World Athletics has fired an arrow into the soul of the Olympic movement, leaving its president Thomas Bach with a $100m headache.
Cash for medals isn’t a novel Games initiative but, in putting a $50,000 price tag on golds at Paris 2024, track and field is the first sport to formally counter Olympic founder Pierre de Coubertin’s diktat that taking part rather than winning is what his sporting jamboree is all about.
While many athletes competing in the Summer Olympics’ 32 sports are amateurs, the myth that they all do so for love of the competition was exposed very many years ago. Even in World Athletics president Seb Coe’s competitive heyday, when the sport was supposedly purely amateur, shoe money and side deals were the order of the day.
In the current era, public and private sector support are commonplace, even for the Olympics’ more niche sports. But up until now, there’s been no formal prize pot for the Games themselves.
The World Athletics payments are said not to be an incentive for athletes, simply a reward to recognise their essential role in the Olympic machine. Which rings true.
None are likely to strive any harder to succeed in this pinnacle competition, although the elation on winning might be a touch greater and the disappointment for runners-up a little sharper. Cash prizes for silver and bronze medals are promised for Los Angeles 2028.
Already athletes in other sports are calling for similar action from their international governing bodies. And who can blame them? Trouble is, not all have the wherewithal to follow World Athletics’ lead.
The track and field golds are costing $2.4m, a sum stripped out of the quadrennial payment made to the sport by the International Olympic Committee. This amounted to $38.5m for the post-Tokyo cycle.
World Athletics is not a wealthy organisation, its finances very poorly stewarded by the previous leadership regime. But it has enough to be able to afford to go down this path. Other sports, enjoying smaller IOC payments and with lesser commercial appeal, are unlikely to have the same flexibility.
World Archery had unrestricted funds of just 1m Swiss francs last seen (only a little more if measured in US dollars), and five Olympic medal events which would eat a chunk from its reserves to reward.
The IOC is now in a bind. It won’t want to preside over a two-tier Games in which medals in some sports are deemed to have greater value than others. If only one or two federations follow athletics’ lead – and surely World Aquatics will – then the IOC will likely feel compelled to step in and institute prize money for all medallists across all sports.
How, though, to set the reward criteria? What of team sports involving multiple athletes? World Athletics has decided that a winning relay team will share $50,000 rather than receive that sum each.
But a similar approach in the likes of football, hockey, basketball and rugby sevens would result in pretty trivial sums. And would every squad member be treated equally, even if some never make it off the bench? How about a rowing eight (plus their cox)? Would each win as much as a single sculler?
There are 329 Olympic medal events at Paris 2024. Let’s assume that the World Athletics tariff of $50,000 is the minimum the IOC might implement in four years’ time in LA. (Let’s face it, they won’t want to appear dictated to by athletics, so may opt for a higher sum). And that the prizes for second and third between them add up to the same amount as gold.
Then accept that every single medallist receives the same amount, whether they are a member of a team or an individual competitor, otherwise many sports would cry foul. Suddenly, the overall cost is ballooning.
The Paris Mint has struck roughly 2,600 medals for the Olympics. At $50,000 for gold and the same for the other two colours combined, that’s $87m. Whack on some inflation through to Los Angeles and you swiftly get to that $100m headache.
Lest you start to feel even a sliver of sympathy for the IOC, remember that it sits on around $1bn of reserves, all ultimately built on the sweat of athletes – and that it rewards its leaders handsomely. In short, it can afford to make this philosophical shift.
Right now, it will be attempting to persuade sports to hold the party line, but this will surely only prove a temporary success. Better it control the introduction of prize money, to reflect reality, than allow a free-for-all that creates a multi-tier ecosystem of haves, have-somethings and have-nots.
The greatest unintended injustice of this shift is likely to be felt by Paralympians. Leading nations now reward elite able bodied and disabled athletes equally, but the International Paralympic Committee has always led a hand-to-mouth existence, heavily reliant on the goodwill of the IOC and host cities.
Around 2,400 medals have been minted for this year’s Paras, not far short of the Olympics. And yet the IPC has cash reserves of just €26m. No chance it can match any Olympic medal rewards, even if only in Para athletics for which World Athletics has no responsibility. The maths simply won’t work.
Seb and the sub-plot
There is little love lost between the IOC and World Athletics, in large part because of the latter’s admirably harder stance of Russia – due firstly to doping and more recently Ukraine. Reporters were told that World Athletics only informed the IOC of its initiative on the morning of the announcement. Make of that what you will.
When Coe was elected president of his sport in 2015 a key manifesto pledge that I dreamt up for him was to pass a slice of the IOC’s quadrennial payment to each of the sport’s 214 member nations. He went on to win a tight contest. Gold medal payments could now form the central plank of any election campaign by Coe to succeed Thomas Bach.
Current favourite to replace Bach is Bach himself, his acolytes plotting to change the rules to allow him one more term of office. Should this chicanery fail, best placed is Zimbabwean Kirsty Coventry, double gold medal-winning swimmer and now a government minister.
She’d be well advised to enthusiastically advocate cash rewards for all medallists right now rather than find herself left in the blocks, as this could become the defining issue in any leadership battle.
Robert Mugabe gave Kirsty Coventry $50,000 in cash after her success at the Athens Olympics and $100,000 – the BBC reported in a suitcase – after Beijing 2008. Story here.
Through the eye of a needle
Cash for gold broke during the Sport Accord conference in Birmingham, a gathering of all the Olympic sports, event hosting cities and picks-and-shovels suppliers to the industry.
Standout quote from the stage for me came from the Epic Games co-founder Mark Rein when asked whether video games’ violence would prevent them becoming a full part of the Olympics: “What was the purpose of javelin in the beginning? It was to pierce your opponent’s heart.”
The event had some unusual exhibitors. My favourite? The International Camel Racing Federation. A new sport for a future Saudi-hosted Olympics? Games inclusion is one of the Federation’s stated aims.
Kop gets real lesson
Liverpool FC fans have been protesting about a two per cent rise in season ticket prices for the second year running, after eight years of freezes.
Had the cheapest adult season 10 years ago – priced then at £685; next season at £713 – risen in line with inflation it would now cost about £900.
Now that would be something to wave a flag about…
Never too late to donate
If you’re not maxed out sponsoring friends, family and colleagues running the London Marathon on Sunday, consider backing these two Ukrainian marines, one an arm amputee, another missing a leg. Full story here in The Times. Links to their fundraising pages: Oleksii and Heorhii.
Testing start
Eighteen County Championship matches so far this season. One won, 15 drawn, two abandoned without a ball being bowled. Too many runs, too few wickets, too much (predictably) variable weather.
Blame the experiment with the Kookaburra ball and/or the scheduling, but this won’t have revved up the kids in their Easter hols.
Ed Warner is chair of GB Wheelchair Rugby and writes his sport column at sportinc.substack.com