Olympics 2024: Track and Field to be 1st sport to introduce prize money for gold-medal winner

For the first time in 128 years, the Olympic gold medal will be worth a little bit more, but only in track and field. Athletics president and two time gold medalist Sebastian Coe argued he was long overdue to award athletes like marathon legend Elliot Kipchoge for growing their sport. I don’t run because of money. But I ran to for of course I want to perform. Then the other things will come with this year that could be worth $50,000. The money, though will come directly from the athletics federation, not the IOC. Leaving it up to the federations of every other sport to decide if they want to follow suit, I think what Ko did is a good thing for pushing this agenda and making this a discussion. From the earliest days of the Olympics, the term amateur was considered sacrosanct. When it was discovered 1912 medalist Jim Thorpe was earning $25 a week playing minor League Baseball. He was stripped of his medals. Any benefit from sport was deemed illegal. It was, you know, it was under the table if you got a prize. Like. A new chain or something like that. You know, Handlebars. And now you’ve got Timbits, you know, shirts on five year olds running around playing soccer and advertising for for a corporation. And and that again, would have been completely unheard of. The rules made life difficult for athletes like Angela Schneider, who before winning silver at the 1984 Games, struggled to put food on her table and afford the equipment to compete. I can’t tell you how poor we were. I mean, I came from a farm, so the Rodney Legion paid for my Olympic ore. The town community rallied to pay for what was then brand new technology, the carbon fiber ore. I have that ore hanging in my home. They bought it for me so I could go to the Olympics. The shift away from amateur happened in 1986 when the IOC removed the word from its charter to allow the US Dream Team to compete. But that was almost 40 years ago. Some countries, including Canada, have since awarded cash prizes to its athletes. But the question now is, should all Olympic athletes, regardless of sport or country, get paid to compete? Microlay Global News Toronto.