The $2.4 million prize pot to be split among the 48 gold medallists in Paris
\nLONDON
\nWorld Athletics\u2019 (WA) decision to give prize money to Olympic gold medallists is unfair to other sports that cannot afford to do the same, Britain\u2019s five-times Olympic rowing champion Steve Redgrave said.
\nAthletics became the first sport to offer prize money to Olympic champions when WA President Sebastian Coe announced on Wednesday that gold medallists in Paris this year will each earn $50,000.
\nThe announcement was met with a positive reaction from the world\u2019s leading athletes, with the $2.4 million prize pot to be split among the 48 gold medallists in Paris.
\nA total of $540 million was allocated to the 28 sports at the Tokyo Games with World Athletics receiving the most at $40 million.
\nRedgrave, who won five successive Olympic gold medals between 1984 and 2000, said the prize money plan would turn the Olympics into a \u201ctwo-tier\u201d system.
\n\u201cIf you win an Olympic gold medal in any athletics event, you are able to earn substantial financial gains from those results,\u201d the 62-year-old told the Daily Mail in an interview published on Thursday.
\n\u201cIt smacks a bit hard for the sports that can\u2019t afford to do this. Rowing is in that situation. We struggle to bring sponsorship and finance into it. This separates the elite sports to the others like rowing, canoeing, and most combat sports.
\n\u201cThey just don\u2019t have the same funding that there is in World Athletics.
\nI would prefer that the money they\u2019re putting in to be helping more of the grassroots of their own sports\u2013or helping other Olympic sports to be able to be at the same level on the same footprint.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The $2.4 million prize pot to be split among the 48 gold medallists in Paris LONDON World Athletics\u2019 (WA) decision to give prize money to Olympic gold medallists is unfair to other sports that cannot afford to do the same, Britain\u2019s five-times Olympic rowing champion Steve Redgrave said. Athletics became the first sport to offer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-399846","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-sports"},"yoast_head":"\n