Winning an Olympic medal for your country always comes with great pride. However, for some countries competing, athletes will be walking home with a lot more than a medal. Out of the 91 countries and territories participating in this year’s winter Olympics in Beijing, around 32 have announced they will be paying cash prizes to those who win a spot on the podium. Of these 32 countries, 12 have announced a bonus of over $100 000 for their medalists including: Hong Kong, Turkey, Malaysia, Italy, Cyprus, Latvia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Kosovo, Estonia, and Czech Republic.
For most Olympic athletes, they rely largely on sponsorship as well as stipends to recover their costs of years of training, equipment, travel, and medical expenses. Sponsorships can be very beneficial for these athletes, but some never become famous enough to land higher sponsorship deals. However, with Hong Kong’s gold medal bonus of $642 000 and Turkey’s $380 000, they could be able to reimburse costs and have money left over. This might seem like an overabundance of money, but unfortunately these two countries have never won an Olympic medal in the winter Olympics.
Olympic medal bonuses can either be acquired by their country’s national Olympic committees or straight from the government. Most of the higher paying countries are backed up by government funding to promote and encourage growing sports culture. Even though Turkey and Hong Kong do not have a great track record for winter Olympics, their medal bonuses are a great motive to keep working hard to improve sport culture in their countries.
Nelleka A.
Sport, Not Games ⚽ 