(Reuters) – The decision by World Athletics (WA), the international athletics federation, to financially reward Olympic gold medalists is unfair to other disciplines which do not have the means to do the same, says the British Olympic rowing champion Steve Redgrave.
WA President Sebastian Coe announced on Wednesday a plan to award a bonus of $50,000 (46,049 euros) to each of the gold medalists in athletics at the Paris Olympic Games.
The prize pool of $2.4 million will be distributed among the 48 gold medalists in Paris.
If the announcement was welcomed by the world’s best athletes, Steve Redgrave, who won five Olympic gold medals between 1984 and 2000, believes that this initiative will transform the Olympics into a “two-speed” system.
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“If you win an Olympic gold medal in any athletics event, you can make substantial financial gains from those results,” he tells the Daily Mail.
“It’s a bit hard for sports that can’t afford it. Rowing is in this situation. We have difficulty finding sponsors and funding. This differentiates elite sports from others, like rowing. “rowing, canoeing and most combat sports,” he said.
“They just don’t have the same funding as world athletics. I would prefer that the money they invest goes into helping their own sports more, or helping other Olympic sports to be at the same level.”
(Aadi Nair in Bangalore; French version Federica Mileo, edited by Sophie Louet)
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