were grouped with each getting $ 14.10 million.

More than 50 percent of these federations depend on the IOC dole to carry out their basic functions and hence are left with very little money to distribute among the athletes as prize money.

Giving athletes their due

It leaves athletes in a precarious position. An Indian Express investigation earlier this year showed that the majority of India’s athletes depend on government jobs for income to sustain their sporting careers.

After the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics, the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) awarded Rs 75 lakh to gold medal winners, Rs 40 lakh to the silver winners and Rs 25 lakh for those who won bronze.

Before the Tokyo Games, NBC reported that more than half of the USA’s Olympic hopefuls – 59 percent – made ‘less than $25,000 during the year of their respective Olympics’, be it the Winter or Summer Games.

Although a majority of federations might not be able to afford something like this, given they do not have $2.4 million which a body like the World Athletics can spare.

By doing so, the Guardian noted that Coe-led World Athletics also highlighted ‘the fact (that) in the 128-year history of the Games it (IOC) has never paid its stars to compete in the biggest sporting show of all.’

And that is the sports politics side of this. Coe is among the candidates to succeed Thomas Bach as the IOC president when the German’s term gets over next year. This is Coe’s way of giving the athletes their due.

The amount offered might not be much – a Neeraj Chopra might make more from a 10-second commercial. But the message isn’t lost.

As Chopra said, “Money-wise in athletics, there isn’t the kind of money that is in tennis or football among other sports. World Athletics’ decision to announce prize money for gold-winning athletes at the Paris Olympics is a good start. It’s a good addition.”

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